Jason sat, motionless, looking out from under the leather hood, the hidden knife in his hand, ready to dive across the floor and sink it into the intruder’s throat.
Looking quickly about the dark interior, the intruder shouted what could only have been a question. Graybeard answered with a negative grunt, and that was all there was to it. The man vanished as quickly as he had come and the old woman tottered over to lace the entrance tightly shut again.
In his years of wandering around the galaxy, Jason had encountered very little unselfish charity and was justifiably suspicious. The knife was still ready. “Why did you take the risk of helping me?” he asked.
“A jongleur will risk anything to learn new things,” the man answered, settling himself cross-legged by the fire. “I am above the petty squabbles of the tribes. My name is Oraiel, and you will begin by telling me your name.”
“Riverboat Sam,” Jason said, putting the knife down long enough to pull up the top of his metalcioth suit and push his arms into it. He lied by reflex, like playing his cards close to his chest. There were no threatening moves. The old woman mumbled over the fire while the youth squatted behind Oraiel, sinking into the same position.
“What world are you from?”
“Heaven.”
“Are there many worlds where men live?”
“At least 30,000, though no one can be completely sure of the exact number.”
“What is your world like?”
Jason looked around, and, for the first time since he had opened his eyes in the cage, he had a moment to stop and think. Luck had been with him so far, but he was still a long way from getting out of this mess alive.
“What is your world like?” Oraiel repeated.
“What’s your world like, old man? I’ll trade you fact for fact.”
Oraiel was silent for a moment and a spark of malice glinted in his half-closed eyes. Then he nodded. “It is agreed. I will answer your questions if you will answer mine.”
“Fine. You’ll answer mine first as I have more to lose if we’re interrupted. But before we do this twenty- questions business, I have to take an inventory. Things have been too busy for this up until now.”
Though his gun was gone, the power holster was still strapped into place. It was worthless now, but the batteries might come in useful. His equipment belt was gone and his pockets had been rifled. Only the fact that the medikit was slung to the rear had saved it from detection. He must have been lying on it when they searched him. His extra ammunition was gone as well as the case of grenades.
The radio was still there! In the darkness they must not have noticed it in the flat pocket almost under his arm. It only had line-of-sight operation, but that might be enough to get a fix on the ship or even call for help.
He pulled it out and looked gloomily at the crushed case and the fractured components that were leaking from a crack in the side. Some time during the busy events of the last day, it had been struck by something heavy. He switched it on and got exactly the result he expected. Nothing.
The fact that the chronometer concealed behind his belt buckle was still keeping perfect time did little to cheer him. It was jo in the morning. Wonderful. The watch had been adjusted for the 20-hour day when they had landed on Felicity, with noon set for the sun at the zenith at the spot where they had landed.
“That’s enough of that,” he said, making himself as comfortable as was possible on the hard ground and pulling the furs around him. “Let’s talk, Oraiel. Who is the boss here, the one who ordered my execution?”
“He is Temuchin the Warrior, The Fearless One, He of the Arm of Steel, The Destroyer—”
“Fine. He’s on top. I can tell that without the footnotes. What has he got against strangers, and buildings?”
“‘The Song of the Freemen,” Oraiel said, digging his elbow into the ribs of his assistant. The youth grunted and rooted about in the tangled furs until he produced a lutelike instrument with a long neck and two strings. Plucking the strings for accompaniment he began to sing in a high-pitched voice.
There was more like this and it went on for an unconscionably long time, until Jason found himself beginning to nod. He interrupted, broke off the song, and asked some pertinent questions.
A picture of the realities of life on the plains of Felicity began to emerge.
From the oceans on the east and west, and from the Great Cliff in the south, to the mountains in the north there stood not one permanent building or settlement of man. Free and wild, the tribes roved over the grass sea, warring on themselves and each other in endless feuds and conflicts.
There had been cities here, some of them were even mentioned by name in the Songs, but now, only their memory remained, and an uncompromising hatred. There must have been a long and bitter war between two different ways of life, if the memory, generations later, could still arouse such strong emotions. With the limited natural resources of these arid plains, the agrarians and the nomads could not possibly have lived side by side in peace. The farmers would have built settlements around the scant water sources and fenced out the nomads and their flocks. In self-defense, the nomads would have had to band together in an attempt to destroy the settlements. They had succeeded so well in this genocidal warfare that the only trace of their former enemies that remained was a hated memory.
Crude, unlettered, violent, the barbarian conquerors roamed the high steppe in tribes and clans, constantly on the move as their stunted cattle and goats consumed the scant grass that covered the plains. Writing was unknown; the jongleurs, the only men who could pass freely from tribe to tribe, were the historians, entertainers and bearers of news. No trees grew in this hostile climate so wooden utensils and artifacts were unknown. Iron ore and coal were apparently plentiful in the northern mountains, so iron and mild steel were the most common materials used. These, along with animal hides, horns and bones, were almost the only raw materials available. An outstanding exception were the helms and breastplates. While some were made of iron, the best ones came from a tribe in the distant hills who worked a mine of asbestos-like rock. They shredded this to fibers and mixed it with the gum of a broad-leaved plant to produce what amounted to an epoxy-fiber-glass material. It was light as aluminum, strong as steel, and even more elastic than the best spring steel. This technique, undoubtedly inherited from the first, pmBreakdown settlers on the planet, was the only thing that physically distinguished the nomads from any other race of iron-age barbarians. Animal droppings were used for cooking fuel; animal fat, for lamps. Life tended to be nasty, brutish and short.
Every clan or tribe had its traditional pasture ground over which it roamed, though the delimitations were vague and controversial, so that wars and feuds were a constant menace. The domed tents, camacks, were made of joined hides over iron poles. They were erected and struck in a few minutes, and when the tribe moved on, they were carried, with the household goods, on wheeled frames called escungs, like a travois with wheels, which were pulled by the moropes.
Unlike the cattle and goats, which were descendants of terrestrial animals, the inoropes were natives of the high steppes of Felicity. These claw-toed herbivores had been domesticated and bred for centuries, while most of their wild herds had been exterminated. Their thick pelts protected them from the eternal cold, and they could go as long as 20 days without water. As beasts of burden, and chargers of war, they made existence possible in this barren land.
There was little more to tell. The tribes roved and fought, each speaking its own language or dialect and using the neutral in, between tongue when they had to talk to outsiders. They formed alliances and treacherously broke them. Their occupation and love was war and they practiced it most efficiently.
