Balance of Power Read online

  As running commentaries go, it seemed fairly adequate.

  Eventually, the one who’d brought us here came back, and began ushering us forward again. He took us to one of the huts and invited us inside. He made signs at us, which even I had no difficulty interpreting as instructions to stay put. Then he went back to his discussion group, to argue a bit more. I peered out of the doorway for a few minutes, watching the villagers, but after a while I got tired of being watched in turn. I went inside.

  There wasn’t much in the hut—two long mounds of straw, presumably used for sleeping; a few bowls carved out of wood—all empty and quite clean; a pot full of some greasy substance rather like soap. One of the inner walls, though, was sown with the colored feathers of a dozen different species of bird—just the wing feathers, obviously saved for some decorative purpose. And in little grass pockets built into the same wall there was an assortment of small tools—scrapers, knives, forks, even pairs of forceps. They were almost all made from wood or bone, but one or two were made from a horny substance that may have been from the bill of a bird. There was no metal at all.

  “Home sweet home,” I murmured.

  The straw had a musty animal odor, but it wasn’t too hard to get used to.

  Mariel sat on the floor with the lantern in front of her, staring at it.

  “I wish I’d brought some of the food,” she said. “I could have loaded up a packsack.”

  “They’ll feed us,” I said. “It’s safe to assume that anything they eat won’t be poisonous to us. Poisons are fairly ubiquitous. And their bacteria certainly won’t worry us except, perhaps, for a touch of gut sensitivity. Anyhow, we don’t have a lot of choice.”

  About an hour passed before we had visitors. There were four of them, and I realized with a guilty start when they came through the door that I couldn’t tell which of them, if any, was the one who’d brought us here. I’d kept my eyes on him before, but I couldn’t actually recognize him. One of the four, however, I eliminated from consideration. He was wearing a headdress made out of feathers and bits of black fur. He seemed to be the one in command, but whether he was the tribal chief or the local shaman there was no way of knowing. He looked us both over very carefully. Then we all sat down, in an approximate circle, with the one in the headdress facing me. He asked questions. I tried to convey my inability to answer. He held conferences with the others. Then they asked more questions. I tried to tell them our names. They didn’t get it—or refused to acknowledge it. One of them handed the lantern to the guy in the fancy headgear, who inspected it closely, figured out how to turn it on, and lit up the inside of the hut. He tested the transparent plastic for heat. I took it from him and showed him how to vary the intensity of both light and heat. Then I switched off, unscrewed the base and showed him the fuel cell. He took a lively interest in all of this, and didn’t seem to attribute any of it to evil magic. In the end, I made a show of making him a gift of the lantern. He took it with apparent pleasure.

  I felt that we were really getting somewhere, then. I tried again with our names, but again it didn’t seem to click. I tried him with the word “lamp,” and he tried to repeat that. He couldn’t quite manage the mp sound because of his arched upper lip, but he made a useful attempt. In a fit of generosity I brought my penknife out of my pocket and made a gift of that, too. He played with both blades and tried to say “knife,” making a better job of the word than he’d been able to do with “lamp.” By the time he left, he seemed genuinely enthusiastic about the whole affair.

  Mariel congratulated me again. They still hadn’t taken much notice of her—presumably because she was smaller. I didn’t suppose that the aliens could recognize her as obviously female. We ate with the family shortly after our inquisitors had gone. We were invited out of the hut by a single male—I assumed it was the one who’d brought us in, but couldn’t take an oath on it—and we squatted on the ground outside with him, a female, and two infants. We ate something like lukewarm sago from wooden plates, and then were offered some large grubs. With the best will in the world I couldn’t summon up the courage, and we declined. It was a silent meal—they all seemed to accept that they couldn’t talk to us, and our presence seemed to inhibit them. Afterward, we were politely ushered back into the hut.

  “As a pattern for life,” I said, “this could get boring.”

  “It’s only temporary,” she assured me. “I think they’re starting a new building up near the top of the cleft. I saw a group of males haggling over something and making marks on the ground. It’s probably the posh end of the village.”

  “For us?” It seemed like a nice gesture. “That’s very nice of them. Generosity obviously pays.”

  “I think the one who came to look us over was the local wise man,” she said. “The guy who’s supposed to know the answers to all questions. He had to weigh us up, decide where we’d fit into the scheme of things. These people are savages—their philosophy of life hasn’t got room for more things in heaven and earth than they habitually dream of. They have to work out a role for us, and he was the man with the job of doing it. You made a hit—so we’re honored members of the community. For now. That’s the way I see it.”

  It was pretty much the way I saw it, too. We had prestige, because we had the gifts of civilization—light and metal. They obviously had some source of supply of the latter, already worked into weapons. If they had to trade for them they probably got ripped off in no uncertain terms. We probably represented an alternative—a potential means of enriching the whole tribe. I wasn’t exactly sure that I wanted to play Prometheus, but that seemed to be the part they had me down for. It was natural enough.

  Much later, we had another visitor. Or, to be strictly accurate, an addition to our numbers. It was Nieland. He was brought in by a pair of males, looking quite terrified.

  I’d never before seen anyone look so glad to see me. His relief was beyond words. He just sank down on the dirt floor, sweating profusely and looking thankful.

  “They found you, then,” I commented, airily, taking advantage of my familiarity with the situation.

  “I thought you were dead,” he said.

  “You shouldn’t have wandered off,” I told him.

  “I thought you were dead,” he said, again. You were lying there with Ling—I thought they’d shot you both and left me to die. It was pitch dark except for the stars...I didn’t find you until I fell over you. I had to get away...back to the river...I don’t know where...I got lost. I was wandering about the forest all day, until....”

  “I think we can piece together the rest in our minds,” I said. “Get some rest. It must have been a long walk—and these people can really cover the ground.”

  He did, in fact, look exhausted.

  “Two chance meetings in one day,” I said to Mariel in a worried tone. “Not likely.”

  “There weren’t many males about the village when we were out having high tea,” she mused. “Only the ones at the head of the valley. The rest may have had other things to occupy them. Or....”

  “They may have been out searching the forest for more miracle-workers from across the sea. And if they find the New Hope....”

  “They can hardly miss her.”

  “Our popularity might fail...very suddenly.”

  She nodded. “I think we’d better pray that they pulled up anchor this morning,” she said.

  “Without checking the hold?”

  She shrugged. “They built up a fair hatred for this place. Verging on superstitious dread. They might have sailed regardless, reckoning on trying their luck elsewhere. They might decide not to try to get supplies from the forest at all. Men like Ogburn and Malpighi would be more likely to think of stealing supplies. They still have some guns—maybe they’ll work their way north after the fishing boat you saw.”

  I turned to Nieland, who was slowly recovering his breath and his composure.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I don’t think they’l
l stay at the base,” he said. “Not after what they did. They’ll run, if only to get away from the scene of the crime.”

  It sounded plausible enough. But I still felt a little uneasy. If the aliens did find our erstwhile companions, and approached them in optimistic friendship....

  But there was nothing we could do, either way. Nothing but wait.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The village did seem to get more crowded around dusk. People were coming in from all around, though whether they’d been searching for more humans or were simply about their own business, there was no way to tell.

  When it grew dark, they built up the fires in the middle of the village, and they hammered a stake into the ground nearby. For a moment, I thought it might be an ominous sign, but with some ceremony they attached to its point the lamp I’d given to the wise man, and they turned its light up high. It glowed like a miniature sun, but whitely.

  I watched them from the doorway as they admired the pure white light. It seemed to make quite an impression. Then somebody got out a drum and started beating it. Someone else joined in.

  There are always drums in jungle melodramas. Sanders of the river was perpetually surrounded by ominous percussion and the feebler bearers of the white man’s burden always used to get the jitters about restless natives. But this was dance music.

  “I think there’s a party starting,” I said to Mariel. “But we don’t seem to have been invited.”

  “We could always wander out,” she suggested. “There’s no guard on the door. We aren’t prisoners.”

  I considered it. It was pretty dark in the hut, and none too comfortable. I knew that Nieland was apprehensive, but I was fed up with sitting around in the wings.

  As I moved toward the light, where the whole tribe seemed to be gathering, the wailing started. To describe it thus is perhaps a little unfair, but it really wasn’t an aesthetically pleasing sound. There was little that was melodious about the way these people spoke, and their singing was worse. Only one voice took the lead at any one time, but there were always a lot more muttering a kind of chorus, providing a rhythm without drowning out the soloist. The solo part was passed from voice to voice about every half-minute. Females took turns as well as males, but it was mostly the older members of the tribe who participated. Some of the children were dancing—each one alone and making it up as he or she went along, but almost everyone else was either sitting or kneeling in a great circle around the fires and the single lantern perched upon its pole.

  There was nothing particularly solemn about what was happening—the ones who were kneeling weren’t praying, just making themselves comfortable. We didn’t push our way to the front, but sat down near the back. The aliens made room for us, and our neighbors stared at us covertly. They didn’t seem surprised or resentful at our coming out to join them.

  The song, I guessed, was the accumulated knowledge and tradition of the tribe, organized into units. No one had to know it all but everyone probably knew most of it. Any part might be taken by any of a dozen of the older members of the tribe, and even the children probably knew a few verses each. We listened in silence, understanding not a word. It wasn’t beautiful, but it was fascinating, and the rhythm, though fast, was almost hypnotic. Maybe somewhere toward the end of the song they’d be making up new verses—verses about us. Something new to sing about.

  I let myself be absorbed into the rhythm. I could almost feel that I belonged. I no longer felt frightened by the possibilities that still lurked within the situation. For the moment, it was all okay.

  Suddenly, there was a movement to the left, and I looked up to see the alien in the feathered headdress and two companions picking their way through the crowd toward me. I stood up to meet him. The singing was still in progress, so he didn’t attempt to speak, but he put out his hand in a beckoning gesture. Mariel still hadn’t noticed, so I touched her shoulder. Nieland was already looking up.

  I moved forward, and the other took my arm in his slender-fingered hand. I could feel blunt vestigial claws denting my skin.

  He was exposing his teeth in what I took to be the beginning of a smile or a gentle laugh. I smiled back.

  And he was pitched backward as if struck down by a giant hand.

  Time seemed to congeal as he fell, arms akimbo, one of those vestigial claws catching briefly in my sleeve. He let go a sound that was only incipiently a scream.

  Sticking out of his chest was a four-inch shaft, neatly feathered with slivers of wood.

  I had just time to notice this before the howling started and all hell broke loose. Suddenly everyone was up and running, yelling like banshees.

  I picked Mariel up from the floor and shoved her toward the hut from which we’d come. “Get under cover!” I shouted. I didn’t bother looking around for Nieland—he could take care of himself. I followed Mariel as she sprinted for the shadows within the hut. But we were too late. Someone else was heading that way ahead of us—one of the females, presumably the one with whom we’d eaten earlier in the day. She was entitled—it was her hut—but she never reached it. Something else came out of the gap between the huts and struck her down with a savage sideways blow of what looked like a cutlass. It was an alien, and it looked just like any other alien to me, but they could tell the difference. A child running along beside me turned tail and ran in another direction.

  I took the hint. I went sideways, pulling Mariel with me, not knowing where I was going but determined to get there fast. Another shadow yawned invitingly beside another hut, and I ran into it, making my way along the outer wall and round the back. Once there I tried to keep going straight out into the jungle, but I had forgotten the walls of the cleft. I ran straight into a rock face, and cursed loudly. I flattened myself up against the rock and began to feel my way along. Mariel was still with me, keeping her hand in touch with my arm though not actually gripping it. Five or six meters along the ragged face I found vegetation again, and realized that what I’d run into was an outcrop. There was a triangular gap behind it—not exactly a hiding place, but at least somewhere out of the way.

  I moved into it, pulling Mariel behind me. We stood stock still, listening. We could see nothing—foliage above our heads cut out most of the stars and the huts blocked out the light of the lantern and the fires.

  The screaming was still going on, and we didn’t need to speak the language to appreciate the mixture of panic-stricken yells of terror and the whoops of the marauders. Through it all I could feel the beat of my heart, pounding like a hammer.

  “We’ve got to make a run for it,” hissed Mariel. “It sounds like a massacre.”

  There was no direct evidence of which way the battle was going, but whoever was attacking had had everything in their favor. They had had plenty of time to group their forces and they had picked the moment. Our lot hadn’t had their arms ready to hand, and they weren’t exactly well-supplied with weaponry. I didn’t want to start running around blind, but I didn’t want to hang about and wait for the butchers.

  “Okay,” I whispered. I began to creep along parallel with the wall of the cleft, toward the lower end of the village and the dam.

  I knew that there was something of a bottleneck at the pool, but figured that if we could get through it we’d be away, with nothing but an infinite sea of trees in front of us. But there was no way I could move silently through the vegetation, and if there was anyone in that bottleneck....

  Step by step we moved forward, futile eyes searching the darkness.

  There was a small sound, very close at hand. A scratching sound. As the thought leapt into my mind that I knew that sound it was instantly confirmed. A match flared into life....

  And the yellow glow illuminated the furred face of an alien who must have been all of seven and a half feet tall. His bright brown eyes caught the light of the match and seemed to gleam like gold. I saw the mouth open to reveal the pointed teeth.

  I aimed a kick at where I thought his groin might be, and he gasped as my boot
hit his thigh. Reflexively, he reached out a long, long arm and shoved me back. The match didn’t go out, and I saw his mouth move to let go a spitting hiss and then a clicking sound. I put up my hand to shield my face, knowing as I did so that it was hopeless. Mariel, behind me, gasped out the ghost of a scream.

  “Blurry iriot,” hissed a voice. “S’ay s’il.”

  For a second or two, I just couldn’t believe that it was the alien who had spoken. I had seen his mouth move, but it just didn’t seem possible. The accent was atrocious, but the words were unmistakable. I just froze, completely confused.

  It was, when all was said and done, what he’d asked of me.

  The frail light flickered in his hand, and he turned the match to keep it alight. He lowered it slightly, so that it illuminated his body. That, too, was a shock. For one thing, he was wearing clothing. Not much, but enough—a sleeveless tunic of some leathery substance, and a short skirt or kilt of dark blue cloth. He had a belt around his waist with a wicked-looking knife tucked neatly into a scabbard. What was even more astonishing was the thing that he carried in his other hand. It was a crossbow, about four feet long from stock to head with a three-foot bow. There was a quiver of bolts slung across his shoulder. He was, to coin a phrase, armed to the teeth.

  Somewhere behind us, one of the huts went up in flames. Its matted wall and dry roof went up very rapidly. By the light of the flames we could see somewhat more than by the light of the match, which now expired. Standing behind the alien who’d stopped us were two more silent figures, impassively waiting.

  One of them was an alien, similarly dressed but carrying only a heavy wooden club.

  The other was a human. He was a little shorter than I, thinly built, with light brown hair and eyes which caught the firelight in the same way as the alien’s had. He was looking straight at me, with his face set hard in a grim half-smile. He didn’t seem surprised to see me,