Balance of Power Read online

  “Okay,” said the one who’d struck the match. “All okay. S’ay cool. All o’er soon.”

  “What the hell are you doing?” I whispered. I had a hundred questions, but that one took precedence.

  “Saving you from the savages,” said the human. His voice was dry and flat. I couldn’t tell whether it was a simple statement or whether he was being sarcastic. His eyes were still on my face, staring with the same kind of fascination that I had seen in a dozen pairs of alien eyes during the day.

  “They hadn’t harmed us,” I whispered. “They were friendly. We weren’t in any danger.”

  The human shook his head. “Forest savages,” he said.

  “Stop it!” I said, abandoning the whisper for a normal tone. “If you started this, for God’s sake stop it.”

  He looked over my shoulder then. Several more huts had been fired, and there was now a great deal of light illuminating his face. I turned to look as well. The sound was dying, and so was the fight. The figures which were moving in the clearing now were all clothed, though some had loincloths instead of skirts, and some had shirts of lighter material instead of the leathery waistcoats. I couldn’t see any of the forest people except for those lying dead on the ground, who included males, females and children.

  “The rest have run into the forest,” said the dry voice. “It’s all over now. You’re safe,”

  I saw two figures coming toward us, silhouetted against the fire. One was tall and thin, the other short and stocky. Nieland had been “saved” too.

  “S’okay,” said the alien who’d lit the match. “We on yur si’, see.”

  I looked back at the human. “Who are you?” I demanded.

  “My name’s Verheyden,” he replied. “Jan Verheyden. This is Al’ha.”

  The alien with the crossbow dropped the weapon, catching it between his legs, and stuck out his hand. “Pleas’a meetya,” he said.

  Too dazed to think straight, I took his hand and let him shake mine.

  “I’m Alexis Alexander,” I said. “But you don’t understand. We weren’t being held captive. They didn’t mean us any harm.”

  Jan Verheyden, still poker-faced, simply shrugged his shoulders.

  “What does it matter?” he said. “Forest savages.”

  Al’ha let go of my hand. “Savages,” he echoed, as if that explained everything.

  I realized that they very probably did understand. They just didn’t care. To them, the savages were just vermin. Al’ha looked just like they did—even the pattern on his fur, what I could see of it, was indistinguishable from theirs. But he, like the alien who’d cut down the female as we tried to reach the hut, had no difficulty in drawing distinctions.

  I felt the anger ebbing away within me, because it was helpless to find any expression.

  I watched the expression of utter surprise on Nieland’s face as he came face to face with Jan Verheyden. He had had one hell of a day for surprises. Still, he had built the New Hope to come in search of adventure. He was getting a damn good run for his money.

  “What now?” he said, in a tone that had gone beyond bewilderment.

  I looked from his face to Verheyden’s, and back again. What now, indeed? I wondered,

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Ilah’y’su is anchored at a small village on the coast,” said Jan Verheyden. “This is about as far south as we come, trading finished cloth and metal implements for raw materials—mostly oil from various sea beasts. There are some deep wells in the seabed offshore there and the local fisherman build ramps from the shore to catch them entirely without boats. Incredible. They have a lot of trouble with the savages—they’re always squabbling and raiding one another. A dhow had brought news farther north that a big ship had been seen here, but it wasn’t until the villagers claimed to have seen it that I really took it seriously. We didn’t know how far south you’d sailed, and we couldn’t take Ilah’y’su south because some of the cargo’s perishable. But we came inland hunting, and some of the trackers from the village picked up your trail where the savages found you this morning. We found your camp, but the ship had already sailed. We picked up your own trail again but it got dark while we were still following. Attacking seemed the logical thing to do. You’re very lucky. If we hadn’t found you, you’d have had damn little chance of reaching civilization, whether the savages were friendly or not. And you can’t trust the savages. We’ve had trouble with them in the west, in the south...everywhere.”

  We were sitting in one of the few huts that hadn’t been burnt out. We had re-possessed the fuel-celled lamp. The alien I’d given it to didn’t need it any more, and his tribe—what was left of it—had scattered into the forest. There were just the five of us—we three “rescued” and our two chief rescuers: Jan Verheyden, captain of the good ship Ilah’y’su, and his towering right-hand man Al’ha. The rest of the attacking party had been a mixed bunch of aliens from the coastal village and Verheyden’s crewmen.

  There were a thousand things that I wanted to know, but I found difficulty in knowing where to start.

  Jan Verheyden seemed tense and unsure of himself now. His voice was still deliberately flat and emotionless, but I could see now the anxiety that put pressure on the facade. Our arrival was at the root of that unease, but I wasn’t quite sure why

  “Bernhard Verheyden must have been your father,” said Nieland, saving me from the worry of not knowing where to start.

  “That’s right,” said Jan.

  “What happened to the Floreat?”

  “She was wrecked. A long way north of here. Only eight got away in one of the boats. Two died within a day of reaching shore. My father, my mother...and four others...lived. They’re all dead now. My father died early last year.”

  “And now you’re alone?”

  “No,” he said, slightly surprised by the question. “There are five of us. Four brothers and a sister. Piet’s the eldest, Charles and Christian are younger than me, and Anna is between them. We’re carrying on his work. Piet took over even during the last year of his life...he was ill for a long time....”

  I noticed a curious thing while Jan was answering Nieland’s questions. He kept glancing away, not because of any embarrassment or confusion, but because there was something in the room that continually attracted his attention, drawing his gaze again and again. It was the lantern.

  I touched it with my fingertips. “Is it too bright?” I asked. “Or would you like me to turn the heat up a little?”

  He shook his head. “That came from Lambda?” he asked, tentatively.

  I realized why he had been puzzled. “Oh!” I said. “No. It comes from Earth.”

  His facade slipped at last as his face showed total astonishment. “From Earth!” he said, as if the words had been ripped unwillingly from his mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, feeling a little pleased by the fact that I’d set him back on his heels. “I should have introduced myself more fully. I came here with a ship—a support ship to give help to the colonies. Mariel is also from Earth.”

  His eyes flashed back to Nieland. “I’m from Lambda,” said Nieland. “I built the ship—the New Hope—to follow in your father’s footsteps. I thought it important that someone else should try to do what your father tried to do. I’m desperately sorry that it took such a long time. We couldn’t know, you see, that anyone had survived. We should have begun again sooner, but perhaps you know something of the colony’s difficulties.”

  He looked at us all with new eyes now, and it seemed to me that he looked considerably more favorably at Nieland than at Mariel or me. He had been prepared to take everything about us for granted, just to maintain his own sense of being totally in control of the situation. But now there were questions he had to ask.

  “What happened to your ship?” he asked, of Nieland. “Why should they sail away this morning? Are they coming back?”

  Nieland blushed. He seemed to lose his voice for a moment. “They...mutinied,” he croaked. Then,
recovering his normal tone, he went on: “We’re stranded here. Just as you were...are. The New Hope has gone....”

  He was about to continue still further, to explain about the small matter of ship’s supplies or the lack of them, but Mariel suddenly cut in with a question: “Your Ilah....” She stumbled over the name and gave up. “Is she capable of crossing the ocean?”

  I was surprised at first that she’d interrupted—it wasn’t her style at all. It leapt to mind that she’d had some reason for not letting on that the New Hope might not have gone far. The fleeting notion was pushed aside, though, when Jan Verheyden answered that question with which she’d intervened.

  “She’s a good ship,” he said. “A little smaller than the Floreat, carrying a little less sail...but I’d be prepared to tackle the ocean in her. I....”

  He stopped, suddenly. He had answered the question as if it were a purely hypothetical one challenging the competence of his ship, and had been quick to defend her. But he realized now that it wasn’t a hypothetical question, but a strictly practical one.

  “Then you could take us home!” exclaimed Nieland. He was missing the point, too.

  “You haven’t tried to return to the colony?” I prompted, gently. The question was rhetorical, but it subtly invited him to provide an answer, if he was so inclined.

  His face became firm again. He exchanged a glance with Al’ha, who sat patiently listening.

  “Ak’lehr is my home,” he said. “The Ore’l are my people. This is the only world we know.”

  “And your father?” asked Mariel, probing deep into the heart of the matter, as she saw it. “Didn’t he want to return?”

  “No,” said Jan, flatly. “Never for a single moment.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Nieland.

  Jan stood up, suddenly. His voice changed again, this time to the voice of command. “No more questions now,” he stated. “We must all sleep. You three may have this hut. I’ll sleep with my men. In the morning, we return to Ilah’y’su. We must return to Ak’lehr without further delay. I have a cargo that must travel immediately.”

  “We have to return to the camp first,” I said.

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “For one thing,” I said, “I had some valuable equipment there, and I want it back, if the mutineers haven’t stolen or destroyed it.” I didn’t bother to list the second reason, which was that I wanted to pick up the stuff Mariel had stashed away upstream of the camp.

  “All right,” said Jan. “But we must not delay long.” With that, he went out. Al’ha followed him.

  Nieland was about to complain once again that he didn’t understand, but I waved him into silence.

  “What’s it all about?” I asked Mariel.

  “I’m not entirely certain,” she said. “But I’ll start at the beginning. He was lying when he told that story about hunting. They came out here looking for the New Hope—and they cut across the land because they didn’t want to advertise their presence sailing up the river in a big ship—they couldn’t even have approached unseen in a canoe. That was a direct lie. He wasn’t directly lying when he talked about rescuing us from the forest people, but he wasn’t exactly telling the truth either. He was—how shall I put it?—removing us from their charge, for safety’s sake. He’s glad the New Hope’s gone, and it’ll help him be glad if he doesn’t know she’s coming back. You noticed that he wasn’t exactly happy to learn that we come from Earth. That was an unexpected complication so far as he’s concerned, but I’m not exactly sure what it complicates. I suspect he fears that there may be more men from Earth buzzing around his ears looking for us. It might be as well if we forgot to reassure him on that point.

  “There was a tremendous emotional rush when he was asked about his father wanting to go home. It was a very touchy subject—but he wasn’t lying when he said ‘Never.’ How we interpret that I’m not sure, but I think that there was some big argument among the survivors of the wreck. Some of them wanted to go home. But Verheyden—the father that is—probably overruled them. Maybe even prevented them. If you want my advice, we should all keep quiet about the matter of returning to Lambda. Because he isn’t going to like the idea. Whatever his reasons are for staying there, they’re strong.”

  “In a nutshell,” I said, “we weren’t prisoners before we were rescued, but we are now.”

  “We could be,” she confirmed, “if we were prepared to make an issue of it.”

  “You think we ought to play along with the game?”

  “What game?” interrupted Nieland, with sudden exasperation. “What’s going on here?”

  He was completely at sea. He didn’t know about Mariel’s talent. It wasn’t something we tended to advertise. Someone with a sensitivity to the meanings that lie behind other people’s words is very useful, but it’s rather undiplomatic to announce her presence.

  “Come on,” I said. “This is weird—you must see that. We aren’t out of trouble by a long way. Out of the frying pan and into God knows what. Jan Verheyden may be human, but that doesn’t make him into our guardian angel in this heathenland. Ogburn was human, too. Jan isn’t exactly overjoyed to have us here—he rescued us...or snatched us, if you take a less benevolent view...because given that we’re already here he wanted us under his control. Giving us a lift back to Lambda is the last thing on his mind.”

  “But why?” asked Nieland, helplessly.

  “We have plenty of time to find out,” I said. “But if I had three guesses I know what number one would be. Jan’s father, having been cast away here, decided to make the best of things. He had a lot to offer the aliens, if only he could persuade them that he was worth listening to. He’s been empire-building. He’s been playing fairy godmother. For thirty-seven years he’s been stage-managing a technological revolution here. And now he’s dead his children have taken over. Don’t you see what an opportunity was presented to him here? An emergent civilization in the north—a whole continent in which to expand. It’s Lambda in reverse. All the problems that Lambda has are meaningless here. There’s no problem of co-adaptation, no manpower shortage. The only thing the aliens lack is the only thing that Lambda has—know-how. The knowledge to exploit the resources they must have already found. After a life of frustration in the colony, think what potential the alien culture must have offered to him!”

  Nieland shook his head. “I can understand that,” he said. “He was stranded here. He must have known there’d be no new ship for a long time—he probably believed that it would be never. So he helped the aliens to develop their resources. There’s nothing wrong in that. But why, when it was possible to come home, did he decide to stay? And why this suspicion and hostility on the part of his son?”

  “Guilt,” said Mariel. “Just guilt. Bernhard Verheyden probably felt that in doing as he did he was in some way turning traitor. Perhaps he felt resentment against the colony—that would be easy enough, as you must know. Half the people on Lambda thought that you were mad and dangerous. They resented your appropriation of resources to build the New Hope. It was probably no different in his day. When he cast his lot with the aliens he must have seen it as a total break. The guilt and the resentment fed one another, building in his mind to an ironclad determination. And that’s what he’s passed on to his children. There’s hatred in Jan—simple hatred. For the colony, for humankind. He didn’t get that from the aliens. He can only have got it from his parents. He doesn’t want to have anything to do with the colony. Most of all, he doesn’t want the colony to know what he’s doing—he and his brothers and sister. He’s closed his mind so that all it contains is Delta, and everything outside it is...well, simply outside. He’s not quite sane, you know. Not by our standards.”

  Nieland digested all this. He didn’t challenge it, though he plainly doubted it. I didn’t—I trusted Mariel well enough to know that she didn’t make wild guesses. It was all conjectural, but it had to make sense in terms of what she’d read through Jan’s words. Her talent wa
s as powerful as ever. Nieland couldn’t know that, but the very sureness of her words pressed him back into a corner. He had nothing to put in place of the story she’d constructed.

  “In that case,” he said, in an anxious voice, “what happens now?”

  “That depends on Jan. He’s taking us back to wherever-it-was...the capital city of the nation. Presumably it’s not entirely his decision. I don’t know whether his elder brother is in charge or whether the five function as a mini-democracy, but either way it isn’t all down to Jan. We’ll have a chance to make them see our kind of reason. And if not....”

  “Well?”

  I shrugged, “How should I know? We join the gang, maybe. We hijack a ship. We hijack the empire. We get cast into a dark dungeon for the rest of our natural lives. There’s only one thing certain, as far as I can see.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “If we’re right,” I said, “and Papa Verheyden really has given the aliens the benefit of everything he knew—which must have been quite a lot—then this alien empire has a very bright future. And if, in the fullness of time they do decide, for reasons of their own, to pay a visit to Lambda... they’ll go as conquerors.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In the morning, I got the first real opportunity to judge the extent of the carnage.

  It was a pretty sickening sight. The attackers had cleaned up a little during the night. They’d collected the bodies and thrown them all into one of the huts before setting it aflame. The hut had gone up like a torch, but the mass of dead flesh inside hadn’t gone up with it—the dry grass and wood and leaves had just burned on top of them. The corpses were charred, but still recognizably corpses. Mostly adults, but some children as well. Maybe thirty in all. About a third of the total population of what had been a village. I didn’t bother to ask how many “civilized” aliens had been lost. Maybe one or two...maybe none at all. I watched the victors moving about the ruins the next day. They seemed quite oblivious to what was around them.