Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1959 (15 page)

 
          
"I'm
at your orders, King Mark," she assured him.

           
"Then give me the first of
those hundred thousand kisses."

           
She gave it to "him. The others
laughed and applauded.

           
"And now," he said,
"pay attention here. I want to teach you how to fly this ship."

 
          
She
moved closer to the controls and put her hands on them.

 
          
"Remember,
Brenda," he said suddenly, "we were talking about mosquitoes back
yonder. How we wished there were mosquitoes to devil the Cold People."

 
          
"Yes.
We said something like that."

           
"I know about those mosquitoes
now."

           
"What mosquitoes, Mark?"

           
"You're one," he told her,
"and I'm another. Every human being is going to be a mosquito. Now pay
attention to what makes us buzz."

 
          
Megan
, that swarthy-jowled leader of a
jungle tribe, years before had made his followers build a village to serve as a
market center for farmers, gardeners, cattle herders and gatherers of wild
rubber. It was a focus of trade, gossip and importance, which importance
reflected on Megan. He enjoyed the importance, and tried his best to deserve
it. One of his practices was to maintain a lookout patrol on hills north of his
settlement, with orders to watch for smoke signals from other villages and
otherwise keep their fellows informed.

 
          
That
lookout patrol was horrified, on a bright September noon, to see a sizable
airship of the Cold People shoving above the northward horizon and swooping
toward them.

 
          
They
were more horrified still to see the craft settle down toward a wooded valley
close to their observation point. All of them fled like rabbits toward the
village, save a single shaky volunteer who waited until the last moment to
watch the progress of the menace.

 
          
Megan
heard the breathless report, and instantly told his drummers to pound their
instruments for assembly. He shouted for his people to gather their cows and
goats—the pigs might not retreat fast enough—pack up their most valuable
portable possessions and follow him to deep-grown cover. As men and women
scurried to obey this order, the last lingerer on the observation hill came
running in.

 
          
"It's
all right," he managed to wheeze out. "I guess it is."

           
"What are you guessing
about?" roared Megan.

           
"Well, that thing landed in the
trees down in the valley, and I got up my nerve to sneak close." The
lookout saw a water-gourd, and drank thirstily from it. "Out came
people."

 
          
"Cold People?"

           
"No, Chief, human
people.
Folks like us—well, not exactly. They're dressed different,
anyway. And they started in busting down trees and bushes and tearing off
branches, to throw over their ship and hide it in that litde hollow."

 
          
"Hide
it?" repeated Megan.
"Sounds as if they want to
surprise us.
Well surprise them."

 
          
He
walked in among the thickest of his people. "All right, the retreat's
delayed," he rapped out. "Pass that word along.
Stay
here, ready to leave if we have to.
Now, where's that lookout
who
saw them? How many would you say there were?"

 
          
The
man shook his head. "Don't know exactly.
Maybe two dozen
or so.
Men and women both."

 
          
"Men
and women," another villager said after him. "That doesn't sound like
trouble-making."

 
          
"We
don't know," Megan decided harshly. "Anyway, I want thirty fighting
men. You come.
You, you."
Swifdy he chose his
force.
"Bows, machetes, and maybe a dozen guns.
But nobody fires a gun unless I give the order. I don't want to waste any
cartridges, hard as it is to make powder and mold bullets."

 
          
In
businesslike fashion, Megan marshaled the armed party in a double column, and
sent ahead as a scout the member of the lookout patrol who had brought news of
the ship. Taking advantage of trails known to them all, they quiedy approached
the hollow where the craft had set itself down.

 
          
"Open
order," said Megan sofdy to his subordinates. "Take the word along.
We'll advance through the trees, but watch me for a signal to halt."

 
          
Smoothly
the men executed the movement. They were all practised hunters and trailers,
and barely rustled the thick green leafage through which they moved. Finally
Megan snapped his fingers for a halt, and his lieutenants stopped the line
under cover just above the hollow. Megan waited until his advance scout
returned.

 
          
"Someone
in that gang I know from somewhere," the scout said. "You know him,
too, but I can't think of his name. Big, black-haired, rangy—I'd heard he took
a lone prowl up north . . ."

 
          
"Darragh,"
said Megan.
"Hmmm.
If it really is Darragh
 
. . . Wait here until I've gone forward
while you count sixty.
 
Then move the rest of the boys after me,
ready for trouble if
 
trouble
begins."                                                         
,
₍

 
          
Alone
the chief went forward. He found himself moving down slope into the hollow.
People moved there among trees. They seemed to be stacking foliage high. Megan,
too, recognized Darragh, stripped to the waist and gesturing in command.

 
          
"Well,
111
be
damned," grunted Megan to himself; then,
at the top of his voice.
"Darragh!
Is that
you?"

 
          
Darragh
turned toward him, and Megan came into the open. At once Darragh ran toward him
like a sprinter in a race. Only a few weeks ago, Megan remembered, he and
Darragh had talked about fighting a duel. His hand moved to loosen his machete
in its scabbard.

 
          
But
Darragh's face was shining with happy relief. "Just the man I hoped to
meet first," he said when he came close. "I've got lots to tell
you."

           
"I imagine you have," said
Megan drily. "I hear you came in a Cold-People air machine."

 
          
"Yes.
Captured one.
Captured two, as a matter of fact, but
this is the one I brought back."

 
          
"How
did you fly it?"

           
"I learned how. But I've got
some new friends to introduce."

 
          
"Wait
a second," growled Megan. "If you stole that rig, there'll be more of
them coming after you. You'll bring a whole fleet of them down to blast us out
of these jungles."

 
          
But
Darragh shook his head. He looked confident.

           
"They tried to chase us, and
they were catching up. Then, somewhere—it must have been about where middle
Tennessee
used to be—we put the blast on one of their
dome cities."

 
          
"Blast?"
repeated Megan. "What kind of a blast?"

           
Megan's men had approached, and held
their line to watch and listen.

 
          
"We
used that explosion ray of theirs. Look, here's one of the small weapons."
Darragh held it out. "We captured some of them, and the ship has a larger
one. We figured out the discharge mechanism, and tore that dome to pieces. The
ships that were chasing us circled down to help or observe where their friends
were in trouble, and I took that occasion to veer off to westward and not cut
back south until I was out of their sight. I think that gave them a false
notion of which way we were headed. Anyway, we're hiding the ship we brought
and—but here comes Miss Brenda Thompson. Brenda, I want you to meet Chief
Megan."

 
          
Within
the hour, signals were going forth from Megan's village. Operators employed the
rickety radio sending set, trying to contact all communities within reach. To
supplement this somewhat untrustworthy means of communication, smoke signals
rose on the observation hill, and the swiftest runners sought nearer villages,
from which went out fresh runners with messages.

 
          
The
formal council opened its session on the first Tuesday in October, and was
tended by an even dozen leaders. Spence, first preacher of counterattack, was
prominent in the forefront of the gathering. The chiefs present represented
perhaps four thousand persons, and could speak for thousands more.

 
          
The
Orinoco leaders had been immediately impressed by the scientific knowledge the
freed captives had inherited from their professor-forebears and learned from
their former jailers, and Spence and the others could not but admire the good
looks and manifest intelligence of Brenda Thompson. She stood with Darragh
while Megan, as host chieftain, welcomed his allies and then turned the
meeting over to Darragh.

 
          
That
tall adventurer spoke with confidence and effect. He told of his journey and
adventures and observations. With promptings from Brenda, he explained the
principle of the explosive ray and what could be surmised about the green
power-radiation. He exhibited a small ray-thrower, and showed its bleak
destructive potency by blasting a tree into vapor before their eyes. He
promised a tour of the captured ship and a lecture on how it operated. Other
baleful mysteries of the Cold People, their fortresses and their ways of life
he described.

 
          
The
listening chiefs were interested and -sespectful. But Spence, long the most
active and influential of them, seemed both critical and apprehensive. Finally
he asked the question that all the others hoped to hear answered.

 
          
"Darragh,
I remember when you and I last talked together. You promised that you'd ieam
something to help us conquer these Cold People. You make them sound stronger
and more numerous than we ever imagined. All right—if you have a plan of
attack, what is it?"

 
          
"My
plan of attack is not to attack," replied Darragh.

           
"Wagh!"
grunted the
bronzed Capato, sitting with three other Indian chieftains. "What kind of
talk is that?"

 
          
"At
least, we won't attack the way you mean," Darragh elaborated. "I'll
try to sum up as simply as I can."

 
          
"Make
it one word," Capato half-joked.

           
"All right, one word,"
said Darragh: "Nuisance!"

           
There was a silence, and the chiefs
gaped.
Then Spence snikered.
"Nuisance?
You've been a big nuisance in the past, young fellow, but what are you getting
at?"

 
          
"It
began when I was poked all over by mosquitoes on Haiti," said Darragh.
"I wished then that the mosquitoes would get interested in the Cold People
instead. Later, I talked about it to Brenda here. And we got to a sort of
rationalization."

 
          
"We're
waiting for the rationalization," Spence prodded him.

 
          
"I’ll
give it to you, in the form of a parable. How about letting me talk without
interruption?"

           
"Go on, boy," Megan bade
him.

           
"It's a matter of
history," went on Darragh, "about how the Swedes moved into old
New Jersey
and tried to settle it. They were a
hard-bitten, stubborn lot, those Swedes. The Indians made a fight for their
home country, and got licked."

 
          
"I'm
not that kind of Indian," spoke up Capato defiantly.

           
"The Dutch came afterward, and
attacked the Swedes. They got driven back. Then the English came into New Jersey
the strongest power so far. They gave the Swedes a hard time but couldn't root
them out."

 
          
"And
then?" inquired Spence.

           
"And then the Swedes moved
on."

           
"You said they hadn't been
licked," Capato reminded.

           
"Not by the Indians or the
Dutch or the English. But there were the New Jersey mosquitoes. That was an
army of nuisances that wouldn't stand up and fight and be swatted. The
mosquitoes just buzzed and bit and flew out of reach,-and came back and heckled
and prodded and made life miserable. Finally the Swedes did the only thing they
could do—they packed up and moved away."