The Status Civilization (13 page)

“There’s a chance,” Joe said. “I told your girl about you, so perhaps her friends can do something. As for me, I’m expecting a reprieve.”

“Is that possible?” Barrent asked.

“Anything is possible. It’s better not to hope for it, though.”

“What are the Games like?” Barrent asked.

“They’re the sort of thing you’d expect,” Joe said. “Man-to-man combats, battles against various types of Omegan flora and fauna, needlebeam and heatgun duels. It’s all copied from an old Earth festival, I’m told.”

“And if anyone survives,” Barrent said, “they’re beyond the law.”

“That’s right.”

“But what does it mean to be beyond the law?”

“I don’t know,” Joe said. “Nobody seems to know much about that. All I could find out is, survivors of the Games are taken by The Black One. It’s not supposed to be pleasant.”

“I can understand that. Very little on Omega
is
pleasant.”

“It isn’t a bad place,” Joe said. “You just haven’t the proper spirit of—”

He was interrupted by the arrival of a detachment of guards. It was time for the occupants of Barrent’s cell to enter the Arena.

“No reprieve,” Barrent said.

“Well, that’s how it goes,” Joe said.

They were marched out under heavy guard and lined up at the iron door that separated the cell block from the main Arena. Just before the captain of the guards opened the door, a fat, well-dressed man came hurrying down a side corridor waving a paper.

“What’s this?” the captain of the guards asked.

“A writ of recognizance,” the fat man said, handing his paper to the captain. “On the other side, you’ll find a cease-and-desist order.” He pulled more papers out of his pockets. “And here is a bankruptcy-transferral notice, a chattel mortgage, a writ of habeas corpus, and a salary attachment.”

The captain pushed back his helmet and scratched his narrow forehead. “I can never understand what you lawyers are talking about. What does it mean?”

“It releases him,” the fat man said, pointing to Joe.

The captain took the papers, gave them a single puzzled glance, and handed them to an aide. “All right,” he said, “take him with you. But it wasn’t like this in the old days.
Nothing
stopped the orderly progression of the Games.”

Grinning triumphantly, Joe stepped through the ranks of guards and joined the fat lawyer. He asked him, “Do you have any papers for Will Barrent?”

“None,” the lawyer said. “His case is in different hands. I’m afraid it might not be completely processed until after the Games are over.”

“But I’ll probably be dead then,” Barrent said.

“That, I can assure you, won’t stop the papers from being properly served,” the fat lawyer said proudly. “Dead or alive, you will retain all your rights.”

The captain of the guards said, “All right, let’s go.”

“Luck,” Joe called out. And then the line of prisoners had passed through the iron door into the glaring light of the Arena.

Barrent lived through the hand-to-hand duels in which a quarter of the prisoners were killed. After that, men armed with swords were matched against the deadlier Omegan fauna. The beasts they fought included the hintolyte and the hintosced—big-jawed, heavily armored monsters whose natural habitat was the desert region far to the south of Tetrahyde. Fifteen men later, these beasts were dead. Barrent was matched with a Saunus, a flying black reptile from the western mountains. For a while he was hard-pressed by this ugly, poison-toothed creature. But in time he figured out a solution. He stopped trying to jab the Saunus’s leathery hide and concentrated on severing its broad fan of tailfeathers. When he had succeeded, the Saunus’s flying balance was thrown badly off. The reptile crashed into the high wall that separated the combatants from the spectators, and it was relatively easy to administer the final stroke through the Saunus’s single huge eye. The vast and enthusiastic crowd in the stadium gave Barrent a lengthy round of applause.

He moved back to the reserve pen and watched other men struggle against the trichomotreds, incredibly fast little creatures the size of rats, with the dispositions of rabid wolverines. It took five teams of prisoners. After a brief interlude of hand-to-hand duelling, the Arena was cleared again.

Now the hard-shelled criatin amphibians lumbered in. Although sluggish in disposition, the criatins were completely protected beneath several inches of shell. Their narrow whiplash tails, which also served them as antennae, were invariably fatal to any man who approached them. Barrent had to fight one of these after it had dispatched four of his fellow prisoners.

He had watched the earlier combats carefully, and had detected the one place where the criatin antennae could not reach. Barrent waited for his chance and jumped for the center of the criatin’s broad back.

When the shell split into a gigantic mouth—for this was the criatin method of feeding—Barrent jammed his sword into the opening. The criatin expired with gratifying promptness, and the crowd signified its approval by showering the Arena with cushions.

The victory left Barrent standing alone on the blood-stained sand. The rest of the prisoners were either dead or too badly maimed to fight. Barrent waited, wondering what beast the Games Committee had chosen next.

A single tendril shot up through the sand, and then another. Within seconds, a short, thick tree was growing in the Arena, sending out more roots and tendrils, and pulling all flesh, living or dead, into five small feeding-mouths which circled the base of the trunk. This was the carrion tree, indigenous to the northeastern swamps and imported with great difficulty. It was said to be highly vulnerable to fire; but Barrent had no fire available.

Using his sword two-handed, Barrent lopped off vines; others grew in their place. He worked with frantic speed to keep the vines from surrounding him. His arms were becoming tired, and the tree regenerated faster than he could cut it down. There seemed no way of destroying it.

His only hope lay in the tree’s slow movements. These were fast enough, but nothing compared with human musculature. Barren ducked out of a corner in which the creeping vines were trapping him. Another sword was lying twenty yards away, half-buried in the sand. Barrent reached it, and heard warning shouts from the crowd. He felt a vine close around his ankles.

He hacked at it, and other vines coiled around his waist. He dug his heels into the sand and clashed the swords together, trying to produce a spark.

On his first try, the sword in his right hand broke in half.

Barrent picked up the halves and kept on trying as the vines dragged him closer to the feeding mouths. A shower of sparks flew from the clanging steel. One of them touched a vine.

With incredible suddenness the vine burst into flame. The flame spurted down the length of the vine to the main tree system. The five mouths moaned as the fire leaped toward them.

If matters had been left to continue, Barrent would have been burned to death, for the Arena was nearly filled with the highly combustible vines. But the flames were endangering the wooden walls of the Arena. The Tetrahyde guard detachment put the fire out in time to save both Barrent and the spectators.

Swaying with exhaustion, Barrent stood in the center of the Arena, wondering what would be used next against him. But nothing happened. After a moment, a signal was made from the President’s box, and the crowd roared in applause.

The Games were over. Barrent had survived.

Still no one left his seat. The audience was waiting to see the final disposition of Barrent, who had passed beyond the law.

He heard a low, reverent gasp from the crowd. Turning quickly, Barrent saw a fiery dot of light appear in mid-air. It swelled, threw out streamers of light, and gathered them in again. It grew rapidly, too brilliant to look upon. And Barrent remembered Uncle Ingemar saying to him, “Sometimes, The Black One rewards us by appearing in the awful beauty of his fiery flesh. Yes, Nephew, I have actually been privileged to see him. Two years ago he appeared at the Games, and he also appeared the year before that. …”

The dot became a red and yellow globe about twenty feet in diameter, its lowest curve not quite touching the ground. It grew again. The center of the globe became thinner; a waist appeared, and above the waist the globe turned an impenetrable black. It was two globes now, one brilliant, one dark, joined by a narrow waist. As Barrent watched, the dark globe lengthened and changed into the unforgettable horn-headed shape of The Dark One.

Barrent tried to run, but the huge black-headed figure swept forward and engulfed him. He was trapped in a blinding swirl of radiance, with darkness above it. The light bored into his head, and he tried to scream. Then he passed out.

Chapter Nineteen

Barrent recovered consciousness in a dim, high-ceilinged room. He was lying on a bed. Two people were standing near by. They seemed to be arguing.

“There simply isn’t any more time to wait,” a man was saying. “You fail to appreciate the urgency of the situation.”

“The doctor said he needs at least another three days of rest.” It was a woman’s voice. After a moment, Barrent realized that Moera was speaking.

“He can have three days.”

“And he needs time for indoctrination.”

“You told me he was bright. The indoctrination shouldn’t take long.”

“It might take weeks.”

“Impossible. The ship lands in six days.”

“Eylan,” Moera said, “you’re trying to move too fast. We can’t do it this time. On the next Landing Day we will be much better prepared—”

“The situation will be out of hand by then,” the man said. “I’m sorry, Moera, we have to use Barrent immediately, or not use him at all.”

Barrent said, “Use me for what? Where am I? Who are you?”

The man turned to the bed. In the faint light, Barrent saw a very tall, thin, stooped old man with a wispy moustache.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” he said. “My name is Swen Eylan. I’m in command of Group Two.”

“What’s Group Two?” Barrent asked. “How did you get me out of the Arena? Are you agents of The Black One?”

Eylan grinned. “Not exactly agents. We’ll explain everything to you shortly. First, I think you’d better have something to eat and drink.”

A nurse brought in a tray. While Barrent ate, Eylan pulled up a chair and told Barrent about The Black One.

“Our Group,” Eylan said,” “can’t claim to have started the religion of Evil. That appears to have sprung up spontaneously on Omega. But since it was there, we have made occasional use of it. The priests have been remarkably cooperative. After all, the worshipers of Evil set a high positive value upon corruption. Therefore, in the eyes of an Omegan priest, the appearance of a fraudulent Black One is not anathema. Quite the contrary, for in the orthodox worship of Evil, a great deal of emphasis is put upon false images—especially if they are big, fiery, impressive images like the one which rescued you from the Arena.”

“How did you produce that?” Barrent asked.

“It has to do with friction surfaces and planes of force,” Eylan said. “You’d have to ask our engineers for more details.”

“Why did you rescue me?” Barrent asked.

Eylan glanced at Moera, who shrugged her shoulders. Looking uncomfortable, Eylan said, “We’d like to use you for an important job. But before I tell you about it, I think you should know something about our organization. Certainly you must have some curiosity about us.”

“A great deal,” Barrent said. “Are you some kind of criminal elite?”

“We’re an elite,” Eylan said, “but we don’t consider ourselves criminal. Two entirely different types of people have been sent to Omega. There are the true criminals guilty of murder, arson, armed robbery, and the like. Those are the people you lived among. And there are the people guilty of deviational crimes such as political unreliability, scientific unorthodoxy, and irreligious attitudes. These people compose our organization, which, for the purposes of identification, we call Group Two. As far as we can remember and reconstruct, our crimes were largely a matter of holding different opinions from those which prevailed upon Earth. We were nonconformists. We probably constituted an unstable element, and a threat to the entrenched powers. Therefore we were deported to Omega.”

“And you separated yourselves from the other deportees,” Barrent said.

“Yes, necessarily. For one thing, the true criminals of Group One are not readily controllable. We couldn’t lead them, nor could we allow ourselves to be led by them. But more important than that, we had a job to do that could only be performed in secrecy. We had no idea what devices the guard-ships employed to watch the surface of Omega. To keep our security intact, we went underground—literally. The room you’re in now is about two hundred feet below the surface. We stay out of sight, except for special agents like Moera, who separate the political and social prisoners who belong in Group Two from the others.”

“You didn’t separate me,” Barrent said.

“Of course not. You were allegedly guilty of murder, which put you in Group One. However, your behavior was not typical of Group One. You seemed like good potential material for us, so we helped you from time to time. But we had to be sure of you before taking you into the Group. Your repudiation of the murder charge was strongly in your favor. Also, we questioned Illiardi after you had located him. There seemed no reason to doubt that he performed the murder you were charged with. Even more strongly in your favor were your high survival qualities, which had their ultimate test in the Hunt and the Games. We were badly in need of a man of your abilities.”