The Super Barbarians

THE SUPER BARBARIANS

JOHN BRUNNER

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I
T’S AMAZING
how fast a legend can grow under the right conditions. Fifty years since the armistice; not more than twenty-five since the Great Grip began to relax a little; a mere ten since Earthmen were grudgingly accorded rights on Qallavarra. Yet already the equation automatically balanced itself in the mind: Earthman on Qallavarra equals the fabulous Acre of Earth.

But I’d been on Qallavarra for the best part of seven months and I’d never set eyes on the Acre, let alone a foot within it. I was almost coming to believe that that rumored quarter of the city where Earthmen did as they liked was just a legend. The idea of its existence was pretty hard to swallow, anyway.

Nonetheless, when the Under-lady Shavarri gave me the address, the instructions and the bribe, I felt my heart turn over. Once. Very heavily. So heavily I expected it to give an audible thump as it settled back into place. Because the address she was sending me to—four badly written numerals on a slip of paper—was slap in the middle of the Acre.

I saw the address was badly written. In fact it looked
more as though it had been drawn—probably copied from a printed original. The Under-lady Shavarri was ninth in line of my employer’s wives, and as such she had no social standing bar a courtesy one; her education had not included such refinements as reading and writing, most likely, and if it had she had never had a practical use to put them to. Up till now I had classified her as just another of the occupants of the seraglio, the youngest but one and—to Earthly eyes—the prettiest.

Now here she was handing me five platina, the best part of a months wages, and telling me to run down to the Acre with an apparently meaningless message. It was a shock. Still, I concealed my feelings, and said only, “As your under-ladyship commands.”

I spoke in high-caste Vorrish, naturally; the translation is as close as I can come to being literal. No modern Earthly tongue had the elaborations of formal Vorrish, like the precedence scales that called for me to use the inferior-to-superior male-to-female vocative case in what I’d just said.

She gave the half-turn of her head which corresponded to a nod of dismissal, and I started to back towards the door. I was almost there when she called after me, “Be swift!”

“As swift as possible,” I agreed.

She half-closed her golden eyes and moved fractionally on the luxurious heap of furs where she was sitting. She said abruptly, “You are strange. Why are you always so cautious?”

Because she used the inferior plural, I knew she meant all Earthmen generally, not me in particular. “Cautious, your under-ladyship?” I parried cautiously.

“Yes! And what is more, set aside that you are not of my own retinue but of my superior sister-wife’s”—Vorrish put
that in one word, of course—”and note that were any other retainer to say only ‘as swift as possible’ instead of ‘at once* I’d shorten him to the shoulders.”

“Perhaps our present circumstances have taught us that we must always reckon with the unforeseen,” I suggested, Reeling acutely uncomfortable.

“Yet you always seem to know what you are doing so well it is—disturbing,” mused Shavarri. “No matter; get you gone. As swift as possible, remember!”

Puzzled by her remarks, I went. It was clear I’d underestimated my employer’s ninth wife. Something else puzzled me even more: the question of what kind of business in the Acre could be worth five platina to Shavarri. Unless she had no notion of the value of money, and had simply given me what she had handy for a job that rated maybe a twelve-rhodia tip, but not more.

Of course, as she had said, I wasn’t one of her own staff but served her superior sister-wife—that personage being the Over-lady Llaq, senior of my employer’s wives. In theory this gave me privileged status; in fact, as Shavarri certainly knew, I’d found it easier to obey orders from the junior wives as well. Refusal would have made life unbearable. The occupants of the seraglio were expert at backbiting and petty persecution. Unkind rumor said that seraglio squabbling was the chief reason why Vorrish nobles preferred to spend much of their time away from home.

Soon, though, I was too excited to be puzzled any more. I looked again at the address she had given me as I hastened to my quarters in the basement. Addresses in the city center consisted of a four-part number-code, indicating street north-south, street east-west, building on the block and floor above or below ground level. I hadn’t been mistaken.
The Acre of Earth was said to run between 658 and 664 north-south, and 122 and 129 east-west. Provided Shavarri hadn’t made a mistake in copying it down, this address I had to go to was on 660 at 127—particularly dead in the center.

As quickly as I could I shrugged into an outdoor cloak and buckled my shield on my left arm. It was called a shield, but of course it was mere decoration: a disc twenty inches across bearing the arms of the House of Pwill, which retainers wore outside their own territory to identify them and show they were on business for their employer. Most of the great houses were bloodthirsty in the extreme; the House of Pwill was no exception and its shields bore a device of a sword piercing a bleeding heart.

I was about to put five of the platina Shavarri had given me in my personal coffer, when it struck me that perhaps she had not intended all of it as a bribe for me, and that whoever I was going to see might require a fee for his services. Accordingly, I put four of the heavy white coins in my pocket and went to the main gate to check out.

The gatekeeper, an elderly man called Swallo, was by now almost a friend of mine. I was thrown less into contact with him than with other members of the household, and maybe for that reason he didn’t seem to share their reflex jealousy. He greeted me with a smile that was as usual horribly twisted upwards at one corner; he’d been injured by one of our wrecking-rays during the Battle of Fourth Orbit shortly before the armistice. But he didn’t hold it against me personally.

Using equal-to-equal forms, he said, “Taking time off, steward?”

I indicated a negative. “Running an errand for Under-lady
Shavarri,” I said. “Want to check with her before you book me out?”

He glanced at the timepiece beside him on the wall of his little office, and picked up a stylus preparatory to scratching an entry in the ledger before him. “No need,” he said. “But watch the time! Himself and the Over-lady are due back at sunset less an hour, and you’d best be here when they arrive. Where are- you going, anyway?”

I hesitated. “Down the Acre,” I said finally.

“Are you now? Are you really? Well, I wouldn’t want to interfere, of course, but maybe I should ask you what you’re going to do with your shield when you get there?”

Blinking, I said, “Wear it—I guess.”

He shrugged. “Well, be lucky. You know” what you’re doing, I reckon.”

He marked up the ledger and slapped it shut. I went on out of the gate, frowning. Coming from someone as uncomplicated as Swallo, that was a peculiar remark.

Since my arrival on Qallavarra I’d had practically no contact with other Earthmen. I was the only one in the employ of the House of Pwill, and had the Over-lady Llaq not taken an interest in me I wouldn’t have got here at all. But before leaving home I’d heard it said that in the Acre Earthmen now did more or less as they pleased. And they didn’t approve, it was murmured, of Earthmen in my position—employed by one of the great houses.

I stamped down my apprehension. What did Swallo know about that? Surely those in the Acre wouldn’t prevent an Earthman from going about his business just because he wore a shield?

Besides, how could they?

Once beyond the formidable gate, I followed the fused slag road down between the brownish-green hedgerows toward the highway. In the fields on the left, cattle were grazing—lop-eared, with coarse gray coats; on the right where the food-crops grew in tight orderly lines, tenants of the House of Pwill were weeding. They were small brawny men and women who sang in eldritch voices to keep the rhythm of the work. I tried to catch the theme of their song, but: they used the abridged common dialect of the locality, and it was so different from the formal language of the upper classes that all I could make out was something about the greatness of the Vorra who had reached out to conquer even the stars in the sky.

At a point where the road joined the highway I paused and looked about me. Today the air was exceptionally clear, and under the high sun I could see right over the city set in the bottom of its bowl-shaped valley. I could even see the glint of light on the glass dome of the House of Shugurra, largest of all the great houses, a good twenty miles distant. Llaq had taken me there once on an annual visit dictated by some custom I hadn’t quite fathomed; since the name of it meant literally “axes being blunt” I assumed it was some ceremonial show of friendship left over like many Vorrish customs from the days when civil war between houses was commonplace.

I had only been waiting; a minute or so when I heard the hum of the bus’s solar-powered engine approaching down the highway. I threw out my left arm to display the device on my shield, and the driver pulled up for me to get aboard. There were only four other passengers aboard—two unprosperous-looking private individuals and two retainers wearing the arms of the House of Shugurra, a cleft skull on a
black ground. They were all Vorrish; accordingly I took the rearmost seat as befitted an Earthman.

The driver, hand hovering over a fare-charge button which bore the same device as my shield, called to me. “On House business?”

“In the name of the Under-lady Shavarri,” I confirmed. He grunted, punched the button to charge my fare to the house account, and let the bus roll forward.