The Super Barbarians (7 page)

I
FELT LIKE
A completely different person. It came to this, I supposed: all my life I’d been so ingrained with the idea that the Vorra were basically superior to us (having proved the fact by beating us into the ground), that even when I was exposed to them at close quarters during my tutorship of Pwill Jr. I went on being impressed by them and honored to serve them. Glad to serve them, in fact.

As though a bright light had been turned on in my mind, my visit to the Acre had shown me something quite different. It had revealed the Vorrà as individuals, capable of being done down by another individual who happened to be Earthly provided he was sufficiently determined. This was what the Acre was all about.

But I was going to cut my own throat if I allowed my elation to show.

Swallo had inspected the thing wrapped in my cloak, as I fully expected him to. I think he noticed the change that had come over me, for instead of putting some joking question, as he normally would have done, he simply handed me cloak and contents.

Thanking him, I crossed the yard back to the family’s block and took the narrow side door leading down to my basement apartment. Although the retinue of a great house had no privileges to speak: of, at least they had privacy in their own quarters if they were lucky enough—like me—to rate a room to themselves. I proposed to spend a little time on my own, secure from intrusion, reading the slip of paper with directions for use which Kramer had given me along with the can of “potion.” And figuring out what to do next.

Outside the door of my room, though, a heavy-set girl whom I recognized as one of Shavarri’s maids sat on the floor with her knees drawn up, scowling. At my approach she stood up quickly.

“Steward!” she said. “The Under-lady Shavarri sent me to find you about an hour ago. She grows impatient.”

I hesitated. Then I unwrapped the can from my cloak.

“This is what she wanted,” I said, trying not to smile. “Tell her that instruction in its use will cost her another platinum.”

Taking the can from me, hefting it uncertainly in her big square hands, the girl blinked. “A platinum?” she echoed. “A platinum is a great deal of money!”

I was salaried at seven platina a month, and fairly well satisfied; a maid like her probably drew down eighty or ninety rhodia. Let her be impressed by the casualness of my request. I shrugged and made to go into my room.

Glancing back before I shut the door completely, I saw her still hesitating. I paused, and she risked another shot.

“I was told to bring you to the Under-lady Shavarri,” she said.

“You’re a fine strapping wench,” I said gently. “But I don’t think you could drag me there, could you? It isn’t your fault if I prefer to come later.”

Her eyes widened in dismay, and on that I pulled the door to.

Having changed into house shoes and put my cloak where the tailoress would find and mend the hole scorched through the hem by the flaring magnesium bullet, I made myself a quick snack of Earthly vegetables. Normally I took my meals -with other members of the staff—Vorrish cooking, though slapdash, was quite palatable—but once a day I had to supplement my diet if I wasn’t to succumb to deficiency diseases. In the middle of sitting down to eat, I had a vision of Kramer’s wife—fever-pale, near delirium.

I made a resolution. Tomorrow, presumably, Pwill would send me back to the Acre to try and stop his son’s supply of the deadly drug coffee. I’d take along a bagful of my choicest Earthly salads for Kramer’s wife.

Maybe there were a few heads running to seed, too. If there were, people in the Acre would welcome them. They
might not have space for gardens, but there wasn’t any reason, was there, why they shouldn’t plant in boxes of soil on the roofs of the houses? Or … was there? I frowned.

Still, that was for tomorrow. I took from my pocket the piece of paper Kramer had given me with the can, and studied it thoughtfully. It bore instructions in English, not Vorrish, irregularly printed—I imagined, on a hand press in the Acre.

It was the most peculiar mixture of hard sense and gobbledy gook I’d ever set eyes on. Astonished, I read:

What in-?

I turned the paper over, and began to understand. The other side bore what the uneducated among the Vorra might well take for a magical symbol of some kind—especially if they had been suitably primed beforehand by some of Kramer’s mumbo-jumbo. But I had had a pretty good education myself, and I instantly recognized diagrams of molecular structure. Two of them, side by side.

Rather hesitantly, I tried to work out their significance. The first one, in particular, looked as though I ought to know it—got it! Aside from one branching chain springing off the main structure, this was a diagram of a drug called credulin, used to heighten suggestibility. Credulin was, in fact, a chemical equivalent of a course of hypnosis. It could also act as a truth serum under the right circumstances.

Assuming that the altered side branch of the molecule was due to the drug having been tailored to the Vorrish metabolism instead of the human, apparently Kramer wasn’t just a phony.

I had much more trouble working out the second diagram, and my assumption that it was a hormone derivative no better than an enlightened guess. Certainly the two drugs combined must have the effect Kramer claimed for them; I could stop thinking ‘love potion” in quotation marks and think of a love potion that actually worked. For instance: as among the majority of Earthly cultures, a mans virility was a kind of badge of honor to the Vorra. Properly employed, this potion could ensure that Shavarri became the wife to whom Pwill most readily responded. Perhaps it could be used to make certain he did not respond at all to the other wives! In which case Shavarri was going to have a tremendous stranglehold on her lord and master.

There was a rapping at the door. I swallowed the last few mouthfuls of my meal and answered the knock. This time Shavarri had not merely sent one of her maids. Despite my good resolutions, I felt my stomach cartwheel inside me.

I had had as little truck as I could manage with Dwerri, the whipmaster, since my arrival, partly because he hated me on principle—but then, he hated everyone!—and partly because I detested his position on the estate. Pwill was absolute
lord of his tenantry and retinue, and his wives’ also, of course. Dwerri was the instrument of his authority: a brick-colored man with carefully dressed whiskers shading between dull gingery-red and brown, pale narrow eyes, arms and legs like sections cut from the bole of a tree. He stood now, eyes glinting, in the narrow passageway outside my room, passing the lash of the whip he carried as symbol of his authority between his stubby fingers. Behind him waited two of his aides, almost as stocky as himself.

“You disobeyed an order from the Under-lady Shavarri,” he said in a purring voice. “You did not go with her maid as you were commanded.”

Putting the boldest possible face on things, I looked him straight in the eye. “It’s taken you quite a long time to bring the maid’s message again,” I said.

He was unperturbed. “I was engaged in beating a field-hand found sleeping by a hedgerow,” he answered, and wet his thumb against his lower lip. He touched it to the lash of his whip. The moisture brought the reddish stain of old dried blood to view on his skin. Waiting until he was sure I had seen and understood, he smiled broadly.

Behind him his aides shifted from foot to foot.

Officially, of course, there was nothing Dwerri could do to me. I was not a member of Shavarri’s personal retinue; an order from her was not automatically to be obeyed like one from Llaq or Pwill. But she could give orders to Dwerri, and it was going to help me not at all if after I had been whipped I crawled to Pwill and had the order overruled.

I had a sudden idea.

I was sweating, but my voice was steady. I said, “I take it this is the chance you’ve been hoping for, to get some
Earthly blood mingled with the Vorrish blood which stains your whip?”

“Exactly. Back into your room; we will attend to the business here. Unfortunately I am commanded to a mere five lashes. Five hundred would scarcely whip your haughtiness out of you. I have often regretted that my duties here on the estate prevented my accompanying Himself to your dirty mudball planet. In my view, the lenient way you Earthmen are being treated means that one day we’ll have to beat you up all over again.”

If he had been impatient. I could not have done anything. Luckily for me he had been looking forward to this chance for so long that he was prepared to savor the joy of anticipation for a few minutes longer.

“Very well,” I said, shrugging, and turned back into the room. I carefully cleared away the dishes from the near edge of my little table. “Will this be a convenient place for you to work?”

That took him thoroughly aback. While he was hesitating over his answer I flashed a glance at his aides. From their faces I could tell they were none too happy about their new task. Maybe they’d already been indoctrinated with stories about Earthmen.

“Tell me, Dwerri,” I went on, “is it true that your whip never leaves you, night or day?”

He hissed his answer. “That’s true!”

“Good,” I said, beginning to remove my shirt.

“What do you mean—good?”

“It gives me plenty of opportunity.”

“Opportunity for what?9 He was really rising to my bait, and his face was darkening still more than usual. I shrugged.

“To settle accounts afterwards,” I said, being as maddeningly evasive as I could.

He strode forward and caught me by the shoulder; the tip of his whiplash shrieked up and caught me on the cheek, missing my eye—fortunately—by a quarter-inch but stinging abominably. When I put my fingers up to the place, I found a drip of blood already running.

The pain brought tears to my eyes, but I managed not to cry out. I simply looked down at my reddened fingertips, and then flicked them towards the worried aides. Red drops flew off.

“Down in the Acre today,” I said conversationally, “I went went to see a magician called Kramer. We had a very interesting talk about blood.”

One of the aides had caught on. He found a spot of my blood on his clothing and began to rub at it frantically. I made a negative gesture to him.

“That doesn’t help,” I said sympathetically. “Nothing helps.”

“What’s all this about?” Dwerri barked, beginning to be alarmed. I looked him straight in the eye.

“Why, just so long as that whip remains with you, Dwerri, with my blood on its lash, I have my chance to even accounts with you. However, since I don’t readily bear grudges against people, suppose we leave it at that, shall we? And I’ll go and see the Under-lady Shavarri.”

The aide who had tried to rub the blood spot off his clothes whispered urgently into Dwerri’s ear. The whip-master took a hesitant pace back from me, his eyes widening.

“I don’t believe it!” he said.

“Try, then!” I offered. “I shall bear the pain gladly, knowing I can inflict far worse on you afterwards.”

Probably Dwerri had never before had a victim who did not struggle to get away, whom his aides did not have to hold down for the infliction of the punishment. That, more than anything, decided him. His mouth working, he turned to the door, beckoned his aides to go with him, and left me alone.

I
HAD A
first aid kit with me, of course. Knowing the rudimentary state of Vorrish medicine, and knowing that medicines which worked on Vorra might easily be poisons for Earthmen, I had stocked up thoroughly before leaving home. I dusted some quick-acting coagulant on my cheek to stop blood dripping on my clothes, but I decided against covering the gash with plastiskin. Let Shavarri see the mark and wonder about it.

Then I put the slip of paper with the directions for the potion in my pocket, and went upstairs to the seraglio.

Someone had been talking!

Normally the Vorrish members of the staff ignored me, except for the few like Swallo who could tolerate Earthmen without either hating their guts like Dwerri or being ridiculously impressed with them like Pwill. (That hadn’t struck me before. Having been personally involved, as a very young officer, in garrison duties on Earth before the Great Grip relaxed, he had seen us at our most abject. It wasn’t logical for him to have gained such a high regard for us later!)

Today the Vorra weren’t just ignoring me. They were apparently avoiding me deliberately. Those I did encounter
on my way upstairs could hardly drag their eyes away from me as they went by.

Astonishing what a change a few minor incidents could make!

Shavarri might not have moved at all since I saw her in the morning; she was still reclining as she had been, in a robe dusted with gold to match the color of her eyes. Her mouth was drawn down a little at the corners in a determined expression. On a low stool-like table within arm’s reach of her was the can I had brought from Kramer’s. She had levered the lid off. The contents were a kind of thick, dry,’ granular paste, grayish in color.

The same maid who had been waiting at the door of my room on my return from the city was fanning Shavarri with a big black spray of feathers. She gave me a nervous glance and went on with the fanning more vigorously than before.

Coolly Shavarri looked me over. I met her glance as levelly as I could.

“You took your time,” she said at last.

I bowed. “Directly I returned Pwill Himself sent for me,” I said. “As your under-ladyship will realize, this delayed me.”