Amphiskios (John D. MacDonald) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

Chapter VI No Stage

As dusk came, as the last attempt ceased, Joe laid on his back on the sandy floor of the cave, completely exhausted.

Mary Callahan stared down into the valley, watched the shadows slowly mask the two bodies remaining.

During the bitter afternoon, during the silent combat, neither side had been able to gain any decisive edge.

The crucial moment had come when the dark-haired warrior had, for a moment, gained the flat place in front of the cave. A blow from the club held in Joe’s right hand had knocked his sword spinning into the valley. The warrior had left his axe behind so as to simplify the ascent.

He had blocked Joe’s further blows with the shield, had beat an orderly retreat back down the ledge.

Joe sighed, inched over to the sagging water-bag, drank deeply.

Mary said ruefully, “Paging DeMille. Only his makeup was never this good.”

Joe grunted. He said, “Always with the jokes, eh?”

“Either that or start screaming, laddie. Which’ll you have?”

He didn’t answer. She looked around, said, “Our best gadget was the rocks. And we’re down to three good-sized ones. Can you help me or do I go down and see if I can bring up a few lady-sized ones.”

Joe said, his voice oddly high, “Damn you, Johnny! You promised me that five bucks!”

Mary went over to him. She knelt and put the back of her hand against Joe’s forehead. It was like fire. She got some of the fetid water, tore a new strip from the hem of her dress and began to bathe his face.

Joe moaned, rolled from side to side and talked incessantly. At last he went to sleep. Mary suddenly realized that the last of the carefully guarded store of matches was gone and in the heat of combat they had let the last embers die.

The stars shone with hard brilliance. She sat in the cave mouth. For a time she sang softly to herself because it was good to hear the lift of a song. In the starlight she felt her way down the ledge, struggled painfully back up with stones. Four trips was all that she could manage.

And then she talked aloud to herself. She told herself that it was a stupid and empty thing she was doing, to resist. The second death might come as quickly as the first. But she felt the hard core of her courage, the will that would not give up. And she knew a sardonic amusement.

She gnawed on the strips of hard smoked meat until her hunger was gone. Joe shivered in his comatose state, his teeth chattering.

She lay down beside him, warming his body with hers, at last drifting off to uneasy sleep.

The shadow in front of the morning sun awakened her. Even as she rolled to her feet, backed slowly to the cave wall, she knew that she had been fighting to remain asleep, squinting her eyes against the sun.

It was the dark-haired one.

He walked lightly toward her on the balls of his feet. At first he was in silhouette and then he turned so that she could see his face where the light struck it, see the lip lifted away from white teeth.

He lifted the sword, his right arm held in front of his body for a backhand slash.

Mary Callahan lifted her chin, smiled at him and said softly, “A quick one right across this swanlike neck, honey-bun. A real quick one.”

The web of muscles stood out on his bronzed forearm. Dawn light shone on the crest of the helmet.

She shut her eyes and waited. But the slashing blow did not come. She heard the thud, the grunt of effort and opened her eyes to see the dark-haired one drop like a log.

Joe stood on his feet, the wildness gone from his eyes. He held the club in his left hand. The swelling had begun to leave his right arm.

He said, “He was a soft one, Mary. He couldn’t quite do it. And while he was making up his mind I got him.”

Joe dropped the club, picked up the sword, wedged his toe under the fallen one’s shoulder, rolled him over and aimed the point of the sword at the unprotected throat for a downward thrust.

“No!” Mary shouted. “Don’t do it, Joe.”

He gave her an odd look. “Why not?”

“Because… well, maybe we can use him for a hostage.”

The fallen man stirred. Joe shrugged, kicked him on the angle of the jaw, while Mary cut two strips from the empty water bag, tied the man’s wrists tightly, then his ankles.

As she finished his ankles, the man opened his eyes and stared calmly at her. Joe once again pressed the tip of the sword to the man’s throat. He looked as calmly up at Joe. The keen tip punctured the skin and a tiny rivulet of blood flowed down into the hollow of his strong throat.

Joe cursed. “I could have done it before, Mary, but I can’t do it with him looking at me.”

Mary pushed the blade away with the flat of her hand.

“Go watch for the other one,” she said.

Joe stalked to the mouth of the cave, muttering. She turned and glanced up at the two silver boxes which floated, motionless, a few inches from the high roof of the cave.

She smiled up at the lenses and said, “How do you like this, fight fans?”

Shawn, son of Orn, carried on the conflicts as devised by his father, ordering the technicians to make minor improvements.

But Shawn was wearied by the difficulties of administration of the greatest Empire the universe had ever seen.

With the passage of the years, as the blood of the Kanes thinned, unrest had spread throughout the four hundred and eleven colonies and throughout Mother Earth. This unrest was based primarily on the accelerating reduction of the birth rate.

Colonies which once had numbered in the hundreds of millions had shrunk to half their original number. Shawn had kept the court scientists hard at work on the problem but they spoke to him of the tiring germ plasm, of the diminishing vitality of the race. They at last convinced him that the race of man had passed the crest of vitality and was doomed to gradual reduction in numbers until at last, when all vitality was gone, the weeds and the rot would take over the works of man.

When Shawn at last believed the word of his court scientists, when he knew that the Empire would eventually fall with the race, he embarked on a course of personal extravagance, of dissipation, that exceeded anything previously known during the reign of the line of Kane.

His subjects became increasingly discontented, the malcontent spreading even to the officers of his elite corps of warriors of space.

The flames smouldered deep underground and various secret societies were formed, each pledged to overthrow the empire. Such was the efficacy of the espionage system of the house of Kane that these societies were, for the most part, ignorant of the existence of the others and consequently each underestimated the total power of the spirit of rebellion.

In line with the spirit of malcontent, all decent men wearied of the spectacle of combat, feeling in their hearts that the bitter little battles on Lassa were but an evidence of the harshness of their ruler.

When Shawn found that his billions of subjects were not being entertained by the battles on Lassa, he cleverly recreated their interest by using Lassa as punishment for those he suspected of insubordination, of desiring to overthrow his empire.

He was not so foolish as to send only the rebels against the savages — against the savage dead, as they were called — but carefully kept the proportion down to three loyal and ambitious young officers to one rebel.

There was one minor difference. Once an officer was victorious on Lassa, he was free to rejoin the fleet. But a rebel was condemned to remain until he at last was killed by one of the savages.

What Shawn did not realize was that his subjects, more than sated with the sight of death, had begun to be sympathetic toward the savages and had lost most of the superstitious horror and fear which was the result of the propaganda of his infamous ancestor.

Shawn was careful to see that loyal technicians handled the individual scanners so that, should any condemned rebel attempt to shout his defiance to the listening universe, he would be quickly taken off the receivers of the world.

But Shawn made one mistake. He misjudged the loyalty of one scanner operator, or possibly the operator of the scanner was loyal until he saw what happened in the case of the ex-officer, Anthon.

Or it can be argued that the Empire was in so precarious a state that any incident would have been sufficient.

Ibid