Neq the Sword

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The trip was done. The three reported to Dr. Jones at the crazy building. Tyl, the tacit leader, did the talking, summarizing Neq's search for missing people, Tyl's own trek with Neq, their encounter with Var and Vara, and their journey back--except for the dialogue and romance.

"Neq has renounced bis sword," Tyl concluded. "He wears the glockenspiel now. Yet he retains the capacity for leadership."

Dr. Jones nodded as though something significant had been said. "The others will no doubt take the matter under advisement."

Tyl and the crazy leader went to round up the "others." Neq and Vara took the vine outside where there was more light. They settled under a spreading tree.

"Tyl will be master of Helicon," Vara said. "See how close he is to the crazies."

Neq agreed. "He brings people together."

"You and I came together inevitably," she said with feminine certainty. "Helicon was your idea. You should be master."

"With this?" He uncovered the glockenspiel. "You could change it back. The sword is still there, underneath."

It was too complicated to explain that he never had been considered for the Helicon office. "If'"! wore the sword again, you would have to kill me."

She frowned, surprised. "I suppose I would."

A little boy about four years old wandered by, spotting them. "Who are you?" he asked boldly.

"Neq the Glockenspiel."

"Vara the Stick."

"I'm Jimi. You have funny hands."

"They are metal hands," Neq said, surprised that the boy had not been frightened. "To make music."

"My daddy Jim has metal guns. They make bangs."

"Music is better."

"It is not!"

"Listen." And Neq lifted the glockenspiel, took the little hammer in his pincers, and began to play. Then he sang:

"What's a town?" the boy inquired, impressed.

"A nomad camp with crazy buildings."

"I know what a boom falela is! A gun."

Vara laughed. "I want one like him," she murmured.

"Find Jim the Gun, then."

"After this one," she said, patting her abdomen.

Neq, startled, sang another verse for the boy.

"How big was that crow?" Jimi inquired, fascinated. Neq struck a loud note. "About that size."

"Oh," the boy said, satisfied. "What's that thing?"

"A flower vine."

"It is not!"

"The flowers only open in the dark. Then they smell funny, and people do funny things."

"Like crows with pitchforks?"

Vara laughed again. "Just about," she said.

Tyl emerged from the building. "They're ready."

Vara picked up the vine-pot and they went inside. Jimi followed. "He has funny hands," he informed Tyl. "But he's fun."

They were all there: the group of odd-named oldsters he had rounded up, along with Dick the Surgeon, and Sola, and several more he did not know. Apparently Dr. Jones had located more of the people on the list during Neq's absence. Some were nomads, male and female. Jimi went to one of these, evidently Jim the Gun.

Vara, poised until this moment, took Neq's covered arm. "Who's that?" she whispered, nodding specifically.

"Sola," he replied before realizing the significance of her identity. The woman had recovered more than a suggestion of her former splendor.

Vara clutched his arm as though terrified. It was entirely uncharacteristic of her.

Tyl stepped in and performed the introduction. "Sola... Vara. You have known each other."

Sola did not make the connection, for she had not known of Var's marriage. But the others saw the resemblance as the two women stood together. "Mother and daughter..." Dick said.

"Widows, both," Tyl said. The words seemed cruel, but they were not, for this clarified a prime source of concern and confusion at once. No further questions about that matter would be asked. That meant in turn that the more devious and less honorable relationships would not be exposed.

Yet it was awkward. Sola and Vara had parted perhaps thirteen years ago, when Vara was hardly more than a baby. What was there to say?

Once more Tyl interceded. "You both knew Var well. And Sol. And the Weaponless. As I did. Soon we must talk together of great men."

"Yes," Sola said, and Vara agreed.

"In your absence," Dr. Jones said to Neq, "we located a few more volunteers, as you see. We have screened them as well as we could, and believe they represent a viable unit. Provided suitable leadership develops."

"There are leaders here," Neq said. Did the crazy want him to affirm his support for the leader already chosen?

"The destruction of the prior Helicon suggests that its leadership was inadequate," Dr. Jones said. "We have been obliged to make certain restrictions."

Neq pondered that. Apparently he was being asked not only to support, but to nominate the leader! "You won't work with just anybody. But you can work with Tyl--"

"I return shortly to my tribe," Tyl said. "My job is done. I am not of this group. I would not leave the nomad culture or take my family under the mountain."

Neq was amazed. So Tyl, too, had been merely supporting the effort, not directing it!

"I know of Jim the Gun," Neq said. "He armed the empire for the assault on--"

"I made a mistake!" Jim broke in. "I shall not make another. I know better than to command what I once destroyed."

Apparently Dr. Jones had not set things up so neatly after all! "What are your requirements?" Neq asked the crazy. "Literacy? Helicon experience? What?"

"We would have preferred such things," Dr. Jones admitted. "We would have liked very much to have found the Weaponless. But other qualities are more important now, and we must work with what we have."

"Why not Neq?" Vara asked.

Neq laughed uncomfortably. "My leadership has become a song. I shall not kill again."

"That is one of our requirements," Dr. Jones said. "There has been too much shedding of blood."

"Then you require the impossible," Neq said grimly. "Helicon was built on blood."

"But it shall not be rebuilt on blood!" Dr. Jones exclaimed with unseemly vehemence for one of his character. "History has clarified the folly of violence and deceit."

Many of the people in the room were nodding agreement. But Neq thought of the way the outlaws would have to be tamed, and knew the dream of nonviolent civilization was untenable.

"Neq the Sword," Sola said after a pause. "We know your history. We do not condemn you. You say you shall not kill again. How can we believe you, when your whole way of life has been based on vengeance by the sword?"

Neq shrugged. He saw already that no man who could give the absolute assurance of pacifism they demanded could be an effective leader of Helicon. He could not kill by his own arm, but he had agreed to the indirect slaughter of the flower vine during the trek here. His stance against killing had been hypocritical.

"Take him as your leader!" Vara exclaimed. "All of you are here because of him!"

"Yes," one thin old crazy agreed. 'This man lifted an outlaw siege against my post, and took a message for me that brought rescue. I trust him, whatever else he has done."

Jim the Gun spoke. He was a little old nomad with curly yellow hair. "We do not question Neq's capacity. We question his judgment under pressure. I myself was ready to shoot somebody when I learned how my brother had died in Helicon--but I did not. A man who would go berserk for weeks at a time, whatever the provocation--"

"I like him," Jimi said. "He has music hands."

Startled, Jim looked at his son. "That man is Neq the Sword!"

"He says music is better'n guns. But I like him."

"We share your vision," Sola said to Neq. "But we must have a leader of inflexible temperament. A man like the Weaponless."

"The Weaponless destroyed Helicon!" Vara flared. "Can anybody even count how many men died because of him? Yet you say no killing, and you want--"

Sola looked at her sadly. "He was your father."

"That's why he did it! He thought I was dead. You talk about a few weeks berserk--He planned it for years, then he followed Var for years. Nothing had happened to me! And you--you sent Var to kill the man who might harm me, when no one had. Who are you to judge? But Neq saw his wife--Dr. Jones' own secretary, a beautiful and literate woman--Neq saw her raped by fifty men, and then they cut off his hands and dumped him in the forest with her corpse. He should have died then--but he brought "that tribe to justice. Now he wants to stop all outlaws by rebuilding Helicon. And you hypocrites quibble about the past!"

"Where is Var the Stick?" Sola asked quietly.

Vara couldn't answer.

"I slew him," Neq said.

Their faces told the story. Many of these people had known Var, and more had heard of him. They were hardly ready to accept his killer as their leader. And why should they?

"It was an accident," Tyl said. "Neq thought Var had killed Soli in her childhood, as we all thought. He reacted as we all did. Before he learned the truth, Var was dead. Because of that error, Neq put aside the sword. Now I speak for his sincerity--and so does Vara."

"So we noticed," Jim said, in a tone that made Vara flush furiously.

Jimi was looking at the vine.

"Show your weapons," Tyl said to Neq.

Neq unveiled the glockenspiel. There was a murmur of amazement, for none of them had seen it before.

"Use it," Tyl said.

Neq looked about. The faces were grim and sad--grim for him, sad for Vara, who was crying without shame. These people evidently shared his vision of a new Helicon, but the example of the prior one frightened them. It frightened him too, for he had seen it in ruins.

Perhaps Helicon could not function without bloodshed, direct or indirect. Perhaps there was no way to restore the old society. But it had to be tried, and now was the time, and this was the group. He could not let it all slide away just because of the confused scruples of the moment.

They needed a leader. If he did not assume command, no one would. He was far from ideal, but there was no one else.

Neq turned to Dr. Jones. "You asked me to find out why Helicon perished, so that we could prevent it from happening again. How did the leadership fail? I do not know. Perhaps it will fail again. Perhaps Helicon is doomed. But this is a risk that must be taken."

Dr. Jones did not respond.

Neq looked for his little hammer, but couldn't find it. So he tapped out a melody slowly with the pincers, touching the glockenspiel lightly so as to avoid the unpleasant metallic effect. Then he sang.

As he sang, he looked first at one person, then another. The song had special meaning for him, as every song did, and while the melody was venting itself through his lung and mouth and instrument he believed it. Its pre-Blast originators could not have honored its precepts--but he was hammering out warning.

It was as though he were meeting each man in the circle and conquering him with his syncopation. And each woman was vulnerable to the sincerity of the song, the vibrant emotion of it. While his voice and hammer were in harness Neq the Glockenspiel was potent even in the face of their unified distrust.

He finished that song, and sang another, and then another. It was as though he were marching out of the haunted forest again, and in a way he was, for there was nothing but song to do the job that had to be done. Vara began harmonizing with him, the way Neqa'tad done long ago, and slowly the others formed into a circle about him, compelled to echo the words.

He sang. The very room wavered and flowed, shaping itself into an ugly badlands mountainside girt by tangled metal palisades, irregular stone battlements, a tunnel under the awful mountain, a vast cavern filled with ashes. Helicon formed, and Helicon's promise infused the group. From death came life--the mountain of death that meant life for the finest elements in man. The dream became tangible, thrilling, eternal; a force that no living man could deny.

At last he stopped. They were his, now, he knew. His dream had met their caution and prevailed, however illogically. Helicon would live again.

Then he saw the vine-box. Jimi had covered it, so that the flowers had opened in their darkness, and the narcotic had seeped into the room while Neq was singing.

Tyl must have seen it happen, and let it be, for Tyl was gone.