Neq the Sword

CHAPTER FIVE

The following day he sang again, as the sun same down and steamed the forest floor into solidity. He pretended to sing to his weapon, but it was really to her, and she knew it.

"You sing very well," she said, reddening a bit. "I know it. But it isn't all real. When I sing of battle, I know what it means. But love--those are words I don't understand."

"How do you know?" It was as though she were afraid to ask, but was fascinated anyway.

He looked at his bare wrist. "I never gave my--" She held up her own wrist with the heavy gold bracelet clasped about it. "You gave. I accepted. Is that love?" "I don't know." But he was breathing jerkily. "Neq, I don't know either," she admitted. "I don't feel different--I mean I'm still me--but the gold seems to burn, to lead me along, I don't know where. But I want to know. I want to give--everything. I'm trying to. But I'm old, and crazy, and afraid. Afraid I have nothing to give."

"You're beautiful, and warm, and brave. That business with the truck--"

"I hate that! Being a killer, I mean. But I had to do it. I was afraid for you."

"That must be love."

"I like the sound of that. But I know better, Neq. I could hate you and still need you. If anything happens to you, I have no way home."

That was the wonder of it: she was as afraid of him as he was of her. She fought rather than see him hurt--yet she could not come to him in peace. She had to impose practical reasons to justify what needed no justification. As he did, too. "Show me your breast," he said.

"What?" She was not shocked, only uncomprehending.

"Your knife. Your--when you put away your knife, you--"

"I don't understand." But she did.

"Show me your breast."

Slowly, flushing furiously, she unwrapped her shoulder, exposing her right breast.

"It is nineteen," he said. "It excites me. A breast like that--it can't be old, or crazy, or afraid, or have nothing to give. It has to be loved."

She looked at herself. "You make me feel wanton."

"I will sing to your breast," he said.

She blushed again, and her breast blushed too, but she did not cover herself. "Where do you leam these songs?"

"They go around. Some say they come from before the Blast, but I don't believe that." Yet he did believe it as much as he disbelieved it, for so many of the words made no sense in the nomad context.

"The books are that old. The songs might be." Her flush was fading at last.

He sang, contemplating her breast:

"Does it?" She looked hopeful.

"No. I'd like it to fit." After a pause he added: "Neqa."

She couldn't seem to stop blushing. "You make me all confused when you say that. Neqa."

"Because of the bracelet."

"I know. I'm your wife as long as I wear it. But it isn't real."

"Maybe it will be." If only it were that simple!

"You nomads--you just pass the bracelet and that's it. Instant love, for an hour or a lifetime. I don't understand it."

"But you were a nomad once."

"No. I was a wild girl. No family. The crazies took me in, trained me, made me like them, outside. They do that with anyone who needs it. I never was part of the nomad society."

"Maybe that's why you don't understand the bracelet."

"Yes. What about you?"

"I understand it. I just can't do it."

"Maybe that's the trouble with us. You're too gentle and I'm too timid." She laughed nervously. "That's funny, after we killed all those men. Gentle and timid!"

"We could hold each other tonight. It might help."

"What if the outlaws come back?"

He sighed. "I'll stand watch."

"You watched last night. I should do it this time."

"All right."

She laughed again, more easily, so that her breast moved pleasantly. "So matter of fact! What if I said 'take me in your arms, crush me, make love to me!'?"

He considered the prospect. "I could try. If you said it before I got too nervous."

"I can't say it. Even though I want to."

"You want to do it--but you can't ask me?"

"I can't answer that." This time she forgot to blush.

"I want to do it," she said seriously. "But I can't just start. Not unless you say. And even then--"

"It is funny, you know. We know what we want, we know how each feels, but we can't act. We can even speak about speaking, but we can't speak."

"Maybe tomorrow," he said.

"Maybe tomorrow." And the look of longing she gave him as she put away her breast made his heart pause and jump.

Tomorrow was another clear day, and the ruts were hardened, and there seemed to be the first whiff of something from the corpses around the truck, and so they moved out. Nature compensated for the day's delay by providing an excellent route.

That night Neqa joined him in a double sleeping bag in the back of the truck and pressed her breast against him, but she did not ask and he did not do. They both were frustrated, and they talked about it, and they agreed the whole thing was ridiculous, but that was all.

They had to keep alert against possible marauders, so they took turns sleeping even though together, and while she slept he tried to touch her breast with his hand but didn't... but it was against his hand when he woke after her turn awake.

The next night they slept together naked, and he ran his hands over both her fine breasts and her firm buttocks, and she cried when she could not respond, and that was all.

The night after that he sang to her and kissed her, and she ran her hands over his torso and did not avoid what she had avoided before, huge as it was, and she pressed against him and he tried... but she cried out with a pain that might have been physical and might have been emotional, and he stopped, chastened, and she cried quietly for some time.

Meanwhile, they were making much faster progress toward the supplier. Their union unconsummated, they pulled up to a hostel near what Neq recognized with shock as the mountain: the place of nomad suicide. Gaunt rusty girders projected from it, hiding the summit; he knew that no man who had passed that barrier had ever returned... until recently.

Yet Tyl of Two Weapons and the Master had laid siege to this bastion, for there had been living men within it. They had gutted it, and now it was truly dead.

Neqa consulted her map. "Yes, this is it."

"This--your supplier?" he demanded.

"Helicon. But something is wrong."

"We destroyed it," he said. "The Weaponless did, I mean; I was not there. I could have told Dr. Jones, if I'd known he was talking about the mountain!"

"Oh, no!" she cried. "Helicon manufactured all the technical equipment! We cannot do without it!"

"Maybe some are alive, inside." Knowing Tyl's efficiency, he doubted it, but he had to offer her some hope.

She moved around the center column of the hostel, looking for something. This hostel had not been ravaged, but there was no food in it. She opened the shower stall and stepped in.

"You're still dressed," Neq reminded her.

"I know it's here," she said, as though he hadn't spoken. "I memorized the instructions." She counted tiles along the wall, then pressed on one. She counted from another direction and pressed again. And once more. Nothing happened.

"You have to turn the knobs," he said. "One for hot, the other for cold. But you don't need to take a shower right now, just when you're beginning to smell like a true nomad--"

"I must have done it too slowly," she said. "Now I know the tiles, I'll try it faster."

She went through her mysterious ritual again, while Neq watched tolerantly. The crazies were crazy!

Something snapped inside the inner wall. Neqa pushed on yet another tile and it tilted out, revealing a handle. Neq gaped; he had never known there were handles behind the shower wall! If not for hot or cold water, what?

She twisted and gave a sharp jerk--and the entire wall swung toward her.

There was a compartment behind the shower--in the heart of the hostel's supposedly solid supporting column!

"Come on," she said, stepping inside.

Neq joined her, clasping his sword nervously. There was barely room for them both. She pulled the wall shut and touched a button inside. There was a hum; then the floor dropped.

Neq jumped, alarmed, but she laughed. "This is civilization, nomad! It's called an elevator. We have them in our buildings, and the underworld uses them too. This is a secret entrance, that we use for transfer of supplies. When nomads see a crazy truck outside, they assume it's a routine servicing--but the truth is we're taking supplies out. Most of the heavy stuff pomes through other depots in the area, of course, that the nomads never see."

The floor stabilized. She pushed open the side again, and now there was a tunnel, curving into darkness.

"Bad," she said. "The lift is on hostel power, that charges whenever the sun shines. But the tunnel is on Helicon power. That means the underworld is dead, as you said." She turned on a flashlight Neq hadn't known she possessed. "But we'll have to look."

The passage opened into a room where empty boxes were stacked. "Someone's been here," she remarked. "They took the merchandise. But the crates were never restored."

"Probably the last truck--that didn't return."

"Our men never went beyond this point," she said. "But obviously there is a pasage to Helicon. We'll have to find it."

"It may not be pretty." He had heard the tales of labyrinthine underground tunnels choked with bodies. Such claims were probably exaggerated; still....

"I know it." She kissed him--she was able to do that now, and was proud of herself--and began pushing again at places in the wall, randomly.

"If they didn't want you inside, it wouldn't open that way," he pointed out. "Might even be booby-trapped."

"I don't think so. They might guard it, but they wouldn't do anything to antagonize us. The crazies, I mean. Helicon needed us as much as we needed it, because they'd largely shelved their hydroponics and couldn't grow really decent vegetables, and of course no wood. It was more efficient to trade with us, so they concentrated on the heavy industry we couldn't touch. Dr. Jones can talk endlessly about such things--what he calls the essential interactions of civilization."

"So it's safe to break in, you think," he said.

She continued to tap at panels without effect. Neq studied the wear-marks on the floor, analyzing their pattern as though he were verifying the situation of a vacated campsite. "There," he said, touching one section of the wall. "It opens there."

She joined him at once. "Are you sure? This seems solid."

He pointed to the floor marks her flash illumined, and she understood. With this hint, they were able to locate a significant crevice. "But it doesn't open inward," he said. "No hinge on this side, no scrape-marks."

"I don't find any other crease," she said. "But it has to open somehow." She banged at the corner with the butt of the light. "Unless it slides--"

Neq forced the point of his sword into the crevice and leaned on it. The wall gave a little, sidewise. "It slides-- but it's locked or blocked."

"Naturally it would lock from the other side," she said. "Can you free it?"

"Not with my sword. But we can get a crowbar from the truck. Enough leverage, it'll give."

They returned to the vehicle and collected an armful of tools. And in due course they had it open.

Behind the wall was a set of tracks. "They used a railroad!" she said. "To haul the supplies along, maybe by remote control. How clever."

But there was no wheeled cart, so they had to walk between the tracks. Neq was nervous about this, not liking the confinement, but she didn't seem to mind. She took his hand in the dark and squeezed it.

He counted paces. It was over a mile before the tracks stopped. There were platforms, with boxes stacked, and sidings with several carts. Neq opened one crate and discovered singlesticks--perhaps fifty of the metal weapons.

So it was true: the underworld had made the nomad arms. Hadn't the Weaponless known that when he destroyed it?

They walked along to the end of the platform and passed through a dark doorway. Then up a gradual ramp, through a charred aperture, and into a larger hall. The air was close and not sweet. Neqa passed the beam of the flashlight over the floor.

Ashes lay across it, with occasional charred mounds. The ambient odor was much stronger here.

"What happened?" she inquired, perplexed.

Neq saw that she didn't comprehend. "Fire. They couldn't get out in time."

"They?" Then she recognized the shape of the nearest mound and screamed. It was the remains of a human being.

Neq led her back down the ramp. "See--after they were dead, the wooden door finally burned through. It must have locked or jammed, like the panel back there. Someone must have poured gasoline all over everything and--"

She turned to him in the darkness, the flashlight off. "The nomads did this?"

"Tyl said it happened before they broke in, actually. The fires were still hot, and the smoke was everywhere, so they didn't stay long. I don't know."

She made a choking sound. He felt something warm on his arm, and knew that she was vomiting against him.

"Helicon was the last hope of man!" she exclaimed, and heaved again.

"I don't think we need to look any more," he said. He took the flashlight from her flaccid hand and guided her away.