The Dark Light Years

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Old Aylmer was partial to his sleep. He strongly resisted Snok Snok Kam’s efforts to rouse him until the young utod lifted him up with four legs and shook him gently.

“You must bring yourself to full wakefulness. my dear Manlegs.” Snok Snok said. “Fit your crutches on and come to the door.”

“My old bones are stiff, Snok Snok. I quite enjoy their stiffness, as long as I’m left horizontal to do so.”

“You prepare yourself for the carrion stage of life,” the utod said. He had over the years trained himself to talk only through his casspu and oral orifices; in that way, he and Ainson could converse after a fashion. “When you change to carrion. Mother and I will plant you under the ammps, and in your next cycle you shall become an utod.”

“Thank you very much, but I’m certain that that wasn’t what you woke me for. What’s the matter?

What’s worrying you?1’ That was a phrase that in forty years’ association with Ainson Snok Snok had never understood. He passed it over.

“Some menlegs are coming here. I saw them bumping on a round-legged four-legs towards our middenstead.”

Ainson was buckling on his leg supports.

“Men? I don’t believe it, after all these years.”

Picking up his crutches, he made his way down the corridor to the front door. On either side of him were doors he had not opened for a long while, doors sealing off rooms containing weapons and ammunition, recording apparatus, and rotted supplies; he heeded this material no more than he did the automatic observation post which had long since wilted, together with its aerial, under the majesty of Dapdrofs storms and gravitational pull.

The grorgs scuttled ahead of Snok Snok and Ainson and plunged on into the middenstead where Quequo gently reclined. Snok Snok and Ainson halted in the doorway, looking out through the wire. A four-wheeled overlander had just drawn up at the gate.

Forty years, Ainson thought, forty years peace and quiet — not all of it so damn welcome either — and they have to come and disturb me now! They might have let me die in peace. I reckon I could have managed that before the next esod, and I’ve no objection to being buried under the ammp trees.

He whistled his grorg back to him, and stood waiting where he was. Three men jumped from the truck.

As an after-thought, Ainson went back down the corridor, pushed his way into the little armory, and stood there adjusting his eyes to the light. Dust lay thickly everywhere. He opened a metal box, took a dull-shining rifle from within. But the ammunition, where was that? He looked round at the muddle in disgust, dropped the weapon on to the dirty floor and shuffled back into the corridor. He had picked up too much peace on Dapdrof to go shooting at his age.

One of the men from the four-wheeler was almost at the front door. He had left his two companions at the entrance to the stockade.

Ainson quailed. How did you address your own kind? This particular fellow did not look easy to address. Although he might well be slightly older than Ainson, he had not spent forty years under 3G’s. He wore uniform; no doubt service life kept his body healthy, whatever it did “to his mind. He wore the well-fed but sanctimonious expression of one who has dined at a bishop’s table.

“You axe Samuel Melmoth. of the Gansas?” the soldier asked. He stood in a neutral pose, legs braced against the gravity blocking the door with his bulk. Ainson gaped at the sight of him; bipeds La clothes looked odd when you were unused to the phenomenon.

“Melmoth?” the soldier repeated.

Ainson had no idea what the fellow meant. Nor could he think of anything that might be regarded as a suitable answer.

“Come, come, you are Melmoth of the Gansas, aren’t you?”

Again the words just baffled.

“He has made a mistake,” Snok Snok suggested, regarding the newcomer closely.

“Can’t you keep your specimens in their wallows? You are Melmoth; I begin to recognize you now.

Why don’t you answer me?”

A tatter of an ancient formula stirred in Ainson’s mind. Ammps, but this was agony!

“Looks like rain.” he said.

“You do talk! I’m afraid that you’ve had rather a wait for your relief. How are you. Melmoth? You don’t remember me, do you?”

Hopelessly, Ainson peered at the military figure before him. He recollected nobody from his life on Earth except his father.

“I’m afraid…. It’s been so long I’ve been alone.”

“Forty-one years, by my reckoning. My name’s Quilter.

Hank Quilter, Captain of the starraider Hightail Quilter. You don’t remember me?”

“It’s been so long….”

“I gave you a black eye once. It’s been on my conscience all these years. When I was directed to this battle sector, I took the chance to come and see you. I’m happy to find you haven’t been harboring a grudge against me, though it’s a blow to a fellow’s pride to find they just are for-gotten. How’s tricks been on Pestalozzi?”

He wanted to be genial to this fellow who seemed to bear him goodwill, but somehow he couldn’t get the line of talk sorted out “Eh Pesta…. Pesta…. I’ve been stuck here on Dapdrof all these years.” Then he thought of something he wanted to say, something that must have worried him for — oh, maybe for ten years, but that was a long way back. He leant against the doorpost, cleared his throat, and asked, “Why didn’t they come for me, Captain… er. Captain?”

“Captain Quilter. Hank. I really wonder you don’t remember me. I remember you clearly, and I’ve done a helluva lot of things these last… Oh well, that’s past history, and what you ask me demands an answer. Mind if I come in?”

“Come in? Oh, you can come in.”

Captain Quilter looked over the old cripple’s shoulders, sniffed, and shook his head. Plainly the old boy had gone native and had the hogs in with him.

“Perhaps you’d better come on out to the truck. I’ve got a shot of bourbon there you could probably use.”

“Eh, okay. Can Snok Snok and Quequo come along too?”

“For crying sakes! These two boys? They stink— You may be used to it, Melmoth. but I’m not Let me give you a hand.”

Angrily, Ainson brushed the offered arm away. He hobbled forward on his crutches.

“Won’t be long, Snok Snok,” he said, in the language they had contrived between them. “I’ve just got to get a little matter sorted out.”

With pleasure, he noticed that he was puffing far less than the captain. At the truck they both rested, while the two rankers looked on with furtive interest Almost apologetically, the captain offered a bottle; when Ainson refused it, the other drank deep. Ainson spent the interval trying to think of something friendly to say.

All he could think of was, “They never came for me, Captain.”

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault, Melmoth. You’ve been well away from trouble here, believe me. On Earth, there has been a whole packet of woes. I’d better tell you about it.

“Remember the old-type Contained Conflicts they used to have on Charon? Well, there was an Anglo-Brazilian conflict that got out of hand. The Britishers started contravening the laws of warfare as they then were; it was proved that they had smuggled in a Master Explorer, which was a social rank not allowed in the conflicts — in case they took advantage of their expert knowledge to exploit the local terrain, you know — I studied the whole incident in Mil Hist school, but you forget the finer details.

Anyhow, this explorer fellow, Ainson, was brought back from Charon to Earth for trial, and he was shot, and the Brazilians said he committed suicide, and the Britishers said the Brazilians shot him. and well, the States got involved — turned out an American revolver was found out-side the prison, and in no time a war blew up, just like old times.”

Old Ainson had come so adrift in this account, he could think of nothing to say. Mention of his own name had befogged him.

“Did you think I’d been shot?” he asked Quilter took a drag at his bourbon.

“We didn’t know what had happened to you. The International War broke out on Earth in 2037, and we sort of forgot about you. Though there has been a lot of fighting in this sector of space, particularly on Numbers and Genesis. They’re practically destroyed. Clementina caught a packet too. You were lucky there were only conventional forces here. Didn’t you sec anything of the fighting here?”

“Fighting on Dapdrof?”

“Fighting on Pestalozzi.”

“No fighting here, I don’t know about there.”

“You must have escaped it in this hemisphere. The north hemisphere is practically fried, judging by what I saw of it on the way in.”

“You never came for me.”

“Hell, I’m explaining, aren’t I? Have some drink; it’ll steady you. Only a very few people knew of you, and I guess most of them are dead now. I stuck my neck out to get to you. Now I’ve got a ship of my own under my command, I’d be glad to take you home — well, there’s only a fragment of Great Britain left, but you’d be welcome in the States. It’d sort of square up that old black eye, eh? What do you say, Melmoth?”

Ainson sucked at the bottle. He could hardly take in the idea of going back to Earth. There would be so much he would miss. But one ought to want to get back home, and there was his duty…. “That reminds me, Captain. I’ve got all the tapes and recordings and vocabularies and stuff.”

“What stuff’s that?”

“Why, now you’re forgetting. The stuff I was landed here to get. I have worked out a good bit of the utodian language — the language of these… these aliens, you know.”

Quilter looked very uncomfortable. He wiped his lips with his fist.

“Perhaps we could pick that up some other time.”

“What, in another forty years? Oh no, I’m not going back to Earth without that gear, Captain. Why, it’s my life work.”

“Quite so,” said Quilter with a sigh. A life’s work, he thought. And how often was a life’s work of no value except to the worker. He hadn’t the heart to tell this poor old shell that the aliens were practically extinct, eradicated by the hazards of war from all the planets of the Six Star Cluster, except for some dwindling hundreds here on the southern hemisphere of PestalozzL It was one of the sad accidents of life.

“We’ll take whatever you want to take, Melmoth,” he said heavily. He rose and straightened his uniform, beckoning to the two soldiers standing idly near by.

“Bonn, Wilkinson, run the truck up to the door of the shack and get Mr. Melmoth’s kit loaded aboard.”

It was all happening too fast for Ainson. He felt him-self on the verge of tears. Quilter patted his back.

“You’ll be okay. There must be a pile of credits waiting somewhere in a bank for you; I’ll see you get every cent that’s due to you. You’ll be glad to get out of this crushing gravity.”

Coughing, the old figure stirred his crutches. How could he say farewell to dear old Quequo, who had done so much to teach him some of her wisdom, and Snok Snok…. He began to weep.

Quilter tactfully turned his back and surveyed the stiff spring foliage around him.

“It’s the unaccustomed drink, Captain Printer,” Ainson said in a minute. “Did you tell me England had been destroyed?”

“Now don’t start worrying about that, Melmoth. It really is wonderful to be alive on Earth now, and I swear that’s true. The life is a bit regimented as yet, but all national differences have been composed, at least for the time being. Everyone is reconstructing like mad — of course the war gave a terrific boost to technology. I wish I was twenty years younger.”

“But you said England….”

“They are damming half the North Sea to replace the disintegrated areas with topsoil, and London is going to be rebuilt — on a modest scale of course.”

Affectionately, he put an arm round the curved shoulders, thinking what a stretch of history was embraced in that narrow space.

The old boy shook his head with vigor, scattering tears.

“Trouble is, after all these years I’m out of touch. Why, I don’t think I’ll ever be in contact with anyone properly any more.”

Moved. Quilter cleared a lump from his own throat. Forty years! You didn’t wonder the old guy felt as he did. How the grokkies would lap up the story!

“Why now, that’s a pack of nonsense. You and I have soon got things straight between each other, haven’t we, Melmoth?”

“Yes, yes, that certainly is so. Captain Quinto.”

At last the military vehicle bumped away from the stockade. Limbs deretracted, the two utods stood on the edge of the middenstead and watched it until it was out of sight. Only then did the younger turn to look at the older. Speech inaccessible to human ears passed between them.

The younger one moved into the deserted building. He examined the armory. The soldiers had left it untouched, as directed by the one who had spoken about the deaths of so many utods. Satisfied, he turned back and walked without pause through the gate of the stockade. He had remained patiently captive for a small fraction of Ms life. Now it was time that he thought about freedom.

Time, too. that the rest of his brothers thought about freedom.