Fanglith - Return To Fanglith Part 9

Of course, the big question was whether we could accomplish anything here. What was needed was some kind of superman-someone out of an adventure thriller-not Larn Rostik kei Deroop.

I shook off the crud of self-devaluation and looked up at the stars. Evdash was up there somewhere, I thought to myself, and then I thought of Jenoor, killed by the Empire, and started deliberately to build up a good hate to toughen my mind for the job we had here. But working up a hate was just a dodge, and I knew it. It didn't change the way things were; it was just a way of not looking at them. I needed to get my attention out of myself, so I took out my communicator; I'd talk with Deneen.

I didn't use the remote. The guards would hear her voice, but that was the kind of thing they expected of me now. I was established as someone who communicated with the angels.

Deneen: Moise was something else, and finding him could almost make me believe in fate. Virtually everything about us was new to him, including knowing what the stars really were, and the galaxy, and Fanglith itself.

You'd never imagine how the Fanglithans had envisioned and explained their world and the universe.

Yet he'd adjusted so quickly to us and to what we'd shown him, with so little confusion and not even a headache, that both Tarel and I were really impressed. Moise was not only very bright, he was very adaptable.

I wonder if mental adaptability might not be the key to maximum success in this universe. You might think we'd have gotten bored, parked fifteen miles above the surface with "nothing much to do."

Actually, we were as busy as we could be, including Moise, because after talking with him a while, I'd decided he'd make a good consultant, and perhaps a contact man on the surface. I wasn't sure about that yet.

So Tarel and I had taken turns questioning him- picking his brain-and educating him. Recording all of it, of course, then running it through linguistic a.n.a.lysis and taking turns using the learning program. We were expanding our knowledge of the language and of Fanglith both.

In turn, we educated him. Over the next Four days we described to him what the universe and galaxy were really like, gave him a course in the basic principles of technology, and let him know a little about ourselves. Not everything. But that we were refugees from a far world, and that we wanted to make a place for ourselves on Fanglith without attracting hostile attention from the people here.

We'd had to talk Provencal, of course-the only language we knew that he could understand.

Fortunately, Moise was from a seaport called Genoa, where the language, Piedmontese, was pretty much like Provencal. He could understand us, and we understood him, without a lot of trouble. He told us he also spoke Hebrew, Aramaic, and quite a bit of Greek. And Arabic, the language of the Saracens.

It had been important in Tarragona, the place where they'd lived before going to Genoa. The pirates had spoken Arabic, too. He'd learned quite a bit of Arabic poetry where he'd lived in Tarragona; he'd thought they were the best poems of all. And the poetry had built his Arabic vocabulary well above the street vocabulary of the children he'd played with.

I'd become aware on our first trip to Fangiith that there was a bad communication scene on this world, but now I began to realize how bad. Because all of those languages, plus a bunch of others, were spoken in just the region around the Mediterranean. Who knew how many different languages there might be on Fanglith? It seemed a safe bet that there were hundreds of them.

Because Arabic was important around much of the Mediterranean, it seemed to me that it might be useful to us. So between times, I had Moise say Arabic words into the recorder, discussing in Piedmontese what they meant. Then I'd load them into the computer. But for the time being we'd stick with Provencal/Piedmontese. Moise said we should be able to make ourselves understood with it, more or less, in Tuscany and Venice, which were important regions of Italy.

Moise was unusually well educated, I realized-even compared with most of the "n.o.bility" of the time.

But it was interesting how little he knew of geography-even the geography of the Mediterranean. He knew a lot about a lot of places and peoples, but a map he tried to sketch for us, in our first session, was so crude and incomplete that, comparing it with the one our s.h.i.+p had made, we couldn't figure out where it was supposed to be. And he had no idea where it was on our map.

It turned out that on Fanglith they hadn't developed map-making as a technical skill. They hardly even had the concept of an overall geographical view-of the planet's surface as something you could sketch on a coordinate system. If they could get where they wanted to go from where they already were, that was enough for them.

Briefly we took him out to 5,000 miles-briefly because that was in one of Fanglith's heavy radiation belts, and because we couldn't see Larn's s.h.i.+p from there. Instead of being scared or awed or anything like that, Moise was positively enraptured. Later, I had the computer print out a map of the whole Mediterranean region for him, and the country north of it all the way to the northern sea. From the way he'd reacted, you'd think I'd given him something of fabulous value, which I guess maybe I had.

When the pirates had attacked the s.h.i.+p his family was on, his mother and sister had jumped into the sea so they wouldn't be sold as slaves. Neither one of them could swim. His father had ordered Moise to lie on his face, then died fighting. Moise, because he was young, and for Fanglith big, had been chained to a rowing bench to replace a slave too sick to row anymore. The sick slave had then been thrown into the sea as a lesson to the others not to get sick.

Moise had never exercised much before, and he told us with a laugh about his first couple of days at the oar. The skin had rubbed off his hands, and in general his body had gotten so tired he'd thought he was dying. Then there'd been a couple of days when the wind had been right, and they hadn't had to row.

That's when his muscles, from legs to shoulders and arms, had gotten so stiff and sore he didn't think he'd ever be able to move again.

But he had. Because the next day, when they were ordered to row again, he'd seen the whip used. He'd rowed then in spite of his soreness. Three weeks of slave food and rowing changed him from kind of pudgy to lean and sinewy. In the months since then he'd added a lot of muscle.

He was lucky, he told us, to have had the captain he'd had. He'd heard that some pirate captains underfed their slaves. His had fed them enough to keep them strong for rowing. He'd even given them dates and raisins, along with dried and salted meat, occasional stew, and what Moise called ma.s.s ah-some kind of bread.

Most of the time we stayed at fifteen miles, keeping the viewscreen locked on Larn's s.h.i.+p, and Bubba kept some telepathic attention on what was going on down there. I checked in with Larn once a day just to stay in touch. After we'd sunk the pirate s.h.i.+p, he'd only called once while he was at sea. My brother isn't the kind who needs his hand held.

But after they got to the port of Reggio, he called again, sounding kind of b.u.mmed out. It seemed as if he was wondering what he was down there for. I could see his problem; it was ours too-Tarel's and mine.

"Larn," I said, "you're worrying about no workable plan again." He didn't say anything back right away.

"Can I make a suggestion?" I asked.

"Okay. Sure."

"We've got an intention. Right?"

"I guess so. Yes."

"So what is it, then? The intention."

It took him a minute-well, ten or fifteen seconds- before he answered, I suppose because what he was looking at didn't seem do-able to him. "Make this a rebel world," he said at last.

I was playing it by ear myself now, and what I said next surprised me. "Take it back another step," I told him, "Our real intention is to rid the Empire of tyrannical rule. Right?"

There was another lag, and when he answered, his voice was thoughtful.

"Right. That's right."

"So how about this, then: You're down there doing things, making decisions step by step to suit the situation-the best you can and with no need to hurry. And if you keep that intention in mind, to rid the Empire of tyrannical rule, your decisions will move us in that direction. "Does that make any sense to you?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Yeah."

"Good. And we're not in a hurry! We can't make a rebel world out of Fanglith overnight. As far as that's concerned, maybe it's not even possible. Take things a step at a time, learn, and wait for the bright idea that you can build a plan on. And if things don't look good in a year or two, maybe we'll decide to go somewhere else, to some other planet. We don't have to make it on Fanglith."

I shut up then, to give him a chance. After a minute though, when he hadn't said anything more, I spoke again. "Brother mine, are you there?"

I heard him chuckle then, the welcome st sound I'd heard in a long time. "Yeah, I'm here. Thanks, sis.

You're the greatest. This is Larn, over and out."

"This is the Jav, over and out."

I switched off the mike. Maybe not the greatest, I thought, but l am pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Tarel and Moise were already sleeping. Only Bubba was awake with me, looking at me and grinning, his tongue hanging out. I winked at him, then put on the learning program skullcap and began my first lesson in Arabic.

Moise: These people who rescued me were clearly not children of Abraham. Nor were they Christian, nor of Islam. Yet if they were heathen, they seemed nonetheless people of honor and n.o.bility. And surely they had shown me kindness and many wonders. Even their huge wolf-like dog spoke with them in his own language, which they understood, and they answered him in-theirs. Deneen says they will start to teach me their language tomorrow.

Although they have knowledge and power incredibly beyond my own, they treat me almost like one of them. True, at first they locked me in my room at night, but that was a reasonable precaution. And they showed me no other distrust, though they knew nothing about me except what I told them. They have told me their dog reads the thoughts of men, and has told them I am honorable, worthy of their trust.

Perhaps he does read thoughts. I will test him when I learn to understand his speech.

Being with them, I feel an excitement like none I have imagined before. And even though they are goyim, if they ask me to help them in their endeavors, as I expect they will, I will surely agree. For I have no family, nor anyone else in all this world.

PART THREE.

CAPTURED.

SIXTEEN.

Larn: A few hours later I woke up, just barely, and feeling kind of chilly, went below and fell right asleep again. The next thing I knew, someone had grabbed me and jerked my right arm up behind my back. A second person was taking the blast pistol, stunner, and communicator off my belt. Someone else, on deck, was holding a flickering torch down through the hatch; now he backed away.

"Not to struggle." The guy talking was the one who'd taken my weapons.

"I wish not to harm you."

The words were Evdas.h.i.+an! Broken Evdas.h.i.+an! Then whoever was holding me jerked me to my feet, harder than he needed to. He was strong, with hands like very large clamps.

I was absolutely wide awake now, but confused. How could the Imperials have found me? And wouldn't the political police have spoken in Standard? Besides, someone whose language was Standard wouldn't speak Evdas.h.i.+an with that accent. It occurred to me then that maybe they'd been here ahead of us this time. Maybe they had native monitors on Fanglith now, who'd picked up my communicator traffic.

But I couldn't really believe that; it seemed impossible that this was happening.

The guy who had me in the hammerlock pushed me toward the ladder. There was just enough light that I could see the one with my weapons start up the ladder.

The man following me had to release his hammer lock to climb the steep steps after me, but at the top, the guy with my weapons was waiting in the dark with my stunner pointed at me. The sailor on watch was standing well back from the gangplank, obviously afraid of the guys who'd captured me. His relief man was sitting awake on a woo! bale, staring, unmoving. The moon, about three quarters full, was lighting the scene from about thirty or forty degrees above the western horizon. Considering the geometry of the planet, moon, and sun here, that made it about midnight.

Then the man behind me reached the deck and clamped the hammerlock on me again. The one with my weapons definitely seemed to be the boss. I could see now that he wore a conical Norman helmet, and I was willing to bet he had a hauberk on beneath his cloak. A knight's outfit. But he was familiar with civilized weapons, because he turned and put both the sailors to sleep with my stunner. I hoped it was to sleep; if he'd reset it upward from the medium setting I usually kept it on, at this range they were probably dead. He hadn't needed to shoot them at all; they hadn't been about to do anything.

Meanwhile the guy behind me never paused, just kept walking across the deck and down the gangplank, pus.h.i.+ng me ahead of him. The guy with the torch had started off ahead; the one with my weapons came along behind now. A little way along the wharf we came to several horses, watched by a fourth man. The guy in charge stepped in front of me and turned, stunner steady. Now, in the moonlight and torchlight, I could see his face.

"Brislieu, let go his arm." This time he spoke in Norman French. My arm was released. "Arno!" I said.

This was harder for me to believe than my first idea about Imperials. How had he learned to talk Evdas.h.i.+an? No wonder I hadn't recognized his voice! Then I recalled: The last day we'd been with him, he'd spent a couple of hours plugged into the learning program, absorbing Evdas.h.i.+an-just before the Federation corvette had blown up; a little before we'd left Fanglith.

It was surprising he could speak it at all; that had been two and a half years earlier, and he'd never had a chance to use it, even once.

"I'd come here looking for you!" I told him. "But how did you find me? How did you even know I was back on Fanglith?"

He laughed softly. "Your French has gotten worse," he said, again in Norman French. "You've been speaking too much Provencal. We'll talk of how I found you, and of other things, when we're out of town." He gestured toward one of the horses. "That one is yours; get on. We have some twenty miles to ride. And do not try to escape. You'll be more comfortable sitting in the saddle than tied over it on your belly, and the scenery will be better that way."

I put a foot in the stirrup and swung up onto the horse-one of the heavy war horses that the Normans call des triers Arno had swung into the saddle without letting the stunner move away from me. Then we rode off down the dirt street, the horses' iron-shod hooves thudding softly in the quiet night. I hadn't ridden since Normandy; the horse's smell and the roll of its gait felt good to me. At one point we encountered a street patrol, but they didn't pay any attention to us. I suppose they recognized Arno and Brislieu as Norman knights, and Normans were the masters here.

The wall around Reggio was higher and thicker than the one at Ma.r.s.eille. One of the gate guards opened a narrow gate for us, and before long we were in the moonlit countryside. Here Brislieu took the lead and Arno rode beside me, their squires sharing a horse behind us.

After a few moments I repeated my earlier question: "How did you find me?"

Arno chuckled. "Those who gain fame are easy to find. I had come to Reggio to arrange to s.h.i.+p horses to Palermo, and in an inn I heard a s.h.i.+p's captain tell a marvelous story, about a holy man who talked to his crucifix. Or actually to an angel, through his crucifix.

And either the crucifix or the angel talked back to him; I forget just how he told it."

Arno laughed again. "The angel sent down lightning from the sky, which struck and sank a corsair. And moments later the eye of G.o.d shown down as a shaft of golden light, to fall unerringly on the holy man.

Then, later, when a plague of grippe sickened all others aboard, this holy man, who was named the Blessed Larn, was not touched by it.

"Later still, when a storm threatened to send one and all to their deaths, this Larn, who was from India incidentally, called on the angel again. Angel Deneen, he called her. And the water smoothed around them like a silver mirror, though at a little distance the waves heaved and tossed more savagely than before."

I could see Arno's grin in the moonlight. "Even allowing for exaggeration," he continued, "I might have "wondered if it was you, even if he had not named you. And indeed I did not catch your name clearly when first he said it, for not only was he speaking Provencal, but his mouth was full at the time. But your sister's name left no doubt."

He chuckled again. He'd changed since I'd seen him last; his mood was lighter. "Lightning from the sky.

That was something you didn't show us before. Or was that the s.h.i.+pmaster's imagination?"

"He stretched things a little," I said, "but it was pretty much true."

He looked me over now as we rode. "You've grown," he said. "You were tall already; now you're as tall as Brislieu. Or very nearly. What brought you back to- our world?"

It was hard for him to say "our world," as if he'd never quite accepted that there were others. In spite of everything he'd seen.

I didn't answer right away-didn't know just how to start, although I'd thought before about what I'd say to Arno when I found him. The country air was a little chilly, an early spring night in a warm climate.

Moonlight lay a s.h.i.+mmering path across the strait to our right; to our left it lit the rugged hills, and filled the ravines with inky shadow.

"What brought us to Fanglith?" I answered him in Evdas.h.i.+an, slowly and carefully, so that hopefully he'd understand. It seemed best that Brislieu and the others not know what I was saying. "Tyranny and death.

The rulers who had driven us from our first home, our first world, have become even more tyrannical."

I paused to let him get that much of it, then continued. "It has named itself the Glondis Empire, and begun to conquer more worlds-including the world where we'd made our new home." I peered at Arno, trying to see his shadowed eyes. "Eventually I expect they'll come here to conquer yours."

He answered in Evdas.h.i.+an, thoughtfully. "Then why come you here, if they will someday follow?" He still held my stunner in his hand, pointed at me.

"Not to hide," I told him. "We would find no satisfaction in hiding."

"Then why?"

What to tell him? The truth, I decided-the truth in its simplest terms. "We left our home world under gunfire," I told him, still in slow and careful Evdas.h.i.+an. "We were being shot at by powerful weapons.

Three of us were killed-shot down as we ran to the sky boat. One was my wife; the Glondis Empire does not hesitate to kill women. We had planned to go to a certain world where we would be welcomed, to help build a rebellion. But our leader, the one of us who knew how to go there, was also killed.

"Your world was the one world we knew the way to, where we felt the Imperial sky navy had not gone yet, because you are so very far away here; much farther than other worlds with people on them."

I had no idea what Arno might be thinking. Maybe that I was crazy possessed by a demon, as the abbot of St. Stephen's had thought that summer day. But Arno had seen our family cutter and ridden on it several times, which should make a lot of other strange and unlikely claims seem at least marginally possible.

"So we came here with more intentions than plans,"

I went on. "We will try to set ourselves up as supporters of some able and powerful man, and help him establish a kingdom on this world-a kingdom that is too strong for any power here to defeat-then help him form an empire that is not evil like the Glondis. And help him manage it; help him make this world so strong that if, or when, the Glondis Empire comes here, they will not be able to enslave you." As I said it, it seemed to me that we could never make Fanglith that strong. It was too primitive!

"You came here in a sky boat again?" Arno asked very matter-of-factly.