Enemies of the System Page 6

  Some of the dogs were dogs, snapping or jumping over one another. Some of them were children of the hunters, running on all fours like real hounds. Dogs and children alike were buttoned into the same type of bristling protective coat the hunters wore. This garment consisted of hundreds of a kind of fir cone stitched on to fabric. In addition, many of the children wore light helmets adorned with fur and upstanding ears. It was hard to tell them from the true dogs. Their hands, their knees, their feet, were calloused and pad-like. Many of them had sharp faces, as if in imitation of canine muzzles.

  While the dog-pack cavorted and peered into the faces of their captives, the hunters were busy ransacking everything piled on the luggage trolley. The tourists had an unrivaled view of knees and scarred calves, and could listen to the harsh language of their captors. More hunters and dogs emerged from nowhere and ringed them round. Rain began to fall in ponderous drops.

  Dulcifer pulled himself into a sitting position, arms folded over knees.

  “They haven’t killed us outright. What do you suppose they will do with us?”

  “Depends on whether or not I’ve killed their chief,” Takeido said. “They’re looking into that now.” He began laughing miserably until Constanza hushed him.

  The rain fell more heavily. The chief had been carried off the road. They knew his position by the knot of hunters surrounding him. The sky was dark.

  “Why don’t those damned buses return for us?” Constanza asked. “I know those foolish hostesses, Sonya Rykznel, Bonni Fin, Pru Ganin. Why have they not become alarmed and turned back to look for us?”

  Rain poured down their faces. They were already soaked to the skin. Water hissed and bubbled off the smooth surface of the road. They waited. Kordan hid his face in his hands.

  “I am a mere Academician, not a leader … There is a great difference …”

  “I have been thinking about what was said earlier,” Burek spoke at last. “They regard us as protein. They will exploit us as food. They have no human values. After all, once a capitalist enemy, always a capitalist enemy. We are in a bad position—I remember an old saying, ‘A man in a lion’s den turns to wolves for friendship.’”

  “If we return to the System, I shall put in a severe criticism,” said Sygiek. “All these creatures should have been destroyed before the planet was opened to tourism. The Minister for Outourism must answer for this. The propaganda also was misleading. I would not have come here had I known the true state of affairs.”

  “Agreed,” said Kordan. “Outourist is notoriously lax. All the same, my orders were disobeyed. Utopianist Takeido, you will be criticized for firing your flare-gun without permission.”

  The rain plastered their hair against their foreheads. The dogs whined and slunk ceaselessly about them.

  Takeido brushed moisture from his face and glared across at Kordan. “Academician Kordan, I tell you now, just in case they set the hounds on us in a minute or two and we are torn to bits, I don’t give a cuss for you or your stupid authority. When we met in the hotel, I thought you were a great and wise man—now I have a contempt for you. We are fifty light years from the System, so forget about it, forget the System! It’s only a prison, with your kind as jailers. Right, Vul Dulcifer?”

  Dulcifer shrugged his shoulders. “But you are so like them, Ian Takeido—always appealing to someone else for support. In the world in which we are forced to live, each individual has to guard his own heart.”

  “What do you say, Mystery Man, Che Burek?” asked Takeido, wiping rain impatiently from his lips. “Have you a similarly feeble answer to Utopianist Dulcifer’s? Or a rustic saying of no marked relevance? Or are you a secret member of the USRP?”

  Constanza’s hand went to her lips. “Don’t speak like that, Ian!”

  “I say that we are not dead yet, and that there may still be hope if we cease quarreling with each other. Remember the old saying, ‘When the frogs croak loudest, the crane strikes.’” Burek illustrated with a hard hand, jabbing sharply toward the freeway. “You are young, Ian Takeido—you don’t understand that rain isn’t the only way of getting wet.”

  “You men are fools,” Sygiek said, glaring with contempt over the spiked backs of hounds. “You in particular, Takeido. Do you imagine for one moment that because you are out of the System that the system is out of you? We are its products, stamped with it through and through, as much shaped by it as these degenerate barbarians are by their environment.”

  “I couldn’t have uttered a harsher criticism of you myself,” said Takeido.

  Still the rain dropped down, filling the air with liquid sound. The landscape appeared to dissolve in water. Hunters, dogs, and children kept up their ceaseless activity, milling over the area, always maintaining watch in all directions. At length, the hunter chief was helped to his feet. He shook his spear above his skull-crowned head. A cheer went up, the dogs barked and whined.

  At the same time, as if the two events were connected, the downpour tapered off sharply. One of the zebras was kicked to its feet and the chief mounted unaided. Again a cheer arose. He pointed toward the six prisoners.

  More activity, more yapping from dogs and children. The tourists were made to rise to their feet. They stood dripping and dashing the last of the rain from their eyes. Willing hands pulled them down from the road, splashing through muddy water toward the spot where the chief waited.

  A long pole was brought. Hempen ropes appeared. The six were lashed to the pole in a row, with hands secured behind their backs so that they could only proceed forward in line abreast. To add to their humiliation, packs of provisions and some of the looted articles from the luggage trolley were strapped to their shoulders so that they became beasts of burden as well as prisoners.

  While this was happening, hunters and hounds alike were disappearing into the waterlogged countryside, into gulleys and scrub. Before they knew it, the forlorn knot of Utopians was again alone with its original five assailants.

  VII

  A harsh order was given. The six captives were made to march forward, yoked like oxen, into the semi-desert. Yellow mud splashed about their ankles with every step. Their heads were down and they moved for a long while in silence.

  “The rain will never fertilize this ground,” said Takeido. “I would love to do some soil-analysis—you would expect to find an almost total absence of micro-organisms. No doubt that was why the crops failed when the colonists first crash-landed here. Vital links in the chain of life have yet to form. What a rotten planet to pick to land on.”

  “With a minimum of terraforming, this could be a good planet,” replied Dulcifer. Nobody else said anything. With their heads bent and the difficulties underfoot, they felt disinclined for conversation.

  “We’ll turn this into an endless carpet of wheat in a century,” Dulcifer said. Nobody answered him.

  Time passed. The tourists lost account of it, in their increasing weariness. Their minds grew blank as every step became an effort. They gazed down at their muddied feet in dull animal pain.

  Abruptly, their captors made them change direction and halt behind a pile of boulders crowned by ferns. The hunters dismounted, whereupon their steeds fell to the soggy ground as if dead. One hunter stood guard while the other four vanished rapidly among nearby boulders.

  Minutes later, a terrible squealing sounded, followed by a deep silence. When the hunters reappeared, each held the leg of an ungainly creature swinging at arm’s length between them. Laughing in triumph, they threw the carcass down by their captives.

  In this creature, adaptation from the standard human form had been carried to an amazing degree.

  It was truly four-legged. In death, the larger hind legs doubled under its lean belly. It otherwise resembled a boar. What had been separate digits in the front legs of its ancestors had through usage become welded into horny hooves.

  Eyes unwinking in death, it glared up at the downcast faces of the humans. Two small tusks, adaptations of canine teeth, curled outward
from the upper jaw, raising the lip in a sneer. It was covered in short bristles and even boasted a short tail. Yet the horror lay not in its resemblance to an animal but in its resemblance to a man.

  With business-like speed, the hunters hammered a spiked pole through the boar’s body from anus to mouth and balanced it on their shoulders. Using kicks and curses, they drove the panting zebras to their feet. Then they kicked the prisoners from their lethargy. The procession got under way again. The ground dried underfoot.

  As the hours passed, the enforced march began to go harder with the prisoners. Their feet hurt, every muscle in their legs aching, the chafing of the pole on their shoulders became intolerable. They moaned for water and rest.

  The day was well eroded before they were allowed another halt. For the last two hours, they had been moving steadily uphill, winding a painful way over gravelly slopes. As soon as they were permitted to stop, they fell to the ground in the same manner as the zebras.

  Liquid noises caught their attention.

  They came to observe that they were lying by a pool of water set amid rock. A stream ran invitingly into the pool. Pebbles gleamed under the surface, little fish fled or meditated on impossible missions. Freshwater shrimps toyed with freedom only a few centimeters from their eyes.

  The hunters drank first, then their zebra-mounts. Finally the prisoners were allowed to drink and dunk their burning heads and shoulders in the cool liquid. While they lay there groaning, one of the hunters came with a flint knife and cut their bonds, so that they were free of the pole. Frugally, he gathered up the rope, stowing it away while they massaged their limbs.

  Sygiek looked about. Behind them, to the west, a sullen glory was gathering in the low clouds. The planet lay beneath the clouds, rumpled and meaningless. Of course there was no sight of the road. And the silence was the silence of a continent unready for life.

  Constanza crawled to Sygiek’s side. “I’m sure that the other buses have returned and rescued the rest of our party by now. Do you think they’ll be able to track us across this wilderness?”

  “They don’t have to follow on land. There are flycraft and matboats in Peace City that will search us out.”

  “Of course, but nobody would ever see us from the air in this sort of country. Besides, it will be getting dark soon.”

  “Infra-red will soon detect us, by day or night.”

  “Utopianist Sygiek, the question is whether they will be in time, isn’t it? These primitive beings have very different attitudes to females from true men. Atavistic, repulsive. I heard a few disgusting tales from women who worked on building the road and I don’t mind telling you I’m scared about our possible fate. You know what I mean—some nauseating mass sexual experience.”

  Sygiek laughed and patted her arm. “Don’t worry about that. We certainly don’t look very attractive at the moment, do we?”

  Constanza glanced down at her breasts, and pulled her stained uniform together. “It’s not so much the look as the shape, I believe.”

  Easing his way to Dulcifer, Kordan said, “You see that line of hills ahead? They must be taking us there, presuming they need to be home by nightfall. Can you make out caves in the cliff-face? These savages are probably troglodytes. This might be our last chance to escape. Do you feel like making a break for it and running back to the bus?”

  “No.”

  “No, nor do I. I can hardly move another pace.”

  Flat on his stomach, Dulcifer looked cautiously about. The hunters were sitting relaxedly nearby, talking among themselves. Kordan lay next to him; the others were also grouped about the pool: Burek, Takeido, then the two women. Catching Burek’s eye, he reached down into the pool and took a fair-sized stone in his fist. He motioned to the others to do the same. With the exception of Kordan, they all chose a stone.

  They lay as if dead, letting the water ripple over their flesh.

  The hunters had come to a decision. Two of them set their spears down and walked briskly over to their captives. They gave a hoarse command. When there was no response, they kicked out at exposed flanks.

  As Dulcifer felt the sandal on his calf, he turned, grasped the hunter’s leg, and flung him down to the ground. While his opponent was falling, he brought up his right arm and struck with the stone. Dulcifer had overestimated his reserves of strength—he missed the hunter’s skull and caught him on the chin. The hunter fell heavily but instantly counter-attacked and had Dulcifer by the throat before he could strike a second time. The stone was wrenched from his grasp and flung away.

  The other tourists fared no better. Constanza and Sygiek dragged a second hunter down between them but did not manage to still his furious struggles. He called for help. The other hunters came over at a run. Burek met them bravely, with Takeido giving rather hesitant support, but in no time they were flat on the ground. Takeido nursed a bleeding lip. The struggle was over.

  “You have some rotten ideas, Comrade Dulcifer,” Takeido said. “I’m disillusioned with you, too, if you wish to know.”

  “You fools!” cried Kordan. “You will get us all killed. Why don’t you obey orders?”

  A hunter kicked him savagely in the back, and he sprawled with his companions. He lay there miserably while Sygiek stroked his shoulder.

  They were secured again. Their wrists were tied painfully behind their necks. This time, the pole was dispensed with.

  “Well, at least we tried … It’s obvious their intention is not to slit our guts out,” said Dulcifer.

  “Wolves prefer their food fresh,” replied Burek, grimly.

  As they prepared to move forward, more natives materialized from the rocks.

  The newcomers were not of the hunter caste. Their faces were unpainted. They wore no barbed coats; their one garment was a kind of loin-cloth, concealing their genitals. About their heads, their hair fanned out in extraordinary fashion, so as to resemble a kind of helmet. In their leather belts were small clubs or hammers. They crowded round the captives in curiosity, prodding and laughing, but the hunters made them keep their distance. They were given the spitted boar to carry.

  “Culturally speaking, this is a valuable experience,” said Kordan.

  The ground crumbled underfoot as they climbed toward the cliffs. There was no grass to bind the soil. Every step was a labor. The captives were panting heavily before they were stopped again. They had arrived at the cliffs. They had arrived at a settlement.

  Between the newcomers and the cliffs ran a swift river, spanned by a rough wooden bridge. At cave-mouths in the cliff, warriors sat relaxedly on watch. These warriors called a greeting to the hunters, the chief of whom gave a triumphant cry in return.

  The bridge was guarded by sentries, and by an elaborately carved pole, with bogey-man faces set one above the other, grimacing hideously at new arrivals. The sentries wore similar masks, carved from wood. They waited without impatience.

  As they rested, Takeido said to Constanza. “It is hard to realize this is actually happening. It shows up a bad flaw in the System.”

  “What will become of us?” sighed Constanza. “These people are utterly inhuman. Wearing masks … it’s absurd and revolting.”

  “If we knew the truth,” replied Burek, “we would probably admire the heroism of this group of savages. They are the descendants of the original colonists who have managed to stay human, or more or less human, while all the others have gradually deteriorated into beasts. That’s 1.09 million E-years of bitterest struggle for survival! I am in part glad to be here, for to me the tale of Lysenka II, if it can ever be fully told, is a fable of triumph as well as horror.”

  For him it was a long speech, but Sygiek would have nothing of it.

  “On the contrary, it is a tale of degradation,” she said. “Think how much progress we have made on Earth in the equivalent time, not least in surviving nine ice ages and rationalizing the irrational.”

  Dulcifer touched her arm. “It would be rational to accept both Burek’s view and your own. Le
t’s keep an open mind and we may yet escape—you’re a strong character and you can do that. I admire the way you speak out, but I counsel tact.”

  She gave him a shy smile.

  Despite his weariness, Kordan turned to Dulcifer, saying sharply, “The way in which you assume a relationship between Millia Sygiek and yourself is incorrect. We are well aware that you come from Iridium City, but the closeness you adopt is improper. Please restrain yourself.”

  Dulcifer said, “I’m sorry it upsets you. Relationships don’t come at our beck and call. Even Biocom hasn’t made us that rational.”

  Sygiek hung her head, aware that his words had unexpectedly brought tears to her eyes. She looked surreptitiously round at her companions, filthy and abject, at the alien hunters, painted to look alarming, at the wooden masks of the sentries, at the whole meager tan scene.

  Ignoring Kordan, she said to Dulcifer, “A sudden recollection … Why should I remember that? Of course I was an exobirth, brought up for my first ten years in the crèche of the country town of Akrakt. I was always in trouble. I had no friends among all the hundreds of my siblings. The machines used to down-rate me and I was punished. I spent many hours alone in the dormitory during the day, just looking out of the window. Outside was an old peach orchard. I don’t know why I tell you this.”

  “Well, let’s find out,” said Dulcifer. “Go on.”

  “There was some local planning dispute, I believe. So the old peach orchard remained at the back of the crèche. I thought the neglected trees very beautiful … There were two women who worked in the crèche, prole women. They were large and shapeless. One, I remember, had black hair which was tied to hang down her back like a horse’s tail. They liked to walk in the derelict orchard. I must once have known their names. I used to envy the women. They walked so close, heads together, talking, half-smiling. How I used to wonder if they were sisters, and what they talked about …

  “And they would stand under the trees and lift their fat bare arms and pluck the golden fruit. They used to gather it in their arms and eat with the juice running down their chins, laughing. Not pleasant, really—but to me then, as a lonely child, so pleasant, so very pleasant. They were so happy and in such communion. Do you see what I mean?”