Читать книгу The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s - Brian Aldiss - Страница 8

The reek and noise at the back of the circus were familiar to Javlin Bartramm. He felt the hard network of nerves in his solar plexus tighten.

There were crowds of the reduls here, jostling and staring to see the day’s entry arrive. You didn’t have to pay to stand and rubberneck in the street; this lot probably couldn’t afford seats for the arena. Javlin looked away from them in scorn. All the same, he felt some gratification when they sent up a cheeping cheer at the sight of him. They loved a human victim.

His keeper undid the cart door and led him out, still chained. They went through the entrance, from blinding sunshine to dark, into the damp unsavoury warren below the main stadium. Several reduls were moving about here, officials mainly. One or two called good luck to him; one chirped, ‘The crowd’s in a good mood today, vertebrate.’ Javlin showed no response.

His trainer, Ik So Baar, came up, a flamboyant redul towering above Javlin. He wore an array of spare gloves strapped across his orange belly. The white tiara that fitted around his antennae appeared only on sports day.

‘Greetings, Javlin. You look in the rudest of health. I’m glad you are not fighting me.’

‘Greetings, Ik So.’ He slipped the lip-whistle into his mouth so that he could answer in a fair approximation of the redul language. ‘Is my opponent ready to be slain? Remember I go free if I win this bout – it will be my twelfth victory in succession.’

‘There’s been a change in the program, Javlin. Your Sirian opponent escaped in the night and had to be killed. You are entered in a double double.’

Javlin wrenched at his chains so hard that the keeper was swung off balance.

‘Ik So! You betray me! How much cajsh have I won for you? I will not fight a double double.’

There was no change of expression on the insect mask.

‘Then you will die, my pet vertebrate. The new arrangement is not my idea. You know by now that I get more cajsh for having you in a solo. Double double it has to be. These are my orders. Keeper, Cell one-o-seven with him!’

Fighting against his keeper’s pull, Javlin cried, ‘I’ve got some rights, Ik So. I demand to see the arena promoter.’

‘Pipe down, you stupid vertebrate! You have to do what you’re ordered. I told you it wasn’t my fault.’

‘Well, for God’s sake, who am I fighting with?’

‘You will be shackled to a fellow from the farms. He’s had one or two preliminary bouts; they say he’s good.’

‘From the farms …’ Javlin broke into the filthiest redulian oaths he knew. Ik So came back toward him and slipped one of the metal gloves onto his forepincers; it gave him a cruel tearing weapon with a multitude of barbs. He held it up to Javlin’s face.

‘Don’t use that language to me, my mammalian friend. Humans from the farms or from space, what’s the difference? This young fellow will fight well enough if you muck in with him. And you’d better muck in. You’re billed to battle against a couple of yillibeeth.’

Before Javlin could answer, the tall figure turned and strode down the corridor, moving twice as fast as a man could walk.

Javlin let himself be led to Cell 107. The warder, a worker-redul with a grey belly, unlocked his chains and pushed him in, barring the door behind him. The cell smelled of alien species and apprehensions.

Javlin went and sat down on the bench. He needed to think.

He knew himself for a simple man – and knew that that knowledge meant the simplicity was relative. But his five years of captivity here under the reduls had not been all wasted. Ik So had trained him well in the arts of survival; and when you came down to brass tacks, there was no more proper pleasure in the universe than surviving. It was uncomplicated. It carried no responsibilities to anyone but yourself.

That was what he hated about the double double events, which till now he had always been lucky enough to avoid. They carried responsibility to your fellow fighter.

From the beginning he had been well equipped to survive the gladiatorial routine. When his scoutship, the Plunderhorse, had been captured by redul forces five years ago, Javlin Bartramm was duelling master and judo expert, as well as Top Armament Sergeant. The army ships had a long tradition, going back some six centuries, of sport aboard; it provided the ideal mixture of time-passer and needed exercise. Of all the members of the Plunderhorse’s crew who had been taken captive, Javlin was – as far as he knew – the only survivor after five years of the insect race’s rough games.

Luck had played its part in his survival. He had liked Ik So Baar. Liking was a strange thing to feel for a nine-foot armoured grasshopper with forearms like a lobster and a walk like a tyrannosaurus’ run, but a sympathy existed between them – and would continue to exist until he was killed in the ring, Javlin thought. With his bottom on the cold bench, he knew that Ik So would not betray him into a double double. The redul had had to obey the promoter’s orders. Ik So needed his twelfth victory, so that he could free Javlin to help him train the other species down at the gladiatorial farm. Both of them knew that would be an effective partnership.

So. Now was the time for luck to be with Javlin again.

He sank onto his knees and looked down at the stone, brought his forehead down onto it, gazed down into the earth, into the cold ground, the warm rocks, the molten core, trying to visualise each, to draw from them attributes that would help him: cold for his brain, warm for his temper, molten for his energies.

Strengthened by prayer, he stood up. The redul workers had yet to bring him his armour and the partner he was to fight with. He had long since learned the ability to wait without resenting waiting. With professional care, he exercised himself slowly, checking the proper function of each muscle. As he did so, he heard the crowds cheer in the arena. He turned to peer out of the cell’s further door, an affair of tightly set bars that allowed a narrow view of the combat area and the stands beyond.

There was a centaur out there in the sunlight, fighting an Aldebaran bat-leopard. The centaur wore no armour but an iron cuirass; he had no weapons but his hooves and his hands. The bat-leopard, though its wings were clipped to prevent it flying out of the stadium, had dangerous claws and a great turn of speed. Only because its tongue had been cut out, ruining its echo-location system, was the contest anything like fair. The concept of fairness was lost upon the reduls, though; they preferred blood to justice.

Javlin saw the kill. The centaur, a gallant creature with a human-like head and an immense gold mane that began from his eyebrows, was plainly tiring. He eluded the bat-leopard as it swooped down on him, wheeling quickly around on his hind legs and trampling on its wing. But the bat-leopard turned and raked the other’s legs with a slash of claws. The centaur toppled hamstrung to the ground. As he fell, he lashed out savagely with his forelegs, but the bat-leopard nipped in and tore his throat from side to side above the cuirass. It then dragged itself away under its mottled wings, like a lame prima donna dressed in a leather cape.

The centaur struggled and lay still, as if the weight of whistling cheers that rose from the audience bore him down. Through the narrow bars, Javlin saw the throat bleed and the lungs heave as the defeated one sprawled in the dust.

‘What do you dream of, dying there in the sun?’ Javlin asked.

He turned away from the sight and the question. He sat quietly down on the bench and folded his arms.

When the din outside told him that the next bout had begun, the passage door opened and a young human was pushed in. Javlin did not need telling that this was to be his partner in the double double against the yillibeeth.

It was a girl.

‘You’re Javlin?’ she said. ‘I know of you. My name’s Awn.’

He kept himself under control, his brows drawn together as he stared at her.

‘You know what you’re here for?’

‘This will be my first public fight,’ she said.

Her hair was clipped short as a man’s. Her skin was tanned and harsh, her left arm bore a gruesome scar. She held herself lithely on her feet. Though her body looked lean and hard, even the thick one-piece gown she wore to thigh length did not conceal the feminine curves of her body. She was not pretty, but Javlin had to admire the set of her mouth and her cool grey gaze.

‘I’ve had some stinking news this morning, but Ik So Baar never broke it to me that I was to be saddled with a woman,’ he said.

‘Ik probably didn’t know – that I’m a woman, I mean. The reduls are either neuter or hermaphrodite, unless they happen to be a rare queen. Didn’t you know that? They can’t tell the difference between human male and female.’

He spat. ‘You can’t tell me anything about reduls.’

She spat. ‘If you knew, why blame me? You don’t think I like being here? You don’t think I asked to join the great Javlin?’

Without answering he bent and began to massage the muscles of his calf. Since he occupied the middle of the bench, the girl remained standing. She watched him steadily. When he looked up again, she asked, ‘What or who are we fighting?’

No surprise was left in him. ‘They didn’t tell you?’

‘I’ve only just been pushed into this double double, as I imagine you have. I asked you, what are we fighting?’

‘Just a couple of yillibeeth.’

He injected unconcern into his voice to make the shock of what he said the greater. He massaged the muscles of the other calf. An aphrohale would have come in very welcome now. These crazy insects had no equivalent of the Terrestrial prisoner-ate-a-hearty-breakfast routine. When he glanced up under his eyebrows, the girl stood motionless, but her face had gone pale.

‘Know what the yillibeeth are, little girl?’

She didn’t answer, so he went on, ‘The reduls resemble some Terrestrial insects. They go through several stages of development, you know; reduls are just the final adult stage. Their larval stage is rather like the larval stage of the dragonfly. It’s a greedy, omnivorous beast. It’s aquatic and it’s big. It’s armoured. It’s called a yillibeeth. That’s what we are going to be tied together to fight, a couple of big hungry yillibeeth. Are you feeling like dying this morning, Awn?’

Instead of answering, she turned her head away and brought a hand up to her mouth.

‘Oh, no! No crying in here, for Earth’s sake!’ he said. He got up, yelled through the passage door, ‘Ik So, Ik So, you traitor, get this bloody woman out of here!’ … recalled himself, jammed the lip-whistle into his mouth and was about to call again when Awn caught him a backhanded blow across the face.

She faced him like a tiger.

‘You creature, you cowardly apology of a man! Do you think I weep for fear? I don’t weep. I’ve lived nineteen years on this damned planet in their damned farms. Would I still be here if I wept? No – but I mourn that you are already defeated, you, the great Javlin!’

He frowned into her blazing face.

‘You don’t seriously think you make me a good enough match for us to go out there and kill a couple of yillibeeth?’

‘Damn your conceit. I’m prepared to try.’

‘Fagh!’ He thrust the lip-whistle into his mouth, and turned back to the door. She laughed at him bitterly, jeeringly.

‘You’re a lackey to these insects, aren’t you, Javlin? If you could see what a fool you look with that phony beak of yours stuck on your mouth.’

He let the instrument drop to the end of its chain. Grasping the bars, he leaned forward against them and looked over his shoulder.

‘I was trying to get this contest called off.’

‘Don’t tell me you haven’t already tried. I have.’

To that he had no answer. He went back and sat on the bench. She returned to her corner. They both folded their arms and stared at each other.

‘Why don’t you look out into the arena instead of glaring at me? You might pick up a few tips.’ When she did not answer, he said, ‘I’ll tell you what you’ll see. You can see the rows of spectators and a box where some sort of bigwig sits. I don’t know who the bigwig is. It’s never a queen – as far as I can make out, the queens spend their lives underground, turning out eggs at the rate of fifty a second. Not the sort of life Earth royalty would have enjoyed in the old days. Under the bigwig’s box there is a red banner with their insect hieroglyphs on. I asked Ik So once what the hieroglyphs said. He told me they meant – well, in a rough translation – The Greatest Show on Earth. It’s funny, isn’t it?’

‘You must admit we do make a show.’

‘No, you miss the point. You see, that used to be the legend of circuses in the old days. But they’ve adopted it for their own use since they invaded Earth. They’re boasting of their conquest.’

‘And that’s funny?’

‘In a sort of way. Don’t you feel ashamed that this planet which saw the birth of the human race should be overrun by insects?’

‘No. The reduls were here before me. I was just born here. Weren’t you?’

‘No, I wasn’t. I was born on Washington IV. It’s a lovely planet. There are hundreds of planets out there as fine and varied as Earth once was – but it kind of rankles to think that this insect brood rules Earth.’

‘If you feel so upset about it, why don’t you do something?’

He knotted his fists together. You should start explaining history and economics just before you ran out to be chopped to bits by a big rampant thing with circular saws for hands?

‘It would cost mankind too much to reconquer this planet. Too difficult. Too many deaths just for sentiment. And think of all those queens squirting eggs at a rate of knots; humans don’t breed that fast. Humanity has learned to face facts.’ She laughed without humour.

‘That’s good. Why don’t you learn to face the fact of me?’

Javlin had nothing to say to that; she would not understand that directly he saw her he knew his hope of keeping his life had died. She was just a liability. Soon he would be dying, panting his juices out into the dust like that game young centaur … only it wouldn’t be dust.

‘We fight in two feet of water,’ he said. ‘You know that? The yillibeeth like it. It slows our speed a bit. We might drown instead of having our heads bitten off.’

‘I can hear someone coming down the corridor. It may be our armour,’ she said coolly.

‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘You can’t wait to die, Javlin, can you?’

The bars fell away on the outside of the door, and it opened. The keeper stood there. Ik So Baar had not appeared as he usually did. The creature flung in their armour and weapons and retreated, barring the door again behind him. It never ceased to astonish Javlin that those great dumb brutes of workers had intelligence.

He stooped to pick up his uniform. The girl’s looked so light and small. He lifted it, looking from it to her.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘It looks so small and new.’

‘I shouldn’t want anything heavier.’

‘You’ve fought in it?’

‘Twice.’ There was no need to ask whether she had won.

‘We’d better get the stuff strapped on, then. We shall know when they are getting ready for us; you’ll hear the arena being filled with water. They’re probably saving us for the main events just before noon.’

‘I didn’t know about the two feet of water.’

‘Scare you?’

‘No. I’m a good swimmer. Swam for fish in the river on the slave farm.’

‘You caught fish with your bare hands?’

‘No, you dive down and stab them with a sharp rock. It takes practice.’

It was a remembered pleasure. She’d actually swum in one of Earth’s rivers. He caught himself smiling back into her face.

‘Ik So’s place is in the desert,’ he said, making his voice cold. ‘Anyhow, you won’t be able to swim in the arena. Two feet of muddy stinking water helps nobody. And you’ll be chained onto me with a four-foot length of chain.’

‘Let’s get our armour on, then you’d better tell me all you know. Perhaps we can work out a plan of campaign.’

As he picked up the combined breastplate and shoulder guard, Awn untied her belt and lifted her dress over her head. Underneath she wore only a ragged pair of white briefs. She commenced to take those off.

Javlin stared at her with surprise – and pleasure. It had been years since he had been within hailing distance of a woman. This one – yes, this one was a beauty.

‘What are you doing that for?’ he asked. He hardly recognised his own voice.

‘The less we have on the better in that water. Aren’t you going to take your clothes off?’

He shook his head. Embarrassed, he fumbled on the rest of his kit. At least she wouldn’t look so startling with her breastplate and skirt armour on. He checked his long and shortswords, clipping the one into the left belt clip, the other into the right. They were good swords, made by redul armourers to Terrestrial specifications. When he turned back to Awn, she was fully accoutred.

Nodding in approval, he offered her a seat on the bench beside him. They clattered against each other and smiled.

Another bout had ended in the arena. The cheers and chirrups drifted through the bars to them.

‘I’m sorry you’re involved in this,’ he said with care.

‘I was lucky to be involved in it with you.’ Her voice was not entirely steady, but she controlled it in a minute. ‘Can’t I hear water?’

He had already heard it. An unnatural silence radiated from the great inhuman crowd in the circus as they watched the stuff pour in. It would have great emotional significance for them, no doubt, since they had all lived in water for some years in their previous life stage.

‘They have wide-bore hoses,’ he said. His own voice had an irritating tremor. ‘The arena fills quite rapidly.’

‘Let’s formulate some sort of plan of attack then. These things, these yillibeeth must have some weaknesses.’

‘And some strengths! That’s what you have to watch for.’

‘I don’t see that. You attack their weak points.’

‘We shall be too busy looking out for their strong ones. They have long segmented grey bodies – about twenty segments, I think. Each segment is of chitin or something tough. Each segment bears two legs equipped with razor combs. At tail end and top end they have legs that work like sort of buzz saws, cut through anything they touch. And there are their jaws, of course.’

The keeper was back. His antennae flopped through the grating and then he unbolted the door and came in. He bore a length of chain as long as the cell was wide. Javlin and Awn did not resist as he locked them together, fitting the bracelets onto Javlin’s right arm and Awn’s left

‘So.’ She stared at the chain. ‘The yillibeeth don’t sound to have many weak points. They could cut through our swords with their buzz saws?’

‘Correct.’

‘Then they could cut through this chain. Get it severed near one of our wrists, and the other has a better long-distance weapon than a sword. A blow over the head with the end of the chain won’t improve their speed. How fast are they?’

‘The buzz saw takes up most of their speed. They’re nothing like as fast as the reduls. No, you could say they were pretty sluggish in movement. And the fact that the two of them will also be chained together should help us.’

‘Where are they chained?’

‘By the middle legs.’

‘That gives them a smaller arc of destruction than if they were chained by back or front legs. We are going to slay these beasts yet, Javlin! What a murderous genus it must be to put its offspring in the arena for the public sport.’

He laughed.

‘Would you feel sentimental about your offspring if you had a million babies?’

‘I’ll tell you that when I’ve had the first of them. I mean, if I have the first of them.’

He put his hand over hers.

‘No if. We’ll kill the bloody larvae OK.’

‘Get the chain severed, then one of us with the longest bit of chain goes in for the nearest head, the other fends off the other brute. Right?’

‘Right.’

There was a worker redul at the outer door now, the door that led to the arena. He flung it open and stood there with a flaming torch, ready to drive them out if they did not emerge.

‘We’ve – come to it then,’ she said. Suddenly she clung to him.

‘Let’s take it at a run, love,’ he said.

Together, balancing the chain between them, they ran toward the arena. The two yillibeeth were coming out from the far side, wallowing and splashing. The crowd stretched up toward the blue sky of Earth, whistling their heads off. They didn’t know what a man and a woman could do in combination. Now they were going to learn.