The Captain th-2 Read online

  “Lout, boor!” called another fellow.

  But they did not approach more closely. It was easy for them to be bold, at a distance, and, too, for the guards, a squad of nine, with rifles, who accompanied the giant and his companion through the streets. Perhaps they thought that the giant was a prisoner. But he was not such. Had that been wished, it might easily have been managed in other places, and at other times, on the first ship, for example, on which they had taken their leave from the Meeting World.

  “Cur, clod!” cried a man.

  The giant wondered how the fellow might stand up against an ax attack.

  “It is not far now,” said the giant’s companion.

  In this district, near the summer palace, no vehicular traffic, save for official vehicles, usually armored, was permitted. It would have been too easy to approach the walls, and the metal of the vehicles might have masked the metal of weapons, and the vehicle might have served as a launching weapon, or as the weapon itself.

  The giant enjoyed walking, and movement, and running, as after bark deer in the forests, for sport. One could pursue the delicate beast for hours at a time, and then, at the end of the hunt, when they lay helpless, gasping on the leaves, lungs heaving, unable to move, eyes wild, one could kill them, or let them go. Sometimes one carried them back to the village, on one’s shoulders, to pen them and see to it, later, that they were mated, thence to be released, pregnant, to the forests, later in soft glades to deliver wet, awkward fawns, destined in time to be the swiftest of the swift. The eggs of hunting birds, too, were sometimes stolen from nests, to be hatched by vardas in their coops, the hatchlings later to be trained to the wrist and thong. Many were the pastimes, and sports, of the forests. And high among them, one of the most pleasurable, was the mastery, and use, of female slaves. These, too, at the master’s discretion, could be judiciously mated.

  “Lout, peasant!”

  His large frame had been cramped in the seat cubicles of the snakelike limousine which had brought them from the hostelry near the port to the pomerium of the sacred district, within which lay the summer palace.

  “Soil worker! Peasant!”

  The giant had indeed, at one time, been a peasant, a denizen of a small village, a festung village, the festung village of Sim Giadini. It is in the vicinity of the heights of Barrionuevo. This range is located on the world of Tangara. He did not understand why the work of the peasants, or the peasants themselves, should seem so scorned here, and by such a dirty, ragged swarm. Did they not eat? Did they not owe their lives, in a sense, to the labor of such as he once was? Were they so much better than they upon whose labor they depended? Did they think it easy to guide the plow, to turn heavy soil, to harrow and disk the fields, to judge seeds, to plant properly, in suitable times and places, to toil long hours, when one’s back was nigh onto breaking, to resist a relentless sun, to hope for rain, which might not come, to be so hungry at times, to have to yield the tithes to the lofty festung of Sim Giadini, almost lost in the clouds of the heights?

  “Get back!” cried his companion, gesturing toward one of the bolder of the unsolicited escort. But he did not care to touch him. “It is not that they believe you are a peasant,” he said to the giant. “It is merely a term of abuse.”

  They continued on their way.

  The peasant had not been born in the festung village. He did not know where he had been born.

  He had left the village after killing a man, one named Gathron, who had been his best friend. He had broken a post over his back, and watched him die, at his feet. Gathron had attacked him, and Gathron had been his best friend. This was something which the giant often remembered, that one does not always know, really, who is one’s friend and who is not. The squabble had been over a woman. That, too, had never been forgotten by the giant, that it had been because of a woman that the business had come about. He regarded women as dangerous, untrustworthy, and tantalizingly delicious. They were to him as another form of life, one excruciatingly desirable, one against whom one must always be on his guard, one which must be managed, controlled, and kept strictly in its place. The place of woman, such delicious, dangerous, precious, despicable, desirable creatures, was at the feet of man, rightless and powerless. This was the decree of nature. Free, out of nature, they will bite at you, and scratch at you, and diminish you, or destroy you, owned, within nature, on the other hand, deprived of power, no longer dangerous, they find themselves suddenly with a different vocation, that of, with trepidation, and zeal, in fear of their lives, devoting themselves eagerly to your service and delight. The answer to the riddle of woman, and the key to her happiness, is the chain and whip. She must never be allowed to forget whose hand it is that holds the leather over her.

  “It is rather,” said the friend, “that they see you are different, that you are clad differently, that you carry yourself differently, that you walk differently, that you look about yourself differently.” The giant nodded, and brushed away flies. They tended to move toward the eyes, which were moist, and sparkled. Sometimes they encircled the eyes of babies in their cradles, tilted there, peering within those flickering orbs, like restless, tiny, winged crusts.

  The giant supposed that he did seem different. It is often that way with animals, he knew, that one which is different, the goat among sheep, the hawk among vardas, the lion among wolves, is marked out for abuse, to be bitten, or driven away. Such things were doubtless owing to the mysteries of being, to those cruel principles or laws without which life might never have emerged, amoral and hungry, from prehistoric colloidal films.

  “Bumpkin!” cried another fellow.

  “See the clothing!” cried another.

  And so a strange beast, among other beasts, is viewed askance.

  “Lout!” cried another.

  “Who is your tailor, bumpkin?” called another.

  His clothing, true, a rough tunic, of pelts, belted, with leggings, was not of the city, but fit rather for the forests of his world, affording its protection against wind, and cold, and brush, that between the meadows and the depths, and, with its mottled darknesses, like shadows, permitting him to stand unnoticed within five yards of the bark deer, that lovely, delicate sylvan ungulate. The pelts were those of the forest lion. Such came sometimes even to the edges of the fields, and, in the winter, softly, to the palings of the stockade itself. The giant had killed the animal himself, with a spear. He had gone out alone. This is not intended to elicit surprise. It was not that unusual. Indeed, in many tribes, a young man was not permitted to mate within the tribe unless he had given evidence of skill and courage, until he had demonstrated his worthiness or prowess to experienced older men, hunters and warriors. One way of accomplishing these things, or providing such evidence, was to slay such a beast, or, in daylight, an alerted foe. Sometimes the young man comes to the hut of the father, to sue for the hand of a daughter. “I hear a lion in the forest,” says the father, if he approves of the young man, though there may be no such sound. The young man then rises gladly and leaves the hut. He does not return until he brings with him the pelt of such a beast. Thongs from the pelt will be used to bind the wrists of the daughter in the mating ceremony. The mating, you see, is understood as a binding of the woman, and it is done that she may understand her relationship to the male, as, in effect, that of a captive to her captor, that she is to please him, and such. As she is a free woman, her wrists are usually bound before her body. This is to honor her, and show her importance, for it is common to bind those of a slave behind her body. Upon the pelt, of course, the mating is later consummated. In such fashions, with many variations, with diverse tests, and such, do the Wolfungs, and many similar tribes, take care to supervise the breeding within the nation.

  “Bumpkin!” cried the fellow, running at the side.

  “Do not mind him,” said Julian.

  About the neck of the giant was hung a rude necklace, of the claws of the lion he had slain.

  It was but one of many which had fallen
to his spear.

  “Boor, lout!”

  “It is not just that you are different,” said his companion. “They fear you, for they have heard of the troubles at the borders, the loss of stations, the incursions which have reportedly taken place, though denied officially.”

  “I am not of the cities,” said the giant.

  “I offered you silken robes, even a uniform of the guards,” said his companion.

  “It is hot,” said the giant. He pulled at the laces of the tunic, opening it, baring his chest.

  “Sherbets and ices will be served in the palace,” said his companion.

  “I do not like being without a weapon,” said the giant.

  “Only authorized personnel may carry such in these precincts,” said his companion. “Too, do you think that small blade would protect against the blast of a rifle?”

  “No,” said the giant, thoughtfully. But he knew that men such as he, in places, men not so different from himself, had such weapons.

  Let those of the empire consider that.

  There was considerable obscurity having to do with the antecedents of the giant. Though he had been raised in a festung village, he did know that he was not of the village, only that, somehow, he had been brought there, as an infant. Neither he himself, nor his companion, knew his origins. His body, it might be noted, was quite unlike that which one tends to associate with the peasantry. That was of interest. It did not have the same heaviness, or dullness, or stolid massiveness that one tends to associate with those who, for generations, have grown congruent with the life and demands of the soil. Whereas the bodies of the peasants might be likened fancifully to rocks or trees, patient and weathered, his seemed, if one may fancy things so, more bestial, more feral, or leonine, enormous perhaps, but yet supple, agile, subtle, swift. It was capable of movement as sudden and unexpected as that of the vi-cat. Similarly his mind was quite unlike that of the typical denizen of a festung village. It was inquisitive and active, complex and subtle. It was not patient; it was not accepting, not unquestioning. It was the sort of mind which wonders where roads lead; the sort of mind not content with close horizons. Too, the emotional makeup of the giant had little in common with that of the peasants. It was high-strung, touchy, fiery. He was not patient. He was quick to anger, and, when angry, could become quite dangerous. Lastly, perhaps most interestingly, and most surprisingly for one raised in a festung village, he seemed to have a kinship with weapons, taking to them, and handling them, as naturally as the lion might make use of its teeth, the leopard of its claws, the hawk of its beak and talons. These things seemed in him a matter of instinct, or blood, rather than one of training. It was as though his heritage might have been, oddly enough, shaped by skills with such things, rather as the swifter and more terrible, the more agile and ferocious beasts, those most successful in their pursuits, their hunts and wars, survive, to master and rule, and to replicate themselves, thus transmitting, casually, thoughtlessly, in a moment’s pleasure, such significant, terrifying genetic templates to succeeding generations. How is it that the duck can swim, that the bird can fly, and that some men can seize a wrist, or parry a blow, or instantly, exactly, without the least hesitation, strike? In any event, it does not seem that the giant was of peasant stock. His, it seems, was a darker, more terrible, blood.

  “Soon, at the end of this street, then the plaza,” said the companion of the giant.

  To their right, as the group, consisting of the companion of the giant, the giant, the officer of the guard, and the guards, advanced down the street, it approached a pair of women, one dark, one fair, well-bangled, richly silked, with golden sandals, lounging against a wall.

  “Handsome guardsmen!” called one of them, the fairer one.

  “Recollect us!” called the other, enticingly.

  The fairer one drew back her silks, a little, as the group approached, that an inviting flank might be glimpsed.

  “Slaves?” asked the giant of his companion.

  “Prostitutes,” said his companion.

  Then the group had passed the women.

  “Then they will keep their own earnings?” said the giant.

  “Yes,” said his companion.

  The giant had thought perhaps that they might have been slaves, put out by their masters, to be beaten if they did not bring back coins. But then, it was true, they were rather overdressed for slaves, and they were not collared. And slaves thusly put out might have a small coin box, metal and locked, chained about their neck, or ankle, into which their earnings, destined for the master, would be placed.

  “They should be slaves,” said the giant.

  “Certainly,” said his companion.

  “Begone! Back to your pigs, peasant!” cried a fellow, growing bolder. It was he concerning whom the giant had wondered how he might stand up to an ax attack.

  As they made their way through the streets the giant looked into various windows, where shutters might be open, or curtains spread. These windows were well above the street level, like most in this city, but one could form some conjecture of the riches of the compartments, from hangings and such. Here and there, too, a shelf might be espied, on which reposed vessels of silver and gold.

  The world from which he had come but months before, and Tangara, on which he had been raised, where lay the festung village of Sim Giadini, at the foot of the heights of Barrionuevo, were poor in such things. This was a rich world, exceedingly rich it seemed to the giant, and it was only a summer world, not Telnaria itself.

  And there must be many such cities, and worlds, within the empire.

  “Hold,” said the officer of the guard, lifting his hand, near a barrier. A guard station was there.

  “Permission must be obtained, for weapons to be carried from this point to the edge of the plaza,” said the giant’s companion.

  “Even those of our guard?”

  “Yes.”

  “At the edge of the plaza?”

  “We shall there be met by guards from the palace, to escort us farther.”

  A woman was to the right, near the wall of a whitewashed building.

  Richly was she garbed, in embroidered leel. Wealthy then must be her station. No prostitute she.

  The giant, with a glance, stripped her in his mind, removing the leel, cutting the straps of the undergarments, pulling them away. She was not then different from the other women. He would put them all on the same chain. He did not think that there would be much to choose between them, when each, in turn, ascended the slave block.

  Such look well, he thought, carrying vessels, collared, naked, their hair not permitted binding, serving warriors at their feasts.

  She spun away, angrily. She did not walk badly, he thought.

  In a moment the officer of the guard had cleared the group for its progress.

  It again moved down the street.

  The giant looked back, and noted that the woman had stopped, and was standing there, angrily, her robes pulled closely about her, and was looking after them.

  The most insistent, most insulting fellow, he who seemed the leader of the jeering, petty, pestiferous escort, he concerning whom the giant had conjectured of cords and axes, with others, one pressing closely behind him, competing with him for attention, inserted himself into even greater proximity. He was perhaps emboldened by the guards’ seemingly straightforward attention, renewed now in the march, which ignored, or seemed to ignore, him and his fellows, Not so much as a rifle butt had been raised against him. Perhaps, he was now emboldened, too, by an aegis of citizenship, recently awarded universally on this world as a gift of the emperor, on his visit.

  The apartments in this area, closer to the plaza, and to the palace, were even richer and more lavishly appointed than their only somewhat more distant predecessors.

  The giant wondered what occurred in such apartments. Muchly were they different from the huts of the forest, many of mud and sticks.

  The giant was not overly enamored of material possessions
, saving as females slaves counted as such.

  He was interested more, though he would not have said so at this time, in the riches of power.

  He who rules those with wealth is richer by far, you see, than those he rules.

  Yet the giant was not insensitive to the beauty of precious stones, nor that of rare, glittering metals, no more than to that of owned women.

  In his way, thus, he was not insensitive to riches.

  And he knew that many men, those deprived of them, were far more sensitive to them than he.

  And they meant power.

  Too, for some reason, it seemed there was some sort of odd prestige connected with them, as though those who possessed them thought themselves somehow superior to those who did not.

  The giant did not like that.

  “Lout!” cried the fellow, almost intruding himself among the guards.

  “Do not mind him,” said the companion of the giant.

  The giant, seemingly not noticing, marked the fellow’s position.

  It was casually done.

  Riches cannot, in themselves, be a sign that one is superior, thought the giant, for it seems obvious that many who possess them are not superior.

  “Bumpkin!” cried the man.

  Do those of the empire regard themselves as superior to us because it is they, and not us, who possess such things?

  “Lout, lout!”

  Perhaps, thought the giant, wealth, the rule, riches, such things, should belong to those who are superior, but, if that is the case, then surely they should not belong to men such as these, running along, harrying us with their ridicule, shouting, carrying on like smug, arrogant, invulnerable rats, thinking themselves so safe within the walls of the empire. Perhaps, rather, riches belonged rightfully, if to anyone, to those who were truly superior, to the masters, to those who were strong enough to take them, and keep them, much as it was fit that the first meat at the great feast went to the greatest warrior, the greatest hero, at the long table?