Short Fiction Complete Page 9

  Foley was telling Ariton that a ship would soon come to take Brazil and him aboard, but she and Sunto would have to stay on shore. She agreed calmly, and watched the horizon for the ship, with some puzzlement.

  Brazil turned to Sunto. “The Tower of the Sea God is very important to your people and the Reds, is it not?”

  “Yes.” Sunto did not seem especially interested in the subject. “It is our old belief that as long as the Tower is not destroyed by the waves of the sea, the Sea God smiles upon the rulers of the island, whoever they be.”

  “What if the waves should knock the Tower down?” Brazil asked.

  Sunto smiled wryly. “Then I think you would see upon this island the one tribe for which Ariton says you asked the king. For the Tower to be so destroyed would mean the Sea God thinks the rulers of the island evil. The destruction of his own Tower is to be his last warning before he overwhelms with waves the entire island, slaying everyone on it and carrying the evildoers down to be frozen forever in the ice at the bottom of the sea.”

  “Get more on this, Boris,” said an excited radio voice. “Ask Ariton about the Tower, Foley. She should be the real authority. Gates, hold that scout underwater for a minute.”

  BRAZIL asked Sunto: “Do you think the Sea God will ever destroy the Tower?”

  Sunto looked out at the ocean soberly; it was dull and placid in the sun.

  “May I never see the day—but I am a practical man. Whoever is king will surely see to it that the sea wall of large rocks is kept strong at the base of the Tower, to break the force of the waves. Some day, perhaps, a very great storm . . . but there are great storms every year. The Tower has stood for many years.”

  “Is the season for great storms coming soon?” Brazil felt the vague beginnings of what might be a valid idea.

  “No, it is just past. Now is the time of the steady-but-not-toostrong winds.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “That checks,” said Meteorology from above.

  Sunto continued: “Also, the Tower stands on a straight shoreline, and the Sea God hurls his waves most strongly against the points of land that jut out into his domain, as if he were jealous.”

  “That is true in all lands,” said Brazil absently. He had just the start of a plan to get these people co-operating, by somehow making the Tower seem threatened by a storm, and scaring them. It might be just possible to induce a violent storm. But what would it do to the rest of the island? The scheme seemed worthless . . .

  “That is true in all lands. As it is true that the waves come in nearly always parallel to the shore, no matter from which point at sea the wind is blowing. And the reason is the same . . .” Brazil fell silent, as if in a sudden dream.

  “Why, that is so, but I have never thought about it,” said Sunto in surprise. “Truly, the waves are like women, for men watch them long and understand them but little.”

  “. . . that they travel more slowly as the water beneath them grows more shallow,” said Brazil with a far-away look. He gave a sudden laugh at the sight of Sunto’s startled face. “Waves, I mean, not women. Sunto, tell me this. If the Tower were destroyed by some means other than the waves, what then?”

  “What then?” Sunto gave the Blond equivalent of a shrug. “Why, the Tower would simply have to be rebuilt, and the king would gain merit in the Sea God’s eyes by rebuilding.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe the Red king would rebuild it on some inland hill, where no wave could ever reach it, and so make his rule safe.”

  Brazil nodded as if satisfied.

  TWENTY minutes later he sat with Foley in scoutship Alpha, gratefully peeling off gadgets and chunks of armor. He faced on a segmented screen the debriefing assembly of their peers and bosses, electronically gathered to analyze the visit to Galamand. The astounded natives who had watched the two planeteers enter the submarine craft were by now no doubt attending their own conferences on the subject.

  “First, just tell me this,” Brazil invited, eyes alight with an idea. “Does it seem likely that a massive assault of ocean waves on this Tower might make these people willing to try getting along together, at least for a while, so we could deal with a halfway representative government?”

  “I would say yes, based on what Ariton told me,” said Foley.

  “I would tend to agree,” said Sociology, cautiously. “It might well give us a start in the right direction.”

  “An assault of ocean waves, you say.” Captain Dietrich frowned. “Not of forcefields, explosives, chemicals or sonic vibrations.”

  “Captain, I think there’s a chance it can be done with this scoutship, and not by directing any of those modern weapons against the Tower.”

  “I am afraid I would have to forbid the use of such weapons against the natives, on principle,” said Chandragupta grimly.

  “The idea is not to wreck the Tower,” said Brazil, “but to make the natives think the Sea God has decided to wreck it.”

  “That Galamand’s no fool,” said Gates. “He’s probably thinking up antisubmarine devices already. And how are you going to stir up suitable waves with a scoutship?”

  “I’m not going to stir them up, exactly. And I don’t think Galamand will notice a submarine acting several miles out at sea, away from his Tower.”

  “Are you drunk?”

  “No, on duty. Another reason for trying to get this situation settled. Now I’ll need some information before I can tell if this scheme has a chance of working.”

  Late that afternoon a cute chick who happened to be an expert oceanographer gave Brazil data he had requested. He studied it for a few moments, then favored the girl’s screen image with a look like that of an elated predator.

  “Baby, I think I could kiss you.”

  “Your threats don’t frighten me at this distance,” she answered, unperturbed. “Is there anything else you want—having to do with the job, that is?”

  He turned serious. “Now I need a weather forecast of such massive solidity that we can all lean on it—one that includes a steady ocean breeze here.”

  TROFAND, Red priest of the Sea God, and chief caretaker of the Tower, was awakened by the sound of the waves, to which he listened with half an ear even while asleep. The sound was now too loud for his liking.

  He arose from his pallet and was dressing in the stone-damp darkness of his chamber in the Tower’s base when he received a shock. A streaming puddle of cold sea water flowed against his bare foot on the floor. He hastened to light a candle from the smoldering brazier that fought uselessly against the permanent dampness of his bedchamber.

  It was true, he saw with distress. Water was entering in thin streams through chinks in the massive masonry of the inner Tower wall. It was something that happened only in the heaviest storms. The booming roar of the waves pounding the heavy sea wall outside brought him to the beginning of real fright. In ten years in the Tower he had never heard it so loud. A mighty storm must be raging, though the season for them was past, and the weather signs had given no indication of any approaching tempest.

  Trofand was nearly dressed when an underling came with a torch, pounding on his door and opening it with a minimum of courtesy.

  “My lord, the waves, the waves! They are very bad!”

  “I have ears, fool. Someone should have called me sooner. What are the signs of the storm’s length?”

  “My lord, there is no storm.”

  Trofand started an angry retort to the foolish statement, but something in the pale frightened face before him made him pause. Fastening his belt, he led the way out of the chamber to the stair that climbed to the Tower’s top. He could soon see for himself what was happening.

  It was true, he realized, emerging into the pre-dawn darkness atop the Tower. The sky was clear. The wind was steady in direction from the sea, but it was not strong. The surf at the Tower’s foot should be fairly gentle.

  He thought he felt the stones of the Tower quiver underfoot with each leisurely watery smash.

  An assi
stant was at his elbow, speaking with a worried voice. “My lord, what shall we do? The signs are that the wind will rise throughout the day, and remain steady in direction. If tire waves become yet higher—”

  “If they do, we will deal with them. The Sea God is not our enemy. Go rouse out the Tower slaves. Conscript more if need be. Have them stand by the fresh slabs of rock, ready at dawn to strengthen the sea wall. Then go you to offer the day’s sacrifice to the Sea God. But do not take too long about it.”

  “I obey.” The man was gone in an instant, down the stair. Other junior priests of the Tower huddled about Trofand in the chill night, in the light of a dim torch, looking to him for guidance.

  WELL, I was right about that, Trofand said to himself. He was thinking of the extra stones, weighing many tons apiece, that he had long ago ordered to be kept on rollers in the courtyard below. They were constantly ready to be moved to reinforce the sea wall in case a storm of unprecedented violence should threaten the Tower.

  But now he had a question to decide immediately. Should he order the king awakened? After all, the Tower seemed in no immediate danger. Galamand might grumble if he were waked up for something unimportant. But he might have the man boiled alive who failed to wake him for a real emergency, priest of the Sea God or not. It was not a hard decision to make.

  “You—go rouse the king. Tell him I say that waves threaten the Tower. Tell no one else.”

  “I obey.”

  King Galamand was beside Trofand within a few minutes, looking over the parapet and frowning at the strange intensity of waves that were driven by such a modest wind. He observed the preparations that had been made to reinforce the sea wall at dawn, then turned and struck his fist against the parapet.

  “You did well to call me. But these stones have stood throughout my lifetime, and I say that they will stand yet a good while longer.” Trofand saw him outlined against the first gray light in the east.

  The Blond slaves, whipped on by overseers, now began to roll the mighty rock slabs into position to reinforce the sea wall. It would be dangerous work. But slaves could be replaced, while the Tower—

  There was an outcry somewhere inside the Tower. In a minute an exhausted runner appeared, helped up the stairs by others. He leaned against the stones beside the king in near panic.

  “My lord, the sea wall—the wall away from the Tower, up and down the peninsula—”

  “Is it breached by waves? Where?”

  “No, my lord.” A gasp for breath. “I came along the wall, after carrying your message conscripting slaves—”

  “Well?”

  “Elsewhere, my lord, the waves are small. Only here at the Tower do they rise abnormally, as if in raging anger. As if the Sea God has grown angry and—uh!” Galamand’s vicious backhand blow knocked the man sprawling. “Enough! Do not preach the anger of the gods at me, or I will show you what anger is! I am the king!” The king turned away to peer, with Trofand and the others, at the waves beating against the sea wall at a distance from the Tower. The fast brightening dawn revealed that the messenger had spoken the truth.

  THE NEWS was out, Brazil saw, as he strode along the sea wall road toward the Tower and the fortified complex of Galamand’s castle. A puzzled Ariton walked between him and Foley. Reds and Blonds stood in little groups along the wall, commenting on the waves that were assaulting the base of the Tower. Faces turned toward them as they passed, but ever turned back again to the greater wonder of the waves.

  Each long swell marched in from the clear horizon of the ocean, foaming up and curling over as the depth of the water below approaching the height of the wave, to smash itself finally against the rocks piled in the shallow water at the base of the sea wall. But in the sea before the Tower, each incoming rise of water seemed to squeeze itself together along its long axis, rising to at last three times the height of the waves elsewhere, before it piled up in a foaming fury of discriminating violence upon that part of the sea wall.

  Ariton paused at her first sight of this, whispering something that might have been a prayer.

  “You knew of this?” she asked Brazil. “This is why you brought me here?”

  “I’m taking you to talk to Galamand,” Brazil evaded. “I think if you and he can’t come to some peaceful agreement soon, there won’t be any Tower left for either of you to use. You have lived near the sea all your life. You know the strength that is in large waves.”

  “What do you mean?” she stared at him, half afraid. “Do you speak for the Sea God?”

  “We are only men,” he answered innocently. “But do I not understand your gods correctly? Is it not so that the Sea God may destroy his own Tower when there is great strife in the land and evil rulers, as a final warning to all the people, before he destroys the entire island?”

  “It is true the Reds are evil rulers,” she said after a long moment, as if thinking aloud. Then she took her eyes from Brazil’s face and turned toward the Tower. “Come, whoever you are. It is my place to be there now.”

  “Is this going to work?” Foley radioed while they walked. “I mean that Tower isn’t built out of pebbles, exactly. And it’s stood through a lot of storms.”

  “On Earth,” answered Brazil in professorial accents, “wave forces have been measured at well over three tons per square foot. Engineers will not build a shoreline structure on Earth without carefully considering local conditions regarding the effect we are now employing.

  “Besides, the idea is to scare Galamand and the little lady here into co-operating, not to actually wreck the Tower. That would probably kill someone, and I hate to think what might happen in the panic.”

  AT the castle gate, the guards seemed almost to be looking over their shoulders at the Tower as they halted the three visitors and sent word to Galamand of their arrival. Everyone in sight, Red or Blond, was obviously thinking or talking of nothing but the waves.

  Within a few minutes, a guide appeared to escort the visitors to the bare top of the Tower.

  Brazil could see by the flags above the castle that the wind had increased slightly and was holding a steady direction, as Meteorology had promised it would. If we were only gods enough to control the winds in an area of a few square miles, thought Brazil. We can come a hundred light years to stick our noses into our neighbors’ business, but if the weather doesn’t quite suit our schemes when we arrive, we can only wait until it does.

  Galamand scoured them with his single eye when they had climbed the stairs to the Tower’s top. The king paused in his pacing amid a group of high-ranking Reds.

  “Come you to preach the Sea God to me also?” he inquired in an ominously quiet voice.

  Ariton looked about her. “Where is Trofand?”

  “He has gone to offer sacrifices in the chapel below,” said the king, with a tinge of amusement in his voice. He leaned against the parapet with thick arms folded and his back to the sea as if in contempt. “He has rather suddenly remembered to take his religious obligations seriously.”

  “A human sacrifice?” asked Brazil. He hadn’t counted on this.

  “He considers it,” said Galamand. “But I think the Sea God has lives enough for one day.” He moved his head to indicate that they should look over the parapet.

  In the cold boiling hell of surf at the Tower’s foot a hundred Blond slaves struggled on the slippery rocks, straining on levers and vine ropes to move an enormous block of stone into the surf at a place where the waves had weakened the wall.

  With each torrential ebb and surge of water, Brazil saw, a pale object in the surf was drawn out and hurled in near the rocks, buried in foam and tossed up again—a fish-pale thing that had blond hair and no longer any face. And there was another—and another . . .

  No Blond slave or Red overseer took any apparent notice of the drowned men, much less attempted to pull them from the sea. Every living man down there was concerned too intently with his own footing on the treacherous rock.

  “Take it easy, old man,” said a
voice inside Brazil’s helmet.

  OH, THIS Brazil is a wonder, a red-hot planeteer, said a louder voice inside Brazil’s mind. Just trust him, and he’ll come up with a great scheme to set everyone on the road to happiness without bloodshed. That’s important, no bloodshed. Well, you can’t see any blood down there, can you?

  Now that’s enough. Shut up and get to work, there’s a job to finish.

  “Why does the surf attack only the place of the Tower, oh king?” he asked, turning, stony-faced.

  The blue eye studied him. “Had I a ship so cunningly built as to travel underwater, I might discover why.” Galamand turned to his aides. “Send boats and divers out beyond the white water. See if anything strange lies under the surface.”

  “The old boy’s uncomfortably shrewd,” said Foley on radio. “Doesn’t seem likely they’ll search the bottom five miles out and a couple hundred feet deep, though.”

  Boats and divers soon appeared in the sea a few hundred yards out from the Tower, and made a show of investigating underwater conditions. It was not a really dangerous job for such skillful sailors and swimmers, out there where there were no rocks to be dashed against. But the Red seamen seemed to approach the job with a vast reluctance. Their faces turned often toward the Tower, as if in hope that the king would recall them.

  Time passed. By noon the wind was obviously gaining strength again.

  “I go to join Trofand in the chapel,” said Ariton to the king, as if daring him to stop her. He I pulled at his beard and appeared not to hear.

  When she had gone he ordered food brought to him. His aides grew continually more gloomy.

  They looked often at the king, but sought to avoid his eye.

  Galamand was amused to see the planeteers drink their lunch from tubes inside their helmets. He asked if their suits had sanitary facilities too, and roared with laughter when he was told they had. But the laughter had a forced sound to skillful ears.

  The wind grew yet stronger, though it was still far from a gale. Down below, an incoming wave got under a forty-ton slab of rock just right, and skipped it like a flat chip against the base of the Tower itself. Slaves and overseers miraculously scrambled clear. Stones split and flew; one fragment spun almost to the Tower’s top.