The Complete LaNague Page 47

  Took instant offense at that.

  "She's nothing to me."

  He laughed. "What kind of a jog do you take me for? You should have seen your face when Lum talked about heading out to Neeka and maybe marrying her."

  "You've been whiffing too much, Doc. You've got permanent brain damage."

  He wandered off to the bar and left me sitting there thinking about emigrating to Neeka. Crazy idea. And yet, maybe there'd be something out there for a roguey guy like me. Something other than farming. Anything but farming.

  It was a thought. A remote maybe.

  Wondered if there'd be anything for Ignatz to eat on Neeka.

  THE TERY

 

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to the editors who over the years have nursed

  The Tery through various iterations to its present form:

  Vincent McCaffrey

  James Frenkel

  Betsy Mitchell

  PROLOGUE

  As they approached the crude stone chapel, the priest’s hopes became a subvocal litany – A whole planetful of Christians… too good to be true… bound to be disappointed – running through his head in a reverberating circuit until it blurred all other thoughts. But its inherent defeatism could not damp the tingling anticipation charging through him.

  The planet had been opened only recently to outside contact and trade. Its original settlers had cut themselves off from the rest of humanity many centuries ago. But their descendants – most of them, anyway – had different ideas.

  The present population was divided into two nations. The smaller island country – inhabited, it was said, by “Talents,” or something like that – wanted nothing to do with the Fed and so was to be left alone. The larger nation, however, welcomed the chance to rejoin the mainstream of interstellar humanity, and it was this segment of the population that interested Gebi Pirella, S.J.

  His mission was one of critical importance to the Amalgamated Church of Unified Christendom because the inhabitants here had been described as followers of a distinctly Christian-like religion, complete with crucifixes. Early trade envoys who had been permitted a brief glance inside one of the chapels mentioned that the crucifixes were somehow different, but gave no specifics.

  No matter. News of the existence of a planet-wide Christian enclave would prove incalculably important to the stagnating Unified Church, spreading its name and hopefully drawing converts from all over Occupied Space.

  “The cross is just a symbol, of course,” Mantha was saying as he pointed to the top of the chapel. He was a big, fair-haired man wearing only a loincloth in the heat. His grammar and speech pattern carried an archaic ring. “Not an object of worship. We revere the one who died upon it and hold to the lesson of brotherhood he taught us.”

  Father Pirella nodded. “Of course”

  Heartening to know, and the first exposition of faith he had been able to wrest from this taciturn native who seemed to serve as some sort of ecclesiastical administrator to the locale.

  The Jesuit had pushed their initial conversation toward a discussion of theological concepts but soon discovered that he and Mantha did not share the same vocabulary on religious matters. Beyond determining that the religious sect in question was less than two centuries old – unsettling, that, but surely not without a satisfactory explanation – Father Pirella’s most basic questions had been met with an uncomprehending stare. He had suggested that the easiest and most logical solution was to go to the nearest structure and start there with concrete articles. After establishing a little common ground, they could then progress to abstractions.

  Mantha had agreed.

  The native held the door open for him – hinges...the technological level here was startlingly depressed – and Father Pirella entered the cool dim interior.

  He saw seats but no altar. Stark and alone, a huge, life-size crucifix dominated the far end of the chamber. He hurried forward, eager to study it. Merely to find the Christ figure here on this isolated world would be quite enough; but to demonstrate that it held a central position in the culture would be more than anyone in the order or the Church had ever dreamed. It would be the consummation of –

  “Mother of God!”

  The words echoed briefly in the dimness. Father Pirella's feet began to slide on the polished floor as he recoiled in horror at the sight of the figure on the cross. Crushing disappointment fanned his indignation.

  “This is sacrilege!” he hissed through clenched teeth framed in tight, bloodless lips. “Blasphemy!”

  For a moment he almost gave in to the urge to hurl himself at the astonished and confused Mantha, then he shuddered and rushed out into the bright, wholesome daylight.

  “I did not know what you were looking for,” Mantha said when he finally caught up to Father Pirella, “but I had a feeling you would not find it in there.”

  “Why didn't you warn me?”

  Mantha gently took the priest's arm and began to lead him down a path through the trees.

  “Come. Come with me to God's-Touch and you will perhaps understand.”

  Father Pirella allowed himself to be led. God's-Touch? What was that? It certainly couldn't be any worse than what he had just seen.

  “Everything starts a long time ago,” Mantha was saying. “One hundred and sixty-seven of our years, to be exact. It begins in a field not too far from here...”

  1

  THEY HADN'T LEFT HIM for dead. They had to know he was still alive, had to see the shallow expansion and contraction of his blood-smeared rib cage as he lay on his face in the grass. But they had other stops to make and he took such a long time dying. A tery didn't merit a final stroke to end it all, so they left him to the scavengers.

  Consciousness ebbed and flowed, and every time he opened his eyes he found the world filled with flies and gnats. He tried but could not lift his arms to brush them away. Each time he tried, the effort involved dropped him again into oblivion. Which wasn't a bad place to be. Dark and quiet, no pain there.

  But he always came back. Soon, if he was lucky, he would remain sunken there forever. Why not stay there? Everyone who meant anything to him had been taken away.

  The creak of a poorly lubricated wooden axle pulled him to consciousness again. He heard stealthy footsteps through the ground against his left ear and allowed himself to hope.

  Maybe another tery...

  Summoning whatever reserve was left in his body, he pushed against the ground with his right arm and tried to roll over. The daylight suddenly dimmed and he knew he was losing consciousness, but he held on and managed to get a little leverage from his left arm, which had been pinned under him. He moved. A shift in his shoulder girdle and suddenly he was rolling onto his back amid a cloud of angry flies.

  The effort cost him another period of awareness. When he came to again, the creaking was gone. Despair crushed him. The furtiveness of the footsteps he had heard was proof enough that they belonged to another tery, for stealth simply was not the way of the human soldiers who trampled everything in their path. Now the footsteps were gone and with them his last hope of rescue.

  He was dying and knew it. If the hot, drying sun and his festering wounds didn't kill him by nightfall, one of the big nocturnal predators would finish the task. He couldn't decide which he–

  Footsteps again…

  The same ones, light and stealthy, but much closer now. The passing creature must have seen some movement in the tall grass and come over to investigate. It had probably crouched at a cautious distance and watched.

  The tery lay still and hoped. He could do no more.

  The footsteps stopped by his head and a face looked down at him. A human face, bearded, with bright blue eyes. He lost all hope then. If he could have found his voice he would have screamed in anguish, frustration, and despair.

  But the human neither ignored him nor further mistreated him. Instead, he squatted and inspected the near countless lacerations that covered his body.
His face grew dark with...could it be anger? The tery was not adept at reading human expressions. The man muttered something unintelligible as his inspection progressed.

  Shaking his head, the human rose and moved around to a position behind the tery's head. He bent and hooked a hand under each of the tery's arms, then tried to lift him. It didn't work. The human lacked the strength to move his considerable weight, and the slight change in position sent a white-hot jolt of pain through each wound. The tery wanted to scream at him to stop, but all he could manage was a low, agonized moan.

  The human loosened his grip and stood up, apparently uncertain of this next step.

  “Can you speak?” the man said.

  The odd question startled the tery. Yes, he could speak. He tried but his tongue was too thick and dry and swollen for a single word.

  “Can you understand?”

  The tery closed his eyes. Why the questions? What did it matter, anyway? He was going to die here. Why didn't this strange human just go away and leave him in peace?

  After a brief pause, the man tore a strip of cloth from the coarse shirt he wore and laid it over the tery's eyes. Then he strolled away. The sound of his retreating footsteps was soon joined by the creak of the wooden axle. Both eventually faded beyond perception.

  A small act of kindness, that strip of cloth, and incomprehensible to the tery. Why a human should want to keep the flies off his eyes while the rest of him died was beyond him, but he appreciated the comfort it offered.

  The sun blazed on him and he felt his tongue grow thicker and drier during the progressively shorter periods of consciousness. Soon one of those periods would be his last.

  He was brought to again by minute vibrations in the ground at the back of his head. Trotting hooves, and something dragging. The soldiers were returning. He was almost glad. Perhaps they would trample him as they passed and quickly end it all.

  But the hoofbeats stopped and footsteps approached – many feet. The cloth was pulled from his eyes with an abrupt motion and the faces that leaned over him were human but didn't belong to soldiers. The four of them glanced at each other and nodded silently. One with blond hair turned and moved from view while the others, much to the tery's surprise, bent over him and began to brush the flies and gnats from his wounds. All this without a single word.

  The blond man returned with one of the mounts. From a harness around its neck, a long pole ran along each shaggy flank to end on the ground well beyond the hindquarters. Rope was basket-woven between the poles.

  Still no word was spoken.

  Their silence puzzled him, for they were obviously on their guard. What was there to fear in these woods besides Kitru's troops? And what had these humans to fear from Kitru, who slew only teries?

  The appearance of a water jug halted further speculation. Its mouth was placed against his lips and a few drops allowed to trickle out. The tery tried to gulp but succeeded only in aspirating a few drops, which started him coughing. The jug was withdrawn, but at least his tongue no longer felt like dried leather.

  With the utmost gentleness and an uncanny coordination of effort, the four men lifted the tery. The pain came again, but not as bad a when the first one had tried to lift him. They carried him and placed him across the webbing of the drag, then tied him down with cloth strips. All without speaking.

  Perhaps they were outlaws. But even so, the tery began to think them overly cautious in their silence. The soldiers were long gone.

  The humans mounted and ambled their steeds toward the deep forest. The uneven ground jostled the drag and caused a few of his barely clotted wounds to reopen, but the tery bore the pain in silence. He felt safe and secure, as if everything was going to be all right. And he hadn't the vaguest notion why he should feel that way.

  The path they traveled was unknown to the tery, who had spent most of his life in the forest. They passed through dank grottos of huge, foul-hued fungi that grew together at their tops and nearly blocked out the sun, and skirted masses of writhing green tendrils all too willing to pull any hapless creature within reach toward a gaping central maw. After what seemed an interminable length of time, the group passed through a particularly dense thicket and came upon a clearing and a camp.

  The tents were crude, all odd shapes and sizes, scattered here and there in no particular arrangement. The inhabitants, too, offered little uniformity of design, ranging from frail to obese. This was hardly what the tery had expected. He had envisioned a pack of lean and wolfish outlaws – they would have to be feral sorts to hold their own against Kitru's seasoned troops. But there were women and children here and a number of them took leave of their working and playing to stare at him as he passed. These people hardly looked like outlaws.

  And the silence was oppressive.

  His four rescuers stopped and untied the drag from the mount, then lowered it gently until the tery lay flat on the ground. One of them called out the first and only word spoken during the entire episode.

  “Adriel!”

  A girl with reddish blond hair emerged from a nearby hut. She was young – seventeen summers, perhaps – slightly plump but not unpretty. Seeing the tery, she rushed over and dropped to his side. Gently she examined his wounds.

  “He's cut up so bad,” she said in a voice high and clear and full of sympathy. “How'd it happen?”

  “Those are sword wounds,” one of the other men said with some impatience. “That can only mean Kitru's men.”

  “Why'd you bring him back?”

  The first man shrugged. “It was Tlad's idea.”

  “Tlad's?”

  The tery detected a note of disbelief in her voice.

  “Yes. He found the beast earlier and somehow convinced your father that we should help it. So your father sent us after it.”

  Adriel's brow furrowed. “Tlad did that? That doesn't sound like him.”

  The man shrugged again. “Who can figure Tlad anyway?” He indicated the hut. “Your father inside?”

  “No.” Adriel rose and pointed to a far corner of the camp. “He's over there somewhere, talking to Dennel, I think.”

  The men left in silence. The tery watched the girl duck back inside the hut.

  Tlad? Was that the name of the man who had spoken to him and placed the cloth over his eyes? Tlad. He would remember that man.

  Adriel soon reemerged with a wet rag and knelt beside him.

  “Oh, you poor thing.”

  He was riding the ragged edge of consciousness then, and the last thing he remembered as everything faded into blackness was the cool, wet cloth wiping the dirt and dried blood from his face and a soft, cooing voice.

  “Poor thing...poor thing...”

  2

  “THINK HE'LL LIVE?” someone said behind her.

  The sound of a voice startled Adriel. She gave a small cry and turned. A bearded man, tall and muscular, stood peering over her shoulder.

  “Oh. Tlad. You startled me. You shouldn't sneak up on people like that.”

  “Sorry. How's he doing?”

  “I think he'll pull through. If his wounds don't fester too much, he should be all right.”

  “Good.” Tlad gave her a quick nod, then he turned and started to walk away.

  “Wait. I don't understand.”

  He looked back, his eyes flicking over her. “What is there to understand?”

  “Why did you bring my father news of a wounded tery? Why convince him to bring it in?”

  “He needed help and I couldn't manage him. I figured you'd like the job.”

  “Oh, you did, did you?”

  She resented this relative stranger's presumption in assuming that he knew what she'd like.

  “Yes. You both look like you could use a friend. You'll be good for each other.”

  Adriel stared into his unreadable face. The insight at the heart of his casual statement was so on-target that she was momentarily speechless. She looked at him closely. His light brown hair hung lankly against the darker brown of
his beard. He was dirty and he smelled bad and she had never much liked him. He returned her stare.

  “That was nice of you,” she said, finally.

  “Forget it. You and he are running from the same thing – I thought you might want to help him out a little. And he looked like he needed all the help he could get. Do a good job.”

  “I don't need you to tell me that,” she said sharply, showing her annoyance at his remark. Of course she would take good care of the tortured beast.

  He barked a short laugh and strolled to his wagon. With a single, smooth motion, he bent, grasped the two handles, and started off into the woods, trailing the wagon behind him. A few shards of broken pottery rattled in the back; the left wheel squeaked on its axle.

  She watched until the thicket swallowed him, then returned to her work with a scowl. Tlad had risen in her estimation today by his show of compassion for the poor beast unconscious before her, but she still did not like him. She couldn't pin it down, but something about that man caused her to mistrust him.

  Still, in a way she wished he had stayed longer. At least he was someone to talk to.

  She went back into the hut to get some clean rags to bind the tery's deeper wounds, and when she returned, she saw her father approaching across the clearing.

  “That thing still alive?” Komak said when he reached her side and stood surveying the bulk of the tery.

  Her father was a man huge in height, girth, and spirit. He had clear, pale blue eyes and shaggy red hair and beard that encircled his head like a mane; his skin was the type that never seemed to tan, remaining ever red from the sun despite the fact that he spent all of his time outdoors these days. Adriel shared his coloring in hair, skin, and eyes, but was shorter and had a smaller frame.

  “Of course he's still alive. And I'll keep him that way.”

  Didn't anyone have any confidence in her?

  Komak lifted the unconscious creature's upper lip to expose its sharp teeth.

  “So this is Tlad's tery. Ugly brute.”