What now, little man? said the wind.
I wished that I knew.
I wasn’t a prisoner, exactly, but Bayon had made it pretty clear that he was calling the tune, and I’d better not forget it.
We moved away down the corridor, past the entrance where Harl and Tob stood guard, so that we could discuss things like rational human beings.
‘Bayon,’ I said, ‘we’ve got to destroy the grotto.’
He looked at me as if I were crazy.
‘Take some of it back to your village, but destroy whatever we leave behind,’ I followed up. ‘Then you still have the possibility of a deal.’
‘As long as I have all of it,’ he said, ‘what does it matter where it is?’
‘You’re setting me up, Bayon. The Churchmen are going to blame me, just as Angelina says. They’re not going to be disposed to make a reasonable deal with anybody while there’s an outworlder holding the grotto with the Hierarch as his hostage. Take some, destroy the rest and let them go. Mavra’s not against us. He’s with Charlot. He’ll set up a deal for us. That’s what you need, if you’re going to get out. As things are, they might send the miners in with the guns, or even deal with Sampson on condition he brings the guns in.’
‘They won’t send any guns in while we have Akim Krist.’
‘But what do you think you’re trying to do?’ I complained. ‘What chain of events are you hoping for? I don’t see your thinking at all.’
‘I want whatever I can get. I want off this world. I don’t care who takes me. But that’s not all—not any more. I’ve got more than just the grotto. I’ve got Akim Krist as well. Which means that the Church, as well as the offworlders, is going to deal with me. Before I say goodbye for good, I’m going to force them to recognise my existence. Krist and Gimli and all the rest. They’re going to remember Bayon Alpart. They’re going to remember that he exists; and that he’s alive and well.
‘It’s not a matter of revenge, Grainger, believe me. It’s a matter of principle. I want them all to admit they were in the wrong. I want them to see me—and what they did to me—whether they want to or not. And you needn’t worry about your taking all the blame. I’m claiming that for myself. Everybody is going to know who stole their treasure. And to make sure that they remember, I’m taking the price of the grotto as well. All of it. The Church men won’t get a penny. Nothing.’
‘They won’t let you get away with that!’ I protested. ‘Hell, there are only sixteen of you.’
‘We have Akim Krist’
‘You have a very inflated idea of Akim Krist’s worth’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘Akim Krist is the Hierarch of Rhapsody. The leader of the Church.’
‘Only on this world. And even here, he isn’t an absolute monarch. He’s just not that important. Remember, it’s Gimli we have to negotiate with now. The man who wanted to sell out the world, just as you do. You’ll never get away with it. You’ll get us all killed.’
‘I’m dead already, remember.’
‘Well, I’m not, and I don’t want to be. If this plan of yours doesn’t work—and it won’t—I’m right out on a limb. It’s all very well for you to take the blame—but if it goes wrong, that’s so much extra blame for me to take.’
‘That’s right! You just keep thinking about that, and do your level best to make sure things come out the way I want them to.
‘This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to send the two miners back to the capital. You can give them a message to take to Gimli. I want him down here, alone, first thing in the morning. My men will let him in provided he’s alone, and we’ll let him out again afterwards. But don’t mention my men. Make things easy for him to begin with. Just let them tell him that he can get in and out provided that he doesn’t bring any guns with him. Right?’
I did as he asked. What else could I do? But I was very unhappy about the state of affairs. Mere hours ago, I thought that the principle of Let Well Alone was a convenience, because it meant I could dabble in revolution without breaking the Law. But it also meant, of course, that the locals could shoot me down with a similar degree of safety. There was no justice.
I settled down on the bare rock, to sleep. Bayon and his three followers were sleeping in shifts. Mavra, Capra and Angelina had also decided to sleep, but Akim Krist was still wide awake, with his eyes gleaming in the lamplight as he radiated his anger.
I found that I didn’t want to sleep. It had, after all, been mid- afternoon when I last awoke.
Never mind, said the wind. If Bayon does scoop the jackpot he might give you twenty thousand for your help. Then you can say goodbye to Charlot and join the gang for good.
‘Bayon’s worse than Charlot.’
Poor Grainger! Everybody pushes him around. But on the other hand, who would you rather have win the deal, Bayon or Akim Krist?
‘Neither of them, damn it. Nor do I particularly want Charlot or Sampson putting it to all the uses their horrible imaginations might conceive. The grotto ought to be destroyed.’
That’s very noble of you. I thought you were in this solely for the profit. I didn’t realise you wanted to save the galaxy from the terrible scourge.
‘To tell you the truth,’ I said, ‘if it was a choice between making twenty thousand to buy my life back and saving the galaxy, I’d probably take the twenty thousand. But I wouldn’t like doing it’
How very kind. I’m sure the galaxy would thank you for your regret.
‘Well, it’s a redundant question anyhow. From here and now, I’d like to see the thing destroyed. My chances of getting twenty thousand out of this are comfortably outweighed by my chances of getting killed. I’ll settle for nothing and a chance to go home. If I could get that power-gun off Bayon I could burn up every damned worm in the grotto in a matter of minutes. That’s all it takes. We could kill the whole farce stone dead. Then I could quietly lift the Swan—with Bayon’s sixteen as passengers—and we could all live happily ever after.’
Everything back to square one. What a way to exploit opportunity. Here’s something unique in human experience, and all you want is to kill it and live happily ever after. Suppose the human who figured out how to use fire had thought like that?
‘If I thought that humans had any common sense I’d say that the first fifty who thought of it did just that. But most of us have about as much sense as Akim Krist or Bayon. They’re never satisfied with what they can get. They want the moon as well.’
At least they want to do something. It may not be the right thing, by your thinking, but it’s positive. And what’s wrong with Charlot’s answer—New Alexandria gets the bug, which is a lot safer for all concerned than someone like Krist, or even Sampson, getting it. And the Splinters—Rhapsody at least—get the help they need to restore themselves to the human scale of existence.
‘They chose to live here. They still choose to do so. They don’t want that kind of help and nobody should try to force it down their throats. And as for New Alexandria being any better than Star Cross or anyone else—that’s just not true. The only difference would be that they’d sell it to everybody, instead of there being a monopoly.’
Isn’t that better?
‘I don’t think so. And even if it is, it’s better still to destroy all of it.’
And you think that your personal judgement should decide which way things go.
‘If I had that beamer it damned well would.’
Then, since you haven’t, it obviously follows logically that Bayon’s way is the way that things should be done.
‘Oh, be quiet! You’re only arguing for the sake of it. You don’t like it any more than I do. Your precious host’s in mortal danger, remember. You ought to be worried.’
I am, he assured me, I really am.
He shut up and I eventually dozed off into a light and fitful sleep.
I couldn’t have been asleep for very long, because there was still nothing happening when I awoke. Tob and Harl had changed places with Bayon and Ezra—the latter were now sleeping—but that was all. The atmosphere was steeped in silence and stillness. It felt like the early hours of the morning.
I contemplated trying to snatch the beamer, but Bayon had wrapped himself all around it before going to sleep, and there was no chance of disentangling it, quite apart from the fact that Tob was in the way. Instead, I decided to sound out Tob on the subject of demands and possibilities. I wasn’t sure what kind of influence he might have with Bayon, but he seemed the likeliest ally I might find.
‘What do you think Bayon intends to do?’ I asked him, in a low whisper.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied.
‘Do you think he does?’
Tob shrugged. ‘He’s sleeping now. Won’t be too strung out in the morning. We’ll find out then.’
‘Do you really think there’s something to be gained by holding Krist for ransom?’
‘There’s none of us with any reason to love Krist,’ he pointed out. ‘In some ways, he’s the linchpin of the whole system. He talks loudest and he’s careful who talks back to him. He don’t encourage much in the way of argument. There’s a good many of us would like to deal out some punishment to Krist. Normally it wouldn’t be a good idea, but with everything happening at once, I don’t know that we might not get away with it.’
‘Getting away with it is fine,’ I said. ‘But if you were willing to settle for less you’d have a damn sight better chance.’
‘If we made a habit of running away,’ he said, ‘we’d all be at the bottom of the hotshafts by now. We want to get out of here. But it is our world, just the same as it’s Krist’s and my daughter’s.’
‘Daughter?’
‘We didn’t appear out of nowhere. We all got families.’
‘Do you want to take your families with you when you go?’
‘They don’t want to come. They can’t want to come, without being forced into our way of seeing things.’
‘Surely they don’t join in with this crazy farce of not seeing you or recognising that you exist?’
He shrugged fatalistically. ‘Most do. It’s their way of life. Some of them can bring themselves to remember, now and again. We can always get help if we need it badly. But once in a while and all the time are two different things.’
‘But they couldn’t want to stay here,’ I protested. ‘Not if they could go to a better world.’
He looked at me steadily, with an expression of patient longsuffering. ‘Do you think we’d want to go if we could stay here?’ he asked.
I don’t know why it surprised me. This was, after all, his world—the only word he’d ever known. He’d never seen sunlight and he wasn’t particularly keen to make its acquaintance. He probably wouldn’t like it. It would cause him a great deal of physical discomfort, at first. And there was the change in sensory balance. Going native works both ways. I don’t suppose he liked the thought of coming out of the warren any better than I would have liked staying there for good. It was purely and simply that life there was being made impossible for him. The symbolic non-existence worked both ways as well. By denying that the outcasts existed, the Churchmen actually robbed them of a great deal of that existence.
And all that could be put down to Krist. He was not solely responsible, nor could he really be said to be at fault—he was trapped in the system just as the outcasts were. The fact that he was content with it didn’t make him any the less trapped. But he was the Hierarch. He had to carry the can for anything rotten within his state. He had to bear the brunt of any grudges.
And Bayon’s outcasts certainly had a big grudge.
It was no wonder that they wanted more out of Krist than for him to turn his back while they sneaked away to an alien existence. I could have been very sympathetic, if I hadn’t been so dangerously involved.
‘It’s a dangerous game,’ I said.
‘So it is,’ agreed Tob laconically.
‘And you don’t really know what you’re trying to win, do you?’
‘Maybe not’
‘You can’t stay here—no matter what you do.’
‘I know that.’
‘Isn’t it better, then, just to make a clean break and leave the whole foul mess behind, to look after itself?’
‘I got a daughter is part of that foul mess,’ he reminded me.
‘Have you? Is she really your daughter, now?’
‘They can’t make that any different.’
‘But it is different, isn’t it?’ I didn’t wait for him to answer. ‘You can’t possibly do her any good by making a stand here and putting on a big show. If anything, it will do her harm. There might be recriminations, whether you exist officially or not. You’d be doing her all the favours you could simply by slipping out quietly. Leave her to her life. You can only hurt her by forcing the Church—and her—to admit that you exist. There’s nothing to be gained.’
He was silent for a few moments, and I judged that I must be gaining ground. The fact that a man has never run away in his life isn’t sufficient reason for his making a stand at every crisis. There has to be something else to give him a reason for fighting.
‘Bayon’s the boss,’ he said.
‘You don’t owe him anything. You follow because he leads. You don’t have to go with him, if he goes the wrong way. You aren’t attached to him.’
‘I don’t reckon this is a good time to start betraying him,’ he said.
‘It has to be done, if needs must.’
‘Not now.’
I didn’t try to press him any harder. I’d said what I could. There was no need to hammer it home. Tob was as capable of thinking it out as I was. I thought that I could trust him to make a rational decision. I hoped that rational decision would be the same as mine. If it was the same as Bayon’s, the future might be very bleak indeed.
We had been very quiet while we talked, but we had awaked Rion Mavra. As Tob retired slightly to resume his sentry position, Mavra came up behind me and knelt down. I turned around, and sat back against the tunnel wall.
‘I’m worried,’ he said.
‘You’re not alone,’ I assured him.
‘Exactly what power do you have with these people?’
‘You saw him turn the gun on me. What do you think?’
‘But he will listen to you. You can talk to him, at least. He won’t hear what we have to say.’
‘That’s understandable,’ I said, ‘since you wouldn’t even concede that he exists. You can’t really expect to be able to argue him around to your point of view. What’s the change of heart for, anyway? I thought you were aligned with the rest of them so far as voluntary blindness goes?’
‘I’d be a fool if I refused to see a gun that wanted to shoot me.’
‘There are a lot of fools in these parts.’
‘Even Krist might compromise when it comes to facing a bullet.’
‘Well, I hope so. Bayon probably won’t settle for anything less. Somebody’s going to have to talk to him eventually, and say some things he wants to hear. Somebody right at the top. I don’t think you qualify.’
‘I’d be easier to deal with than Jad Gimli. I warn you—Gimli might be intransigent. He wouldn’t shed many tears over Akim Krist’s death after the events of the last few days. I arrived late but I gather that a great deal of heat was generated between the two.’
‘It’s no good your angling for release,’ I told him. ‘Bayon won’t consider it. He knows full well that it’s Gimli we have to talk to. I don’t know how much influence you’ve managed to win back since Titus Charlot imported you to act as his agent, but you’re not going to convince Bayon or me that you can swing the council. What you can do, though, if you want to be co-operative, is tell me what you know about the stuff in the grotto. How much of it has got out?’
He spread his arms wide. ‘I don’t know. How can I? Nobody would admit to having removed any. The official story is that it’s all there, but I don’t know what to believe.’
‘But there’s a chance that if we can destroy the grotto we can exterminate the whole thing?’
‘You can’t destroy the grotto. And even if you did, it would only precipitate trouble. We’d be no better off.’
‘We’d have sidestepped the issue of price. Bayon couldn’t sell what he hasn’t got, and he can’t object to the Church selling it, either. It would make things a lot simpler from our side. And a lot of people might thank us for it, if they ever found out.’
‘And if we were still alive to be thanked.’
‘We’ll have to overlook that, for now. If I can get the beamer away from Bayon, will you help me? I don’t suppose Krist will help, but you might persuade Capra. If Harl and Ezra could be taken by surprise....’
‘You’re asking too much. There are four of them and three of us. They have the guns.’
‘We could try.’
‘No.’
And who could blame him? I didn’t think much of it myself. As a plan of action, it was a joke.
It became redundant anyway, within a matter of minutes. One of Bayon’s men arrived at a run, and awoke Bayon and Ezra.
‘They broke through,’ he said, loudly enough to awake everyone else. ‘They knew just where to hit. They’ve cut us off completely. We’re sealed in. Arne’s dead.’
Bayon was still shaking himself into full alertness but he missed none of the rapid speech. He didn’t waste any time in wondering what to do, either. His contingency plans were already made.
‘Harl! Get out into the tunnels and warn the rest. Bring them all back down here. Haul a couple of ore trucks back and barricade the tunnel just this side of the slit. We can defend there.’
Harl rushed off to carry out the orders.
‘Anybody else hurt?’ Bayon asked the bearer of bad news.
‘Lud was hit. I don’t know how bad. The others are bringing him back at his own pace. We had to leave Arne’s body at the cutting.’
‘How many were there?’
‘I don’t know. Eight or ten, maybe. They knew where we’d be and what to do about it. There was nothing we could do, Bayon.’
‘All right. Nobody’s blaming you. If we’re shut in, we’re shut in. It makes no difference, except that we’ve got a dead man to think about.’
I came to Bayon’s shoulder.
‘I think they’ve conceded the fact that you exist,’ I told him.
‘Don’t you believe it,’ he said. ‘You wait until Jad Gimli comes down to the barricade.’
‘You think he’ll come? After killing one of your men and sealing you in? Surely he wouldn’t dare. He’ll try to starve you out. And he can do it, too.’
Bayon shook his head. ‘He’ll come. To talk to you. He’s a lot more worried about the cave than about us.’
‘Don’t bet on that. He might already have his bit stashed away. It might serve his purposes very well to see the worms—and Akim Krist as well—burned up.’
‘We’ll find out,’ he said confidently. ‘Gimli will come.’
He was right. Gimli came.