Retaliation (8 page)

Then he recognized his visitors-a family group, led by his old friend Ipy. Not so long ago Gerekh and Ipy had labored together in the mines of Nagada, wresting bits of golden crystal from the surrounding rock. They’d slaved for Ra, then worked for the Earth-men. But after the great battle that left equipment strewn across the desert, both men had figured there was an easier way to make a living.

They’d started from the same place, and Ipy considered them to be the same-independent busi-nessmen. Gerekh, however, considered Ipy to be a fool. At the start of their prospecting, when there was the most money to be made, Ipy had turned his finds in to the Elders and the Earthmen, earning a paltry bounty. But Gerekh had found other buyers, who paid in stacks of the shining silver coins the strangers had brought to Abydos. He’d invested his riches in the car-avan trade, making further profits, then moved into a consortium of traders buying food from the farmer clans. His business was booming.

Not only did the food trade make his wealth grow, it allowed him to save his silver and deal with the remaining weapons prospectors in kind-salvaged guns for food. Ipy had changed since the days in the mines, and not for the better. Always lean, he was now almost skeletal, his skin almost black from the sun. The prospector’s wife looked half starved as well. The best-fed member of the family was their twelve-year-old son, who merely looked pinched and famished. Eyes gleaming, Ipy carried a long bundle wrapped in the tattered remains of a cloak. “Everyone said there was nothing more to be found where Hathor blasted the boxes that moved-the ay-pee-sees,” Ipy said proudly. “But everyone is sometimes wrong, so I looked there, thinking, ‘If I find anything, I’ll bring it to my good friend Gerekh-‘ “ Gerekh cut off the flow of self-congratulation and flattery. “So what did you find?”

“These!” Ipy let his bundle down on the counter with a metallic clatter. He unfolded the threadbare cloth to reveal an M249 light machine gun, complete with bipod, and an M-16 rifle, its butt charred and scorched. With a frown Gerekh pushed the machine gun aside. “This one will have few buyers, if any. It eats up bullets and who other than the Earthmen can afford to feed it?”

“I have people to feed, too,” said the desperate Ipy.

“We shall see what can be done,” Gerekh replied, examining the other weapon. “It’s fouled with sand-the barrel is full of it.” At least he’d taught the scav-engers to leave their finds alone. Some idiots like Ipy had managed to destroy valuable weapons by at-tempting to clean them up for a better sale. Reaching under his counter, Gerekh brought out a loaf of day-old bread, a small sack of grain, a smaller sack of flour, some beans. Perhaps enough to keep a family of three going for a few days. Ipy and his wife exchanged tense glances. “And for the useless gun ...” Gerekh added a couple of handfuls of beans and some overripe fruit. Inwardly he rebuked himself for showing favor to an old friend.

Ipy scooped up the pitiful supplies-another lesson Gerekh had taught his scavengers. Unlike other mer-chants, he didn’t haggle. Putting up a hand to forestall the speech of thanks tumbling from Ipy’s lips, Gerekh said, “Always a pleasure to do business with an old friend.” “And we will be back to do business again next week!” Ipy assured him. Gerekh repressed a wince at the thought of the family subsisting for so long on such scanty fare.

“Perhaps luck will smile on you,” he said to the poor, deluded scavenger. “If you find a weapon of the Horus guards, come to me immediately. I could be very generous.”

Indeed, for a working blast-lance he might offer enough to feed them well for two or three weeks.

In spite of the fact that he was the teacher, Daniel Jackson had a strange back-to-school feeling when-ever he initially faced a class. He’d awakened before sunrise from the final exam nightmare-a ludicrous dream where he was forcibly taken back to college to make up an examination in a subject he’d never heard of before.

Daniel put the nightmare down to the dinner he’d cooked the night before as an attempt at domestic har-mony. The mess of beans and onions had been made palatable only by a heavy lacing of tabasco sauce bummed from the Marine base. That would be enough to give anyone bad dreams, he supposed.

For the last couple of days, the first wave of new students had trickled in from far-flung communities of farmers. There’d been quite a scramble to secure student accommodations, since a sizable reality gap had set in between the planned numbers and the actual arriving students.

Today’s classroom reflected part of the improvisa-tion in the program. It was an outdoors setting, pro-tected from the sun by a large awning. The rows of tables and chairs had come from the ruins of UMC’s translation school, as did the portable blackboard. There were even some textbooks rescued from the de-funct mining operation’s school.

Daniel took his place by the blackboard as the class-room filled. Nakeer had apparently taken Daniel’s words to heart-the students offered a mix of sexes and ages. There even appeared to be a couple of El-ders on hand to learn the new language-or keep an eye on their compatriots.

The usual hubbub of an arriving class died down, and Daniel took a deep breath. “Welcome. Today we begin the study of the English language-one of many tongues on the world I come from-“ His rehearsed speech sputtered to a stop as a young woman dashed under the awning. She was tall for an Abydan, and moved with an unconscious grace that was a delight to see. Wide, dark eyes gazed in conster-nation around the room, seeking an empty seat. The girl-somehow she seemed girlish to Daniel-had a light olive complexion and a stunningly beautiful face, even while biting her full lower lip. The aquiline fea-tures approached the sculptor’s ideal, but were animated with so much life-she had the expression of a beautiful statue come to life and realizing its nudity.

“I yam saw-ray, Dan-yer,” the young woman said. Her musical voice almost canceled out the problems of her accent. Switching to a rich peasant strain of Abydan, she apologized again. “I didn’t mean to be late, but all those streets ...” She made a helpless gesture.

“Well, you know where to come now.” Daniel lifted an interrogatory eyebrow. The girl supplied her name: “Faizah.” “There’s an empty seat right here, Faizah. Why don’t you settle yourself, and we’ll start?” Daniel pointed at a space in the first row. Like poetry in mo-tion, she took her place. Just as well she’s in front, Daniel thought. Half the male students will be gawking in her direction anyway.

He decided to jettison the rest of his welcoming speech and get right down to work. “Let’s see how many of us understood what Faizah first said as she arrived

...”

Whistling tunelessly to himself, Gerekh wrapped a wad of rag around the end of a long, thin wooden rod. Then he rammed the wadding down the sand-fouled barrel of the M-16 Ipy had salvaged.

Gerekh had become fairly adept at stripping and cleaning lost weapons. He’d paid generously for ex-pert tutelage from an early volunteer in the militia, part of the first wave that had been trained by Skaara and the outworld warriors. Pursing his lips, he peered down the rifle barrel, a small oil lamp providing dim illumination. Perhaps the level of cleanliness wouldn’t have passed muster for a Marine, but it was more than sufficient for pur-poses of sale. Gerekh hastily swept away his cleaning apparatus as his doorman announced a visitor. The newcomer had a harsh, sun-seamed visage, and the squint of a man who habitually taxes his eyes for a glimpse be-yond the next dune. A caravan leader, most certainly.

“I am Menna,” the man said abruptly. “My mastadges travel the high desert to the black lands of the distant farmers. I am told that you sell-“ His voice broke off as he saw the rifle being re-assembled under Gerekh’s deft fingers. “Yes. You deal in the sort of merchandise I desire.” The traveling merchant was a fierce haggler. But in the end he had to part with silver coins for the rifle and two thirty-round magazines of ammunition. The amount would have kept Ipy and his family in luxury for more than a month. Gerekh drew out the other weapon he’d received, the light machine gun. He hadn’t cleaned it, having only removed the bipod from the weapon’s muzzle. “Another of these death sticks?” Menna said.

“This one is not so useful,” Gerekh warned. “It spits out bullets too quickly-brrrrrrp!” He imitated the sound of an automatic weapon. “None but the Urt-men can afford to keep it fed. I don’t think it pays for me to clean it and put it right. But seen from a distance, in the hands of a man on mastadge-back, it would seem that a caravan had twice as many weapons-even if it was empty.” Menna frowned. “Buying the weapon that works has dug deeply into my silver.” A new round of haggling ensued. By its end Gerekh had agreed to part with the dummy weapon not for silver, but for a portion of the caravan’s bounty when it returned to Nagada.

Gerekh bowed graciously and offered the caravan leader some advice for free. “Among Skaara’s militia is a young warrior named Sek. For a modest fee he will show you how to operate the weapon.”

Sek was a useful contact with the warriors, some-times sending ammunition to Gerekh. The weapons merchant smiled. Sek could also be depended upon to kick back some of his training fee.

In the former command deck of the starship Ra’s Eye, Barbara Shore sighed as she leaned her elbows on her desk-a piece of wood sitting on two sawhorses. A week into the job, and what did she have to show for it? She riffled through the thick sheaf of papers decorating her In box. A line of hieroglyphics was fol-lowed by a line of isolated English words—then a run-ning translation from the pen of Dr. Gary Meyers.

“What is this crap?” Barbara demanded. “I send Gary Harvard a file from one of those computer slates-we think it’s about how circuits regenerate aboard this oversize suppository. His translations are all about Ra’s magic, with some sexual allusions.”

Looking up from a similar makeshift desk, Sha’uri nodded in embarrassed agreement. “I saw some of it when he was at the copying machine. When I questioned his translation, he looked like an Elder who’d made a misstep in the mastadge field. “ ‘Young woman,’ “ she said, deepening her voice and jutting her chin to mimic the good doctor, “ ‘I have several degrees in this field. This passage is transliterated ac-cording to the standard, generally accepted meanings of the symbols in question.’ “ “In other words, he translated that file into the priestly hoo-raw the hieroglyphics came to mean in later centuries,” Barbara said in disgust. She looked at her head local translator. “Can you take over that file? We’ll try to stick Herr Professor Meyers with something a little less demandin’.” “How about this?” Sha’uri produced a pile of pho-tographs, each taken of a new “page” that had ap-peared on the face of one of the slate computers. “Mitch Storey says it seems to deal with operating toilets in zero-G,” she said, reading a note clipped to the top photo. “I’m beginning to wonder what kind of translator / am. I know what a toilet is: I know zero is a number and G is a letter. Are we marking the decks in some new way that no one told me about?” “Zero G means no gravity. I suppose that file covers emergency situations when the artificial grav-“ Bar-bara cut herself off when she took in the expression on Sha’uri’s face. She wasn’t giving Barbara a blank look. Instead, Sha’uri was registering a desperate attempt to comprehend. But there wasn’t a shared vocabulary or knowledge pool.

We’re trying to get these folks to translate post-Einsteinian physics when they’ve never even heard of Newton’s laws, Barbara thought with a chill. “Okay. Gravity is the attraction between two bod-ies-whoa. Now I sound like I’m making sexual allu-sions. Have you ever wondered why things fall down? One of our great thinkers suggested that there is a force that draws things together. A large object, like a planet, tends to draw smaller objects to it. We call this attraction the force of gravity.”

Sha’uri nodded. “But if there was no gravity, no rea-son for things to fall ...” Comprehension flashed across her features. “I could see why people might be worried about toilets.”

‘So would you mind passing those pictures to Gary?” Barbara asked.

Sha’uri’s expression dimmed. “If I must.”

Barbara’s eyes narrowed. “So what else has Grue-some Gary been up to? Now give.” Sha’uri hesitated for a second, then said, “Remem-ber what you said about all of us being Daniel’s students? I’ve had to complain to Daniel about that sometimes. But with Dr. Meyers-we’re not merely students but rather dull ones. He’s asked me to route all translations through him-so he can correct them!” “Did he, now?”

Barbara purred. “And what did you do?”

“I said he’d have to discuss it with you.”

“Just the right answer!” Barbara nodded in ap-proval. “Good ole Gary can’t complain that you ruined his little power play. And he’s too fond of his skin to come to me.”

“His skin?” Sha’uri gulped.

“Just an idiom, darlin’, “ Barbara assured the young woman. “Although Dr. Meyers might not be sure of that.” She looked searchingly at Sha’uri. “Is that all?” The young Abydan woman looked uncomfortable.

“It’s bad enough that Dr. Meyers looks down on us. But for the female translators-“ “He’s not playing touchy-feely, is he? I’ll break his arms.” Sha’uri shook her head. “It’s just that he seems to feel a certain-gravity. If he tells me once more what a lucky man Daniel is-!” “I suppose he thinks he’s turning on the old charm.” Barbara made a face. “It’s too bad we can’t distract him with a little sex. It might make him a little more human.”

She glanced apologetically at Sha’uri. “Sorry about that. Sometimes I get a little too blunt. It’s the problem of comin’ from a free-and-easy planet.” “Ah,” said Sha’uri. “I suppose so.”

Half-trained soldiers on undemanding guard duty- a dangerous combination, Sek thought as he leaned against a large pottery vessel that contained three M-16 rifles. Several more of the sealed urns served as storage for other militia weapons salvaged from the battle-field-pistols, grenades ... ammunition. The men on their knees in the pool of light from the room’s single lamp had stood unflinchingly before the Horus guards of Ra himself. They’d fought and risked their lives bravely enough.