Starship Home (16 page)

When they walked into the village the next morning, the school girls were already sitting in a group under the tree where they had been the day before. Maze was standing in front of them and conducting as they sang the alphabet. Meg glanced at Zachary, walking beside her. ‘You can’t ask me not to teach these children. Just look at them.’

‘The Don was kind of, how shall I put this, firm on the subject? You teach peasants to read…’ and he finished his sentence with the same throat-slitting gesture the Don had employed to get his point across.

‘Fascist, patriarchal … I’m going to talk to Our Mother about this,’ Meg said and strode toward the big hut, calling across her shoulder, ‘keep right on doing what you’re doing there, Maze!’

As they all headed for Helena’s hut, Zachary said to Harold, ‘I never heard of anyone dying in the cause of infants’ teaching before.’

Meg was first into the hut and she strode to Helena’s side, talking all the way. ‘Some fascist gorilla named Don Costello says I can’t teach school any more. Is that what you want? Is that your view?’

‘A messenger from the Don was here at dawn,’ Our Mother replied. ‘I think we must postpone to a better season.’

‘We could do it indoors. He needn’t know,’ Meg answered.

‘Meg,’ Zachary said, ‘aren’t we forgetting the little thing about the starship blowing up?’

‘The male doesn’t speak in my presence,’ Our Mother said, and turned her questioning gaze upon Zoe.

‘The starship’s … sick.’ Zoe did not know any other way of expressing it. ‘In 39 days, unless we heal her, she’s going to blow up. Like a very big bomb. Now, we’re going to try and get her well, but in the meantime, everyone should leave the district.’

Her ancient sister looked at her and said: ‘Take your ship and go. The women may stay if they wish. The males and the ship must go. I don’t want trouble with either the Don or the Slarn.’

‘I’m sorry Helena, but the ship can’t move at the moment. We have to heal her, and that means getting a lot of metal and stuff. If we fail to get everything, there’s going to be a giant explosion. Everyone in the district’ll be killed. You and your people are going to have to move away.’

‘Not possible,’ said the old woman. ‘we have food to get in against winter.’

‘Please,’ said Harold. ‘Try and understand…’

‘The woman speaks,’ Helena said, without looking at him.

‘Helena, if the ship explodes, food won’t matter. You’ll all be dead.’

‘If we leave, we’ll all be dead.’ She paused, remembering bad times in the past. ‘Starvation on the march, attacks by other clans when we try to cross their land. I saw it all in the old days. We leave here … we die.’

‘The Don and his people will have to leave too. If you travel together, he and his men can protect you.’

‘The Don won’t leave his turf unguarded for others to take.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Zoe. ‘because he’s the next one we’ve got to warn.’

Maze went with them to Trollcastle, and got Meg to teach her the five times table on the way. Maze knew that one day she would lead her people, and wanted to learn as much as possible before she succeeded Helena as Our Mother.

Now, they stood within the treeline, looking up past the clear area toward Trollcastle. Zachary was having strong second thoughts about this scheme. He was wondering whether it might not be better to send the Don a letter on the subject. Beginning a process which would lead up to this suggestion, he said: ‘Basically, this is a terrible idea, you know that?’

Zoe could not see the problem. ‘We’ve got to warn them. Guinevere says so.’

‘She didn’t say we had to warn them … in person.’

Meg looked at him in the way that a person who found worms particularly disgusting might look at a worm. ‘You’re the sort of man who announces he’s leaving by way of a note on the kitchen table, aren’t you?’

‘It takes a lot of guts to do that. Anyone can say things face to face, it takes a lot of guts to put it in writing.’

Meg simply snorted in disgust.

‘I’m just saying,’ Zachary went on, ‘that the Don seems to have an excitable sort of personality. I wasn’t the one who called him a paranoid sociopath, but I’d have to agree there’s a lot of truth in that diagnosis,’ Zachary said, feeling he was on solid ground here.

‘Guinevere says we’ve got to do it,’ Zoe said.

‘Guinevere doesn’t know everything.’

‘Effectively, compared with us, yes she does,’ said Harold.

Zachary knew when he was licked. ‘We’re going to do it. No one says we’re not going to do it! It’s just finding the right time and method.’

‘Don’t give it another thought, Zachary, I’ll do it,’ Meg said, and moved uphill toward the castle.

‘No!’ Maze yelled.

Meg turned and looked at Maze, wondering just who the squirt thought she was talking to.

‘You say in your mind “who is this squirt talking to?”,’ Maze said with grim amusement. ‘Answer is I talking to you. Trolls won’t listen to a woman.’

Meg’s eyes narrowed. ‘And why not?’ But she was already guessing why not.

‘They keep their women veiled and locked up.’

‘Just who do they think they are!’

‘They think they Trollwarriors, lords of the High Law.’

Not for the first time, Meg wished Maze would not be quite so logical. It was hard to ask a metaphorical question around her without getting a strictly literal answer.

‘Look,’ said Harold. ‘It’s simple. If women aren’t allowed, then I’ll go and explain everything to them. It’s better that way, because Zachary doesn’t understand the physics and I do.’

‘Great idea, kid, go for it,’ Zachary said.

Harold set out for the edge of the trees as the others stood watching him go. Meg was saying, ‘You disgust me, Zachary Owens, you truly disgust me. A grown man, standing by, allowing a half-grown boy to do his work for him …’

‘You heard the kid, he understands the physics,’ Zachary said, but watching Harold’s skinny back, with the shoulder blades poking out, he felt that this was not going the way he would have liked.

‘I didn’t think Topclass had it in him,’ Maze said.

‘I hate this,’ said Zachary. ‘I really hate this. Why me?’ He moved after Harold and stopped him before he had left the treeline. ‘I’ll tell him. I know how to talk to guys like the Don.’

Harold felt a huge surge of relief. ‘But I understand the physics,’ he said.

‘I understand “blow up”,’ Zachary said. ‘I understand “hole sixty miles wide”. I think I can handle those concepts.’ He walked on, muttering to himself, ‘Why me? What did I ever do?’

The others moved up to join Harold at the edge of the treeline. ‘Isn’t he a great guy?’ said Harold, ‘you know, the way he pretends he doesn’t want to do something and then comes through for you?’

‘He’s an asshole,’ said Meg.

‘Yeah, but…’ said Harold, ‘but a great asshole.’

Maze was looking at Harold with new respect. ‘That was good what you did, Topclass.’ Harold smiled at her. ‘For a dumb male,’ she added, thereby spoiling the compliment somewhat in Harold’s view.

‘My fantasy role playing character has a lot of hit points. He could take that Don apart.’

When Zachary got to the gate he found a Troll man-at-arms waiting for him. ‘Hi,’ Zachary said to the man-at-arms. ‘I was wondering if the Don of the house was at home…?’ and then stopped talking when the guard showed him the point of his spear.

They brought Zachary into the main hall, where the Don sat on the big chair at the centre of the stage. He was flanked by Ulf and Father John, and Rocky the squire stood by in case he was needed. Marlowe was sitting with some Troll men-at-arms on a bench at one side of the hall.

It was a long way from the door at the back of the hall, and when Zachary got to the stage, it was a long way to look up, but he smiled his best smile and said: ‘Hi! I’ve got a few things I have to tell you …’

‘You drop to one knee!’ Ulf bellowed. ‘You bow your head, you say “my lord”!’

Zachary was getting very tired of being interrupted. In the future, it seemed to him, no one ever let you finish a sentence.

‘Or I take your ears off!’ bellowed Ulf.

They were also over-fond of threatening to commit grievous bodily harm on people. Nevertheless, he dropped to one knee, and bowed his head. He had not done anything like this since he was an altar boy but he found it all came back in a rush when he needed it. ‘My lord,’ he said, and then looked up at Ulf. ‘Did I get that right?

‘I take it,’ the Don said gently, ‘that you’ve come to tell me that you and your friends and that iron castle are leaving the district.’

‘Well, I have to tell you there’s a small problem there.’ Zachary noticed the Don’s gaze taking on an icy look at this point, so he speeded up. ‘We’re having a little trouble with the starship, nothing that can’t be fixed, but we can’t move it for the moment, and if we don’t get a little time to mend it, then it’s going to blow up and take everyone including the village and this castle with it.’

Marlowe had moved over while Zachary was talking, and now he said: ‘My lord, he’s lying.’

The Don stood, and stretched like a cat and strolled down the steps to face Zachary, who saw this as a very positive sign. ‘Thought I’d just come and tell you in person. Lots of guys would’ve been scared to. Probably would’ve sent you a letter or something?’

The Don was looking at him in a way which told Zachary that his coming down to stand in front of Zachary had not been a positive sign at all. The Don smiled at him in a way that made Zachary’s blood run cold, mainly because none of the smile reached the Don’s eyes. ‘Let me get this straight. The starship is going to blow up,’ said the Don.

‘Uh huh.’

‘And take us all with it.’

‘That’s it,’ Zachary said.

‘Unless you’re allowed to stay.’

‘Well that’s not exactly…’

‘Then tell me. Exactly.’

‘It’s like this Don. I don’t know if you know much physics, but I’ll put it in simple terms, right? The people who made the ship rigged it to explode. Like a big bomb? You understand big bomb?’

‘I understand “big bomb” very well,’ the Don said with a grim smile.

‘So we need about six, five and a half maybe, weeks to get the ship mended and off the planet, and in the meantime it’d be safer if you all left the district.’

The Don’s smile was now angelic. ‘Let me see if I understand this? Yesterday I gave you until today to get off my turf. Now you’re telling me that if I don’t get off my own turf, the turf which my ancestors shed their own blood and the blood of many other people for, then you’re going to blow me up with your big bomb? Please tell me if I’m understanding this correctly?’

Zachary thought that he might have expressed it differently but there was no doubt that the Don had certainly got the gist of what he had said. So he nodded.

‘You try a school, and when that doesn’t work, you try a hijack?’ For the first time, the Don had raised his voice.

‘Look,’ said Zachary, ‘I know that’s how it must look…’

‘Ulf!’

There it was again. They never let him finish what he was going to say. The giant was coming down the steps. The giant was pulling him to his feet as easily as Zachary might have lifted a briefcase. The giant was putting one hand on Zachary’s face and gripping his jaw with his other hand and opening his mouth and looking inside. ‘Aaaah argle garp!’ said Zachary, by way of protest.

‘It seems strong, could fetch a good price as a slave,’ the giant was saying, ‘could make a warrior.’ The giant released him. The Don was now looking him in the eye. ‘You’ve committed two hanging offences in two days,’ the Don said, ‘Trial’s in session.’

‘I didn’t know!’

‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse. The verdict is guilty, the penalty is death, the appeal is dismissed.’

‘That was a trial?’

‘That was a
long
trial,’ said the Don, ‘by Troll standards. The penalty is commuted in view of the economic value of the convicted person. Do you choose being sold into slavery, or the Testing?’ He paused. ‘If you pass the Testing you enter my service.’

‘I guess that’s better than slavery? Is it?’

‘It’s certainly what I’d choose for myself.’

Zachary thought fast. How bad could Testing possibly be? He had done lots of tests in his time. Probably it was a medical plus an IQ test of some kind. Maybe an aptitude test. If the people he had seen in the Don’s service had passed the Testing, then he could. That giant right-hand man of the Don’s, Sir Ulf, did not have the brains of an indoor plant. Testing it was. ‘I choose Testing,’ Zachary said.

Marlowe the witchdoctor smiled. Ulf laughed with what seemed to be genuine pleasure. The Troll men-at-arms applauded. Zachary smiled. They certainly seemed like a very friendly bunch around here, all right. ‘Your Testing with be single combat with Ulf,’ said the Don.

‘Thank you my lord,’ said Ulf with a big toothy grin.

‘That would be single combat using …?’ asked Zachary.

‘Swords,’ said the Don. ‘After dinner. Round here we call it a “floor show”.’

‘Oh good,’ said Zachary. ‘Great move.’ Then he fainted.

It had been half an hour on Harold’s digital watch (the one with the built-in calculator, calendar, organizer and stopwatch) since Zachary had gone up the hill and disappeared into Trollcastle, and Zoe, Harold and Meg were getting worried. Maze seemed to be used to waiting for things to happen. ‘Can take time,’ she explained to them.

‘What can take time?’ asked Harold. ‘He just had to explain to the Don that the ship might blow up and maybe everyone’d better get out of the district.’

‘Trouble is sound like goonietale. Maybe Don put him to the Question.’

‘Torture?’ asked Meg. ‘In the Middle Ages, “putting people to the question” meant torturing them.’

‘I knew that,’ said Harold. He had known that. How dare Meg explain that to him? He Put People To The Question all the time in computer games.

‘Depends if they believe him,’ Maze said.

Meg felt a surge of panic. ‘No one could believe him! Zachary can’t tell the truth. He’s incapable!’

‘Even when he’s telling the truth it sounds like a lie,’ added Zoe.

‘We’ve got to get him out of there!’ said Meg.

‘Right!’ said Zoe, and rose from where they were lying in cover and started running toward the castle.

‘Zoe Poulos, come back here this instant!’ yelled Meg in her best teacher’s voice, but it had no effect. Harold was getting up to follow, and Meg pushed him down again. He had not realized the woman was so strong. ‘We can’t all get caught,’ she said, watching Zoe move up the hill toward the castle. ‘At least she’s using cover.’

‘You know about cover?’ Harold asked, amazed.

‘My father was a soldier and my brothers made me play stalking games as soon as I could walk. They’re no doubt all enjoying themselves immensely in a Slarn mercenary army somewhere on Alpha Centauri.’

‘Alpha Centauri’s actually a star,’ said Harold. ‘They couldn’t be on the surface of a star. Maybe one of its planets.’ Meg looked at him in such a fierce way that he decided he probably would not go on telling her about the difference between stars and planets. There was a chance that she already knew and there was an even bigger chance that she might punch him, so he turned to watch Zoe instead.

Zoe had also had brothers who had insisted on her playing stalking games. There was not a lot of what they had taught her to call “dead ground”, that is, not a lot of ground that was not visible from the roof of the castle, but any dead ground there was she was using, and then waiting for the guard on the roof to move before running on again to the next dip or fold which could give concealment. It took about ten minutes, but at last she reached the wall of the castle without any alarm going, so she felt that she had not been spotted. Along one wall, the wall where someone had added an exterior chimney at some time in the past, were a set of windows. Heavy metal shutters had been attached to the wall with hinges so that the windows could be effectively closed off, probably, Zoe thought, when the castle was under attack, but at the moment these shutters were open.

Zoe moved to one of the windows and looked in. What she was seeing was a room that looked to her like a mediaeval banqueting hall. It could have been a school assembly hall once, she thought, with its high ceiling and its stage at one end. But there were banners hanging from flagstaffs and from other flagstaffs hung what looked like incredibly old denim jackets with some kind of wild animal motif on them. On the far wall there was a set of life-size paintings of men in armor, though one looked more like a biker.

From cover, Harold, Meg and Maze watched Zoe as she looked in the window. ‘She’s not going to go inside, is she?’ said Harold. ‘Please tell me that she’s not going to go inside.’ As if hearing him, Zoe climbed through the window and disappeared into the castle. ‘Okay,’ said Harold, ‘so she’s gone inside. But she’ll be coming right out.’ They watched the window for a while and no one came out. Harold looked at his multi-functioned digital watch, set the stopwatch running, and looked at the window again.

Inside the hall of Trollcastle, Zoe was exploring. She had looked at the paintings, even taking a peek behind the curtain which hung over the covered one. She had replaced the curtain very quickly, as the painting was a gruesomely realistic depiction of a very handsome man standing on a pile of dead bodies.

She had moved from the paintings up the steps to the stage, and was looking around for an exit when she heard footsteps and voices. Along one side of the stage hung a velvet curtain. She ran to it, and got behind it. Peering out, she could see, walking down the length of the hall, the Don, with the giant warrior Ulf, the priest who rode with them, and the village witchdoctor Marlowe.

‘There are three other thieves in the iron castle, my lord,’ she heard Marlowe saying. ‘Take my advice. Capture them and sell them up the river into Vic. They mean you nothing but harm.’

‘Three? I met only two. The barefaced girl and the youth.’

‘There’s a third, my lord. A woman. She was the one teaching school in the village.’

‘We could use another teacher in the women’s quarters, Don,’ the priest said. ‘A woman teacher for the young boys?’

Suddenly Zoe felt a tap on her shoulder and almost fainted. She turned, and found what she had not noticed when she scrambled behind the curtain: that her back was pressed against a door, and in the door was set a small barred window, curtained on its far side. The curtain had now been drawn back, and a woman, her face veiled below the eyes, was looking at her. The woman’s hand came into view, and she beckoned Zoe. Behind her, Zoe could hear the footsteps of the men as they mounted the steps to the stage and she was suddenly very conscious of the fact that the curtain which concealed her did not quite reach the ground. They might see her feet at any moment!

The door had a handle. She took it, turned it, and went through the doorway, closing the door behind her. The woman who had beckoned her in was smiling in welcome. Zoe could tell from the crinkling at the corners of her eyes. Zoe smiled in return but then found herself staring. She was in a place that was like pictures she had seen of harems.

Beyond her, in a big room which opened into a central courtyard, women and children were occupied in various activities. The women and female children wore veils below the eyes, and long concealing dresses in layers of fine fabrics. Some of the newer, more coarsely woven fabrics were dyed in the muted yellows and oranges and browns that Zoe was familiar with from the forest village. Here too they were using natural eucalypt dyes. But some of the fabrics must have come from before the Slarn invasion, because Zoe recognized synthetics and imported silks. They must have been taken from city stores and warehouses before things totally collapsed.

Some of these older fabrics had been recycled in the form of fine patchwork, tiny pieces of cloth sewn together in shimmering patterns of brighter colors. Zoe even recognized patterned sheeting and curtaining fabrics from her own day which must have been hoarded, and used and reused for clothing.

She could imagine how a length of fabric had started as the material for a dress, and then, that dress having worn in places, parts of it had become pieces of other garments, until finally, six or eight garments down the line, fragments of the original cloth were still surviving in the form of brilliantly pieced patchwork, almost jewel-like in its execution.

The same style of clothing did for both adult and child among the females. The small boys (and there did not appear to be any over the age of eight) were dressed in leather like the adult male Trolls she had seen.

In that first moment, Zoe was already seeing differences between the Forester women and their Troll counterparts. The Forester women were shorter and thicker in build. The Trollwives, as she remembered Maze calling them, were taller, and more slender. They had always had good food, and they had not spent their lives carrying sacks of food or buckets of water.

And there was something else, something about this place, something she was familiar with but had not seen since coming into the future. Then she realized what it was: leisure. These people had leisure, time in which to do more than just battle for survival. Some had been reading books when she entered, some had been engaged in writing, some in embroidery, one was using a spinning wheel, several were painting, and one had been playing a type of mandolin. Some were sewing, but even the sewing was not just to produce clothes which would protect the body from heat or cold: there was the extra element of time spent on adornment. The Foresters’ clothes were vivid and attractive but this was the result of the blending of different natural dye colors in the weaving process. The Trollwives’ clothing had its jewelled quality because of extra time put into it. They had leisure to devote to the conscious production of beauty.

All of this Zoe took in during that first silent moment after she had come through the door. The woman who had beckoned her inside now spoke. ‘You must be a friend of the prisoner?’

‘How did you know that?”

‘From your ancient clothing. We have books with pictures of people who wore clothing like yours.’

‘Oh.’ Zoe was still looking around, taking it all in. ‘What is this place?’

‘The Women’s Room.’

Then Zoe remembered what Maze had told her about Trollwives. ‘Right. Your men keep you veiled and locked up.’

There was a silvery shimmer of laughter from the women within earshot. Others were moving closer to meet the stranger in their midst.

‘Our husbands and fathers protect us. Yes.’ The woman who had beckoned Zoe in, now took her by the arm and led her to a couch. ‘Now tell us what’s happening in the world.’

‘Yes,’ said others, ‘tell us.’

‘Now hang on just a minute,’ said Zoe, ‘I’m here to get my friend.’

‘The prisoner’s not your husband…?’

‘No. No just a friend, but he…’

‘He’s to be Tested,’ one of the older women said. ‘If he passes the Testing he’ll be a warrior in the Don’s service like our husbands and fathers and sons.’

‘You could marry him then and live here with us,’ said a younger woman.

‘Hold on! I’m only 15,’ Zoe began, but the women talked over her. It was like trying to have a conversation in an aviary.

‘Fifteen? Not married?’ said one.

‘On the shelf?’ said another.

‘We’ll find you a husband,’ said a third.

‘I’m not looking for a husband!’

‘Of course you are!’

‘You have a Vocation? You want to be a nun?’

‘No, but I…’

‘Tell us what’s happening in the world now.’

‘I’ve got to help Zachary!’

The women around Zoe fell silent and looked at one another. Then the one who seemed to be the oldest sat down beside her, and took her hands and looked deeply into her eyes. ‘No woman can help a man through his Testing. No one can. That’s what a Testing is about, being on your own.’