The Blue Marble Gambit (21 page)

"Ned?" I said urgently. "What's going on?" I figured that he might have been able
to track the conversations, or at least enough of them to follow things.

He had. He appeared
before me in full native regalia. I
noticed that he had taken a few liberties to bring his own sense of artistic
flair to his ensemble. Most of the
natives were dressed in something, though many were naked. Ned wore only a necklace of bones around
his neck, a grass hat,
a
bone through his nose,
decorative armbands, and some body paint. This, no doubt, was so that he could show off his finest attribute - a
manhood the size of a python. I
fully expected him to trip over it.

"Do
you want the good news or the bad news?"

I
imagined - as vividly as possible, since Ned would be viewing it - a
pterodactyl swooping from the sky and seizing Ned's fleshy rope in its bony
talons, then carrying off his whole wriggling native package. I didn't mind mixing eras; after all, it
was my imagination. It was my
little way of saying I didn't want to play these games. In case that wasn't clear, I said,
"Never mind. I'll figure it
out for myself."

But
Ned wouldn't be dissuaded. "The good news is we're going to be heading in the right direction,
over that ridge." He pointed
grotesquely, and not with his arms.

"That
is good news," I said, surprised.

"Well,
don't celebrate just yet,” he said with disgust. "The bad news is we've been
sold."

"Sold?"
I said out loud.

"We're
slaves?" Trina said incredulously.

Ned
exhaled humorlessly. "No, not
exactly."

"We're
not slaves," I said reassuringly to Trina.

"Then
what are we," she barked. Apparently she was less calmed by my reassurance than I had hoped.

Ned
heard her question, and answered it. I made him repeat himself. Twice.

"So,
congratulations," Ned finished. "You've really outdone yourself this time. Who would have guessed you could pull
such a thing off?"

Trina
saw the expression on my face, and began cursing at me. This was
her
little way of encouraging me to tell her.

I
took a deep breath, and then repeated Ned's description word for word. "We're, ah, sacrifices.”

“I
know
we’re making sacrifices, Court,
but what I want to know is-”

I
held up a hand and she stopped. “No, no.
We
are sacrifices. You know,
still-beating-heart-ripped-out-and-shown-to-you type stuff."

CHAPTER
18. HEARTTHROB

Our
new hosts called themselves the Ahulans. And they weren't bad at all, except for that part about being neolithic
savages with a predilection for ripping the beating hearts out of perfect
strangers. Of course, that may be
more civilized than yanking the hearts out of your friends, relatives, or
acquaintances. But it isn't so
palatable when you're the stranger.

Actually,
it might not be fair to call the Ahulans savages. They were primitive, of course, but in
terms of the ability to cause some serious destruction, they were completely
outclassed by the people of my own time. It just goes to show - people will do whatever they can do. Give them a wickedly sharp obsidian
blade, and they'll use it. Loan
them a planet-busting N-bomb, they'll try it out. Human nature.

So
given that these folks had bamboo cages and flint-tipped spears, we could
hardly begrudge their use of both, although it was a bit tiresome, getting
poked again and again through the bars. Each time I shrieked, which happened each time I was rudely prodded by a
sharp stick in a tender place, it set off peals of laughter. With merry chanting and singing they
thumped us along, and their good spirits were almost infectious. Almost.

Poke.
Ouch
. Poke.
Ouch
. Poke.
Ouch
.

The
land was jagged and steep. Even if
we hadn't been trapped in tiny bamboo cages, we would have had a major problem
covering the ground we needed to cover. Couldn't be done, in fact. It might have been possible over flat ground, but I doubted it. So perhaps our fate on some Stone Age
sacrificial altar didn't matter, in the big picture. The consolation of this big picture was
singularly hard to appreciate from the perspective of our particular little
picture. I supposed that there was
something ironically symmetrical about the fact that mankind's brutality
actually would spell his own end, though in a more convoluted fashion than
anyone had ever imagined.

After
awhile, I realized, I could understand the Ahulan dialect - it was one of
several Trina and I had been brain-printed with.
Brain-printing
is impossible with an alien tongue like that of the Boffs, but works with human
languages, and was completely safe, which was why even Trina's precious gray
matter had undergone it. It takes a
short period of exposure to the language,
then
the
imprint rises.

"You
there!" I called to one of my porters. "Where are you taking
us?" The Ahulan words were an
oddly jagged mouthful; I was half surprised I hadn't cut my tongue on them.

The
Ahulan - a skinny young man - pulled out a bone knife and pretended to plunge
it into his own chest. Then he aped
reaching in with a hand, digging about, and finally finding
something
which
he seized and pulled. The something seemed to pull back. His eyes bulged and he redoubled his effort before ripping it out, fist
balled. His eyes rolled to show
just the whites and his head flopped over. He collapsed, then as quickly sprang up, cackling loudly - he evidently
found his little play hilarious. The others were laughing too.

"Of
course," said the skinny one in a happy voice, "your performance will
no doubt be much better. Since you
will really have your heart ripped out! Ho ho!"

"Ho
ho," I muttered. "When we
will arrive?"

"We
will be at the place of heart-ripping-out soon."

I
didn't ask any more questions.

We
spent the next several hours thumping up and down rough twisting trails. After dark we came to the Ahulan's
village, a collection of torch-lit stone buildings. The tropical perfume of the jungle gave
way to cut stone, domestic animals, and fresh bread. Our cages were carried through the
narrow streets and finally up a narrow hill to the stone dwelling that was the
highest in the village.

This
was the home of the Chief Rotolo, we were told as we were released. With four muscle-bound guards behind us,
we were ushered into the audience chamber. It was a long windowless hall of bare stone, lit at regular intervals by
flickering torches.

The
Chief waited at one end. He was a
huge brown sprawl, trussed in a simple cloth tunic and layered into a stout
throne of bamboo and stone. Black
beady eyes, quick and cunning, flicked over us in sharp glances that missed
nothing. He made a gesture and the
guards turned us to and fro, and then fro and to, showing off all our
angles. Another gesture, and the
guards stopped our rotation with us facing the Chief.

"And
just who might you be?" he asked in a disinterested tone.

I
introduced us, using our real names. He paused for a moment, mouth silently working as if tasting those
exotic phonemes, while he fixed us each with a new look of intelligent
curiosity. Next he minutely
examined our meager objects, which our captors had stripped from us. I was a little nervous when he toyed
with my maser, but his thick fingers were oddly deft. He avoided the buttons as if he'd
handled microweapons all his life. His great brow furrowed for a moment, then abruptly relaxed, as if he
had solved a troubling puzzle.

"You
are not of this Cycle. You are from
the next?" he asked in the same bored tone. Ahulans believed that the world was
periodically destroyed and recreated; he had in essence asked if we were from
the future.

I
couldn't have been more surprised if he'd sketched the temporal quadratic
equation in the dirt and neatly solved it with an algorithm made from sticks,
old bones, and animal skins.

"We
are from a different world," I conceded. "Very different."

What
could I reveal? Time paradoxes were
inherently paradoxical - you could theoretically get away with some fairly
large perturbations. Some thought
that causality was time-independent - it didn't matter if you went back and
killed your grandfather, you would still be born, because you already had been
born. Under this omnisimultaneity
view, all time actually happened at once, and the human perception of past,
present, and future was a mere convenience, an artificial
side-effect
of our limited consciousnesses. But
it was
all theoretical
, with huge gray areas. No one was entirely sure that this
theory was even true - or always true - and that certain interventions would
not have cascade effects. For example,
we might return to a world where everyone spoke Ahulan. Ned read my confusion perfectly,
researched his vast databanks, and stepped into the breach.

"They
don't survive," he whispered.

"Who?"
I subvocalized.

"The
Ahulans."

"None
of them?"

"None. In about two centuries a series of
volcanic eruptions will scour the local area of human life. It's unlikely that anything you say
could change their ability to withstand poison gas. So if honesty might help us get out of
this, let fly, boy."

The
Chief was looking at me with skepticism. I fidgeted like a schoolboy. "What world?" he asked.

"The
next," I said simply.

"Ah. As I thought." He seemed relieved by the news, not
intrigued. The Ahulans so
completely accepted the existence of a series of worlds, one after the other
and each destroyed in its turn by various cataclysms, that to them learning we
were from the future was no more remarkable than rain.

In
an odd coincidence, outside it began to rain. A wet smell filled the air as the heavy
droplets spattered against the roof timbers.

"What
is your Cycle like?" the Chief asked politely.

"Very
different," I said diplomatically.

He
gazed at me with idle speculation. "Now you are being evasive."

"It
is hard to describe in your language."

He
gestured, palms up. "Very
well. I shall ask no more about
it. I have not met visitors from
your Cycle before, so I had hoped to learn of it. No doubt it is worse than this one,
though. That is the way of
things."

"Er,
Chief, with all due respect, in our cycle we consider this time period to be
relatively primitive."

He
nodded sagely. "Typical
conceit of the later Cycles. Here,
the people work ten hours a week in the fields, forest, or their chosen trade,
and spend the remainder of their time as they please. We have no crime. Our lives are full and rich. How does the typical being of your Cycle
live?"

I
thought. Taxes. Drudgery. Wars. Government control.
Life as a sheep.
I couldn't defend it. I'd fled from it. "Er, uh-"

"Exactly. And now, as a courtesy to your Cycle, I
will bestow a great honor upon you. Are you prepared?"

"Ah-"

"Of
course you are. Behold. I will now tell you the royal
joke."

I
glanced at Trina. She gave the
barest hint of a shrug.

"It
is quite an honor to hear the royal joke, of course," the Chief said.

"Then
we are honored. I think."

"Good. Here goes. A tortola -" an ancient version of
a ham and cheese sandwich, Ned explained sotto voce "- walks into a
birra." A bar. “The birra-tender points to a sign and
says-"

"Sorry,
we don't serve food here!" I
interrupted. By Uranus' frozen
anus, the joke really was prehistoric! And some people don't believe in genetic memory!

The
guards exploded into cascades of forced but uneasy laughter.

"That's
exactly right!" the Chief roared, plainly amazed. "That is the royal joke! How do you
know it? It is common in your
Cycle?"

"It
is a fine joke, O Chief."

"No
one has ever gotten the royal joke before," the Chief mused. "Of course, that might be because
interrupting the Chief is punishable by death."

Diz,
Trina hissed at me.

"However,"
continued the Chief magnanimously, "I will spare you."

See,
I smiled at Trina.

"After
all, it wouldn't do to execute our sacrifices." The Chief smiled broadly and kindly.

My
own smile dropped like a coconut. My
mouth went dry. "Ah, Chief,
excuse me, but I don't think we're the right ones to sacrifice. We have some terribly important business
to take care of. Being sacrificed
would be awfully inconvenient."

He
leaned forward and looked at me with a mixture of careful speculation and
something else while picking at his teeth. "You have to save all of Creation?"

I
was taken aback. "No, just the
planet."

The
Chief was disappointed. "Only
the planet? Think big, my boy. Aim high. Claim you need to save everything! That's what everyone else does!"

The
Chief had me a little bit off-balance.
Just a teense.

"Who
is 'everyone'?" I asked in a cautious tone.

His
great brown hands waved in a noble gesture. "Why, all our other sacrifices, of
course. They always claim to have
galaxies to save, things to do, great feats to accomplish. They beg for mercy; they plead that
millions will die if they don't complete their missions. They all say that."

"Do
you spare them?"

A bald look of balder amusement.
"Of course not. We sacrifice them anyway. If you want to avoid the black knife,
you will have to do better."

The
black knife! Arg!
Alright
.
Time for logic.
No problem for a modern man like
me. "Are there any
requirements to be a sacrifice?"

"An
excellent question. There is only
one. You must be a virgin. The rules say we can only sacrifice
virgins!"

Thank
you, Zot, I murmured with relief, then smiled broadly at the Chief and winked
at Trina. It was rare to receive
such a tangible reward for leading a roguish lifestyle. "Well. No. Sorry. We aren't."

The
Chief scratched his great head. "You mean you aren't virgins?"

"Ah,
no."

He
frowned. "I can't say I'm
surprised. Morals always seem to
slip in younger generations." Then he leaned back, thinking long and hard, before he winked and smiled
broadly.

"No
problem. We'll sacrifice you
anyway."

I
jolted. "No problem? But we're not virgins! And you only sacrifice virgins! You just said so!"

"That
is what the rules say," the Chief agreed placidly.

"Then
you can't sacrifice us!" I screamed.

"But
of course we can," countered the Chief.

"I
don't understand!" I yelled.

"Young
man," intoned the Chief. "Please calm down. There is nothing to worry about. We will simply change the rules."

"You
can't change the rules!" I cried.

"Of
course I can. I'm the Chief. I do it all the time." He lumbered weightily to his feet and
shuffled forward, a cool intelligent gaze filling his liquid black eyes. He circled us, eyes roaming
meticulously. Then he closed
in. He poked and prodded, squeezed
and pressed. He seemed to be
assessing our physical condition.