The Cache (25 page)

Meanwhile, there were the first steps to be taken for the unskinning of an entire planet.

IX

Later that day, the mucketeers surrounded the castle, but they made no effort to storm it. The following day one of them knocked on the huge front door and presented Mapfarity with a summons requiring them to surrender. The Giant laughed, put the document in his mouth, and ate it. The server fainted and had to be revived with a bucket of cold water before he could stagger back to report this tradition-shattering reception.

Rastignac set up his underground so it could be expanded in a hurry. He didn’t worry about the blockade because, as was well known, Giants’ castles had all sorts of subterranean tunnels and secret exits. He contacted a small number of priests who were willing to work for him. These were congenital rebels who became quite enthusiastic when he told them their activities would result in a fierce persecution of the Church.

The majority, however, clung to their Skins and said they would have nothing to do with this extradermal-less devil. They took pride and comfort in that term. The vulgar phrase for the man who refused to wear his Skin was “devil,” and, by law and logic, the Church could not be associated with a devil. As everybody knew, the priests have always been on the side of the angels.

Meanwhile, the Devil’s band slipped out of the tunnels and made raids. Their targets were Giants’ castles and government treasuries; their loot, the geese. So many raids did they make that the president of the League of Giants and the Business Agent for the Guild of Egg-stealers came to plead with them. And remained to denounce. Rastignac was delighted with their complaints, and, after listening for a while, threw them out.

Rastignac had, like all other Skin-wearers, always accepted the monetary system as a thing of reason and balance. But, without his Skin, he was able to think objectively, and he saw its weaknesses.

For some cause buried far in history, the Giants had always had control of the means for making the hexagonal golden coins called
oeufs.
But the Kings, wishing to get control of the golden eggs, had set up that elite branch of the Guild which specialized in abducting the half-living ‘geese.’ Whenever a thief was successful, he turned the goose over to his King. The monarch, in turn, sent a note to the robbed Giant informing him that the government intended to keep the goose to make its own currency. But even though the Giant was making counterfeit geese, the King, in his generosity, would ship to the Giant one out of every thirty eggs laid by the kidnappee.

The note was a polite and well-recognized lie. The Giants made the only genuine gold-egg-laying geese on the planet because the Giants’ League alone knew the secret. And the King gave back one-thirtieth of his loot so the Giant could accumulate enough money to buy the materials to create another goose. Which would, possibly, be stolen later on.

Rastignac, by his illegal rape of geese, was making money scarce. Peasants were hanging on to their produce and waiting to sell until prices were at their highest. The government, merchants, the league, the guild, all saw themselves impoverished.

Furthermore, the Amphibs, taking note of the situation, were making raids on their own and blaming them on Rastignac.

He did not care. He was intent on trying to find a way to reach Kataproimnoin and rescue the Earthman so he could take off in the spaceship floating in the harbor. But he knew that he would have to take things slowly, to scout out the land and plan accordingly.

Furthermore, Mapfarity had made him promise he would do his best to set up the Landsmen so they would be able to resist the Waterfolk when the day for war came.

Rastignac made his biggest raid when he and his band stole one moonless night into the capital itself to rob the big Goose House, only an egg’s throw away from the Palace and the Ministry of Ill-Will. They put the Goose House guards to sleep with little arrows smeared with dream-snake venom, filled their lead-leaf-lined bags with gold eggs, and sneaked out the back door.

As they left, Rastignac saw a cloaked figure slinking from the back door of the Ministry. On impulse, he tackled the figure. It was an Amphib-changeling. Rastignac struck the Amphib with a venomous arrow before the Water-human could cry out or stab back.

Mapfarity grabbed up the limp Amphib and they raced for the safety of the castle.

They questioned the Amphib, Pierre Pusipremnoos, in the castle. At first silent, he later began talking freely when Mapfarity got a heavy Skin from his flesh-forge and put it on the fellow. It was a Skin modeled after those worn by the Water-people, but it differed in that the Giant could control, through another Skin, the powerful neural shocks.

After a few shocks, Pierre admitted he was the foster-son of the Amphibian King and that, incidentally, Lusine was his foster-sister. He further stated he was a messenger between the Amphib King and the Ssarraror’s Ill-Will Minister.

More shocks extracted the fact that the Minister of Ill-Will, Auverpin, was an Amphib-changeling who was passing himself off as a horn Landsman. Not only that, the Human hostages among the Amphibs were about to stage a carefully planned revolt against the born Amphibs. It would kill off about half of them. The rest would then be brought under control of the Master Skin.

When the two stepped from the lab, they were attacked by Lusine, knife in hand. She gashed Rastignac in the arm before he knocked her out with an uppercut. Later, while Mapfarity applied a little jelly-like creature called a
scar-jester
to the wound, Rastignac complained:

“I don’t know if I can endure much more of this. I thought the way of Violence would not be hard to follow because I hated the Skins and the Amphibs so much. But it is easier to attack a faceless, hypothetical enemy, or torture him, than the individual enemy. Much easier.”

“My brother,” boomed the Giant, “if you continue to dwell upon the philosophical implications of your actions, you will end up as helpless and confused as the leg-counting centipede. Better not think. Warriors are not supposed to. They lose their keen fighting edge when they think. And you need all of that now.”

“I would suppose that thought would sharpen them.”

“When issues are simple, yes. But you must remember that the system on this planet is anything but uncomplicated. It was set up to confuse, to keep one always off balance. Just try to keep one thing in mind—the Skins are far more of an impediment to Man than they are a help. Also, that if the Skins don’t come off, the Amphibs will soon be cutting our throats. The only way to save ourselves is to kill them first. Right?”

“I suppose so,” said Rastignac. He stooped and put his hands under the unconscious Lusine’s armpits. “Help me put her in a room. We’ll keep her locked up until she cools off. Then we’ll use her to guide us when we get to Kataproimnoin. Which reminds me—how many gallons of wine have you made so far?”

X

A week later Rastignac summoned Lusine. She came in frowning and with her lower lip protruding in a pretty pout.

He said, “Day after tomorrow is the day on which the new Kings are crowned, isn’t it?”

Tonelessly, she said, “Supposedly. Actually, the present Kings will be crowned again.”

Rastignac smiled. “I know. Peculiar, isn’t it, how the ‘people’ always vote the same Kings back into power? However, that isn’t what I’m getting at. If I remember correctly, the Amphibs give their King exotic and amusing gifts on coronation day. What do you think would happen if I took a big shipload of bottles of wine and passed it out among the population just before the Amphibs begin their surprise massacre?”

Lusine had seen Mapfarity and Rastignac experimenting with the wine, and she had been frightened by the results. Nevertheless, she made a brave, attempt to hide her fear now. She spit at him and said, “You mud-footed fool! There are priests who will know what it is! They will be in the coronation crowd.”

“Ah, not so! In the first place, you Amphibs are almost entirely Aggressive Pantheists. You have only a few priests, and you will now pay for that omission of wine-tasters. Second, Mapfarity’s concoction tastes not at all vinous and is twice as strong.”

She spat at him again and spun on her heel and walked out.

That night Rastignac’s band and Lusine went through a tunnel which brought them up through a hollow tree about two miles west of the castle. There they hopped into the Renault, which had been kept in a camouflaged garage, and drove to the little port of Marrec. Archambaud had paved their way here with golden eggs and a sloop was waiting for them.

Rastignac took the boat’s wheel. Lusine stood beside him, ready to answer the challenge of any Amphib patrol that tried to stop them. As the Amphib-King’s foster-daughter, she could get the boat through to the Amphib island without any trouble at all.

Archambaud stood behind her, a knife under his cloak, to make sure she did not try to betray them. Lusine had sworn she could be trusted. Rastignac had answered that he was sure she could be, too, as long as the knife point pricked her back to remind her.

Nobody stopped them. An hour before dawn they anchored in the harbor of Kataproimnoin. Lusine was tied hand and foot inside the cabin. Before Rastignac could scratch her with dream-snake venom, she pleaded. “You could not do this to me, Jean-Jacques, if you loved me.”

“Who said anything about loving you?”

“Well, I like that! You said so, you cheat!”

“Oh,
then!
Well, Lusine, you’ve had enough experience to know that such protestations of tenderness and affection are only inevitable accompaniments of the moment’s passion.”

For the first time since he had known her, he saw Lusine’s lower lip tremble and tears come in her eyes. “Do you mean you were only using me?” she sobbed.

“You forget I had good reason to think you were just using
me.
Remember, you’re an Amphib, Lusine. Your people can’t be trusted. You blood-drinkers are as savage as the little sea-monsters you leave in Human cradles.”

“Jean-Jacques, take me with you! I’ll do anything you say! I’ll even cut my foster-father’s throat for you!”

He laughed. Unheeding, she swept on. “I want to be with you, Jean-Jacques! Look, with me to guide you in my homeland—with my prestige as the Amphib-King’s daughter—you can become King yourself after the rebellion. I’d get rid of the Amphib-King for you so there’ll be nobody in your way!”

She felt no more guilt than a tigress. She was naive and terrible, innocent and disgusting.

“No, thanks, Lusine.” He scratched her with the dream-snake needle. As her eyes closed, he said, “You don’t understand. All I want to do is voyage to the stars. Being King means nothing to me. The only person I’d trade places with would be the Earthman the Amphibs hold prisoner.”

He left her sleeping in the locked cabin.

Noon found them loafing on the great square in front of the Palace of the Two Kings of The Sea and The Islands. All were disguised as Waterfolk. Before they’d left the castle, they had grafted webs between their fingers and toes—just as Amphib-changelings who weren’t born with them, did—and they wore the special Amphib Skins that Mapfarity had grown in his fleshforge. These were able to tune in on the Amphibs’ wavelengths, but they lacked their shock mechanism.

Rastignac had to locate the Earthman, rescue him, and get him to the spaceship that lay anchored between two wharfs, its sharp nose pointing outwards. A wooden bridge had been built from one of the wharfs to a place halfway up its towering side.

Rastignac could not make out any breaks in the smooth metal that would indicate a port, but reason told him there must be some sort of entrance to the ship at that point.

A guard of twenty Amphibs repulsed any attempt on the crowd’s part to get on the bridge.

Rastignac had contacted the harbor-master and made arrangements for workmen to unload his cargo of wine. His freehandedness with the gold eggs got him immediate service even on this general holiday. Once in the square, he and his men uncrated the wine but left the two heavy chests on the wagon which was hitched to a powerful little six-legged Jeep.

They stacked the bottles of wine in a huge pile while the curious crowd in the square encircled them to watch. Rastignac then stood on a chest to survey the scene, so that he could best judge the time to start. There were perhaps seven or eight thousand of all three races there—the Ssassarors, the Amphibs, the Humans—with an unequal portioning of each.

Rastignac, looking for just such a thing, noticed that every non-human Amphib had at least two Humans tagging at his heels.

It would take two Humans to handle an Amphib or a Ssassaror. The Amphibs stood upon their seal-like hind flippers at least six and a half feet tall and weighed about three hundred pounds. The Giant Ssassarors, being fisheaters, had reached the same enormous height as Mapfarity. The Giants were in the minority, as the Amphibs had always preferred stealing Human babies from the Terrans. The Ssassaror-changelings were marked for death also.

Rastignac watched for signs of uneasiness or hostility between the three groups. Soon, he saw the signs. They were not plentiful, but they were enough to indicate an uneasy undercurrent. Three times, the guards had to intervene to break up quarrels. The Humans eyed the non-human quarrelers, but made no move to help their Amphib fellows against the Giants. Not only that, they took them aside afterwards and seemed to be reprimanding them. Evidently, the order was that everyone was to be on his behavior until the time to revolt.

Rastignac glanced at the great tower-clock. “It’s an hour before the ceremonies begin,” he said to his men. “Let’s go.”

XI

Mapfarity, who had been loitering in the crowd some distance away, caught Archambaud’s signal and slowly, as befit a Giant whose feet hurt, limped towards them. He stopped, scrutinized the pile of bottles, then, in his lion’s-roar-at-the-bottom-of-a-well voice said, “Say, what’s in these bottles?”

Rastignac shouted back, “A drink which the new Kings will enjoy very much.”