The Super Barbarians (8 page)

“And you have the effrontery to ask a platinum as fee for explaining the workings of this—this porridge to me!”

The maid gulped audibly. Shavarri turned to her and waved irritably.

“Leave us in peace!” she commanded, and the girl was only too glad to go.

“The cost of the can you have was five platina,” I said urbanely when the door had closed again.

“I knew that!” she answered impatiently. “Cosra told me—I gave you what was necessary.”

Cosra. The name rang a bell. One of the wives of Shugurra Himself, head of the House of Shugurra across the valley from here, and the most powerful individual on Qallavarra; the rival Pwill would most dearly like to do down. That was really interesting!

I hid my elation. Bowing again, I said, “May it please your under-ladyship, there is a difference between a small everyday service and one like this. On my way to the Acre, a squad of trainee soldiers decided to use me as a moving target, firing magnesium bullets at me. One burned a hole in my cloak.”

“I see.” She studied me thoughtfully. “And you value your life, which you thus risked, at one platinum. It agrees very closely with my own estimate of an Earthman’s life. There you are!”

She picked up a shiny coin from the same table where the open can of potion stood, and tossed it towards me. I caught it one-handed in mid-air and pocketed it.

Her light eyes followed the movement, and I guessed why she was puzzled, but said nothing. After a moment, she sat up on her couch of furs and gestured me to sit down on a chair near her.

“I had not expected you to be able to walk here,” she said. “Yet you move freely, for all that Dwerri has marked you with his whip.”

“Ah—Dwerri?” I agreed, and put my finger to my cheek. “Oh yes!”

“Did he not lash you, then?” The question was snapped at me.

“Dwerri, for all his pose of authority, is a servant with a servant’s spirit—lack of spirit, I mean. ‘He—changed his mind, shall we say? The capabilities of Earthmen impress
him too greatly. After all, as your under-ladyship is well aware”—and I nodded towards the can of potion—”we are not without ability.”

“Did you purchase a drink of artificial courage, steward, at the magicians home in the Acre?” Shavarri said mockingly. “To hear you speak, one would think you another man from your habitual self.”

She was certainly perceptive. I wondered how I had come to underrate her all the time since I arrived here. Shrugging, I answered, “An Earthman about Earthman’s business is a different person from an Earthman about petty tasks.”

“Would you that I repeat what you have said to my superior sister-wife Llaq?”

“I think, Under-lady, that she knows already.”

Shavarri smiled unexpectedly. “In other words, panic for her blockheaded son’s behavior has made her turn to you for help. Well, I counseled this when the thing first became known—but it was natural, I suppose, for her to wait till she could wait no longer.”

“May I inquire why your under-ladyship gave such advice?”

“Bolder and bolder! You may not inquire. Work it out for yourself. You have my leave to go away.”

That took me by surprise. I felt in my pocket for the slip of paper with the directions printed on, and ventured, “But—the potion, your under-ladyship? Its mode of use?”

“I know already, steward. Plainly there can be only one way such a drug will work. It must make the subject listen more readily to what is said to him, and it must inflame his mind with passionate desires. Oh yes, steward!” she added quickly. “I was sure you would ask the seller what you were bringing to me, and I don’t doubt you have already decided
for what purpose I wanted it. That was why I paid your extra platinum. For your discretion. Not for you to read me the directions. I have been instructed—so much as will cover a- thumb’s end, five to ten times at sunset in food or drink.” She laughed; I had never quite got used to Vorrish laughter, a high neighing sound ending in a savage grunt.

I stood up, a little at a loss. “Your under-ladyship is a person of remarkable talent and imagination,” I said sincerely. “Scheming is a skill we Earthmen admire.”

“I know! I know!” She tapped the can on the table. “You would not otherwise provide such excellent aids to it.”

Her laughter was still in my memory as I returned to my room. That woman was going to be hard to cope with, I thought—probably harder than Llaq and Pwill combined, now she had revealed herself to me as a plotter and contriver.

But I hadn’t made much progress with my new line of thinking before I reached my room again and found the door was ajar. It might have been that Dwerri had changed his mind, found himself a passkey and returned to wait for me; I looked cautiously past the edge of the door before I went in.

The boots outflung from my one low chair told me my guess was wrong. My uninvited guest was Pwill Heir Apparent. He looked in a bad way, I saw as I quietly pushed the door to behind me. His face was flushed, set in the same scowl I had seen earlier, but he kept biting his lower lip in a typical Vorrish gesture of nervousness, and he had to thrust his hands deep in his breeches pockets to stop them from shaking.

He must have arrived directly after I went to see Shavarri, for he had had time to ransack the room, turning out particularly
my food store—after coffee, no doubt. Finding none, he had dropped into the chair to await my return. Beside him on the table he had laid a scattered collection of coins.

I tried not to look at the coins as I bowed to him.

Raising his head, he glowered at me. Back in the days when I had been his tutor on Earth, he had been consistently unfriendly to me for two reasons: first, that I was appointed to supervise him, and he detested anyone who had power to order him about, and second, that I was an Earthman and a member of a defeated race. I’d never managed to learn to hate him, because at age fifteen he was just as much a silly young boy as any Earthly teen-ager—maybe more so, because he was far less bright than either of his parents. I had always been privately convinced that Pwill and Llaq were going to see their hopes unrealized.

Still, it would be better, probably, for Earth if he were to attain his inheritance and then bungle matters, than if he were to be disposed of in the traditional way and be succeeded by one of his brighter half-brothers. There were five of these to reckon with; all five were at the Vorrish equivalent of a military academy where they had been sent when Pwill Himself departed for Earth.

This was no longer a silly young boy, though; aged twenty, Pwill was a nasty young man.

“Don’t stand there gloating!” he barked suddenly.

I gave an inquiring look.

“You know what I mean! Why in the name of seven gods have you no coffee?”

“It’s expensive, even on Earth. And it would have been impossibly bulky to bring a supply with me.”

“They have it in the Acre!”

“Perhaps.” I tried to recall what I had known back home
about shipments for the people of the Acre. “They are allowed—if I remember rightly—one shipload a month of necessaries. Possibly coffee is sometimes included in one of the crates.” It was the only explanation I could think of, though I wondered why coffee should be sent when the worst need was for diet supplements, vitamins, antihistamines, antibiotics and other medicines.

Abruptly Pwill got to his feet and began to pace the floor, not looking at me. He said, “Having saved your life today, I want you to get me a fresh supply”

“With respect,” I said, “saved my life…?”

“Of course!” His eyes flashed at me and then he was staring at the floor again. “Don’t you think my father would have shortened you to the shoulders if I’d done as you deserved and said it was your fault I’d learned to like coffee?”

He probably would. I shivered. In actual fact, I had never to my knowledge tried to make Pwill like any Earthly food or drink; that was outside my province. In any case he wouldn’t have liked it on principle. Things of Earth, to his dogmatic way of thinking, were fit for Earthmen and not for the superior Vorra.

“Why didn’t I say that?” he pursued. “Because you’re an Earthman; you can go and come in the Acre. And you’re going to. Whatever my father offers you to buy the cooperation of your fellow sneak-thieves in the Acre, I’ll match it. I know what a stupid thing I’m doing. I know you could take the chance to poison me, or anything! But nothing, not even death, could be worse than—this!”

He took his hands from his pockets and held them out towards me. They shook. Each finger shook differently from its neighbor, as though his muscular co-ordination had gone completely. Above the wrists, the muscles were knotted with
tension as he struggled to hold his hands still and failed. Sweat crawled out of his hair and down his face; his lips went pale with effort.

“That!” he said at last. “What devil’s seed you make the drug from, I don’t know. But it’s wrecking my body to do without it. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat, I can’t move my bowels, I can’t throw a harpoon, and I can’t take a woman! There on the table, son of an unpedigreed ox! You’ll find ten platina, enough for two handfuls of coffee beans. Get me that much tomorrow, understand, or else—”

He snatched up a knife from the sheath dangling on his belt, and presented the point to me, bright and deadly, a few inches from my face.

One moment, and the point began to waver and swing from side to side. At first he fought to control it; then, with a howl like an animal’s, of sheer despair, he dropped his arm to his side and went hurrying from the room.

I
KNEW WHAT
I was doing this time. Before entering the Acre, I slipped my house shield into the bag I carried; I let the fingers which I had remembered to straighten as I walked through the city curl into a natural pose, and settled my head at an Earthly angle on my neck. Nobody troubled me as I made my way to Kramer’s.

Instead of the front door I had used yesterday—which was locked from inside, I found—I went to the back entrance, and a small boy of ten or twelve answered my knock suspiciously.

“Who’re you?” he said.

Tm Gareth Shaw,” I said, and explained my business. When I showed him one of the new bright coins I carried, he let me enter.

“Fathers got a client at the moment,” he said, indicating a chair for me. “A Vorrish noblewoman, I think. She usually stays quite a long time. Mind waiting?”

“Not at all,” I said. “How’s your mother today?”

A look of deep unhappiness passed over the boy’s face. He muttered something I didn’t catch, and turned back to a table on which he had been preparing some food—paring mouldy vegetables of their rotten parts. He wasn’t very good at his work; he held the knife awkwardly and seemed to peer at each vegetable he picked up, though the light was fairly good. At first I thought he might be backward. Then the weariness of his movements made it clear to me what the real reason was. He was ill himself with undernourishment, although he probably ate as much as he could hold in his narrow belly.

I thought of the vegetables I had in my bag, and I was going to bring them out and offer them to him, when Kramer’s voice rose in the adjacent room uttering a formal Vorrish farewell. I decided to wait. I heard the front door open and shut, and a few moments afterwards Kramer came grinning through from his mumbo-jumbo parlor, stripping off his huge black cloak.

“Well, that’s another on the hook—” he began. Then he caught sight of me and broke off, his face darkening.

“You again, Shaw,” he said flatly. “What’s it for this time?”

“You don’t seem exactly pleased to see me,” I countered, holding my bag on my knee.

“I’m not,” he agreed after a pause. “No, I happened to be speaking to Ken Lee last evening. I think you met him.”

“Ken Lee was told by Judge Olafsson not to mention me to anyone,” I said.

“Are you sure?” Kramer hesitated.

“Certain sure,” I said. “Ask Olafsson himself, if you like. I don’t think a loose tongue is a good thing to have around the Acre.”

He nodded, but his look of hostility didn’t fade. I held out the balance of his fee on my palm, and he took it quickly. “You squeezed it out of her, then.”

“I didn’t squeeze it,” I said. “She paid it as the price of my discretion, because she knew I would ask you what I was bringing her.”

Again he nodded:

“Still, if you’re not glad to see me,” I went on, “at least you’ll welcome these.” I produced some heads of salad from my bag.

Kramer’s jaw dropped. It was a satisfying sight. He said in a voice near whispered-level, “Where the—?”

“I have some I grow my self. For I don’t get any vitamins or diet supplements from back home. I thought your wife might be helped a little by these, since obviously pills aren’t doing her any good.”

Reverently he took the few undersized knobs of greenery I handed him, shaking his head and moving his Lips soundlessly. At length he said, “That’s a very kind thought, Shaw. I’m sorry. I think I must have misjudged you. But—” He set the salad on a table, and the boy stopped his paring and began to sniff at and finger What I had brought.

“But what was that yen said about stuff from home?” Kramer pursued.

“Well, didn’t I hear, back home, that you in the Acre were allowed one shipload a month of supplies?” “That’s so, yes.”

“And isn’t that mainly vitamins and so on?”

“You’d never been to the Acre before yesterday, had you?”

“No, I hadn’t.”

“I see. What’s the mark on your cheek?”

I explained. Kramer was carried away with enthusiasm when I finished. Slapping his hands together, he chortled delightedly.

“Clever! Oh yes, clever! I suppose you want something to make sure that your threats to Dwerri come true?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” I said. “Can you-?”

“Fix you up? Nothing easier! Ah…” He searched among the jars and cans from which he had selected Shavarri’s love potion yesterday. “This’ll do it,” he said finally, taking up a flat glass vial full of reddish oily liquid. “Why, it even looks like blood. You can put this anywhere that Dwerri might touch it; the lash of his whip would be the best place.”

“What will it do?