C. C. MacApp, page 1
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Recall Not Earth by C.C. MacApp
Chapter One
HE WAS A fairly tall man, hence considerably taller than the brown-skinned, hairless, wide-faced Dronthen passersby, who skirted wide of him half in scorn and half in prudence. He had the thinness of the derelict. The reddish-blond stubble on his rather prominent chin was at least ten days old. His shaky fingers were stained cinnamon-brown from dron. He kept swallowing and moistening his lips with his tongue, as if he suffered from the thirst-that-was-not-thirst, the chief symptom of dron need. Such symptoms were not surprising—he’d been on the planet Drongail for almost one of its years (slightly shorter than an Earth year), he’d become addicted almost at once, and he had not enjoyed the gentle forgetfulness of the almost narcotic dron for many days now.
He leaned against a wooden building, just inside the mouth of a littered alley, in the shade. This planet’s sun was a little more than his skin could take. The building against which he leaned had no windows below the second story and no entrances except the one heavy-planked flush door. The alley behind him reeked of stale cooking grease, the body odors of more than one alien race, and (most of all) dron. That latter smell he held in vague affection—not only because, when he could get it, dron gave him some measure of comfort, but also because it reminded him of musty hay. That was one of the smells he remembered all the years since Earth.
A bit of paper blew against his bare ankle. He peered down at it (an empty dron-tube wrapper) and kicked it away irritably. When he looked up he saw a half-grown Dronthen boy staring at him from ten paces away. “Observe well, urchin!” he snarled in the local dialect. “Ere you sport a pot belly, we’ll all be extinct. And you shall not behold our like again!”
The stripling blinked and edged farther away.
The man turned and shuffled a few steps into the alley to sit down with his back against the building. For the hundredth time he fumbled in a pocket of his ragged coat, brought out a badly wrinkled slip of paper, smoothed it out, and peered at the writing. “John Braysen,” it read, “it’s urgent that I see you. I’ll be at the north end of the alley you live in, two hours after noon tomorrow. B. Lange.”
He thrust the note back in his pocket. “John Braysen,” he muttered, as if his own name were strange, “Commodore Johnathan Braysen. Commanding Officer, Scout Wing, Terran Space Force.” How long since he’d called himself anything but “John”? How long since he’d even been asked if he had a last name? Such records as were kept on Drongail (or on the last several alien worlds he’d drifted to) said merely, “John, native of Terra. Currently without citizenship. Vagrant. No listed crimes. No listed skills.”
And how long since he’d seen Bart Lange? Four Terran years? No—they’d been together as mercenaries with the Hohdan Fleet, that time more than thirty of the surviving men had died, and that had been five years, give or take a few months, after the Destruction. Three years ago, then.
John murmured in vague bewilderment. Was the Destruction only eight years ago? That would leave him only thirty-seven—and he certainly felt older than that! It all seemed so long ago, so terribly long ago.
He wondered why Bart Lange wanted to see him. For the first few years after the Destruction, the only survivors—fewer than five hundred men of the Fleet—had stuck together. And then, when the necessities of survival in alien space split them apart, they’d looked forward eagerly to any reunion. Later, with the steady growth of despair and hopelessness, they’d mostly become apathetic about seeing one another. Vaguely, he wondered how many were still alive. The last he’d heard, a hundred or so had still been serving as mercenaries with various alien fleets; and the whereabouts of perhaps sixty or seventy more was definitely known. The rest—however many remained—were lost, scattered on backward worlds like Drongail.
He was surprised that Lange had been able to locate him at all—though, of course, cargo ships of many worlds stopped at Drongail, the source of dron. If Lange had any money—and he must, to make his way here—he’d be good for a touch. Vaguely John wondered whether he shouldn’t spend the money on food, some simple garments (though an unexpected pang knifed through him at the thought of parting with this ancient coat of Earth origin); pay off some of the indigent’s indebtedness at the grimy public flophouse where he lived. He could kick the dron habit, he thought, if he really made up his mind. But why bother? It wouldn’t make any difference that mattered.
He stared idly at the line of shadow down the middle of the alley. Not time yet for Lange (if he showed up at all). John let his head droop forward, and dozed.
“John! John?”
John raised his head, blinking away sleep. It took his eyes a minute to focus on the stocky man in the neat blue suit. No—a zipperall garment, cut to the Fleet undress pattern! He struggled to his feet. Now that he was actually looking at Bart again, memories flooded back. Emotion welled up in him, tightened his throat, tried to burst out in sobs. He fought them down, blinked away tears, and seized the outthrust hand. “Bart! It’s been so… It’s wonderful to see you, Bart!”
Bart’s face was serious and a little shocked. John felt himself flush. “Yes, I’m a dron-head, Bart. An indigent; a—a public charge. I get my meals, such as they are, and a pad to sleep on. Once in a while they take some of us out for a day or two of ditch-digging or levee-building. But—” He let go of Lange’s hand and stood looking at the man. “You look great, Bart! I’m happy to see you that way. Are you still a mercenary? With whom? Have you—” He looked Bart over. “You don’t seem to have suffered any serious wounds.”
Lange continued to stare at him anxiously. Then he said, “I was with Hohd again for a two-thousand-hour hitch recently. I came through in one piece and got paid off, so I’m prosperous. They didn’t want me seen on Hohd just then, so I drifted. Right now I’m with a—well, with a colony on a planet called Akiel. I’m gathering together all the men I can, John—there are over twenty of us now, traveling and tracing, trying to bring the Fleet back together. The… ruler of Akiel wants us. All of us.”
John stared at the other. “You know most of us have given that up, Bart. Killing, and more killing—grabbing planets, raiding, hauling away loot from worlds we haven’t the slightest grudge against to other worlds we don’t care a damn about. I don’t think you’ll get many.”
Lange said earnestly, “I think we will, John. This time there’s a real reason!”
John sighed. “I’m surprised to hear you talk that way. The last time I saw you…” He shrugged. If Lange didn’t feel the uselessness, the emptiness, there was no sense in arguing. “Akiel. I never heard of the place. What is there about it to, well, inspire a man? Is this some great cause you’ve latched on to?” He paused, remembering. “We looked for causes, didn’t we? And we found a seller’s market. Trained, disciplined, we were—so dauntless we became a legend almost overnight. Because we didn’t give a whoop whether we lived or died, just so long as we could find, or think we’d found, something worth dying for. But it wore off, Bart. At least, it did for me. And I thought it had for you too.”
Lange glanced up and down the alley and bent a little closer. “This colony I’m with now is Chelki, John.”
John stared down at the shorter man. “Chelki? You mean it’s in—in the Vulmot Empire?”
“No, John. These are free Chelki—a colony the Vuls don’t even know exists! There’s an Omniarch almost twenty-two hundred years old, a couple hundred years older than any of his descendants, who are the colony. He’s a Vul slave who escaped with a few ambions and covered his tracks well!”
Things suddenly churned inside John. He hadn’t known there was so much feeling left in him. Slowly he turned and stared half-seeingly at the Dronthens who passed the mouth of the alley, peering in wide-eyed to see two of the aliens called “men.” Finally he sighed and turned back to Lange. “I don’t think I’d even want to hit the Vuls, Bart. Oh, I’ll hate them as long as I draw a breath—I doubt you could find one of us who won’t—but, after all, it wasn’t individual Vulmoti who did it. And (I can say this now) we more or less asked for it. We blundered into space we knew nothing about. And when we found something we should have run from, we tried to fight instead, took up the challenge as if we were the mightiest power in the galaxy. After already being stupid enough to reveal where our home world was! And… Well, I doubt that the Vul commander who hit the Solar System knew that it was our only system.”
Lange’s face was hard now. “We agreed about that once, John—but I know more now. This fugitive Chelki has had spy contacts with the Vulmot Empire for two thousand years, John—two thousand years! He knew, shortly after it happened, about our little skirmish and the quick kill of Earth. He’s told me the reason, the actual Vul decision. Having seen how we fought against odds, they didn’t want us developing to a powerful empire. And they decided we weren’t suitable to be enslaved or perpetually subjugated. They knew they were killing us, John—and they spent a lot of time making sure there was no breeding stock left. High-up heads rolled because we, a tiny traction of the Fleet, escaped. They laughed with relief when they found there hadn’t been any women among us. They searched the Solar System and its vicinity meticulously to make sure there were no other survivors!”
John found he was trembling. He forced his fists to unclench. After a minute he sighed. “Even s
Lange’s face twisted with emotion. He stepped forward and seized handfuls of John’s coat. “Listen to me, damn it—I’m not talking about some righteous crusade! There are women alive! More than a hundred of them, and practically all of child-bearing age! This Omniarch on Akiel knows where they are! He’s willing to help us reach them!”
For just a moment blood pounded in John’s temples. Then it subsided, and he laughed bitterly. “That old nonsense, Bart? You’ve fallen for that again? You must be cracking up. Don’t you remember all the crazy rumors, the wild-goose chases we went on like a horde of rutting tomcats? What have you been— Look, the only thing I’m hooked on is dron. It befuddles your wits a little, and eventually eats away at your guts, but it doesn’t make a child of you!”
Lange stepped back with a hard grin. “Listen to me, Commodore Johnathan Braysen, whose name was a byword, a few years ago, in alien military organizations all over this sector of the galaxy. You who outwitted all the brains of the Vul Task Force and tied them up in knots, using just a handful of small ships. You who could have had whole fleets at your disposal just by nodding and signing your name. The Chelki I’m dealing with knows all about you and says you’re the man we need; you out of the bunch. He says you are the one who can rally us together.” Lange paused for breath. “He was scheming for two millennia, long before Earth sprouted wings, let alone null drives—long before Columbus sailed three wooden ships across an ocean that hasn’t so much as a living minnow in it now. We came as a windfall to him. He engineered the rescue of these women. He caused a force of slave Chelki to land on Earth with forged authorization and take a few thousand females, mostly young, for biological experimentation. He arranged for some of them to be spirited away, and the records changed to hide the discrepancy. Look, John—a lot of Chelki died protecting that deception. He’s described the whole thing in detail to me, and shown me pictures!”
John felt a chill. Lange looked so sincere; yet… “Bart, be sensible. Does it stand to reason that this Chelki plotter, even if he is what he claims, would go to those lengths just to help an unimportant race survive? What are we to him?”
Lange snarled an obscenity. “Can’t you see, John, we impressed the Vuls so much that they went to real pains to exterminate us. You don’t exterminate anything that’s not a threat. The Omniarch sees us as a long-range threat to the Vuls. We’re not the whole of his plan—I don’t doubt he’s got a hundred other little things going. But he wants us to survive! We’ve already demonstrated that we stack up very well, as warriors, against other species. Look at it from the Omniarch’s viewpoint!”
John, the blood beginning to pound in his temples again, stared at Lange. Could all this actually be true—a fact, not just another desperate dream?
It sounded so improbable. Still, the chance—the bare, infinitesimal, incredible, long-abandoned blessed chance…
Suddenly John was weeping.
Chapter Two
THE SMALL SHIP (a patched-up old Unarmed Scout retired from the Hohdan Fleet and given to Bart Lange as part payment for his services) broke out of null about a tenth of a light-year from Akiel’s sun, took bearings, made a short zeroing-in hop, and broke out again practically in orbit around the planet. It was a blue-green world—vastly jungled in places, grassy in others, with no really large seas but with many small ones and a myriad of lakes and rivers. There were minor ice caps at both poles. Only a low small brown areas near the equator interrupted the verdure. The atmosphere was rather thick, considering the surface gravity of slightly less than one gee, and the hothouse effect obviously made for temperate climates. There were no impressive mountain ranges.
No spaceport facilities were visible even from as low as five thousand feet.
Bart Lange punched out a landing program on the simple computer keyboard, scanned the playback on the data screen, and turned to John. “If any unwanted visitors showed up here, they’d actually have to land to find any signs of technology. No radio, no visiocasts, no exposed factories or dwellings. Not even any centralized power sources to spill detectable energy into space. Anyway, this star’s not near any well-traveled routes. The Omniarch tells me that in all the time he’s been here only four exploration ships have broken out within mass-detector range, and only one of them came close enough in to take pictures.”
John—considerably neater now, and less shaky of hand, though there were still moments when he felt the dron need—ran his eyes over the small ship’s instruments. “If they keep mass detectors in orbit around their sun, they must really be masters of miniaturization. That one blip in the corner of screen H-four could be a chunk of rock the size of your fist. How do their detectors report, anyway? Do they have a lock-on to the planet so they can beam transmissions in?”
Bart nodded. “Right. To intercept a beam you’d have to pass directly in line at the moment of squirting.” He reached up to turn knobs manually, zooming in a view of a grass plot below. “Can you spot the landing field?”
“No.”
Bart grinned. “As soon as we’re in and under cover, they’ll resod what marks we leave. If there are any precautions they don’t take, I can’t think of them!”
The ship slowed, hovered, then settled slowly to within inches of the ground. Views on screens began to move sideward. Then the hazed, rather yellowish sunlight was blocked off. An overhead viewscreen showed a shifting image of large spade-shaped leaves.
And then they were over a concrete ramp and slanting underground. Daylight, behind them, was cut off as doors closed, and artificial light took over. The ship moved a little way and settled to a concrete floor.
Bart jabbed keyboard studs, and air began to hiss in. There was a mild pungency, possibly from traces of ozone, and a leafy smell. The hissing faded quickly.
Bart eyed John for a moment, as if to make sure he was over the dron shakes, then opened hatches. John, peering out, got glimpses of vague dark-furred forms—then a big Full Male Chelki paced into sight.
John peered at the being. This was a patriarch, all right! He must weigh eight hundred pounds. The skin on the face was like gray leather, and four legs each as thick as a man’s thigh.
John remembered the first time he’d seen a Chelki. It had been a shock. They had legs not too different from those, say, of a hairy bovine, and a barrel-shaped body, but there any similarity ended.
The neck and head weren’t in the right place at all—they grew out of a mound atop the middle of the body. From this mound also grew two arms, good-sized ones, ending in large, hairy, deft hands with three fingers and a thumb each. The feet weren’t hoofed; they had toes like an ostrich’s. There was no tail, and no chest at the front end of the body; in fact, you could distinguish the front end only by the way the feet aimed and the head faced (though the rather long neck could twist enough to let a Chelki face completely to his rear). The organs of elimination and reproduction were below the body, though you couldn’t see that at a glance. The face was perhaps not humanoid, but it wasn’t too far from it.
The thin-lipped mouth opened and produced precise, faintly accented English. “Welcome to Akiel, Commodore Johnathan Braysen. I have waited long for this day.” The voice was deep, slow, mellow. “Let us go to a place where you can sit down.”
As they crossed the concrete floor of the underground hangar, they passed a number of Chelki of much smaller, lighter build—neuter-gendered workers who showed no curiosity about John. There were also individuals of similar body form but obviously more active minds; their heads were actually bigger, and they looked at John closely, inclined their heads in a sort of greeting, blinked slowly at the Omniarch (a sign of deference, John knew) and in some cases carried tools or instruments that marked them as technicians, not simple workers. Then there were a few individuals almost as big as the Omniarch himself, but with claws on toes and fingers, and short snouts on their heads equipped with combative-looking teeth. These were the Warriors—male gender, though they did not breed—and they carried pistols in belts or cinches that circled their round bodies. There was one other Full Male besides the Omniarch, younger and smaller than the latter, but no females in sight.
