Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) 📕

machine, twitching and whimpering. They had heard him, out in the tunnels, and with slow caution they entered and stood over him and watched his spasms jerk toward stillness.

They were tall and well-formed, the Janyard rebels⁠—Earth had sent her best out to colonize the Sagittarian worlds, three hundred years ago. But the long cruel struggle, conquering and building and adapting to planets that never were and never could be Earth, had changed them, hardened their metal and frozen something in their souls.

Ostensibly it was a quarrel over tariff and trade rights which had led to their revolt against the Empire; actually, it was a new culture yelling to life, a thing born of fire and loneliness and the great empty reaches between the stars, the savage rebellion of a mutant child. They stood impassively watching the body until it lay quiet. Then one of them stooped over and removed the shining glassy helmet.

“He must have taken it for something he could use against us,” said the Janyard, turning the helmet in his hands; “but it wasn’t adapted to his sort of life. The old dwellers here looked human, but I don’t think it went any deeper than their skins.”

The woman commander looked down with a certain pity. “He was a brave man,” she said.

“Wait⁠—he’s still alive, ma’m⁠—he’s sitting up⁠—”

Daryesh forced the shaking body to hands and knees. He felt its sickness, wretched and cold in throat and nerves and muscles, and he felt the roiling of fear and urgency in the brain. These were enemies. There was death for a world and a civilization here. Most of all, he felt the horrible numbness of the nervous system, deaf and dumb and blind, cut off in its house of bone and peering out through five weak senses.⁠ ⁠…

Vwyrdda, Vwyrdda, he was a prisoner in a brain without a telepathy transceiver lobe. He was a ghost reincarnated in a thing that was half a corpse!

Strong arms helped him to his feet. “That was a foolish thing to try,” said the woman’s cool voice.

Daryesh felt strength flowing back as the nervous and muscular and endocrine systems found a new balance, as his mind took over and fought down the gibbering madness which had been Laird. He drew a shuddering breath. Air in his nostrils after⁠—how long? How long had he been dead?

His eyes focused on the woman. She was tall and handsome. Ruddy hair spilled from under a peaked cap, wide-set blue eyes regarded him frankly out of a face sculptured in clean lines and strong curves and fresh young coloring. For a moment he thought of Ilorna, and the old sickness rose⁠—then he throttled it and looked again at the woman and smiled.

It was an insolent grin, and she stiffened angrily. “Who are you, Solman?” she asked.

The meaning was dear enough to Daryesh, who had his⁠—host’s⁠—memory patterns and linguistic habits as well as those of Vwyrdda. He replied steadily, “Lieutenant John Laird of the Imperial Solar Navy, at your service. And your name?”

“You are exceeding yourself,” she replied with frost in her voice. “But since I will wish to question you at length⁠ ⁠… I am Captain Joana Rostov of the Janyard Fleet. Conduct yourself accordingly.”

Daryesh looked around him. This wasn’t good. He hadn’t the chance now to search Laird’s memories in detail, but it was clear enough that this was a force of enemies. The rights and wrongs of a quarrel ages after the death of all that had been Vwyrdda meant nothing to him, but he had to learn more of the situation, and be free to act as he chose. Especially since Laird would presently be reviving and start to resist.

The familiar sight of the machines was at once steadying and unnerving. There were powers here which could smash planets! It looked barbaric, this successor culture, and in any event the decision as to the use of this leashed hell had to be his. His head lifted in unconscious arrogance. His! For he was the last man of Vwyrdda, and they had wrought the machines, and the heritage was his.

He had to escape.

Joana Rostov was looking at him with an odd blend of hard suspicion and half-frightened puzzlement. “There’s something wrong about you, Lieutenant,” she said. “You don’t behave like a man whose project has just gone to smash. What was that helmet for?”

Daryesh shrugged. “Part of a control device,” he said easily. “In my excitement I failed to adjust it properly. No matter. There are plenty of other machines here.”

“What use to you?”

“Oh⁠—all sorts of uses. For instance, that one over there is a nucleonic disintegrator, and this is a shield projector, and⁠—”

“You’re lying. You can’t know any more about this than we do.”

“Shall I prove it?”

“Certainly not. Come back from there!”

Coldly, Daryesh estimated distances. He had all the superb psychosomatic coordination of his race, the training evolved through millions of years, but the sub-cellular components would be lacking in this body. Still⁠—he had to take the chance.

He launched himself against the Janyard who stood beside him. One hand chopped into the man’s larynx, the other grabbed him by the tunic and threw him into the man beyond. In the same movement, Daryesh stepped over the falling bodies, picked up the machine rifle which one had dropped, and slammed over the switch of the magnetic shield projector with its long barrel.

Guns blazed in the dimness. Bullets exploded into molten spray as they hit that fantastic magnetic field. Daryesh, behind it, raced through the door and out the tunnel.

They’d be after him in seconds, but this was a strong long-legged body and he was getting the feel of it. He ran easily, breathing in coordination with every movement, conserving his strength. He couldn’t master control of the involuntary functions yet, the nervous system was too different, but he could last for a long while at this pace.

He ducked into a remembered side passage. A rifle spewed a rain of slugs after him as someone came through the magnetic field. He chuckled