Young Bleys - Childe Cycle 09 Read online

  He was tight as a bowstring. Now that he had arrived, his plans, the Bible and other books he had studied on the way, seemed like fragile things for his hopes of making new friends to depend upon. The reality of finally being here was like stepping into a new universe.

  The terminal waiting room was a large, circular place with light silver carpeting, as opposed to the familiar dark green of the upholstery on the overstuffed chairs of the lounge; and a number of people were standing there waiting for those who were landing. The red-haired cabin attendant went with him, saying she would point out his uncle to him when they got there. She had, herself, been provided with a picture of Henry.

  He was standing a little aside from the others who were waiting when they found him; and Bleys' hopes sank a little at the sight of him. He had none of Ezekiel's open face and engaging smile. This was a man of surprisingly indeterminate age, whose hair had not so much grayed as become drab with approaching middle age. Certainly he was more than twenty-eight years old.

  He was tall, thin almost to the point of emaciation, with a narrow, potentially unyielding face, and an impatient air about him.

  His clothes were universal working clothes—rough dark pants, and rough dark shirt, under a leather-like jacket of some black material. The bones of his face were so narrow that the* features of it seemed pinched to a sharpness like that of an ax-blade. He had dark eyes which focused like twin weapon barrels on the attendant and Bleys as they came up to him.

  "Bleys," said the cabin attendant, stooping down a little to speak into Bleys' ear, "this is your uncle, Henry MacLean. Mr. MacLean?"

  "The same," answered the man. His voice was somewhere between rusty and harsh in an otherwise light baritone. "I thank the Lord for your kindness, attendant. I'll take care of him, now."

  "Honored to meet you at last, sir," said Bleys. "No need for frills, boy," said Henry MacLean. "Come with me.

  He turned around and led the way out of the terminal waiting room with such briskness that, although his height was only a few inches greater than the average, he set a pace that had Bleys trotting to keep up with him.

  Outside the terminal, they went down a slope into a long underground tunnel and stepped onto a floating strip that moved them along; at first, slowly, then at faster and faster speeds, apparently accompanied by a flow of air that moved with them, since there was no feeling of a breeze in their face.

  Still, so swiftly did they end up moving that Bleys guessed they had covered a number of kilometers within several minutes by the time the strip slowed again and they were let off at the far end before wide, glass doors that opened automatically. They stepped out into a gray, cool day with a stiff breeze moving damp air under low-hanging clouds that threatened rain.

  "Sir! Uncle! said Bleys, trotting beside him, "I have luggage—"

  "That will already have been delivered to me," answered Henry, without looking down at him, "and let me hear no more 'sirs' from you, boy—Bleys. 'Sir' implies rank; and there's no rank, in our church."

  "Yes, Uncle," said Bleys.

  They continued for some distance, until the parked vehicles thinned out. At last they came to a number of other vehicles, motorized, but with wheels, rather than the skirts around their bottom edges that marked the hovercraft or magnetic-field style of transport which made up most of the ranks they had passed through so far.

  Eventually, beyond these, they came at last to unmotorized transports. These varied from carts to wagons, and finally to something that was neither cart nor wagon, but something of both, but which like the rest had a team of goats harnessed to it and tethered in place. Beside it stood Bleys' single small bag.

  "How did they get it here so quickly, Uncle?" asked Bleys, fascinated to see the expensive case glittering beside the unpainted, goat-driven cart.

  "They drop off a luggage container on landing, before taxiing to the terminal," answered his uncle, shortly. "It's done automatically. Put your bag in the back and we'll cover it with a tarp. It'll likely rain before we're home. You and I sit in the cab, up front."

  Bleys moved to help; but his uncle was too quick for him. The bag was loaded and covered before Bleys had done more than begin trying to help.

  "In the other door with you, boy," said Henry, opening the left side door of the wooden cab for himself. Bleys ran around

  and let himself in on the right side, closing the door behind him and securing it with a loop of rope that seemed to act as a door-lock.

  Within, the cab was much more obviously home-built than it had appeared to be, looked at from the outside. It was like a closed wagon on the inside, with cut-out holes for the reins in a dashboard below a windscreen made of some transparent material—not glass, for it was bent and creased in places.

  Reins to the goats ran through the holes. He and his uncle were seated on what seemed like an old bench, thinly covered with something like the tarp they had used to cover the luggage in the open back of the vehicle, and padded underneath the tarp-material with straw or dried grass, of which ends stuck out. The back, where there was a backrest to their seat, was similarly padded.

  Bleys had been eager to get into the cab. He was dressed for shipboard. In fact, he had never owned anything but warm-weather clothes in his life, since his whole life had been spent either inside buildings or at places that were at a season of summer temperatures. But the cab, aside from the fact that no wind blew through it, was just as damp and cold as it had been outside.

  He was shivering.

  "Here!" said Henry MacLean, gruffly. He picked up what turned out to be a jacket, not unlike his own, but smaller— though still too long in the sleeves and wide in the shoulders for Bleys. He helped Bleys into it with one arm. Bleys gratefully closed it about him, buttoning the front up tightly, with its row of awkward, primitive buttons.

  "Thought you wouldn't have anything to wear," said Henry. For a moment there was a blunting of the edge to his harsh voice. "Think you'll be warm enough, now?"

  "Yes, Uncle," said Bleys; and with the warmth to prompt him, his mind began to work again. A lifetime of surviving by giving grown-ups the responses they thought proper and correct brought the answer to Bleys' lips without conscious thought. "I thank God for your kindness, Uncle."

  Henry, who had picked up the reins and looked ahead again, stopped abruptly. His head snapped around to stare at Bleys.

  "Who told you to say that?" His voice was totally harsh again, and threatening.

  Bleys stared back at him with a look of utter innocence. Actually Henry himself had given him the words, with Henry's opening speech to the lounge attendant. But the question triggered a panic in him. How could he ever explain to this almost-stranger how he had learned to pick up phrases from adults and use them back to the same people?

  "The woman," he lied, "the woman who took care of me said that that was the proper thing to say, here."

  "What woman?" demanded Henry.

  "The woman who took care of me," said Bleys. "She took care of me, arranged for my meals and my clothes and everything. She was from Harmony. She'd married somebody on New Earth, I guess. Her name was Laura."

  Henry stared hard at him, as if his eyes were searchlights which would illuminate and uncover any lie. But Bleys had had too much experience at looking completely blank, misunderstood, and innocent. He stared back.

  "Well," said Henry, turning back his head once more toward the front of the cart. He gave the reins a shake that started the goats to moving. There were eight of them, harnessed in pairs, pulling the cart; and they moved it, it seemed, with comparative ease. But it was strange to Bleys to feel the jolting of the wheels of the vehicle on the surface over which they were passing, used as he was to hovercraft and magnetic-floatcraft.

  "We'll talk more about this woman, then," said Henry.

  In spite of his last words, however, Henry MacLean said no more for a long time, merely concentrating on guiding his goat team and the goat cart along various roads leading away from the spaceport
.

  At first the road was like a massive ribbon of half a dozen colors, draped over the surface of the ground. All around the land was bare, not even trees showing; only in the distance, occasionally, they would see one of the landing terminals.

  All Bleys' senses were alert, his eyes, his ears, his nose

  recorded the sights, sounds and smells of the goat-cart, the road surface beneath their wheels and the day outside the windscreen and cab of the cart.

  They were traveling in the lane on the far left of the highway, the darkest colored of all the stripes that made up a number of different parallel roadways leading away from the spaceport and obviously designed for different vehicles.

  At the far right, the striped road was so wide that Bleys was not able to see clearly the vehicles on it. But at its further edge must be the near-white surface, seamless and almost electronically smooth, above which Bleys could almost see magnetic float vehicles traveling. These were disk-shaped. They moved, by contrast with the goat-cart, at blinding speed; so that in any case it would have been hard to get a good look at them.

  Not that Bleys needed to know what they looked like, since he had traveled in many such during the earlier years of his life, going with his mother from one hotel to another, or from a hotel to some palatial private home.

  Just in from the strip for float vehicles was the one for hovercraft. Next was the strip for small passenger-carrying, wheeled vehicles that were also motorized, and then, next closest, the one for large, motorized transport-carrying wheeled vehicles.

  Last of all was their strip, the one for unmotorized wheeled vehicles, with the slowest, like the goat cart, at the extreme edge.

  In between the goat-cart and the wheeled vehicle strips were a number of other unmotorized vehicles of varying types. They ranged from other versions of goat wagons like Henry Mac-Lean's to odd vehicles, such as one whose wheels were moved by two men pumping a horizontal lever, see-saw fashion, between them. In among all the rest, in and out, were bicycles, some of them with carts pulled behind them.

  As their own cart moved along, strip after strip peeled off from the roadway. First to go was the near-white strip above which the magnetic vehicles moved. It headed off over the horizon to their right. Shortly thereafter, the strip for hovercraft also parted company with them. It was some longer time—whether it was a longer distance or not, Bleys was in no position to judge—before the two strips carrying motorized vehicles also left them. They were at last traveling on a single strip for unmotorized traffic, though this was still at least five vehicles wide.

  Finally, however, even this strip also began to narrow, as the carts and wagons on it turned down side roads. A few trees were beginning to appear on the horizon now; and Bleys, who in his omnivorous reading had also gotten into books on trees, recognized most of these as variforms of earth florae—mainly the softwoods and conifers. Only occasionally was a variform hardwood maple, elm, oak, or ironwood tree seen growing among them.

  Now as the traffic dwindled down to almost nothing, the trees moved in, and soon they were passing through what seemed to be almost solid forest with only an occasional open area of grassy meadow, or an occasional valley with a small river. Now they were headed uphill; although the goats pulling Henry's goat-cart showed no sign of the extra effort this must require.

  It was only when they had the road almost completely to themselves, that Henry MacLean spoke again.

  "This woman," he said, glancing briefly down at Bleys and then back at the road, "what else did she tell you?"

  "Stories mainly, Uncle," said Bleys, "about David and Goliath. About Moses and the Ten Commandments. Stories about the kings and prophets."

  "Do you remember any of this?" demanded Henry. "What do you remember of the story of David and Goliath?"

  Bleys took a deep breath and began to talk in the tone of voice with which he had kept visitors to his mother entertained. Hope rose in him at the chance to show off this early to this new uncle. He spoke in a solemn, steady utterance that made every word plain.

  The words flowed freely from his memory:

  "—And there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines" said Bleys, "named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span ..."

  He was aware of Henry's eyes on him—but they gave him no clue. Bleys went on.

  ". . . And he had an helmet of brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass.

  "And he had greaves of brass upon his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders.

  "And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron; and one bearing a shield went before him."

  Out of the corners of his eyes, Bleys could still see Henry's face, unchanged. Bleys felt his heart sink. But he kept bis voice confident and went on.

  "... And he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel, and said unto them, Why are ye come out to set your battle in array? am not I a Philistine, and ye servants to Saul? choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me.

  "If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me, then will we be your servants; but if I prevail against him, and kill him, then shall ye be our servants, and serve us.

  "And the Philistine said, I defy the armies of Israel this day; give me a man, that we may fight together.

  "When Saul and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed, and greatly afraid ..."

  Henry MacLean was staring fixedly at Bleys, who continued to watch the man out of the comers of his eyes while pretending to gaze ahead out through the windshield. The reins hung lax in Henry's hands, but the goats continued, keeping directly down the road as they had been doing. Bleys went on:

  "... Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem-Judah, whose name was Jesse : . ."

  He continued quoting. Henry continued to listen without a change of expression; and the cart continued without direction directly down the road under the lowering gray sky, the clouds of which were now darkening and threatening rain.

  Bleys had had experience in holding an audience, and he knew how with tone and voice to work up to the climax of a story. Now he was getting to the climax of the account of the combat between David and Goliath, the Philistine. Henry should be showing some reaction now if he was ever going to; but he showed none. Bleys' voice changed accordingly, rising a bit in tone and the words speeding up:

  "... Then said David to the Philistine, Thou contest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but 1 come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, who thou hast defied.

  "This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand; and I will smite thee, and take thine head from thee; and I will give the carcases of the host of the Philistines this day unto the fowls of the air, and to the wild beasts of the earth; that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.

  "And all this assembly shall know that the Lord saveth not with sword and spear: for the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hands."

  Henry's face had not changed.

  "And it came to pass, when the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.

  "And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.

  "So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling, and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David.

  "Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith. And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled."

  Bleys was openly watching Henry now, but Henry's face was as unchanged as the cart around them.

  "..
. And the men of Israel and of Judah arose, and shouted, and pursued the Philistines, until thou come to the valley, and to the gates of Ekron. And the wounded of the Philistines fell down by the way to Shaaraim, even unto Gath, and unto Ekron.

  "And the children of Israel returned from chasing after the Philistines, and they spoiled their tents ..."

  Bleys stopped reciting. He turned and looked directly at Henry. For a long moment the other merely stared back at him. Then, as if suddenly waking up, he jerked his head, gathered up the goat reins and turned his attention to the road before them, chucking the reins to urge the goats temporarily to a trot, which gradually dwindled as they went on, until they were back in their walking pace again.

  Meanwhile he continued to stare straight ahead and say nothing.

  "Was that the way it actually was, Uncle?" asked Bleys at last, out of a desperate need to break the silence.

  For a moment it seemed that Henry had not heard him. Then he drew a deep breath.

  "There are no miracles nowadays!" he said violently to the windscreen, as if Bleys was not even there. "No! No miracles!"

  But then he turned and looked at Bleys.

  "Yes, boy,' he said, "that's how it was. As it is written, in the First Book of Samuel in the seventeenth chapter."

  "I thought so," said Bleys softly, for now the time for histrionics was past. He had had some success, after all. All this, and all that was yet to come from him, was simply a basis upon which perhaps he could build a better relationship. "I knew you'd be able to tell me for certain."

  But Henry said nothing, driving the goat cart ahead.

  Bleys let the silence continue again for a good time. Finally, he ventured another timid feeler.

  "Would you like me to tell you what I know about Moses and the Ten Commandments?" he asked.