Child of the Sun: Leigh Brackett SF Boxed Set (Illustrated). Leigh Brackett
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stared at him. "But, Father! Why?"
The old man spread long blue-white hands. His voice was heavy.
"Because we, the Kraylens, shall have ceased to be."
Campbell didn't say anything for a minute. He sat down on the hide-frame cot and ran his fingers through his black hair.
"Tell me, Father," he said quietly, grimly.
The Kraylen's white crest rippled in the lamplight. "It is not your fight."
Campbell got up. "Look. You've saved my neck more times than I can count. You've accepted me as one of your own. I've been happier here than any—well, skip that. But don't say it isn't my fight."
The pale, triangular old face smiled. But the white crest shook.
"No. There is really no fight. Only death. We're a dying tribe, a mere scrap of old Venus. What matter if we die now—or later?"
Campbell lit a cigarette with quick, sharp motions. His voice was hard. "Tell me, Father. All, and quick."
Opalescent eyes met his. "It is better not."
"I said, 'tell me'!"
"Very well." The old man sighed. "You would hear, after all. You remember the frontier town of Lhi?"
"Remember it!" Campbell's white teeth flashed. "Every dirty stone in it, from the pumping conduits on up. Best place on three planets to fence the hot stuff."
He broke off, suddenly embarrassed. The Kraylen said gently,
"That is your affair, my son. You've been away a long time. Lhi has changed. The Terra-Venusian Coalition Government has taken it for the administration center of Tehara Province."
Campbell's eyes, at mention of the Coalition Government, acquired a hot, hard brightness. He said, "Go on."
The old man's face was cut from marble, his voice stiff and distant.
"There have been men in the swamps. Now word has been sent us. It seems there is coal here, and oil, and certain minerals that men prize. They will drain the swamps for many miles, and work them."
Campbell let smoke out of his lungs, very slowly. "Yeah? And what becomes of you?"
The Kraylen turned away and stood framed in the indigo square of the doorway. The distant drum sobbed and shouted. It was hot, and yet the sweat turned cold on Campbell's body.
The old man's voice was distant and throbbing and full of anger, like the drum. Campbell had to strain to hear it.
"They will take us and place us in camps in the great cities. Small groups of us, so that we are divided and split. Many people will pay to see us, the strange remnants of old Venus. They will pay for our skills in the curing of leshen-skins and the writing of quaint music, and tattooing. We will grow rich."
Campbell dropped the cigarette and ground it on the dirt floor. Knotted veins stood out on his forehead, and his face was cruel. The old man whispered:
"We will die first."
* * * * *
It was a long time since anyone had spoken. The drumming had stopped, but the echo of it throbbed in Campbell's pulses. He looked at his spread, sinewy hands on his knees and swallowed because the veins of his neck were swollen and hurting.
Presently he said, "Couldn't you go further back into the swamps?"
The old Kraylen spoke without moving. He still stood in the doorway, watching the trees sway in the slow wind.
"The Nahali live there. Besides, there is no clean water and no earth for crops. We are not lizard eaters."
"I've seen it happen," said Campbell somberly. "On Earth, and Mars, and Mercury, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Little people driven from their homes, robbed of their way of life, exploited and for the gaping idiots in the trade centers. Little people who didn't care about progress, and making money. Little people who only wanted to live, and breathe, and be let alone."
He got up in a swift savage rush and hurled a gourd of water crashing into a corner and sat down again. He was shivering. The old Kraylen turned.
"Little people like you, my son?"
Campbell shrugged. "Maybe. We'd worked our farm for three hundred years. My father didn't want to sell. They condemned it anyhow. It's under water now, and the dam runs a hell of a big bunch of factories."
"I'm sorry."
Campbell looked up, and his face softened. "I've never understood," he said. "You people are the most law-abiding citizens I ever met. You don't like strangers. And yet I blunder in here, hot on the lam and ugly as a swamp-dragon, and you...."
He stopped. It was probably the excitement that was making his throat knot up like that. The smoke from the lamp stung his eyes. He blinked and bent to trim it.
"You were wounded, my son, and in trouble. Your quarrel with the police was none of ours. We would have helped anyone. And then, while you had fever and your guard was down, you showed that more than your body needed help. We gave you what we could."
"Yeah," said Campbell huskily. He didn't say it, but he knew well enough that what the Kraylens had given him had kept him from blowing his top completely.
Now the Kraylens were going the way of the others, straws swept before the great broom of Progress. Nothing could stop it. Earth's empire surged out across the planets, building, bartering, crashing across time and custom and race to make money and the shining steel cage of efficiency.
A cage wherein a sheep could live happily enough, well-fed and opulent. But Campbell wasn't a sheep. He'd tried it, and he couldn't bleat in tune. So he was a wolf, now, alone and worrying the flock.
Soon there wasn't going to be a place in the Solar System where a man could stand on his own feet and breathe.
He felt stifled. He got up and stood in the doorway, watching the trees stir in the hot indigo gloom. The trees would go. Wells and mines, slag and soot and clattering machinery, and men in sweat-stained shirts laboring night and day to get, to grow, to produce.
Campbell's mouth twisted, bitter and sardonic. He said softly:
"God help the unconstructive!"
The old Kraylen murmured, "What happened to those others, my son?"
Campbell's lean shoulders twitched. "Some of them died. Some of them submitted. The rest...."
He turned, so suddenly that the old man flinched. Campbell's dark eyes had a hot light in them, and his face was sharply alive.
"The rest," he said evenly, "went to Romany."
* * * * *
He talked, then. Urgently, pacing the hut in nervous catlike strides, trying to remember things he had heard and not been very much interested in at the time. When he was through, the Kraylen said:
"It would be better. Infinitely better. But—" He spread his long pale hands, and his white crest drooped. "But there is no time. Government men will come within three days to take us—that was the time set. And since we will not go...."
Campbell thought of the things that had happened to other rebellious tribes. He felt sick. But he made his voice steady.
"We'll hope it's time, Father. Romany is in an orbit around Venus now—I nearly crashed it coming in. I'm going to try, anyhow. If I don't—well, stall as long as you can."
Remembering the drum and the way the men had looked, he didn't think that would be long. He pulled on a loose shirt of green spider-silk, slung the belt of his heavy needle-gun over one shoulder, and picked up his black tunic.
He put his hand on the Kraylen's shoulder and smiled. "We'll take care of it, Father."
The old man's opalescent eyes were shadowed.