Mack Reynolds - The Space Barbarians

We had no time even to boil water. The Thompsons were in pursuit.”

The bedel shrugged.

Don got out, “It is not important. I will be up and around before the day is through. The Thompsons do not dispose of Don of the Clarks quite so easily.”

John reached down and mussed the other’s hair fondly. “That they don’t, Don,” he murmured. “I promise that.”

Don fell into a sleep, and John, not wishing to leave him, drew to one side of the room with the bedel, while Sally sat at her husband’s side. She was a slight girl and now infinitely worried, as she had occasion to be; one seldom recovered from the fleshrot.

John of the Hawks whispered, “What has happened with the strangers since we have been gone?”

The bedel scowled. “Bertram of the Fowlers took the soma.”

“And?”

“And within twenty-four hours his sight has become that of a twenty-five year old clannsman.”

John sucked in air—not that he was greatly surprised.

The bedel said, “Nor is that all. The gnawing pain in his belly is gone. For the first time in long months, it is gone. The guru used some mystic term ‘cancer,’ which not even we bedels and Keepers of the Faith understand. But whatever, the pain is gone.”

“And what else has occurred?” John of the Hawks could sense what was coming, but he must know.

“Bertram has been cast down from the post of Bedel of the Fowlers, and his kilts have been stripped from him, and he is now a clannless one. However, he cares not, no more than Robert of the Fieldings cares, and he was once the boldest raider of Aberdeen.”

“I know,” John said. “What else?”

“Others take the soma, or say they will, and there is great talk against the strangers amongst the Keepers of the Faith and the younger clannsmen, though the women and those elderly enough to feel the burdens of age and sickness speak largely for them.”

John thought about it. “And what do the younger men wish to do with the men from Beyond?”

The bedel said in disgust, “What can be done? Obviously, the guru, at least, is a holy man. He performs miracles.”

“He performs medicine,” John growled. “While we of Caledonia have remained stationary with our banns and our traditions, they have advanced in every direction. The so-called miracles of the guru are simply medicine far in advance of what we know in Aberdeen, or in any phylum, for that matter.”

The bedel was scowling again. “You sound as though you speak against the bann, clannsman. Let me point out to you that it is beyond a simple war cacique to understand all aspects of the Holy and of the Holy Books. It takes long years of study, long years of contemplation, before one can even begin to interpret the true meaning of the Holy Books. I cite a simple example, the first verse from one of the four.

“Now then, lad, it is commonly understood that a stag was an animal of the chase, on one of the worlds Beyond. But tell me, what is a moon, and how does it dance? And above all, what is a Monan’s rill? And these are but simple problems that we bedels and Keepers of the Faith must dwell upon.”

“I don’t know,” John said. “But it is I who wish to preserve the old ways. These so-called holy men will destroy all, and it will result in clannless men such as this Mister of the Harmons stripping us of the products of our lands.”

The bedel said, “Why do you think all this? How do you know?”

“I haven’t the time now to reveal, Bedel of the darks; however, I will tell all at the next Aberdeen muster.”

He turned back to Don, who was breathing hard in his sleep, and stared down at his feverish comrade in blood. He turned again to the bedel. “You are sure it is the fleshrot?”

“I am fairly sure.”

Sally closed her eyes and moaned.

John gripped her shoulder and squeezed. “I have promised Don of the Clarks will survive.”

“You promise more than you can deliver, John of the Hawks,” the bedel grumbled.

John of the Hawks went to his own longhouse and to his assigned quarters and banged on the door.

It was opened by one of the expressionless younger orange clad strangers. The two were remarkably colorless. John wondered, in passing, if taking soma did this to a worshiper at the Shrine of Kalkin.

He said, “I wish to talk to Mister of the Harmons.”

“He has returned to the Revelation ,” the stranger from Beyond said tonelessly. “Aberdeen is not the only town in which we spread the word of Lord Krishna. There are duties elsewhere.”

John said impatiently, “Then Guru of the Marks.”

“The guru is meditating upon the path of the Lord Krishna.”

The other was a man of no more than six feet, a puny creature compared with John of the Hawks. John, irritation, put a hand on the stranger’s chest and pushed him back and to the side.

“It is a matter of great importance,” he growled. He looked about the room. It was furnished quite differently than it had been when he was in residence. Various shiny metal devices and gadgets were here and there. Grey metal cabinets, holding John knew not what, lined the walls of the chamber. There was a high raised hard bed in the room’s middle, which reminded him strongly of the beds the bedels used when surgery must be performed upon the wounded.

The orange clad stranger began to remonstrate with him, albeit in a gentle voice, but at that moment Mark, the guru, entered from, a back room.

He said, with his usual calm dignity, “Ah, my son. You have come at last to take your soma and follow the footsteps of Lord Krishna?”

“No,” John said. “I have not. I have come to ask you use your medicine to cure my blood companion Don of the Clarks.”

“He is ready, then, to take the soma?”

John’s eyes narrowed. “No, he is not.”

The other said mildly, “Then how can I invoke the Lord Krishna in his behalf?”

John said impatiently, “Guru of the Marks, you use your words in double meaning. I am beginning to suspect that such is the custom of all men of religion. The truth! Is it necessary to take soma for you to cure ills incurable by our bedels?”

The guru looked at him for a long moment. Finally, he said, “What is wrong with your friend, my son?”

“A carbine slug in his side. We were on a raid against the Thompsons of the Caithness Phylum.”

“Thou shalt not harm, my son. Evil begets evil.”

John snapped, “Nevertheless, the fleshrot has set in, and our bedels are helpless to cure the fleshrot when it is in the body. An arm or a leg, yes. They can amputate. But not in the depths of the body, and this wound is immediately beneath the lung.”

“Gangrene,” the guru murmured unhappily. “How long since the wound was taken?”

“Three days and more.”

“Too long,” the orange clad assistant said. “Only the autohospital in the Revelation could handle him if the flesh has been gangrenous for that long.”

John’s eyes went from one of them to the other. “What is an autohospital?” he demanded.

The assistant looked at the guru, who said, “The Lord Krishna has seen fit, my son, to provide his followers of the path to the Shrine of Kalkin with the means whereby to cure all ills, save those of time. So it is that we who walk with Lord Krishna live lives free of sickness until we are ready to be gathered to the bosom of Kalkin.”

John snapped, “You still talk with double meaning, Guru of the Marks. But this autohospital will free Don of the Clarks of the fleshrot?”

“Yes, my son. But Harmon has returned with the skimmer of the Revelation and is not to return for a week. By that time our work hers in Aberdeen will be through, for the time, and we will proceed to the next town, leaving the good work here to be continued by those who have taken up the path of Krishna.”