Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena

The herd scattered, shrieking and abandoning the dead and maimed on the bottom of the gully.

Mada threw herself on Ave Mar’s breast and sobbed her heart out.

Toni Fae offered his hand to his friend and saviour.

In the corner of his eye, Ave noticed one more Faetoid at the cave entrance who was evidently intending to attack Gor Terr from behind.

He promptly sprang to the rescue, but Gor Terr’s huge arm held him back.

“This is Dzin, a female. She helped me to r-rescue you.”

Mada stared in amazement at the shaggy creature, who was not hiding her delight at Gor Terr’s strength and fearlessness.

When Quest lifted off for space, the body of Kutsi Merc was lying in an underground corridor. But the pool of blood under him did not dry up, as if the stiletto-pierced heart was still bleeding. Suddenly, Kutsi Merc’s hand twitched, fell on the wound and stanched it. The blood coagulated and stopped flowing.

It was a long time before Kutsi Merc moved again. Not one of many millions of Faetians could have survived his condition; not a single one except Kutsi Merc himself.

Kutsi Merc came from a roundhead family who had fled the continent of the Superiors after the Uprising of Justice was defeated. Yar Jupi was only beginning the Blood Bath there. Kutsi was still a small boy without a name of his own. Kutsi’s father, Khrom Merc, suspected of being sympathetic to the Doctrine of Justice, was earmarked for elimination by the Blood Guard. The Mercs were poor and could not afford to escape by ship. The three of them made an incredible journey on a raft knocked together by Khrom Merc. After harrowing days at sea, enduring storms that swept away their meagre provisions and a lull that brought an intolerable thirst, they avoided pursuit (none of the Blood Guard ever thought of looking for a raft in the ocean!) until finally, emaciated and at the end of their tether, they reached the coast of Danjab. But no one there had prepared a warm welcome for the refugees. They could not even find work in the fields and workshops of the proprietors, who were indifferent to anything that did not promise gain.

Reduced to desperation by poverty, Khrom Merc steeled himself for what he would have formerly rejected with disgust: he decided to make money out of his deformed little son.

Kutsi had two hearts. This “deformity” is exceedingly rare. On the continent of the Superiors, the parents had kept quiet about their son’s abnormality, afraid that he might be pronounced unfit and destroyed.

But here, on the continent of the Culturals, anything that could arouse even morbid curiosity could be a source of profit.

They began exhibiting the little boy at show-booths. Crowds of the curious came rolling in. And each spectator felt himself entitled to feel the naked, terrified “monster”. He was roughly turned round, cold tubes were applied to his chest and back, or ears were pressed to his skin in a repulsive manner. He was made to squat, dance to general guffaws and shouts, then again he was examined and auscultated. The rubbernecks shook their heads in bewilderment, marvelled and went away to tell, exaggerating wildly, about the weird monster they had seen with their own eyes.

The enterprising Khrom Merc managed to earn so much that he became the owner, first of a small workshop, then of big ones in which thousands of Faetians were employed by him.

Kutsi Merc grew up, remembering with shame and revulsion the days when his deformity had been “put on show”. However, not only his father profited by it. Soon, it transpired that the little boy was becoming uncommonly strong and tough. By tacit agreement between the son and his parents, his two hearts now became a family secret so as not to attract a wearisome curiosity about the boy in school. When he was given a new name on his coming-of-age (he was called Khrom-Merc Junior), he was named Kutsi (Shorty) because of his ungainly shape as a result of his having a double heart.

Kutsi soon grasped that he could make a virtue of his deformity. During the humiliating career of the “show-booth freak”, Kutsi Merc developed the traits of character that were to decide his profession.

Unsociable, cunning, venomous, hating the Superiors across the ocean, he possessed rare strength and stamina. He caught the attention of the Special Service. He was found suitable for intelligence work. His irreproachable knowledge of barbarian mores and the barbarian language enabled him to carry out many dangerous transoceanic assignments (but not on a raft any more).

Making his way up the secret ladder, intelligent and self-effacing, rational and decisive, the son of a proprietor and in no way sympathetic to the Doctrine of Justice, he came to enjoy a position of trust among the big proprietors who were selecting convenient rulers for themselves.

Dobr Mar’s predecessor had been so afraid of a disintegration war that he had been ready to give way to Dictator Yar Jupi, and so he had become useless to the proprietors. Kutsi Merc was able at that time to warn “the Ruler’s friend”, Dobr Mar, on what terms he could himself become Ruler, by being the first to start a disintegration war. That was the only way the proprietors, who were members of the Great Circle, thought of dealing with the proprietors of the Blood Council.

On becoming Ruler, Dobr Mar manoeuvred skilfully on the brink of war. When his re-election fell due and he had to take the prescribed step, he sent Kutsi on a diversionary escapade, even risking his own son’s life in his personal interests. Kutsi Merc was such an eminent spy that he could have refused the mission. But ever since childhood he had had his own score to settle with the Superiors. He could forgive them neither the Blood Bath, nor the misfortunes of his own family, nor the oppression of the roundheads. That is why Kutsi Merc became a “hunchback”, carrying on his back a disintegration charge to destroy the Dictator’s Lair together with all the technology delivered by the short-sighted proprietors of Dan jab.

Kutsi Merc had taken a dangerous risk and had lost, struck down by Yar Alt’s stiletto.

But it could never have entered Yar Alt’s mind, when he tugged the stiletto out of Kutsi’s heart, that the hunchback had a second heart.

Kutsi took a long, long time to regain consciousness. The second heart continued beating. Only an organism as unusual as his could win. But he was too weak owing to the enormous loss of blood.

When he came round and realised what had happened, he first of all took off his “hump” and examined it. It had been punctured in several places. The delayed-action fuse had been rendered useless. He threw the “hump” aside.

He was spurred on by a ravenous hunger. He must get out of this place somehow, although it seemed impossible. Kutsi, however, was not one to give up, even when the situation was hopeless.

Overcoming his pain and stomach spasms, he crawled over the stone floor, convinced that the Wall would bar his way. He could not believe the evidence of his own eyes when he saw a gap in it. After the battle of the brain biocurrents, when Yar Alt had mentally been trying to open the door and Lua to close it, no one had ordered the automatic system to close up the Wall. Also still open were the next two barriers through which Yar Alt had hurried and through which the dying Mother Lua had managed to crawl on her hands and knees.

At the familiar turn in the palace gardens, which Kutsi was hoping to reach, his way was barred by a high wall. He crawled off along Lua’s bloody trail. He would crawl a little way, stop out of exhaustion and then carry on further. And still Kutsi Merc was alive!

During the few hours that had elapsed, the spaceship Quest had lifted off from Cape Farewell. Yar Jupi himself had gone down into the deep underground bunker to begin the disintegration war on which he had finally decided.