Poul Anderson: The Rebel Worlds

Without that sun, planet, constellations, frosty rush of Milky Way and dim gleam of sister galaxies, he might soon have crumbled — screamed for release, confessed to anything, kissed the hand of his executioner, while honest medics reported to headquarters on Terra that they had found no sign of torture or brainscrub upon him. It would not have been the sensory deprivation per se that destroyed his will in such short order. It would have been the loss of every distraction from the thought of Kathryn, every way of guessing how long a time had gone by while she also lay in Aaron Snelund’s power. McCormac admitted the weakness to himself. That was not one he was ashamed of.

Why hadn’t the governor then directed he be put in a blank cell? Oversight, probably, when more urgent business demanded attention. Or, being wholly turned inward on himself, Snelund perhaps did not realize that other men might love their wives above life.

Of course, as day succeeded standard day (with never a change in this bleak white fluorescence) he must begin wondering why nothing had happened up here. If his observers informed him of the exact situation, no doubt he would prescribe that McCormac be shifted to different quarters. But agents planted in the guard corps of a small artificial moon were lowly creatures. They would not, as a rule, report directly to a sector governor, viceroy for His Majesty throughout some 50,000 cubic light-years surrounding Alpha Crucis, and a very good friend of His Majesty to boot. No, they wouldn’t even when the matter concerned a fleet admiral, formerly responsible for the defense of that entire part of the Imperial marches.

Petty agents would report to administrative underlings, who would send each communication on its way through channels. Was somebody seeing to it that material like this got — no, not lost — shunted off to oblivion in the files?

McCormac sighed. The noise came loud across endless whisper of ventilation, clack of his shoes on metal. How long could such protection last?

He didn’t know the satellite’s orbit. Nevertheless, he could gauge the angular diameter of Llynathawr pretty closely. He remembered the approximate dimensions and mass. From that he could calculate radius vector and thus period. Not easy, applying Kepler’s laws in your head, but what else was there to do? The result more or less confirmed his guess that he was being fed thrice in 24 hours. He couldn’t remember exactly how many meals had come before he started tallying them with knots in a thread. Ten? Fifteen? Something like that. Add this to the 37 points now confronting him. You got between 40 and 50 spaceship watches; or 13 to 16 Terran days; or 15 to 20 Aenean.

Aenean. The towers of Windhome, tall and gray, their banners awake in a whistling sky; tumble of crags and cliffs, reds, ochers, bronzes, where the Ilian Shelf plunged to a blue-gray dimness sparked and veined with water-gleams, that was the Antonine Seabed; clangor of the Wildfoss as it hurled itself thitherward in cataracts; and Kathryn’s laughter when they rode forth, her gaze upon him more blue than the dazzlingly high sky —

“No!” he exclaimed. Ramona’s eyes had been blue. Kathryn’s were green. Was he already confusing his live wife with his dead one?

If he had a wife any more. Twenty days since the housecarls burst into their bedchamber, arrested them and took them down separate corridors. She had slapped their hands off her wrists and marched among their guns with scornful pride, though tears rivered over her face.

McCormac clasped his hands and squeezed them together till fingerbones creaked. The pain was a friend. I mustn’t, he recalled. If I wring myself out because of what I can’t make better, I’m doing Snelund’s work for him.

What else can I do?

Resist. Until the end.

Not for the first time, he summoned the image of a being he had once known, a Wodenite, huge, scaly, tailed, four-legged, saurian-snouted, but comrade in arms and wiser than most. “You humans are a little breed,” the deep voice had rumbled. “Together you can show courage that may cross the threshold of madness. Yet when no one else is near to tell your fellows afterward how you died, the spirit crumbles away and you fall down empty.”

“Heritage of instinct, I suppose,” McCormac said. “Our race began as an animal that hunted in packs.”

“Training can tame instinct,” the dragon answered. “Can the intelligent mind not train itself?’

Alone in his cell, Hugh McCormac nodded. I’ve at least got that damned monitor to watch me. Maybe someday somebody — Kathryn, or the children Ramona gave me, or some boy I never knew — will see its tapes.

He lay down on his bunk, the sole furnishing besides washbasin and sanitizer, and closed his eyes. I’ll try playing mental chess again, alternating sides, till dinner. Give me enough time and I’ll master the technique. Just before eating, I’ll have another round of calisthenics. That drab mess in the soft bowl won’t suffer from getting cold. Perhaps later I’ll be able to sleep.

He hadn’t lowered his improvised curtain. The pickup recorded a human male, tall, rangy, more vigorous than could be accounted for by routine anti-senescence. Little betrayed his 50 standard years except the grizzling of black hair and the furrows in his long, lean countenance. He had never changed those features, nor protected them from the weathers of many planets. The skin remained dark and leathery. A jutting triangle of nose, a straight mouth and lantern jaw, were like counterweights to the dolichocephalic skull. When he opened the eyes beneath his heavy brows, they would show the color of glaciers. When he spoke, his voice tended to be hard; and decades of service around the Empire, before he returned to his home sector, had worn away the accent of Aeneas.

He lay there, concentrating so furiously on imagined chessmen which kept slipping about like fog-wraiths, that he did not notice the first explosion. Only when another went crump! and the walls reverberated did he know it was the second.

“What the chaos?” He surged to his feet. A third detonation barked dully and toned in metal. Heavy slugthrowers, he knew. Sweat spurted forth. The heart slammed within him. What had happened? He threw a glance at the viewport. Llynathawr was rolling into sight, unmarked, serene, indifferent.

A rushing noise sounded at the door. A spot near its molecular catch glowed red, then white. Somebody was cutting through with a blaster. Voices reached McCormac, indistinct but excited and angry. A slug went bee-yowww down the corridor, gonged off a wall, and dwindled to nothing.

The door wasn’t thick, just sufficient to contain a man. Its alloy gave way, streamed downward, made fantastic little formations akin to lava. The blaster flame boomed through the hole, enlarging it. McCormac squinted away from the glare. Ozone prickled his nostrils. He thought momentarily, crazily, no reason to be so extravagant of charge.

The gun stopped torching. The door flew wide. A dozen beings stormed through. Most were men in blue Navy outfits. A couple of them bulked robotlike in combat armor and steered a great Holbert energy gun on its grav sled. One was nonhuman, a Donarrian centauroid, bigger than the armored men themselves; he bore an assortment of weapons on his otherwise nude frame, but had left them holstered in favor of a battleax. It dripped red. His simian countenance was a single vast grin.

“Admiral! Sir!” McCormac didn’t recognize the youth who dashed toward him, hands outspread. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes. What—” McCormac willed out bewilderment. “What is this?”