Anderson Poul - Psychotechnic League 10 Read online

  TEUCAN

  By POUL ANDERSON

  SOMETIMES a nuclear-conversion engine develops an ulcer. The containing fields weaken long enough—a few microseconds, perhaps—for the machine to start devouring itself.

  It doesn’t happen often, but neither is it unheard of, and it will continue to happen until somebody abolishes the Uncertainty Principle. In the event of an ulcer, the only thing to do is to get out of the neighborhood— fast.

  Weber considered himself lucky to be near a planet when his engine broke loose. He had, in fact, been coming in for a landing, and it was a moment’s scrambling to get into a space-suit. He grabbed for the chest where he kept his weapons, and a blue electric bolt sizzled to his hand and limned his insulated suit in ghostly fire. Cursing, he reached again, but the chest was already glowing red-hot and the white-blazing bulkhead aft was slumping into molten ruin. No time—when it went down, he’d get a radiation blast which would finish him. He dove for the airlock, awkward in free fall now that the gravity unit was gone.

  Just in time! His impellers whirled him away. The boat was a nova against the bitter stars of space. Alone—weaponless—supplyless save for the suit’s little emergency pack — well, that planet had better be habitable!

  It was a great cottony ball of cloud below him, blinding in the harsh spatial sunlight. Below him —yes, he was close enough, well within the region of perceptible gravitation. He turned off his impeller and let himself fall. A few hours—

  The silence and loneliness oppressed him. As the thunder of is heart and blood eased, he considered the years ahead, a I if time of separation from humankind and all he had known. The lifetime would be short unless he was lucky. His name would be bandied among the Traders for perhaps a decade, and then his very memory would be dust.

  Well—not much he could do about it. At least his instruments had told him the planet was Terra-type: about the same size and mass, pretty similar atmosphere. That meant green plants, which in turn meant animals with high probability, which might mean intelligent natives; but of course everything might be poisonous to his metabolism. He didn't think the natives would be very far advanced, technologically; the planet was rather close to its sun, an obscure G6 dwarf, steamy and tropical and perpetually cloudy—so it was unlikely that its dwellers would have much concept of astronomy, the father of the sciences. Still, you never knew.

  First there was the problem of getting down. He gave himself a northward velocity—the subarctic regions would be most comfortable for a human. It was necessary to be careful with energy; his powerpack had barely enough to land him and maybe fly around a bit, without wasting any.

  The slow hours passed.

  WHEN he came below the high permanent clouds it was raining. He swung into the wind, the strong heavy flow of water sluicing over his helmet and blurring vision, lightning savage above him. By the time he was out of the storm, his energy meter was flickering near zero. He slanted groundward, studying the terrain with wary eyes.

  It was a rolling land of hills and broad valleys, green with a sweeping stretch of jungle, snaked through by long rivers. But he was on the fringe of the wilds. Beyond were cultivated fields, stone huts scattered like grain seeds over the mighty planetscape, wide highways of beaten earth converging on the distant walls of a city. Quite a sizeable city, too, there in the middle of its huge domain; it might well have twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants if they . were humanoid. Weber’s brain began to calculate.

  You could never tell in advance how primitives were going to react. There were the unpredictable inherent differences, due to climate and ecology and physiology and the very external appearance; and then within the same species you could get fantastic variations of thought and behavior patterns from culture to culture. But his best chances lay in a sort of polite boldness, at least till he knew his way around a little better.

  He landed with a jarring thump as his powerpack finally sputtered to extinction. Not far off, behind a grove of trees, stood a hamlet of some ten buildings. Dismissing thoughts of bacteria, molds, and other forms of slow or sudden death, Weber got to his feet, threw back his helmet and breathed deeply.

  It was a warm, moist, pleasant air, pungent with the aroma of earth and forest and life, heady after the staleness of his suit. The clouds made a featureless gray sky overhead, and there were no visible shadows in that diffused light, but vision was clear enough. A brilliantly feathered bird flew squawking above him. He crossed the field in which he’d landed, set his boots on the road, and started walking toward the village.

  The natives came out of it, and others ran from the distant farm huts, converging on him with shrill whoops. He stopped, folded his arms, and waited.

  Humanoid—yes, very. If he survived, his shipwreck might prove quite tolerable. They were a slightly built folk, several centimeters shorter than the average Terran, six fingers to a hand and six toes to a sandaled foot, ointed ears, pale bluish skins, air and eyes of deep purple, the males beardless as the females— but with handsome features not unlike the Caucasian, wiry and graceful of body, Both sexes wore little more than a loincloth, but the males had all the color and most of the shell, tooth, and hammered copper ornaments, feathers in their long hair, tattooing on their breasts. They brandished obsidian spears and axes, and some had wicked-looking wooden swords saw-toothed with chips of flint. They stood and stared at him.

  Weber, who was a big blond man, lifted one arm with all the solemnity he could muster. The natives slowed their prancing approach, women huddling behind the ranked men, children screaming, a pack of lithe, longbodied, blue-furred animals yowling. The peasants coming near, hoes and spades still clutched in their grimy hands, were almost as gaudily equipped as the villagers. Since it was unlikely that he had arrived precisely at a festival moment, Weber decided that the natives simply liked color. Well—the plain, burnished metal of his spacesuit stood out among them. He waited, taut as a drawn wire, holding his face impassive with a straining effort.

  They converged again, closing warily in on all sides, muttering to each other. Weber caught one repeated word. "Teucan." It could mean stranger, god, demon, amazement, metal, or maybe just plain to hell with it—no way of knowing.

  An old one finally stood forth —bigger than the rest, his face hard and seamed by ancient wounds. "T eucan quituhiulat shu?” he snapped. "Baldemo ttzunttbarinn tzi

  "Sorry,” said Weber. "No savvy.” He read fright and a savage will in the narrowed purple eyes. The other blueskins had fallen silent; they were watching with an enormous anticipation.

  Suddenly the native lifted his ax and whirled it down. Weber threw up his metal-clad arm just in time to save his skull. The native screeched and sprang like a wildcat, hacking again, raking the Trader’s cheekbone. Weber struck at him, the armored fist glancing off the dodging native’s shoulder and sending him spinning.

  He stood panting, glaring at the Terran. Another native prodded him with a spear. Before Cosmos—they were egging him on!

  He gathered his muscles and leaped again. This time Weber was prepared. He caught the blow once more on his arm, and his other fist slammed into the attacker's nose. He felt bone crunch and saw the blood spurt —red as his own, that blood. The native staggered, and Weber wrenched the ax from him.

  Some of the watchers shouted, lifting their weapons to the gray heaven. The assailant looked around him, eyes wild with despair through the blood that masked his broken face. There was no friendliness in the answering stares. With something like a groan, he drew an obsidian knife from his belt and charged afresh. Weber swung the ax, and the keen blade clove his skull.

  The Trader stood panting over the body, looking a
round and raising the bloody weapon. "All right,” he said hoarsely. "All right. Who else wants the same treatment?"

  There was a long minute’s silence, and then the cheers nearly split his eardrums. He was escorted into the village by a crowd that capered and yelled and brought forth flutes and drums to serenade him in. Only the peasants stayed behind, eagerly carving the body of the fallen into chunks, squabbling over the pieces and finally hastening back with their trophies.

  Before Cosmos, thought Weber dazedly, they expected a finish fight!

  He was shown to a good-sized hut well furnished with stools, mats, furs, and the other items of primitive wealth. Four nice-looking women came in with him, smiling somewhat timorously. Apparently he had inherited his enemy's possessions along with his rank—whatever that had been.

  It might be duplicity, but he doubted it. The attempt to murder him had been honest enough, and the awe which he now received seemed honest, too. It was not the formal and silent respect of more civilized races—these people were whooping things up as much as they could—but it was there nonetheless. In the long blue twilight of the planet’s day—he estimated it at thirty hours—they gave him a feast. Meats, vegetables, fruits, and a potent sort of beer—it was fun, and he staggered back to his new wives in the middle- sized hours of morning.

  By Sirius, if he couldn’t make a good thing out of this he didn’t deserve the name of Trader!

  WITHOUT making claims to brilliance or to any outstanding intellectual interests beyond the making and spending of as much money as possible, Weber Franz had a sharp brain and knew how to use it. The first thing was to learn the language and find out what the devil he’d gotten himself into.

  He held the most intelligent looking of his wives back from work in his fields and drafted her as his instructor. There was little danger of upsetting his godhead, if any, by asking to be taught something—one very general rule about primitives is that they don’t worry about consistency and a god who doesn’t know the language is not a contradiction. He wasn’t much disturbed in the next few days—his wives did the farming and household chores and except for the gaping children the villagers left him pretty much alone—so he could devote his full time to study. His tutor was only too pleased to be free of manual labor, and the primary trouble was the attempt of a couple of the others, jealous of her privilege, to kill her. Weber knocked a few teeth out and had no difficulties thereafter. He was beginning to realize that brutality was an accepted feature of this society. The men swaggered and fought, the villagers browbeat the peasants, the children abused the animals—and still there seemed to be as much laughter here as anywhere else. They must like it, he thought.

  Traders generally didn’t have too much to do with races as backward as this one. The ideal was a people far enough advanced to have something worth buying or bilking them out of. Thus Weber's knowledge of the present level of society was scant, a fact which caused him considerable grief later on. But he had had mind training, and he understood linguistic principles, so he learned fast now. The names of simple objects and actions—more abstract words derived by indirection or from context—and the language was agglutinative, which helped a lot. It wasn’t many days before he could understand and make himself understood.

  This, it seemed, was the village of Tubarro, part of the domain of Azunica, to which it paid tribute in the form of foodstuffs and slaves. He—Beber, as they rendered it—was now the Teucan of Tubarro, having killed the old one. He didn’t dare ask directly what the Teucan was—that might be going too far—and said merely that he had come from the far land of Terra.

  Once a levy of soldiers marched down the road toward Azunica, gay with feathers and shields and flowing cloaks, drums and flutes and gongs, leading a hundred miserable- looking captives roped together. And there was a lot of traffic, runners speeding up and down the highway, porters moving under fantastic loads, nobles borne in litters and commoners trudging with goods bought or to sell. The life of this culture seemed to be in Azunica; Tubarro was only a sleepy fuel station and supply store. Weber decided that he would have to visit the city.

  But as it happened, the city came to him.

  THEY arrived toward evening, about two weeks after Weber's arrival—though he had lost count of time in the monotonous round of days. There was quite a procession—a squad of soldiers, a company of slaves, even a group of musicians—and they pushed arrogantly down the one street of Tubarro and halted before Weber's dwelling. The Terran, who was becoming aware of the importance of haughtiness, did not look up. He sat in front of his house, wearing the native dress, which showed his size and blondness to spectacular advantage, playing solitaire with the pack of cards he had had in his pocket at the time of the wreck.

  "Are you, sir, the Teucan of Tubarro?"

  Weber lifted heavy-lidded eyes. A tall old man had gotten from his litter—gaudily painted and ornamented, with a feather cloak swung from his shoulders and an elaborately carved staff in one hand. Weber, whose eyes missed little, noticed that his visitor and everyone in the troop had had the first joint of the little finger removed. He spread his five-fingered hands into plain sight.

  "Yes, sir, I am,” he replied, with the cold courtesy of formal occasions. Idly, he shuffled the cards and snatched one out of the air. Sleight-of-hand could be useful. "Would you like to come inside and take refreshment?”

  "Thank you, sir, I would." The old-—priest?—followed him into the house. Was it polite to go in before or after or arm-inarm with your guest? Weber didn't know. He signaled a wife for food and drink,

  "Word of you has come to Azunica, sir," said the visitor after due formalities. "It is said you came from a remote land, and most strangely attired."

  "That is true, sir.” Weber nodded his head very slightly to the polished spacesuit, standing in a corner. "Weaponless I overcame the old Teucan and gave his body to the earth. I did not choose to use my weapons against a single man.”

  "I see, sir." The priest made a bridge of his fingers and peered shresvdly at the Terran. "It is plain that you are from far away, and that the teucans have placed the holy sign on your hands themselves."

  There was that word again— teucan! In this context it seemed to mean god; but as used by the villagers, and in view of Weber’s daily life, it seemed to mean little more than battle-ax champion. The ins and outs of the primitive mind-they don’t think like civilized people— "What I wondered, sir,” went on the native, "is why you chose to come to this little wallow, rather than to Azunica the great and sacred. You could, being plainly marked as holy yourself, have had the teucanno for the asking now that the old one has returned to the earth.”

  “I had my reasons, sir.”

  "So you did, sir, and I do not question them. But I am the Chief Servant of Azunica, and it is my duty to select the next Teucan of the city and the whole domain. I do not know how they do it in your land, sir, but in Azunica we determine the will of the teucans by drawing lots among all qualified young men. However, you yourself are so clearly the designated one that when word of you came I hastened to find you. It is past time for the choosing—the banyaquil must be planted soon or not at all. The people grow restless.” Weber reflected that most of the fields were still being cultivated, and that the crops in tire planted ones were young. He must have arrived just in the sowing time, and apparently they needed someone to preside over fertility ceremonies and whatnot. If the old Teucan had lately died—

  Hmmrn—this, my boy, looks like the luck of the Webers. If you play it right—

  "I am content here, sir," he said. "I have my house and my fields and my wives. Why should I move?”

  "But reflect, sir. You will grow old and weak—or perhaps, even before that time, there will be a lucky challenger. There are many restless young men who seek a teucanno to make their fortune. You will have to fight many times a year. And all for this little village!”

  "But there would be even more challengers in Azunica, would there not?”

 
For an instant the old man looked astonished, and then the mask clamped down again and the eyes were shrewd. There was a good brain under that gray-streaked purple hair. By betraying his ignorance, Weber had started the brain thinking. The Terran looked nervously at the door, but none of the soldiers shifted from the post of attention.

  "You jest, sir,” said the priest. "Unless it is indeed that they do matters very differently in your homeland. No, who would dare lift a hand against the Teucan of Azunica? He is—he is the Teucan! What he would have is his for the asking. Should he tell a man to slay himself, that man would plunge the knife in his own belly on the instant.”

  Hmmm—yes, apparently the Teucan of Azunica—which, after all, was the capital of a fairsized theocratic empire—was something different from the Teucan of a village. The latter were—what? Symbols of some kind, no more. The former might well be an incarnate god.

  "The homes of Azunica are stuffed with gold and feathers, sir,” said the priest persuasively. "The meats are tender, the fruits are sweet, the beer is a singing in the blood. The maidens are young and lovely. The lords of the realm are glad to wait on the Teucan as his slaves.” He sighed. "It is clear to me that you are the intended one, and there will be an evil year if the wrong man should be raised to the golden seat. That, sir, is why I am so anxious to give you all this.”

  "Hmmm—and what must I do myself?”

  "What you will, my lord. There are the ceremonies, of course, and appearances to keep up, but it is not arduous. And every creature in the realm is your chattel.”

  "I will consider it, sir. You shall have my answer tomorrow.” He’d have to make a few discreet inquiries, confirm what had been said. He couldn't inquire too much, of course, without giving himself away to a dangerous extent—but he could at least find out if the Teucan of Azunica had all that power. And if so—If so, Weber my boy, you’ll take another step to success. From Trader to god—not bad!