Emil Petaja - Tramontane

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2024-12-19 0 0 282.76KB 113 页 5.9玖币
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Tramontane
Emil Petaja
PART ONE
Wayfarer
“And the friendless one reflected:
‘Wherefore have I been created?
Who has made me and has doomed me
Thus ’neath moon and sun to wander
Through the starry wastes forever?‘ ”
KALEVALA: Runo XXXIV
(Rev. SONG OF THE VANHAT:
Runo LI, Cir. 5168)
I
If one’s destiny is to be expunged like some monstrous mistake by a
death-squad of three perverted louts, then the new hell-hot colony planet
of Ryler 8 on the frontier of known space is as good a place for it to
happen as any.
Better.
Fed by seven star-suns, the lately formed world still seethed savagely
under its rusty red shell; Mothership Control had named it according to
precedent in honor of the pioneer, Captain Ose Ryler, who discovered it.
Ryler and all his scout-ship crew had been charred into meaningless flakes
by the then unguessed gaseous discharge from one of the cracks in the
hell-planet’s crust. Ryler 8 was of ugly sanguinary color and uglier
disposition, an uneasy stepping-stone to Still Further Out. Custom entitled
it only the hardiest, most desperate of Mothership colonists; its motley
bag of humanity included misfits and problem types of many varieties
who had to be finally decanted from their Mothership somewhere.
Kullervo Kasi was such a misfit. If there were any hidden character
traits on the worthy side of the ledger they could not be detected in his
wide dour face, in the animal slope of his thick shoulders, in the
lumbering splayfoot gait his ill-fit cast-off boots displayed. His sackcloth
blouse had been patched up out of hydroponics tank shoddy; his
pantaloons were forever dirty; his thick hairy legs were bare from knobby
knees to half down his knotted calves, whereupon the one mismatched
bright note took over. His synth-wool stockings were self-knitted, unusual
in itself, and they were vivid blue. Kullervo Kasi’s stockings brought smiles
even from the quasis programmed to do handwork for the Mothership
computers. From others, colonists and regulars, they brought frowns or
open jeers. They didn’t suit that face, that grotesque body. This odd bid
for beauty was out of keeping. It was a bone of contention for more
universal contempt. He would be better off without them. His ugliness of
form and nature must be unrelieved, total.
Sloughing along across the brittle orange terrain, head adangle,
Kullervo Kasi made no slight demur against his fate. The kicks, when he
didn’t move fast enough, didn’t register. Besides, the Dantesque agony of
twisted rock landscape, plus the near-intolerable heat outside the Colony
Bubble, precluded coherent thought. His fate was a foregone conclusion,
predestined in his genes.
Kullervo Kasi. The name itself was alien. More than just alien, out here
at the star frontier, where alienness was a common commodity. There was
no information about him on his current Mothership, nor indeed on any
of the ten thousand Motherships that wheeled the galaxy and beyond,
spitting out human pips by the thousands and ten thousands whenever
worlds could be found that would tolerate them. Of course Kullervo had
been displaced from Mothership to colony to Mothership to another
colony so often that perhaps it is no wonder that his Nee-ship, not to
mention his age, antecedents—his very Nee-number on Central
Recordship—was missing. This, of course, was not entirely new. Births
were of course controlled rigidly but hole-in-corner alliances were not
unheard of among so many billions of billions.
Kullervo’s existence was scarcely noteworthy in Man’s great splashout
through his galaxy and well beyond (in Motherships now, the small planet
of his origin was so dimmed that its very mention brought winces of
contempt, as if Earth were a dirty name) in a titanic pattern-wheel that
brushed on some three hundred thousand star-colonies at latest count.
Who cared who he was? Get rid of him! This time hope it would stick. His
Placement card would run through the record-computer again, stamped
“Kullervo Kasi—Origin Unknown,” and off he would go. Not for long,
unhappily. His temperament, some aura he cast off, would cause grown
men to shiver and children to hide and throw rocks at him; it happened
over and over again. It happened in direct proportion to the available
space, to the establishment of new colonies so desperate for muscle that
they would take even Kullervo. Robots were expensive. Man was cheap.
And if ever a man was expendable, that man was Kullervo Kasi.
Ryler 8 was finis. The period at the end of Kullervo Kasi’s worm’s
existence. In a millieu where man fought against androids and cybernetics
to give his own children a chance to get born, an excrescence like him was
scarcely tolerable. Like so many other colonies with atmosphere that was
breathable but not for sustained periods, certainly not over generations,
Ryler 8 wore a plas-dome over its only city to shield its new citizens from
the pitiless glare of those seven great eyes, to reduce the heat and keep
them and their frugal necessaries from shriveling away until the next time
the Mothership returned for a look-see. Away she went to offer teat to one
of her other offspring, always hoping that each new colony would stick and
later provide room to slough off more of her endless supply of children.
“You are an ugly bastard, Kullervo.” The heat exploded one of his
executioners into breaking the torpid silence. Kullervo acknowledged the
gratuitous shove that went with the insult by swabbing sweat out of his
eyes so that he could move along faster.
Two sniggered approval. Three, as a gesture of hostility encompassing
the whole of his new hellish home and the distasteful job at hand, decided
to find fault with one.
“Knock it off, Pot,” he grumbled. “The sucker’s going to get blasted and
chucked down that volcanic fissure when we get to it. Isn’t that enough for
you?”
“No!” Pot’s voice was a raw crackle from his parched craw. “It ain’t
enough! Not nearly enough, Al! Crud played around with my little sister!”
“Bat-dung! I saw the whole thing. Those vicious sluts at the kangaroo
court only twisted what happened to look like that. Your little sister was
needling the creep, like that bunch of brats do every morning, waiting on
the corner for him to come out of his hole so they could shag rocks at him.
Your sister ran up and spit in his face. Kullervo grabbed hold of her
arm—”
“He touched her, damn him!”
“So?”
Something in the tone riled Pot into a snarl. He swung out a mean
hook; Al ducked easily. “Hell, I didn’t mean anything, Pot. Your sister’s
only twelve. What I meant was he only just touched her arm, krissake. So
what? Those damn kids do that every morning. Shag rocks at Kullervo
when he comes out of that hole he sleeps in since they kicked him out of
the dorm. Call him names. Krissake. What would you do?”
Pot wiped off sweat. “Kids got nothing else to do. You can’t blame ‘em.
Teach-meck’s on the blink and no damn place to play. Got to have some
fun.” He stared blamefully at Kullervo’s broad bowed back, then, on
impulse, grabbed him and spun him around. “Look! Take a good look, Al!
Look at that puss! Wouldn’t you say it was made to get spit in?”
Al looked. He looked carefully, for the first time. Curiosity stirred
vaguely through the boiling heat. Like most of the other men he had
ignored Kullervo as beneath his notice. Too stupid to even yell about it
when the colonists’ kids screamed bad names at him and hit him with
rocks, or when somebody jolted him out of the way on the narrow dome
streets.
Maybe there was more to the guy. Maybe.
The face was too wide, as if somebody had taken hold of those hairy
ears and pulled hard. Kullervo’s nose was a misplaced lump, not so much
oversize as it was distorted. The mouth was purple and wide. The
dry-cracked lips bled a little, but it was the big animal teeth, spaced with
gaps between, and the tongue lolling out like a hog liver, that made it
impossible to even laugh at the guy. His hair straggled like a pile of
urine-soaked hay over scabby ears. The eyes seemed to have no color
whatever, or else it was because they were set in so deep and the puckers
around them were so deep that it just seemed so. The shapeless chin had a
cleft in it like another lipless mouth and was vaguely obscene. His chest,
bare where the blouse had been ripped in the manhandling during the
street-court trial, was heavily matted with yellow-gray hair and there was
more of it on the backs of his stubby-fingered hands.
“Yeah. You’re right, Pot. You’re damn right.” He whistled thoughtfully.
Colony Captain Ralph Langois had been right when he didn’t interfere
with the kangaroo court, when he took the word of the vicious
scandalmongers who said they had seen Kullervo slinking around during
the sleep-periods, molesting kids. Nothing was proved and nobody, even
Captain Langois, really believed there was anything to prove. But there
was something about Kullervo… Something un-nameable. Something that
hinted that with a creature like him any outrage was possible, even
probable.
Captain Langois’ job of running Ryler 8 was no easy one. If just having
Kullervo Kasi around made people behave like that then the thing to do
was get rid of him. For good. No shunting him back to the Mothership
next time it called. Do them all a favor.
“Cap Longois was right to stand by the kangaroo court’s decision,” Al
said aloud.
“Sure he was. We’re a democracy, ain’t we? What the majority says
goes, don’t it?” He gave Kullervo a forward shove with his boot. “Only
why’n hell did Cap have to pick us?”
They reached the brink of the volcanic fissure. It was deep. The
writhing crack belched up tendrils of vomit-making gases. You couldn’t
see how far down it went because of those angry orange-red clouds.
Pot shoved Kullervo Kasi close to the drop; all three of the kill-detail
backed up and raised their blasters. Kullervo stood at the drop, his ugly
face washed by the sudden dawning of the largest of the seven suns, which
Ryler 8 termed morning. This hot star turned Kullervo satanic red, made
him blink and grimace, standing there by the volcanic wrinkle, arms
dangling helplessly. He seemed not to understand what was about to
happen to him, yet when the muzzles of the three long blasters converged
on his misshapen body his hands moved up in an age-old gesture of
surrender.
Surrender wasn’t enough. Die, Kullervo Kasi! Die!
The poising fingers stayed, as if to savor this death or reluctant to cause
it. Then, awkwardly, Kullervo moved. His right hand darted like a hairy
spider into his torn shirt. Something bright and pointed caught the new
red sunlight. It made the executioners blink from the backlash, lower
blasters.
“Sucker’s got a knife!” Pot cried.
“So? Get him before he decides to throw it.”
“No! I want it! I need a blade. Looks like a good one. No use letting it go
down the drop with him.”
Pot moved forward warily. For the first time Kullervo showed fight.
Like his curious blue stockings, this bone-handled blade was a personal
talisman. His and his alone. He must not lose it, even in death. When Pot’s
strides brought him within feet, Kullervo jumped aside with an animal
yelp. He went into a crouch, made his antique weapon cut the air between
them in swift inconclusive jabs.
Pot grinned and touched his blaster’s trigger-stud. Fire leaped. Kullervo
gave a wolfish howl and flung himself flat on the crusty ground. Like all his
movements, it was lumbering and awkward, but for the moment it paid
off. He managed to undershoot the deathline. Yet it put him at a
disadvantage because he couldn’t use his knife as Pot rushed him, angrily.
He did attempt to arch up enough to hurl the poinard blade at his enemy
but, with a laughing shout, Pot leaped, planning to bring his heavy boot
down on Kullervo’s wrist.
Kullervo dragged his arm back to save himself from crushed bones. The
eight-inch blade caught in a flinty outcrop of laval rock. The boot struck
down on Kullervo’s fingers and wrung an involuntary scream of agony
from him. The blow made him lose hold of his precious knife and sit up,
shaking the broken fingers as if to shake off the ravening demon pain. It
was half a minute before he remembered his treasure and groped down
for it, left-handed.
Pot looked at it and swore.
The silver-steel blade had an ancient look to it and that animal-bone
handle, blackened by eons, was archaic beyond belief. It spoke of primitive
ways on a primitive world.
When he saw what had happened Kullervo Kasi loosed a great cry. It
ululated from the depths of an anguished soul. Triangulated between the
rock shard and the ground the knife blade had snapped off clean at the
bony hilt.
“Damn thing was no good anyway,” Pot rationalized. “Too old.” Still, he
was not inclined to be happy about it and he took out his anger on
Kullervo. “On your feet, crud! We got a job to do!”
Kullervo Kasi’s pale deep-set eyes were rooted on the broken blade. He
began to moan. Nothing else seemed to matter. He didn’t hear Pot or feel
his boot nudge. He picked up the handle and the blade and held them
close to him, crooning hard gritty sobs of intolerable grief for the loss of
his one and only treasure, his one and only friend. He was alone. Alone.
Alone. His secret thing, his pukko, was broken and useless.
“Get up!” Pot commanded. The others waited, grumbling. The big sun
was beginning to blast. They were supposed to have finished by now.
Kullervo wailed his grief, rocking back and forth. Then, at Pot’s volley of
curses, his wide face turned up ominously. He rocked up on his feet,
making raw animal sounds deep in his throat. Then he began to talk. The
first words anyone within memory had ever heard him say. It wasn’t
space-idiom. No. It was a roaring torrent of biting alien words like rocks
being crushed by raging tides. A language forgotten for millennia, spewed
up out of Kullervo Kasi’s cells in a storm because of what had happened to
his pukko.
Pot rolled back under the wave of harsh noises. Al called out, “C’mon
back here! He’s gone ape! Stand away! I’ll cut the sucker down!”
Pot wrenched his eyes away from what had always seemed a docile
beast of burden, a butt for every man’s errant hostility, and what had
suddenly about-faced into a thunderstorm of unbridled fury. Then all
three of them started blasting.
Kullervo turned on them with a feral snarl. Then, with a doleful croak
like a crow’s caw, he ran to the brink of the fissure and jumped.
They gaped cautiously over the edge at the swirling cloud masses of
demoniac color and frightful stink. Not even a sigh came back up to them
as the ugly unwanted lump of life-tissue vanished into the raw planetary
wound.
II
While it was no novelty to be prodded awake by something sharp, this
time an angry difference made Kullervo Kasi leap to his feet faster than
usual.
Where was he? Why could he feel pain? For that matter: why was he?
His eyes told him nothing. It was dark around him, dark and dank and
cold. While his sleep-sanded eyes dug around him for hints, his hands
groped the corner he lay in, finding the stony angles indeed clammy and
tomb-like. The dark and the cold suggested death (not the fiery death of
Ryler 8, surely!), but the biting hurt in his forearm didn’t. He labored his
mind over thoughts of being alive and guessed he must be. His legs and
arms were prickling and tingling as from a long sleep, as his blood began
pumping sluggishly out of his heart and around his arterial channels.
“If I’m not dead…” All his life Kullervo had talked to himself, since
nobody else would unless it was something derisive or to issue him an
order; usually both. “Or maybe this is Hell? Is this Hell, I wonder?”
Someplace he had heard about where bad people went when they died,
and there was no doubt at all that Kullervo was bad. Wicked. Evil. He had
been told so often enough and there was no reason not to believe them;
they were so clever and important.
Kullervo sighed.
He was content, in a way, Before, trying so hard to understand what life
was all about, with nobody patient or interested enough to help him (even
to hook him up to a machine), he had been left with an ever-present sense
of burning shame about himself. Maybe it had something to do with his
mother. He didn’t know much about her, since she died soon after he was
born. She wasn’t much good, he was told or overheard: he couldn’t
remember for sure. What happened was that she had birthed him secretly
behind the trash disposers, then tried to open one of the sealed hoppers
and throw him in. She couldn’t get it open, fainted out of weakness, and
Kullervo was left there for the Mothership’s kitchen menials to find next
morning. Later, when he was five or six, he used to sneak out of the
orphan’s sector of the great wheeling starship and down to the trash
grinders and obliterators. Laying his cheek against the warm thrumming
surface of a giant machine he would imagine it to be his mother. Nobody
liked him, even then, so Kullervo had to flounder out things for himself,
and with his thick skull that wasn’t easy.
His father? Who knows? Perhaps nobody, not even the white stars
salted across the endless skies…
Nobody had liked him, this much he knew all too well. Why? He had
only to look casually into one of the polished surfaces of the great cookers
in the kitchens where he toiled. The medics who demicrobed him and
made him live didn’t. His teachers didn’t, usually finding an excuse to
expel him from their classes as a disruptive influence. So this is how it had
ended up. Down here in the stygian dark where nobody could see how ugly
he was.
A coldness that was alive slithered over his legs. Reaching down to fling
it away his hands discovered that it had fangs on one end. He found that
out when they bit into his arm.
“Owwwww!” he howled. His wolfish protest echoed dolefully across the
dank stony surfaces.
Now he knew what had wakened him. A nibbling serpent. His howl
rippled a sea of hissing around him and a sinister rustling. Snakes.
Hundreds. Thousands. A dungeon-ful of them, slithering like great black
worms over and under and around each other; now, it seemed to Kullervo
Kasi, moving methodically toward him to fang the intruder.
Kullervo loosed a small whimper and tried to climb the wall behind
him. There were erosions in the masonry between the great rough stones
and he managed to find chinks for his boots and clamber up away from
that ocean of reptilian flesh and fang.
He clung there, whimpering and waiting.
He thought maybe the snakes were curious or that he was warm and
they liked warm. Then he thought about his pukko. His treasure. He felt
under his blouse where he had fashioned a kind of pocket against his hide.
Yes. It was there. It was broken in two. It wouldn’t help him much against
all those serpents, anyway. But he still had the pieces. He had that much.
The broken pukko and his blue stockings.
He was shivering so hard from the chill that he knew it was only a
matter of time before his fingers would be numb and he’d have to go.
Desperately he thought when that happened he would run. He would
probably fall and then all those fangs would dig his flesh and kill him for
sure; but he would try. He went a step further. Why wait until his hands
and feet were numbed? Do it now!
About to drop, he was aware of a faint glow of light blossoming off in
the dark, outlining the high curve of a long tunnel. The light grew and
brightened. It swung to and fro in a zigzagging arc, bisected by shadowy
sprouting fingers.
It was a lanthorn, an ancient wooden lamp fed by fat-oil, a clumsy
thing. The man holding it up was big, stooped, and his attire matched the
antiqueness of the lanthorn. He wore chain mail over leg-tight hose, a
vivid scarlet cowl over lank slag-blond hair; a thick broadsword clanged
from his wide back, bent as he walked toward Kullervo’s spider-cling.
“Down, dungeon worm! She wants you!”
“Wants me!” Out of wonder that anyone would have use for him, and
relief, Kullervo dropped in front of the burly warrior, happy that the black
serpents fled, hissing, from the light.
“The starwitch, Louhi, dung-hopper! Come!” He fondled the
palm-greased butt of a whip he carried slung over his shoulder
significantly.
There was no more conversation. Kullervo shambled after him down
摘要：

ScannedbyHighroller.ProofedbyanUnsungHero.MadeprettierbyuseofEBookDesignGroupStylesheet.TramontaneEmilPetajaPARTONEWayfarer“Andthefriendlessonereflected:‘WhereforehaveIbeencreated?WhohasmademeandhasdoomedmeThus’neathmoonandsuntowanderThroughthestarrywastesforever?‘”KALEVALA:RunoXXXIV(Rev.SONGOFTHEVA...

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