Andre Norton - Dark Piper
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2024-12-24
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Andre Norton
I
I HAVE HEARD it stated that a Zexro tape will last forever. But even a second generation now may
find nothing worth treasuring in our story. Of our own company, Dinan, and perhaps Gytha, who now
work on the storage of all the old off-world records may continue to keep such a history of our times.
But we do not run our reader now except for a pressing need for technical information, since no one
knows how long its power pack will last. Therefore, this tape may keep its message locked for a long
time unless, ages from now, those off-world do remember our colony and come seeking to learn its fate,
or unless there shall arise here people able to rebuild machines that have died for want of proper repairs.
My recording may thus be of no benefit, for in three years our small company has taken a great
backward leap from civilized living to barbarism. Yet I spend an hour each evening on it, having taken
notes with the aid of all, for even young minds have impressions to add. This is the tale of the Dark Piper,
Griss Lugard, who saved a handful of his kind, so that those who walk as true men should not totally
vanish from a world he loved. Yet we who owe him our lives know so little about him that what we must
in truth set upon this tape are our own deeds and actions and the manner of his passing.
Beltane was unique among the Scorpio Sector planets in that it was never intended for general
settlement, but instead was set up as a biological experimental station. By some freak of nature, it had a
climate acceptable to our species, but there was no intelligent native life, nor, indeed, any life very high in
scale. Its richly vegetated continents numbered two, with wide seas spaced between. The eastern one
was left to what native life there was. The Reserves and the hamlets and farms of the experimental staffs
were all placed upon the western one, radiating out from a single spaceport. As a functioning unit in the
Confederation scheme, Beltane had been in existence about a century at the outbreak of the Four
Sectors War. That war lasted ten planet years.
Lugard said it was the beginning of the end for our kind and their rulership of the space lanes. There
can rise empires of stars, and confederations, and other governments. But there comes a time when such
grow too large or too old, or are rent from within. Then they collapse as will a balloon leaf when you
prick it with a thorn, and all that remains is a withered wisp of stuff. Yet those on Beltane welcomed the
news of the end of the war with a hope of new beginning, of return to that golden age of “before the war”
on which the newest generation had been raised with legendary tales. Perhaps the older settlers felt the
chill of truth, but they turned from it as a man will seek shelter from the full blast of a winter gale. Not to
look beyond the next corner will sometimes keep heart in a man.
Since the population of Beltane was small, most of them specialists and members of such families, it
had been drained of manpower by the services, and of the hundreds who were so drafted, only a handful
returned. My father did not. We Collises were First Ship family, but unlike most, my grandfather had
been no techneer, nor bio-master, but had commanded the Security force. Thus, from the beginning, our
family was, in a small measure, set apart from the rest of the community, though there was nothing but a
disparity of interests to make that so. My father lacked ambition perhaps. He went off-world and passed
in due course through Patrol training. But he did not elect to try for promotion. Instead, he opted to
return to Beltane, assuming, in time, command of the Security force here that his father had commanded.
Only the outbreak of the war, which caused a quick call-up of all available trained men, pulled him away
from the roots he desired.
I would have undoubtedly followed his example, save that those ten years of conflict wherein we were
more or less divorced from space kept me at home. My mother, who had been of a techneer family, died
even before my father lifted with his command, and I spent the years with the Ahrens. Imbert Ahren was
head of the Kynvet station and my mother’s cousin, my only kin on Beltane. He was an earnest man, one
who achieved results by patient, dogged work rather than through any flashes of brilliance. In fact, he
was apt to be suspicious of unorthodox methods and the yielding to “hunches” on the part of
subordinates—though, give him his due, he only disapproved mildly and did nothing to limit any gropings
on their part.
His wife, Ranalda, was truly brilliant in her field and more intolerant of others. We did not see much of
her, since she was buried in some obtuse research. The running of the household fell early on Annet, who
was but a year younger than I. In addition, there was Gytha, who usually was to be found with a reading
tape and who had as little domestic interest as her mother. It must be that the specialization that grew
more and more necessary as my species entered space had, in a fashion, mutated us, though that might
be argued against by the very people most affected. Though I was tutored and urged to choose work
that would complement the labors of the station, I had no aptitude for any of it. In the end, I was
studying, in a discontinuous manner, toward a Rangership in one of the Reserves—an occupation Ahren
believed I might just qualify for—when the war, which had not affected us very directly, at last came to a
dreary end.
There was no definite victory, only a weary drawing apart of the opponents from exhaustion. Then
began the interminable “peace talks,” which led to a few clean-cut solutions.
Our main concern was that Beltane now seemed forgotten by the powers that had established it. Had
we not long before turned to living off the land, and the land been able to furnish us with food and
clothing, we might have been in desperate straits. Even the biannual government ships, to which our
commerce and communication had sunk in the last years of the war, had now twice failed to arrive, so
that when a ship finally planeted, it was a cause for rejoicing—until the authorities discovered it was in no
way an answer to our needs but rather was a fifth-rate tramp hastily commandeered to bring back a
handful of those men who had been drafted off-world during the conflict. Those veterans were indeed the
halt and the blind—casualties of the military machine. Among these was Griss Lugard. Although he had
been a very close part of my childhood, the second-in-command of the force my father had led starward,
I did not know him as he limped away from the landing ramp, his small flight bag seeming too great a
burden for his stick-thin arms as its weight pulled him a little to one side and added to the unsteadiness of
his gait. He glanced up as he passed, then dropped that bag. His hand half went out, and the mouth of a
part-restored face (easy to mark by the too smooth skin) grimaced.
“Sim—”
Then his hand went to his head, moving across his eyes as one who would brush aside a mist, and I
knew him by the band on his wrist, now far too loose. “I’m Vere,” I said quickly. “And you are”—I saw
the rank badges on the collar of his faded and patched tunic—“Sector-Captain Lugard!” “Vere.” He
repeated the name as if his mind fumbled back through time for identification. “Vere—why, you’re Sim’s
son! But—but—you might be Sim.” He stood there blinking at me, and then, raising his head, he turned
to give his surroundings a slow, searching stare. Now he gazed as if he saw more than his boots raising
planet dust.
“It’s been a long time,” he said in a low, tired voice. “A long, long time.” His shoulders hunched, and
he stooped for the bag he had dropped, but I had it before him.
“Where away, sir?”
There were the old barracks. But no one had lived there for at least five years, and they were used for
storage. Lugard’s family were all dead or gone. I decided that, whether Annet had room or not, he could
guest with us. But he was looking beyond me to the southwest hills and to the mountains beyond those.
“Do you have a flitter, Sim—Vere?” He corrected himself. I shook my head. “They’re first priority
now, sir. We don’t have parts to repair them all. Best I can do is a hard-duty hopper.
And I knew I was breaking the rules to use that. But Griss Lugard was one of my own, and it had
been a long time since I had had contact with someone from my past.
“Sir—if you wish to guest—” I continued.
He shook his head. “When you’ve held to a memory for some time”—it was as if he talked to himself,
almost reassuring himself—“you want to prove it, right or wrong. If you can get the hopper, point her
west and south—to Butte Hold.” “But that may be a ruin. No one has been there since Six Squad pulled
out eight years ago.”
Lugard shrugged. “I’ve seen plenty of ruins lately, and I have a fancy for that one.” With one hand he
fumbled inside his tunic and brought out a palm-sized metal plate that flashed in the afternoon sun.
“Gratitude of a government, Vere. I have Butte Hold for as long as I want—as mine.”
“But supplies—” I offered a second discouragement.
“Stored there, too. Everything is mine. I paid half a face, strong legs, and quite an additional price for
the Butte, boy. Now I’d like to go—home.” He was still looking to the hills.
I got the hopper and signed it out as an official trip. Griss Lugard was entitled to that, and I would
face down any objection on that point if I had to. The hoppers had been made originally to explore
rough country. They combined surface travel, where that was possible, with short hops into the air to
cross insurmountably rough terrain. They were not intended for comfort, just to get you there. We
strapped into the foreseats, and I set the course dial for Butte Hold. Nowadays it was necessary to keep
both hands on the controls. There was too apt to be some sudden breakdown, and the automatics were
not to be trusted. Since the war the settlements on Beltane had contracted instead of expanded. With a
short supply of manpower, there had been little or no time wasted in visiting the outlying sites, abandoned
one after another. I remembered Butte Hold as it had been before the war—dimly, as seen by a small
boy—but I had not been there for years.
It was set on the borders of the lava country, a treacherous strip of territory that, in remote times,
must have lighted most of this continent with titanic eruptions. Even the eroded evidence of these
volcanoes was still spectacular. Of late years it was an unknown wilderness of breaks and flows, a maze
of knife-sharp ridges with here and there pockets of vegetation. Rumor had it that, beside the forbidding
aspect of the land itself, there were other dangers—from beasts that had escaped the experimental
stations and found this forsaken range an ideal lair. No one actually had evidence of such. It was rumor
only. But it had grown into tradition, and a man wore a stunner when he ventured in. We left the road at
a turn trace so dim by now that I could not have found it without Lugard’s direction. But he gave that
with the surety of one seeing markers plain in the sun. And very shortly we were out of the settled land. I
wanted to talk, but I did not quite dare to ask my questions. Lugard was so plainly occupied with his
thoughts.
He would find other changes on Beltane, less tangible than those of the abandonment of old
landmarks but nonetheless sharp. The settlements had been drained of certain types of men: first the
guard, and then scientists and techneers. Those left had unconsciously, perhaps consciously in some
ways, changed the atmosphere. The war had not come close enough to make any great impression on
our planet. It remained a subject of reports, of attrition of supplies and manpower, of growing irritation as
men, buried in their own chosen fields of research, had been commanded to explore other paths for
refinements in killing. I had heard enough to know that there had been a deliberate dragging of feet in
sections that had been set to war problems. And there had been angry outbursts five years back, threats
passed between the last commander and such men as Dr. Corson. Then the commander had been
ordered off-world, and Beltane settled down to a peaceful existence.
The sentiment now on Beltane was pacifist—so much so that I wondered whether Lugard would find
an accepted place among these men bent so strongly on keeping matters as they were and had been. He
had been born on Beltane—that was true. But, like my father, he was of a Service family, and he had
never married into one of the settlement clans. He spoke of Butte Hold as his. Was that literally true? Or
did it mean that he was sent here to make ready for another garrison? That would not be welcome.
Our trail was so badly overgrown that I reluctantly took to the air, skimming not far above the top of
the brush. If Lugard was the forerunner of a garrison, I hoped they would number among them some
techneer-mechanics with training in the repair of vehicles. Already our machines had become so
unpredictable that some of the settlements talked of turning to beasts of burden. “Take her farther up!”
ordered Lugard.
I shook my head. “No. If she parts at this height, we have a chance of getting out in one piece. I
won’t chance more.”
He glanced first at me and then at the hopper, as if he really saw it for the first time. His eyes
narrowed.
“This is a wreck—”
“It is about the best you can find nowadays,” I replied promptly. “Machines don’t repair themselves.
The techneer-robos are all on duty at the labs. We have had no off-world supplies since Commander
Tasmond lifted with the last of the garrison. Most of these hoppers are just pasted together, with hope
the main ingredient of that paste.”
Again I met his searching stare. “That bad, is it?” he asked quietly. “Well, it depends upon what you
term bad. The Committee has about decided it is a good thing on the whole. They like it that off-world
authority has stopped giving orders. The Free Trade party is looking forward to independence and is
trying to beam in a trader. Meanwhile, repairs go first for lab needs; the rest of it slides. But no one, at
least no one with a voice in Committee affairs, wants off-world control back.”
“Who is in charge?”
“The Committee—section heads—Corson, Ahren, Alsay, Vlasts—” “Corson, Ahren, yes. Who is
Alsay?”
“He’s at Yetholme.”
“And Watsill?”
“Drafted off-world. So was Praz—and Borntol. Most of the younger men went. And
some of the big brains—”
“Corfu?”
“He—well, he killed himself.”
“What?” He was clearly startled. “I had a message—” Then he shook his head. “It was a long time
reaching me—out there. Why?”
“The official verdict was minor fatigue.”
“And behind that verdict?”
“Rumor has it that he discovered something deadly. They wanted him to develop it. He wouldn’t.
They pressured him, and he was afraid he might give in. So he made sure he would not. The Committee
like that rumor. They have made it their talking point against off-world control. They say that they will
never put weapons into anyone’s hands again.”
“They won’t have the chance—into former hands, that is,” Lugard replied dryly. “And they had
better give up their dreams of trade, too. The breakup is here and now, boy. Each world will have to
make the most of its own resources and be glad if someone else doesn’t try to take them over—” “But
the war is over!”
Lugard shook his head. “The formal war, yes. But it tore the Confederation to bits. Law and
order—we won’t see those come again in our time, not out there—” He motioned with one thin hand to
the sky over us. “No, not in our time, nor probably for generations to come. The lucky worlds with rich
natural resources will struggle along for a generation or two, trying hard to keep a grip on civilization.
Others will coast downhill fast. And there will be wolves tearing all around—” “Wolves?”
“An old term for aggressors. I believe it was an animal running in packs to pull down prey. The
ferocity of such hunts lingered on in our race memories. Yes, there will be wolf packs out now.”
“From the Four Stars?”
“No,” he answered. “They are as badly mauled as we. But there are the remnants of broken fleets,
ships whose home worlds were blasted, with no ports in which they will be welcomed. These can easily
turn rogue, carrying on a way of life they have known for years, merely changing their name from
commando to pirate. The known rich worlds will be struck first—and places where they can set up
bases—” I thought I knew then why he had returned. “You’re bringing in a garrison so Beltane won’t be
open—” “I wish I were, Vere, I wish I were!” And the sincerity in his husky voice impressed me. “No,
I’ve taken government property for my back pay, to the relief of the paymaster. I have title to Butte Hold
and whatever it may contain, that is all. As to why I came back—well, I was born here, and I have a
desire that my bones rest in Beltane earth. Now, south here—” The traces of the old road were nearly
hidden. There had been a washout or two, over which the quickly growing guerl vines had already laid a
mat. Now we were coming to the lava country, where there were signs of the old flows. The vegetation
rooting here was that fitted to wastelands. This was midsummer, and the flowering period was nearly
over. But here and there a late blossom still hung, a small flag of color. There were ripening yellow globes
on the vines, and twice spoohens fluttered away, at the approach of the hopper, from where they had
been feeding.
We circled about an escarpment and saw before us Butte Hold. It was a major feat of adaptation, the
rock of the mountain carved away and hollowed to make a sentry post. It had been fashioned right after
First Ship landing, when there was still doubt about the native fauna, meant to be a protection against
what lay in the saw-toothed wilds of the lava country. Though the need for such a fort was soon known
to be unnecessary, it had served as a headquarters for all the outland patrols as long as they kept watch
here.
I set down on the landing strip by the main entrance. But the doors were banked with drifting sand
and looked as if they had been welded so. Lugard got out, moving stiffly. He reached for his bag, but I
already had it, sliding out in his wake. By the looks of it, he was traveling light, and if there were no
supplies within—well, he might change his mind and want to return, if only temporarily, to guest in the
section.
He did not deny my company but went on ahead, once more in his hand that metal plate he had
shown me at the port. As he came to the sand-billowed doorway, he stood a long moment, looking at
the face of the stronghold, almost as if he expected one of those now shuttered windows to open and
himself to be hailed from within. Then he stooped a little, peering closely at the door. With one hand he
brushed its surface and with the other fitted the plate he carried over the locking mechanism.
I half expected to see him disappointed, my belief in the durability and dependability of machinery
having been systematically undermined by the breakdowns of years just past. But in this case I was
wrong. There was a moment or two of waiting, to be sure, but then the seemingly solid surface parted
into two leaves, rolling silently back on either side. At the same time, interior lights glowed, and we
looked down a straight hall with closed doors to right and left.
“You ought to be sure of supplies,” I ventured. He had turned to reach for the bag I still held. Now he
smiled.
“Very well. Assure yourself, come in—”
I accepted that invitation, though I guessed he would rather be alone. Only I knew Beltane now as he
did not. I would have to leave in the hopper, and he would be, could be, disastrously on his
own—marooned here. He led the way straight down the hall to a door at the rear, raising his hand to
pass it in a swift, decisive gesture over the plate set into its surface. That triggered the opening, and we
stood on the edge of a grav shaft. Lugard did take precautions there, tossing his kit bag out. It floated
gently, descending very slowly. Seeing that, he calmly followed it. I had to force myself after him, my
suspicions of old installations being very near the surface. We descended two levels, and I sweated out
that trip, only too sure that at any minute the cushioning would fail, to dash us on the floor below. But our
boots met the surface with hardly a hint of a jar, and we were in the underground storeroom of the hold. I
saw in the subdued glow shrouded machines. Perhaps I had been wrong to think Lugard would miss
transportation when I left. But he was turning to the right and some alcoved spaces, where there were
containers and cases.
“You see—I am well provided for.” He nodded at that respectable array. I looked around. There
were weapon racks to the left, but they had been stripped bare. Lugard had gone past me to pull the
covering off one of the machines. The plastic folds fell away from a digger, its pointed pick nose
depressed to rest tip against the surface under us. My first hopes of a command flitter, or something like
it, faded. Perhaps, just as the weapon racks had been stripped, so had such transports been taken.
Lugard turned away from the digger, and there was a new briskness about him. “Have no doubts,
Vere. I am well situated here.” His tone was enough to send me to the grav, and this time he signaled
reverse, so we rose to the entrance hall. I was on my way to the door when he stopped me.
“Vere—?”
“Yes?” I turned. He was looking at me as if he were hesitant to say what was in his mind, and I had
the impression that he fought to break through some inner reserve.
“If you find your way up here again, look in.” It could not be termed a warm invitation; yet, coming
from him, I knew that it was as cordial a one as I would ever have, and it was honestly and deeply
meant.
“I will that,” I promised.
He stood in the doorway, a light sundown wind stirring up the drifted sand, driving some of it over the
threshold to grit in the bare hallway, to watch me go. I deliberately circled once as I left and waved, to
see his hand raised shoulder high in return.
Then I headed to Kynvet, leaving the last of Beltane’s soldiers in his chosen retreat. Somehow I
disliked thinking of him alone in that place, which must be for him haunted by all the men who had once
trod its corridors and would never now return. But that it was a choice no one could argue against, I
knew, Griss Lugard being who and what he was.
When I put the hopper down at Kynvet, I saw the wink of lights through the summer dusk.
“Vere?” Gytha’s voice called from the house. “Annet says hurry. There is company—” Company?
Yes, there was the other hopper with the Yetholme code on its tail, and beyond it the flitter Haychax
kept in flying order—almost as if we were entertaining half the Committee. But—why? I quickened pace
and for a space forgot about Butte Hold and its new commander.
II
IT MIGHT NOT be a full meeting of the Committee gathered under Ahren’s roof that night, but the
men whose voices murmured behind closed doors were those who would dominate any such meeting. I
had expected to have to answer for the presence of the hopper and was prepared to stand up for
Lugard’s rights, only to discover that had I presumed to take a flitter, it would not have been noted then.
Annet, busy at dishing up before summoning the men now entrenched in her father’s study, informed
me of the reason for such an unusual convocation. The ship that had brought in Lugard and the other
veterans had, in addition, a second mission. The captain had been contacted, as he came out of hyper
into orbit, by a ship now above Beltane, of whose presence we had not been aware. And a plea had
been delivered to the Committee.
It was as Lugard had predicted, though his view of the matter had been gloomy. There were ships
now without home ports, their native worlds burn-out cinders or radioactive to the point that life could
not exist on their deadly surfaces. One such load of refugees now wove a pattern in our sky and asked
for landing rights and settlement space.
Beltane had, by the very reason for its settlement, been a “closed” world, its single port open only to
certified ships. But that enclosure vanished with the end of the war. The truth was that the sector
settlements occupied so little of the continental masses that we were not even a true pioneer world, in
spite of the permanence of the hamlets that radiated from the port. The whole eastern land mass was
empty of any colonization at all.
Did the old restrictions still prevail? And if they did not—was the welcome signal out for any flotsam
of the war? I thought of Lugard’s dire prophecy that wolves ranged or would range the star lanes—that
those without defenses could be looted, or even taken over. And would these men now conferring with
Ahren think of that possibility? I believed not.
I picked up a platter of dunk bread and took it to the long table. Servo-robos were long gone now,
save for a few in the labs. We had returned to the early state of our species and used our two hands, our
feet, and the strength of our backs to work. Annet was a good cook—I relished what came out of her
pots and pans more than the food at the port, which was still running by robo. The appetizing odor of the
dunk bread made me realize it had been a long time since noon and that my port meal had been even less
satisfactory than usual. When I returned for a tray of dunk bowls, she was looking out of the window.
“Where did you get the hopper?”
“Portside. I had a passenger into the outback.”
She looked at me in surprise. “Outback! But who—?”
“Griss Lugard. He wanted to go to Butte Hold. Came in on the tramp.”
“Griss Lugard—who is he?”
“He served with my father. Used to command at Butte Hold before the war.” “Before the war” was
even more remote to her than to me. She had hardly been out of a sector crèche when the first news of
the conflict had come to us. And I doubted if she could remember the time before.
“What did he come for? He is—was—a soldier, wasn’t he?” Soldiers, men who made fighting their
profession, were as legendary on Beltane now as any of the fantastical creatures on the story tapes of the
young.
“He was born here. He was given the hold—”
“You mean there are going to be soldiers here again? But the war is over. Father—the
Committee—they will protest that! You know the First Law—” I knew the First Law—how could I
escape it? It had been dinned into my ears, and supposedly my head, long enough. “War is waste; there
is no conflict that cannot be resolved by men of patience, intelligence, and good will meeting openly in
communication.”
“No, he’s alone. He is no longer with the forces. He’s been badly wounded.” “He must be wit-addled
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AndreNortonContentsIIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIIIIXXXIXIIXIIIXIVXVXVIXVIIXVIIIIIHAVEHEARDitstatedthataZexrotapewilllastforever.Butevenasecondgenerationnowmayfindnothingworthtreasuringinourstory.Ofourowncompany,Dinan,andperhapsGytha,whonowworkonthestorageofalltheoldoff-worldrecordsmaycontinuetokeepsuchahistoryof...
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