Assault on the Gods

CHAPTER 1-1

CHAPTER 1

Just as a child needs its parents, so does an immature society need its gods. Freedom is always hard to bear, and the weight of self-responsibility can only be carried after a certain level of sophistication has been attained.

—Anthropos, The Godhood of Man

The road, if such it could be called, was a simple track along which the local equivalent of horses—six-legged beasts called daryeks—could pull rickety wooden carts. The ruts worn by wagon wheels were several centimeters deep in water, while the rest of the road was mud. With no traffic at night, Ardeva Korrell had the trail entirely to herself. The planet Dascham had no moon and the overcast sky blocked out the stars, so her universe was a darkness broken only by the light of the small electric lantern she carried as she trudged along on foot.

“In the ideal world,” she mused to no one in particular, “a spaceship captain would not have to serve as her own shore patrol as well.” And she sighed. Dascham was about as far from the ideal world as she ever hoped to get. She might as well wish for a ship of her very own, a competent crew, and the respect due her rank and experience. They were all equally distant from reality.

The dark clouds overhead threatened rain—not unexpected, since it rained every night in the inhabited parts of this planet. A biting wind accompanied the clouds and chilled her spirit, despite the spacer uniform that insulated all but her head.

“I hope Dunnis and Zhurat are drunk,” she said. “It will give me such pleasure tomorrow to yell into their hung-over ears and give them penalty duty.” The thought warmed her for a moment then died as her religious training came to the fore. “‘Vengeance eases frustrations only in the insecure mind,’” she quoted. “‘Sanity does not require the evening of natural imbalances.’ I know, I know. But I sometimes think life would be a lot more fun if I were a little less sane.”

She thought of her warm, if cramped, cabin back aboard Foxfire, and about the books waiting for her there. This slogging through mud towards a shantytown to retrieve two drunken crewmen was not her idea of a pleasant way to spend a cold, damp night on an alien world. But it was necessary. She’d told them she wanted them back in four hours; when six had gone by without their return, she knew she’d have to take disciplinary action. Being a female captain put her in a precarious enough position without letting the crew take advantage of her.

At least she wouldn’t have to walk back. The Daschamese had generously provided the ship with a small cart for transportation to and from the village, but the two errant crewmembers had taken it with them into town. The only other transportation short of Shanks’ mare was Foxfire’s lifeboat, wasteful for a two-kilometer jaunt.

So she walked, with mud sucking at her boots as she lifted each foot, thinking alternately about her bed and books aboard ship and about what she could do to Dunnis and Zhurat if she were a less-sane, vengeance-seeking person.

***

She came upon the town suddenly. One moment the glow of the lantern showed nothing around her but open fields and, in the next, crude hovels that served the Daschamese as houses surrounded her. The ground underfoot, no better for being within the village, had been churned up from the volume of traffic that crossed over it daily.

To Dev, the settlement looked haphazard, squalid, and depressingly medieval—in short, identical to the three others she’d seen since Foxfire arrived on Dascham a week ago. Huts, rather than houses had been built out of a reedy material resembling bamboo; large c****s in the walls were filled in with mud—hardly the warmest possible arrangement. Little wonder, then, that the Daschamese wore heavy, coarse clothing. Something had to be done to keep pneumonia from wiping out the race. The roofs, thatched with what appeared to be twigs, probably only kept out ninety percent of the water. Dev wondered whether the Daschamese would die if moved to a temperate climate; even their broad, flat feet seemed adapted to walking in mud.

Dev shook her head. It depressed her to see intelligent beings living in such physical poverty. Something was missing from their racial character, a sense of pride and accomplishment. Probably due to those gods they worshiped; the religious taboos were so strict they barely allowed the people a subsistence living. “Gods fit the minds of those who serve them,” Anthropos had once observed. It made her wonder about the health of the Daschamese intellect.

The village was dark and preternaturally quiet. Dev estimated the population at several thousand, yet after dark there was little indication the region was even inhabited. It was the gods again, naturally—strict taboos against being outside after dark, except under certain circumstances. To be sure, even the dismal Daschamese had their nightlife, but it was a pale pleasure compared to those of human civilization.

It was a rule of the universe that warm-blooded protoplasmic creatures could be affected by fermented beverages. It was also a rule that intelligent minds often sought relief from oppressive realities by indulging in some form of mind-alteration. The combination of those two rules meant there would be the equivalent of a bar on any world a human being could tolerate.

The Daschamese bars, built in the same architectural style—or lack thereof—as the houses, were only slightly bigger. They would be lit at night, in contrast to the darkened sleeping hovels, and they would also tend to be slightly noisier—though from what Dev had seen of the natives, she wagered the Daschamese were quiet drunks. The bars seemed to be the only places on the entire planet offering respite from the dreariness of Daschamese living—and it would be in one of these bars that she would most likely find Dunnis and Zhurat.

There were no streets in the village. Huts were built wherever the owner felt they were convenient, which meant a resident had to find his way about by instinct.

Dev slogged through the mire, searching the random town for her crewmen. It began to drizzle before she found even the first bar—a monotonous heavy mist that blurred the outlines of objects around her. Her close-cut brown hair got damp, plastering itself to her forehead and neck. But aside from the steaming of the rain as it hit the ground, there was no sound—no babies crying, no people talking, no pets yapping. It seemed as though the village crouched in fear from some nameless horror. Finally she spotted a larger hut with lights shining between the c****s—a bar. She increased her pace to just short of a run. She didn’t want to move too fast and fall in the mud; it would give those two clowns something more to laugh about if she went inside in such a disgraceful condition.

Entering the bar, she blinked at the mild lighting provided by candles in sconces around the walls. After being out in the pitch darkness of the Daschamese night, it took time for her eyes to adjust. Besides, there was a smoky quality to the atmosphere, which Dev guessed was produced by some local drug other than alcohol. The smoke burned her eyes and made her rub away the tears with the backs of her hands.

When she could see again, she surveyed the interior. Four small tables dotted the floor, each with four chairs around it. The proprietor stood behind a slightly longer table—more like a workbench than a bar. The floor was bare wood and the walls—except for the sconces and some blankets to cover the larger c****s—were devoid of decoration.

Several Daschames occupied the tables. Dev’s hundred and eighty centimeter height towered over the natives, who only averaged a hundred fifty-five. The Daschamese looked like nothing so much as animated teddy bears. Thick, matted fur in varying colors covered their bodies. They walked on broad, flat feet, and they wore heavy woolen clothes. Their short, stubby hands each contained three fingers and an opposable thumb. It was impossible for a human to read any expression in the ursine faces, but their eyes lacked the vibrant luster of the truly alive.

At the sight of her, the natives rose quickly to their feet—whether out of respect or fear, Dev couldn’t say. Probably a little of each, she supposed. After all, she was one of those strange beings from the sky. Many of the Daschamese may never have seen a human close up, since their planet was well outside the normal trading routes, and few ships ever ventured here. To the locals, with their primitive technology, humans must seem almost as powerful as their own gods.

Reaching up to her cheek, she switched on her translator. “Please don’t be startled,” she said into the mouthpiece, and heard her own voice coming out of it in the growly Daschamese tongue. “I am merely looking for two of my friends. Have any of you seen them?”

Silence for a moment then low growls, which the computer informed her were a chorus of ‘NOs’. She thanked the people and, with a sigh, ventured outside once more.

The drizzle had become a downpour in just the short time she’d been inside the bar. Dev wished she’d been able to bring her helmet with her, but she would have had to bring some oxygen tanks along in that case, and Foxfire’s stores could ill afford that expenditure. So her brown hair turned stringy, and water dripped down the back of her neck as she trudged wearily through the darkened village to find the next bar.

***

It had been a drier, if more desperate, Captain Korrell that had walked up to the door of Elliptic Enterprises two months earlier in search of a job. The planet was New Crete and the situation was critical. Her landlord had eyed her intently as she left the apartment; she could almost hear him wondering how long it would take to fumigate the place and move in a new tenant—one who paid rent when it was due. Her meager savings had all but evaporated, and the prospects of a job for a ship’s captain who was both a woman and an Eoan were slim at best.

The door opened at her buzz, and she entered the outer office. The surroundings weren’t as bad as she’d expected. True, the office was located in the less fashionable part of town, but an effort had been made to preserve dignity and comfort. Carpeting covered the floors, and the walls were painted a restful, pleasing blue. Interesting bits of sculpture were tucked into the crannies and a pair of silver mobiles hung from the ceiling. The secretary’s desk looked to be real wood and its top surface was busy but uncluttered. Nothing in the room completely matched anything else, but at least some effort and pride had taken place to make it habitable. Dev had applied at some offices with bare floors and walls, and large insects crawling nonchalantly over the desktops. This was a distinct improvement.

The secretary—a pleasant, middle-aged woman—took her name, invited her to have a seat and went into the inner office to inform the boss of Dev’s arrival. Dev started looking through some magazines as she waited—at first just to keep down the jitters, but after only a minute she was absorbed in the subject. She considered it almost an intrusion when the secretary returned to tell her Master Larramac would see her now.

She followed the woman into the inner office, a tribute to eclecticism. Larramac was obviously a collector of knick-knacks, because the room was festooned with odd little gadgets: an old-time fire hydrant, an assortment of colorful rocks, a set of porcelain flowerpots and many little things her eye did not recognize immediately. Posters covered the walls: “Work is what you do so some day you won’t have to do it any more” and “I believe in getting into hot water—it keens me clean.”

Then Dev noticed the man behind the desk. He was very thin, and his body seemed composed entirely of acute angles. His clothes were of violent reds and blues, and his codpiece was just a trifle over-padded. His goatee was graying and his hair thinning a bit—though not quite enough to justify a transplant. The shaven part front to back along the center of his scalp—an affectation indicating he hoped someday to join Society—was tattooed with a design of numbers skillfully interwoven to form an intriguing pattern. His eyes never stood still, but darted around the room, as though fearful of missing some momentous event.