--And Devious the Line of Duty, Tom Godwin [have you read this book .TXT] 📗
- Author: Tom Godwin
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For an instant Lyla's face had the hurt expression of a child rebuffed without reason. Then she looked away and Val turned to Rockford and said, "I'm ready when you are, sir."
Lyla watched them walk away and she was still watching when the helicopter had lifted into the air and faded from sight.
Hunter hesitated, then spoke to her:
"I understand you want to talk more about the Space Guard, Princess Lyla?"
"Princess Lyla!" Her lips curled as she turned to face him and she seemed to spit the words at him in sudden, unexpected resentment. "I love the meaningless sound of my official figurehead title! It's so much better than being regarded as a living person with feelings that can be hurt!"
"But Princ ... I mean—" He floundered, not quite sure what had caused her reaction.
She made a visible effort to compose herself. "I'm sorry," she said. "I suppose my ... husband ... is quite right; an immature female has no business trying to rule a world and the sooner the marriage is confirmed, the sooner a competent man can take over the job."
"No," he said. "I think—"
He decided that what he thought had better be left unsaid.
"I'll"—she looked toward the cabin she shared with Narf—"let you know when we can talk."
She went back toward the cabin, walking slowly. From inside Narf's half of it came the sound of Narf's voice as he spoke to Sonig:
"... Of course, this collection of heads is nothing compared with what I have in the Sea Islands ... but some interesting stories here ... take that snow fox there...."
Hunter sighed, and saw that Lyla had stopped before her door, as though dreading to enter. Narf's voice droned on:
"... Only wounded, so I finished it with a knife. Even with its heart half cut out, it still wanted to live ... beautiful pelt ... coat for Janalee, the strip-tease queen ... always had a way with women—Lyla could tell you that ... had my pick of hundreds but I'm letting her be my choice...."
He saw Lyla half lift her hand, as in some mute gesture of protest, then she turned and walked swiftly away; up the path that led into the ghost trees, and out of sight.
He waited, but she did not come back. He went into his cabin and moved about restlessly, hearing again Narf's sadism-and-sex boasting and seeing again how she turned and almost ran from it—
"Rootenant!"
Alonzo was panting, a look of frantic appeal in his eyes.
"Prease herp me ... Princess Ryra ... she wirr die!"
He felt his heart lurch. "She's hurt?" he demanded, and was already on his way to the door.
"She are about to cry and she are going to where the tree tigers riv. They wirr kirr her—prease come with me!"
He asked no more questions but went out the door and up the path, Alonzo running ahead of him.
The ghost trees grew thinner as they went up the mountain's slope, and the blue-green fernlike trees of the tiger forest began to appear. They grew thicker and thicker, until the ground was black with their shadows and the midday sunlight was filtered out by the foliage overhead. Alonzo was trailing her, his nose to the ground, and Hunter hurried close behind him, watching for the red-and-white of the clothes she was wearing and hoping they would not find her too late.
They were deep in the forest when they found her.
She was standing motionless in the center of a clearing, facing away from him and looking as small and alone as a lost child. She seemed to be waiting....
He realized for the first time how alone she really was, with only a doglike alien, Alonzo, to love her or care what might happen to her, and with a future she could not bear to face. But Rockford had been wrong when he had said, For her, there is no escape.
There was escape for her. She had only to wait, as she was waiting now, and it would come in the windlike whisper of a tiger's rush through the grass behind her....
He hurried to her. She turned, and he saw the stains of tears now dry on her face and in her eyes the darkness of utter defeat.
"I was afraid you might get hurt, Lyla—"
Then, seemingly without volition on his part, he put his arms around her and she was clinging to him and crying in muffled sobs and trying to say something about, "I didn't think anybody cared...."
It was some time later, when her crying was finished, that he was reminded of the tigers by Alonzo:
"Rootenant ... awr the time, some tigers are coming croser and croser. We better get her out of here, Rootenant, before they find us."
Lyla looked down at Alonzo. "Thank you, Alonzo, for watching over me and ... and—" Her voice caught and she dropped to her knees and hugged the shaggy head tight against her.
Hunter watched ahead, Lyla beside him as they went through the dense trees. Alonzo walked soft-footed behind them, watching the rear. When they came to the first ghost trees and the dwindling of the tiger trees, Hunter thought it safe to walk slower and talk to her.
"I saw you go," he said. "I didn't know where until Alonzo came running to tell me."
"I heard him bragging about killing, and about his women—I was weak, wasn't I?"
"Weak?"
"I was afraid to face the future, just because it isn't to be exactly like I thought I wanted."
"What was the kind you wanted, Lyla?"
"Oh ... I guess I wanted a husband who could see me only, and children, and evenings together in the flower garden, and ... well, all the silly, sentimental little things that mean so much to a woman."
He thought, Even with its heart half cut out, it still wanted to live ... Coat for Janalee ... the strip-tease queen....
They passed through the last of the tiger trees and she said, "We're safe, now. The tigers never attack anyone outside their forest."
She was walking slowly and he said, "We should get on back before you're missed, shouldn't we?"
"Who would miss me?" she asked. "So long as I remain physically intact for the marriage night, who cares where or why I went away?"
There was the cold bleakness of winter in her eyes as she spoke, and in her voice the first undertone of brass. He saw that this was already the beginning of the change that Narf would make in her; the transformation of a girl young and wanting to love and be loved into a hard and cynical woman.
He put his arm around her shoulder, thinking that he should tell her that he cared and that she must never let Narf change her.
"Lyla, I—"
He realized how futile and foolish the words would sound. She would marry Narf, he would return to Earth, and they would never meet again. There were no words for him to speak on this last walk together, no way to tell her that he wanted to help her, to protect and care for her. No way to express the feeling inside him....
He did what seemed as natural under the circumstances as it had been for him to put his arm around her in the clearing. He tilted up her face and bent his head to kiss her.
And walked with jarring impact into the knobby elbow of a ghost tree limb.
The sun was down and dusk was darkening the camp when they arrived back at her cabin.
"Thank you, Dale," she said. Her hand squeezed his arm. "I didn't know I had a friend ... but now we'll have to be strangers because—"
Gravel crunched loudly on one of the paths in the ghost trees and they looked back, to see Narf and Sonig coming, walking swiftly. Even at the distance, there was anger like a red aura about Narf.
"Well," Lyla said softly, "here comes my medicine."
Sonig stopped at his own cabin, to stand just within the doorway, watching. Narf strode on and stopped before Hunter and Lyla, his face twisted with savage hatred as he looked at Hunter. He spoke to Lyla with grating vehemence:
"You've done an excellent job of making an ass of yourself—and of me—haven't you? Come on in the cabin!"
Narf seized her by the arm, towering over her as he jerked her around toward the door. Hunter stepped quickly forward, feeling the hot flash of his own anger, but there was the paleness of Lyla's face as she looked back, an appeal on it that said, No! He stopped, realizing that Narf would not physically harm the woman who would make him king of Vesta, and that any interference on his part would only make everything the harder for her.
He watched the two go into the cabin—into Lyla's half—and Narf slammed the door shut behind them. There followed the quick bang of windows being closed, and then Narf's muffled tirade began: "... May think I'm a fool ... I'm going to tell you a few things...."
Sonig was still standing within his doorway. Hunter knew, without seeing it, that the thin-lipped smile would be on Sonig's face.
He turned and walked back to his own cabin. There was nothing he could do but withdraw—and listen from a distance and be ready to act if it seemed she was in danger.
He sat on his doorstep in the darkness, hearing occasional phrases in Narf's unrelenting abuse. One was: "So prim you had to countermand my order for a key to that lock—then you went out to play with that second lieutenant...."
Alonzo materialized out of the darkness, coming as silently as a shadow. He was no longer the bumbling clown. The idiotic grin was gone and his eyes were green fire, slanted and catlike, his teeth flashing white in a snarl as he looked back toward the sound of Narf's voice.
"She are my Princess Ryra," Alonzo said. "He are cursing her. If he ever hurt her, I wirr tear out his throat and his river."
"He won't hurt her, Alonzo," Hunter said, wishing he could be sure. "He'll only use words on her."
"He never ask her why she run away—he onry curse her and threaten her because she embarrass him."
"Embarrass him?"
"He and Sonig, they see you coming out of the forest with your arm around her. They watch with high-power grasses."
"But there was nothing wrong in that—"
"That are what Princess Ryra say. She say you onry put your arm around her because she are stirr scared of the tigers. And then he say, what about the other? And he cawr her awrful bad names."
"What other?"
"Oh, when you are bending down to kiss Princess Ryra and are wawrking into tree."
He gulped. "They saw that?"
"Oh, sure. Rord Narf are so mad he want to kirr you right then but Sonig say, 'Wait, I have a pran.' Then Sonig say, 'It are too bad we don't have a camera—we could have made that rootenant the raffing stock of forty worlds.'"
The thought made Hunter gulp again.
"What was Sonig's plan that Narf told Lyla about?" He asked.
"Oh, he not terr her. I hear Sonig terr Rord Narf when I spy. Sonig say, 'Tomorrow we be friendry and we ret those two go for another wawrk in the woods. And we have cameras with terescope rens and when they kiss and hug we take moving pictures.'"
"Why, the gutter-bred rat—"
"And Rord Narf say, 'That is what we wirr do. And then I wirr kirr him as soon as we have the pictures and she wirr have to toe the mark from then on because if I pubricry show the pictures of what she did, she wirr be ashamed to show her face anywhere on Vesta.'"
"Why, the—" He could not think of a suitable expression.
"And then Sonig say, 'To make sure she go out tomorrow, you bawr her out good so she wirr want to cry on the rootenant's shourder again.' And Rord Narf say, 'I wirr
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