Star of Gypsies
- Автор: Силверберг Роберт
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Star of Gypsies». Краткое содержание книги:
Now that I knew I could ghost as far back in time as Earth, I went there often, hoping to find my people again. And very often I did; but it was a long time before I saw them in such merriment again. Instead I saw them huddling in leaking leantos under a cold rain, wearing nothing but ragged scraps of old clothing. I saw them cooped up in prisons, living a filthy life in squalid wooden huts while grunting bailiffs strode among them with whips. I saw them living on roots and leaves in the forest. I saw them marching on dry dusty roads, looking fearfully back over their shoulders. I saw their dark eyes peering out through barbed wire fences. Again and again and again I went to Earth and sought out my people and whenever I found them I found them suffering and hungry. That was when I knew that for the Rom old Earth had been Alta Hannalanna all the time, when they lived as homeless strangers, despised and hungry among the uncaring Gaje. It was then that the resolution was born in me to devote the rest of my life to setting right that ancient wrong, to end the years of wandering at last. I would bring my people home to Romany Star.
But first I had to get myself free of this hideous place where I was trapped.
ONE DAY THEY BROUGHT VABRIKANT BACK BADLY wounded from the tunnels. He had gone out a couple of days before with a novice, a long-legged boy from Darma Barma-that was what they mostly used Vabrikant for, the training of novices-and this time he had been imprudent or too slow or he had simply not cared; and when he opened the cyst the insect was alive and waiting. It sprang out already fighting and laid him open from side to side with a single swipe of its beak.
I give the boy from Darma Barma credit: he struggled with the thing and killed it, and staggered back all the way to the dormitory with Vabrikant in his arms although he had been seriously cut and gouged himself. A couple of the overmasters came out to see what had happened. Vabrikant was a horrifying sight and he seemed close to death. He was unconscious, breathing slowly and hoarsely, his mouth slack. His eyes were open, but they looked like little slits of glass. The overmasters studied him a moment, shrugged, walked away.
The merciful thing would probably have been to help him die as quickly as possible, but I was too young to understand that. I went running after the overmasters, shouting, "Hey! Are you just going to leave him lying there?"
One of them didn't even look back. The other turned and peered at me in disbelief. Nobody spoke to overmasters here unless they spoke to you first.
"You said something?"
"He's still alive. He's in pain. For God's sake, aren't you going to do anything for him?"
"Why is that your problem?"
"That's Vabrikant there. He's the best man in this whole godforsaken place."
The overmaster stared at me as if I had gone insane and made a quick offhand gesture with his thumb, telling me to get back where I belonged. I wasn't having that. I came up close to him, practically nose to nose, and pointed angrily at Vabrikant. "He doesn't have to die! Get him into surgery, will you? At least give him a pain-killer." A chilly stare was the only response I got. "God damn it, aren't you human? A man's lying there on the ground with his guts hanging out and you won't even do anything?"
The overmaster had his truncheon in one hand and his sensory whip in the other. I saw the blaze of irritation and fury in his eyes and I knew that if I didn't back off in another moment he was going to jab me. But I didn't care. I went on pointing and shouting and then, when that seemed to do no good, I grabbed him by the arm and swung him around.
He didn't give me the truncheon. He gave me the sensory whip.
I wasn't prepared for that. Not that you could ever be; but the sensory whip was a weapon that ordinarily was used only in extreme jeopardy. It could kill. I thought it had killed me. I had never known such pain as that in my life. I felt as if I had been speared in the skull with a mining pick. My head rolled until it almost fell off my shoulders and my heart stopped beating and my feet went out from under me and I fell down, choking and gagging, biting at the spongy flooring.
When I came back to consciousness the walls seemed to be spinning. The roof of the dormitory was gone and the hundreds of kilometers of sponge-stuff above us had blown away and I saw the open sky, and it was all bright yellow swirls of lightning dancing up and down. Gradually my vision cleared and I saw the overmaster against the blare of yellow light. He was standing over me, waiting to see what I would do next.
The sensible move would have been to get myself away from him fast. To forget all about Vabrikant and creep or crawl or drag myself back into some dark quiet corner of the dormitory, if indeed I had enough strength left in me to do anything like that, and lick my wounds, if I could remember where my tongue was. Otherwise, if I made any sort of further trouble at all, the overmaster was going to lash me with the sensory whip a second time, and the second time would almost certainly kill me. I was young and I was very strong, but I had just taken a tremendous jolt of force through my entire nervous system. A second hit of that magnitude and I was done for.
Any sensible person would have known that. And I was a sensible person. Usually.
But I also knew that Vabrikant was going to die very soon if I didn't do something. And that I was probably going to die before long too, for I had grabbed an overmaster's arm in anger, and that marked me as extremely dangerous. Slaves were not supposed to tell overmasters what to do. They certainly weren't supposed to lay hands on them. The next time I got out of line the overmasters would finish me off.
Feebly, numbly, I got to my feet. I was shaking like a man with the palsy. My arms dangled as though they had no bones. I was a thousand years old. The overmaster watched me smugly. He held the sensory whip cocked and ready, but he knew I was going to shuffle away in defeat. A man who has been hit like that doesn't come back for more. It's only common sense. So when I took a couple of shambling steps in his direction he understood that I was simply disoriented. I must have meant to go the other way. Yellow lightning was still crackling through my brain and I could barely focus my eyes. A moment went by before he realized that I had no common sense at all and that I was about to do a very foolish thing; and by then it was too late for him. He raised the whip and started to squeeze off the fatal hit, but I came in smoothly underneath his arm, moving much more rapidly than I had any right to, surprising us both. And I took the whip away from him and told him what I was going to do to him; and then I turned the whip's force down to its lowest level and I lashed him with it.
I didn't want to kill him. I didn't even want to make him lose consciousness. I just wanted to hurt him, again and again, until he groveled, until he begged, until he screamed. I wanted to give him as much torment in five minutes as I had absorbed in two years on this world. So I lashed him at the lowest setting and I lashed him again, and then again. His sphincter control went on the third hit. He fell down and scrabbled about, sobbing, moaning, biting the ground, slapping his hands and feet against the floor in desperate pain. Begging me to stop. I enjoyed not stopping.