Fantastic Stories Presents: Fantasy Super Pack #1. Fritz Leiber

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ trying.” Honath said. “But you should go down to the jungle-top, then. We’re not like the others; they are the people you want to see.”

      “We shall, in the morning. We just landed here. But, just because you’re not like the others, we’re more interested in you now. Tell me, has any condemned man ever escaped from the jungle floor before you people?”

      “No, never. That’s not surprising. There are monsters down there.”

      Jarl Eleven looked sidewise at the other Giant. He seemed to be smiling. “When you see the films,” he remarked, “you’ll call that the understatement of the century. Honath, how did you three manage to escape, then?”

      Haltingly at first, and then with more confidence as the memories came crowding vividly back, Honath told him. When he mentioned the feast at the demon’s nest, Jarl Eleven again looked significantly at Adler, but he did not interrupt.

      “And finally we got to the top of the chimney and came out on this flat space,” Honath said. “Alaskon was still with us then, but when he saw you and the metal thing he threw himself back down the cleft. He was a criminal like us, but he should not have died. He was a brave man, and a wise one.”

      “Not wise enough to wait until all the evidence was in,” Adler said enigmatically. “All in all, Jarl, I’d say ‘prodigious’ is the word for it. This is easily the most successful seeding job any team has ever done, at least in this limb of the galaxy. And what a stroke of luck, to be on the spot just as it came to term, and with a couple at that!”

      “What does he mean?” Honath said.

      “Just this, Honath. When the seeding team set your people up in business on Tellura, they didn’t mean for you to live forever in the treetops. They knew that, sooner or later, you’d have to come down to the ground and learn to fight this planet on its own terms. Otherwise, you’d go stale and die out.”

      “Live on the ground all the time?” Mathild said in a faint voice.

      “Yes, Mathild. The life in the treetops was to have been only an interim period, while you gathered knowledge you needed about Tellura and put it to use. But to be the real masters of the world, you will have to conquer the surface, too.

      “The device your people worked out, that of sending criminals to the surface, was the best way of conquering the planet that they could have picked. It takes a strong will and courage to go against custom, and both those qualities are needed to lick Tellura. Your people exiled just such fighting spirits to the surface, year after year after year.

      “Sooner or later, some of those exiles were going to discover how to live successfully on the ground and make it possible for the rest of your people to leave the trees. You and Honath have done just that.”

      “Observe please, Jarl,” Adler said. “The crime in this first successful case was ideological. That was the crucial turn in the criminal policy of these people. A spirit of revolt is not quite enough, but couple it with brains and—ecce homo!”

      Honath’s head was swimming. “But what does all this mean?” he said. “Are we—not condemned to Hell any more?”

      “No, you’re still condemned, if you still want to call it that,” Jarl Eleven said soberly. “You’ve learned how to live down there, and you’ve found out something even more valuable: how to stay alive while cutting down your enemies. Do you know that you killed three demons with your bare hands, you and Mathild and Alaskon?”

      “Killed—”

      “Certainly,” Jarl Eleven said. “You ate three eggs. That is the classical way, and indeed the only way, to wipe out monsters like the dinosaurs. You can’t kill the adults with anything short of an anti-tank gun, but they’re helpless in embryo—and the adults haven’t the sense to guard their nests.”

      Honath heard, but only distantly. Even his awareness of Mathild’s warmth next to him did not seem to help much.

      “Then we have to go back down there,” he said dully. “And this time forever.”

      “Yes,” Jarl Eleven said, his voice gentle. “But you wont be alone, Honath. Beginning tomorrow, you’ll have all your people with you.”

      “All our people? But you’re going to drive them out?”

      “All of them. Oh, we won’t prohibit the use of the vine-webs too, but from now on your race will have to fight it out on the surface as well. You and Mathild have proven that it can be done. It’s high time the rest of you learned, too.”

      “Jarl, you think too little of these young people themselves,” Adler said. “Tell them what is in store for them. They are frightened.”

      “Of course, of course. It’s obvious. Honath, you and Mathild are the only living individuals of your race who know how to survive down there on the surface. And we’re not going to tell your people how to do that. We aren’t even going to drop them so much as a hint. That part of it is up to you.”

      Honath’s jaw dropped.

      “It’s up to you,” Jarl Eleven repeated firmly. “We’ll return you to your tribe tomorrow, and we’ll tell your people that you two know the rules for successful life on the ground—and that everyone else has to go down and live there too. We’ll tell them nothing else but that. What do you think they’ll do then?”

      “I don’t know,” Honath said dazedly. “Anything could happen. They might even make us Spokesman and Spokeswoman—except that we’re just common criminals.”

      “Uncommon pioneers, Honath. The man and the woman to lead the humanity of Tellura out of the attic, into the wide world.” Jarl Eleven got to his feet, the great light playing over him. Looking up after him, Honath saw that there were at least a dozen other Giants standing just outside the oval of light, listening intently to every word.

      “But there’s a little time to be passed before we begin,” Jarl Eleven said. “Perhaps you two would like to look over our ship.”

      Humbly, but with a soundless emotion much like music inside him, Honath took Mathild’s hand. Together they walked away from the chimney to Hell, following the footsteps of the Giants.

      To Serve a Prince

      by B.W. Clough

      The storm was the worst the eastern Mediterranean had endured this century, and the royal yacht Brittania was in trouble. The ship swooped up and down like a roller coaster on the wind-lashed waves. Down in the royal suite Charles, Prince of Wales, was damnably seasick. His cabin had big picture windows, but the waves scoured right up over them so they might as well have been portholes. And the way the curtains swayed back and forth—ugh! it’d make anybody queasy. “Can’t you make this stop?” he demanded.

      “Sorry, Sir,” the Brittania’s captain said, a broad apology that covered the waves, the weather, and life in general all at once. “Weather conditions are worsening. We’ve radioed for assistance. I have to ask that you put this on, Sir. Just in case.”

      The picture of restrained British fury, Prince Charles looked tight-lipped СКАЧАТЬ