The Buttoned Sky Part 17

_My G.o.d! Even the fox hunts--with people hunted. Anyone but miners? Open days, eh? Ho-oly...._

_Glad to know you, Rack. Don't know as I'd care to have you on the other side, you look like Goliath. So you just saw the light when the G.o.ds started to die? You are lucky you saw it, big man; brother against brother is the nastiest form of war, especially if mankind's fighting an alien power...._

_Your rebels sound familiar, Mink. They had 'em about like you in Ireland, a hundred or so years ago--I mean before I went bye-bye....

Always romantic, unbelievable, unfindable, foxes with fangs...._

_I wonder what your globes wanted? Power, sure, if they're that humanoid in concept, but it must have been more. Maybe their own planet blew up.

Maybe they ran out of something. Tell me, do you have to give them anything? Any metal, say?_

_Diamonds? Are those small hard chunks of--yes, I guess diamond still means what it did. By gravy, I'll bet I know! They were just starting to discover the terrific potential of energy of the diamond when I went to sleep in 2084. I_ wonder _how long ago that was? Anyway, I'll wager these globes of yours run their d.a.m.ned saucers--b.u.t.tons--on diamond energy.

Maybe their planet ran out of diamonds. By G.o.d! what a yarn!_

_You'll have your hands full, but maybe I can help. There's a way to bring those saucers down out of the sky in a hurry.... They won't give up easily. They obviously have atomic bombs, and the lush intoxication of power won't be a cinch to give up, not for anything that sounds as egotistic as the globes...._

_Dolfya? We called it Philadelphia. Kamden, Camden, yeah.... Woods lions, wow! They must be mutants from zoo or circus lions that escaped during the atom wars; or maybe someone brought 'em to the U.S. The Tartarians had tame lions, I remember._

_Six or eight brains? Well, Mink, I wouldn't argue, but I think you are confusing certain functions of one brain with--oh, do go on!_

_Let me see that gun. My Lord, what a concoction! Blunderbuss muzzle, sh.e.l.ls, yet no breech-loading; ramrods to shove in sh.e.l.ls! My sainted aunt! A fantastic combination...._

_He eats dandelions, parsley, gra.s.s, eh ... chlorophyll, obviously. And the globe rests on his chest and puts tentacles into his mouth and nostrils. It's feeding, sure; look at the t.i.tle of this book you've got here. This is a b.a.s.t.a.r.d English but close enough. Certainly your father wrote it, Miss. Some of your gentry must have preserved the art as a secret._

_Look here: I'll make it as plain as I can. The globes are from another world. They came here for diamonds to run their b.u.t.tons with. Got that?_

_Now here's what I deduce from the little I've read here. Talk about Pepy's Diary! Hadn't anything on this chronicle. Your father and the other gentry have to feed the globes periodically. Evidently they draw nourishment out of the human bodies--all that chlorophyll makes me think it's a definitely physical nourishment, rather than a psychic one.

That's what your people pay for being privileged powers in the land.

They stand the disgrace and the pain, if there is any, the draining of their energies, in return for plain old magnetic_ power.

_So that's the source of life, strength, what-have-you, of the aliens!

They must have gotten pretty frantic out in the s.p.a.ce wastes, looking for a planet that could afford them a life form that was tap-able._

_Evidently it has to be voluntary, from these books. I guess the ancestors of the ruck had their crack at the honor and declined, thus dooming themselves and their offspring to servitude; while those that a.s.sented became the gentry. What a--Judas Priest! What a sordid state of affairs for poor old Earth!_

_Let me have that line from the Globate Credo again:_ They came from the sky before our grandfathers were born, to a world torn by war; they settled our differences and raised us from the slime_--there's a bitter laugh, gentlemen_--giving us freedom. All we have we owe to the globes.

_There's the whole tale in a nutsh.e.l.l. G.o.d!_

_Orbish language, Orbuary, Orbsday--nice job they did of infiltrating. I wonder what books they left you. I'd like a look at your father's library. Alice in Wonderland, I suppose, or Black Beauty, or something equally advanced._

_Now listen, lads, and you, Lady Nirea. I came from a world that may have had its rugged spots, but it was heaven and Utopia compared with this one. You disinterred me at the d.a.m.ndest most vital moment of your history, and probably of Earth's as well--we've had conquerors aplenty, but always of this world, not from out of it. It seems to me that if your rebellion fails, you're due for worse treatment than ever. You've got to win, and win fast. Any ent.i.ty that has atomic weapons is going to be no easy mark, and the gentry have guns. How about you people? Ten?

Ten guns altogether? Oohh...._

_See here. That big machine over there is a--well, that's hopeless. I'll try to break this down in one-syllable words. Orbish words, I hope._

_That big thing sends up rays like beams of sunlight but of different intensity, color, wave length, et cetera--it sends up beams that counteract, I mean work against, destroy, other beams. Now the b.u.t.tons are held up there by forces in diamonds, taken out by these globes of yours and used to hold up their homes, ships, saucers, b.u.t.tons. The beams from that big thing will destroy the diamond beams and make the b.u.t.tons fall._

_There's just one thing. We have to get the machine, the thing, out of this cave and onto the surface of the earth. You catch my meaning? It has to have sky above it before it can work against the b.u.t.ton-beams.

Yes, much like your globes' telepathy (what a word to survive, when "gla.s.s" and "electricity" didn't) and hypnosis fails when rock gets in the way._

_Can you get it to the surface? Talk it over, Mink. It can give you plenty of help ... if you can get it up there. I'll just sit here, if it's okay with you, and let my imagination boggle at what you've told me._

_I have the most confounded urgent feeling that this is a visit I'm making in a time machine, and that tomorrow I'll go back to good old 2084. Johnnie, Johnnie, wake up! You're here!_

_G.o.d!_

CHAPTER XIII

The Mink he takes his pick and gun, He ranges through the towns; His force is miners, trappers, thieves-- And a girl in gentry-gown.

The rebels ride on stolen nags, They travel on shanks' mare; The gore's awash, the heads they roll, All in the torches' glare.

--Ruck's Ballad of the Mink

Revel the Mink and his eight troops crouched in the dark entrance of the mine. The night was black, clouds had obscured the moon, and only the occasional pinpoints of globes drifting between the b.u.t.tons above them broke the gloom.

"What are they doing?" hissed Nirea. "Why haven't we been attacked long since?"

"The globes move in a mysterious way their wonders to perform," muttered John Klapham. "I'll wager there's something like that in the Globate Credo."

"Almost those words." Revel glanced at him respectfully. This man of the Ancient Kingdom had great mental powers.

"Sure. Every time somebody has the upper hand over somebody else, there's got to be an aura of mystery; and any half-brained action is put down to 'mysterious ways.'" He spat. "They're so d.a.m.n confused, son, that they're probably holding forty conferences up there, because they don't dare wipe out this valley--coal keeps the gentry warm and happy for 'em--and they want to inspect the cave down below. So they're tryin'

to think of the best way to squelch you without losing too many priests and zanphs and gentry."

"True, they mustn't lose too many servants, or their prestige is hurt,"

said Lady Nirea. Now that she'd found her Revel, she had discarded the rucker's clothing and was dressed in a thigh-hugging sapphire gown. Even in the dark she was beautiful, he thought.

The Mink stood. Up and down the valley glowed the lights of G.o.d-guards at the mines, double and treble now, since with the Mink loose not even a G.o.d was safe alone. Plenty of zanphs there too, he thought. Yet he had a few gentryman's guns, and his old pick slung at his back. Zanphs, G.o.ds, gentry, priests? Let them beware!

His thinking was done; he would retire his brains--despite the clever John, Revel knew he had more than one brain--and let his brawn take over. Only the brawn of the Mink could win through the next hours.

Half-consciously he tensed his whole frame, curled his fingers and toes, thrust out his great chest. The skin on all parts of his body creaked, split back from the worse wounds, achily stretched; blood sprang from shoulder and from other hurt places. Yet he was not only whole, but full of eager vitality. The small pains of his hide were only incentives to act violently and forget them. He relaxed and turned to his friends.

"You two, find the nags of the gentry we slew. I hear stamping nearby.

Nirea, go to your own beast and wait for me. You two, with Rack, Jerran, John and me, we'll search the mines for men. We need plenty of them--it's miners' guts and muscles it'll take to move that beam-throwing thing from the cavern. Let's begin."

He drew the Lady Nirea up to him, slapped her face lightly, kissed her open mouth. "Quick, wench, hop when I speak!" A touch of starshine glistened on his grin-bared teeth. Then he turned and leaped off the rock shelf.

The nearest mine was guarded by three G.o.ds, nervously jiggling up and down in grotesque little air-dances; below them sat half a dozen hideous-headed zanphs. Revel crawled up toward the entrance. At the first touch of an alien mind on his own, he shot forward, pick flailing.

Two G.o.ds he caught with one stroke, the third began to rise and his backswing took it on the underside and tore a gash as if the pick had struck a rubber bag: yellow gore dropped in a flood. He had no time to wonder if the third globe had telepathed a distress signal, for the zanphs were on him.

Their snake-like heads were fitted with only two teeth in each jaw, yet those were four inches long and thick as a man's thumb at the base, tapering to needle points. One zanph, propelled by all the vigor of its six legs, rose like a rocketing pheasant and clamped its jaws across his left arm. It overshot, and two teeth missed; but the others dug down into the flesh and grated on the ulna bone.

He gave it a jab of the handle of his pickax between its cold pupilless eyes, and it swung limp, losing consciousness but anch.o.r.ed to his arm by the frightful teeth. He cracked the neck of another zanph with his foot, spitted a third, and then Rack and Jerran were slaying the others. John appeared and lifted the first one's body so that Revel could disengage the teeth from his b.l.o.o.d.y arm.