To Outrun Doomsday

by Kenneth Bulmer

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Space Opera

Synopsis

The planet Kerim must have been Utopia - once. All its inhabitants had to do when they wanted something was to pray out loud for it - and what they wanted would materialise before their eyes. But by the time Jack Waley crashed on it, its best days had long been gone - and its future was strictly limited. Which was typical Jack Waley luck. He had bungled and blundered his way across the space lanes, messing up everything he tried and being castaway on Kerim looked like the end of the line. For Kerim's people were now bands of confused savages and its cities crumbling ruins. And this time Waley knew that he'd have to change a whole world's luck if he wanted to save his own neck one more time.

Release date: September 29, 2011

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 155

Sample

SOON SUMMER would bring the roses jostling and bursting with color over the pergola where now sere stalks entwined like the discarded ropes of winter. The high snows shrank on six of the seven Mountains of Manicoro and soon jesting white-throated water would sparkle into rivulets and darken the winter-drugged land with richness. Once again this world decked herself with life.

The prospect filled Kerith with sadness.

She tapped her crystal-slippered foot with moody uncertainty on the stone flags where green moss sought with agile tacky fingers for the ants and beetles scavenging for crumbs scattered from the breakfast table at Kerith’s side. The table had been set daintily on the terrace where the first of the days sunshine could reach and the eye could find refreshment in the beauties of the walled garden. Now those beauties, that sunshine, that promise of abundant life to be-even the absorbed hurryings of the insects—merely mocked.

There were always more ants and more beetles in a never-ending stream of life scuttling avidly to feed the patient moss; once upon a time weed-killer would have been put down to clean the flags—but not now. Petulantly Kerith consigned the insects to their fate. At least they were more fortunate than the people of her land—they bred freely and they did not know the nature of their end.

Her slender hand, whitely delicate and unjeweled, lifted the last of her milk. Her long throat stretched as she drank, bared and defenseless. Without hindrance or belt or ornament her azure gown clung about her figure. Radiant, she was, like the first of the roses of summer not yet come to full bloom, palpitant, dewy, unsure.

Jarfon of Trewes broke his hiscuit with a single hard snap and his bearded lips closed over strong even teeth. He masticated deliberately, tight muscles moving rhytlimically beneath his hard roughened skin.

A sip of milk, a swallow, and then: “No one regrets more than I do, my lady, the necessity of our situation. But we must go on with courage. The messenger—”

“Courage!” The Princess Kerith grimaced. Her fingers crumbled a hiscuit for the ants beneath her chair. “My people do not lack courage. What I question is the need for it.”

“But we must face our destiny with—”

“I know.” Her golden-red hair stirred and swirled a net of rosy light about her head as she stood up swiftly. “With courage and dignity, with nobility and calm—like these poor blind scuttling ants beneath my heel!”

“Not so, my lady!” Jarfon of Trewes rose also, as was demanded in courtesy to the presence of any woman, be she ruler of all Brianon or no, his hard dark face showing unhappiness before the agony of this girl-queen. “The ants know nothing of their death and so they continue to act until the moment of death. We, as human beings, cannot do less.”

“The messenger, Jarfon?”

“Has not arrived.”

She gripped the back of her chair. “I had hoped, this time—”

“The woman was only ten days overdue. We pin our hopes on fragile facts when such a small irregularity causes us this pain at its failure.”

Kerith sighed with the black despair that shrouded all the bright land of Brianon.

“There is much to be done today—” She stopped speaking and a look of self-disgust marred her delicate features. “No, Jarfon. That is all pretense and well you know it. We manufacture work for our hands and hope it will occupy our minds. But of what use is it all?”

“One day, my lady, one day—”

“We hope—but after nineteen years hope becomes a mockery.”

Jarfon of Trewes picked up his short royal blue cape and slung it about his shoulders by its golden clasps; the day had begun brightly but summer was not here yet, and the wind was off the seven Mountains of Manicoro where the snows still capped those ancient summits. He tried to find words of comfort.

“Nineteen years is: a long time, my lady, to you, for it is all your life span. But I have waited for only a third of my life. Despite all, I still hope.”

“And you go on, with courage.” Kerith smiled at him, a smile that made of the words no mockery but a warm friendly compact between two people prepared to face the end with dignity and courage—like the ants.

“The houses along ninety-seventh avenue are no longer tenantable,” Jarfon of Trewes said after a pause. “We must rehouse the people—”

“As my chief minister of state I know I can leave all those affairs with you, Jarfon. If the houses do not repair themselves there is nothing left for us to do but move the people out. … I hope there will be no hardship.”

Jarfon of Trewes knew she did not refer to physical hardship, for such animal-like habits had long departed from this land of Brianon. But—“None can look upon the homes they, and their families before them, have lived in for hundreds of years without sorrow when they see the buildings collapse and fall. Some people cling to material comforts now that the tragedy is upon us in ways they would have derided before—before you were born.”

“I was born …” Kerith swallowed. “Yes.”

“You were the last, my lady….”

The last … Oh, how I wish that I had not beenl Not to have been born; not to know the agony my people suffer; not to suffer with them…. Why was I born into this world only to have to die? Where is the sense in that?”

“Nobody asked to be born, my lady…. But once we are here we must face that as a fact and act as though our actions had meaning—”

“Meaning!” She turned a rounded shoulder on him and walked stiffly to the balustrade encircling the terrace. Here a giant scarlet and emerald stychaphon climbed spirally around the pilaster, its broad leaves damp and shining, its scarlet mouths open and waiting, inviting. A blue bottle fly alighted on a petal seeking the nectar within, and the petals folded: the fly was gone.

“What meaning to the fly could there be in that?” demanded Kerith darkly. “His death solves nothing.”

“The stychaphon, could it talk, could give you the best answer, my lady.”

“But the fly, Jarfon, the fly! Of course the plant fed and will grow the stronger—but the fly. What of the victim?”

“The victim’s role is no less important than the victors.”

“This is all easy platitudinous talk. Anyone can see that if there are to be victors there must be victims. But why must we men and women of Brianon be the victims? Why has this fate been singled out for us? Why?”

Jarfon of Trewes could not meet the blazing look of agony in the eyes of his young girl-queen. “If we knew that, my lady, we might find the answer that would bring children once more into the world.”

Beyond the russet wall of the sheltered garden rose the Spring Palace, a luminous pile designed for fleeting occupancy during the brief springtime of this planet when life girded itself for summer’s splendors. Heavy-headed spatulate-leaved trees embowered the crystal spires of the palace. Doves cooed somnolently from the eaves. Signs of activity showed around the lower terraces among the brown crumbling earth where ranked rows of blended flowers soon would bloom. Here the sun picked a pin-bright glint of metal from the swinging blade of a gardener already at work, the machine’s globular orange body moving slowly about its tasks with a mechanical exhaustion more frightening than any fatigue of bone and muscle.

Three or four humans worked alongside the mechanical gardener, giving their time and labor freely for love of their girl-queen, their movements only slightly less rapid and efficient than the mechanical’s.

“Why do we bother?” asked Kerith, watching the stychaphon slowly distend its flower petals once again. The scarlet glowed invitingly in the morning sunshine.

“Because we are men,” said Jarfon of Trewes. He brisked across the terrace, forcing his animation. “As you said, my lady, there is much to be done today. After the rehousing the Guild of Frontiersmen have an audience. Then—”

“Very well, my friend. I am ready.” Kerith gathered her azure gown about her. Her crystal slippers tinkled bravely on the flags. “Despite all, we must go on.”

A keening nerve-irritating wail began fibrillating the air with alarm.

“Predakkers,” said Jarfon of Trewes unnecessarily.

Instinctively they both looked into the bright morning sky, blinking their eyes.

“It would be better for you to go inside at once, my lady.” He took her arm in a grip common danger made respectful.

“Yes, Jarfon. You are right. To die—we must all die, as well we know—but not in the talons of a Predakker.”

Kerith shivered at the thought.

They hurried along the ochre brick path from the terrace. Men and women, gardeners, people about their morning tasks, all scampered for the safety of the walls of the Spring Palace. The alarm on every face stamped a real dread on the scene in the limpid air with the rays of the sun still burning off the last of the night mist. No one ran. But no one dawdled.

The alarm siren wailed and dwindled into silence.

From the ceiling high windows of the Pleasant Poppy Room, Kerith was relieved that stout walls interposed between her and the Predakkers, for she watched with distaste at what must follow…. The walls of the room had been painted in flowing color and distraught line, poppy on poppy, stalk and leaf entwined, a riotous explosion of abundant life. More than once she had considered altering the decor; but mere frivolous house redecoration schemes could not be indulged in now when the people’s houses refused to repair themselves.

Over the flat head of a nearby lichen tree two black dots shot into view, small and distant, but coming on with defiant speed.

“There!” said Jarfon of Trewes.

“Have you glasses?” asked Kerith.

“A moment, my lady.” Jarfon of Trewes looked about the room. On a spindly-legged table stood a carafe of warm Fallonian wine and half a dozen slender wafer-glass goblets, the light sheening them with rainbows. He walked quickly across, his feet soundless on the purple and crimson pile; he selected two goblets, placed them on their sides on the table, their rims and bases touching.

He stood for perhaps half a second as a man stands in deep and introspective thought; then he reached down briskly and picked up the field-glasses from the table, and took them across to the Princess Kerith.

“Thank you, Jarfon.” She put them to her eyes, adjusting the set screw, brought the two ominous black dots into focus. At once, against the hazy blue, they jumped into enormous raucous horrid life.

Again Jarfon of Trewe’s hand on her shoulder was the hand of a comrade, steadying her.

“Predakkers are not a pretty sight, my lady.”

“No.” She handed the binoculars to her chief minister and he bent his dark brows over the eyepieces.

“Two young ones,” he said harshly. “A new pair. Out for a quick cheap meal before they think about hatching young.” His knuckles stretched and whitened on the glasses. “I’d like to find the devils’ nest. An expedition would soon sear the earth of their evil—”

“Why should we bother, Jarfon? When we are—are gone, the Predakkers, at the least, will remain.”

“A noble sentiment, but one I cannot share.”

He handed her the field glasses, but at the speed the birds of prey were making through the air glasses soon became unnecessary. The Princess Kerith swallowed. The Predakkers were large, powerful brutes, capable of lifting a whole sheep unaided, capable of crushing a man’s skull and dashing out his brains. All scales and fangs and claws with blued leathery necks and scarlet gaping beaks, forked tongues flickering;, their wings thrashing a heavy diapason of thunder, each beat like the sound of a butcher’s cleaver going through meat.

Kerith felt no fear, safe behind these crystal walls. But repugnance at what was unbeautiful, cruel, malefic in her land fraught her thoughts with sorrow. She stood straight and slim before the windows, one hand grasping the looped ivory curtain, the other clenched at her breast.

Abruptly Jarfon of Trewes slapped the field glasses again to his eyes, twisted the set screw. His face ridged, tautened, yellow patches spreading on his cheekbones.

“What is it, Jarfon?”

He jerked the glasses down. Kerith looked down from where the pair of Predakkers orbited momentarily now, seeking prey. Up the long winding ochre brick road, with a shroud of dust clogging his heels, a horseman galloped stretched out along his mount’s neck, his cape lifting like clipped wings behind him. Kerith could see clearly the white triangle of his face beneath the low brimmed hat.

“The messenger!” said Jarfon of Trewes, on a breath.

Soundlessly the horse galloped on, a distant tiny figure lonely in a vast landscape. The first Predakker checked its orbiting flight. Its sheening wings slanted.

“No …” whispered the Princess Kerith of Brianon.

The irony of the situation was all too apparent. Not, Kerith realized with a shudder, that the messenger, urging his mount on with frantic desperation, would relish the irony of it; but they had waited for the messenger knowing his tidings would bring them no joy, and now here he was on a fool’s errand and likely to be killed in the doing of it. Like any sane person, Kerith hated waste.

“If he can reach the milestone unscathed,” her chief minister growled with repressed anger and impatience, “he should be within reach of our cover. I am glad now, my lady, that I insisted this year that a company of your guard was stationed at the Spring Palace—”

“Yes, yes, Jarfon.” Kerith jerked in frantic tenseness at the ivory curtain, her teeth biting into her lip the moment she had finished speaking. “You were right—as always.”

Jarfon of Trewes watched that hurtling figure out there on the wide dusty brick road and his face, for all its strong-bearded power, for a moment showed his regret that he was three times the age of his princess. A haunted melancholy engulfed him as the messenger rode for life. They were all riding for life, here in doomed Brianon, and at the winning post leered a grinning skull.

Into the opal courtyard below the seventy-nine steps leading up to the west portal of the spring Palace seven guardsmen ran out into the sunshine and shadows of the opaline mosaics. They moved with quick, neat gestures. Each man acted with a precision drilled in long hours on the barrack square. Yet the result was not so much of painstaking drill as of the ingrained habit patterns of these people of Brianon for the rounded whole, the neat effect, the perfect performance of every tiny everyday act.

Against the well-cut yellow of their tunics and the classical curve of their bronze helmets, the black and blued steel heft of their weapons showed like a bruise on a woman’s cheek.

“They can nail the brute if he crosses the milestone marker,” Jarfon of Trewes said, with little satisfaction.

The first Predakker slid down the sky chute.

The sergeant of the guard detail gave his order to fire in a voice that reached plainly all the way up the seventy-nine steps. Seven forefingers pressed. Seven sears clicked. Seven bows released their stored energy in a whiplash of recurvature. Seven bolts flashed.

So. . .