SOS the Rope (14 page)

    "Tomorrow. Give back his bracelet and take mine, publicly."

    "I will," she said. "Now-"

    "No!"

    She drew back and tried to see his face in the dark. "You mean it."

    "I love you. I came for you. But I will have you honorably."

    She sighed. "Honor is not quite- that simple, Sos." But she got up and began putting on her clothing.

    "What has happened here? Where is Sol? Why are you hiding from people?"

    "You left us, Sos. That's what happened. You were the heart of us."

    "That doesn't make sense. I had to leave. You were having the baby. His son."

    "No."

    "That was the price of you. I will not pay it again. This time it has to be my son, conceived upon my bracelet."

    "You don't understand anything!" she cried in frustration.

    He paused, knowing the mystery to be yet unfathomed. "Did it die?"

    "No! That's not the point. That-oh, you stupid, stupid clubhead! You-" She choked over her own emotion -and faced away from him, sobbing.

    She was more artful, too, than she had been, he thought. He did not yield. He let her run down, unmoving.

    Finally she wiped her face and crawled out of the tent. He -was alone.

    CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sol was a little leaner, a little more serious, but retained the uncanny grace his coordination provided. "You came!" he exclaimed, grasping Sos's hand in an unusual display of pleasure.

    "Yesterday," Sos said, somewhat embarrassed. "I saw Vit, but he wouldn't let me talk to your' wife, and I hardly know the others here." How much should he say?

    "She should have come to you anyway. Vit knows nothing." He paused refiectively. "We do not get along. She keeps to herself."

    So Sol still didn't care about Sola. He had protected her for the sake of the coming heir and no longer even bothered with pretense. But why, then, had he kept her isolated? It had never been Sol's way to be pointlessly selfish.

    "I have a weapon now," Sos said. Then, as the other looked at him:"The rope."

    "I am glad of it."

    There did not seem to be much else to say. Their reunion, like their parting, was an awkward thing.

    "Come," Sol said abruptly. "I will show her to you."

    Sos followed him into the main tent, uncomfortably offbalance. He should have admitted that he had talked with Sola and prevented this spurious introduction. He had come on a matter of honor, yet he was making himself a liar.

    Nothing was falling out quite the way he had expected- but the differences were intangible. The subtle wrongnesses were entangling him, as though he had fallen prey in the circle to the net.

    They stopped before a homemade crib in a small compartment. Sol leaned down to pick up a chuckling baby "This is my daughter," he said. "Six months, this week."

    Sos stood with one hand on- his rope, speechless gazing at the black-haired infant. A daughter! Somehow that possibility had never occurred to him.

    "She will be as beautiful as her mother," Sol said proudly. "See her smile."

    "Yes," Sos agreed, feeling every bit as stupid as Sola had called him. The name should not have gone to his bird.

    "Come," Sol repeated. "We will take her for a walk." He hefted the baby upon his shoulder and led the way. Sos followed numbly, realizing that this was the female they had come to see, not the mother. If he had only known, or guessed, or allowed himself to hear, last night.

    Sola met them at the entrance. "I would come," she said

    Sol sounded annoyed. "Come, then, woman. We only walk."

    The little party threaded its way out of the camp and into the nearby forest. It was like old times, when they had journeyed to the badlands yet completely different. What incredible things had grown from the early coincidence of names!

    This was all wrong. He had come to claim the woman he loved, to challenge Sol for her in the circle if he had to yet he could not get the words out. He loved her and she loved him and her nominal husband admitted the marriage was futile-but Sos felt like a terrible intruder.

    Stupid flew ahead, happy to sport among the forest shadows; or perhaps there were insects there.

    This could not go on. "I came for Sola," he said baldly.

    Sol did not even hesitate. "Take her." It was as though the woman were not present.

    "My bracelet, on her- wrist," Sos said, wondering whether he had been understood. "My children by her. She shall be Sosa."

    "Certainly."

    This was beyond credence. "You have no conditions?"

    "Only your friendship."

    Sos spluttererd, "This is not a friendly matter!"

    "Why not? I have preserved her only for you."

    "You-Vit-?" This elaborate guardianship had been for his, Sos's benefit? "Why-?"

    "I would have her take no lesser name," Sol said.

    Why not, indeed? There seemed to be no barrier to an amicable changeover but it was wrong. It couldn't work. He could not put his finger on the flaw, but knew there was something.

    "Give me Soli," Sola said.

    Sol hanaed the baby over. She opened her dress and held Soli to her breast to nurse as they walked.

    And that was it. The baby! "Can she leave her mother?" Sos asked.

    "No," Sola replied.

    "You will not take my daughter," Sol said, raising his voice for the first time.

    "No-of course not. But until she is weaned-"

    "Until, nothing," Sola- said firmly. "She's my daughter, too. She stays with me."

    "Soli is mine!" Sol said with utter conviction. "You woman-stay or go as you will, wear whose clasp you will-but Soli is mine."

    The baby looked up and began to cry. Sol reached over and took the little girl, and she fell contentedly silent. Sola made a face but said nothing.

    "I make no claim upon your daughter," Sos said carefully. "But if she cannot leave her mother-"

    Sal found a fallen tree and sat down upon it, balancing Soli upon his knee. "Sorrow fell upon our camp when you departed. Now you are back, and with your weapon. Govern my tribe, my empire, as you did before. I would have you by my side again."

    "But I came to take Sola away with me! She cannot stay here after she exchanges bracelets. It would bring shame upon us both."

    "Why?"

    "Sosa nursing Sol's child?"

    Sol thought about it. "Let her wear my bracelet, then. She will still be yours."

    "You would wear the horns?"

    Sol jiggled Soli on his knee. He began to hum a tune then, catching the range, he sang the words in a fine clear tenor:

From this valley they say you are going

We shall miss your bright eyes and sweet smile

For they say you are taking the sunshine

That brightens our pathway a while.

Come and sit by my-,

    Sos interrupted him, appalled. "You heard!"

    "I heard who my true friend was, when I was in fever and could not move my body or save myself from injury. I heard who carried me when I would have died. If I must wear the horns, these are the horns I would wear, for all to see."

    "No!" Sos cried, shocked.

    "Only leave me my daughter; the rest is yours."

    "Not dishonor!" Yet it seemed late for this protest. "I will not accept dishonor-yours or mine."

    "Nor I," Sola said quietly. "Not now."

    "How can there be dishonour among us!" Sol said fervently. "There is only friendship."

    They faced each other in silence then, searching for the solution. Sos ran over the alternatives in his mind, again and again, but nothing changed. He could leave-and give up all his dreams of union with the woman he loved, while she remained with a man she did not love and who cared nothing for her. Could he take comfort in such as blonde Miss Smith, while that situation existed? Or he could stay-and accept the dishonorable liaison that would surely emerge, knowing himself to be unworthy of his position and his weapon.

    Or he could fight-for a woman and honor. Everything or nothing.

    Sol met his gaze. He had come to the same conclusion.

    "Make a circle," he said.

    "No!" Sola cried, realizing what was happening. "It is wrong either way!"

    "That is why it must be settled in the circle," Sos told her regretfully. "You and your daughter must be together. You shall be-either -way."

    "I will leave Soli," she said with difficulty. "Do not fight again." ,

    Sol still sat holding the baby, looking very little like the master of an empire. "No-for a mother to leave her- child is worse than for the leader to leave his tribe. I did not think of that before, but I know it now."

    "But you brought no weapon," the said, frying to stave it off.

    Sol ignored her and looked at Sos. "I would not kill you. You may serve me if you wish, and do what you wish-but never again will you bear weapon against me," he finished with some force.

    "I would not kill you either. You may keep your weapons' and your empire-but child and mother go with me."

    And that defined it. If Sal won, Sos would be deprived of any honorable means to advance his case, which would mean that he was helpless. If Sos won, Sol would have to give up the baby, leaving Sola free to go with the rope.

    The winner would have his desire; the loser, what remained.

    What remained, despite the theoretical generosity of the terms, was the mountain. Sos would not remain to adulterate the bracelet Sola wore or return in shame to the crazies' establishment. Sal would spurn his empire, once mastered in combat; that had always been clear. It was not a pretty situation, and the victor would have his sorrows, but it was a fair solution. Trial by combat.

    "Make the circle," Sol said again.

    "But your weapon-" They were repeating themselves. Neither really wanted to fight. Was there some other way out?

    Sal handed the baby to Sola and peered through the trees. He located a suitable sapling and stripped the branches and leaves by hand. Seeing his intent, Sos proceeded to clear a place on the forest floor to form a roughly level disk of earth the proper size. The arrangements were crude, but this was not a matter either man eared to advertise in front of the tribe.

    They met, standing on opposite sides of the makeshift arena, Sola standing anxiously near. The scene reminded Sos of their first encounter, except for the baby in Sola's arms.

    Sos now far outweighed his opponent, and held a weapon he was sure Sol had never seen before. Sol, on the other hand, held a makeshift implement but he was the finest warrior ever seen in the area, and the weapon he had fashioned was a staff.

    The one thing the rope was weak against.

    Had Sol's barrow been available, he might have taken the sword the club or one of the other standardized instruments of battle, but in his self-reliance he had procured what could be had from nature, and with it, though he could not know it yet, the victory.

    "After this we shall be friends," Sol said.

    "We shall be friends." And somehow that was more important than all the rest of it. They stepped into the circle.

    The baby cried.

    CHAPTER FOURTEEN

    It was midsummer by the time he stood at the foot of the mountain. This was a strange heap of lava and slag towering above the twisted landscape, sculptured in some manner by the Blast but free of radiation. Shrubs and stunted trees approached the base, but only weeds and lichen ascended the mountain itself. -

    Sos peered up but could not see the top. A few hundred yards ahead, great projections of metallic material obscured the view, asymmetrical and ugly. Gliding birds of prey circled- high in the haze overhead, watching him.

    There was wind upon the mountain, not fierce, but howling dismally around the brutal serrations. The sky above it was overcast and yellowish.

    This was surely the mountain of death. No one could mistake it.

    He touched his fingers to his shoulder and lifted Stupid.

    The bird had never been handsome; his mottled brown feathers always seemed to have been recently ruffled, and the distribution of colors remained haphazard-but Sos had become accustomed to every avian mannerism in the time they had had their association. "This is about as far as you go, little friend," he said. "I go up, never to come down again-but it is not your turn. Those vultures aren't after you."

    He flicked the bird into the air, but Stupid spread his wings, circled, and came to roost again upon his shoulder.

    Sos shrugged. "I give you your freedom, but you do not take it. Stupid." It was meaningless, but he was touched. How could the bird know what was ahead?

    For that matter, how could anyone know? How much of human loyalty and love was simply ignorance of destiny?

    He still wore the rope, but no longer as a weapon. He caught a languishing, sapling and stripped it as Sal had done, making himself a crude staff for balance during the climb. He adjusted his heavy pack and moved out.

    The projections were metal-enormous sheets and beams melted at the edges and corners, securely embedded in the main mass, the crevices filled with pebbles and dirt. It was as though a thousand men had shoved it together and set fire to it all-assurning that metal would burn. Perhaps they had poured alcohol upon it? Of course not; this was the handiwork of the Blast.

    Even at this terminal stage of his life, Sos retained his curiosity about the phenomenon of the Blast. What was its nature, and how had it wrought such diverse things as the invisibly dangerous badlands and the mountain of death? If it had been unleashed somehow by man himself, as the crazies claimed, why had the ancients chosen to do it?

    It was the riddle of all things, unanswerable as ever. The modern world began with the Blast; what preceded it was largely conjecture. The crazies claimed that there had been a strange other society before it, a world of incredible machines and luxury and knowledge, little of which survived.