SOS the Rope (18 page)

    "You can give classes in reading," Sosa added excitedly. "We all want to learn, but so few know how-"

    "I'll call Bob immediately. What a discovery!" The librarian fumbled for the intercom on his desk.

    "Let's get out of here," Sos said, embarrassed by the commotion. He had always considered reading a private pursuit, except in the school, and found this eagerness upsetting.

    It was a long day in the perpetual artificiality of the underworld, and he was glad to retire at the end of it. He was hardly certain he wanted to spend the rest of his life under the mountain, extraordinary as this world might be.

    "But it really isn't a bad life, Sos," she said. "You get used to it-and the things we do are really important. We're the manufacturers for the continent; we make all the weapons, all the basic furnishings for the hostels, the prefabricated walls and floors, the appliances and electronic equipment-"

    "Why did you take my bracelet?"

    The question brought her up short. "Well, as I said, there aren't many women here. They have it scheduled so that each man has a night with someone each week. It isn't quite like a full-time relationship, but on the other hand there is variety. It works out pretty well."

    The game of traveling bracelets. Yes, he could imagine how certain people would enjoy that, though he had noticed that most men did not use the golden signals here. "Why am I excluded?"

    "Well you can, if you want. I thought-"

    "I'm not objecting, girl. I just want to know why. Why do I rate a full-time partner when there aren't enough to go around?"

    Her lip trembled, "Do-do you want it back?" She touched the bracelet.

    He grabbed her, unresisting, and pressed her down upon the bunk. She met his kiss eagerly. "No I don't want it back. I-oh, get that smock off, then!" What use to demand reason of a woman?

    She divested herself of her clothing, all of it, with alacrity. Then, womanlike, she seemed to change her mind. "Sos-"

    He had expected something like this. "Go ahead."

    "I'm barren."

    He watched her silently.

    "I tried-many bracelets. Finally I had the crazies check me. I can never have a baby of my own, Sos. That's why I came to the mountain . . . but babies are even more important here. So-"

    "So you went after the first man they hauled off the mountain."

    "Oh, no, Sos. I took my turn on the list. But when there isn't any love or any chance for-well, some complained I was unresponsive, and there really didn't seem to be much point in it. So Bob put me on the revival crew, where I could meet new people. The one who is on duty when someone is brought in is, well, responsible. To explain everything and make him feel at home and get him suitably situated. You know. You're the nineteenth person I've handled-seventeen men and two women. Some of them were old, or bitter. You're the first I really-that sounds even worse, doesn't it!"

    Young, strong, pliable: the answer to a lonely woman's dreams, he thought. Yet why not? He had no inclination to embrace assorted women in weekly servicings. Better to stick to one, one who might understand if his heart were elsewhere.

    "Suppose I happen to want a child of my own?"

    "Then you-take back your bracelet."

    He studied her, sitting beside him, halfway hiding behind the balled smock as though afraid to expose herself while the relationship was in doubt. She was very small and very woman-shaped. He thought about what it meant to be denied a child, and began to understand as he had not understood before what had driven Sol.

    "I came to the mountain because I could not have the woman I loved," he said. "I know all that is gone, now but my heart doesn't. I can offer you only-friendship."

    "Then give me that," she said, dropping the smock.

    He took her into the bed with him, holding her as carefully as he had held Stupid, afraid of crushing her. He held her passively at first, thinking that that would be the extent of it. He was wrong.

    But it was Sola his mind embraced.

    CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    Bob was a tall, aggressive man, the manifest leader of the mountain group. "I understand you can read," he said at once. "How come?"

    Sos explained about his schooling. "Too bad."

    Sos waited for him to make his point.

    "Too bad it wasn't the next one. We could have used your talent here."

    Sos still waited. This was like taking the circle against an unknown weapon. Bob did not have the peculiar aura of the death-dealing Tom, but he was named as strangely and struck Sos as thoroughly ruthless. He wondered how common this stamp was among those who had renounced life. It probably was typical; he had seen for himself how the manner, the personality of the leader, transmitted itself to the group. Sos had shaped Sol's empire with tight organization and a touch of humor, letting the men enjoy their competition for points as they improved their skills. When he left, Tyl bad ruled, and the discipline remained without the humor. The camps had become grim places. Strange that he only saw this now!

    "We have a special and rather remarkable assignment for you," Bob was saying. "A unique endeavour."

    Seeing that Sos was not going to commit himself, Bob got down to specifics. "We are not entirely ignorant of affairs on the surface, can't afford to be. Our information is largely second hand, of course-our teevee perceptors don't extend far beyond the Helicon environs-but we have a much better overall view than you primitives have. There's an empire building up there. We have to break it up in a hurry."

    Evidently that excellent overall view did not reveal Sos's own place in the scheme. He suspected more strongly now that it would be best if it never were known. The flamethrower undoubtedly pointed in the direction of the organizer of such an empire, while an ignorant, if literate, primitive was safe. "How do you know?"

    "You have not heard of it?" The contempt was veiled and perhaps unconscious; it had not occurred to Bob that a newcomer could knew more than he. The question had lulled any suspicions he might have had and strengthened his preconceptions. "It's run by one Sol, and it's been expanding enormously this past year. Several of our recent arrivals have had news of it, and there's even been word from the South American unit. Very wide notoriety."

    "South America?" Sos had read about this, the continent of pre-Blast years, along with Africa and Asia, but had no evidence it still existed.

    "Did you think we were the only such outfit in the world? There's one or more Helicons on every continent. We have lines connecting us to all of them, and once in a while we exchange personnel, though there is a language barrier. South America is more advanced than we are; they weren't hit so hard in the war. We have a Spanish-speaking operator, and quite a few of theirs speak English, so there's no trouble there. But that's a long ways away; when they get wind of an empire here, it's time to do something about it."

    "Why."

    "Why do you think? What would happen to the status quo if the primitives started really organizing? Producing their own food and weapons, say? There'd be no control over them at all!"

    Sos decided that further questions along this line would be dangerous. "Why me?"

    "Because you're the biggest, toughest savage to descend upon us in a long time. You bounced back from your exposure on the mountain in record time. If anyone can take it, you can. We need a strong body now, and you're it."

    It occurred to Sos that it had been a long time since this man had practiced diplomacy, if ever. "It for what?"

    "It to return to life. To take over that empire."

    If Bob had intended to shock him, he had succeeded. To return to life! To go back. . . "I'm not your man. I have sworn never to bear a weapon again." That was not precisely true, but if they expected him to face Sol again, it certainly applied. He had agreed never to bring a weapon against Sol again-and regardless of other circumstances, he meant to abide by the terms of their last encounter. It was a matter of honor, in life or death.

    "You take such an oath seriously?" But Bob's sneer faded as he looked at Sos. "Well, what if we train you to fight without weapons?"

    "Without a weapon-in the circle?"

    "With the bare hands. The way your little girl does. That doesn't violate any of your precious vows, does it? Why are you so reluctant? Don't you realize what this means to you? You will have an empire!"

    Sos was infuriated by the tone and implications, but realized that he could not protest further without betraying himself. This was big; the moment Bob caught on- "What if I refuse? I came to the mountain to die." "I think you know that there is no refusal here. But if personal pressure or pain doesn't faze you, as I hope it doesn't, there may be things that will. This won't mean much to you right now, but if you think about it for a while you'll come around, I suspect." And Bob told him some things that vindicated Sos's original impression of him utterly.

    Not for the reason the underground master thought- but Sos was committed.

    "To life?" Sosa demanded incredulously, when he told her later. "But no one ever goes back!"

    "I will be the first-but I will do it anonymously."

    "But if you want to return, why did you come to the mountain? I mean-"

    "I don't want to return. I have to."

    "But-" She was at a loss for words for a moment. "Did Bob threaten you? You shouldn't let him-"

    "It was not a chance I could afford to take."

    She looked at him, concerned. "Was it to-to harm her? The one you-"

    "Something like that."

    "And if you go, you'll get her back."

    After his experience in the observation deck, Sos was aware that anything he said or did might be observed in this region. He could not tell Sosa anything more than Bob thought he knew. "There is an empire forming out there. I have to go and eliminate its leader. But it won't be for a year or more, Sosa. It will take me that long to get ready. I have a lot to learn first."

    Bob thought he had been swayed, among other things, by the dream of owning an empire. Bob must never know where his real loyalty lay. If someone were sent to meet Sol, it was best that it be a friend.... -

    "May I keep your bracelet-that year?"

    "Keep it forever, Sosa. You will be training me."

    She contemplated him sadly. "Then it wasn't really an accident, our meeting. Bob knew what you would be doing before we brought you in. He set it up."

    "Yes." Again, it was close enough.

    "Damn him!" she cried. "That was cruel!"

    "It was necessary, according to his reasoning. He took the most practical way to do what had to be done. You and I merely happen to be the handiest tools. I'm sorry."

    "You're sorry!" she muttered. Then she smiled, making the best of it. "At least we know where we stand."

    She trained him. She taught him the blows and the holds she knew, laboriously learned in childhood from a tribe that taught its women self-defense and cast out the barren ones. Men, of course, disdained the weaponless techniques-but they also disdained to accept any woman who was an easy mark, and so the secret knowledge passed from mother to daughter how to destroy a man.

    Sos did not know what inducement Bob had used to make Sosa reveal these tactics to a man, and did not care to inquire.

    She showed him how to strike with his hands with such power as to sunder wooden beams, and how to smash them with his bare feet, and his elbow, and his head. She made him understand the vulnerable points of the human body, the places where a single blow could stun or maim or kill. She had him run at her as though in a rage, and she brought him down again and again, feet and arms tangled uselessly. She let him try to choke her, and she broke that hold in half a dozen painful and embarrassing ways, though there was more strength in his two thumbs than in her two hands. She showed him the pressure points that were open to pain, the nerve centers where pressure induced paralysis or unconsciousness. She demonstrated submission holds that she could place on him with a single slender arm, that held him in such agony he could neither break nor fight. She brought out the natural weapons of the body, so basic they were almost forgotten by men: the teeth, the nails, the extended fingers, the bone of the skull, even the voice.

    And when he had mastered these things and learned to avoid and block the blows and break or nullify the holds and counter the devious strategies of weaponless combat, she showed him how to fight when portions of his body were incapacitated: one arm, two arms, the legs, the eyes. He stalked her blindfolded, with feet tied together, with weights tied to his limbs, with medicine to make him dizzy. He climbed the hanging ladder with arms bound in a straitjacket; he swung through the elevated bars with one arm shackled to one foot. He stood still while she delivered the blows that had brought him down during their first encounter, only twisting almost imperceptibly to take them harmlessly.

    Then he set it all aside. He went to the operating room and exposed himself to the anaesthetics and the scalpels. The surgeon placed flexible plastic panels under the skin of his belly and lower back, tough enough to halt the driven blade of knife or sword. He placed a collar upon Sos's neck that locked with a key, and braced the long bones of arms and legs with metallic rods, and embedded steel mesh in the crotch. He mutilated the face, rebuilding the nose with stronger stuff and filling the cheeks with nylon weave. He ground and capped the teeth. He peeled back the forehead and resodded with shaped metal.

    Sundry other things occurred in successive operations before they turned him loose to start again. No part of him was recognizable as the man once known as Sos; instead he walked slowly, as a juggernaut rolls, fighting against the pain of an ugly rebirth.

    He resumed training. He worked on the devices in the rec room, now more familiar to him than his new body.. He climbed the ladder, swung on the bars, lifted the weights. He walked up and down the hallways, balancing his suddenly heavier torso and increasing his pace gradually until he was able to run without agony. He hardened his healing hands and feet by smashing the boards; in time he developed monstrously thick calluses. He stood still, this time not moving at all, while Sosa struck his stomach, neck and head with all her strength-with a staff-and he laughed.