The Cache

  THE PRINCESS AND THE BARBARIAN

  She was young and beautiful, and wise.

  He was rudely handsome, and very cunning.

  She held the key to a secret that would unlock the world.

  He would steal it, if he could.

  THE CACHE

  Copyright © 1981 by Philip Jose Farmer

  The novel The Long Warpath has been published previously in a slightly different form as The Cache from Outer Space, copyright © 1965, by Ace Books, Inc.

  Acknowledgments:

  “Rastignac the Devil” and “They Twinkled Like Jewels” were both first published in They Twinkled Like Jewels, copyright © 1965, by Ace Books, Inc.

  THE LONG WARPATH

  A few miles outside of the city, Joel Vahndert challenged Benoni Rider.

  The tension between them had been high enough before they left Fiiniks with the mule-train to the Iron Mountains. But it had been confined to not-so-good-natured kidding; practical jokes which could have crippled or killed, and boasts about which one would marry Debra Awvrez.

  The older men on the expedition had intervened more than once to prevent blows. They did not want to lose one of the warriors-to-be. Too many had died last year from snakebite, valley fever, and raids by the Navahos.

  When the train got to the Iron Mountains, the leaders had seen that the two eighteen-year-olds were kept apart as often as possible. This was not difficult to do, for every man had to work hard all day long. By evening, all were too tired to do much besides slump around the fires, talk a while, then go to sleep. And Chief Wako had assigned Benoni and Joel to different work parties.

  So, the two did not see much of each other. They were too busy with the digging of the ore, the melting, refining, tempering, and hammering of the metal into weapons and tools. Under expert guidance, they learned how to make swords, daggers, spearheads, arrowheads, iron stirrups and bits, hammers, nails, and plowblades. The months passed while they sweated under the hot Eyzonuh sun. Three months they struggled with the pick and shovel, the furnace, the flame and forge, the hammer and anvil. And when Chief Wako thought that the two youths still kept too much energy after the day’s labor, he assigned one of them to night guard.

  But the end of summer neared. All the weapons and tools that could be carried by the mules were fashioned. The mules were loaded with the steel handicrafts, the smoked meat the hunters had killed and prepared, and water from the springs. Then, the train began its slow and dangerous trip over the mountains, through the desert, and eventually to Fiiniks in the Valley of the Sun. So far, they had been lucky, for no wild Keluhfinyanz or Indians had attacked them and they made the journey back to the city without losing one man.

  On the way back, there was not enough work to keep Benoni and Joel apart. Chief Wako watched them, and he or one of the sub-chiefs interfered when one of the gamecocks pushed the other too far.

  A few miles from Fiiniks, nevertheless, Joel Vahndert began telling all within hearing of his loud voice what he and Debra would do on their wedding night. The men walking beside him did not like this. You did not talk of such things Al least, not about your wife and the other free women in the valley. Perhaps, if no preachers were around, you might talk about your exploits with the Navaho slave girls. But never about the Fiiniks women.

  Joel knew this, and he must have hungered deeply for a fight with Benoni to have risked the disapproval and perhaps punishment of the older men. He disregarded their glares and tight-lipped frowns and continued talking in ever greater detail. He could see the flush spreading over Benoni’s skin, the flush replaced by paleness in a few minutes.

  Joel did not seem to care. He walked beside the mule that was his care in a long-legged stride. He was a big man, six feet four, with heavy bones and muscles to go with the bones. His long, thick black hair was bound in a red band around his forehead. His face was broad; his nose, long and slightly aquiline; his lips, thin; his chin, thick and seemingly hard as the end of a warclub. There was not a youth his own age in the valley he had not wrestled and thrown, not a man for twenty miles around Kemlbek Mountain who could throw a javelin as far as he. He made a splendid figure in his red cotton shirt gathered around the waist with a belt of turquoise beads and his puma-skin shorts and leggings.

  Benoni Rider was a different sort, impressive in his own frame of reference but puny compared to Joel. He was about six feet tall, had broad shoulders, a tapering waist (Joel was thick there) and long legs. His waist-long yellow hair was held by a black band around his head; his blue eyes were now narrow; the nostrils of his straight nose were flaring; his normally full mouth was clamped to a thin line. He was strong, and he knew it. But he was not the bear that Joel was. Rather, he was a mountain lion, a slim but swift creature, or a deer. He could run faster than any one born in the shadow of Kemlbek. But here, obvious to all, was a situation which did not demand running. Not if he wanted to be worthy of taking the First Warpath.

  Benoni listened to Joel for several minutes, meanwhile looking around to see if the older ones would speak to Joel. When it became apparent that he was expected to be the one to take action, Benoni did not hesitate. The only thing that had kept him silent so far was the realization that Joel Vahndert was baiting him. And he had not wanted to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he had the power to infuriate him. Also, he had hoped that one of the sub-chiefs would rebuke Joel and so humiliate him.

  But the sub-chiefs were at the head of the train conferring with Wako about the order of dress as they marched into the nearing city of Fiiniks. No help from them.

  Now, Benoni walked up to Joel. Joel stopped talking and faced Benoni, knowing from the fury on Benoni’s face that he would be challenged.

  “What’s the matter, jack rabbit?” he said. “You look pale. Been out in the sun too long? Maybe you should lie down in the shade of a sawaro until you recover. We men will go on ahead of you and tell the slaves to bring out a stretcher to fetch you. I’ll tell Debra that . . .”

  Benoni did not follow protocol. Instead of slapping Joel in the face and then formally challenging him, he kicked Joel. He kicked him where it hurts a man most, with feet that had never known shoe or moccasin, with soles the skin of which was half an inch thick and hard as rock.

  The big man screamed, clutched himself, and fell to the ground. There, he writhed and rolled and yelled with agony.

  Wako, though distant, heard the screams, and he came running. Joel was still making noise when he arrived, but Wako shouted at him to keep quiet, to bear himself like a warrior—which he would be some day if he lived that long.

  One of the men explained what had happened. Wako said, “Serves the filthy young fool right.”

  But he swung towards Benoni, and he said harshly, “Why did you strike him without warning? Or without first making sure that one of us was a formal witness to the challenge?”

  “When a man talks like he does about a woman, he should have his filthy mouth shut as a slave’s is shut,” said Benoni. “Besides, why should I give him the advantage of a formal challenge? He’s much bigger and stronger than I am; I’m not too proud to admit it. Why should I give him an advantage? I fight to win, and letting him get a chance to get a bear hug on me isn’t the way to win.”

  Wako laughed and said, “I wouldn’t have permitted you two to kill each other if you had challenged him. What’s the matter with you young fools? Don’t you know that in less than a week you’ll be going on the First Warpath? And that you’ll get all the killing you want? Maybe more than you want.”

  Joel, still holding himself and bent over, struggled to his knees. Glaring at Benoni, he said, “You fight like a dirty Navaho! Wait until I recover, you . . . !”

  “Both of you will wait,” said Wako sternly. “There will be no s
erious fighting among the unblooded until you return from the uplands. And, by then, you’ll have more than your belly full. Now, listen to me. I told you what you can’t do. If either of you disobey, you’ll stand before the Council of Kemlbek. And that may mean that you’ll have to wait a year before you’re allowed to go on the warpath. Do you want to do that?”

  Both young men were silent. They wished this punishment no more than any one of their age would have. To continue to be treated like boys while their friends became men!

  “It’s settled then,” said Wako. “You two shake hands and swear you won’t tangle again until after you’re set on the trail. Otherwise . . .”

  Joel Vahndert, who had now risen to his feet, half-turned away as if he had no intentions of shaking hands with Benoni, ever. Benoni watched him, his hands on his hips.

  Wako said, loudly, “You had that coming, Vahndert! And you, Rider, wipe that smile off your little boy’s face! Now, shake! Or I’ll see that you have some trouble getting initiated this year!”

  Vahndert turned back, held his hand out, and said, “I’ll shake if Rider is man enough.”

  “I’m man enough to do anything you do,” said Benoni. His hand disappeared in Joel’s, and Joel squeezed down with all his strength.

  Benoni’s arm muscles became rigid, but he did not wince nor try to withdraw.

  “All right, don’t try to make the other holler uncle,” said Wako. “And get back to your mules. We’ll be in Fiiniks by noon if we push hard.”

  The train started again. Benoni was still too angry to feel the joy of homecoming. He looked to the south across the rocky plain and saw a reflection of his own smoldering fury in the sky. Thin black clouds of smoke rising from a volcano ten miles away. Last year, when he had left his native city for the mountains, that volcano had just been forming. Now, it was high enough for him to see that the lava and cinders had built a cone at least two hundred feet high. The earth-demons had been busy while he was gone.

  His anger faded away, replaced not by the pleasure of returning to his family, but by fear for them. He could remember, when he was a very little boy, hearing his father tell a friend that the first of the volcanoes had broken the crust of the earth only two years before Benoni was born. That fury had been forty miles to the west; its birth had accomplished an earthquake that shook down the walls and houses of Finniks and killed many. Now, there were ten volcanoes in the Valley of the Sun. Sometimes, when the winds were right, smoke from all ten lay over the valley and made the sun a ghost.

  Benoni looked to the east where the strange form of Kemlbek Mountain lay. From this distance, the mountain did appear as a sleeping beast with a high-humped back, a very long neck, and a long-snouted head. The preachers said it got its name from the keml. Benoni had never seen a keml; neither had the preachers. But there was a beast called the keml (spelled camel in the archaic writing of the ancients) which was mentioned in the Found Books. Benoni wondered if it were as large as the mountain named for it. If so, he was glad it was as dead as the leviathan and the unicorn also mentioned in the Found Books.

  At midday, the adobe walls of the city which ringed the foot of Kemlbek appeared. An hour later, the men of the train saw the crowd waiting outside the Gate of the Fiiniks (a huge bird that had lived long long ago but which would some day rise from its ashes and come whirling over the desert bearing Jehovah on its back).

  Benoni, after being formally dismissed by Wako, went home with his father and stepmother, his two younger brothers, his two married sisters, their husbands and his little nephews and nieces. Everybody was talking at once. Benoni could only partly answer the many questions hurled at him. He was in a glow of happiness. Even though he could not help thinking of Debra Awvrez and was impatient to get to her, to be loved so by his people made him love them very much. And, in the eyes of the younger members, he was a hero because he had been so far away and had brought back the much-needed tools and weapons.

  After they had walked about a half mile down the broad street, they came to his father’s home. This was a two-story adobe house painted white. It had a tower at each corner and an embrasured roof from which the Fiinishans could shoot at any invaders. A ten-foot adobe wall around it gave them privacy; also, if attackers ever entered the city, a place from which to fight until they were forced to retreat to the house.

  Here the dogs, big wolflike beasts, bounded out barking, and leaped upon Benoni. The household cats, aloof, clad in stripes and dignity, sat on the walls and watched the proceedings. Later, when there were not so many people and so much commotion, Benoni’s favorites would come down and rub against his leg and purr to be picked up.

  Benoni had to eat a big supper, or at least to sit down at a loaded table of fruhholiiz, toriya, refried beans, beef, and Mek beer. He talked too much to get a chance to eat, but he was not hungry. He trembled at the thought of seeing Debra that night, and he wondered also how he could get away decently from the family.

  After supper, he put on his church clothes and went with the family to church. There they stayed for an hour while the preacher gave innumerable prayers of thanks for the safe return of the men and boys who had gone to the Iron Mountains. Benoni tried to keep his mind on what the preacher said, but he could not resist the temptation to look around. She was not there. Or, if she were, he could not see her.

  He went back to his house. His father and brothers-in-law asked him many questions, and he answered as best he could with his mind on Debra. Finally, as he was beginning to despair of finding a polite way of leaving the house, his stepmother came to his rescue.

  “You men will have to excuse Benoni,” she said, laughing so they would not be angry at her. “I’m sure he’s dying to visit the Awvrez. And they will think he’s very impolite not to drop by there for at least a few minutes.”

  Benoni looked at this woman with gratitude. She had taken his mother’s place only six years ago, and he loved her as much as he had his own mother.

  His father appeared disappointed, and he opened his mouth to protest. But Benoni’s mother said, “I don’t interfere much, Hozey, you know that. I do know that Benoni has been itching to leave for hours now. Have you forgotten how you were when you were eighteen?”

  Benoni’s father grinned. He slapped his son on the shoulder and said, “Get going you young stallion! But don’t stay out too late. Remember! Your initiation might start at any time! And there are things you must do before then.”

  Benoni’s mother looked sad, then, and Benoni felt a pang. He had seen her weep two years ago after Benoni’s older brother had left for the First Warpath—and his last.

  Benoni excused himself, kissed his mother, and went outside to the stable. There he put a gold-chased Med leather saddle on Red Hawk, a fine roan stallion. He led the horse to the front gate, shouted to his nephews to open the gate and mounted.

  He was no more astride than he heard the bellow of an Announcer.

  “Wait a minute, Benoni Rider! I have a message for you from the council of Kemlbek!”

  Benoni reined in Red Hawk, impatient as himself to get going. And he said, “Announcer Chonz! What message? I hope it’s not bad!”

  “Good or bad, it’s well to mind it,” said Chonz. “I just gave the same message to Joel Vahndert, and he did not think much of it. But he swore on The Lost Books and The Found that he would obey.”

  “Oh?” said Benoni. “Well?”

  “The chiefs have heard of the quarrel between you and Joel Vahndert and what happened afterwards. They have met and decided that you two would undoubtedly meet at Debra Awvrez’ house. And there you might spill each other’s blood. So to make sure that you save your blood for the Navahos —may God smite them blind—the Council forbids you two to see the girl until you return with a scalp at your belt. Then, being men, and responsible for your actions, you may do what you wish. But, until then . . . have you heard?”

  Sullenly, Benoni nodded and said, “I have.”

  Chonz urged his horse through
the gate until he was beside the youth. He held out a book bound in Mek leather. “Place your right hand upon it and swear upon it that you will obey the Council.”

  Benoni hesitated a moment. The full moon, which had just come over the faraway Supstishn (Superstition) Mountains, showed him gritting his teeth.

  “Come on, son,” said Chonz. “I ain’t got all night. Besides, you know the Council won’t do anything but what’s good for you.”

  “Can’t I even see her once before I go?” said Benoni.

  “Not unless you go to her house,” said Chonz. “Her father is making her stay at home. Old man Awvrez is mad. He says you and Joel have shamed her by bandying her name in a public place. If it wasn’t so close to initiation, he’d horsewhip both of you.”

  “That is a lie!” cried Benoni. “Why, I never once mentioned her name! It was Joel Vahndert! It’s not fair!”

  Sullenly, Benoni placed his hand on the book. He said, “I swear by The Found—and The Lost—Testaments to obey the will of the Council as charged in this matter.”

  “That’s a good boy,” said Chonz. “Good luck to you on your first warpath. God be with you.”

  “With you,” said Benoni. He watched the tall lean Announcer ride away, then he rode Red Hawk back to the stable. After unsaddling the horse, he did not return to the house. He wanted his fury to die out first. Instead, it became stronger, fed by images of Debra and Joel. After elaborating various forms of exotic punishment for Vahndert, if Vahndert ever got into his power, he felt somewhat better. Then, he went back into the house and explained what had happened. To his relief, he was not kidded. His father and brothers-in-law did speculate on the chance of bad blood between the Riders and Vahnderts, and they talked with gory detail of some honor-battles that had taken place between Fiiniks frats in the remote and recent past.

  Until now, the elders of both families had been on good terms. They went to the same church. They lived not more than five blocks apart. The heads of both often had amicable and mutually profitable business.