The Men in the Jungle Page 4

  “Shut up!” Fraden roared.

  “For a man who was a President, you’re not very bright, Fraden,” Moro gloated. “Did you really think I would do anything but take the drug from you? The strong kill and the weak die. You will now order the ship to land. If you’re quick about it and give no trouble, I promise you a relatively quick death. If not…” He shrugged and grinned wolfishly.

  “You’re not exactly Einstein yourself, Mora,” Fraden said. “My crew has orders to A-bomb the city within the hour unless I say otherwise.”

  “You will be taken to a transmitter and you will rescind those orders immediately!”

  “Not a chance, man! No percentage in my doing that.”

  “Very well,” Moro said diffidently. “After a few minutes of the proper torture, you’ll do anything I say. It will enliven a rather tedious day.”

  “Strike three!” Fraden said, opening his mouth wide and touching his tongue to a molar. “This is a transmitter in my tooth. The entire conversation has been monitored on my ship. You’ll play it straight, or you’ll be radioactive dust in five minutes. I’m tired of playing silly games.”

  “You’re bluffing!” Moro said instantly. “An A-bomb would kill you too.”

  “For a change you’re right,” Fraden said. “But the catch is that I’ve nothing to lose. You’re going to kill me anyway, remember? You, on the other hand, have everything to lose. Want to call my bluff? Go right ahead. If you win, why then you’ve got yourself a nice corpse. If you lose, you’re a dead man. Seems to me those are pretty one-sided stakes, no matter what the odds. But then, I never was a gambling man.”

  Moro’s eyes blazed. He clenched his fists. Then once again, he shrugged. “Neither am I,” he said. “Fortunately, this is a game I can well afford to lose. Very well. I want that drug. State your terms.”

  “Now you’re talking good sense! I’ll sell you the drug, a modest quantity each month. I’ll keep the stockpile in orbit in my ship, just in case you get any more fancy ideas. We can dicker about price once I clue myself in on what the local currency is worth.”

  “Currency?” Moro said, frowning. “What’s currency?”

  “Money,” said Fraden, He laughed. “Surely you’ve heard of money?”

  “Money…? Ah yes, symbolic tokens of exchange! There is no monetary system on Sangre—no need for one. I own the planet, the Brotherhood, the peasants, and the Killers. The Brothers own their slaves and meat herds and Killers of their own. The peasants own the Bugs. The strong take what they need from those weaker than they are. No need for tokens of exchange.”

  “Then would you mind telling me how you expect to pay for the drug?”

  Moro toyed with his heavy jowls. “Hmmmm…” he mumbled. “Well, why not, you’re better than most of the fools! You will be initiated into the Brotherhood of Pain. As long as you continue to supply the drug, you’ll be a full-fledged Brother.”

  “I’ve got all the honorary titles I need,” Fraden said. “Just what does that entitle, me to?”

  “Why, everything Sangre has to offer, of course!” Moro said. “Your own Killers. Any slaves you care to take from those Animals not owned by anyone else. Your own herd of meat animals. Absolute power over everyone on Sangre, save me, other Brothers and our property. A seat in the Pavilion at the Pain Day Pageant. Land, if you want it.”

  Fraden smiled. It was a far better opening wedge than he could’ve hoped for—a piece of the action, in effect.

  “You’ve got yourself a deal,” he said. “But I’ll pass on the land. I’m a city boy, myself.”

  “Good,” said Moro. “Tomorrow we will hold the Initiation. You will be shown to your quarters now. Go. I wish to view the conclusion of this contest in private.”

  And as one of the soldiers led them out, Fraden saw that Moro’s attention was already riveted on the television screen again. He was careful not to look. Enjoy yourself while you can, lardbucket! he thought. Comes the Revolution!

  CHAPTER THREE

  “The female slave will remain in your quarters.”

  It had been a long night for Bart Fraden, a night full of second thoughts and not much sleep. He and Sophia, after looking over their rather sumptuous quarters, had spent the rest of the day poking around the large walled compound, trying to get the lay of the land.

  The soldiers, Fraden found, were all over the place and seemed to be in charge. There were hundreds of them, possibly thousands, within the compound, and all of them had the same receding hairlines, lean hard bodies, prominent chins, small sunken eyes. If men were a species like dogs, then the soldiers were a breed, like Dobermans. The soldiers would answer simple, innocuous, strictly factual questions—they were known as Killers, the city was called Sade, the Sangran natives, who were nowhere to be seen, were known as the Bugs and were some kind of hive organism. But any really probing questions were turned away with blank stares.

  Similarly, they were permitted to wander about the open courtyard almost at will, but arbitrary limits seemed to have been set on their freedom. When Fraden had tried to enter a small low building where fat, naked little boys entered in a long line at one end and didn’t come out at the other, he was turned back at gunpoint. On the other hand, no one stopped him from watching a single Killer drilling a squad of older boys dressed in miniatures of the Killer uniform, carrying real-looking rifles and morningstars, and looking very much like the young of this separate breed, down to the teeth filed to sharp points. But when he tried to follow a line of the most perfect little girls he had ever seen into a building where he had caught glimpses of older and equally perfect naked adolescent girls, he was again turned back at gunpoint. And the few men he saw dressed in black robes totally ignored him, as if he were an animal.

  Later, after they had eaten a rather tasty dinner of the same pungent, salty meat that Moro had served, and were alone in the bedroom of their quarters, Sophia had said: “Bart, let’s get into that lifeboat and get out of here. I don’t like this place. I don’t like it at all.”

  Fraden sat down next to her on the bed and kissed her. Her lips were limp beneath his. She pulled away from him. “I’m not exactly in the mood,” she said, screwing her face into a sour expression that was half-disgust, half-fear. “This stinking mudball is a lunatic asylum! That filthy thing old Whale-blubber was watching, getting his jollies out of watching women tsar each other to pieces… And those horrid little boys with the filed teeth and the guns… And all those beautiful little girls that look so much alike… Bart, they breed people here! They breed people like animals! It’s obvious—those Killers all look alike, and the young Killers like some separate species… It’s monstrous! We’re no angels, but we’re not monsters either. It’s a cesspool! We’ve got to get out!”

  “Sure it’s a cesspool, Soph,” Fraden said. “But remember what New South Africa was like? That wasn’t paradise either. This planet is over-ripe for revolution. I can smell it. The worse it is for the people, the better it is for us. I know what I’m doing. In a year, this’ll be our planet. Then I’ll put a stop to the really bad stuff, I promise. Give it a year, Soph. If I can’t take over a hellhole like this in a year, it’s time to hang up.”

  “All right, all right. But you’re not going to that damned initiation ceremony alone tomorrow! I’m coming with you.”

  She put her hands on his shoulders, looked Into his eyes, smiled wanly and said, “You may be a swine, Bart Fraden, but you’re the only swine I’ve got I’m not about to lose you.”

  He looked down at her, at her wild red hair, her tense, determined jaw. “If that’s the way you feel about it, you come with,” he said. “I know I have lousy taste in women, but I could do worse than you. Beneath that crummy exterior, I sometimes detect the heart of a little girl.”

  “Cut out the maudlin crap and let’s go to bed,” she said. “All of a sudden, I’m in the mood. Besides there’s not a hell of a lot else to do.”

  And now, the Killer who had awakened them insisted: “The
female slave will remain in your quarters.”

  “But she wants to see the Initiation Ceremony,” Fraden said. “Despite her foul temper, she’s my favorite slave and I like to please her.”

  “Only Brothers may witness the Initiation,” the Killer said in a laconic monotone. “Even Killers may not attend. You will come at once.”

  Fraden shrugged, “You heard the man, Soph.”

  “I don’t like the idea of your being alone,” Sophia insisted.

  Fraden sucked at a tooth. “Won’t be exactly alone,” he muttered.

  “You mean you’ve had that damned thing on all night? Bullethead heard everything that…? Bart Fraden, you’re a filthy, crud-minded, degenerate—”

  “Just no way to turn it off,” Fraden said. He turned, to the Killer. “Come on, man,” he said, “what’re we waiting for? As I believe I’ve mentioned, this slave has an impossible temper!”

  And he led the Killer out into the hall, just ahead of a long string of highly improbable obscenities.

  The Killer led him to a small door painted dull black, opened it, thrust him through It, and slammed the door behind him.

  Fraden found himself alone in a strange, mediumsized room that gave him an eerie feeling of being cut off from the world, of being thrust back into the womb. The ceiling, the walls, were draped in heavy black velvet, giving the room an uncanny feeling of indistinctness. The only light in the room was a large open fire burning in a great brass brazier, casting ominous shifting shadows in the heavily folded drapery. In front of the brazier was a rude, waist-high wooden altar, its surface stained and scratched. On the altar rested a small sharp ax and a long, thin sword. Fraden did not like it. He did not like it at all.

  The draperies to one side of the brazier parted, and a great fat figure dressed in a long black robe, with a hood covering his head entered the room—Moro. Ten similarly clad figures followed the Prophet of Pain into the room, one carrying a black robe, another a white one. The last of them pushed the heavy drape back into place.

  Moro took the white robe, waddled over to Fraden, handed the robe to him, and said. “The Prospective Brother will don the Robe of Innocence, Let the Prospective Brother know that to speak during the Initiation under any and all circumstances means instant death.”

  Uneasily, Fraden put on the white robe. Play along with this idiocy, he told himself. No matter what, play along. He wondered what Vanderling, listening on the microminitransmitter was making of all this mumbo-jumbo. Probably appeals to his over-developed sense of the primitive, he thought dourly.

  Moro stepped behind the altar in front of the fire, rested his heavy hands on its scarred surface. The other men arranged themselves in a shallow semicircle, five to either side of the Prophet, cowls drawn low on their faces.

  Moro stared straight at Fraden, his gross face, with its pig-eyes, tiny beak-nose, drawing a mad brand of insane dignity from, the flickering orange firelight.

  “The universe is dead,” Moro droned solemnly. “It is a place of cold and fire and random death. The universe has no meaning. The universe has no will.”

  “Only man has meaning,” the Brothers chanted contrapuntally. “Only man has will.”

  “Only in opposites is there meaning,” Moro droned on. “Only between opposites may there be Choice. Only in Choice can there be Meaning. Only in Meaning can there be Existence.”

  “And the measure of Existence is man,” the Brothers chanted.

  Fraden shuffled his feet nervously. There was something deeply disturbing about this stupid, inane ritual… Then he realized what it was—Moro and the Brothers were dead serious. They hung on every word of it! It wasn’t just a crock to impress the yokels; these men were fanatics.

  “To live without Existence is not to live at all. Animals live, men Exist. One must choose. One must be an animal or a man. There is only one real Choice: the Choice between doing and being done to, between taking Pleasure and receiving Pain. Pain and Pleasure are the Great Opposites. The giving of either means the receiving of the opposite. Animals receive Pain and thereby give Pleasure. Men give Pain and thereby receive Pleasure. One must choose.”

  “Choose!” the Brothers chanted. “Man or Animal? Choose! Choose!”

  “The Brotherhood consists of humans who have chosen,” Moro intoned “The Brotherhood of Pain is a brotherhood of humans who have chosen to be men. The Brotherhood of Pain consists of men who have chosen to give Pain and receive Pleasure. Brothers kill so that they may truly live. This ceremony is the ceremony of the Great Choice.”

  “Brother or Animal?” the hooded men chanted. “Pleasure or Pain! Life or death? Kill or be killed? Choose! Choose!”

  Moro’s glowing pig-eyes met Fraden’s, held them like a cobra’s hold a rat’s. “The moment of the Great Choice is at hand, Prospective Brother,” he said, “Into this room, Brothers and Animals come, those who have chosen, and those who are to choose. To witness this ceremony is to choose between joining the Brotherhood as a man, or dying as an animal. Only those who choose to kill leave this room alive.”

  From beneath the folds of their robes, the Brothers drew long, sharp knives.

  “The Great Choice!” cried Moro. “Kill or be killed! The moment of decision is now! Bring forth the human animal!”

  One of the ten Brothers sheathed his knife, and stepped behind the drapery. He emerged a moment later bearing a burden that turned Fraden’s bloody to ice, his knees to rubber. No! No! No! No! his mind screamed as he balled his hands into fists, felt his nails bite into the soft flesh of his palms.

  For the object cradled in the arms of the black-robed Brother was a naked human baby.

  The Brother passed the infant to Moro, who placed it face upward on the stained, scarred wooden altar. Now Fraden realized that the scratches were blade marks, the dark stains were dried human blood.

  Moro read the expression on Fraden’s face accurately. He picked the hand ax up off the altar, thrust it in Fraden’s limp palm and said, “The moment of choice. Do not utter a sound or you die. By the death of this Animal, become a Brother, or by sparing it, die. The Great Choice is yours, Prospective Brother. Make it now, or it will be made for you.”

  With that, Moro took the sword from the altar, placed its sharp tip against Fraden’s Adam’s apple. The Brothers encircled him, knives drawn, eyes eager.

  Fraden stared woodenly down at the bland, motionless tittle face of the apparently drugged baby. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t speak. The ax in his hand seemed to quiver like a thing alive. He looked up, saw the Brothers tense with anticipation, saw Moro position every ounce of his ponderous bulk behind the blade at his throat, ready, eager, to ram it home.

  He shut his eyes tight against the unseeable. To think of the choice as monstrous was a mere inanity. To kill a… No! No! It was better to die, better to remove the impossible decision from his own power, better to…

  “Now!” Moro ordered savagely. “Choose now or die now! Kill or be killed. Now!”

  Eyes still shut, Fraden felt the sword point move forward fractionally, felt the increased pressure behind it, felt the tight skin of his Adam’s apple split minutely, felt a tiny trickle of blood wet his throat…

  The moment hung suspended, extended its echoes backward and forward in time. Bart Fraden, who had led a revolution, who had fought against a counter-revolution, who planned another bloody uprising, had never killed by his own hand. Bart Fraden had never faced a moment like tins, had never been so forced to delve into his own being. Kill or be killed. It was no longer an abstract problem in moral philosophy; it was an ax in his hand and a sword at his throat. He saw the next moment in his mind’s eye, the bloody little body, the severed head, the blood, the blood, the blood… He couldn’t! He wouldn’t!

  But the vision reversed itself. He saw himself with the sword thrust through his neck, pieces of blood-soaked flesh and cartilage hanging from both ends of the hole, felt the searing, terrible pain, the lazy, easy blackness closing in as his oxygen-star
ved brain expired… In that terrible moment, Bart Fraden saw himself die, and from the depths of his soul, his muscles, his heart, his guts, came a monumental spasm of refusal, denial—No! No! Not me!

  The spasm ran through his guts, shot along his nervous system. The muscles in his arm contracted savagely, the ax in his hand came down in a heavy arc. There was a tiny, shrill scream, a hideous thunk that was felt, not heard, a soft moment of resistance; then a powerful shock that ran up his arm into his shoulders as the ax buried itself in the wood beneath the flesh.

  Fraden went limp; only the muscles in his eyelids remained contracted, keeping his eyes tight shut. In the awful dark silence that followed, Bart Fraden held to sanity by a single thread that gave, stretched, then hardened to an iron, savage resolve that pulled him back from the brink. They would die! They would all die! The Brotherhood that had forced him to do this thing to himself would perish in a bath of blood. There would be no surrender for Moro or his monstrous Brotherhood when the Revolution was won. They would be exterminated like the rabid dogs they were! I’ll kill them all! Kill… kill… kill…

  A smell of scorching flesh, and a sharp slap across the face forced his eyes open. Moro grabbed him by the chin with one hand, thrust a tiny morsel of cooked meat into his mouth with the other.

  Numbly, stupidly, he chewed upon it as the Brothers threatened him with their knives—and he tasted the pungent salty flavor of human flesh—the flavor he had unthinkingly relished less than a day before.

  And as they stripped the white robe from him, and dressed him in the black garment of the Brotherhood, he held back the vomit in his throat only with the iron fury of his hate. There was no turning back now, no place for mercy or weakness or disgust. He could not live with himself until the Brotherhood of Pain was a nameless memory in an unmarked grave. I’ll kill you all! he swore. I’ll exterminate you so thoroughly that no one will remember you or your names! Or what happened in this dark place…