The Super Barbarians by John Brunner

Author:John Brunner [Brunner, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780575101234
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2011-09-29T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XII

IT WENT WELL. But it didn’t all go as smoothly as the episode of Dwerri, or the arrangement with Forrel about the supply of coffee to Pwill Heir Apparent. And no matter how pleased I felt with my small local successes one frightening problem continued to undermine my confidence.

The same point which had so upset me in Olafsson’s office in the Acre kept coming back. Why had I been on Qallavarra, in my position of trust and influence, for seven mortal months without making use of my opportunities? Now indeed I had some results to show for my belated efforts, but all that time I had been living like a typical serf that the people of the Acre so despised: comfortable, well-fed, not overworked. And in the Acre my Earthly fellows were plotting, and struggling, and dying.

When I concentrated on that question, my mind seemed to go out of my control. My memory clouded. I lost track of the difference between facts I really remembered and facts I might have pieced together subconsciously to account for the state of affairs as i found them.

The Acre itself, for example. I’d known about it all along—I must have! Even back on Earth the tales circulated; on my first trip there to carry out Shavarri’s errand I’d been eager to find out if the rumors were true. I’d known the streets which bounded it, recalling their numbers instantly. Why hadn’t I gone beyond that?

Many times I lay awake, staring into the darkness of my room, for hours on end before my tortured brain would relax into sleep, worrying over the same impossible paradox. It couldn’t be that I was purely a selfish, contented vegetable of a man. Pwill was too good a judge of human nature-Earthly or Vorrish—to select such a person as tutor to his heir.

Yet if I were not, why I had been so passive for those seven months, when my every instinct should have been to get in touch with the people in the Acre and ask how best I could serve the cause of Earth from my unique position?

Other unaccountable memories piled on that foundation. I remembered how Olafsson had commanded Ken, Gustav and Marijane to get out of his office when they brought me in for questioning, and not to mention the episode to anyone. I remembered the look of disgust on Marijane’s face when she found my house shield strapped to my arm. I remembered the passionate way I had tried to convince her that she was wrong about my being a mere serf—and wondered whether I’d been more interested in convincing her, or convincing myself.

Once, while I was fighting to still my raging thoughts because I was exhausted and not only wanted, but needed, to sleep, an idea occurred to me which I was too weak to debate with myself, so that it simply rested in the front of my mind until I dropped off. The phrase is apt; that time, I felt I actually was dropping when I went to sleep, as though into a pit of darkness.

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