The Dawning Light
Randall Garrett & Robert Silverberg
(as Robert Randall)
Astounding March-May 1957
PART I
Chapter I
There was just one elderly Peaceman guarding the bank that held the wealth of the Province of Dimay. In the cold, rainy drizzle of the Nidorian night, Kris peKym Yorgen paced the deck of his ship, frowning uneasily as he watched the black shadows of his men slipping up on the square-hewn brick building.
Kris peKym turned to the man at his side—a small, wiry Bronze Islander named Dran peDran Gormek. "Is the longboat ready?"
Dran peDran nodded.
"And the deests?"
Again the Bronze Islander nodded.
"Good," Kris said. "The bank's surrounded. We'll be in possession within three minutes, if all goes well." His voice was incisive: "All we have to do is cut down the one old guard and the Keeper—not much protection for millions of weights, is it?"
Dran peDran shook his head. "They isn't expecting any robberies, captain. You doesn't guard against something you doesn't expect."
Kris smiled. The little outlander's bizarre inflection always amused him—besides, there was truth in what he said. Nidor's banks were four thousand years old—and in four thousand years, no bank had ever been robbed. The idea would have been preposterous, once; Nidor's carefully-balanced economy had seen to it that everyone had at least enough for himself, anyway.
Kris' lips curled in a lopsided grin. "There's always a first time, Dran peDran. There was a first time when the Earthmen came, when they first built their School and first started spreading lies and blasphemy among us. And there'll be a first time for robbing the Bank of Dimay." He squinted into the rainy darkness, then said, "Shove off and get into that longboat. They're ready to enter the bank."
"Right, captain."
Dran peDran sprang over the side of the deckrail into the waiting longboat below, and there was the sound of oars creaking as he moved off toward the dock. Kris peKym continued to pace the deck anxiously. First mission for the Party, he thought. It has to be perfect.
He fidgeted impatiently, watching the dim silhouette of the Peaceman strolling placidly back and forth before the bank. The Peaceman was going to be surprised, Kris thought with a grim smile. His family had probably held that sinecure for four thousand years in unbroken succession.
No ... no one had ever robbed a bank before ... but it had to be done now. Robbing the bank would drive a wedge between the people and the Earthmen, would leave the Council of Elders in an awkward spot—would, in short, put Nidor one step closer to a return to the old ways.
It was a paradox, thought Kris: in order to return to the old ways, it was necessary to do startlingly new things, like—he chuckled softly—-robbing the bank. But the world had changed, in the past century, and further change was needed to return it to the Way of the Ancestors.
He watched as a dark figure edged up quietly behind the unsuspecting Peaceman. Dimly seen behind him were the other crewmen who had gone ashore to make the assault on the bank.
Now, Kris thought. Now—hit him!
Kris saw an arm go up, saw the black bulk of a club hover in the air for a moment and then, traveling quickly and clearly across the water, there came the sound of the club striking the Peaceman's skull. He watched the shadowy form sag to its knees, and saw two other shadows appear out of the fog and truss the man thoroughly. So far, so good. The Peaceman would never know what hit him.
Nor would the Keeper of the bank. Kris smiled as he remembered the man—he had met him three days before, while he and Dran had been making preliminary investigations while ostensibly changing some large coins. The Keeper was a short, rotund man of the Clan Sesom, whose golden body hair had turned nearly silver; he was very fat, and waddled ludicrously around within his bank.
Straining his ears, Kris thought he heard a grunt from within the bank. So much for the Keeper, he thought.
His men, trained minutely for the job, were carrying the robbery off as if they were so many puppets. Only-Yes, there it was. The faint clatter of doubly-cleft deest-hoofs, behind the bank. Three of his men were there, mounted. At the signal that the bank was taken, they were to ride up the marshy back road toward Holy Gelusar for a few miles—far enough for them to take the main-road turn-off, come back, and repeat the whole thing all over again. By the time they had made ten or twelve round trips, it would appear as if a good-sized party of marauders had come down from Gelusar to clean out the bank.
Meantime, the real unloading was proceeding. Kris watched approvingly as the ten men who had entered the vault formed themselves into a human chain stretching from the unseen interior of the bank to the dock that led from the bank to the waters of Tammulcor Bay. And then, the cobalt began to move.
It traveled arm-to-arm down the row of men, each heavy loop of coins passing from one to the next, until it reached the dock. The last man was bending and handing the coins through the hole that had been prepared—I hope those sons of deests didn't hurt those planks, Kris swore; I want them to look as good as new when we're done—and into the longboat that waited under the docks, ready to scuttle through the water under cover of darkness to the Krand.
After about fifteen minutes of loading, the chain dispersed. That told Kris that the longboat was full, and that the men were going back to take a breather while the boat was rowed to the Krand. Tensely, he listened as the oars creaked in the night, held his breath as the longboat approached.
Then Dran peDran was up on the deck again, looking sweaty and overheated. "We is got the first load, captain!"
"Fine work," Kris said. "Get it below and go back for more."
"Is going, captain."
"Good."
He watched as the perspiring crewmen swung the loops of cobalt out of the longboat and onto the deck, where other crewmen grabbed the coins and carried them below to stow them in the false bottom of the Krand. Then the longboat slid silently away in the night, heading back under the dock to receive the next load of coins.
It was long, hard, slow, sweaty work, and it took most of the night. But no one bothered them. Who would be out, late at night, down at the treacherous waterfront? And who would expect the bank to be robbed, anyway? Such things just didn't happen.
At least they never used to, Kris thought pleasantly.
It was close to morning by the time they were finished and all the money was aboard the Krand. The bank had been thoroughly robbed, and the money was safely stowed in the ship's false bottom.
The bank bad been robbed. Strange words, Kris thought—words that never would have been conceived, had the Earthmen never come. But the Earthmen had come. It was not yet a hundred years since they had dropped from the skies, claiming to have come from the Great Light Himself. In not a hundred years, Kris thought, the balance of a world had been destroyed.
It was no exaggeration to say that tradition had been demolished and Nidor turned topsy-turvy since the coming of the Earthmen. The Elder Priests of Nidor's Sixteen Clans had accepted them as emissaries from Heaven, had greeted them enthusiastically—and thereby, Kris thought bitterly, had paved the way for their own downfall. Today, the knife and the rifle ruled in a world that had known peace for thousands upon thousands of years—and it was the fault of the Earthmen.