Free Earthblood by Keith Laumer, Rosel George Brown Page A

started.
    The boulder moved in the shadows. It leaned forward, and Roan saw two bright-faceted jewels near the top, which caught the light and threw back a green glint. There was a low rumble that seemed to come from the bottom of a volcano.
    "Why you wake Iron Robert up?"
    "Hello, Iron Robert," Stellaraire said in a squeaky voice. "I . . . I wanted our new Freak to . . . to meet you . . . He's a Terry, sort of, and he's going to do a wire-walking act and double in greenface . . . " Her voice trailed off. Her fingers were digging into Roan's arm now. He wanted to take a step back, but she was half behind him, and he would have to push her out of the way, so he stood his ground and looked into the green eyes like chips of jade in an ancient idol hewn from lava.
    "You mean new Freak want to look at old Freak. Go'head, Terry, take good look. Iron Robert strongest living creature. Fight any being, anytime, anyplace." The giant's voice was a roll of chained thunder. Stellaraire tugged at Roan's arm.
    "We . . . uh . . . didn't mean to bother you, Iron Robert," she said breathlessly. She tugged again, harder. But Roan didn't move.
    "Don't you have any lights in this place?"
    The dark shape stirred, rose up in the shadows, nine feet tall, massive as a mountain.
    "Iron Robert like dark. Sit in dark and think of old battles, old days." He took a step and the deck boomed and trembled under Roan's feet. "You come meet Iron Robert? OK, you shake hand that can tear leg off bull-devil!" He thrust out a vast, blunt-fingered, grayish-brown paw. Roan looked at it.
    "What's matter, Terry, you 'fraid Iron Robert tear arm off you?" Roan reached up, put his hand in the stone one before him. It was rough and hard and warm, like rock in the sun, and it made him feel as soft and weak as a jelly-toad. Iron Robert flexed his fingers, and Roan felt the grating slide of the interlocking crystals of the incredible hide.
    "You small, pale being," Iron Robert rumbled. "You really Terran?" Roan tried to stand up straighter, remembering that once Terrans had ruled the Galaxy.
    "That's right," he said. He looked up at the rough-hewn face above him and swallowed. "Why do they call you Iron Robert instead of Rock Robert?" He hoped his voice sounded bold.
    Iron Robert laughed, a deep, gutsy laugh. "I come of royal ferrous stock, Terry. See oxidation?" He turned his arm so that Roan could see the flakes of rusted iron in the silicon of his skin.
    "You look as though you'd last forever," Roan said. He was thinking suddenly of mountains, and how they weathered and endured, and of his own soft, inadequate flesh and the maybe two hundred years he had left.
    "Why not?" the giant said, and he took his hand away and turned and went back to the cast-iron slab that was his bed. Roan's eyes were accommodating to the dim light now, and he saw a wall plaque over the bunk, a carved design of growing flowers. One of the blossoms, half-blown, leaned, dropped a petal that fell with a gritty crunch, crumbling into dust.
    "Petals all gone soon," Iron Robert said. "Then last remembrance of home gone. Flower getting old, Iron Robert old, too, Terry. Last long time, maybe, but not forever."
    "Well, 'by, Iron Robert," Stellaraire said, and this time when she tugged at Roan's arm, he went with her.
    That night Stellaraire made Roan a pallet in a small room near her own. She dressed the scratch on his face again, and the other, deeper one on his thigh, adjusted the blanket under his chin, did something nice to his mouth with hers, then went away and left him alone in the silence and the dark. For a while he thought of the strangeness of it, and suddenly the loneliness was almost choking him, like the bad air in the Soetti Quarter. Then he thought of Stellaraire, and of suddenly having a friend, something he had almost forgotten since Clanth had died so long ago.
    Then he slept, and his sleep was tortured with vivid, dying images of Dad .
    . . of Dad's sad corpse, crying for