Brion didn"t want to think about the loss of a full day from his already close deadline. "Have you told the Disans this yet?"
"No," Krafft told him. "The decision was reached a few minutes before your call. It is going on the radio to Lig-magte now."
"Can you cancel the transmission and let me take the message in person?"
"I can do that." Krafft thought for a moment. "But it would surely mean your death at their hands. They have no hesitation in killing any of our people. I would prefer to send it by radio."
"If you do that you will be interfering with my plans, and perhaps destroying them under the guise of saving my life. Isn"t my life my own--to dispose of as I will?"
For the first time Professor Krafft was upset. "I"m sorry, terribly sorry. I"m letting my concern and worry wash over into my public affairs. Of course you may do as you please; I could never think of stopping you." He turned and said something inaudible offscreen. "The call is cancelled. The responsibility is yours. All our wishes for success go with you. End of transmission."
"End of transmission," Brion said, and the screen went dark.
"Faussel!" he shouted into the intercom. "Get me the best and fastest sand car we have, a driver who knows his way around, and two men who can handle a gun and know how to take orders. We"re going to get some positive action at last."
X.
"It"s suicide," the taller guard grumbled.
"Mine, not yours, so don"t worry about it," Brion barked at him. "Your job is to remember your orders and keep them straight. Now--let"s hear them again."
The guard rolled his eyes up in silent rebellion and repeated in a toneless voice: "We stay here in the car and keep the motor running while you go inside the stone pile there. We don"t let anybody in the car and we try and keep them clear of the car--short of shooting them, that is. We don"t come in, no matter what happens or what it looks like, but wait for you here. Unless you call on the radio, in which case we come in with the automatics going and shoot the place up, and it doesn"t matter who we hit. This will be done only as a last resort."
"See if you can"t arrange that last resort thing," the other guard said, patting the heavy blue barrel of his weapon.
"I meant that last resort," Brion said angrily. "If any guns go off without my permission you will pay for it, and pay with your necks. I want that clearly understood. You are here as a rear guard and a base for me to get back to. This is my operation and mine alone--unless I call you in. Understood?"
He waited until all three men had nodded in agreement, then checked the charge on his gun--it was fully loaded. It would be foolish to go in unarmed, but he had to. One gun wouldn"t save him. He put it aside. The b.u.t.ton radio on his collar was working and had a strong enough signal to get through any number of walls. He took off his coat, threw open the door and stepped out into the searing brilliance of the Disan noon.
There was only the desert silence, broken by the steady throb of the car"s motor behind him. Stretching away to the horizon in every direction was the eternal desert of sand. The keep stood nearby, solitary, a ma.s.sive pile of black rock. Brion plodded closer, watching for any motion from the walls. Nothing stirred. The high-walled, irregularly shaped construction sat in a ponderous silence. Brion was sweating now, only partially from the heat.
He circled the thing, looking for a gate. There wasn"t one at ground level. A slanting cleft in the stone could be climbed easily, but it seemed incredible that this might be the only entrance. A complete circuit proved that it was. Brion looked unhappily at the slanting and broken ramp, then cupped his hands and shouted loudly.
"I"m coming up. Your radio doesn"t work any more. I"m bringing the message from Nyjord that you have been waiting to hear." This was a slight bending of the truth without fracturing it. There was no answer--just the hiss of wind-blown sand against the rock and the mutter of the car in the background. He started to climb.
The rock underfoot was crumbling and he had to watch where he put his feet. At the same time he fought a constant impulse to look up, watching for anything falling from above. Nothing happened. When he reached the top of the wall he was breathing hard; sweat moistened his body. There was still no one in sight. He stood on an unevenly shaped wall that appeared to circle the building. Instead of having a courtyard inside it, the wall was the outer face of the structure, the domed roof rising from it. At varying intervals dark openings gave access to the interior. When Brion looked down, the sand car was just a dun-colored b.u.mp in the desert, already far behind him.
Stooping, he went through the nearest door. There was still no one in sight. The room inside was something out of a madman"s funhouse. It was higher than it was wide, irregular in shape, and more like a hallway than a room. At one end it merged into an incline that became a stairwell. At the other it ended in a hole that vanished in darkness below. Light of sorts filtered in through slots and holes drilled into the thick stone wall. Everything was built of the same crumble-textured but strong rock. Brion took the stairs. After a number of blind pa.s.sages and wrong turns he saw a stronger light ahead, and went on. There was food, metal, even artifacts of the unusual Disan design in the different rooms he pa.s.sed through. Yet no people. The light ahead grew stronger, and the last pa.s.sageway opened and swelled out until it led into the large central chamber.
This was the heart of the strange structure. All the rooms, pa.s.sageways and halls existed just to give form to this gigantic chamber. The walls rose sharply, the room being circular in cross section and growing narrower towards the top. It was a truncated cone, since there was no ceiling; a hot blue disk of sky cast light on the floor below.
On the floor stood a knot of men who stared at Brion.
Out of the corner of his eyes, and with the very periphery of his consciousness, he was aware of the rest of the room--barrels, stores, machinery, a radio transceiver, various bundles and heaps that made no sense at first glance. There was no time to look closer. Every fraction of his attention was focused on the m.u.f.fled and hooded men.
He had found the enemy.
Everything that had happened to him so far on Dis had been preparation for this moment. The attack in the desert, the escape, the dreadful heat of sun and sand. All this had tempered and prepared him. It had been nothing in itself. Now the battle would begin in earnest.
None of this was conscious in his mind. His fighter"s reflexes bent his shoulders, curved his hands before him as he walked softly in balance, ready to spring in any direction. Yet none of this was really necessary. All the danger so far was nonphysical. When he did give conscious thought to the situation he stopped, startled. What was wrong here? None of the men had moved or made a sound. How could he even know they were men? They were so m.u.f.fled and wrapped in cloth that only their eyes were exposed.
No doubt, however, existed in Brion"s mind. In spite of m.u.f.fled cloth and silence, he knew them for what they were. The eyes were empty of expression and unmoving, yet were filled with the same negative emptiness as those of a bird of prey. They could look on life, death, and the rending of flesh with the same lack of interest and compa.s.sion. All this Brion knew in an instant of time, without words being spoken. Between the time he lifted one foot and walked a step he understood what he had to face. There could be no doubt, not to an empathetic.
From the group of silent men poured a frost-white wave of unemotion. An empathetic shares what other men feel. He gets his knowledge of their reaction by sensing lightly their emotions, the surges of interest, hate, love, fear, desire, the sweep of large and small sensations that accompany all thought and action. The empathetic is always aware of this constant and silent surge, whether he makes the effort to understand it or not. He is like a man glancing across the open pages of a tableful of books. He can see that the type, words, paragraphs, thoughts are there, even without focusing his attention to understand any of it.
Then how does the man feel when he glances at the open books and sees only blank pages? The books are there--the words are not. He turns the pages of one, of the others, flipping the pages, searching for meaning. There is no meaning. All of the pages are blank.
This was the way in which the magter were blank, without emotions. There was a barely sensed surge and return that must have been neural impulses on a basic level--the automatic adjustments of nerve and muscle that keep an organism alive. Nothing more. Brion reached for other sensations, but there was nothing there to grasp. Either these men were without emotions, or they were able to block them from his detection; it was impossible to tell which.
Very little time had pa.s.sed while Brion made these discoveries. The knot of men still looked at him, silent and unmoving. They weren"t expectant, their att.i.tude could not have been called one of interest. But he had come to them and now they waited to find out why. Any questions or statements they spoke would be superfluous, so they didn"t speak. The responsibility was his.
"I have come to talk with Lig-magte. Who is he?" Brion didn"t like the tiny sound his voice made in the immense room.
One of the men gave a slight motion to draw attention to himself. None of the others moved. They still waited.
"I have a message for you," Brion said, speaking slowly to fill the silence of the room and the emptiness of his thoughts. This had to be handled right. But what was right? "I"m from the Foundation in the city, as you undoubtedly know. I"ve been talking to the people of Nyjord. They have a message for you."
The silence grew longer. Brion had no intention of making this a monologue. He needed facts to operate, to form an opinion. Looking at the silent forms was telling him nothing. Time stretched taut, and finally Lig-magte spoke.
"The Nyjorders are going to surrender."
It was an impossibly strange sentence. Brion had never realized before how much of the content of speech was made up of emotion. If the man had given it a positive emphasis, perhaps said it with enthusiasm, it would have meant, "Success! The enemy is going to surrender!" This wasn"t the meaning.
With a rising inflection on the end it would have been a question. "Are they going to surrender?" It was neither of these. The sentence carried no other message than that contained in the simplest meanings of the separate words. It had intellectual connotations, but these could only be gained from past knowledge, not from the sound of the words. There was only one message they were prepared to receive from Nyjord. Therefore Brion was bringing the message. If that was not the message Brion was bringing the men here were not interested.
This was the vital fact. If they were not interested he could have no further value to them. Since he came from the enemy, he was the enemy. Therefore he would be killed. Because this was vital to his existence, Brion took the time to follow the thought through. It made logical sense--and logic was all he could depend on now. He could be talking to robots or alien creatures, for all the human response he was receiving.
"You can"t win this war--all you can do is hurry your own deaths." He said this with as much conviction as he could, realizing at the same time that it was wasted effort. No flicker of response stirred in the men before him. "The Nyjorders know you have the cobalt bombs, and they have detected your jump-s.p.a.ce projector. They can"t take any more chances. They have pushed the deadline closer by an entire day. There are one and a half days left before the bombs fall and you are all destroyed. Do you realize what that means--"
"Is that the message?" Lig-magte asked.
"Yes," Brion said.
Two things saved his life then. He had guessed what would happen as soon as they had his message, though he hadn"t been sure. But even the suspicion had put him on his guard. This, combined with the reflexes of a Winner of the Twenties, was barely enough to enable him to survive.
From frozen mobility Lig-magte had catapulted into headlong attack. As he leaped forward he drew a curved, double-edged blade from under his robes. It plunged unerringly through the spot where Brion"s body had been an instant before.
There had been no time to tense his muscles and jump, just the s.p.a.ce of time to relax them and fall to one side. His reasoning mind joined the battle as he hit the floor. Lig-magte plunged by him, turning and bringing the knife down at the same time. Brion"s foot lashed out and caught the other man"s leg, sending him sprawling.
They were both on their feet at the same instant, facing each other. Brion now had his hands clasped before him in the unarmed man"s best defense against a knife, the two arms protecting the body, the two hands joined to beat aside the knife arm from whichever direction it came. The Disan hunched low, flipped the knife quickly from hand to hand, then thrust it again at Brion"s midriff.
Only by the merest fractional margin did Brion evade the attack for the second time. Lig-magte fought with utter violence. Every action was as intense as possible, deadly and thorough. There could be only one end to this unequal contest if Brion stayed on the defensive. The man with the knife had to win.
With the next charge Brion changed tactics. He leaped inside the thrust, clutching for the knife arm. A burning slice of pain cut across his arm, then his fingers clutched the tendoned wrist. They clamped down hard, grinding shut, compressing with the tightening intensity of a closing vise.
It was all he could do simply to hold on. There was no science in it, just his greater strength from exercise and existence on a heavier planet. All of this strength went to his clutching hand, because he held his own life in that hand, forcing away the knife that wanted to terminate it forever. Nothing else mattered--neither the frightening force of the knees that thudded into his body nor the hooked fingers that reached for his eyes to tear them out. He protected his face as well as he could, while the nails tore furrows through his flesh and the cut on his arm bled freely. These were only minor things to be endured. His life depended on the grasp of the fingers of his right hand.
There was a sudden immobility as Brion succeeded in clutching Lig-magte"s other arm. It was a good grip, and he could hold the arm immobilized. They had reached stasis, standing knee to knee, their faces only a few inches apart. The m.u.f.fling cloth had fallen from the Disan"s face during the struggle, and empty, frigid eyes stared into Brion"s. No flicker of emotion crossed the harsh planes of the other man"s face. A great puckered white scar covered one cheek and pulled up a corner of the mouth in a cheerless grimace. It was false; there was still no expression here, even when the pain must be growing more intense.
Brion was winning--if none of the watchers broke the impa.s.se. His greater weight and strength counted now. The Disan would have to drop the knife before his arm was dislocated at the shoulder. He didn"t do it. With sudden horror Brion realized that he wasn"t going to drop it--no matter what happened.
A dull, hideous snap jerked through the Disan"s body and the arm hung limp and dead. No expression crossed the man"s face. The knife was still locked in the fingers of the paralyzed hand. With his other hand Lig-magte reached across and started to pry the blade loose, ready to continue the battle one-handed. Brion raised his foot and kicked the knife free, sending it spinning across the room.
Lig-magte made a fist of his good hand and crashed it into Brion"s groin. He was still fighting, as if nothing had changed. Brion backed slowly away from the man. "Stop it," he said. "You can"t win now. It"s impossible." He called to the other men who were watching the unequal battle with expressionless immobility. No one answered him.
With a terrible sinking sensation Brion then realized what would happen and what he had to do. Lig-magte was as heedless of his own life as he was of the life of his planet. He would press the attack no matter what damage was done to him. Brion had an insane vision of him breaking the man"s other arm, fracturing both his legs, and the limbless broken creature still coming forward. Crawling, rolling, teeth bared, since they were the only remaining weapon.
There was only one way to end it. Brion feinted and the Lig-magte"s arm moved clear of his body. The engulfing cloth was thin and through it Brion could see the outlines of the Disan"s abdomen and rib cage, the clear location of the great nerve ganglion.
It was the death blow of kara-te. Brion had never used it on a man. In practice he had broken heavy boards, splintering them instantly with the short, precise stroke. The stiffened hand moving forward in a sudden surge, all the weight and energy of his body concentrated in his joined fingertips. Plunging deep into the other"s flesh.
Killing, not by accident or in sudden anger. Killing because this was the only way the battle could possibly end.
Like a ruined tower of flesh, the Disan crumpled and fell.
Dripping blood, exhausted, Brion stood over the body of Lig-magte and stared at the dead man"s allies.
Death filled the room.
XI.
Facing the silent Disans, Brion"s thoughts hurtled about in sweeping circles. There would be no more than an instant"s tick of time before the magter avenged themselves bloodily and completely. He felt a fleeting regret for not having brought his gun, then abandoned the thought. There was no time for regrets--what could he do now?
The silent watchers hadn"t attacked instantly, and Brion realized that they couldn"t be positive yet that Lig-magte had been killed. Only Brion himself knew the deadliness of that blow. Their lack of knowledge might buy him a little more time.
"Lig-magte is unconscious, but he will revive quickly," Brion said, pointing at the huddled body. As the eyes turned automatically to follow his finger, he began walking slowly towards the exit. "I did not want to do this, but he forced me to, because he wouldn"t listen to reason. Now I have something else to show you, something that I hoped it would not be necessary to reveal."
He was saying the first words that came into his head, trying to keep them distracted as long as possible. He must appear to be only going across the room, that was the feeling he must generate. There was even time to stop for a second and straighten his rumpled clothing and brush the sweat from his eyes. Talking easily, walking slowly towards the hall that led out of the chamber.
He was halfway there when the spell broke and the rush began. One of the magter knelt and touched the body, and shouted a single word: "Dead!"
Brion hadn"t waited for the official announcement. At the first movement of feet, he dived headlong for the shelter of the exit. There was a spatter of tiny missiles on the wall next to him and he had a brief glimpse of raised blowguns before the wall intervened. He went up the dimly lit stairs three at a time.
The pack was just behind him, voiceless and deadly. He could not gain on them--if anything, they were closing the distance as he pushed his already tired body to the utmost. There was no subtlety or trick he could use now, just straightforward flight back the way he had come. A single slip on the irregular steps and it would be all over.
There was someone ahead of him. If the woman had waited a few seconds more he would certainly have been killed; but instead of slashing at him as he went by the doorway, she made the mistake of rushing to the center of the stairs, the knife ready to impale him as he came up. Without slowing, Brion fell onto his hands and easily dodged under the blow. As he pa.s.sed he twisted and seized her around the waist, picking her from the ground.
When her legs lifted from under her the woman screamed--the first human sound Brion had heard in this human anthill. His pursuers were just behind him, and he hurled the woman into them with all his strength. They fell in a tangle, and Brion used the precious seconds gained to reach the top of the building.
There must have been other stairs and exits, because one of the magter stood between Brion and the way down out of this trap--armed and ready to kill him if he tried to pa.s.s.
As he ran towards the executioner, Brion flicked on his collar radio and shouted into it. "I"m in trouble here. Can you--"
The guards in the car must have been waiting for this message. Before he had finished there was the thud of a high-velocity slug hitting flesh and the Disan spun and fell, blood soaking his shoulder. Brion leaped over him and headed for the ramp.
"The next one is me--hold your fire!" he called.
Both guards must have had their telescopic sights zeroed on the spot. They let Brion pa.s.s, then threw in a hail of semi-automatic fire that tore chunks from the stone and screamed away in noisy ricochets. Brion didn"t try to see if anyone was braving this hail of covering fire; he concentrated his energies on making as quick and erratic a descent as he could. Above the sounds of the firing he heard the car motor howl as it leaped forward. With their careful aim spoiled, the gunners switched to full automatic and unleashed a hailstorm of flying metal that bracketed the top of the tower.
"Cease ... firing!" Brion gasped into the radio as he ran. The driver was good, and timed his arrival with exact.i.tude. The car reached the base of the tower at the same instant Brion did, and he burst through the door while it was still moving. No orders were necessary. He fell headlong onto a seat as the car swung in a dust-raising turn and ground into high gear, back to the city.
Reaching over carefully, the tall guard gently extracted a bit of pointed wood and fluff from a fold of Brion"s pants. He cracked open the car door, and just as delicately threw it out.
"I knew that thing didn"t touch you," he said, "since you are still among the living. They"ve got a poison on those blowgun darts that takes all of twelve seconds to work. Lucky."
Lucky! Brion was beginning to realize just how lucky he was to be out of the trap alive. And with information. Now that he knew more about the magter, he shuddered at his innocence in walking alone and unarmed into the tower. Skill had helped him survive--but better than average luck had been necessary. Curiosity had gotten him in, brashness and speed had taken him out. He was exhausted, battered and b.l.o.o.d.y--but cheerfully happy. The facts about the magter were arranging themselves into a theory that might explain their attempt at racial suicide. It just needed a little time to be put into shape.
A pain cut across his arm and he jumped, startled, pieces of his thoughts crashing into ruin around him. The gunner had cracked the first-aid box and was swabbing his arm with antiseptic. The knife wound was long, but not deep. Brion shivered while the bandage was going on, then quickly slipped into his coat. The air conditioner whined industriously, bringing down the temperature.
There was no attempt to follow the car. When the black tower had dropped over the horizon the guards relaxed, ran cleaning rods through their guns and compared marksmanship. All of their antagonism towards Brion was gone; they actually smiled at him. He had given them the first chance to shoot back since they had been on this planet.
The ride was uneventful, and Brion was scarcely aware of it. A theory was taking form in his mind. It was radical and startling--yet it seemed to be the only one that fitted the facts. He pushed at it from all sides, but if there were any holes he couldn"t find them. What it needed was dispa.s.sionate proving or disproving. There was only one person on Dis who was qualified to do this.
Lea was working in the lab when he came in, bent over a low-power binocular microscope. Something small, limbless and throbbing was on the slide. She glanced up when she heard his footsteps, smiling warmly when she recognized him. Fatigue and pain had drawn her face; her skin, glistening with burn ointment, was chapped and peeling.
"I must look a wreck," she said, putting the back of her hand to her cheek. "Something like a well-oiled and lightly cooked piece of beef." She lowered her arm suddenly and took his hand in both of hers. Her palms were warm and slightly moist.
"Thank you, Brion," was all she could say. Her society on Earth was highly civilized and sophisticated, able to discuss any topic without emotion and without embarra.s.sment. This was fine in most circ.u.mstances, but made it difficult to thank a person for saving your life. However you tried to phrase it, it came out sounding like a last-act speech from a historical play. There was no doubt, however, as to what she meant. Her eyes were large and dark, the pupils dilated by the drugs she had been given. They could not lie, nor could the emotions he sensed. He did not answer, just held her hand an instant longer.
"How do you feel," he asked, concerned. His conscience twinged as he remembered that he was the one who had ordered her out of bed and back to work today.
"I should be feeling terrible," she said, with an airy wave of her hand. "But I"m walking on top of the world. I"m so loaded with pain-killers and stimulants that I"m high as the moon. All the nerves to my feet feel turned off--it"s like walking on two b.a.l.l.s of fluff. Thanks for getting me out of that awful hospital and back to work."
Brion was suddenly sorry for having driven her from her sick bed.
"Don"t be sorry!" Lea said, apparently reading his mind, but really seeing only his sudden ashamed expression. "I"m feeling no pain. Honestly. I feel a little light-headed and foggy at times, nothing more. And this is the job I came here to do. In fact ... well, it"s almost impossible to tell you just how fascinating it all is! It was almost worth getting baked and parboiled for."
She swung back to the microscope, centering the specimen with a turn of the stage adjustment screw. "Poor Ihjel was right when he said this planet was exobiologically fascinating. This is a gastropod, a lot like Odostomia, but it has parasitical morphological changes so profound that--"
"There"s something else I remember," Brion said, interrupting her enthusiastic lecture, only half of which he could understand. "Didn"t Ihjel also hope that you would give some study to the natives as well as their environment? The problem is with the Disans--not with the local wild life."
"But I am studying them," Lea insisted. "The Disans have attained an incredibly advanced form of commensalism. Their lives are so intimately connected and integrated with the other life forms that they must be studied in relation to their environment. I doubt if they show as many external physical changes as little eating-foot Odostomia on the slide here, but there will surely be a number of psychological changes and adjustments that will crop up. One of these might be the explanation of their urge for planetary suicide."
"That may be true--but I don"t think so," Brion said. "I went on a little expedition this morning and found something that has more immediate relevancy."
For the first time Lea became aware of his slightly battered condition. Her drug-grooved mind could only follow a single idea at a time and had over-looked the significance of the bandage and dirt.