"I"ve been visiting," Brion said, forestalling the question on her lips. "The magter are the ones who are responsible for causing the trouble, and I had to see them up close before I could make any decisions. It wasn"t a very pleasant thing, but I found out what I wanted to know. They are different in every way from the normal Disans. I"ve compared them. I"ve talked to Ulv--the native who saved us in the desert--and I can understand him. He is not like us in many ways--he certainly couldn"t be, living in this oven--but he is still undeniably human. He gave us drinking water when we needed it, then brought help. The magter, the upper-cla.s.s lords of Dis, are the direct opposite. As cold-blooded and ruthless a bunch of murderers as you can possibly imagine. They tried to kill me when they met me, without reason. Their clothes, habits, dwellings, manners--everything about them differs from that of the normal Disan. More important, the magter are as coldly efficient and inhuman as a reptile. They have no emotions, no love, no hate, no anger, no fear--nothing. Each of them is a chilling bundle of thought processes and reactions, with all the emotions removed."
"Aren"t you exaggerating?" Lea asked. "After all, you can"t be sure. It might just be part of their training not to reveal any emotional state. Everyone must experience emotional states, whether they like it or not."
"That"s my main point. Everyone does--except the magter. I can"t go into all the details now, so you"ll just have to take my word for it. Even at the point of death they have no fear or hatred. It may sound impossible, but it is true."
Lea tried to shake the knots from her drug-hazed mind. "I"m dull today," she said. "You"ll have to excuse me. If these rulers had no emotional responses, that might explain their present suicidal position. But an explanation like this raises more new problems than it supplies answers to the old ones. How did they get this way! It doesn"t seem humanly possible to be without emotions of some kind."
"Just my point. Not humanly possible. I think these ruling cla.s.s Disans aren"t human at all, like the other Disans. I think they are alien creatures--robots or androids--anything except men. I think they are living in disguise among the normal human dwellers."
At first Lea started to smile, then her feeling changed when she saw his face. "You are serious?" she asked.
"Never more so. I realize it must sound as if I"ve had my brains bounced around too much this morning. Yet this is the only idea I can come up with that fits all of the facts. Look at the evidence yourself. One simple thing stands out clearly, and must be considered first if any theory is to hold up. That is the magters" complete indifference to death--their own or anyone else"s. Is that normal to mankind?"
"No--but I can find a couple of explanations that I would rather explore first, before dragging in an alien life form. There may have been a mutation or an inherited disease that has deformed or warped their minds."
"Wouldn"t that be sort of self-eliminating?" Brion asked. "Anti-survival? People who die before p.u.b.erty would find it a little difficult to pa.s.s on a mutation to their children. But let"s not beat this one point to death--it"s the totality of these people that I find so hard to accept. Any one thing might be explained away, but not the collection of them. What about their complete lack of emotion? Or their manner of dress and their secrecy in general? The ordinary Disan wears a cloth kilt, while the magter cover themselves as completely as possible. They stay in their black towers and never go out except in groups. Their dead are always removed so they can"t be examined. In every way they act like a race apart--and I think they are."
"Granted for the moment that this outlandish idea might be true, how did they get here? And why doesn"t anyone know about it besides them?"
"Easily enough explained," Brion insisted. "There are no written records on this planet. After the Breakdown, when the handful of survivors were just trying to exist here, the aliens could have landed and moved in. Any interference could have been wiped out. Once the population began to grow, the invaders found they could keep control by staying separate, so their alien difference wouldn"t be noticed."
"Why should that bother them?" Lea asked. "If they are so indifferent to death, they can"t have any strong thoughts on public opinion or alien body odor. Why would they bother with such a complex camouflage? And if they arrived from another planet, what has happened to the scientific ability that brought them here?"
"Peace," Brion said. "I don"t know enough to be able even to guess at answers to half your questions. I"m just trying to fit a theory to the facts. And the facts are clear. The magter are so inhuman they would give me nightmares--if I were sleeping these days. What we need is more evidence."
"Then get it," Lea said with finality. "I"m not telling you to turn murderer--but you might try a bit of grave-digging. Give me a scalpel and one of your friends stretched out on a slab and I"ll quickly tell you what he is or is not." She turned back to the microscope and bent over the eyepiece.
That was really the only way to hack the Gordian knot. Dis had only thirty-six more hours to live, so individual deaths shouldn"t be of any concern. He had to find a dead magter, and if none was obtainable in the proper condition he had to get one of them by violence. For a planetary savior, he was personally doing in an awful lot of the citizenry.
He stood behind Lea, looking down at her thoughtfully while she worked. The back of her neck, lightly covered with gently curling hair, was turned toward him. With one of the about-face shifts the mind is capable of, his thoughts flipped from death to life, and he experienced a strong desire to caress this spot lightly, to feel the yielding texture of female flesh....
Plunging his hands deep into his pockets, he walked quickly to the door. "Get some rest soon," he called to her. "I doubt if those bugs will give you the answer. I"m going now to see if I can get the full-sized specimen you want."
"The truth could be anywhere. I"ll stay on these until you come back," she said, not looking up from the microscope.
Up under the roof was a well-equipped communications room. Brion had taken a quick look at it when he had first toured the building. The duty operator had earphones on--though only one of the phones covered an ear--and was monitoring through the bands. His shoeless feet were on the edge of the table, and he was eating a thick sandwich held in his free hand. His eyes bulged when he saw Brion in the doorway and he jumped into a flurry of action.
"Hold the pose," Brion told him; "it doesn"t bother me. And if you make any sudden moves you are liable to break a phone, electrocute yourself, or choke to death. Just see if you can set the transceiver on this frequency for me." Brion wrote the number on a scratch pad and slid it over to the operator. It was the frequency Professor-Commander Krafft had given him for the radio of the illegal terrorists--the Nyjord army.
The operator plugged in a handset and gave it to Brion. "Circuit open," he mumbled around a mouthful of still unswallowed sandwich.
"This is Brandd, director of the C.R.F. Come in, please." He went on repeating this for more than ten minutes before he got an answer.
"What do you want?"
"I have a message of vital urgency for you--and I would also like your help. Do you want any more information on the radio?
"No. Wait there--we"ll get in touch with you after dark." The carrier wave went dead.
Thirty-five hours to the end of the world--and all he could do was wait.
XII.
On Brion"s desk when he came in, were two neat piles of paper. As he sat down and reached for them he was conscious of an arctic coldness in the air, a frigid blast. It was coming from the air-conditioner grill, which was now covered by welded steel bars. The control unit was sealed shut. Someone was either being very funny or very efficient. Either way, it was cold. Brion kicked at the cover plate until it buckled, then bent it aside. After a careful look into the interior he disconnected one wire and shorted it to another. He was rewarded by a number of sputtering cracks and a quant.i.ty of smoke. The compressor moaned and expired.
Faussel was standing in the door with more papers, a shocked expression on his face. "What do you have there?" Brion asked.
Faussel managed to straighten out his face and brought the folders to the desk, arranging them on the piles already there. "These are the progress reports you asked for, from all units. Details to date, conclusions, suggestions, et cetera."
"And the other pile?" Brion pointed.
"Offplanet correspondence, commissary invoices, requisitions." He straightened the edges of the stack while he answered. "Daily reports, hospital log...." His voice died away and stopped as Brion carefully pushed the stack off the edge of the desk into the wastebasket.
"In other words, red tape," Brion said. "Well, it"s all filed."
One by one the progress reports followed the first stack into the basket, until the desk was clear. Nothing. It was just what he had expected. But there had always been the off chance that one of the specialists could come up with a new approach. They hadn"t; they were all too busy specializing.
Outside the sky was darkening. The front entrance guard had been told to let in anyone who came asking for the director. There was nothing else Brion could do until the Nyjord rebels made contact. Irritation bit at him. At least Lea was doing something constructive; he could look in on her.
He opened the door to the lab with a feeling of pleasant antic.i.p.ation. It froze and shattered instantly. Her microscope was hooded and she was gone. She"s having dinner, he thought, or--she"s in the hospital. The hospital was on the floor below, and he went there first.
"Of course she"s here!" Dr. Stine grumbled. "Where else should a girl in her condition be? She was out of bed long enough today. Tomorrow"s the last day, and if you want to get any more work out of her before the deadline, you had better let her rest tonight. Better let the whole staff rest. I"ve been handing out tranquilizers like aspirin all day. They"re falling apart."
"The world"s falling apart. How is Lea doing?"
"Considering her shape, she"s fine. Go in and see for yourself if you won"t take my word for it. I have other patients to look at."
"Are you that worried, Doctor?"
"Of course I am! I"m just as p.r.o.ne to the weakness of the flesh as the rest of you. We"re sitting on a ticking bomb and I don"t like it. I"ll do my job as long as it is necessary, but I"ll also be d.a.m.ned glad to see the ships land to pull us out. The only skin that I really feel emotionally concerned about right now is my own. And if you want to be let in on a public secret--the rest of your staff feels the same way. So don"t look forward to too much efficiency."
"I never did," Brion said to the retreating back.
Lea"s room was dark, illuminated only by the light of Dis"s moon slanting in through the window. Brion let himself in and closed the door behind him. Walking quietly, he went over to the bed. Lea was sleeping soundly, her breathing gentle and regular. A night"s sleep now would do as much good as all the medication.
He should have gone then; instead, he sat down in the chair placed next to the head of the bed. The guards knew where he was--he could wait here just as well as any place else.
It was a stolen moment of peace on a world at the brink of destruction. He was grateful for it. Everything looked less harsh in the moonlight, and he rubbed some of the tension from his eyes. Lea"s face was ironed smooth by the light, beautiful and young, a direct contrast to everything else on this poisonous world. Her hand was outside of the covers and he took it in his own, obeying a sudden impulse. Looking out of the window at the desert in the distance, he let the peace wash over him, forcing himself to forget for the moment that in one more day life would be stripped from this planet.
Later, when he looked back at Lea he saw that her eyes were open, though she hadn"t moved. How long had she been awake? He jerked his hand away from hers, feeling suddenly guilty.
"Is the boss-man looking after the serfs, to see if they"re fit for the treadmills in the morning?" she asked. It was the kind of remark she had used with such frequency in the ship, though it didn"t sound quite as harsh now. And she was smiling. Yet it reminded him too well of her superior att.i.tude towards rubes from the stellar sticks. Here he might be the director, but on ancient Earth he would be only one more gaping, lead-footed yokel.
"How do you feel?" he asked, realizing and hating the triteness of the words, even as he said them.
"Terrible. I"ll be dead by morning. Reach me a piece of fruit from that bowl, will you? My mouth tastes like an old boot heel. I wonder how fresh fruit ever got here. Probably a gift to the working cla.s.ses from the smiling planetary murderers on Nyjord."
She took the apple Brion gave her and bit into it. "Did you ever think of going to Earth?"
Brion was startled. This was too close to his own thoughts about planetary backgrounds. There couldn"t possibly be a connection though. "Never," he told her. "Up until a few months ago I never even considered leaving Anvhar. The Twenties are such a big thing at home that it is hard to imagine that anything else exists while you are still taking part in them."
"Spare me the Twenties," she pleaded. "After listening to you and Ihjel, I know far more about them than I shall ever care to know. But what about Anvhar itself? Do you have big city-states as Earth does?"
"Nothing like that. For its size, it has a very small population. No big cities at all. I guess the largest centers of population are around the schools, packing plants, things like that."
"Any exobiologists there?" Lea asked, with a woman"s eternal ability to make any general topic personal.
"At the universities, I suppose, though I wouldn"t know for sure. And you must realize that when I say no big cities, I also mean no little cities. We aren"t organized that way at all. I imagine the basic physical unit is the family and the circle of friends. Friends get important quickly, since the family breaks up when children are still relatively young. Something in the genes, I suppose--we all enjoy being alone. I suppose you might call it an inbred survival trait."
"Up to a point," she said, biting delicately into the apple. "Carry that sort of thing too far and you end up with no population at all. A certain amount of proximity is necessary for that."
"Of course it is. And there must be some form of recognized relationship or control--that or complete promiscuity. On Anvhar the emphasis is on personal responsibility, and that seems to take care of the problem. If we didn"t have an adult way of looking at ... things, our kind of life would be impossible. Individuals are brought together either by accident or design, and with this proximity must be some certainty of relations...."
"You"re losing me," Lea protested. "Either I"m still foggy from the dope, or you are suddenly unable to speak a word of less than four syllables. You know--whenever this happens with you, I get the distinct impression that you are trying to cover up something. For Occam"s sake, be specific! Bring me together two of these hypothetical individuals and tell me what happens."
Brion took a deep breath. He was in over his head and far from sh.o.r.e. "Well--take a bachelor like myself. Since I like cross-country skiing I make my home in this big house our family has, right at the edge of the Broken Hills. In summer I looked after a drumtum herd, but after slaughtering my time was my own all winter. I did a lot of skiing, and used to work for the Twenties. Sometimes I would go visiting. Then again, people would drop in on me--houses are few and far between on Anvhar. We don"t even have locks on our doors. You accept and give hospitality without qualification. Whoever comes. Male ... female ... in groups or just traveling alone...."
"I get the drift. Life must be dull for a single girl on your iceberg planet. She must surely have to stay home a lot."
"Only if she wants to. Otherwise she can go wherever she wishes and be welcomed as another individual. I suppose it is out of fashion in the rest of the galaxy--and would probably raise a big laugh on Earth--but a platonic, disinterested friendship between man and woman is an accepted thing on Anvhar."
"Sounds exceedingly dull. If you are all such cool and distant friends, how do babies get made?"
Brion felt his ears reddening, not sure if he was being teased or not. "The same d.a.m.n way they get made any place else! But it"s not just a reflexive process like a couple of rabbits that happen to meet under the same bush. It"s the woman"s choice to indicate if she is interested in marriage."
"Is marriage the only thing your women are interested in?"
"Marriage or ... anything else. That"s up to the girl. We have a special problem on Anvhar--probably the same thing occurs on every planet where the human race has made a ma.s.sive adaptation. Not all unions are fertile and there is always a large percentage of miscarriages. A large number of births are conceived by artificial insemination. Which is all right when you can"t have babies normally. But most women have an emotional bias towards having their husband"s children. And there is only one way to find out if this is possible."
Lea"s eyes widened. "Are you suggesting that your girls see if a man can father children before considering marriage?"
"Of course. Otherwise Anvhar would have been depopulated centuries ago. Therefore the woman does the choosing. If she is interested in a man, she says so. If she is not interested, the man would never think of suggesting anything. It"s a lot different from other planets, but so is our planet Anvhar. It works well for us, which is the only test that applies."
"Just about the opposite of Earth," Lea told him, dropping the apple core into a dish and carefully licking the tips of her fingers. "I guess you Anvharians would describe Earth as a planetary hotbed of s.e.xuality. The reverse of your system, and going full blast all the time. There are far too many people there for comfort. Birth control came late and is still being fought--if you can possibly imagine that. There are just too many of the archaic religions still around, as well as crackbrained ideas that have been long entrenched in custom. The world"s overcrowded. Men, women, children, a boiling mob wherever you look. And all of the physically mature ones seem to be involved in the Great Game of Love. The male is always the aggressor. Not physically--at least not often--and women take the most outrageous kinds of flattery for granted. At parties there are always a couple of hot breaths of pa.s.sion fanning your neck. A girl has to keep her spike heels filed sharp."
"She has to what?"
"A figure of speech, Brion. Meaning you fight back all the time, if you don"t want to be washed under by the flood."
"Sounds rather"--Brion weighed the word before he said it, but could find none other suitable--"repellent."
"From your point of view, it would be. I"m afraid we get so used to it that we even take it for granted. Sociologically speaking...." She stopped and looked at Brion"s straight back and almost rigid posture. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened in an unspoken oh of sudden realization.
"I"m being a fool," she said. "You weren"t speaking generally at all! You had a very specific subject in mind. Namely me!"
"Please, Lea, you must understand...."
"But I do!" She laughed. "All the time I thought you were being a frigid and hard-hearted lump of ice, you were really being very sweet. Just playing the game in good old Anvharian style. Waiting for a sign from me. We"d still be playing by different rules if you hadn"t had more sense than I, and finally realized that somewhere along the line we must have got our signals mixed. And I thought you were some kind of frosty offworld celibate." She let her hand go out and her fingers rustled through his hair. Something she had been wanting to do for a long time.
"I had to," he said, trying to ignore the light touch of her fingers. "Because I thought so much of you, I couldn"t have done anything to insult you. Such as forcing my attentions on you. Until I began to worry where the insult would lie, since I knew nothing about your planet"s mores."
"Well, you know now," she said very softly. "The men aggress. Now that I understand, I think I like your way better. But I"m still not sure of all the rules. Do I explain that yes, Brion, I like you so very much? You are more man, in one great big wide-shouldered lump, than I have ever met before. It"s not quite the time or the place to discuss marriage, but I would certainly like--"
His arms were around her, holding her to him. Her hands clasped him and their lips sought each other"s in the darkness.
"Gently ..." she whispered. "I bruise easily...."
XIII.
"He wouldn"t come in, sir. Just hammered on the door and said, "I"m here, tell Brandd.""
"Good enough," Brion said, fitting his gun in the holster and sliding the extra clips into his pocket. "I"m going out now, and I should return before dawn. Get one of the wheeled stretchers down here from the hospital. I"ll want it waiting when I get back."
Outside, the street was darker than he remembered. Brion frowned and his hand moved towards his gun. Someone had put all the nearby lights out of commission. There was just enough illumination from the stars to enable him to make out the dark bulk of a sand car.
"Brion Brandd?" a voice spoke harshly from the car. "Get in."
The motor roared as soon as he had closed the door. Without lights the sand car churned a path through the city and out into the desert. Though the speed picked up, the driver still drove in the dark, feeling his way with a light touch on the controls. The ground rose, and when they reached the top of a mesa he killed the engine. Neither the driver nor Brion had spoken a word since they left.
A switch snapped and the instrument lights came on. In their dim glow Brion could just make out the other man"s hawklike profile. When he moved, Brion saw that his figure was cruelly shortened. Either accident or a mutated gene had warped his spine, hunching him forward in eternally bent supplication. Warped bodies were rare--his was the first Brion had ever seen. He wondered what series of events had kept him from medical attention all his life. This might explain the bitterness and pain in the man"s voice.
"Did the mighty brains on Nyjord bother to tell you that they have chopped another day off the deadline?" the man asked. "That this world is about to come to an end?"
"Yes, I know," Brion said. "That"s why I"m asking your group for help. Our time is running out too fast."
The man didn"t answer; he merely grunted and gave his full attention to the radar pings and glowing screen. The electronic senses reached out as he made a check on all the search frequencies to see if they were being followed.
"Where are we going?" Brion asked.
"Out into the desert." The driver made a vague wave of his hand. "Headquarters of the army. Since the whole thing will be blown up in another day, I guess I can tell you it"s the only camp we have. All the cars, men and weapons are based there. And Hys. He"s the man in charge. Tomorrow it will be all gone--along with this cursed planet. What"s your business with us?"
"Shouldn"t I be telling Hys that?"
"Suit yourself." Satisfied with the instrument search, the driver kicked the car to life again and churned on across the desert. "But we"re a volunteer army and we have no secrets from each other. Just from the fools at home who are going to kill this world." There was a bitterness in his words that he made no attempt to conceal. "They fought among themselves and put off a firm decision so long that now they are forced to commit murder."
"From what I had heard, I thought that it was the other way around. They call your Nyjord army terrorists."