Dancers in the Afterglow (13 page)

"What the hell
is
this?" one guard demanded.

He barely remembered to readjust the voice back from Rolvag's to the woman's one he'd used.

"I'm the liberation army," he told them. "Want to change sides?"

They both grumbled, and rubbed various parts of their bruised anatomies.

"Where's Amara?" he demanded.

One guard smiled. "Wouldn't you like to know?"

Daniel sighed. As uncomfortable as he was impersonating a woman, what he was about to do made him even more so. He forced the two women up and back into the cave. They lost a little of their composure when they saw Rolvag's still form, but held firm.

He had no magical truth serums, no hypnotic powers to draw them out or make them do his bidding. And time was running out. He had no desire to lose a second drone body to an energy pistol.

He tied one up and gagged her with some clothing he found in the cave. The guards were confident enough in their ultimate rescue that they tried nothing funny.

He picked the second guard for interrogation because she obviously took special care in her appearance. Vanity was an exploitable weakness.

He tied her hands and feet with more cloth, then kneeled in front of her.

"Listen good, honey," he told her. "I'm in no mood for funny stuff." He reached over, picked up a jagged crystal from what had been Rolvag's energy pistol. Reaching over for a small piece of wood, he made her watch as he drew the jagged piece along it, causing a deep mark.

Now he grabbed her by her hair and held the crystal to her face, just below the left temple.

"Oh, God! You wouldn't!" the guard protested. "No! Don't!"

"Tell me all about Amara," he invited.

"I—I can't. She'd kill me," the guard sobbed.

He pressed on the crystal, making a small scratch that drew blood. She tried to shrink from it, couldn't

"Amara," he invited.

"You bitch!" the guard spat. "All right, all right!"

Daniel moved his index finger to her temple, could feel her heart pounding. He opened up his biomedical sensors.

"Now, where is she and what's she doing?"

"In one of the tents," the guard lied. "The big blue one below."

"Not good enough," he responded, and scraped the crystal a little more. "I can tell a lie when I hear one."

The girl trembled at the touch of the crystal and gave in. "She's in the cave below," she sighed. "She has two teenagers, a boy and a girl, with her."

That
was the truth. He relaxed his grip a little.

"How many guards?"

'Two," she responded, again the truth. "Always two outside."

Daniel nodded in satisfaction, opened the guard's mouth, and stuffed some cloth in it.

Time was important. Soon somebody would notice the absence of the two guards at the mouth of Rolvag's cave and give an alarm. He didn't fear the shotguns and rifles even though they could cause inconvenient damage, but the energy pistol would be ready to destroy him.

He was sure there was only the one; it was the symbol of supreme power.

Besides, those things were hard to come by.

He carefully slipped from the cave and into the darkness. To avoid attracting Machist patrols, the so-called guerrillas used no lights and shielded their fires.

He adjusted his optics to low-flight levels and the scene came in ghostly but clear. Climbing slowly and carefully down the path, he centered himself over the cave below. He could see the two guards plainly. Lowering himself carefully over the side, he hung by his arms over them, and spread his legs. No matter how he tried, though, he couldn't get both with one jump. He wished he had his old, standard, familiar body; the overlarge breasts he'd counted on to capture Rolvag's fancy were inconvenient for this kind of work.

Silently he abandoned his planned leap and pulled himself back up on the walk, turned and took a crouching position overlooking the guards. He was amazed that he'd done all this and not yet been discovered.

Suddenly his hand touched a rock.

He smiled. Basic pitching might do it. He searched for a second rock, found it, and just barely managed to hold both in one hand. Although ambidextrous, the robot had a lot of limits, one of which was the physics of ballistics. A rock, thrown with force and accuracy, required a follow-through of the body. So he would need three seconds between the first throw and the second. These seconds were critical, and his balance was slightly off because of the unfamiliar body design. Three seconds was time enough to give an alarm.

Well, time pressed. There was no other choice. He sighted the guard standing to the left of the cave mouth and calculated the distance, trajectory, and velocity.

What he really needed, he thought, was one of Ondine's frequent thunderstorms, but you can't have everything. He waited for wind and target positions to get just so, then finally the moment came and he acted with lightning speed.

The first rock struck the woman's head with extreme force, propelling her off the ledge and into the blackness.

The other guard heard the blow and the body fall, but the lack of an outcry slowed her for a critical second.

She turned, brought her shotgun around, and took a half-step toward the cave mouth when Daniel's second missile struck her in the mouth, snapped her head back, and tossed her, too, over the ledge.

It sickened Daniel to have to kill two essentially innocent human beings, but his was the practical, military mind that accepted it. There wasn't time to let such sentiments get to him—not now, anyway.

He jumped down to the lower path, a distance that would have probably snapped a real human's ankles, and eyed the cave mouth. The sounds from inside were those of a woman at pleasure. There was no sign that any of the commotion outside had been heard.

He slowly readjusted his sight to normal and crept to the cave mouth, which was covered with rugs so that little light escaped. He peered cautiously inside, and the sight disturbed him. So this is the glorious humanity we fight to save, he thought sourly. The kids seemed very, very young to him.

Well, anarchy had inevitably resulted in a dictatorship of the strongest, and the strongest were always corrupted by power.

He looked for the pistol, didn't see it. That worried him, since it took little aim to do a nasty job with one of those.
She
definitely didn't have it on her, not right now, that was for sure.

But she was a marine. He knew that from his scouting, from her general manner, and from the way she'd worn the sidearm as well as from the very nature of the pistol and her boots. The weapon would certainly be close to her.

The cape and boots were beside her air mattress and he stared hard. He needed telescopic vision now, but they'd never gotten around to providing that because he had the flying probes.

Can't think of everything, he reflected philosophically.

He thought he could make out a belt folded neatly behind the boots. That was the place, he decided. Aim for the boots and get the whole thing.

He estimated distances and considered risks. It would be about six meters in a dash, while she'd have to get the two kids off her to roll over to the pistol. Odds were one of the kids would be thrown in the direction of the boots, which wouldn't bother him much but would force her to reach over a very live and protesting body.

His ears detected the sounds of someone coming up the walk. Now or never, he decided. And acted.

It took just a moment before Amara noticed the figure dashing by at almost impossible speed.

She immediately jumped up, sprawling the two kids as Daniel had figured. One, the girl, cried out and landed on the boots.

Daniel saw in a flash that he was wrong. Amara reached under the air mattress and he dived for her left hand, landing almost on top of her. Her hand came up with the pistol, but Daniel's hand was holding her wrist

Amara's marine training activated. Her right hand came down with a chop to the back of Daniel's neck, and though it made him sag, the blow didn't collapse him the way it was supposed to.

He squeezed, heard her wrist snap, and saw the pistol fall as she cried out in pain. Quickly he rolled off her, almost crushing the panicky teenage girl, and grabbed the weapon, crushing it as he had the first.

Amara didn't see. She jumped on the intruder with a snarl of extreme ferocity, and Daniel rolled over.

"Stop it!" he growled at her. "Stop it or I'll have to
really
hurt you!"

But she kneed the strange woman in the groin and tried to free her arms from Daniel's grip to deliver a body blow.

Daniel'd had enough. He pulled and yanked. Amara gave a horrible scream and then collapsed, bleeding.

In his fury and haste, Daniel had pulled both her arms off, and she had fainted from shock. He turned quickly to the two terrified children. "Look!" he told them. "Go over and sit down!" The tone had such force that the trembling pair obeyed instantly.

This was
her
chamber, he thought. He noticed a trunk with a small thumb-lock on it. He broke it easily, rooted through the trunk, found the marine emergency medikit he'd wanted, and went back over to the now armless, unconscious woman.

He worked fast. If he didn't seal the wounds quickly she'd bleed to death, and there wasn't time to determine her type and rig a transfusion from the kit

The medipads adhered like skin, although they were just barely large enough to cover the wounds. Fitted to her, they'd integrate themselves into her skin, match it, and start repairs.

Next he gave her a series of shots for infection, pain, and shock.

The adrenalin actually brought her to for a groggy second. She looked up at his female form, wonderingly, and shook her head.

"Who—who are you?" she managed.

"Naval Captain Daniel," he replied softly. "Go to sleep. You've been relieved."

And she was out again.

This is one mighty tough marine, he thought with admiration.

Pianto

MORE ORANGE DRINK, MORE CHOCOLATE. IT WAS
becoming a regular routine at the camp. Only a few days after the program had begun, all Ponder had to do was sound the whistle and everyone would run to his classroom, falling over themselves to get there. The comfort, the relaxed atmosphere, the rewards, and the pain of the collar had combined for quick conditioning. He was in a hurry, and his early success pleased him enormously; this was the best, most malleable group he'd encountered to date.

He had explained to them the Machist philosophy. It was similar to many Utopian concepts, but it was different in that, as Ponder kept stressing, it worked.

Basically, he'd explained, every Machist considers every other rational being a precious organism. Every one has something he or she can contribute to society, and every one must realize his own value and the fact that his life is interlinked with the lives of those around him. The engineer and the mower of grass are worlds apart in what they do and the skills they need, yet each is an important, living, breathing, thinking being. They must do their jobs because that is what they are best qualified to do; there are no ranks or social strata in Machist society, only jobs.

Everyone receives exactly the same in an independent distribution network. It is unthinkable to a Machist not to perform his job to the best of his ability, because to do so would negatively affect the lives of others. The system works of its own accord.

"Selfishness must be banished from the human spirit," Ponder told them. "You become a Machist when you think more about serving others than you do serving yourself. When everyone thinks this way there is a mental and emotional bond. No one is ever lonely, no one is ever friendless, no one is ever unappreciated. No one covets another's position, for all are regarded as equally essential.

"No one is ever alone,"
he stressed.

Books—and tapes for those unable to read—were provided to pound the philosophy into their heads. They were told to memorize the materials, and they had long discussions about them. These discussions were fast and furious; you couldn't fool Ponder, as Moira and several others discovered. You couldn't think that fast. You were caught in your own contradictions.

And many in the group aided Ponder's plan. Those who progressed were rewarded with special food and drink and with other minor rewards that were first resented by the others, then coveted by them.

After two weeks, all desperately wanted the rewards, the kind looks and favors from Ponder, and even the slowest began to realize that the only way they could get them was to actually think the way Ponder wanted them to think.

Even Moira started to crack after other women were given haircuts and allowed .the use of combs and such while she was denied them. If the contradiction between the stated goals of Machist equality and the system of reward and punishment occurred to any of them, it quickly disappeared in the face of practical reality.

Soon, study of Machist principles became the primary work at the camp and food was provided in ever larger and more appetizing varieties by Ponder and the guard. The Machist teacher instituted regular strenuous exercise to counteract the sedentary habits they were developing. Men and women ran eight kilometers a day on a marked course in the morning, did an hour's set of various exercises, ran another eight, and worked out with weights.

And then they arrived at the next stage.

They sat at absolute attention in the little schoolhouse. Ponder looked at them in satisfaction. Some of them, in pretending to please, had become his favorite pupils.

He smiled at them.

"What do we say when we get up with the sun?" he asked them.

"We must think the correct thoughts," they responded automatically.

He nodded. "First, last, and always, that is the key. However, this is but the surface, the outer veneer," he continued. "Now we must face
the
hardest target of all. Our inner selves." He looked up at the people with that smile, noting their tremendous muscle development. In another couple of weeks they'd be strong as oxen, and they were beginning to look somewhat different from other humans. It matched their mental progress.