Dancers in the Afterglow (24 page)

All but one lonely figure walking down the Lamarine boardwalk.

Tenero

THE MACHIST DISPLAY WAS CRUEL INDEED.
FIRST,
there was a sign over the big doors that said:
WELCOME HEROES!
He pushed open the great doors and stepped inside.

It was a museum of horrors. Mutilated bodies in terrible poses, surgically and chemically altered specimens that were grotesque in the extreme. Pictures and 'visor stuff on the stages of the transformation of the population, so that no doubt would be left as to who did it to whom. No way to claim that the people here now were different creatures from the original population, substitutes.

And one terribly cruel living exhibit.

They had her by herself, facing the door, mercifully unable to see the displays behind her. It was the same beautiful face, the same lovely breasts and torso, even the long black hair.

But that was all. They had taken everything they could without killing her, and used the superior hospital equipment to make it seem she was born that way.

She was the last casualty of the Battle of Ondine.

She was set in a plastic stand with a form-fitted brace. She'd been dozing, but awoke when she heard the doors slide open. He walked in, and at first she didn't recognize him. Then, suddenly, she remembered the face of that first visitor to Rolvag's caves, and the manner, the walk.

"Hi," she managed, softly, shyly embarrassed, unable to do anything, even hide, even kill herself.

He walked over to her, the sadness and pity in bis own mind having no outlet in his machine body.

"I—I come to a point now," she tried, looking down, voice quivering. Tears welled up in her, and she tried to look away from him for a moment. "I'm sorry," was all he could say. She looked back at him, tears still flowing. "They told me about it. Even laughed about it. I guess you told them to go to hell with their deal. I prayed you would."

He didn't tell her how close he'd come to accepting, "I had no choice," he replied. "The Combine located the Machists in orbit and killed them."

"I'm glad." She nodded, trying to compose herself. "I—I could never have stood being turned into creatures like we saw in the camp. Turning
you
into one. Creatures who could do that—" She paused for a moment as more tears came, then continued. "Even
this
is better than that. Better my limbs than my mind."

Some hair fell in her eyes and she shook her head violently to get it away. It was the only moving part she'd been left.

She looked at him again. "Th-they said I'd always be like this. That they'd fixed it so nothing would work, not regeneration, not cloning, not even robotic connectors."

He went over to her. braced her back with his hand, and kissed her, long and hard. "We'll see, Princess," he said gently. "Either way, we still have a job to do. What they've done to Ondine is worse than anything you could have imagined. We're going to have to save the colonists from our own people, and help these new varieties of humanity to adjust to their new world and to ours."

"It's a big job," she responded.

"Well, I'll do the walking and you'll do the feeling, and together we'll make a whole person," he told her. He looked around at the ghastly exhibit.

"Let me get you out of this chamber of horrors," he said, and lifted her gently. On impulse, he picked up the stand as well.

He held her gently in his left arm, facing her forward so she could see what he did, and walked out the door.

The tough marine medical officer looked at him, and at Amara, arid he wanted to alternately cry and throw up. He managed to do neither. He took Daniel aside.

"They did it, all right," he almost whispered. "Shot her so full of the stuff it had no problems. What it does, it seems, is change the genetic and neural codes almost constantly. The cells alter just a little, but it's enough to make regeneration or sophisticated prosthesis impossible. A fast clone was tried, and it didn't live an hour. The robot prosthetics won't work because they depend on each nerve to do the same thing every time. The best we can do is a voice-activated robot, which would contain her, which she could move in, and which could attend to minimal bodily functions. And yet, the same little bits of protein and other molecules that are doing this to her devour harmful agents at a fantastic rate, even common poisons. I'd say that short of electrocution she might easily live another seventy years, maybe longer."

Daniel nodded. "I'll break it to her," he said gently, and the chief medical officer looked enormously thankful.

Amara had already resigned herself to her fate, and so the news didn't come as a great shock, but its finality was deadening.

"Shall I order that robot?" he asked her.

She nodded. "Yes, but not for the camps and the bush. I'll trust you for that. You've seen how it helps in talking to them. The bush people lose all their self-pity, and the camp people accept me as one of them, something I wouldn't be with a blinking, whirring machine around me."

He nodded. "Okay. Agreed."

She looked up at him, and smiled, genuinely. "You remember that first camp we went into? How that one—ah, member—came up to us, looked at me, and asked if someone like me had a job?"

"I remember," he replied.

"And I realized then that I
did
have a job—a purpose is what she really meant. And in that moment, I knew I
did
have a purpose, like this. I was the bridge between them and humanity. Only like
this
was it possible. I am a creature, like the camps and sea people. Someone they can identify with. Made alien, like them, by the Machists. And that's the way the humans react. Like I'm a different creature. Only, unlike the Ondinians, I can talk to them as a person. And those in the bush—if
I
can adjust,
they
can adjust It's almost as if it were planned that way."

He kissed her, and held her to him. "Besides," she said, "I get the best-looking man on Ondine."

"All seventeen of him," he agreed.

AUTHOR KILLED IN FREAK ACCIDENT

LAMARTNE, ONDINE
7-3 (UPF). Amara Schtinik, noted author of books on alien sociology, psychology, and poetry, was struck by lightning and died instantly on the Lamarine boardwalk just a little under four years after the liberation of Ondine. A Machist-deformed quadraplegic, she often used a voice-actuated robot while in Lamarine, and authorities at Ondine Naval Command indicated that the robot drew the lightning. Schtinik, a hero to billions across the Combine for her refusal to accept her physical limitations as a handicap, was chief architect and supervisor for the Ondine restoration and a leader in the fight to
protect the Machist-altered population from extermination or exploitation. The former marine is survived by her husband, Commodore Daniel, Commander of the Ondine District. She was 23.

Coda

Clap! Clap! Step! Slept Lock step! Pivot step! Kick! Kick! Kick!

The people have come in from the fields; it is just past sunset now, and they gather ritually after the evening meal to celebrate the fullness of the day by doing the dance of sharing.

Step! Bend! Step! Bend! Walk! Walk! Back! Walk! Right foot, paw! Paw! Paw!

"Of course our presence has disturbed the established mind-set," the psychologist says to the VIPs watching the dancers along the coast.

"Can't you just shatter the whole conditioning?" a military officer growls. "Why permit this bullshit to continue?"

The psychologist shuffles uncomfortably. The military mind's unbending tendency to reduce all people to ciphers and solve all problems by direct force is the hardest problem in the reclamation project.

"You've got to understand, sir," the psychologist tries, "that it just isn't that simple. Everyone has some problem, some weakness. The psychologists of the Machists exploited this. Most people are not really happy. That's why religious cults, social experiments, and even lonely hearts clubs thrive. Our own mushrooming suicide rate shows how vulnerable we are."

"You mean," the military man responds in an amazed tone, "they like it better the way they are?"

The psychologist smiles humorlessly. "Let us just say that they find it preferable to what they care to remember about their past lives. They couldn't go back, anyway. Their genetic codes have been altered. With seven years in the tanks we could remake them into humans, but only out of a catalog. And even if we could return them to their former state, their experiences will have made them totally alien inside. Yes, the Machists did their job, they changed nine million into truly alien lifeforms—but not
Machist
aliens."

''What do you mean?" asks another, a politician.

"Because the Machist system is ultimately dependent on the absence of alternatives," the psychologist explains patiently. "The final insurance they have is that the people know that they must join the new system or die. Most will join under those circumstances. Now, with us in charge, they have options, alternatives. Many of the groups are already changing socially, and there will be more as time goes on if we make certain we don't force the issue, but keep those options open."

"And the sea people?" a bureaucratic type asks.

"No difference," the psychologist tells him, "except that they will evolve socially and develop radically different from the land people. They'll make it, though, and give us an incredible opportunity to see how human minds react in alien surroundings."

Lock step! Pivot step! Turn! Tum! Turn!

The man looks human, but everyone knows he is not. He is the most familiar human face on Ondine, and he walks past the dancers at their pleasure and gives a friendly smile and a wave in their direction. The dancers in the afterglow do not break rhythm, but do introduce a kind of bow into their prancing.

The man's expression is one of satisfaction, his manner one of confidence and good humor. There is nothing in his placid exterior to show the million psychic swords slicing at the very core of his being.

He reaches the shore, where a small one-man fishing boat is tied to a makeshift pier, jumps aboard, and starts the little motor. Its
pip, pip, pip,
cannot be heard over the chants of the dancers and the roar of the surf. The man aims for that rapidly vanishing afterglow, alone on a darkly painted sea, a single, tiny figure chasing a sun that has already deserted him.

Far overhead, a small, golden egg-shaped object fires three short bursts that jar it out of orbit, and it begins to move.

Lock step! Pivot step! Twirl! Twirl! Twirl!

"I still don't like it," the military man growls. "Between the rockheads and the squids this whole damn place gives me the creeps!"

"That's why we never did such things ourselves," the psychologist tells him. "The potential and knowledge of what it could do in the wrong hands stopped all such research. Now we are faced with it whether we want it or not. I'd like to think we've matured enough to use it wisely. It is an awesome power—and a terrible responsibility."

"They're already saying the technique is cheaper and better than terraforming," the politician notes. "Within our lifetimes, I fear, the term human may lose its meaning."

The bureaucrat decides to step in. "That's why this is so important a project," he emphasizes. "Remember, the war continues. As we slowly gain superiority, we will be taking Machist worlds, worlds that weren't even human to begin with, and Lord knows what after the Machists got through with them. We can't exterminate the whole galaxy, you know. We have to learn to deal with them as effectively as the Machists learned how to deal with us."

They stand in silence a moment as the dancers continue.

"This used to be one hell of a beautiful place," the military man growls at last.

"Still is, sir, still is," the psychologist replies without looking away from the dancers. "It just isn't ours anymore. It's
theirs."

Link! Twirl! Link! Twirl! Step! Step! Back step! Pivot step!

The man in the boat is alone now on a quiet sea. It is a little choppy, but he doesn't seem to mind. Nearby, suddenly, there is a splash and a gurgle, and two of the sea people surface-and stare at him. He gives them the regulation smile and wave, but, strangely, they do not respond, just keep staring at him.

His eyes, so unlike human eyes, can see others of their kind swimming in shared togetherness, looping, whirling, playing, celebrating life in their own way as the dancers are on the shore.

"Daniel! Daniel!" calls a voice inside him. "You have broken orbit Explain, please. You are drifting in-system. Can you explain nature of difficulty?"

Yes,
he thinks sadly.
I can explain the nature of the difficulty. But you wouldn't understand it
—
or be able to help if you did.

The wounds, those terrible wounds, scars on his soul, flare anew at the thought, strengthening his resolve still further.

He notes they are putting an intercept on him, and he boosts at full power toward the bright, glowing, growing object ahead of him, the star Arachnus, bathing Ondine with warmth and light.

The two sea people are suddenly alarmed. The man is standing now at the bow of the little boat, arms outstretched to the darkening horizon, seeming to reach for something indefinable beyond their vision.