Deathworld (21 page)

Breathing deeply, Brion softly spoke the auto-hypnotic phrases that
triggered the process. Fatigue fell softly from him, as did all
sensations of heat, cold and pain. He could feel with acute
sensitivity, hear, and see clearly when he opened his eyes.

With each passing second the power drew at the basic reserves of
life, draining it from his body.

When the buzzer sounded he pulled his foil from his second's
startled grasp, and ran forward. Irolg had barely time to grab up
his own weapon and parry Brion's first thrust. The force of his rush
was so great that the guards on their weapons locked, and their
bodies crashed together. Irolg looked amazed at the sudden fury of
the attack—then smiled. He thought it was a last burst of energy,
he knew how close they both were to exhaustion. This must be the end
for Brion.

They disengaged and Irolg put up a solid defense. He didn't attempt
to attack, just let Brion wear himself out against the firm shield
of his defense.

Brion saw something close to panic on his opponent's face when the
man finally recognized his error. Brion wasn't tiring. If anything,
he was pressing the attack. A wave of despair rolled out from
Irolg—Brion sensed it and knew the fifth point was his.

Thrust—thrust—and each time the parrying sword a little slower to
return. Then the powerful twist that thrust it aside. In and under
the guard. The slap of the button on flesh and the arc of steel that
reached out and ended on Irolg's chest over his heart.

Waves of sound—cheering and screaming—lapped against Brion's
private world, but he was only remotely aware of their existence.
Irolg dropped his foil, and tried to shake Brion's hand, but his
legs suddenly gave way. Brion had an arm around him, holding him up,
walking towards the rushing handlers. Then Irolg was gone and he
waved off his own men, walking slowly by himself.

Except that something was wrong and it was like walking through warm
glue. Walking on his knees. No, not walking, falling. At last. He
was able to let go and fall.

Ihjel gave the doctors exactly one day before he went to the
hospital. Brion wasn't dead, though there had been some doubt about
that the night before. Now, a full day later, he was on the mend and
that was all Ihjel wanted to know. He bullied and strong-armed his
way to the new Winner's room, meeting his first stiff resistance at
the door.

"You're out of order, Winner Ihjel," the doctor said. "And if you
keep on forcing yourself in here, where you are not wanted, rank or
no rank, I shall be obliged to break your head."

Ihjel had just begun to tell him, in some detail, just how slim his
chances were of accomplishing that, when Brion interrupted them
both. He recognized the newcomer's voice from the final night in
the barracks.

"Let him in, Dr. Caulry," he said. "I want to meet a man who thinks
there is something more important than the Twenties."

While the doctor stood undecided, Ihjel moved quickly around him and
closed the door in his flushed face. He looked down at the Winner in
the bed. There was a drip plugged into each one of Brion's arms. His
eyes peered from sooty hollows; the eyeballs were a network of red
veins. The silent battle he fought against death had left its mark.
His square, jutting jaw now seemed all bone, as did his long nose
and high cheekbones. They were prominent landmarks rising from the
limp greyness of his skin. Only the erect bristle of his
close-cropped hair was unchanged. He had the appearance of having
suffered a long and wasting illness.

"You look like sin," Ihjel said. "But congratulations on your
victory."

"You don't look so very good yourself—for a Winner," Brion snapped
back. His exhaustion and sudden peevish anger at this man let the
insulting words slip out. Ihjel ignored them.

But it was true; Winner Ihjel looked very little like a Winner, or
even an Anvharian. He had the height and the frame all right, but it
was draped in billows of fat—rounded, soft tissue that hung loosely
from his limbs and made little limp rolls on his neck and under his
eyes. There were no fat men on Anvhar, and it was incredible that
a man so gross could ever have been a Winner. If there was muscle
under the fat it couldn't be seen. Only his eyes appeared to still
hold the strength that had once bested every man on the planet to
win the annual games. Brion turned away from their burning stare,
sorry now he had insulted the man without good reason. He was too
sick, though, to bother about apologizing.

Ihjel didn't care either. Brion looked at him again and felt the
impression of things so important that he himself, his insults, even
the Twenties were of no more interest than dust motes in the air. It
was only a fantasy of a sick mind, Brion knew, and he tried to shake
the feeling off. The two men stared at each other, sharing a common
emotion.

The door opened soundlessly behind Ihjel and he wheeled about,
moving as only an athlete of Anvhar can move. Dr. Caulry was halfway
through the door, off balance. Two men in uniform came close behind
him. Ihjel's body pushed against them, his speed and the mountainous
mass of his flesh sending them back in a tangle of arms and legs. He
slammed the door and locked it in their faces.

"I have to talk to you," he said, turning back to Brion.
"Privately," he added, bending over and ripping out the communicator
with a sweep of one hand.

"Get out," Brion told him. "If I were able—"

"Well, you're not, so you're just going to have to lie there and
listen. I imagine we have about five minutes before they decide to
break the door down, and I don't want to waste any more of that.
Will you come with me offworld? There's a job that must be done;
it's my job, but I'm going to need help. You're the only one who can
give me that help.

"Now refuse," he added as Brion started to answer.

"Of course I refuse," Brion said, feeling a little foolish and
slightly angry, as if the other man had put the words into his
mouth. "Anvhar is my planet—why should I leave? My life is here and
so is my work. I also might add that I have just won the Twenties.
I have a responsibility to remain."

"Nonsense. I'm a Winner, and I left. What you really mean is you
would like to enjoy a little of the ego-inflation you have worked so
hard to get. Off Anvhar no one even knows what a Winner is—much
less respects one. You will have to face a big universe out there,
and I don't blame you for being a little frightened."

Someone was hammering loudly on the door.

"I haven't the strength to get angry," Brion said hoarsely. "And
I can't bring myself to admire your ideas when they permit you to
insult a man too ill to defend himself."

"I apologize," Ihjel said, with no hint of apology or sympathy in
his voice. "But there are more desperate issues involved than your
hurt feelings. We don't have much time now, so I want to impress you
with an idea."

"An idea that will convince me to go offplanet with you? That's
expecting a lot."

"No, this idea won't convince you—but thinking about it will.
If you really
consider
it you will find a lot of your illusions
shattered. Like everyone else on Anvhar, you're a scientific
humanist, with your faith firmly planted in the Twenties. You accept
both of these noble institutions without an instant's thought. All
of you haven't a single thought for the past, for the untold
billions who led the bad life as mankind slowly built up the good
life for you to lead. Do you ever think of all the people who
suffered and died in misery and superstition while civilization
was clicking forward one more slow notch?"

"Of course I don't think about them," Brion retorted. "Why should I?
I can't change the past."

"But you can change the future!" Ihjel said. "You owe something
to the suffering ancestors who got you where you are today. If
Scientific Humanism means anything more than just words to you,
you must possess a sense of responsibility. Don't you want to try
and pay off a bit of this debt by helping others who are just as
backward and disease-ridden today as great-grandfather Troglodyte
ever was?"

The hammering on the door was louder. This and the drug-induced
buzzing in Brion's ear made thinking difficult. "Abstractly, I of
course agree with you," he said haltingly. "But you know there is
nothing I can do personally without being emotionally involved. A
logical decision is valueless for action without personal meaning."

"Then we have reached the crux of the matter," Ihjel said gently.
His back was braced against the door, absorbing the thudding blows
of some heavy object on the outside. "They're knocking, so I must be
going soon. I have no time for details, but I can assure you upon my
word of honor as a Winner that there is something you can do. Only
you. If you help me we might save seven million human lives. That
is a fact."

The lock burst and the door started to open. Ihjel shouldered it
back into the frame for a final instant.

"Here is the idea I want you to consider. Why is it that the people
of Anvhar, in a galaxy filled with warring, hate-filled, backward
planets, should be the only ones who base their entire existence
on a complicated series of games?"

This time there was no way to hold the door. Ihjel didn't try. He
stepped aside and two men stumbled into the room. He walked out
behind their backs without saying a word.

"What happened? What did he do?" the doctor asked, rushing in
through the ruined door. He swept a glance over the continuous
recording dials at the foot of Brion's bed. Respiration,
temperature, heart, blood pressure—all were normal. The patient lay
quietly and didn't answer him.

For the rest of that day, Brion had much to think about. It was
difficult. The fatigue, mixed with the tranquilizers and other
drugs, had softened his contact with reality. His thoughts kept
echoing back and forth in his mind, unable to escape. What had Ihjel
meant? What was that nonsense about Anvhar? Anvhar was that way
because—well, it just was. It had come about naturally. Or had it?

The planet had a very simple history. From the very beginning there
had never been anything of real commercial interest on Anvhar. Well
off the interstellar trade routes, there were no minerals worth
digging and transporting the immense distances to the nearest
inhabited worlds. Hunting the winter beasts for their pelts was a
profitable but very minor enterprise, never sufficient for mass
markets. Therefore no organized attempt had ever been made to
colonize the planet. In the end it had been settled completely by
chance. A number of offplanet scientific groups had established
observation and research stations, finding unlimited data to observe
and record during Anvhar's unusual yearly cycle. The long-duration
observations encouraged the scientific workers to bring their
families and, slowly but steadily, small settlements grew up. Many
of the fur hunters settled there as well, adding to the small
population. This had been the beginning.

Few records existed of those early days, and the first six centuries
of Anvharian history were more speculation than fact. The Breakdown
occurred about that time, and in the galaxy-wide disruption Anvhar
had to fight its own internal battle. When the Earth Empire
collapsed it was the end of more than an era. Many of the
observation stations found themselves representing institutions that
no longer existed. The professional hunters no longer had markets
for their furs, since Anvhar possessed no interstellar ships of its
own. There had been no real physical hardship involved in the
Breakdown as it affected Anvhar, since the planet was completely
self-sufficient. Once they had made the mental adjustment to the
fact that they were now a sovereign world, not a collection of
casual visitors with various loyalties, life continued unchanged.
Not easy—living on Anvhar is never easy—but at least without
difference on the surface.

The thoughts and attitudes of the people were, however, going
through a great transformation. Many attempts were made to develop
some form of stable society and social relationship. Again, little
record exists of these early trials, other than the fact of their
culmination in the Twenties.

To understand the Twenties, you have to understand the unusual orbit
that Anvhar tracks around its sun, 70 Ophiuchi. There are other
planets in this system, all of them more or less conforming to the
plane of the ecliptic. Anvhar is obviously a rogue, perhaps a
captured planet of another sun. For the greatest part of its 780-day
year it arcs far out from its primary, in a high-angled sweeping
cometary orbit. When it returns there is a brief, hot summer of
approximately eighty days before the long winter sets in once more.
This severe difference in seasonal change has caused profound
adaptations in the native life forms. During the winter most of the
animals hibernate, the vegetable life lying dormant as spores or
seeds. Some of the warm-blooded herbivores stay active in the
snow-covered tropics, preyed upon by fur-insulated carnivores.
Though unbelievably cold, the winter is a season of peace in
comparison to the summer.

For summer is a time of mad growth. Plants burst into life with
a strength that cracks rocks, growing fast enough for the motion
to be seen. The snowfields melt into mud and within days a jungle
stretches high into the air. Everything grows, swells, proliferates.
Plants climb on top of plants, fighting for the life-energy of the
sun. Everything is eat and be eaten, grow and thrive in that short
season. Because when the first snow of winter falls again, ninety
per cent of the year must pass until the next coming of warmth.

Mankind has had to adapt to the Anvharian cycle in order to stay
alive. Food must be gathered and stored, enough to last out the long
winter. Generation after generation had adapted until they look on
the mad seasonal imbalance as something quite ordinary. The first
thaw of the almost nonexistent spring triggers a wide-reaching
metabolic change in the humans. Layers of subcutaneous fat vanish
and half-dormant sweat glands come to life. Other changes are more
subtle than the temperature adjustment, but equally important. The
sleep center of the brain is depressed. Short naps or a night's rest
every third or fourth day becomes enough. Life takes on a hectic and
hysterical quality that is perfectly suited to the environment. By
the time of the first frost, rapid-growing crops have been raised
and harvested, sides of meat either preserved or frozen in mammoth
lockers. With this supreme talent of adaptability mankind has become
part of the ecology and guaranteed his own survival during the long
winter.