Deathworld (33 page)

"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.

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 quantity 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
anticipation. 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 prone 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
damned 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 attitude 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
classes 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
shore. "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 damn 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 massive 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."