Deathworld (37 page)

"If I succeed—you'll know. Otherwise, that will be the end of it.
End of Transmission." He switched the radio off.

Lea was sleeping easily when he looked at her, and there was still
a good part of the hour left before he could wake her. How could
he put it to use? She would need tools, instruments to examine the
corpse, and there were certainly none here. Perhaps he could find
some in the ruins of the Foundation building. With this thought
he had the sudden desire to see the wreckage up close. There might
be other survivors. He had to find out. If he could talk to the men
he had seen working there....

Ulv was still crouched against the wall in the outer room.
He looked up angrily when Brion came over, but said nothing.

"Will you help me again?" Brion asked. "Stay and watch the girl
while I go out. I'll be back at noon." Ulv didn't answer. "I am
still looking for the way to save Dis," Brion added.

"Go—I'll watch the girl!" Ulv spat words in impotent fury. "I do
not know what to do. You may be right. Go. She will be safe with me."

Brion slipped out into the deserted street and, half running, half
walking, made his way towards the rubble that had been the Cultural
Relationships Foundation. He used a different course from the one
they had come by, striking first towards the outer edge of the city.
Once there, he could swing and approach from the other side, so
there would be no indication where he had come from. The magter
might be watching and he didn't want to lead them to Lea and the
stolen body.

Turning a corner, he saw a sand car stopped in the street ahead.
There was something familiar about the lines of it. It could be the
one he and Telt had used, but he wasn't sure. He looked around, but
the dusty, packed-dirt street was white and empty, shimmering in
silence under the sun. Staying close to the wall and watching
carefully, Brion slipped towards the car. When he came close behind
it he was positive it was the one he had been in the night before.
What was it doing here?

Silence and heat filled the street. Windows and doors were empty,
and there was no motion in their shadows. Putting his foot on a
bogey wheel, he reached up and grabbed the searing metal rim of the
open window. He pulled himself up and stared at Telt's smiling face.

Smiling in death. The lips pulled back to reveal the grinning teeth,
the eyes bursting from the head, the features swollen and contorted
from the deadly poison. A tiny, tufted dart of wood stuck in the
brown flesh on the side of his neck.

Brion hurled himself backward and sprawled flat in the dust and
filth of the road. No poison dart sought him out; the empty silence
still reigned. Telt's murderers had come and gone. Moving quickly,
using the bulk of the car as a shield, he opened the door and
slipped inside.

They had done a thorough job of destruction. All of the controls had
been battered into uselessness, the floor was a junk heap of crushed
equipment, intertwined with loops of recording tape bulging like
mechanical intestines. A gutted machine, destroyed like its driver.

It was easy enough to reconstruct what had happened. The car had
been seen when they entered the city—probably by some of the magter
who had destroyed the Foundation building. They had not seen where
it had gone, or Brion would surely be dead by now. But they must
have spotted it when Telt tried to leave the city—and stopped it in
the most effective way possible, a dart through the open window into
the unsuspecting driver's neck.

Telt dead! The brutal impact of the man's death had driven all
thought of its consequences from Brion's mind. Now he began to
realize. Telt had never sent word of his discovery of the
radioactive trace to the Nyjord army. He had been afraid to use
the radio, and had wanted to tell Hys in person, and to show him
the tape. Only now the tape was torn and mixed with all the others,
the brain that could have analyzed it dead.

Brion looked at the dangling entrails of the radio and spun for the
door. Running swiftly and erratically, he fled from the sand car.
His own survival and the possible survival of Dis depended on his
not being seen near it. He must contact Hys and pass on the
information. Until he did that, he was the only offworlder on Dis
who knew which magter tower might contain the world-destroying
bombs.

Once out of sight of the sand car he went more slowly, wiping the
sweat from his streaming face. He hadn't been seen leaving the car,
and he wasn't being followed. The streets here weren't familiar, but
he checked his direction by the sun and walked at a steady fast pace
towards the destroyed building. More of the native Disans were in
the streets now. They all noticed him, some even stopped and scowled
fiercely at him. With his emphatic awareness he felt their anger and
hatred. A knot of men radiated death, and he put his hand on his gun
as he passed them. Two of them had their blowguns ready, but didn't
use them. By the time he had turned the next corner he was soaked
with nervous perspiration.

Ahead was the rubble of the destroyed building. Grounded next to it
was the tapered form of a spacer's pinnace. Two men had come from
the open lock and were standing at the edge of the burnt area.

Brion's boots grated loudly on the broken wreckage. The men turned
quickly towards him, guns raised. Both of them carried ion rifles.
They relaxed when they saw his offworld clothes.

"Bloody damned savages!" one of them growled. He was a heavy-planet
man, a squashed-down column of muscle and gristle, whose head barely
reached Brion's chest. A pushed-back cap had the crossed slide-rule
symbol of ship's computer man.

"Can't blame them, I guess," the second man said. He wore purser's
insignia. His features were different, but with the same compacted
body the two men were as physically alike as twins. Probably from
the same home planet. "They're gonna get their whole world blown out
from under them at midnight. Looks as if the poor slob in the
streets finally realized what is happening. Hope we're in jump-space
by then. I saw Estrada's World get it, and I don't want to see that
again, not twice in one lifetime!"

The computer man was looking closely at Brion, head tilted sideways
to see his face. "You need transportation offworld?" he asked.
"We're the last ship at the port, and we're going to boil out of
here as soon as the rest of our cargo is aboard. We'll give you
a lift if you need it."

Only by a tremendous effort at control did Brion conceal the
destroying sorrow that overwhelmed him when he looked at that
shattered wasteland, the graveyard of so many. "No," he said.
"That won't be necessary. I'm in touch with the blockading fleet
and they'll pick me up before midnight."

"You from Nyjord?" the purser growled.

"No," Brion said, still only half aware of the men. "But there is
trouble with my own ship." He realized that they were looking
intently at him, that he owed them some kind of explanation.
"I thought I could find a way to stop the war. Now ... I'm not so
sure." He hadn't intended to be so frank with the spacemen, but the
words had been uppermost in his thoughts and had simply slipped out.

The computer man started to say something, but his shipmate speared
him in the side with his elbow. "We blast soon—and I don't like the
way these Disans are looking at us. The captain said to find out
what caused the fire, then get the hell back. So let's go."

"Don't miss your ship," the computer man said to Brion, and
he started for the pinnace. Then he hesitated and turned. "Sure
there's nothing we can do for you?"

Sorrow would accomplish nothing. Brion fought to sweep the dregs
of emotion from his mind and to think clearly. "You can help me,"
he said. "I could use a scalpel or any other surgical instrument
you might have." Lea would need those. Then he remembered Telt's
undelivered message. "Do you have a portable radio transceiver?
I can pay you for it."

The computer man vanished inside the rocket and reappeared a minute
later with a small package. "There's a scalpel and a magnetized
tweezers in here—all I could find in the med kit. Hope they'll do."
He reached inside and swung out the metal case of a self-contained
transceiver. "Take this, it's got plenty of range, even on the
longer frequencies."

He raised his hand at Brion's offer to pay. "My donation," he said.
"If you can save this planet I'll give you the whole pinnace as
well. We'll tell the captain we lost the radio in some trouble with
the natives. Isn't that right, Moneybags?" He prodded the purser
in the chest with a finger that would have punched a hole through
a weaker man.

"I read you loud and clear," the purser said. "I'll make out an
invoice so stating, back in the ship." They were both in the pinnace
then, and Brion had to move fast to get clear of the takeoff blast.

A sense of obligation—the spacemen had felt it too. The realization
of this raised Brion's spirits a bit as he searched through the
rubble for anything useful. He recognized part of a wall still
standing as a corner of the laboratory. Poking through the ruins, he
unearthed broken instruments and a single, battered case that had
barely missed destruction. Inside was the binocular microscope, the
right tube bent, its lenses cracked and obscured. The left eyepiece
still seemed to be functioning. Brion carefully put it back in the
case.

He looked at his watch. It was almost noon. These few pieces of
equipment would have to do for the dissection. Watched suspiciously
by the onlooking Disans, he started back to the warehouse. It was a
long, circuitous walk, since he didn't dare give any clues to his
destination. Only when he was positive he had not been observed or
followed did he slip through the building's entrance, locking the
door behind him.

Lea's frightened eyes met his when he went into the office. "A
friendly smile here among the cannibals," she called. Her strained
expression gave the lie to the cheeriness of her words. "What has
happened? Since I woke up, the great stone face over there"—she
pointed to Ulv—"has been telling me exactly nothing."

"What's the last thing you can remember?" Brion asked carefully.
He didn't want to tell her too much, lest this bring on the shock
again. Ulv had shown great presence of mind in not talking to her.

"If you must know," Lea said, "I remember quite a lot, Brion Brandd.
I shan't go into details, since this sort of thing is best kept from
the natives. For the record then, I can recall going to sleep after
you left. And nothing since then. It's weird. I went to sleep in
that lumpy hospital bed and woke up on this couch, feeling simply
terrible. With
him
just sitting there and scowling at me. Won't
you please tell me what is going on?"

A partial truth was best, saving all of the details that he could
for later. "The magter attacked the Foundation building," he said.
"They are getting angry at all offworlders now. You were still
knocked out by a sleeping drug, so Ulv helped bring you here. It's
afternoon now—"

"Of the last day?" She sounded horrified. "While I'm playing
Sleeping Beauty the world is coming to an end! Was anyone hurt
in the attack? Or killed?"

"There were a number of casualties—and plenty of trouble," Brion
said. He had to get her off the subject. Walking over to the corpse,
he threw back the cover from its face. "But this is more important
right now. It's one of the magter. I have a scalpel and some other
things here—will you perform an autopsy?"

Lea huddled back on the couch, her arms around herself, looking
chilled in spite of the heat of the day. "What happened to the
people at the building?" she asked in a thin voice. The injection
had removed her memories of the tragedy, but echoes of the strain
and shock still reverberated in her mind and body. "I feel so ...
exhausted. Please tell me what happened. I have the feeling you're
hiding something."

Brion sat next to her and took her hands in his, not surprised to
find them cold. Looking into her eyes, he tried to give her some of
his strength. "It wasn't very nice," he said. "You were shaken up by
it, I imagine that's why you feel the way you do now. But—Lea,
you'll have to take my word for this. Don't ask any more questions.
There's nothing we can do now about it. But we can still find out
about the magter. Will you examine the corpse?"

She started to ask something, then changed her mind. When she
dropped her eyes Brion felt the thin shiver that went through her
body. "There's something terribly wrong," she said. "I know that.
I guess I'll have to take your word that it's best not to ask
questions. Help me up, will you, darling? My legs are absolutely
liquid."

Leaning on him, with his arm around her supporting most of her
weight, she went slowly across to the corpse. She looked down and
shuddered. "Not what you would call a natural death," she said.
Ulv watched intently as she took the scalpel out of its holder.
"You don't have to look at this," she told him in halting Disan.
"Not if you don't want to."

"I want to," he told her, not taking his eyes from the body.
"I have never seen a magter dead before, or without covering,
like an ordinary person." He continued to stare fixedly.

"Find me some drinking water, will you, Brion?" Lea said. "And
spread the tarp under the body. These things are quite messy."

After drinking the water she seemed stronger, and could stand
without holding onto the table with both hands. Placing the tip of
the scalpel just below the magter's breast bone, she made the long
post-mortem incision down to the pubic symphysis. The great,
body-length wound gaped open like a red mouth. Across the table Ulv
shuddered but didn't avert his eyes.

One by one she removed the internal organs. Once she looked up at
Brion, then quickly returned to work. The silence stretched on and
on until Brion had to break it.