First Command (9 page)

“There’s no reason why it shouldn’t be in the basement.”

“None at all. And there’s no reason why it shouldn’t be up one floor, with the other chambers. But it’s not its location that’s odd.”

“Then what is?”

“It’s got two doors, Brasidus. One opening into the basement, the other one right at the back. I found this second door, quite by chance, when I was checking the insulation.”

“And where does it lead to?”

“That is the question. I think, although I am not sure, that there is a tunnel behind it. And I think that the tunnel runs to the créche.”

“But why?”

Alessis shrugged. “That’s what our mutual friend Diomedes wants to find out.”

Chapter 13

A BLACK, WINDOWLESS CUBE,
ugly, forbidding, the Andronicus warehouse stood across the cobbled street from the gracefully proportioned créche complex. To its main door, a few minutes before 0800 hours, slouched the gang of workmen employed by Alessis, among them Brasidus. He was wearing dirty, ill-fitting coveralls, and he was careful not to walk with a military stride, proceeded with a helot’s shamble.

The other men looked at him, and he looked at them. He saw a bunch of peasantry from the outlying villages, come to the city to (they vaguely hoped) better themselves. They saw a man like themselves, but a little cleaner, a little better fed, a little more intelligent. There were grunted self-introductions. Then, “You’ll be the foreman?” asked one of the workmen.

“No,” admitted Brasidus. “He’ll be along with Alessis.”

The engineer arrived in his hovercar, his foreman riding with him. They got out of the vehicle and the foreman went to the doorway, pressed the bell push set to one side of it. Then he said, “Jump to it. Get the tools out of the car.” Brasidus—his years of training were not easily sloughed off—took the lead, swiftly formed an efficient little working party to unload spanners, hammers, gas cylinders and electrical equipment. He heard the foreman say to his employer, “Who’s that new man, sir? We could use a few more like him.”

Slowly the door opened. It was thick, Brasidus noted. It appeared to be armored. It looked capable of withstanding a chariot charge, or even the fire of medium artillery. It would have been more in keeping with a fortress than a commercial building. In it stood a man dressed in the gray tunic of an industrialist. That made him a helot, although one of a superior class. Nonetheless, his salutation of Alessis was not that of an inferior to a superior. There could even have been a hint of condescension.

The maintenance gang filed into the building—the engineer and his foreman unhampered, Brasidus and the others carrying the gear. So far there was little to be seen—just a long, straight corridor between featureless metal walls, terminating in yet another door. But it was all so clean, so sterile, impossibly so for Sparta. It reminded Brasidus of the interior of John Grimes’ ship, but even that, by comparison, had a lived-in feel to it.

The farther door was heavily insulated. Beyond it was a huge room, crowded with machinery, the use of which Brasidus could only guess. Pumps, perhaps, and compressors, and dozens of white-faced gauges. Nothing was in motion; every needle rested at zero.

“Have you everything you want, Alessis?” asked the industrialist.

“I think so. Nothing’s been giving any trouble since the last overhaul?”

“No. I need hardly tell you that the deep freeze is, as always, top priority. But Hera’s not due for another couple of months.”

“Not to worry, what’s the hurry?” quipped the engineer. Then, to his foreman, “O.K., Cimon, you can start taking the main compressor down. One of you”—he looked over his workmen carefully as though making a decision—“come with me to the basement to inspect the deep freeze. You’ll do, fellow. Bring a hammer and a couple of screwdrivers. And a torch.”

Brasidus opened the hatch in the floor for Alessis and then, as he followed the engineer down to the lower level, managed to shut it after himself. It was not difficult; the insulation, although thick, was light. In the basement there was more machinery seeming, thought Brasidus, to duplicate the engines on the floor above. It, too, was silent. And there was the huge, insulated door that he, as instructed by Alessis, opened.

The chamber beyond it was not cooled, but a residual chill seemed to linger in the still air. Physical or psychological? Or psychic? There was . . . something, some influence, some subtle emanation, that resulted in a slight, involuntary shudder, a sudden, prickly gooseflesh. It was as though there were a million voices—subsonic? supersonic? on the verge of audibility—crying out to be heard, striving, in vain, to impart a message. The voices of the dead? Brasidus must have spoken aloud, for Alessis said, “Or the not yet born.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Brasidus. “What do you mean?”

“I . . . I don’t know, Lieutenant. It seemed that the words were spoken to me by someone, by something outside.”

“But this is only a deep-freeze chamber, sir.”

“It is only a deep-freeze chamber—but it has too many doors.”

“I can’t see the second one.”

“No. It is concealed. I found it only by accident. You see that panel? Take your screwdriver and remove the holding screws.”

In spite of his unfamiliarity with power tools, with tools of any kind, Brasidus accomplished the job in a few seconds. Then, with Alessis’ help, he pried the insulated panel out from the wall, lifted it to one side. There was a tunnel beyond it, high enough so that a tall man could walk without stooping, wide enough so that bulky burdens could be carried along it with ease. There were pipes and conduits on the roof of the tunnel, visible in the light of the torches.

“An alternative freezing system,” explained Alessis. “Machinery in the créche itself. I’m not supposed to know about it. The tunnel’s insulated, too—and I’ve no doubt that when it’s in use it can be brought down to well below zero.”

“And what am I supposed to do?” Brasidus asked.

“You take your orders from Captain Diomedes, not from me. You’re supposed to snoop—that’s all that I know. And if you are caught, I risk my neck by providing you with some sort of a cover story. You thought—and I thought—that all these wires and pipes are supposed to be doing something. As, in fact, they are. Well, you’ll find another door at the end, a proper one, and with dogs that can be operated from either side.” His hand rested briefly on Brasidus’ upper forearm. “I don’t like this business. It’s all too hasty; there’s far too much last-minute improvisation. So be careful.”

“I’ll try,” Brasidus told him. He stuck the hammer and the screwdriver into his belt—after all, he was supposed to be a workman, and if it came to any sort of showdown they would be better than no weapons at all—and, without a backward glance, set off along the tunnel.

The door at the far end was easy enough to open, and the screw clamps were well greased and silent. With the thick, insulated valve the slightest crack ajar, Brasidus listened. He could hear nothing. Probably there was nobody on the farther side. He hoped. The door opened away from him into whatever space there was on the other side. It was a pity, as anybody waiting there—the possibility still had not been ruled out—would be hidden from Brasidus as he emerged. But if the door were flung open violently, he would be not only hidden, but trapped.

Brasidus flung the door open violently, catching it just before it could thud noisily against the wall of the corridor.

So far, so good.

But what was there to see? Across the corridor there was yet another door, looking as though it, too, were insulated. And it was locked. To his left stretched a long, long passageway, soft ceiling lights reflected in the polished floor. To his right stretched a long, long passageway, similarly illuminated. On both sides there were doors, irregularly spaced, numbered.

Brasidus stood, silent and motionless, every sense tuned to a high pitch of sensitivity. There was the faintest hint of perfume in the air, merged with other hints—antiseptics, machinery, cooking—noticeable only by reason of its unusualness. A similar fragrance had lingered around Margaret Lazenby. And, remembered Brasidus, around that other Arcadian in this very building—Sally. And, oddly enough, around Heraklion. (Normally the only odors associated with doctors were those of the various spirits and lotions of their trade.)

So, he thought, there are Arcadians here.

So, he told himself, I knew that already.

So what?

His hearing was abnormally keen, and he willed himself to ignore the mutter of his own heartbeats, the susurus of his respiration. From somewhere, faint and faraway, drifted a murmur of machinery. There were voices, distant, and a barely heard tinkle of that silvery laughter he already associated with the Arcadians. There was a whisper of running water, evocative of a hillside rill rather than city plumbing.

He did not want to stray too far from the door, but realized that he would learn little, if anything, by remaining immobile. He turned to his left, mainly because that was the direction from which the Arcadian laughter and the faint splashing sounds were coming. He advanced slowly and cautiously, his hand hovering just clear of the haft of his hammer.

Suddenly a door opened. The man standing there was dressed in a long, soft, enveloping robe. He had long, blonde hair, and the fine features and the wide, red mouth of an Arcadian. There was about him—about her, Brasidus corrected himself—more than just a hint of that disturbing perfume. “Hello,” she said in a high, pleasantly surprised voice. “Why, hello! A fresh face, as I live and breathe! And what are you doing in this abode of love?”

“I’m checking the refrigeration, sir.”

“Sir!” There was the tinkling laughter, amused but not unkind. “Sir! That’s a giveaway, fellow. You don’t belong here, do you?”

“Why, sir, no.”

The Arcadian sighed. “Such a handsome brute—and I have to chase you off. But it’s getting on for the time when our learned lovers join us for . . . er . . . aquatic relaxation in the pool. And if they find you wandering around where you shouldn’t be . . .” She drew the edge of her hand across her throat in an expressive gesture. “It’s happened before—and, after all, who misses a helot? But where did you come from? Oh, yes, I see. You could be a refrigeration mechanic . . . My advice to you is to get back into your hole and to pull it shut after you.” Then she said, as Brasidus started to turn to retreat to the tunnel, “No so fast, buster. Not so fast.” A slim hand, with red-painted nails, caught his right shoulder to swing him so that he faced her; the other hand came up to rest upon his left shoulder. Her face was very close to his, the lips parted.

As though it were the most natural thing in the world, Brasidus kissed her. Unnatural, said a voice in his mind, flatly and coldly. Unnatural, to mate with a monster from another world, even to contemplate such a sterile coupling. Unnatural. Unnatural.

But his own arms were about her and he was returning her kiss—hotly, avidly, clumsily. That censor in his mind was, at the moment, talking only to itself. He felt the mounds of flesh on her chest pressing against him, was keenly aware of the softness of her thighs against his own.

Suddenly, somehow, her hands were between their upper bodies, pushing him away. With a twist of her head she disengaged her mouth. “Go, you fool!” she whispered urgently. “Go! If they find you, they’ll kill you. Go. Don’t worry—I’ll say nothing. And if you have any sense, you’ll not say anything either.”

“But . . .”

“Go!”

Reluctantly, Brasidus went. Just as he closed the door he heard footsteps approaching along the alleyway.

But there was no alarm raised; his intrusion had been undetected.

Back in the deep-freeze chamber, Alessis looked at him curiously. “Have you been in a fight? Your mouth . . . there’s blood.”

Brasidus examined the back of his investigatory hand. “No,” he said. “It’s not blood. I don’t know what it is.”

“But what happened?”

“I don’t know,” replied Brasidus truthfully. Still he was not feeling the shame, the revulsion that should have been swamping him. “I don’t know. In any case, I have to make my reports only to Captain Diomedes.”

Chapter 14

“SO IT WAS NOT
the same one that you saw before?” asked Diomedes.

“No, Captain. At least, I don’t think so. Her voice was different.”

“H’m. There must be an absolute nest of Arcadians in that bloody créche . . . And all . . . she did was to talk to you and warn you to make yourself scarce before any of the doctors came on the scene?”

“That was all, Captain.”

“You’re lying, Brasidus.”

“All right.” Brasidus’ voice was sullenly defiant. “I kissed him, her, it. And it—or she—kissed me back.”

“You what?”

“You heard me, sir. Your very vague instructions to me were that I should find out all that I could. And that was one way of doing it.”

“Indeed? And what did you find out?”

“That these Arcadians, as you have said, exercise a sort of hypnotic power, especially when there is physical contact.”

“Hypnotic power? So the touch of mouth to mouth almost put you to sleep?”

“That wasn’t the way I meant it, sir. But I did feel that, if I weren’t very careful, I should be doing just what she wanted.”

“And what did she want?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you, sir? Oh, I know that intercourse with an alien being must be wrong—but that was what she wanted.”

“And you?”

“All right. I wanted it, too.”

“Brasidus, Brasidus . . . You know that what you have just told me could get you busted down to helot. Or worse. But in our job, as you are learning, we often have to break the law in order to enforce it.”

“As a policeman, sir, I am reasonably familiar with the law. I cannot recall that it forbids intercourse with aliens.”

“Not yet, Brasidus. Not yet. But you will recall that contact with the crews of visiting ships is prohibited. And I think that the preliminaries to making love may be construed as contact.”

“But are these Arcadians in the créche crew members of visiting ships?”

“What else can they be? They must have got here somehow.” Diomedes looked long and hard at Brasidus, but there was no censure in his regard. “However, I am not displeased by the way in which things are turning out. You are getting to know something about these . . . . things. These Arcadians. And I think that you are strong enough to resist their lure . . . Now, what have we for you? This evening, I think, you will visit your friend Achron at the créche. Keep your eyes and ears open, but don’t stick your neck out. Tomorrow I have an assignment for you that you should find interesting. This Margaret Lazenby wishes to make a sightseeing trip, and she especially asked for you as her escort.”