Flesh (26 page)

It was a trick they had used to get away from the avianthropes of the planet Vixa when they had been in a similar situation.

“Do we put them in deep-freeze?” Steinborg said.

“For the time being,” Churchill replied. “Later, we’ll put them on the ground. If we took them to Vega II, they might murder us.”

He took hold of the wheel, pulled back on a lever, and the
Terra
rose from the ground, her antigravs lifting the fifty-thousand ton bulk easily.

“Due to atmospheric resistance,” Churchill said, “it’ll take us fifteen minutes to get to Aino. We’ll pick up your wives there and mine—and then it’s Poughkeepsie ho!”

The wives he was referring to were the Karelian women Yastzhembski and Al-Masyuni had married during their stay in Aino.

“They’re not expecting this. What’ll they do once we get them aboard?”

“Give them the gas and put them in deep-freeze,” Churchill said. “It’s a dirty trick, but we can’t waste time arguing with them.”

“I hate to think of what they’ll say when they thaw out on Vega.”

“Not much they can do about it,” Churchill said. But he frowned, thinking of Robin’s sharp tongue.

However, for now at least, there was no trouble. Robin and the two women came aboard, and the starship took off. The Karelians still on the ground discovered the abduction too late and hurled harmless invectives at them which they did not hear. Again, the gas was released. The women were put in the tanks.

On the way to Poughkeepsie, Churchill said to Calthorp, “According to what the spies said, Stagg was seen in a little village on the east bank of the Hudson a few days ago. That means he escaped from the Pants-Elf. Where he now is, I don’t know.”

“He must be trying for Caseyland,” Calthorp said. “But he’ll just be jumping from fire to pan. What I don’t understand is how he’s had will power enough to keep from going back on the Great Route. That man is possessed by something to which no man can say no.”

“We’ll land outside Poughkeepsie,” Churchill said. “Near Vassar. There’s a large clearinghouse for orphans, operated by the priestesses. The orphans are kept there until families are found who’ll adopt them. We’ll pick the infants up and deep-freeze them. And we’ll kidnap a priestess and use a hypnotic on her to make her reveal what she knows about Stagg’s whereabouts.”

That night, they hovered above the clearinghouse. There was a slight wind, so the starship moved upwind a little and then released the anesthetic.

It took an hour to install sixty sleeping infants in the deep-freeze. Then they revived the head of the clearinghouse, a priestess of about fifty years of age.

They did not bother trying to get her to talk voluntarily. They injected the drug. Within a few minutes, they learned that Alba and her hunting party had left Poughkeepsie the night before on Stagg’s trail.

They carried her back into the house and put her in bed.

“When morning comes,” Churchill said, “we’ll cruise over the vicinity where they should be. We could use black light, but our chances of finding somebody who’ll be hiding under cover of trees are very remote.”

The starship rose shortly after dawn from the little valley in which it had been hiding. It sped at a height of thirty meters above ground, heading due east. When it reached the Housatonic River, Churchill turned it back to the west. He calculated that Stagg could not have reached the river yet and so must be somewhere in the wasteland.

Returning, they were delayed a dozen times, because they saw people in the woods and descended to investigate. Once a man and a woman disappeared into a cave and the starmen went after them to interrogate them. They had trouble getting them out of the winding tunnels of what turned out to be an abandoned mine. By the time they had questioned them, and found out the two knew nothing of Stagg’s location, they had lost several hours.

Reaching the Hudson again, the starship went due north a few miles and then began her eastward hunting.

“If Stagg sees the
Terra
, he’ll come out of hiding,” Calthorp said.

“We’ll go up a few more meters and turn on the full power of the magnifier,” Churchill said. “We have to find him!”

They were above five kilometers from the Housatonic River when they saw a number of deer riders racing pell-mell down a trail. They dropped down but, seeing a lone figure on foot leading a deer about a kilometer behind the others, they decided to interrogate the straggler.

She was Virginia, the ex-chief maiden-priestess of Washington. Heavy with child, unable to endure the hard riding any longer, she had gotten off her mount. She tried to escape into the woods, but the ship sent a cloud of gas around her, and she crumpled. Revived a short time later by an injection of antidote, she proved willing enough to talk.

“Yes, I know where the so-called Sunhero is,” she said viciously. “He is lying on the path about two and a half kilometers from here. But you need be in no hurry. He’ll wait for you. He is dead.”

“Dead!” Churchill gasped. He thought,
So close to success. Half an hour sooner, and we could have saved him!

“Yes, dead!” Virginia spat. “I killed him. I cut off his remaining antler, and he bled to death. And I am glad! He was not a true Sunhero. He was a traitor and a blasphemer, and he killed Alba.”

She looked pleadingly at Churchill and said, “Give me a knife so I can kill myself. I was proud once, because I was to bear the child of the Horned King. But I want no brat of a false god! And I do not want the shame of bearing it.”

“You mean that if we let you go, you’ll kill yourself and the unborn child?”

“I swear by the sacred name of Columbia that I will!”

Churchill nodded to Calthorp, who pressed the syringe against her arm and pushed in on the button which sent a blast of anesthetic into her flesh. She slumped, and the two men carried her to the deep-freeze tank.

“We certainly can’t allow her to kill Stagg’s child,” Calthorp said. “If he is dead, his son will live.”

“I wouldn’t worry about his not having descendants, if I were you,” Churchill said. He did not elaborate on the statement, but he thought of Robin, frozen in the tank. In about fifty years, she would give birth to Stagg’s boy.

Oh well, there was nothing he could do to change the situation, so he quit thinking about it. The immediate concern was Stagg.

He raised the ship and shot it straight east. Below, the trail was a thin brown curving line bordered by green. It went around a small mountain, a hill and then another hill; and there was the scene of the battle.

Bodies of dogs and deer and pigs. And a few human forms. Where were the many reported killed?

The ship touched ground, settling on the path and crushing many trees on either side. The men, armed with rifles, stepped out of the main port and surveyed the scene. Steinborg stayed behind in the pilot’s seat.

“I think,” Churchill said, “that the dead Caseys have been taken off the trail into the woods. They’re probably being buried. You’ll notice that all the corpses here wear Deecee clothes.”

“Maybe they’re burying Stagg,” Calthorp said.

“I hope not,” Churchill replied. He was sad because his captain, who had led him successfully through so many dangers, was gone. Yet he knew that there was a reason why he could not find it in him to mourn very much. If Stagg were alive, what complications would exist once they arrived on Vega? Stagg would not be able to help taking more than a mild interest in Robin’s child. Every time Churchill loved or punished the boy, Stagg would be wanting to interfere. And he, Churchill, would be wondering if Robin still regarded Stagg as more than human.

What if she wanted to keep her religion alive?

The men separated, looking for the burial party. Presently, a whistle sounded. It could not be heard by the Caseys, because it was pitched too high. The starmen wore in one ear a device which lowered the frequency to an audible noise, yet did not block normal sound.

They came swiftly, stealthily, and assembled behind Al-Masyuni, who had blown the whistle. There, inside a ring of trees, they saw the worst: a girl and four men, smoothing out the mound of what was obviously a common grave.

Churchill stepped out from the trees and said, “Do not be alarmed. We are friends of Stagg.”

The Caseys were startled, but, hearing Churchill repeat his assurance, they relaxed somewhat. However, they did keep their hands upon their weapons.

Churchill advanced a few steps, stopped and explained who he was and why he had come here.

The girl’s eyes were red-rimmed and her face tear-streaked. Upon hearing Churchill ask about Stagg, she burst into weeping again.

“He is dead!” she sobbed. “If only you had come sooner!”

“How long has he been dead?”

One of the Caseys eyed the sun. “About half an hour. He bled much for a long time and did not give up without a fight.”

“Okay, Steinborg,” Churchill said into his walkie-talkie. “Bring the ship up and send out a couple of walking shovels. We have to dig Stagg out of this ground fast. Calthorp, do you think there’s a chance?”

“That we can resurrect him? A good chance. That he’ll escape brain damage? No chance at all. But we can build up the damaged tissue and then see what happens.”

They did not tell the Caseys their real reason for wanting to exhume Stagg. By now they knew a little of Mary’s love for him, and they did not want to rouse false hopes. They told her they wished to take the captain back to the stars, where he would have wished to be buried.

The other corpses were left in the grave; they were badly mangled and had been dead too long.

Inside the ship, Calthorp, directing the delicate robo-surgeon, cut the bony base of the antlers out of Stagg’s skull and removed the top of his skull.

His chest was laid open, electrodes implanted in the heart and the brain. A blood pump was attached to his circulatory system. Then the body was lifted by the machine and placed in a lazarus tank.

The tank was filled with biogel, a thin fluid which nourished the cells swarming in it. There were two kinds of cells. One would eat away the damaged or decomposed cells of the corpse. The other was a multitude descended from cells from Stagg’s own body. These would seek out and attach themselves to the mother organs and replace those which had been scourged from his body.

Stagg’s heart began pumping under the electrical stimulus. His body temperature began to rise. Gradually, the grayish color of skin was replaced by a healthy pink.

Five hours passed, while the biogel did its work. Calthorp studied for the hundredth time the indications on the meters and the waves on the oscilloscopes.

Finally he said, “No use keeping him in there any more.”

He twisted a dial on the instrument panel of the robo-surgeon, and Stagg was slowly lifted from the tank.

He was deposited on a table, where he was washed off, the needles withdrawn from heart and brain, his chest sewed up, a metal skull cap fitted on, the scalp rolled back over the cap and the skin sewn up.

From there the men took over. They carried Stagg to a bed and put him in it. He slept like a new-born baby.

Churchill went outside, where the Caseys waited. They had refused to enter the ship, because they were too filled with superstitious fear and awe.

The men were talking in low tones. Mary Casey sat slumped against a tree trunk, her face a Greek mask of tragedy.

Hearing Churchill approach, she raised her head and said, emotionlessly, “May we go now? Id like to be with my people.”

“Mary,” Churchill said, “you may go wherever you wish. But first I must tell you why I asked you to wait all these hours.”

Mary listened to his plans for going to Mars, picking up or making fuel there and then going on to Vega II to settle. She lost some of her grief-stricken look at first, but after a while she seemed to fall back into her apathy.

“I am glad for you that you have something to look forward to,” she said. “Although, somehow it sounds blasphemous. However, it does not really concern me. Why are you telling me this?”

“Mary, when we left Earth in 2050
A.D.,
it was common practice to bring men back from the dead. It was not black magic or witchcraft, but application of knowledge that did it...”

She leaped to her feet and seized his hands.

“Do you mean that you have brought Peter back to life?”

“Yes,” he said. “He is sleeping now. Only...”

“Only what?”

“When a man has been dead as long as he was, he suffers a certain inevitable amount of brain damage. Usually this can be repaired. But sometimes the man is an idiot.”

She lost her smile. “Then we won’t know until morning. Why didn’t you wait until then to tell me?”

“Because you would have gone on home unless I told you this. There’s something else. Every man aboard the
Terra
knew what might happen if he died and was resurrected. All of us, except Sarvant, agreed that if he came out of the lazarus tank an idiot, he was to be killed again. No man wants to live without his mind.”

“To kill him would be a terrible sin!” she said. “It would be murder!”

“I will not waste time arguing with you,” he said. “I just want you to know what might happen. However, if it’s any help to you, I can tell you that when we were on the planet Vixa, Al-Masyuni was killed. A poisonous plant which shot little darts by means of air pressure got him twice. He died at once, and then the plant opened up and about twenty centipede-like insects raced out. They were enormous for insects, two feet long and armed with great pincers. They apparently intended to drag Al-Masyuni’s body into the plant, where everybody—including the plant—would share in the feast.

“We stayed out of range of the darts and blasted the insects with rifle fire and the plant with grenades. Then we took Al-Masyuni’s body to the ship and resurrected him, after we’d gotten rid of the alkaloid in his system. He suffered no physical or mental effects from his death at all. But Stagg’s case is somewhat different.”

“May I see him in the morning?” she said.

“For better or for worse.”

The night went slowly. Neither the starmen nor Mary slept, though the Caseys sprawled in the woods and snored lustily. Some of the crew asked Churchill why they did not proceed with their plans while waiting for Stagg to waken. They could gas a village or two, put more babies and women in deep-freeze, and be on their way to Mars.