Infinity One (24 page)

Roban frowned. He remembered the cries of “Asian barbarians,” and unkempt little men in dusty vehicles, and—well, yes, it had been surprising how many of them played a musical instrument; and the Protector had started night classes for them in Seattle, and later for the provincial garrisons. . . . Not that they were any band of geniuses. Far from it. But the lowiest herdboy-turned-grease-monkey respected any educated person.

He met the oblique eyes and said, “You might give a bit of your thought to what becomes of aggressors.”

“We do, we do,” Duna answered. “Let’s not get into de rights and wrongs of our war wit’ Norrestland. We say you was making.border trobble for us in Alaska, and egging de Tundra Runners on to raid us, and many odder t’ings your government maybe denied. Fact is, dough, your foreign policy was tied to dat of our Latino rivals. And .. . we are not such bad bosses, are we? Before long, Norrestlanders will start getting offered Baikalan citizenship—w’ich will not mean dey have to quit deir own ways of living.”

“Until they’re told to march out and help conquer the Latinos for you.”

“Dey won’t be. Not if it can be avoided. Dat is one lesson we draw from de past. An empire gets spread too t’in, like de British, and it evaporates. On de odder hand, de Romans stopped too soon. Dey could have taken Germany, soudem Russia, and de Near East; and dey should have, because dat was w’ere deir later enemies came from. Rome might den have lasted longer dan Egypt of de Pharaohs, and a better world dan ours might have grown up inside de framework. Could hardly be worse, no?”

Roban shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“And still you put your judgment against mine?” Duna replied, turning severe. “Besides, you was supposed to have renounced national ties w’en you joined de Order.”

“Well—you can’t expect a man to . . . I’ve family there—”

Duna watched him narrowly. “I have got reports,” he said. “I have seen for myself. Luizo did not pick de best trained assistant he was personally acquainted wit’; he picked de one wit’ de best reason to hate de Domination. And he would not wear de mask he does if he was simply learning details about how anodder planet is put to-gedder.”

Roban swallowed. “Your, uh, your government will get the information when we’ve worked it out ourselves.”

“For certain? Brudder, I have been trying to make you see you should cooperate wit’ us. Now I tell you plain, you better do it. De Domination wants to be just, but de justice is strict.”

“I don’t know anything!” the techno almost shouted. “He hasn’t told me! ” He realized the implications. “That is ... no point in him telling me at the, the present stage of things. He’s the only man here who can—”
Go on the offensive, for God's sake.
“If your government wanted faster results, it could have brought more than one top-ranker.”

“Wit’ dat many more chances for trickery?” The tone was a whipcrack.

After a moment, however, Duna smiled and said quite gently: “Please t’ink on it. Ask Primary Luizo to t’ink. You may not like us Baikalans much, but at de last, we are human beings wit’ you.” He waved around the dome.

The sun was entirely down, nothing except that misty half-lens of zodiacal light to interrupt the awful majesty of the stars. “If dis shell around us breaks, we are dead. Dat is a big and strange cosmos out yonder, and it was not made for us; we were made for a single tiny corner of it. Do not take chances wit’ our corner.”

He rose. “Goodnight,” he said and departed.

The Great Bear walked slowly over heaven. When Roban donned earphones to examine the audio component of a message, he would hear the dry, random rustle and hiss that were the stars’ way of talking to each other. Once the radioscope had eavesdropped on it and the computers had translated what was heard into discourse of bursting atoms and ghost-thin nebulae and cosmic rays spiraling down light-years-long magnetic lines. But that was before anger and valor drowned reason on Earth.

In another generation, perhaps again.

Luizo began finding less for his helper to do, as the possible manipulations of available data grew exhausted. Roban was not glad. He didn’t want leisure to fret over why his chief worked ever more feverishly and withdrew ever deeper into himself. The Norrestlander arranged a few excursions outside, gliding dreamily along the crater floor or riding a moonbuggy to the ringwall for a climb up those gaunt steeps. The trips refreshed him less than expected, and the company of Dominist soldiers was not the cause. He was longing for home— Earth: manhome—gray walls and grave courtyards, gardens, bells at dusk, where Australia Station kept watch from a high hill over intensely green Croplands; or gurgle and glitter on Puget Sound, lulling winds, flying gulls and flying sails, little red-roofed villages on the strand beneath pinewoods, odor of smoke and a friendly hail and the brave striding of girls.

Night wore away toward another furnace sunrise. And Luizo said: “We are through here, I believe. We can best finish on Earth. I want to consult my colleagues.”

His spare face moved only in the lips, from which the words issued metallic. Roban’s heart stumbled.

A call flew from peak to peak to relay satellite to peak until it reached Duna at the base whither he had returned. The colonel’s reply was prompt: “Optimum time for raising ship, twenty-nine hours hence. Let countdown begin. I will come bid farewell in person.”

Luizo interpreted this for Roban when the officer in charge told him about it at dinner. “For my part,” the Primary said, “I shall mostly sleep.” His back was slumped, his eyes and cheeks sunken, as if he were hollowed out . . . but by a flame within that was only burning low, that would not die.

When they had eaten, he and Roban sought the laboratory to collect their transcriptions, calculations, ciphered notes, and conclusions. Luizo always took them with him when he went to rest, and never left them alone for any significant length of time. “You may wipe the memory banks of our computers,” he said.

“What? But . . .” Roban gulped. The Nominators’ scientists could be almost as indignant at losing those marks along the trail the Communicators had followed, as they would have been at destruction of the message reels themselves.

“I said for you to clear the memory banks.” Luizo’s voice rose. “To avoid needless duplication where data storage space is short.”

That’s a command,
Roban knew.

Well
. . .
presumably no one 'will realize it’s been done till we’re safely back in Australia. And even if they do, what of it? We need merely claim we took the procedure for granted. Relations are strained enough between Domination and Order that the Baikalans can’t afford to consider it a provocative act.

And it’ll do them one in the eye.

He laughed. Leaning close: “Sir, can’t you tell me now what—”

“No,” Luizo said. “The interpretation remains clouded.”

His thumb jerked toward the wall.
Wait till we're home. Here we too likely have electronic listeners.

“I, uh, understand, sir.” Roban carried the boxes of material to the room the Communicators shared. Luizo reminded him about his key; he had forgotten it once, and found that the Primary had locked him out. Returning to the lab, the techno spent an hour making the erasures.

That left him likewise weary. He started for the washroom closest to his doss. Rounding a comer, he almost collided with a blocky form. “Oh! H-h-hello, Colonel.”

Duna smiled. “Salutation, Brudder. I just got in. Was hoping to catch you two at work. Dey told me you was.”

“I . . . have finished.”
Thank the fates!
“My superior has already turned in.”

“Would you like a drink? I brought a bottle of good gin. Not vodka, gin.”

Roban was tempted. But no—not with the enemy—and they’d have taken it in the lounge, which meant sitting under those icily strange stars. “I’d better hold off. You, well, you might tell them not to call us for breakfast but leave some food on standby. We both need ten or twelve hours’ rest.”

“And blastoff soon after. Very well, as you wish. I will see you before you leave. Nice dreams.” Duna waved and continued down the corridor with his horseman’s gait.

Roban stared a moment at his back. Hoy,
I did accept a favor from him after all, didn’t I?

Not important. People weren’t machines; relationships between them, or between aspects of themselves, had nothing of machine simplicity and invariance.

Nonetheless, the fact that he couldn’t really hate Duna —nor really love the whole of mankind—bothered him. And what was in those sendings from Outside, that both troubled and uplifted Luizo?

Sleepiness fled.
Another wakeful nightwatch,
Roban groaned to himself.
God, I can't wait to live again the way men were meant to live!
No caging underground
sameness, exterior deadly barrenness; no days which were nothing but symbols and calculators; wind, rain, green grass and thunderous surf, music and ceremonies and tales of desperate bravery, falling in love and children running to meet you, jokes, games, the billion tiny illogicalities of a human existence. Those brought peace.

He let himself into the bunkroom, remembering to re-lock the door. Luizo had written to him, early in the project, that this was crucial to keeping the papers safe. Roban saw why they must be guarded. Given, a chance to photocopy a full record of the Communicators’ work, the Dominists could eventually read it; no cipher is unbreakable. And if the masters of the Order should decide to turn in a false report . . . None of the Baikalans had objected, or made any remark concerning the secretiveness. Roban had speculated that they might plan on arresting him and Luizo, acquiring the material by force. No, he concluded, that would bring the ban down on their realm; and they could ill afford to let their rivals enjoy the Order’s exclusive services.

The room was a cubicle, sparsely furnished. The sole decorations on its dull gray walls were the official medallion Luizo had hung, four stars linked by trains of waves, and the time-blurred portrait of an unknown woman and child which Roban had sentimentally left in place. A ventilator gusted air that felt a little chill when he removed his clothes; no matter how far they ranged, men did best to take the cycles of mother Gaea with them. Its murmur was soft in his ears. Luizo looked oddly shrunken and helpless, asleep with one thin arm laid over the blanket.

Roban chinned into the upper bunk, turned off the light, and tried to compose himself. Useless. He did not thresh about, for any position is comfortable in low-weight. But too many questions moved inside his head.

Three or four hours had passed when the door opened.

The entry was most quiet. Roban’s first intimation was
a faint brightening on his lids. He blinked, and saw a line of wan illumination from the hall.
What the demons?
He half sat up. The crack widened and a silhouette appeared within.

They
. . .
yes, why didn't we think of it, of course they'd have duplicate keys and combinations.
Roban rolled over to face the entrance and watched through slitted eyes. He hoped his breathing stayed regular and his heart did not hammer audibly. It prickled along scalp and backbone.

The intruder stepped through and reclosed the door. There was an instant’s blackness. A stopped-down flash-beam glowed. Reflections picked Duna’s countenance out as a few bony highlights and a glitter of watchfulness.

He padded across the floor and squatted by the lower bunk. Roban risked leaning over the side for a look. Duna held the flash between his knees. One hand grasped a pressure container. From it snaked a tube ending in a bell mouth, that his other hand was bringing toward Luizo.

Roban had done battle in waterfront brawls, and hunted bear with crossbows while the Domination still forbade guns to Norrestlanders, and ridden out gales of Cape Flattery. Only later did he recognize that what flared in him now was less rage than joy.

He swung himself outward in an arc that landed him behind Duna. The colonel heard the thud, bounded erect and sought to whirl around. Roban caught him in a full nelson. Duna hissed an oath, writhed with astonishing power, and kicked. Pain coursed through Roban’s bare shin. He held firm, stood on his unhurt leg and wrapped the other around both of Duna’s. “Gotcha, you bastard!’’ he grunted.

Duna pressed the trigger on his can. A sickly-sweet whiff reached Roban’s nostrils. For a second his mind spun, his muscles loosened, and Duna broke free.

A shadow among shadows, the Baikalan snatched for his pistol. Another shadow arose, Luizo, wakened by

Roban’s massive body striking the bunkframe. The Primary lunged. “I’ve caught ... his gun hand. Help!”

Roban shook his head. The giddiness went away. He found the dropped dash and played its beam over the struggle. Duna had lost his pressure can. He wrenched to break Luizo’s grip. The old man hung on.

Roban trod forward. His fist smote. The violence of the blow erupted in his own shoulder. Duna’s head snapped back. He fell, with the peculiar, buckling Lunar slowness, and did not move.

For a while murk was, and harsh breath.

Luzio groped to the light switch. The fluorescence seemed bright as topside day. Roban hunkered over Duna. “Is he dead?” The Primary’s question sounded as if from an interstellar distance.

“No. Sock to the chin. He should rouse in a minute or two.” Roban heaved the Baikalan into the lower bunk.

Luzio peered out. “Nobody else in sight.” He shut the door.

“What’s this about?”’ Roban demanded.

“Obvious.” Luizo’s crisp calm was restored. He stooped for the can, shot the least jet from the tube, and sniffed. “Yes, pentacycline. A common anesthetic. We would have been unwakeable for several hours, while he duplicated our material and put it back. If tomorrow we suspected, what proof could we bring? I should have anticipated the possibility. You did well, Brother. We may never dare speak publicly of such an incident, but I will commend you to the right people.”