The Heaven Makers (13 page)

What powers has he gained from these natives? Kelexel asked himself. Can he see into me, divine my thoughts? But I’m not insane… or violent.

“What paradox is this you propose?” Kelexel demanded. And he was proud that his voice remained level, calm and questing.

Gently, gently, Fraffin thought. He’s well hooked, but he mustn’t struggle with me too much—not yet.

“An amusing thing,” Fraffin said. “Observe.” He gestured at the pantovive’s stage, manipulated the controls.

Kelexel turned reluctantly, stared at the projected scene—the same drab room, the same barred window with its red and white curtains, the hissing radiator, Murphey seated in the same position at the scarred table. It was a tableau, identical with the scene they’d just watched except that another native sat behind Murphey, his back to the observers, a clipboard and papers on his knees.

Like Murphey, this new figure conveyed an impression of excessive bulk. The visible curve of cheek when he turned his head showed choleric. The back of his neck carried a sanitary, barber-scraped appearance.

A scattered stack of the inkblot cards lay on the table before Murphey. He was tapping a finger on the back of one of them.

As Kelexel studied the scene, he observed a subtle difference in Murphey. There was a suggestion of greater calm. He was more relaxed, more sure of himself.

Fraffin cleared his throat, said: “The native writing on that pad is another witch doctor, Whelye, an associate of Thurlow’s. He has just finished administering the same test to Murphey. Observe him carefully.”

“Why?” Kelexel asked. This repetition of native rites was beginning to bore him.

“Just observe,” Fraffin said.

Abruptly, Murphey picked up the card he’d been tapping, looked at it, discarded it.

Whelye turned, raised his head to expose a round face, two buttons of blue eyes, a steep shelf of nose and thin mouth. Satisfaction poured from him as though it were a light he shone on everything within range of his senses. In the satisfaction there lay a stalking craftiness.

“That card,” he said, his voice petulant. “Why’d you look at that card again?”

“I… ah, just wanted another look,” Murphey said. He lowered his head.

“Do you see something new in it?”

“What I always see in it—an animal skin.”

Whelye stared at the back of Murphey’s head with a look of glee. “An animal skin, the kind you trapped when you were a boy.”

“I made a lot of money off those skins. Always had an eye for money.”

Whelye’s head bobbed up and down, a curious wracking motion that rippled a fold of flesh against his collar. “Would you like a second look at any of the other cards?”

Murphey wet his lips with his tongue. “Guess not.”

“Interesting,” Whelye murmured.

Murphey turned slightly, spoke without looking at the psychiatrist. “Doc, maybe you’d tell me something.”

“What?”

“I had this test from another of you headshrinkers, you know—from Thurlow. What’s it show?”

Something fierce and pouncing arose in Whelye’s face. “Didn’t Thurlow tell you?”

“No. I figured you’re more of a right guy, that you’d level with me.”

Whelye looked down at the papers in his lap, moved his pencil absently. He began filling in the “o’s” of a printed line. “Thurlow has no medical degree.”

“Yeah, but what’s the test show about me?”

Whelye completed his pencil work on the line of print, sat back and examined it. “It takes a little time to evaluate the data,” he said, “but I’d hazard a guess you’re as normal as the next fellow.”

“Does that mean I’m sane?” Murphey asked. He stared at the table, breath held, waiting.

“As sane as I am,” Whelye said.

A deep sigh escaped Murphey. He smiled, looked sidelong at the inkblot cards. “Thanks, Doc.”

The scene faded abruptly.

Kelexel shook his head, looked across the desk to see Fraffin’s hand on the pantovive’s cutoff controls. The Director was grinning at him.

“See,” Fraffin said. “Someone else who thinks Murphey’s sane, someone who agrees with you.”

“You said you were going to show me Thurlow.”

“But I did!”

“I don’t understand.”

“Didn’t you see the compulsive way this witch doctor filled in those letters on his paper? Did you see Thurlow doing anything like that?”

“No, but…”

“And didn’t you notice how much this witch doctor enjoyed Murphey’s fear?”

“But fear can be amusing at times.”

“And pain, and violence?” Fraffin asked.

“Certainly, if they’re handled correctly.”

Fraffin continued to stare at him, smiling.

I enjoy their fear, too, Kelexel thought. Is that what this insane director’s suggesting? Is he trying to compare me to these… creatures? Any Chem enjoys such things!

“Some of these natives have conceived the strange idea,” Fraffin said, “that anything which degrades life—degrades any life—is a sickness.”

“But that depends entirely on what form of life’s degraded,” Kelexel objected. “Surely, even these natives of yours wouldn’t hesitate to degrade a… a… a worm!”

Fraffin merely stared at him.

“Well?” Kelexel demanded.

Still Fraffin stared.

Kelexel felt his rage rising. He glared at Fraffin.

“It’s merely an idea,” Fraffin said, “something to toy with. Ideas are our toys, too, aren’t they?”

“An insane idea,” Kelexel growled.

He reminded himself then that he was here to remove the menace of this storyship’s mad director. And the man had exposed his crime! It would bring severe censure and relocation at the very least. And if this were widespread—ah, then! Kelexel sat studying Fraffin, savoring the coming moment of denunciation, the righteous anger, the threat of eternal ostracism from his own kind. Let Fraffin go into the outer blackness of eternal boredom! Let this madman discover what Forever really meant!

The thought lay there a moment in Kelexel’s mind. He had never approached it from quite this point of view before. Forever. What does it really mean? he asked himself.

He tried to imagine himself isolated, thrown onto his own resources for time-without-end. His mind recoiled from the thought, and he felt a twinge of pity for what might happen to Fraffin.

“Now,” Fraffin said. “Now is the moment.”

Can he be goading me to denounce him? Kelexel wondered. It isn’t possible!

“It’s my pleasant task to tell you,” Fraffin said, “that you’re going to have another offspring.”

Kelexel sat staring, stupefied by the words. He tried to speak, couldn’t. Presently, he found his voice, rasped: “But how can you… ?”

“Oh, not in the legally approved manner,” Fraffin said, “There’ll be no delicate little operation, no optimum selection of ovarian donor from the banks in the Primacy’s crèche. Nothing that simple.”

“What do you…”

“Your native pet,” Fraffin said. “You’ve impregnated her. She’s going to bear your child in the… ancient way, as we once did before the orderly organization of the Primacy.”

“That… that’s impossible,” Kelexel whispered.

“Not at all,” Fraffin said. “You see, what we have here is a planet full of wild Chem.”

Kelexel sat silently absorbing the evil beauty of Fraffin’s revelation, seeing the breath behind the words, seeing things here as he was meant to see them. The crime was so simple. So simple! Once he overcame the mental block that occluded thinking about such matters, the whole structure fell into place. It was a crime fitting Fraffin’s stature, a crime such as no other Chem had ever conceived. A perverse admiration for Fraffin seeped through Kelexel.

“You are thinking,” Fraffin said, “that you have but to denounce me and the Primacy will set matters right. Attend the consequences. The creatures of this planet will be sterilized so as not to contaminate the Chem bloodlines. The planet will be shut down until we can put it to some proper use. Your new offspring, a half-breed, will go with the rest.”

Abruptly, Kelexel sensed forgotten instincts begin to war in him. The threat in Fraffin’s words opened a hoard of things Kelexel had thought locked away. He’d never suspected the potency or danger of these forces he’d supposed were chained—forever. Odd thoughts buzzed in his mind like caged birds. Something free and wild rose in him and he thought:

Imagine having an unlimited number of offspring!

Then: So this is what happened to the other Investigators!

In this instant, Kelexel knew he had lost.

“Will you let them destroy your offspring?” Fraffin asked.

The question was redundant. Kelexel had already posed it and answered it. No Chem would hazard his own offspring—so rare and precious a thing, that lonely link with the lost past. He sighed.

In the sigh, Fraffin saw victory and smiled.

Kelexel’s thoughts turned inward. The Primacy had lost another round with Fraffin. The precise and formal way he had participated in that loss grew clearer to Kelexel by the minute. There was the blind (was it really blind?) way he’d walked into the trap. He’d been as easy for Fraffin to manipulate as any of the wild creatures on this wonderful world.

The realization that he must accept defeat, that he had no choice, brought an odd feeling of happiness to Kelexel. It wasn’t joy, but a backward sorrow as poignant and profound as grief.

I will have an unlimited supply of female pets, he thought. And they will give me offspring.

A cloud passed across his mind then and he spoke to Fraffin as a fellow conspirator: “What if the Primacy sends a female Investigator?”

“Make our task easier,” Fraffin said. “Chem females, deprived of the ability to breed, but not deprived of the instinct, find great joy here. They dabble in the pleasures of the flesh, of course. Native males have a wonderful lack of inhibitions. But the magnetic attraction for our females is a very simple thing. One exposure and they’re addicted to watching at the births! They get some vicarious pleasure out of it that I don’t understand, but Ynvic assures me it’s profound.”

Kelexel nodded. It must be true. The females in this conspiracy must be held by some strong tie. But Kelexel was still the Investigator in his training. He noted the way Fraffin’s mouth moved, the creasing of lines at the eyes: little betrayals. There was an element here that Fraffin was refusing to recognize. The battle would be lost some day. Forever was too long for the Primacy to lose every exchange. Suspicions would mount to certainty and then any means would be employed to unveil this secret.

Seeing this, Kelexel felt a pang of grief. It was as though the inevitable already had happened. Here was an outpost of the Chem mortality and it, too, would go—in time. Here was a part of all Chem that rebelled against Forever. Here was the proof that somewhere in every Chem, the fact of immortality hadn’t been accepted. But the evidence would be erased.

“We’ll find you a planet of your own,” Fraffin said.

The instant he’d spoken, Fraffin wondered if he’d been too precipitate. Kelexel might need time to digest things. He’d appeared to stiffen there, but now he was rising, the polite Chem taking his leave, accepting defeat—no doubt going to be rejuvenated. He’d see the need for that at once, of course.

Chapter 16

Kelexel lay face up on the bed, his hands behind his head, watching Ruth pace the floor. Back and forth, back and forth she went, her green robe hissing against her legs. She did this almost every time he came here now—unless he set the manipulator at a disgustingly high pressure.

His eyes moved to follow the pacing. Her robe was belted at the waist with emeralds chained in silver that glittered under the room’s yellow light. Her body gave definite visible hints of her pregnancy—a mounding of the abdomen, a rich glow to her skin. She knew her condition, of course, but aside from one outburst of hysterics (which the manipulator controlled quickly) she made no mention of it.

Only ten rest periods had passed since his interview with Fraffin, yet Kelexel felt the past which had terminated in the director’s salon had receded into dimness. The “amusing little story” centered on Ruth’s parent had been recorded and terminated. (Kelexel found it less amusing every time he viewed it.) All that remained was to find a suitable outpost planet for his own uses.

Back and forth Ruth paced. She’d be at the pantovive in a moment, he knew. She hadn’t used it yet in his presence, but he could see her glancing at it. He could sense the machine drawing her into its orbit.

Kelexel glanced up at the manipulator controlling her emotions. The strength of its setting frightened him. She’d be immune to it one day; no doubt of that. The manipulator was a great metal insect spread over the ceiling.

Kelexel sighed.

Now that he knew Ruth was a wild Chem, her ancestry heavily infused with storyship bloodlines, he found his feelings about her disturbed. She had become more than a creature, almost a person.

Was it right to manipulate a person? Wrong? Right? Conscience? The attitudes of this world’s exotics infused strange doubts into him. Ruth wasn’t full Chem—never could be. She hadn’t been taken in infancy, transformed and stunted by immortality. She was marked down at no position in Tiggywaugh’s web.

What would the Primacy do when they found out? Was Fraffin correct? Would they blot this world? They were capable of it. But the natives were so attractive it didn’t seem possible they’d be obliterated. They were Chem—wild Chem. But no matter the Primacy’s attentions, this place would be overwhelmed. No one presently partaking of its pleasures would have a part in the new order.

Arguments went back and forth in his mind in a pattern much like Ruth’s pacing.

Her movement began to anger him. She did this to annoy him, deliberately testing the limits of her power. Kelexel reached beneath his cloak, adjusted the manipulator.

Ruth stopped as though drawn up against a wall. She turned, faced him. “Again?” she asked, her voice flat.

“Take off your robe,” he said.

She stood unmoving.

Kelexel exerted more pressure, repeated his command. The manipulator’s setting went up… up… up…

Slowly, woodenly she obeyed. The robe dropped to the silvery piled carpet, leaving her nude. Her flesh appeared suddenly pale. Rippling tremors moved up and down her stomach.

“Turn around,” he said.

With the same wooden movement, she obeyed. One of her bare feet caught the emerald belt. Its chain rattled.

“Face me.” Kelexel said.

When she’d obeyed, Kelexel released the manipulator’s pressure. The tremors stopped moving across her stomach. She took a deep, ragged breath.

How superbly graceful she is, Kelexel thought.

Without taking her gaze from him, Ruth bent, picked up the robe, slipped into it, belted it.

There! she thought. I’ve resisted him. I’ve asserted myself at last. It’ll be easier next time. And she remembered the sodden pressure of the manipulator, the compulsion which had forced her to disrobe. Even in that extremity, she’d felt the sureness that a time would come when she could resist Kelexel’s manipulator no matter its pressure. There’d be a limit to the pressure, she knew, but no limit to her growing will to resist. She had only to think of what she’d seen on the pantovive to strengthen that core of resistance.

“You’re angry with me,” Kelexel said. “Why? I’ve indulged your every fancy.”

For answer, she seated herself at the pantovive’s metal webwork, moved its controls. Keys clicked. Instruments hummed.

How deftly she uses her toy, Kelexel thought. She’s been at it more than I suspected. Such practiced sureness! But when has she had time to become this sure? She’s never used it in front of me before. I’ve seen her each rest period. Perhaps time moves at a different rate for mortals. How long to her has she been with me? A quarter of her sun’s circuit or maybe a bit more.

He wondered then how she really felt about the offspring within her body. Primitives felt many things about their bodies, knew many things without recourse to instruments. Some wild sense they had which spoke to them from within. Could the potential offspring be why she was angered?

“Look,” Ruth said.

Kelexel sat upright, focused on the pantovive’s image stage, the glowing oval where Fraffin’s almost-people performed. Figures moved there, the gross wild Chem. Kelexel was suddenly reminded of a comment he’d heard about Fraffin’s productions—“Their reverse dollhouse quality.” Yes, his creatures always managed to seem emotionally as well as physically larger than life.

“These are relatives of mine,” Ruth said. “My father’s brother and sister. They came out for the trial. This is their motel room.”

“Motel?” Kelexel slipped off the bed, crossed to stand beside Ruth.

“Temporary housing,” she said. She sat down at the controls.

Kelexel studied the stage. Its bubble of light contained a room of faded maroon. A thin, straw-haired female sat on the edge of a bed at the right. She wore a pink dressing gown. One heavily veined hand dabbed a damp handkerchief at her eyes. Like the furniture, she appeared faded—dull eyes, sagging cheeks. In the general shape of her head and body, she resembled Ruth’s father. Kelexel wondered then if Ruth would come to this one day. Surely not. The strange female’s eyes peered from deep sockets beneath thin brows.

A man stood facing her, his back to the viewers.

“Now, Claudie,” the man said, “there’s no sense…”

“I just can’t help remembering,” she said. A sob in her voice.

Kelexel swallowed. His body drank emotional identification with the creatures in the pantovive. It was uncanny—repellant and at once magnetic. The pantovive’s sensimesh web projected a cloying sweet emotion from the woman. It was stifling.

“I remember one time on the farm near Marion,” she said. “Joey was about three that night we was sitting on the porch after the preacher’d been there to dinner. Paw was wondering out loud how he could get that twelve acres down by the creek.”

“He was always wondering that.”

“And Joey said he had to go toi-toi.”

“That danged outhouse,” Grant said.

“Remember them narrow boards across the mud? Joey was still wearing that white suit Ma’d made for him.”

“Claudie, what’s the use remembering all…”

“You remember that night?”

“Claudie, that was a long time ago.”

“I remember it. Joey asked all around for someone to go out with him across them boards, but Paw said for him to git along. What’s he scared of?”

“Doggone, Claudie, you sound like Paw sometimes.”

“I remember Joey going out there all by hisself—a little white blot like in the dark. Then Paw yipped: ‘Joey! Look out for that buck nigger ahint you!’”

“And Joey ran!” Grant said. “I remember.”

“And he slipped off into the mud.”

“He come back all dirty,” Grant said, “I remember.” He chuckled.

“And when Paw found out he’d wet hisself, too, he went and got the razor strop.” Her voice softened. “Joey was such a little feller.”

“Paw was a strict one, all right.”

“Funny the things you remember sometimes,” she said.

Grant moved across to a window, picked at the maroon drapery. Turning, he revealed his face—the same fine bone structure as Ruth, but with heavy flesh over it. A sharp line crossed his forehead where a hat had been worn, the face dark beneath it, light above. His eyes appeared hidden in shadowed holes. The hand at the drapery was darkly veined.

“This is real dry country,” he said. “Nothing ever looks green out here.”

“I wonder why he done it?” Claudie asked.

Grant shrugged. “He was a strange one, that Joey.”

“Listen to you,” she said. “Was a strange one. Already talking like he was dead.”

“I guess he is, Claudie. Just as good as.” He shook his head. “Either dead or committed to an insane asylum. Same thing really when they stick you away like that.”

“I heard you talk plenty about what happened when we was kids,” she said. “You figure that had anything to do with him going… like this?”

“What had anything to do with it?”

“The way Paw treated him.”

Grant found a loose thread in the drapery. He pulled it out, rolled it between his fingers. The sensimesh web projected a feeling of long-repressed anger from him.

(Kelexel wondered then why Ruth showed him this scene. He understood in a way the pain she must feel at seeing this, but how could she blame him or be angry at him for this? What had happened to her parents… that’d been Fraffin’s doing.)

“That time we went to the county fair to hear the darky singers,” Grant said. “In the mule wagon, remember? Joey didn’t want to come along. He was mad at Paw for something, but Paw said he was too young to leave at home alone.”

“He must’ve been all of nine then,” she said.

Grant went on as though he hadn’t heard. “Then when Joey refused to leave the wagon, remember? Paw says: ‘Come along, boy. Don’t you want to hear them niggers?’ And Joey says: ‘I guess I’ll stay with the mules and wagon.’”

Claudie nodded.

Another thread came out of the drapery into Grant’s hand. He said: “I heard you plenty of times when you didn’t want to go someplace say: ‘Guess I’ll stay with the mules and wagon.’ We had half the county saying it.”

“Joey was like that,” she said. “Always wanting to be alone.”

Grant’s lips formed a harsh smile. “Everything seemed to happen to Joey.”

“Was you there when he ran away?”

“Yep. That was after you was married, wasn’t it? Paw sold Joey’s horse that he’d worked all summer cutting wood to buy from old Poor-John Weeks, Ned Tolliver’s brother-in-law.”

“Did you see the ruckus?”

“I was right there. Joey called Paw a liar and a cheat and a thief. Paw went to reach for the white oak club, but Joey was quicker. He must’ve been seventeen then, and strong. He brung that club down on Paw’s head like he wanted to kill him. Paw went down like a pole-axed steer. Joey ripped the money Paw’d got for the horse outen his pocket, ran upstairs, packed the gladstone and left.”

“That was a terrible thing,” she said.

Grant nodded. “Long as I live I’ll remember, that boy standing there on the porch, that bag in his hand and holding that screen door. Maw was sobbing over Paw, dabbing at his head with a wet towel. Joey spoke so low we’d never’ve heard if we hadn’t all been so scared and quiet. We thought Paw was dead for sure.”

“‘I hope I never see any of you ever again, ‘ Joey says. And he run off.”

“He had Paw’s temper and that’s for sure,” Claudie said.

Ruth slapped the pantovive cutoff. The images faded. She turned, her face composed and blank from the pressures of the manipulator, but there were tear stains down her cheeks.

“I must know something,” she said. “Did you Chem do that to my father? Did you… make him that way?”

Kelexel recalled Fraffin boasting how the killer had been prepared… boasting and explaining how an Investigator from the Primacy stood no chance to escape the traps of this world. But why waste concern over a few suborders demeaned and shaped to Chem needs? Precisely because they were not suborders. They were wild Chem.

“You did, I see,” Ruth said. “I suspected it from what you’ve told me.”

Am I so transparent to her? Kelexel asked himself. How did she know that? What strange powers do these natives have?

He covered his confusion with a shrug.

“I wish you could die,” Ruth said. “I want you to die.”

Despite the manipulator’s pressure on her, Ruth could feel rage deep inside her, remote but distinct, a burning and smoldering anger that made her want to reach out and waste her fingernails clawing at this Chem’s impervious skin.

Ruth’s voice had come out so level and flat that Kelexel found he’d heard the words and almost passed over them before he absorbed their meaning. Die! She wished him dead! He recoiled. What a boorish, outrageous thing for her to say!

“I am a Chem,” he said. “How dare you say such a thing to a Chem?”

“You really don’t know, do you?” she asked.

“I’ve smiled upon you, brought you into my society,” he said. “Is this your gratitude?” Kelexel slipped off the bed, crossed the room.

She glanced around her prison room, focused on his face—the silvery skin dull and metallic, the features drawn into a sharp frown of disdain. Kelexel’s position standing beside her chair put him only slightly above her and she could see the dark hairs quivering in his nostrils as he breathed.

“I almost pity you,” she said.

Kelexel swallowed. Pity? Her reaction was unnerving. He looked down at his hands, was surprised to find them clasped tightly together. Pity? Slowly, he separated his fingers, noting how the nails were getting that foggy warning look, the reaction from breeding. Reproducing itself, his body had set the clock of flesh ticking. Rejuvenation was needed, and that soon. Was this why she pitied him, because he’d delayed his rejuvenation? No; she couldn’t know of the Chem subservience to the Rejuvenators.

Delay… delay… why am I delaying? Kelexel wondered.

Suddenly, he marveled at himself—his own bravery and daring. He’d let himself go far beyond the point where other Chem went racing for the Rejuvenators. He’d done this thing almost deliberately, he knew, toying with sensations of mortality. What other Chem would’ve dared? They were cowards all! He was almost like Ruth in this. Almost mortal! And here she railed at him! She didn’t understand. How could she, poor creature?