The Space Guardian (18 page)

Lahks was sure she would not need to use real brainwashing to inculcate these notions. Probably they were very close to the Cargomaster’s own beliefs. She merely was reinforcing those beliefs to turn them into unshakable convictions.

“If we are killed,” she continued, “not only will the Guild hunt you, but all the gorls and all Trade will hunt you, too, because the Guild will enlist their aid to punish you. This will raise the odds against your escape too high. If we are left safe, the gorls and Trade will be indifferent. They will feel that your failure to fulfill your contract may be safely left to the Guild to punish. Now, repeat my reasoning.”

The little lecture came back word-perfect.

“Good,” Lahks said approvingly. “This will sink into your mind, will become a deeply fixed conviction. No argument will be able to shake or change this idea. You will take us prisoner as soon as you wake up, but gently, without violence. We will be too surprised to resist. No one will be hurt in any way. You will accept the drom. It came aboard by itself, but it is valuable. No attempt will be made to expel it from the ship.”

“So far, so good,” Stoat agreed. “The only trouble is that they’ll probably set us down on a primitive, no-call, or interdicted planet. That would give them more time and more freedom.”

Lahks shook her head and smiled impishly. “If I cannot get the Captain to agree to a reasonable approximation of the Deal, in other words, as soon as it is clear that they are breaking the Deal so that we will be straight with the Guild, we can act as we like. Certainly, I don’t intend to let them set us down anywhere they like. If we must, we will take over the ship.”

“Why not?” Stoat chuckled. “If the main vessel is as small and old as I think it is, it only needs a crew of twelve experts to run it—and we are three know-nothings.” But his eyes were alight with a quick hunter’s delight, and Lahks laughed aloud, sure he knew more than enough about running a Guild ship and bringing a crew of Guildsmen to heel.

The best-laid plans of mice and men, it is said, gang oft agley. And if droms are about, they gang agley more oft than usual.

As soon as the craft latched to the ship and the pressure locks opened, the drom, which had been sitting so quietly that everyone had almost forgotten it, charged through. It barreled right by the cargo handlers who had come to unload and, with an agility incredible in so huge a beast, scooted through the lock. Of what happened on the other side, Lahks and her companions were in ignorance. However, when the Cargomaster led them through the lock, they were all—including the Cargomaster himself—promptly felled by stunner blasts.

Lahks regained consciousness rapidly, but she neither moved nor opened her eyes. A little pseudopod grew out of her neck, divided in two, and squeezed her earlobe. Two things happened simultaneously. First, all Lahks’ electronic equipment began to sing. Obviously there were “Watchers” and “Listeners” of every variety spying on them. Second, there was a muffled sound of revulsion from an area off to her right.

Although she did not wish to betray her consciousness, Lahks could not allow a stranger to tell the tale of that pseudopod. Unfortunately, Guildsmen were well trained. The sound had been so low and brief that Lahks could not locate the man without opening her eyes. Hoping that the Watchers would record only gross movement, Lahks let her eyes slide down her right cheek and open. She saw a crewman, green and retching with horror, and heard a low smothered chuckle. With flickering rapidity her hand turned: out of the palm a tiny sliver flew; the crewman collapsed, dropping the knife he had been about to use to the floor; Lahks’ hand was in its original position before the crewman had started to fall. Safe in the curve of her neck and the shadow of her cheek, Lahks’ eyes sat up and looked around brightly. The chuckle must have been from Stoat.

Very soon she spotted him. His whole body, including cheeks and lips, was flaccid with apparent unconsciousness, but one eye—as is common in unconscious people—was open a slit. Out of that slit, however, the eye regarded Lahks with lively intelligence. Well, at least she and Stoat were awake. Now they needed a way to communicate that would not be recorded by the spy eyes and ears around them. Lahks had just started to blink basic Guild dit-dat code when a tremendous hubbub could be heard coming down the corridor. She snapped her eyes back into place and closed them.

Although she had known the felling of the young Guildsman would be recorded, she had hoped there would be a few amin before anyone came to investigate. Actually, she had not been much concerned. The sliver would have dissolved, leaving no mark; she and her companions, limp and unconscious, could not be implicated. One or even a few men might come to investigate, yes, but why the shouting, the hiss of blasters, the sizzle of metal touched by laser? Mutiny?

Just as Lahks’ agile mind seized on a method of turning such an event in their favor, the true cause of the disorder revealed itself. With the screech of metal tortured by a substance infinitely harder than any known, a long dent appeared near the door.

“Holy Yahweh! Here comes the rescue squad again!” Stoat exclaimed, abandoning any attempt to seem unconscious and sitting up. He followed up with what was rapidly becoming his favorite remark, “Damned droms.”

Lahks, too, had sprung to life the moment it was apparent that the drom was set on getting them out. She rolled both Shom and Fanny under their respective bunks. It was little enough cover, but the best available. Stoat, however, instead of coming to help, shook his head at her.

“They will not kill us now. They will want to find out how to control the drom first.”

“When they do find out,” Lahks said sarcastically, “I wish they would tell me.”

The cries in the corridor had resolved themselves from shrieks and shouts of fear and fury into one commanding voice. “Open the door! Open the door before that thing goes through the wall!”

There was a fumbling at the lock, as if a very fearful hand was trying to hurry. Another screech heralded the appearance of a narrow slit in the wall. A third would undoubtedly enlarge the gap so that the room would be useless as a prison—if it was not already. The fumbling grew more frantic. Lahks and Stoat braced themselves to jump or dodge as necessity demanded. The door gave, there was a shout of alarm, and a grinning reptilian head thrust through. Since the bulk of the drom blocked the doorway completely, there was no need for any immediate defensive action. Of course, it was also impossible for them to get out, so there was not much opportunity for offensive action, either. In fact, if the drom did not move, they were as effectively imprisoned now as before.

“Stoat,” Lahks murmured sufficiently low so that the continuing hubbub in the corridor would screen their voices, “if they want to know why we recovered so fast, I carry a sonic shield—a new ‘Trade’ invention. Why did you recover so fast?”

Stoat’s reply was pitched to be equally indistinguishable to the detection devices. “Master is proof against most sonic ranges. They’ll want the device.”

“I’ll tell them it’s personnel-coded. That will cover the mess of melted stuff. There’s enough in it to look good.”

“Yes, well, it will be helpful if and when we get our. That drom seems permanently planted. And what do we do when we get out?”

“Where is Control?”

“If this is the brig, there is nothing but cargo and reaction chambers below us. Everything else is above, and at the very top is Control.”

“Probably too far,” Lahks remarked, “unless we go under escort. If we allow them to capture us, where will they take us?”

“Usually to interrogation rooms, also at this level, but with the drom taking down walls . . .”

“Stoat,” Lahks interrupted suddenly, her eyes widening, “if the drom came in on the cargo level, how did it get up the companionway? It wouldn’t fit.”

Stoat’s mouth opened, shut with lips thinned, and then he spoke sharply. “How did you get out of the food slot? And that is equally irrelevant to what we must do now.”

Lahks cocked her head. Stoat was never sharp when she introduced puzzles to him. They were all that added savor to a life so long that all experiences except death itself became familiar. The sharpness then must be generated by some internal struggle, and that could only be concerned with their present situation.

“You have a way, then, to bend this ship to your command?”

There was a silence while the dark eyes that ordinarily showed only a feral eagerness become shadowed with memory. “There is a way. Whoever else can endure revolution, a Guildmaster cannot. What is more, a Guildmaster may not wish to be known as such when he enters a particular situation. Thus Guildsmen are all imprinted to respond with protection and obedience to a certain code.”

He was about to add something when the expletives and sounds of activity in the corridor took on a new tone. Lahks’ lips twitched. “They are trying to move the drom by force. Since we have time, tell me what prevents a Guildmaster from forming a private army to take over from all other Guildmasters.”

“Two things. The imprinting works only in the reasonable proximity of the Guildmaster. I can control this ship, these men, but nothing more. The second fail-safe is in the Guildmaster. When the imprinting for obedience is removed, as it must be to permit a Master to function, it is replaced by an imprinting that inhibits any action that will harm the Guild as a whole. That I still have, you know. I cannot move against the good of the Guild.”

“Then is it possible to take over the ship? Will I have to block you, too?’

“No. This Captain intends to violate a Guild Deal. If I prevent him—since you intend to keep the Deal—I am acting in the best interests of the Guild. That such action also suits my private purposes is irrelevant.”

Lahks looked at him for a moment and shook her head. “It is too easy. Nothing could be so simple as the speaking of a few words. I suppose your code is secret?”

“No. It is, according to the sem-psychs, impossible to remember the sounds without deep conditioning. Actually, I do not remember them. I remember a mnemonic code. When I speak that aloud, it permits me to pronounce the sounds of the Master’s code. But that is not the difficulty. If . . .”

Stoat’s voice checked suddenly as the drom removed its head from the door to look over its shoulder reproachfully. Lahks had no idea what the crewmen were doing to it, but she and Stoat promptly fell to the floor and took cover in the least accessible corner.

“If I say those words,” Stoat muttered hastily, “the Guild will hunt us to the end of the universe. And we are not hard to identify—a gorl, an idiot, a woman, and me. They know the number of Masters and where those Masters are. A stray being who knows the code . . .”

He did not need to finish. Lahks knew what he said was true and knew that it was impossible to brainwash the entire crew. They had to get to the Captain. Stoat could use the Master’s code on him and Lahks could, she hoped, wipe the incident from his memory. The Cargomaster was already committed to the purpose she desired, and it was those two who controlled the ship.

A new outburst of obscenities from the corridor and the return of the drom’s benign, if bemused, gaze to them indicated that the attempts to remove it had failed. “In your list,” Lahks remarked dryly, “you forgot to mention the drom. It seems permanently attached.”

Stoat smiled in acknowledgment, but his head was cocked toward the corridor. “I think the officer is acknowledging defeat,” he murmured right into her ear. “Probably he will leave a couple of men on guard to give warning if the drom moves. That will be our chance.”

“If the drom will let us out.”

An expressive shrug was the only reply Lahks received, and she grinned, guessing the “damned drom” litany that must be going through Stoat’s mind. Both knew their movements were probably monitored. As soon as they acted to escape, whether the drom moved or not, men would be alerted. They would have, at best, a few amin to subdue the guards in the corridor. Hiding thereafter would be impossible if the drom followed them. Lahks was tempted to say “damned drom” herself, but Stoat said he knew the ship type, and she was willing to trust herself to his expertise.

They remained crouched in their corner, listening. Soon enough it was apparent that two men had been left on guard. Lahks could see Stoat eyeing the knife the Guildsman had dropped and gauging the distance. When the muscles of his jaw and throat tensed in preparation for the leap, Lahks threw the entire force of her will against the drom. “Out,” she demanded silently. “We want out.”

Stoat leaped, checking for a flicker of time to scoop up the knife so that Lahks, who had started to move a fraction of a sec later, arrived at the drom-blocked doorway at the same instant he did. Both truly expected to crash into the immovable creature. Although their minds urged them forward, the self-defensive mechanism of their bodies tensed against the impact. Therefore, when they arrived and the drom was not there, each exploded into the corridor with an unbalanced reel that could defy the finest marksman.

Although they fortunately reeled in opposite directions so that they did not collide and knock each other down, the situation was already well out of hand in other ways. On Stoat’s side, the guard was tearing down the corridor shouting a warning. On Lahks’ side, the drom, grinning and bobbing benignly, completely shielded the Guildsman from her lethal intentions.

Wasting no time in vain regrets, imprecations against droms, or attempts to get at the Guildsman, Stoat moved across the corridor and a few meters down it in the direction the guard had fled. Then he began feeling at the seams in the metal. In moments he breathed a sigh of relief and blessed the ancient ship as he found what he wanted. As he worked the service panel free, Lahks slipped past him. He had only to squeeze through himself and slam it shut. Their escape route would be obvious, but for the moment they were free of both Guildsmen and drom.

“How do we get to the Captain?” Lahks asked, flattening herself against the wall to let Stoat pass.

“I don’t. You do. No service section goes to Control. Control is completely separate, except for the air ducts. You’ll have to make like a snake again to get through those.”

As he spoke he moved swiftly forward and gestured Lahks upward. She scrambled up the hand- and foot-hold ladder, wondering where to stop. That question answered itself when the well ended in another service passage. Stoat’s hand touched Lahks’ right ankle and, obediently, she turned right again, flattening herself so he could pass. Some yards down the passage, he paused to place his ear against the wall. Lahks shook her head, then fingered the top of her ear to activate a sound magnifier. Shortly her hand went up in the null sign. Stoat fingered the studs and opened the panel. Here Lahks’ equipment indicated no surveillance devices.

“Better than Engineering,” Stoat commented softly. “It’s easier to hide in the vegetation, if we have to, and they can’t use gas on us because it would get into the air-concentrating equipment. You’ll have to get the Captain here alone.”

Lahks grinned. Stoat needed a little reeducation. Although a Guardian was competent to make the majority of the people of a nation or even of a whole planet act in a predetermined pattern, there was no guarantee she could bend a single man to her will without the use of drugs. The mass mind was low and brutal, the mass psychology simplistic in the extreme. An individual, on the other hand, even a low and brutal one, had a most complex psychology and a most devious mind. The reactions of any individual could not be planned for and predicted. However, this was not the moment for clarifying Stoat’s notions.

After Stoat explained the duct system, Lahks wasted no time. She shed her clothing and crawled into the duct pointed out, elongating as she went. She wondered briefly whether there were any intelligent snake people, making a mental note to find out and take lessons in abdominal crawling. It was obviously a finer art and a far more useful method of locomotion than she had realized in the past. In a few moments, when Stoat had reconnected the duct to the blower, she was helped along by a strong tail wind.