Worlds Apart (18 page)

Once there had been scores of benders on the ship; now there was only one, retained for routine exercise. Phyllis half closed her eyes and saw herself at six, at ten, being fastened roughly in the machine and left for her hour or two hours. She had never murmured, and already Toni was whimpering. They just didn't understand, these Mundans.

The third time Toni braced the right muscles and found she could hold the machine. A hard wall of muscle split her stomach and diaphragm. She saw it quivering, lost confidence in her own effort, and the bender folded her up painfully again.

The fourth time she held it. For five minutes, ten minutes . . . She gasped and collapsed again.

She had just tensed herself once more in the way the machine was designed to make her hold herself, when there was an interruption. Captain Wyness himself entered and signaled to Phyllis.

She considered briefly. Clades were left in the bender for long periods. Once, as revenge for some real or imagined slight, Phyllis had been left in it for seven hours. But Toni was no Clade, just a prisoner.

So Phyllis switched off the machine and told the guards to take her away.

When she was gone Wyness looked at Phyllis intently. "This is a very serious charge, Lieutenant," he said, nodding at the note in his hand.

"Have you checked it, sir?"

"No. I just want to contirm that you want me to."

Phyllis was silent.

"You realize said Wyness, "that if the recording exists, the consequences will be very serious for you?"

He meant, principally, that Corey would take it out of her hide, as he was entitled to do. It was far beyond the captain's duty to tell her so, and give her a chance to retract. Phyllis made two mental notes on different sides of the slate -- one, Wyness was quite capable of elaborating on his duty and of sentimental weakness and must be carefully watched; two, Wyness was a decent fellow and might perhaps be trusted to a certain extent. The double attitude was necessary.

"I mean it, sir," she said. "After all, if I'm right, you can imagine circumstances, I'm sure, in which this sort of thing would be very dangerous for any officer."

Her reply, too, was ambivalent. If anyone was listening there was nothing to which exception could be taken. But the unusual warmth of her tone showed she understood Wyness's warning, and appreciated it.

The investigation, made in the next few minutes, showed, as she alleged, that she had made a suggestion to Sloan, had it recorded, and been recommended to take it to the commodore; that there was a recording made in the cabin of the commodore beginning "Suggestion by Lieutenant Phyllis Barton re interrogation" and ending on the question "Confirmed?"

When the commodore saw Captain Wyness and Sloan and Phyllis he knew what must have happened. Somehow Phyllis had trapped him over the recording. The calculation took a split second.

"Ah, Lieutenant Barton," he said smoothly. I was just going to send for you. There was a misunderstanding. I don't think the recording you requested was actually made -- "

It didn't save him from the bald, damning statement in the log; it made no difference to the actual verdict in the case and it didn't enable him to take any action, even indirect, against Phyllis in revenge.

But it did, probably, save his position for the moment. It left him dangling by a thread, but it left him Commodore Corey -- until the faintest shadow of discredit or failure should fall on him, and Corey would be less than the youngest spaceman on board.

It also left him with a raging hatred for Phyllis Barton, and the knowledge that if he allowed himself to vent it in any way she would use it to topple him finally.

VII

1

This is the last Council meeting," said Rog.

There were gasps, murmurs; there was even a muffled shriek from the back. No one thought for an instant he was joking. Rog could be forceful, he could be determined. He was all these and more at this meeting.

"/We are just about to surrender to the Clades/," Rog remarked.

"Shut up!" he roared as the storm burst. "I don't want that any more than you do. But no one has produced an alternative."

More calmly, quietly, he explained. It was impossible to hide from the Clades, if they persisted with the search. There were no caves on Mundis; any community was out in the open, more or less visible. One could camouflage dwellings, but not fields of crops, and while the Mundans might live somewhere else for some time without crops, it couldn't last. Now or next month or next year the Clades would find them, whether they were in the open waiting to be found or trying to hide.

Some of the older people looked at Pertwee, hoping he would have something different to say. He merely said: "That's perfectly true, and sat down again. As a politician, Pertwee had always been colorless. He only used rhetoric when he steeled himself deliberately to do so, and he always found it much easier to tell the truth and the whole truth than anything else.

Bentley nodded too; for the people there who followed their leaders there was no sanctuary. No one who mattered was going to give them comfort.

Henry Boyne stood up and said frenetically that God would not permit this, and that the forces of evil, if evil indeed the Clades were, would never be allowed to triumph, and the answer, the whole answer, was prayer.

"Let us return to God," he said. "Let us open up our hearts and admit we have erred and ask forgiveness. Let us . . . "

Jessie Bendall was a Christian. As well as being the President she preached at the service on Sunday, and when she could, tried to spread the Christian faith on the somewhat barren ground of the young Mundans. When Boyne's voice worked up into the whine of the fanatic, Jessie Bendall echoed Rog Foley and said:

"Shut up."

"It's impossible to withstand the Clades when they do find us," said Rog. "The only possibility is some kind of working agreement. Frankly, from what Pertwee has told us I don't think there can be any agreement. I think the Clades might respect us and deal honestly and fairly with us if we were strong. But, being weak, we can only be swept into their train, to become good Clades."

"That," said Pertwee, "is precisely how I see it."

"We've said all this before," Alice pointed out impatiently.

"And we must go on saying it," said Rog, "until everyone understands it."

Alice was puzzled. Then she saw it. All the young people saw it. It was easy enough for them.

Bentley saw it too. "If you think we are going to have atomic power to use in fighting off the Clades," he said bluntly, "you're wrong."

"Let's split that into two parts," said Rog. "You mean it would be impossible even if you worked towards that end?"

"Yes."

"All right, let's consider the other part. Would you do it if it weren't impossible?"

"No."

"Then maybe if we can change the answer to the second you might be able to change the answer to the first."

There was no noise now. Atomic power might have been kept secret in the community, like birth control. The young people might never have heard about it. Instead they had heard about it only in a prohibition. It had always been a dangerous thing to talk about. There was a feeling of danger in the words: /atomic power, radio-active, nucler fission/ . . .

Other words were never used. The list of elements stopped at eighty-eight. Stopping at bismuth, eighty-three, had been considered, but the eventual decision had been to stop at radium, which was the last element in the preliminary survey made with the instruments of the Mundis. It was there; one might as well admit its existence. The other radioactive elements beyond it, now; they were no doubt there, but that first and only survey hadn't revealed them. Therefore, very likely, they would remain undiscovered for centuries.

"We haven't centuries for progress now," said Rog quietly. "We have a few hours or a few days."

"Then it isn't worth considering," said Bentley. "It doesn't matter whether I'd change my mind if it were possible -- "

"I'd do it," said Pertwee. I've seen the Clades."

"Did you hear about Corey's taunt?" said Rog, knowing they had. "You were all conditioned against atomic power."

"So?" said Bentley angrily -- Bentley who was never angry. "Wasn't it right that we were? We agree -- "

"With the compulsion. You say you'd do it anyway. It says somewhere in those microfilm records that if you hypnotize a man and command him to stand on his head, he'll insist he /likes/ standing on his head. He'll tell you he's standing on his head of his own free will."

Rog was no psychologist. He didn't know what to do with compulsions except batter at them. Pertwee was on his feet now, trying to explain something. The founder colonists were whispering, protesting, interrupting, looking angry; the young people only looked bewildered. They hadn't been conditioned. They had only been told: "Don't do it," and as they hadn't wanted to do it, hadn't been able to do it, and hadn't, for the most part, had the fainteat idea of what it was they were not to do, this had hardly registered at all.

But it was clear the old people were fighting with something deep in them. They wanted to live. They wanted to withstand the slavery that the Clades might bring. But they also /knew/ that they must have nothing to do with atomic power.

Rog let them stew for a long time. It was surprising, almost frightening, to see even Mary Bentley frowning, grim, puzzled, angry, and not really knowing why. Then Rog took over again. Conditioning could only work by involving the emotions rather than reason. Therefore one could try to break it down by involving the emotions again.

"Pertwee has changed his mind on this," he said. "Why? Because Toni means something to him, and he's seen the Clades torturing her. When you see someone you love being tortured, are you sure you'll say: 'Yes, better this than atomic warfare again'? Bentley, picture the scene when Commodore Corey decides to hang Mary -- "

"For Christ's sake!" exclaimed Bentley, his face white.

"With twenty others, as a gesture. To show us we'd better behave. To make it clear who's boss. Will you tell yourself: 'Thank God I didn't do anything that might have stopped this' ?"

"You're a devil, Rog!" screamed Alice, as Bentley swayed and put his hands to his head.

"Brad," Rog shouted, "you look as calm as ever. Suppose they took Fanny away and made her work in the fields. Suppose each time you saw her she coughed a little more, and you knew -- "

For the only time in Mundan history they saw Brad Hulton angry. "Flay someone else, you little snipe," he growled. "I never knew anything about atomic power."

"Albert," said Rog. "Albert Cursiter. Toni's your daughter. You -- "

"Yes," said Albert eagerly. "I'm with Pertwee. But as Brad says, we don't know anything. Only Jim Bentley -- "

Rog turned back to Bentley. "Well?" he demanded. "Are you sticking to the compulsion?"

Bentley looked as if he had been beaten up. His face was pale and tired and old -- and Bentley seldom looked old. "I need time," he pleaded. "I must think . . . "

"There's no time," said Rog brutally. "This very meeting may be interrupted by the Clades. And you've had thirty-eight years to think."

He lashed himself to a frenzy of which he was rather ashamed. He hoped, as he began to speak, that June wasn't watching him, but knew she must be. She was just behind him.

"This refusal to have anything to do with atomics is a very old madness," he taunted. "It's the decision not to do anything, so that you can't fail. It's the provision of an excuse in advance, so that you can say you didn't try, you didn't know, it wasn't your fault, it had nothing to do with you, you couldn't help it. Look at your excuses!

"It's too late. There isn't enough time. Better not do anything, because it's impossible, you're bound to fail, it isn't worth starting. Is that what you say when someone comes at you with a knife? Too late to do anything, it'll only stop him making a clean job of it, and it'll hurt more. It isn't fair to ask you to fight a man who has a knife with your bare hands, so you won't fight. You won't have anything to do with such an unfair struggle, you'll just resign yourself and let him cut your throat. You won't start anything in which you'll show up so badly."

He went on and on, repeating himself, ramming the same things home, taking angrily, violently, and making everyone else angry too. Then at the first signs of nervous exhaustion, of inability to take any more, he said more quietly:

"Any attempt to hide things once discovered is an effort to turn the clock back, to pervert the past, to say it never happened.

"But you can't turn the clock back. Why do you try? Because you're afraid. You've been made afraid. Why are you trying now? They could only have conditioned you against atomics, back on Earth, by mixing atomics up with the group instinct, so that for your group, your children, your race to survive there must be no meddling with nuclear fission . . . "

He knew from the reaction to that that he was on the right track. He kept watching Bentley, for he was the one who counted.

Finally Bentley rose in the middle of one of Rog's persuasive sentences. Rog stopped dead. There was sudden, complete silence.

"Well, why not?" asked Bentley, in a normal, quizzical tone. But Rog watched him more closely than ever. Bentley was sane, but his compulsion wasn't, Rog mistrusted it. This was like the early surrender that covered the last stand. "We won't accomplish anything, of course. If we had an atomic engine, just one, we might -- "

Suddenly Dick was on his feet. Rog moved to him, intuitively. Dick needed support when it came to speaking in public.

"There never was enough metal," said Dick very distinctly.

Bentley half turned, but wouldn't quite look at him.

"There was a lot, and I've seen most of it," said Dick quickly. "The engines were never accounted for. There was never anything that might have been part of an atomic engine, if such a thing is as much as three feet long. I've looked. I looked for any clue -- "

"Those things we helped you to bury!" Pertwee shouted. "Come on, Rog, I'll show you where they are!"