“It wasn’t easy, sir.” Brong squirmed and blinked. “If you’ll let me explain—”
“Do that to the shipwatch.” The Admiral’s grin turned cold. “I imagine they’ll want to look at the wreck of your lander. If they can’t find it, you’re in trouble.”
His image went out.
“I won’t be the only one in trouble.” Brong stood up with a tired little sigh and asked to use his father’s secret room. “Not when the humanoids get here.” In the hall, he paused beside that red-winking light. “You’ve got my message, Crewman. The shipwatch will say I lied about the lander. But what I said about the humanoids—that’s all true. Remember it, Crewman, and I hope you can keep them out.”
He went inside the room and closed the door behind him. Three shipwatch officers were there in half an hour with orders for his arrest. His father let them in and led them back to knock on the door. The red light kept flashing, but Brong didn’t answer. The officers drew their laserguns, and his father opened the door.
Brong was gone.
4
Lifecrew An organization formed to alert and guard the people of Kai against the humanoids; influential once, but later discredited by calling too many false alarms.
The shipwatch men didn’t want to believe what his father said. They drew maps of the rooms and tapped on all the walls and frowned at the blinking light and holoed everything. They yelled at his father and Nurse Vesh and even at him, asking the same things over and over, always angrier.
The room was eighty meters underground, they kept saying. Carded out of solid granite, with only one doorway. If the subject had actually entered it through that door, and if he really hadn’t come out through the door—then why wasn’t he still inside?
His father grew pale and trembly, his voice turning sharper and the scar shining whiter. He always said he didn’t know.
“I wouldn’t hide the man,” he kept insisting. “It’s true I knew him on Malili, but he never was my friend. A worthless halfbreed. I never believed a word he said, and I can’t imagine how he got away.”
They left at last, but then the Admiral called.
“Crewman Kyrone, I’m getting reports I can’t understand.” His broad, red face was hard and watchful. “I think you had better explain them.”
“Sorry, sir.” His father looked sick. “I can’t explain anything.”
“Maybe I can.” The Admiral leaned alertly forward. “Though you’ll deny it. You want support for your dying Lifecrew. This wild tale of invading humanoids—”
“I didn’t make it up,” his father muttered. “I can’t believe how Brong said he got back, but his story frightens me.”
The Admiral waited, his meaty features almost friendly.
“Always too much I never knew about him.” His father was sweating. “Half Leleyo, you know, and half mechanical now. Hardly human at all. I never understood him.”
“Crewman, I wish I could understand you.” The Admiral’s cold half-smile was fading. “Perhaps I will, when I learn how Brong left your place. In the meantime, I imagine this farce will kill what’s left of your Lifecrew—”
He reached to punch out.
“Wait, sir!” his father begged. “If the humanoids are really established on the Dragon, we’re in danger here. The Lifecrew has to go on—”
“I’ll see to that.” The Admiral’s voice was short and frosty. “If I ever believe the humanoids really caused my brother’s death.”
His hard, red face flickered out.
Later that night, his father called him back behind that gray steel door.
“A rough day, Skipper.” His father sat heavily down at the desk, suddenly looking older than the black-bearded man in the queer flat picture above him. “I don’t know what became of
Bosun Brong.” Uneasily, his father glanced around the tiny room. “Anyhow, it’s time we had a talk.”
He listened, breathless with his eagerness.
“I wanted this to wait till you were older,” his father said. “But you’ve heard Brong’s story. Part of it may be a clumsy lie, but I’m afraid the part about the humanoids is true. Kai’s in danger, Skipper, and only the Lifecrew stands against them.
“Here’s our fort” With a tired white smile, his father waved at the old strongbox and the flatprint books and that dim picture. “We have another on Malili, with one brave woman for a garrison. Crewmate Cyra Sair. Two of us against the humanoids. If I’ve neglected you, that’s most of the reason. I thought I ought to tell you now, and I hope you understand.”
“Thank you, sir,” He watched his father’s face. “Will they come here?”
“I wish I knew.” The scar looked pale and bold. “But now they surely know about us. We can only wait. Wait, and be as ready as we can.”
“If there’s time—” He had to get his breath. “If I grow up, I want to join the Lifecrew. May I, sir?”
“If there is a Crew.” His father gave him a thin little smile. “And if you’re tough enough. But fighting them—”
His father stopped, staring off at nothing. Waiting, forgotten, Keth felt bad to see him looking so baffled and afraid.
“Well, Skipper!” His father remembered him. “I didn’t want to worry you, but I thought you ought to know.”
“About Malili?” Suddenly now he felt brave enough to ask. “Are the humanoids there? Nurse Vesh says they are. She says they killed my mother—”
“Don’t speak of her!” The soar grew whiter, and he thought the thick ridges of it looked like a spider crawling up his father’s cheek. “Don’t ever—ever speak of her!”
“I—I’m sorry, sir.”
He wanted more than ever now to know about the world where he was born, about his mother and how his father got the scar, about rockrust and bloodrot and the strange Leleyo, but his father’s open mood was gone.
“Now run along, Skipper.” His father was turning to the holo. “I’ve a call to make.”
Stumbling out of the room, he heard the special lock click behind him. He wondered if his father was calling Malili, perhaps to tell Crewmate Cyra Sair about the humanoids on Kyronia.
Through the rest of that long winter, he took gym and ran his route and did his lessons for Nurse Vesh. Sometimes he listened to the holo, but no more news came back from the Kyrone. There was never anything about Captain Vorn or the humanoids or the man with golden hands or even actual dragons.
For his next birthday, Nurse Vesh saved quota points to make him a redberry tart and his father promised him a fine surprise. The surprise was Crewmate Cyra Sair, home from Malili. She was going to be his new mother.
He loved her at once. She was a large, warm woman with dark, bright-shining hair and a small red mole under one eye. She always smelled like sunbud vines, and she was kinder than Nurse Vesh.
When she had time.
Like his father, she was haunted with dread and always busy. Every night at home they locked themselves in that little back room. They were often away, he seldom knew where. Once when they were leaving he couldn’t help sobbing.
“We do love you, Keth.” She came back inside with him. “But you must try to understand your father. I wish he talked more to both of us, but he carries such a terrible lead.”
Though his father was waiting out in the tunnel, she sat down and put her arm around him.
“He’s begging for help. Begging Bridgemen and fleet people for money they never want to give, because they won’t believe the humanoids are out there on the Dragon. And I’m looking—”
“Cyra!” his father shouted. “Aren’t you coming?”
“A moment, Ryn.”
She drew him closer, into her warm sunbud scent.
“Looking for a lost secret.” Her low voice hurried. “A secret we need. You see, people came to Kai in a rhodomagnetic ship. Lance Mansfield’s Deliverance. But he was afraid the humanoids would detect rhodo energy if anybody used it here. After the landing, he dismantled the ship and cut all the rhodo data out of h
is papers. But I can’t believe he destroyed everything—”
“Cyra, please!”
“He knew we’d need rhodo know-how if the humanoids ever found us. He must have kept some private record. We hope it still exists. That’s what I’m searching for.”
She stood up to go.
“A hopeless hope, your father thinks. Too much was destroyed in the Black Centuries. But we’re desperate for it.” Sobbing again, he clung to her.
“I must ran.” She bent to kiss him. “I hope you’ll try to understand your father. A man alone, Keth, against all the humanoids. He can’t spare much time for us.”
With an ache in his throat, he let her go. He used to wonder afterwards if she had found that rhodo weapon against the humanoids, but she said no more about it. He didn’t ask. Probably, he thought, she had no good news and didn’t want to frighten him.
5
Malili The larger of the Cat’s two planets, rotating in tidal lock with the smaller, Kai. Malili was settled by the mutant forefathers of the Leleyo, Kai by “normals.”
When he had questions now, he was to ask Doc Smart, the new tutor Cyra had brought him for his birthday A fat green box, not too heavy for him to carry. When he lifted the lid, Doc Smart’s holo head jumped out, white-haired and pink-faced, smiling through queer, black-rimmed glasses, programmed to amuse and teach him. Doc Smart was never cross. He didn’t have to mind, and he could ask whatever he pleased.
When he asked about Malili, the holo showed an image of two little balls, white on the sun side and black on the other, swinging slowly about a point in the air between them.
“Kai and Malili,” Doc Smart said. “Chasing each other around their orbit, just like the Cat and the Dragon chase each other around a much larger orbit. Each keeps the same face to the other. That gives us one suntime and one moontime in each sixty-day orbital period.”
Encouraged by that answer, he asked what killed his mother. “Sorry, Keth.” The rollicky voice didn’t change. “Data lacking.”
“Nurse Vesh says the humanoids did it.” He watched the smooth pink face. “Are there humanoids on Malili?”
“Sorry, Keth.” The shining smile never changed. “Data lacking.”
He kept trying. “Tell me about rhodomagnetics.”
“A mythical science.” When the happy voice stopped, the smile stopped too. Both froze for a moment now, before Doc Smart finished, “Sorry, Keth. Further data lacking. Would you like a game of chess?”
He didn’t like chess. Cyra and his father never had time for it. Nurse Vesh always remembered the very last game her husband played and began to cry. Doc Smart was programmed to let him win every other game, but there was no fun in beating a machine.
“I’d rather know about the Leleyo. What are they like?”
“A mutated race. Physically identical to the Kai Nu in nearly all respects, but immune to bloodrot. Language and culture largely unknown but apparently quite primitive. Shall we talk about your lesson in the civics of the ship?”
He didn’t care much for that or math or grammar, but data was nearly always lacking when he asked for anything he really wanted to know. He ran his route and did his lessons, through the endless underground days of a long winter moontime.
In the white excitement of a spring Sunrise day, when he had run all the way back from the gym to get ready for a deckside snow excursion, Nurse Vesh sent him to see his father. Back in that secret room he had seen only twice, Cyra was waiting, too. Both looked serious.
“Sit down, Keth.” She made room beside her on the cot. “We’ve news for you.” She was trying to smile. “I hope it won’t upset you.”
Uneasily, he looked at his father.
“We’re leaving, Skipper,” his father said. “Returning to the Zone.”
Eagerness lifted him. “Am I going?”
His father just frowned.
“We’re sorry, Keth.” Cyra reached for his hand. “It’s a hard thing for us, too. You see, I never found the lost secret I was looking for. One vague hint, in a manuscript of Mansfield’s log, but nothing useful. Your father got no support for us here. We hope to do better back in the Zone.”
He dropped her hand and kept from crying, too hurt to hear much more of what they said. His father had taken an engineering job they could live on. She would do research at the old Crew station. There was something about weak rhodo sources in the jungle that she thought could be humanoid probes.
“Our last chance, Keth.” He was listening again. “I can’t guess what the humanoids are waiting for, but when they do come across from the Dragon we’ve got to meet them with rhodo weapons. From the hints in the log, we can make a crude detector—a sort of palladium compass to pick up that radiation out of the jungle—but nothing that could stop a humanoid.”
His throat still ached with his own disappointment “I—I see,” he whispered at last. “But what about me?”
“We’re planning for you, Skipper.” His father frowned as if annoyed by the tears still in his eyes. “I spoke to Nurse Vesh, but she’s going to Northdyke to be with an invalid sister. We must put you m school.”
“Can I—can I learn to be a Crewman?”
“I don’t think so.” His father’s frown bit deeper. “We don’t know when the humanoids may come, or whether there will be a Crew. Even if there is, I’m afraid you wouldn’t fit.”
“Why—why not, sir?”
“A Crewman has to be a fighter.”
“I”—he felt weak inside—“I can learn, sir.”
“You’ve been neglected.” His father looked hard at him. “Nurse Vesh says you have trouble at the gym. Doc Smart reports that you won’t play chess. It appears that you avoid conflict.”
“But it’s not—not that I’m afraid, sir.” He slid off the cot and tried to stand brave and straight. “It’s just—just that I don’t care about winning games. I don’t like to beat people or hurt them. But the humanoids aren’t people. I could fight the humanoids.”
His father kept frowning. “What’s your trouble at the gym?”
“I guess—guess I’m different.” Trying to think, he looked up at the proud man in that dim picture. “Maybe because I was born on Malili. I don’t understand the other kids, and they don’t—” His voice tried to break, and he wished he were as stem and strong as old Kyrondath Kyrone. “They never ask me to play.”
“If you can’t learn to fight—” His father’s Ups shut hard, and the spider legs of the scar were ragged ridges. “Forget the Crew.”
“No!” The hurt made him weak and breathless. “Sir, please! I want so much to be a Crewman.”
“We all want things we never get,”
His father’s tight face twitched, and the tired eyes flashed to the black-bearded man in the picture and back to him. For a long time his father said nothing. His own knees wobbled, and he sat back on the cot beside Cyra.
“You’ve a lot to learn, Skipper.” His father nodded for him to go. “You will be in school. I’ve called Topman Taiko at Greenpeak, and you’re to go down tomorrow.”
Nurse Vesh helped him pack the few things he could bring and found enough quota points to bake him a bag of rocknut cookies to eat on the tubeway. When his father was ready to take him to the station, he reached up to shake her hand. Suddenly she bent down to take him in her arms. Surprised at the sobs that shook her thin, old limbs, he realized that she loved him better than anybody.
Yet he couldn’t help crying at the station, when Cyra hugged him and said good-bye. His father’s engineering contract was for seven years, nearly as long as his whole life. Nobody had ever told him much about the Zone, except that it was strange and dangerous. If the bloodrot got them, or the humanoids came, he would never see them again.
6
“Dragon’s Eggs” Popular name for spheres of polished stone found in the polar ice-caves of Kai, usually buried in circular arrays, perhaps left by ancient visitors from space. Significance unknown.
Greenpeak was a spe
cial boarding school for kids with people on Malili. His father warned him at the station that Topman Taiko would be rough on swabbers. He didn’t ask what a swabber was, but he felt uneasy.
The tubeway car ran so fast he had no time to eat the rock-nut cookies. He was too excited to be hungry, anyhow. If the school trained people for service in the Zone, he would be learning what he wanted to know about the dangers and wonders of Malili.
The name “Greenpeak” struck him as a sad little joke when he came to know the school, because nothing green had ever grown within many hundred kilometers. It was in the upper levels of old Mansfort, the tunnel city the first colonists had dug at the unlucky spot where they landed. Bombed twice in the Black Centuries and finally abandoned, the old city had lain empty and dead for six hundred years before the school moved in. Even in the long summer suntimes, snow banked the black granite peaks around it.
The first night there, he cried in his berth. The crumbling tunnels were dank and gloomy, blocked all around the school with barriers and signs to keep people out of the uncleared areas. His stiff new boots had worn blisters on his toes, and his scratchy new uniform felt too thin. He had taken too long to get it on and missed his turn at mess. He’d been scolded for breaking rules he hadn’t known about, had walked a long tour on the duty deck for offering the watch officer a rocknut cookie, because swabbers were new students, not allowed extra-quota sweets.
The next day wasn’t quite so bad, after he had met Chelni Vorn. She had been walking the duty deck coo, because she hadn’t known swabbers weren’t allowed to talk in the corridors. Her short upper lip turned white and her square chin quivered when she told him about it.
They hadn’t gone with her father to the Dragon because her mother wouldn’t leave Northdyke. Her mother didn’t-want her now, and she had stayed with her uncle before she came to Greenpeak. He told her a little about his father and Cyra. Her chin quivered again when she said she didn’t know what had happened to her father and his starship, and suddenly they were friends.
The Humanoids- The Complete Tetralogy Page 31
