They hurried him through gray-walled corridors to an elevator. It rose with a sickening thrust of acceleration, stopped as rapidly. Gann nearly fell, but was thrust to his feet again by one of the guards. "Out! Move on, Risk!" And he stumbled through more corridors into a bare gray office, and there he stood at attention for a long, long time, waiting.
Then—Boysie Gann heard no signal, but perhaps it had been relayed through the radar-horned helmet of the guards—the security guardsman barked, "In therel" and thrust him through a door.
Gann entered a larger, brighter office. It was beautifully furnished, with a bust of the Planner in glowing gold smiling .down from a pedestal, and a golden linkbox to the Machine dominating the desk. On the desk was a nameplate.
MACHINE GENERAL ABEL WHEELER
And the man who sat behind it was the general himself.
He sat regarding Boysie Gann for a long moment. Machine General Wheeler seemed more than half a machine himself. He was a big man, an angular, perplexing, abrupt-moving man. His whole body looked metallic: skin tan of bronze, eyes the color of steel, spikes of copper wire for hair. He stared at Gann and then, without a word, looked away, his eyes going to something invisible on his desk.
Boysie Gann felt choked by the hard, cold constriction of the security collar. Bruises aching, skin clammy with sweat, he stood painfully rigid. At the Technicorps academy he had learned the art of standing endlessly at attention—the imperceptibly slow shifting of weight and muscular tensions that kept a man from pitching forward on his face. He blanked out his mind, thought of nothing but of the importance of standing there.
The general's frowning eyes clung to the tilted communications screens that faced him on his desk, invisible to Gann. After a moment he tapped soundless keys, communicating, Gann knew, with the Machine. Gann wondered that he did not use the linkbox. It did not occur to him that the general might fear that Boysie Gann, the man who had appeared inexplicably in the heart of the Planning Machine's caverns, might equally inexplicably have learned to understand Mechanese.
The general waited, reading something, frowning stiffly. Abruptly his head jerked up and he stared at Gann.
The screens had ceased to flicker. His flat bronzed face Was expressionless. It was a mask of meat, as if some bungling surgeon at the replacement center had failed to connect the nerves and muscles that would have given it life.
General Wheeler said sharply, "Machine Major Boysie Gann!" Gann jumped; he could not help himself; the voice was like a metal rasp. "You may stand at ease!"
Gann let his lean shoulders sag slightly forward, drew a long breath, shifted his feet. But he was not really at ease. General Wheeler's eyes were on him, steel-colored, as coldly merciless as if they were the probes of a surgeon planting electrodes in his brain. He snapped, "The Machine requires information from you."
Gann said painfully, "I know, sir. I've already been interrogated—about a hundred times, I'd say."
"It will be a thousand! You will be interrogated again and again and again. The Machine's need for truth is urgent." Wheeler's broad head jutted forward like the sudden thrust of a piston. "The Starchild! Who is he?"
There was a dry lump in Gann's throat. He swallowed and said stubbornly, "I don't know, sir. I've told everything I know."
"The Writ of Liberation! Who wrote it?" Gann shook his head. '"How did it get into the Planner's headquarters?" Gann kept on shaking his head, hopelessly but obstinately. "And yourself, how did you get into the Planning Machine's tunnels? Who is Quarla Snow? Why did you kill .Machine Colonel Zafar and make up this preposterous lie?"
"No, sir!"" cried Gann. "I didn't! Colonel Zafar was . anti-Plan!"
The general's wide mouth hardened. His bloodless lips shut like the jaws of a trap. His voice was like a muffled, ominous clang. "The evidence," he said, "suggests that you are lying. Can you prove you are not?"
"No, sir. But—"
"Machine Mayor Boysie Gann! Are you the Starchild?"
"No, sir!" Gann was honestly surprised, indignant. "I—"
"Machine Major Boysie Gann! Do you know what became of the Together ship?"
Gann cried hopelessly: "The what? General, I never even heard of the—what is it? The Togethership. I don't know what you're talking about."
Like the steady pulse of a laser scan, the general tolled: "The Togethership went into space forty years ago. It was never heard of again. Major Gann, what do you know of this?"
"Nothing, sir! Why, I wasn't even born!"
For a moment the mask cracked, and the general's face looked almost human. Worried. Even confused. He said after a moment, "Yes. That's true. But..."
Then he tightened up again, bent forward stiffly from the hips. His steel eyes narrowed. "Are you loyal to the Plan of Man?" he asked softly.
"Yes, sir!"
The general nodded. "I hope so," he said bleakly. "For the sake of the Plan—and for your own sake, too. For I am going to tell you something that cannot ever be told again. If you whisper a word of it, Machine Major Boysie Gann, your death will come at once. At once.
"You see, the Planning Machine is not unique. There is another one."
Gann's eyes widened. "Another ..." he stopped, and had to begin again. It was like being told there were two Jehovahs, a second Christ. "Another Planning Machine, sir? But where is it?"
The general shook his head. "Lost," he said somberly. "Another Machine—as great, as powerful, as complete as the one that guides the Plan of Man. And we do not know where it is.
"Or what it is doing."
There was a man named Ryeland, the general told Boysie Gann. A great mathematician. A brilliant scientist. The husband of the daughter of the then-Planner, and close to the center of power surrounding the Planning Machine itself. And decades before he had gone into space, just as Gann himself had done, and seen the Reefs of Space, and come back with the tale of countless thousands of unplanned humans living their lives out on the fusorian worldlets, outside the scope of the Plan.
"What he said," rasped General Wheeler sternly, "was false! But the Machine wisely determined to test it out! The Planning Machine does not leap to conclusions! It weighs the evidence—learns the facts—makes a plan!"
"Yes, sir," said Boysie Gann. "I've heard of this Ryeland, I think. A leading scientist even today!"
The genera! nodded. "Today," he said cryptically, "Rye-land has abandoned error. A loyal servant of the Plan. And so is the former Planner, Creery, who also has turned away from falsity. But then ..." He sighed, like the wheezing of a high-vacuum pump.
Then, he told Gann, both men had been duped—and had caused the Machine to commit ... not an error, of course—that was impossible to the Machine—but to conduct an experiment that failed.
The experiment was to bring the Plan of Man to the Reefs.
The Machine had directed the construction of a mighty spacecraft called the Togethership, The biggest space-going vessel ever built, a mobile spacefort. it was fabricated at the yards on Deimos, and powered with six detachable jetless drive units that were themselves great fighting ships. And more than half of its hull was filled with a slave unit of the Planning Machine—a linked bank of computers and storage banks, as advanced as the Machine itself, lacking only the network of communications and implementation facilities that the Machine had developed out of the race of Man.
The Togethership was built, launched, tested, and fitted out. A selected crew was assembled and came aboard. Supplies were loaded for a ten-year cruise. The slave Machine assumed control ... the Togethership flashed out past Orbit Pluto—passed the Spacewall—and was gone.
Days later a message came back via laser relay chain. All was going well. The Togethership had sighted a major cluster of the Reefs of Space.
No other message was ever received.
Machine General Wheeler paused, his steel-gray eyes on Gann. "No other message," he repeated. "It has never been heard from again. Scouting vessels, attempting to locate it, came back "without ha
ving found any trace. Or did not come back at all. Or returned early, damaged, having been attacked by pyropods or something worse.
'That is the story of the Togethership, Major Gann. Except for one thing: the cluster of Reefs it last reported sighting was in the same position as what you have called Freehaven, And you were there, Major. What did you learn?"
Wonderingly, Gann shook his head. "Nothing, sir. Believe me. Not even a rumor."
The general looked at him for a long second. Then he nodded. "Gann," he said bleakly, "I will tell you one more thing." Abruptly he snapped three switches on his desk, glanced at a monitoring dial, nodded, "We are cut off," he declared. "Not even the Planning Machine can look in on us now. What I have to tell you is for no ears but your own.
"You see, Gann, it is not only the welfare of the Plan of Man that is involved here. I have a special interest in solving these mysteries. Solving them myself.
"Major Gann, I intend to be the next Planner."
Boysie Gann was adrift in dangerous waters, and he knew it. He had heard rumors of the power struggle of the human leaders who surrounded the great central power-fact of the Machine, jockeying for position, seeking personal advantage. The Technicorps Academy had been filled with sly jokes and blazing-eyed, after dark discussions of it. Some had viewed the political strife as treason (though they dared only whisper the thought). Some had taken it as a joke, or as a natural law of human affairs which they proposed to follow for their own advancement. Gann remembered the brother of the girl he had left at Playa Blanca, a white-hot idealist—remembered one of his instructors, a cynical humorist whose japes had seemed half in earnest and had set his classes wriggling with astonishment and something like fear. The instructor had disappeared one day. The young cadet who was Julie Martinet's brother had become an honor student at the academy. He had even gone on to spy school on Pluto, just as Gann himself was leaving.
But idealist or cynic, whatever the attitude of the individual, the whole question of political maneuvering had be'-n remote. Tt was something fhat took place far off, high up—not in the life of Boysie Gann.
Not until now.
Machine General Abel Wheeler leaned forward from his desk and rapped out the words: "I must know this. Do you know who sent the Writ of Liberation?"
Gann shook his head. "Sir, I've never even seen it. I don't know what it says."
"Foolish threats, Major Gann! An insane promise to stop the sun's light. A warning to the Planner and to the Machine that freedom must be restored—hah! And yet—" the man's steel eyes grew colder and more distant still, as he contemplated something far away—"it seems that there is something behind the threats. For the sun is indeed stopped."
He paused. Boysie Gann blinked. "Stopped? The sun? Sir, I don't understand ..."
"Nor do I," rasped the general, "but that does not matter. What matters is the security of the Machine. It matters particularly to me, since I am entrusted with its defense. This Writ of Liberation is a threat; I must protect the Machine against it. If I am successful, I will receive ... a suitable reward. To those who can help me ..." He glanced about his spy-tight room, leaned farther forward still, and merely mouthed the words: "I can offer them rewards, too, Major Gann."
His steel eyes stabbed restlessly about the room, then returned to Gann. "Major," he said. "I need you for a friend."
Gann was still turning over in his mind what the general had said about the stoppage of the sun. The sun? No longer shining in the sky? It was hard to believe. He shook himself free from the questions that were burning at him and said uneasily, "I hope to be your friend, sir. But I still know nothing of the Starchild!"
The general nodded like a metronome. "You will be questioned again," he rapped out. "This time, directly by the Machine, through one of its servitors—a human who has taken the Machine's communion and speaks directly to it. This will perhaps help you to remember ..certain things. It may even be that from the questions the acolyte asks, you may be able to deduce other things— perhaps even make a guess at things that are stored in the memory banks of the Machine that even I do not know. If so." he said, his face a bronze mask, "I will be interested. The choice is yours. My friend or my foe— and even now," he said, his bronze jaws hardening, "I have power enough to punish my foes."
He opened the switches again, glanced at his communications screens, nodded, tapped out an answer, and turned once more to Gann.
"You will go now to Sister Delta Four," he stated. "There your direct link questioning to the Machine will begin. Major, look at this!"
Unexpectedly he raised his right fist. It clenched like a remote manipulator into a bronze hammer. "This hand," he droned somberly, "once belonged to someone else, an unplanned traitor who threw a bomb at the Planner. His aim was poor. He missed the Planner but his bomb shattered my own right hand.
"My hand could not be repaired by the surgeons, so it was replaced. With the hand of the would-be assassin." The bronze fist slammed against the console.
"Gann, remember this! If you fail to serve the Machine in the way that is first required, you will serve it in some other way— more than likely in the Body Bank!"
Chapter 7
The radar-horned guards were waiting.
"Come on, Risk!" growled the NCO in charge, and once again Boysie Gann was thrust and dragged through the long gray halls, into the elevators, out again—and left to wait in a bare gray room.
Only for a moment. Then the guards came back, looking angry and confused. "Come on, Risk!" growled the NCO again—he seemed to know no other words, be able to speak in no other way—and Gann was taken out again.
A girl was standing in the doorway, telling her sonic beads, her head bent. She wore the robe and cowl of one of the Machine's communing acolytes, one of those adepts who had learned the Mechanese that the Machine now spoke in preference to any other language, whose very brain centers were open to the touch of the Machine. As they passed she spoke to one of the guards. "Orders changed!" he said roughly. "Come along if you like— we're going to the Planner!"
Gann hung back, trying to turn and see her, but the NCO shoved him ahead. He could hear the girl's oddly melodious voice, not so much speaking as chanting Mechanese in the quarter tones of her sonic beads, but could not make out her words.
She would be—what had General Wheeler called her? Sister Delta Four. The one who was to interrogate him.
But he was going instead to the office of the Planner himself!
In all his years of life under the Plan, Boysie Gann had never seen the Planner in the flesh. Few had. There was no need, with communications reaching into every home, even every room under the Plan—and the Planner was something more than human, removed from even the condescending social intercourse of emperors.
Gann shivered slightly. He was already assuming the attitudes of the convict of any land or time. He feared change. He dreaded the unknown. And the Planner represented a very large unknown quantity indeed.
Again the tunnels, again the high-velocity drop of the elevators. Again Gann was thrust into a tiny room and left there.
He was somewhere far underground. Listening, he could hear no sound except the muffled murmur of air from the duct overhead. The walls were an unpleasant yellowish gray—no longer quite the sterile Technicorps color, but tinged with Planner's gold. Gann wondered if it was deliberate, or if it was merely that this cell was so old, its occupants viewed with so little favor, that the baked-in coloring of the walls had yellowed with age. The ceiling gave a cold gray light. There was only one bare metal table and one bare metal chair.
The security collar was hard against his throat. Gann sat down and laid his head on the table. His bruises were beginning to stiffen and ache. His brain was whirling.
Confused images were filling his mind. General Wheeler and his menacing hints of reward. Quarla Snow's space-ling, and the pyropods. Julie Martinet. A daytime sky with the sun somehow gone out ... the sunlike fusorian globules in Colonel Zafar's blood ... Julie
Martinet again, and Quarla Snow.
He lived again the endless frightening drop that landed him in the bowels of the planet Earth, among the memory banks of the Machine. He saw again sterile Pluto's vistas of ice, and the great slow spin of Polaris Station.
He thought of the Writ of Liberation and wondered at the love for freedom of the Planless men of the Reefs— the love for freedom—the freedom to love ...
He thought again of Julie Martinet, and submerged himself in memories of the Togetherness resort at Playa Blanca, the slight, dark girl he had heard signing, then-golden dawn together on the beach, with the taste of salt spray on her lips. He could see her face as clearly as if she were in the room with him.
"Julie," he whispered, and she opened her lips to reply ...
"Come on, Risk!" she said queerly—roughly. "Get up! Move!"
The radar-horned NCO was shaking him angrily. "Risk! Wake up!"
Gann shook himself. He had been asleep. His arm was numb and tingling where his head had rested on it.
He was still dazed as they dragged him out of the cell, into another room—larger, brighter, furnished in splendor. It was all gold. Gold tapestries on the wall, showing the spinning worlds of the Plan of Man. Gold light fixtures, and gold trays on the golden tables. The floor a carpeting of gold, the furniture upholstered in a golden fabric.
A guard stood by him at each side, gripping his arms. They brought him to the center of the room and stood there, waiting, while the NCO went to a gold-arched door and whispered to a Technicorps officer in the uniform of the Planner's guard who stood there. The officer nodded impatiently and held up a hand.
The radar-horned guard turned and signaled to his men. Wait.
Boysie Gann was very sure, without being told, of where they were. Beyond that door was the Planner himself.
They were not alone in the room. Turning his neck —the grip of the guards did not allow him to turn his body—he saw that the acolyte girl, Sister Delta Four, was in the room, kneeling on a golden hassock, telling her sonic beads. She was slight. What small sight he could get of her face, under the great soft cowl, was oval, grave, and pale. Her loose black robe fell to the floor around the hassock. Her cape bore the luminous emblem of those who had undergone communion with the Machine—the symbolic ellipses of electronic orbits intertwined.
The Starchild Page 6
