He opened his eyes, and saw a Technicorps medical orderly retreating from him, the communion probe wires in his hand. He had been cut off from the joy of the Planning Machine.
Gann took a long shuddering breath and reconciled himself to being human again. He could understand Sister Delta Four. He could accept his destiny hi communion with the Machine. No other reward could be half-as great as this, no other purpose as important...
Dazedly he became aware that something was wrong. The Technicorps man's face was pale with fear. Voices shouted from outside, and one of them was queerly familiar.
Gann struggled to his feet, apprehensive and wary. When the door burst open, it was Machine General Wheeler who came into the room like a raging typhoon. "Gann!" he roared. "Starchild! You devil, what have you done?"
"I? Done? Nothing, General—and I'm not the Star-child, I swear it!"
"Filth!" howled the general. "Don't lie to me! What have you done to the Planning Machine?"
Gann started to reply, to defend himself. The general gave him no chance. "Lies!" he raged. "Starchild, you've destroyed us all! Admit it! Admit that it was you who has driven the Planning Machine hopelessly mad!"
Chapter 12
The Plan of Man had gone amok. All over Earth, out into the asteroid belt, in the refrigerated warrens on Mercury, in the sunless depths of Pluto and on the slowly wheeling forts of the Spacewall, the terror had struck. Routing orders crashed one subcar ball into another two thousand miles below the surface of the earth. Six hundred persons died in a meteor-like gout of suddenly blazing gases that melted the subcar shaft and let the molten core pour in.
On Venus a Technicaptain received routine programming instructions from the Machine and, obediently, set a dial and turned a switch. It flooded forty thousand hard-won acres of reclaimed land with oily brine.
A "man of golden fire" appeared on the stage of the great Auditorium of the Plan in Peiping, where the Vice-Planner for Asia had been scheduled to speak to his staff. The golden man disappeared again, and twenty raging pyropods flashed out of nowhere into the hall, killing and destroying everything within reach. The Vice-Planner, minutes late in keeping his engagement, has his life spared in consequence.
In short, sharp words, Machine General Wheeler barked out the story of the catastrophes that were overwhelming the Plan. "The Starchild! Seen in the vaults of the Planning Machine—and now the Machine's gone mad. Its orders are wrong! Its data can't be trusted! Gann, if you are the Starchild—"
Boysie Gann had been pushed too far, In a shout louder than Wheeler's own he roared, "General! I'm not the Starchild! Don't be a fool!"
Suddenly the machinelike face of the general seemed to wilt and crack. It was in a very human voice that he said, after a moment. "No. Perhaps you're not. But what in the name of the Plan is going on?"
Gann snapped, "I thought you were telling me that. What's this about the Starchild being seen in the Machine itself?"
"Just that, Gann. Guards reported someone there. A squad was sent down, and they saw him. He was at the manual consoles—changing the settings, erasing miles of tape, reversing connections. The Machine is mad now, Gann. And the Plan is going mad with it. All over the world."
"Never mind that! What did he look like, this Star-child?"
Machine General Wheeler squared his shoulders and backed crisply, "A man. Golden, they say. Almost as if he were luminous. Photographs were taken, but he was not recognized. It ... didn't resemble you, Gann. But I thought—"
"You thought you'd come here anyway. Use me as a scapegoat, maybe. Is that it? The way you did when you pretended I shot Delta Four?"
The general tried to protest; then his lips smacked shut like the closing of a trap. He nodded his head twice, briskly, like a metronome. "Yes!"
Gann was taken aback. He had not expected so quick a confession. All he could do was say, "But why? Why did you shoot her? To get her out of the way as a witness?"
"Of course," rapped Machine General Wheeler.
"And pretend I was the' Starchild? To make yourself more important to the Planner and the Machine?"
"Precisely," the general crackled out.
Gann studied him thoughtfully, then said, "Something must have changed your mind. What was it?"
The general answered without changing expression or tone. Only a faint color on the brow, a pale brightness as of perspiration, showed the strain he must have felt. "The girl recovered," he snapped. "She told the Planner the truth—that I had merely found that document, and planted it on you. The Planner reported to the Machine and—"
"And what?" demanded Boysie Gann.
The general's voice cracked. "And the Machine went mad. It ordered my arrest. Then it began ordering the arrest of Sister Delta Four, the Vice-Planner for Central America, the guards in the Hall of the Planner, even the Planner himself. There was confusion. I shot my way clear. I secured an aircraft, the one Sister Delta Four had come to the Planner's headquarters in, and I escaped. But I must leave Earth, Gann! I want you to take me to the Reefs, because ... because I must get away."
"Get away? Why?"
The general's voice tolled out the answer. "In shooting my way out of the Planner's headquarters, I killed two men. One of them was the Planner."
Boysie Gann had never known where the training school was located on Earth. As they emerged to the surface he saw for the first time the great sweep of mountains to the north, felt the icy sting of cold air, and realized that they were on the plateaus below the Himalayas. For thousands of years only nomads and warriors had shared this bleak, desolate land. Now a great hydroelectric plant boomed beyond the level sweep of a rocket-port hewn out of rock.
There was something about the power plant that looked strange. As Machine General Wheeler led him quickly to a waiting jetcraft Gann realized what was wrong with the hydroelectric plant. Even at this distance he could see that it was a wreck. Its great windows reflected no light; they were shattered. There were cracks in its solid masonry walls. There had been an explosion within— some mighty burst of short-circuiting energy, volatilizing all matter within its scope.
"Never mind that," rapped out the general "Come aboard! There's someone there you'll want to see."
Gann followed, staring about. If destruction had come even here, it must be radically more far-reaching than he had dreamed.
Was it the Starchild?
And who was the Starchild? Hurrying after General Wheeler, Gann's mind was a vortex of thoughts, memories, impressions. The body-shaking rupture of his communion with the Machine. The terrible fight in the Planner's hall, and the terrible shock that had struck him when he saw Sister Delta Four—the girl who had once been Julie Martinet, his love—shot down before him. The long, dizzying fall through nonspace, from the Reefs to Earth. The strange hermit, Harry Hickson ...
It was almost more than he could take in. Bemused, he was hardly aware when they reached the waiting jet-ship. He followed General Wheeler into the open hatch, and then he saw who it was who awaited them there.
"Julie!" he cried. "Julie Martinet!"
But it was Sister Delta Four who answered. "Come in. Close the hatch. We must take off at once! I have a message from the Machine."
General Wheeler reacted at once. He turned and closed the hatch, then leaped across the narrow cabin of the jet-ship and snatched from the grasp of Sister Delta Four the black cube that was her linkbox. "Fool!" he rasped. "A message from the Machine! Don't you know the Machine's gone mad? The Starchild has been tampering with it. It is no longer functioning according to Plan. The evidence of your eyes should tell you that. Can't you see what's been going on?"
The girl lifted her head, unafraid, and stared at him with objective, remote eyes. The black fabric of her hood fell away, baring the bright medallion of the communion plate in her forehead, just like Boysie Gann's own. She said in her melodic, chiming voice, "I serve the Machine, General Wheeler. And you are a traitor, condemned to death."
"So are you, for
that matter," growled the general. He tossed the linkbox to Boysie Gann. "Here. Keep her quiet while I get us started. We've got to get off Earth at once." He dived for the control cabin to set the automatic instruments that would start the motors, take the plane off the field, fly it straight and true to its destination, radio for landing instructions, and set it down. Gann glanced at the linkbox in his hands', then at Sister Delta Four.
The linkbox carried its communion plug racked in a recess in its cubical bulk. Gann could see the bright glitter of its rounded tips that mated so perfectly with the plate in his own skull.
If, he thought ponderously, he were to take that plug off its clip and place it into the plate in his forehead ...if he were to complete his communion ... he would once again feel that total rapture, that almost unbearableecstasy of soul and senses that he had tasted, just once, an hour before.
The temptation was overpowering.
He could understand Julie—or rather, Sister Delta Four —a great deal better now. There had never been an addiction like this one, no drug, no narcotic, no mere alcoholic craving that was as overpowering in its appeal.
He could understand why Julie Martinet had given up family, freedom, the pleasures of the senses, and himself for the shroud of an acolyte of the Machine.
He could understand it, because he was all but at that point himself, after one single exposure... .
With a swift motion, before he could stop to think, he lifted the linkbox and dashed it to the floor. It crackled and sputtered. In its static-filled buzzing sound he could detect some of the tonal morphemes he had been taught, but he did not give himself a chance to puzzle out their meaning, did not allow the linkbox the time to beg for its preservation—if that was its intention. He lifted a foot and crushed it, stamped it again and again, like a noxious insect. Its buzzing abruptly stopped. There was a faint blue flash of electric sparks; then it was only a mangled mass of printed circuits and crushed transistors.
"That's the end of that, Julie," he said. "And that's the end of our relationship with the Machine."
She was watching him silently, her eyes dark and incurious.
"Don't you have anything to say?" he demanded.
She pealed, "Only what I am instructed to tell youi Major Gann. The message that was given me by the Machine."
"Damn the Machine!" he cried. "Can't you understand that's over? It's finished. Gone! First we have to try to straighten out this mess; then—maybe then!—we can think about using the Machine again. Using itl Not letting it use us!"
"I know nothing of that, Major Gann," she sang. "I only know the message. It follows: To Major Gann. Action. Proceed at once to the "Togethership" on the Reefs of Space via Mercury Terminator Line Station Seven. Message ends."
Gann shook his head dazedly. "Julie, Julie!" he protested. "That's ridiculous on the face of it. Go to the Reefs by way of Mercury? That's like coming across a room by way of ... of Deneb. It's not the way at all—"
"I don't know about that," rasped the voice of Machine General Wheeler from behind him. Gann turned. The general was standing in the open door of the control cabin, something hi his hand. His expression was dark and fearful, like some trapped and dangerous creature of the jungle.
Gann said, "But Mercury is near the Sun. Even if we wanted to go to the farthest part of the Reefs, where we're at superior conjunction, we might go near Mercury, yes, but we'd never land there. Not anywhere on the planet, much less at some particular station on the terminator line."
"Go there we will," rapped General Wheeler. "Land there we will. And at the station. Major Gann! I told you I intended to go to the Reefs at once and wanted you with me. I had a reason. See here! This dropped to the ground before me as I was leaving the Planner's chambers after my—ah—episode with the guns."
Wordlessly Boysie Gann took the document It was a creamy square, without signature, and on it were the words:
If you would save yourself, your people, and your worlds, bring Machine Major Boysie Gann and yourself to the Togethership on the Reefs of Space. The gateway will be found at the Plan of Man solar observatory on Mercury, Terminator Station Seven.
'The Starchild!" cried Gann.
General Wheeler nodded with a harsh, mechanical up-down, up-down.
"A message from the Starchild, yes. And the same message from the Planning Machine. Major Gann! Do you realize what this means? The Planning Machine is the Starchild!"
Chapter 13
At some point they transhipped into a Plan of Man jetless-drive cruiser. Gann paid little attention.
He was using the time in the best way he could, to rest, to try to recover from the shocks and stresses of the last few weeks. And how „ fast they had accumulated, how violently they had drained him of strength, and of peace of mind!"
He could still feel the distant ache in his forehead, in the bones of his skull, behind his eyes, in his sinuses —the track of the probes of the surgeons who had implanted the communion electrodes in his brain.
He could feel the aches and bruises of his working over by the Planner's guards. How long ago?
He was exhausted still from the battle with the pyropods and the long drop to Earth. His weary muscles still bore the fatigue poisons of his fight on Harry Hickson's reeflet...
He closed his eyes, and Quarla Snow came into his mind. He opened them, and Sister Delta Four sat quietly unmoving, her eyes fixed on him, before him.
He was beginning to feel himself again. With the return of strength there returned the question of the two women, so unlike yet so much in his thoughts. He said, "Julie, Sister Delta Four, if you'd rather. Do you know that what General Wheeler said is true? That the Machine is mad?"
Her perfect face, half hidden in the cowl, did not change expression. "I know that is what the general said," she sang.
"But it is mad, Julie. The Starchild has wrecked it Now it is wrecking the Plan planets. Do you still want to serve it?"
"I serve the Planning Machine," she chimed sweetly, her dark eyes cool and empty.
"Because of the bliss of communion? I understand that, Julie. Don't forget"—he touched the glittering plate in his forehead—"I've felt it too."
There was a flicker in her eyes, almost an expression of indulgent amusement as she looked at him. But she only said, in her voice like the sound of bens, "What you felt, Major Gann, is only a shabby imitation of what the Machine gives its true servants. For you are only half a servant The Machine has not opened its mind to you."
Puzzled, Gann asked, "You mean ... mind-to-mind linkage? Communication with the—what could you call it?—with the thoughts of the Machine?"
She only shrugged. "It is something of that sort, perhaps," she said indifferently. "You cannot know." She sang a quick chiming chorus of tonal morphemes. Gann tried to follow, but was lost almost at once.
"You said something about the ... the soul?" he guessed. "The soul of the Machine?"
"You see? I am sorry for you, Major Gann," she said. "More for you than for myself. Since you have destroyed my linkbox I cannot reach the Machine, but some day perhaps I will find another linkbox. You will never attain it"
Machine General Wheeler had been dozing while they spoke. Now Gann became aware that the general was awake and listening to them. When he saw Gann's eyes on him, the general sat up and laughed raspingly, like an ancient, ill-kept machine.
"A fool," he said, hurling one bright, contemptuous look at the girl. "And you're another, Gann. You're not fit to survive, either of you."
"I survive if the Machine desires it," chimed the girl clearly. "I will cease when the Machine no longer needs me."
The general ticked off a nod and turned to Gann. "You see? And what is it that keeps you alive?"
Gann said seriously, "I don't know." He got up, moved restlessly about the cramped quarters of the Plan cruiser, his step light and imprecise in the tiny gravity its jetless thrust supplied. He said, "Out on the Reefs they talk about freedom. I'm not sure, but ... Yes. I think it
is that hope that keeps me going now, the hope that freedom is real, and good."
The general laughed again. Without passion, as if playing back an ancient tape recording in his brain, he said, "The Planner I just killed understood freedom. He called it 'the romantic fallacy.' Freedom is what permits the dirty, Planless nomads of the Reefs to eke out their wretched lives. It is a myth."
"I saw happy men and women on the Reefs," said Boysie Gann softly, less to the general than to himself.
"You saw animals! They believe that men are good. They believe that mere human men and women, left to their own un-Planned devices on any drifting rock somewhere in space, can somehow find within themselves the natural springs of morality and intellectual enlightenment and progress. They are wrong!"
He blinked at Gann and the silent, composed girl. "Men are evil," he said. "The givers of laws have always known that men are essentially bad. They must be goaded into whatever good they display. Our Plan of Man was created to defend this classic philosophy—the cornerstone of all civilization. The Plan recognizes the evil in man. It forces him to goodness and progress. There is no other way!"
Mercury, the hell planet, lay before them.
The guiding sensors of their Plan cruiser reached out with fingers of radiation to touch the planet, the Sun; sought reference points by optical examination of the fixed bright stars; scanned the limbs and poles of Mercury, and accurately fixed the proper point on the terminator line of the sun's radiation. Then, satisfied, or in whatever state passes in a machine for satisfaction, it completed its landing corrections and directed the cruiser into a landing orbit.
The great naked fire of the Sun hung only thirty-odd million miles away—three times as close as to Earth, its mighty outpouring of light and heat nine times as great. Its surface was mottled with great ugly spots, leprous with the scaly markings called faculae and granulations. It was painful to watch, bright and blinding. Machine General Wheeler moved a hand angrily, and the vision screen obediently blotted out the central disk, like a solar eclipse; then they could see the somber scarlet chromosphere, the leaping red arches of prominences, like slow-motion snakes striking at the void and, surrounding all, the white blazing radiance of the corona.
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