The Outposter

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "Remember—I'm going to live," said Jarl softly. "One of the ones who does."

  Mark left him and followed Ulla down the dim aisle. They mounted the twisting metal stairs to the landing, where the petty officer had the door already open, waiting for them.

  Back once more in the passenger section of the ship, they walked away together in silence, until a turn in the corridor hid them from the two Navy guards. Then Ulla stopped and turned to face Mark, leaning back tiredly against the corridor wall.

  "You might as well know," she said. "Dad will do it if I ask. He's got a few civilian employees at Navy Base, in his Blue One Command. They do maintenance on the obsolete ships the Outer Navy has mothballed there in case of emergency damage to the regular fleet. I talked it over with Jarl, and we both decided to ask Dad to pull strings to get Jarl assigned as a maintenance man. With millions of colonists being shipped off Earth every year, they won't turn down Dad's asking for just one. You don't have to help us—just don't tell Dad you got me in to talk to Jarl. Just promise you won't hinder."

  She almost put her hands appealingly on his gun arm again, but remembered in time and dropped them back to her sides. Mark gazed at her. No one could be this good an actress. On the other hand, it was incredible that anyone could be so ignorant of the machinery that controlled all their lives— Earth-Citians, outposters, and colonists alike.

  "No," he said slowly.

  "No?" Her eyes widened, and she stepped back from him. "You don't mean you will hinder?"

  "I would if I thought I needed to," said Mark. "But I don't. It won't work. You ought to know that's one string not even an admiral-general of the Blue can pull."

  "He can't?" she echoed. "You mean Dad can't get one colonist—just one man?"

  "Of course not," said Mark. "You can buy almost anything back on Earth, but the one thing that's not for sale anywhere is the Earth-City's own survival. Even one man is too many. One man's a precedent, and there aren't going to be any precedents for colonists escaping once they've been lotteried. Earth wants these people gone—for good and without recourse. There's no single individual on Earth the Earth-City wouldn't sacrifice to make sure the excess population it bleeds off stays bled."

  She blinked at him unbelievingly.

  "You—" She ran out of words. "What've you got against Jarl? Why are you picking on him, out of all of them, like this?"

  "I'm not," Mark said. "I'm only somewhat better educated than you seem to be. I'm also a better judge of men. Your friend Jarl knew there wasn't any hope in this maintenance-man idea of yours. It was his idea, wasn't it?— for you to mention it to me." "Why ... yes," she said. "He thought—" "He thought, or maybe you both thought, I might be touched at seeing you cook up such a hopeless scheme," said Mark. "Rakkal must know better than to guess I'd be concerned about him alone. But he could have hoped I might just be concerned enough about you to add one name to my list of colonists. What's one man among millions, you said? Well, what's one man among thousands? And there are thousands at the station I'll be taking over."

  He smiled at her again, and this time there was no doubt the smile was bitter.

  "Tell me," he said. "That phrase about the one man among millions—that was his suggestion too, wasn't it?"

  She exploded suddenly.

  "But you hate him—or me!" she cried. "You must, or you wouldn't be like this." Her hands were clenched into fists, and they quivered helplessly as if she longed to use them upon him, but dared not. "Why are you like this? There's no reason! Why?"

  "There's a reason," he said, and sighed. With that sigh, the bitterness flowed out of him, leaving him empty and resigned. "I'm a disposable—as you said outside the ship—lit­erally a disposable item on the human balance sheets. But you wouldn't understand that any more than anyone else does. Don't worry, I'll take Jarl Rakkal to my station. But for my reasons, not his—or yours."

  "You... will?"

  The unexpected victory was so powerful in its effect on her that she looked at him with unbelieving eyes, hands opening and falling limp.

  He nodded coldly, taking refuge from the effect of those eyes of hers in the memory of the purpose that had dominated him as long as he could remember.

  It did not matter who Ulla was, he reminded himself, or that she could manage to stir him as she did. Nothing mattered, as long as he could use her, or anyone else who came to hand, to do what needed to be done.

  Therefore, it did not matter, either, if she were the spoiled child of wealth and power he had taken her to be at first or whether she were an honestly uninformed idealist who really cared whether a man she had known should be left to scratch for a living in some nameless colony, with no hope of ever regain­ing what he had lost.

  The facts were the only things that mat­tered. The fact that the Space Navy was rotten with a do-nothing spirit; the fact that the Earth was deliberate in its selfish indiffer­ence to the colonists it deported to maintain its own artificial standard of living; the fact that Jarl Rakkal was an example of the worst of Earth in that same selfish indifference, car­ing for nothing but himself and of use to no one but himself, unless some stronger hand took him like a tool and put him to work; the fact that her own father was as corrupt as any other admiral-general in the Space Navy.

  It might be, he thought unexpectedly, that she was aware of these things, but still trying to deny them. As if by some means she could find a way to put nobility back into men like Rakkal and her father, and the whole Earth-City/Colonies arrangement. Yes, Mark told himself now, a little surprised at how true this new insight rang in him, that was the most likely explanation for Ulla. She was obviously the kind that would cling with tooth and nail to anything or anyone she was deter­mined to save, in the face of all the facts.

  "You will?" she was demanding again now, since he had not answered immediately.

  He shook off his speculation, reminding himself once again that whatever she really was did not matter.

  "That's right," he said flatly, "but not for nothing. It's interesting you mentioned that maintenance situation at Navy Base. I've got my own price for picking Jarl Rakkal, and it's a high one. But one you can actually get your father to pay, and one where the strings he pulls will work."

  Chapter Five

  The man on the bed was little more than half a man. Brot Halliday's right leg was gone just below the knee, his left leg almost at the hip. His left arm was missing below the elbow, and the right side of his face and body were just beginning to recover from the temporary paralysis from the corona of the Meda V'Dan fire weapon that had crippled his two legs and one arm. He was supposed to have been dying, but he had not. He had refused, and now the physician that the Navy had sent out to deal with him had endorsed that refusal. It was the physician's conclusion that Brot Halliday would live—for the forseeable future at least. "Mark..." Brot's words were a little blurred with weakness, but strong enough to be heard. He looked up at Mark's face above him, at the side of the bed. "They wanted to put me away and leave the station up for grabs. Hell, no. This is going to be your station, and I'll hold it for you until you're ready to take over...."

  The burst of energy that had allowed him to string three sentences together into a single speech played out suddenly, and his voice left him. He lay, trying to get his vocal cords back into action again, the muscles in his still-thick neck working.

  "Don't talk," said Mark. He had been hold­ing Brot's paralyzed right hand. Now he put it gently back under the bedcover and let go of it. "Plenty of time for that when you're stronger. I brought you some presents. Let me take you outside and show you."

  Mark reached up to touch the autocontrols at the head of the bed. The motors beneath it whirred alive, and the bed floated through the bedroom door on its air cushion, slid across the living room and out the front door of the Residence, into the cool air of early spring of the north temperate zone of Garnera VI.

  "Look," said Mark. He pressed the button that raised the head of the bed, so that Brot
could look forward. The balding round skull was lifted, the hard brown eyes stared out over the square quarter mile of cleared land­ing area before the Residence and the other buildings of the Outpost Station now in the process of reconstruction. There, spaced about the area, were four small squat Navy spaceships, tail down, nose up, and looking ready to lift at a moment's notice.

  "The Navy here? What the hell?" whispered Brot.

  "Not the Navy," said Mark. "They're ours— mothballed heavy scout ships, released to me on lease to help scare away any Meda V'Dan who might think of hitting us again here at Station Fourteen before we've gotten back our full strength."

  Brot stared at the gleaming shapes of the obsolete warcraft. Then, slowly, his chest began to heave. It heaved several times like a bellows working up to full inflation, before the fruits of its effort came forth in a series of short hoarse coughs that were actually laughter.

  "Lower me down ..." he whispered, ex­hausted, when the paroxysm had run its course. "Scarecrow Navy ... really ... play­ing ... scarecrow, after all... Mark, you ... boy ..."

  At that point, he literally did run out of the capacity for speech, and Mark wheeled him back inside to the bedroom. There, Brot spent the better part of an hour building up both his strength and his verbal capacity, before ordering Mark to drive the hospital bed into the Residence planning room for a meeting with the other outposters, those under- Brot's command at Station Fourteen.

  The four of them were there waiting when Mark and Brot finally came in—Horace Hub­ble, the assistant station master, and three senior grade outposters, the youngest of them six years older than Mark.

  "All right," said Brot, when his bed was wheeled into position before the chairs on which they sat waiting, "here's Mark. And you know ... what I want you to do. You'll take orders from him, from now on. Even though on the rolls he's junior to all ... of you."

  Brot's voice ran out into a barely audible whisper and fell silent.

  "I thought so," said Stein Chamoy.

  He got to his feet. He was a tall, rawboned outposter, almost as big as Jarl Rakkal, and second in authority after Horace Hubble at Station Fourteen.

  "Sit down, Stein," said Horace, for Brot's neck was working as he struggled to speak.

  "Sorry, Race," said Stein, looking at him. He looked back at Brot. "And I'm sorry, Brot. Quit trying to split yourself to talk, damn it! You know how I felt about this. I hung on this long hoping you wouldn't try to go through with it."

  "Don't like ... get out ... " whispered Brot.

  "That's what I'm going to do," said Stein. He turned to the doorway of the planning room. "I'll either retire or take a transfer. Let you know in the morning."

  "Hold it," said Race Hubble. He was a thin, gangling, long-armed brown man, with arm and leg joints that looked as loose as a marionette's. "You may not want to take orders from Mark, Stein, but you'll take them from me as long as you're on the rolls at this station. Just hold up a minute. Maybe we can talk this thing out."

  "There's nothing to talk out," said Stein, looking back at Race. He stopped, however, and glanced once more at Brot and Mark. "Unless Brot wants to change his mind."

  "I'll see you ..."

  "Easy Brot," said Race. "Let's all stay easy about this. You've got to admit it's not a normal thing to put four experienced men under the authority of a boy just out of school, with no experience at all."

  "I say ..."

  "No," Mark put his hand on Brot's good shoulder, to calm the older man. "Let me talk to them, Brot. Stein, you were here at the station when Brot carried me home. You know me."

  "I know you, Mark. I like you for that matter, boy," said Stein. "But there are twenty-four hundred plus colonists in my quadrant that need a real station master here at the Outpost to keep them alive and healthy. If I can't give them that, anything else I can give them isn't worth having. You may be hell on wheels someday. Mark, but right now you're just another green kid fresh from Earth with your head full of book learning, and my colonists—your colonists, Mark— can't eat books when the winter comes. As I say, I want out."

  "Wait—" Race Hubble began again, as Stein turned away.

  "No, Race," Mark said, "let him go. If he's made up his mind, then he's not going to listen to me no matter what I tell him. His mind's already closed. I wouldn't be able to use him. Or"—he looked around at Orval Belothen and Paul Trygve, the other two outposters—"any­one else who's got a closed mind."

  Orval Belothen, a short, round-faced out-poster in his early thirties, shifted in his chair and looked at the floor of the planning room, Paul Trygve, slim, dark-haired, and twenty-eight years old, stared straight back at Mark, but with a narrow frown line between his level brows.

  "That's settled, then," said Stein. He headed for the door.

  "Only," Mark said after him, and Stein hesi­tated, looking back, "you might want to make it a transfer instead of retirement, Stein. Just in case a year from now you change your mind about me?"

  For a second more, Stein hesitated.

  "Maybe. All right, a transfer," he said. And went.

  "All right," said Mark to the three who were left. He pulled up a chair for himself and sat down. They faced one another in a rough circle, four men in chairs and one in a floating hospital bed. "I'll tell you why I'm taking what Brot's offered me, and when I'm done if any more of you want to transfer, that's up to you. Stein's right. I'm a green kid fresh from Earth; moreover, I'm a green kid who spent my first thirteen years out here and knows that there's no substitute for experience when you're an outposter. But I've happened to come back out at a time when the whole struc­ture of things is ready to break down. Any of you know what I'm talking about?"

  He looked around at them. They all looked back wordlessly.

  "I didn't really expect you to," Mark said. "The only place it can really be seen is from Earth. But it's plain enough if you look at it from there. Briefly, the whole Colonies plan is reaching the point where it's ready to collapse of its own weight."

  "This is your idea, Mark?" asked Race.

  "It's the idea of a number of scholars who've taken the trouble to dig into the situ­ation—like a man named Wilkes Danielson, who was my tutor on Earth-City. The trouble is, a man like Wilkes can talk his head off and everyone listens because of his reputation. But no one remembers what he says for five minutes, because they'd rather they'd never heard it in the first place."

  "Mark," said Orval Belothen, "are you plan­ning to bet this Outpost and its colony and all of us on some theory dreamed up by book­worms away back on Earth-City, where they don't know anything about conditions out here anyway, and don't want to know?"

  "It's no bet, Orv," said Mark. "It's a case of a volcano exploding, sooner or later, and whether we're making up our minds to move now or to wait until we see the hot lava bearing down on us."

  Orv nodded, but he sat back in his chair, plucking at his lower lip. Mark turned to Paul Trygve.

  "How about you, Paul?"

  "I'm listening," said the youngest of the station's regular outposters.

  "Then I'll get into it." Mark leaned forward in his chair. "I brought those scout ships out­side for a number of reasons. But one of them was to prove something of what I'm saying. I got them all—four ships worth maybe twenty million in credits—for doing a single small favour for the admiral-general of the Blue. I agreed to include one colonist, on request, in my choices from a shipped batch, for our sta­tion here. Four ships for one colonist. Stop and think about that for a second. That's how worm-eaten the Navy's getting."

  He paused.

  "What's this colonist got?" Orv exploded.

  " Jaseth Showell's daughter likes him," said Mark.

  Orv looked at Race, at Brot, and over at Paul.

  "I can't believe it," he said.

  "Do you believe it?" Mark demanded.

  Orv hesitated, shook his head a little, then nodded.

  "I'll believe you—if you're sure you know what you're talking about, M
ark," he said.

  "I was the one who made the trade with Showell," said Mark.

  Slowly, Orv nodded again.

  "All right, then," said Mark. "The Navy's gone rotten. The Earth-City's gone rotten. The colonist system is breaking down. The Meda V'Dan are getting more uncontrolled every day—look at their attacking a five-man Out­post station like this. Ten years ago, they'd never have risked anything so open or on such a scale. They'd have known that the Navy would have had to retaliate. Now they know they can do something like this and the Navy won't send out a single ship to hunt down the aliens who did it. How about it, Orv? Am I right about that or not?"

  Orv looked grimly at him.

  "You're right, as far as the Meda V'Dan and the Navy go nowadays, anyway," he said. "All right, Mark. Let's have the whole story. I'm listening."

  "It's simple enough," said Mark. "The Colonies system is gradually bankrupting the Earth-City economically. In theory this shouldn't be happening. In theory the older colonies by this time should be self-support­ing, freeing supplies, equipment, and outpost­ers to work with the newer Colonies. It hasn't worked out that way, though, because the plan was rotten at the core to begin with."

  "Now, wait—" Orv said.

  "Wait yourself, Orv," said Mark. "You know it was. The theory was that since not enough people were emigrating Earth volun­tarily to hold the population there down to workable limits, we have a lottery—an abso­lutely fair and square lottery that would force emigration of the necessary number of people purely on a chance basis."

  "It was a good theory," put in Paul, "par­ticularly for the situation at that time, a hun­dred years ago. Something had to be done fast."

  "True enough," said Mark, looking at Paul, "only it hasn't worked out. In practice, they needed experts to guide the amateur colonists—us outposters. They needed an armed force to protect them—the Space Navy. And the people manning those organizations had to be exempt from the lottery. So did necessary Earth government figures. So did certain peo­ple necessary to the running of the Earth-City, and so on. No wonder it has all ended up just the way it has. The lottery gets its pick all right—but only of the human garbage of Earth. And garbage doesn't make very good colonists. Which means that Colonies founded nearly a hundred years ago still aren't able to run themselves without outposters, or sur­vive without supply shipments, or face the Meda V'Dan without either the Navy or us to fight for them."