Hale would probably shoot him on sight. Or would he, as Joel Reed? No one knew Sam yet except Sari, but who could guess what wild caprices might move her between now and the time he was face to face with Hale? He had better act fast.
He did.
The most striking thing about the Colony was that it might just as well have been undersea.
At no time since Sam Reed had left the Keep was the open sky ever above his head. First there was the Keep’s impervium dome and above that a mile of water. Then the plane, with its alloy and plastic shell. After that, the great Colony locks, with their safeguards against infection—UV, acid spray, and so on—and now he stood on the land of Venus, with a transparent impervium dome catching rainbows wherever the fugitive sun broke through the cloud blanket The air smelt the same. That was a tip-off. The free air of Venus was short on oxygen and long on carbon dioxide; it was breathable, but not vintage atmosphere. And it was unmistakable. Here, under the dome, the atmospheric ingredients were carefully balanced. Necessary, of course—just as the impervium shell itself seemed necessary against the fecund insanity that teemed the Venusian lands—flora and fauna bursting up toward the light, homicidally and fratricidally determined to bud and seed, to mate and breed, in an environment so fertile that it made its own extraordinary imbalance.
On the shore stood the old Fort, one-time stronghold of the Doonemen Free Companions. It had been rehabilitated. It, too, was inclosed under the impervium, the great shell a quarter of a mile in diameter. There were small houses arranged here and there, with no attempt at planning. The houses themselves were of all shapes, sizes, and colors. With no rainfall or winds here, the architects had a free hand. The only limitations were those of natural gravity, and paragravitic shields made even Pisa-towers possible. Still, there was nothing really extravagant in material or design. No lavishness. The whole Colony had an air of faint attrition.
There was no open land visible beneath the dome.
The ground had been floored over with plastic materials. Protection against the ground-lichens? Probably. Great hydroponic tanks were the gardens, though a few shallow tanks held sterilized soil. Men were working, rather lazily. It seemed a siesta hour.
Sam walked along one of the paths, following the sign that pointed toward Administration. A mild agoraphobia afflicted him. All his life he had dwelt under an opaque dome, knowing the weight of water above it, shutting out the upper air. Now through the translucent impervium above he had glimpses of watery sunlight, and the illumination was not artificial, though it seemed a bad imitation of the surrogate daylight of the Keep lamps.
His mind was very busy. He was taking in all he saw, evaluating it, packing facts and impressions away against the moment when his innate opportunism saw its chance. He had for the moment dismissed Sari and the Harkers. Let that group of ideas settle and incubate. How Robin Hale would receive Sam Reed, or Sam’s son, was the important question now. He did not consider that he owed Hale any debt. Sam did not think in terms like that. He thought only in terms of what would best benefit Sam Reed—and the Colony was something that still looked promising to him.
A girl in a pink smock, bending over a tank of growing things, looked up as he passed. It was curious to see the effect even diluted sunlight made upon the faces of these Landsiders. Her skin was creamy, not milk-white as Sari’s in the Keep. She had smooth brown hair, brushed sleek, and her eyes were brown, with a subtly different focus from the eyes of Keep people. An impervium dome shut in her life as fully as any undersea Keep life, but light from the sun came through it, and the jungle pressed ravenously against the gates—a hungry, animate jungle, not the dead weight of sea water. You could tell by her eyes that she was aware of it.
Sam lingered a little. “Administration?” he asked unnecessarily.
“That way.” Her voice was pleasant.
“Like it here?”
She shrugged. “I was born here. The Keeps must be wonderful. I’ve never seen a Keep.”
“You wouldn’t know the difference—there isn’t any,” Sam assured her, and went on with a troubling thought in his mind. She had been born here. She could be no more than twenty. She was pretty, but not wholly to his taste. And the idea had come to him that if she had only partially the qualities he liked in a woman, he could afford to wait for her daughter, or her daughter’s daughter—if he chose the parents of the final product with reasonable care. An Immortal could work out a strain of humanity as a mortal could breed for elegance in cats or speed in horses. Except that the product would be only a cut flower, lovely but perishing in a day. He wondered how many of the Immortals did just that, maintaining in effect a harem in time as well as in space. It would be excellent, so long as one’s emotions remained unengaged.
The Governor of the Land Colony should have been busy. He wasn’t. A minute after Sam sent in his assumed name, the door opened with an automatic click and he walked into Robin Hale’s office.
“Joel Reed?” Hale said slowly. His stare was intent, and it took all Sam’s hardihood to meet it without shrinking a little.
“Yes. Sam Reed was my father.” He said it with a bit of bravado.
“All right,” Hale said. “Sit down.”
Sam looked at him through the thin protection of his eye shields. It might have been yesterday they met last, Hale had changed so little. Or—no, he had changed, but in ways too subtle for the eye to catch. The voice told more of the story. He was still thin, still brown, still quiet, a man whose mind was attuned to patience because of the years behind him and the centuries ahead. He could accept any defeat as temporary, and any victory as evanescent.
This change in him was temporary too, but no less real for that. He had not quite the quiet enthusiasm of voice and manner that Sam remembered. The thing he had been working toward with high hope when they parted was an accomplished fact now, and a finished failure. But it was so brief a thing in the total of Hale’s experience—that was it, Sam realized, staring at the man.
Robin Hale remembered the Free Companion days, the long war years, the time generations past when the last vestiges of mankind had been free to roam the seas, free to face danger. It had been matter-of-fact enough, Sam knew. A business, not a swashbuckling romance. But emotions had run high and the life the Free Companions led was nomadic, the last nomads before mankind returned wholly to the shelter of the Keeps, the stagnation of the underseas. The Keeps were the tomb, or the womb, or both, for the men of Venus, who had begun their life as wild tribesmen on Earth.
Sam was beginning to feel the first stirrings of interest in his own kind as a long-term investment for a long-lived Immortal.
“Are you a volunteer?” Hale asked.
Sam came back to himself with something of a jolt. “No,” he said.
“I didn’t know Sam Reed had a son.” Hale was still looking at him with that quiet, speculative stare that Sam found hard to meet. Could one Immortal know another, through any disguise, simply by those mannerisms no man could wholly hide? He thought it likely. It didn’t apply to himself—yet for he was not yet immortal in the sense that these others were. He had not acquired the long-term view with which they kept life at bay.
“I didn’t know myself until just lately,” he said, making his voice matter-of-fact. “My mother changed my name after the Colony scandal.”
“I see.” Hale was noncommittal.
“Do you know what happened to my father?” That was pushing things. If Hale said, ’“Yes—you’re Sam Reed,” it would at least settle this uncertainty. But if he didn’t, it need not mean he had failed to recognize Sam.
The Free Companion shook his head. “He dream-dusted. I suppose he’s dead by now. He’d made enemies after the bubble burst.”
“I know. You … you must have been one of them.”
Hale shook his head again, smiling faintly. Sam knew what the smile meant. One neither hates nor loves the ephemeral short-lived. Temporary annoyance is the worst they can evoke. Nevertheless Sam was not te
mpted to reveal himself. Olympians had the god-prerogative of being unpredictable. Zeus tossed thunderbolts on impulse.
“It wasn’t Sam Reed’s fault,” Hale said. “He couldn’t help being a swindler. It was born in him and bred in him. Anyhow, he was only a tool. If it hadn’t been Sam, it would have been someone or something else. No, I never hated him.”
Sam swallowed. All right, he had asked for that. Briskly he moved on to the next point. “I’d like your advice, Governor Hale. I’ve only learned who I really am lately. I’ve been checking up. I know my father was a crook and a swindler, but the government found his caches and paid back everything—right?”
“Right.”
“He left me nothing—not even his name, for forty years. But I’ve been investigating, just in case. There was one asset my father had when he dream-dusted, and that wasn’t taken away from him. A land-grant. Forty years ago the government issued him a patent on certain Venusian land areas, and that grants still valid. What I want to know is this: Is it worth anything?”
He tapped his fingers on the desk. “Why did you come to me?”
“My father was with you when the Colony started. I figured you’d know. You’d remember. You’re an Immortal; you were alive then.”
Hale said, “I knew about that patent, of course. I tried to get hold of it. But it was in your father’s name, absolutely watertight. The government wouldn’t release. As a matter of fact, land-grants aren’t revokable. There’s a reason. On Venus all colonies presumably have to depend for existence on the Keeps, and it would be easy to cut off supplies if necessary. So you’ve inherited that patent, eh?”
Sam said, “Is it worth anything?”
“Yes. The Harkers would pay you a good deal to suppress the information.”
“The Harkers? Why?”
“So I couldn’t start a new colony,” Hale said, and his hand on the desk opened slowly from a tight-balled fist. “That’s why. I started this Colony, after your father—after the collapse. I went ahead anyway. The good publicity we’d built up boomeranged. We had to start on a skeleton crew. Just a few, who believed in the same things I did. Not many of them are still alive. It was a tough life in the beginning.”
“It doesn’t look so tough,” Sam said.
“Now? It isn’t. The Colony’s been emasculated. You see—what the Harkers did was try to stop me from even starting the Colony. They couldn’t stop me. And after I’d started, they didn’t dare let me fail. Because, eventually, they want to colonize Venus, and they don’t want the psychological effect of a failure chalked up in history. They couldn’t let me fail once I’d started, but they wouldn’t let me succeed either. They didn’t believe I could succeed. So—”
“So?”
“Attrition. Oh, we worked hard the first year. We did it with our fingernails. We didn’t lick the jungle, but we started. We got the Colony cleared and built. It was a fight every step, because the jungle kept pushing back in. But we kept going. Then we were ready to reach out—to establish a new beachhead. And the Harkers stopped us cold.
“They cut off our supplies.
“They sat in the Keeps and made sure there wouldn’t be any volunteers.
“The equipment dwindled. The power dwindled. The machines stopped coming.
“According to the original charter, we had to show an annual profit. Or the government could step in as administrator till matters got on an even basis again. They couldn’t take my grant away from me, but they could cut down the blood supply so the Colony wouldn’t be able to show a profit. That’s what they did, thirty-four years ago. Since then, the government has been administrator here—maintaining the status quo.
“They administer. They give us enough supplies so we won’t fail. But not enough so we can go forward. They don’t want us to go forward—because there’s the risk of failure. They want to wait until there’s no risk. And that time will never come.”
Hale looked at Sam, a deep fire beginning to glow far back in his eyes under the scowling brows. Was he talking to Joel Reed—or to Sam? It was hard to be sure. Certainly he was saying more than he would say to the casual visitor.
“My hands are tied,” Hale went on. “Nominally I’m Governor. Nominally. Everything here has come to a full stop. If I had another patent—if I could start another colony—” He paused, looking at Sam from under meeting brows. “They won’t grant me a patent. You can see how important yours is. The Harkers would pay you very well to suppress it.”
That was it, then. That was the reason behind his freedom of speech. He had finished, but he did not look at Sam. He sat motionless behind his bare-topped desk, waiting. But he made no plea and no argument.
For what could he offer the man before him? Money? Not as much as the Harkers could offer. A share in the new colony? By the time it would begin to pay off any short-term man would be long dead.
On impulse Sam said suddenly, “What could you do with the patent, Governor?”
“Start over, that’s all. I couldn’t pay you much. I could lease the patent from you, but there’d be no profit for many years. They’d be eaten up by the costs. On Venus a colony has to keep moving, spreading out. It’s the only way. I know that now.”
“But what if you failed? Wouldn’t the government come in again as administrator—the same thing over again? Wouldn’t they see you did fail?”
Hale was silent.
Sam hammered at him. “You’d need a big stake to start a new colony. You—”
“I’m not arguing,” Hale said. “I told you you’d get more money from the Harkers.”
It was Sam’s turn for silence. A dozen possibilities were already taking shape in his mind—ways to raise money, to circumvent the Harkers, to spread propaganda, to make the next colony a success in spite of all opposition. This time he thought he could do it. He had all the time in the world and it would be worthwhile now to invest it in a successful colony.
Hale was watching him, a flicker of hope beginning to show through the fatalistic inertia which had dulled all he said until now. And Sam was a little puzzled by the man. With all that long life behind him, all that unthinkable maturity which must be the sum of his experiences, still he had turned once and was ready to turn again to Sam Reed, short-lived, immature to the point of childishness from an Immortal’s view. Hale was ready to let his most cherished venture fail for lack of ideas and initiative, unless this man before him, short-lived as a cat and as comparatively limited in scope, could take over for him.
Why?
A vague parallel with the social history of Old Earth swam up in Sam’s memory. Somewhere in his reading he had encountered the theory that those countries on Earth which the Mongol hordes invaded in very ancient times had been so completely vitiated by the terrible experience that they had never again been able to regain their initiative. With all the resources their countries offered, the people themselves remained helpless to use them or to compete with other peoples who had not been robbed of that essential spark.
Perhaps the same thing had happened to Robin Hale. He was the only man alive now who had fought with the Free Companions. Had he expended in those wild, vigorous years the spark that would move him now if he still possessed it? He had the centuries of experience and knowledge and accumulating maturity, but he no longer had the one essential thing that could let him use them.
Sam had it, in abundance. And it occurred to him suddenly that perhaps of all men alive he alone did possess it. Hale had the long life but not the will to use it. The other Immortals had initiative enough, but—
“If we wait on the Families, the time never will come to move,” Sam said aloud, in a marveling voice, as if he had never heard the idea before.
“Of course not.” Hale was calm. “It may be too late already.”
Sam scarcely heard him. “They think they’re right,” he went on, exploring this new concept which had never dawned on him before. “But they don’t want a change! They’ll go right on waiting until even they re
cognize they’ve waited too long, and then maybe they’ll be a little bit glad it is too late. They’re conservatives. The people on top are always conservatives. Any change has to be for the worse where they’re concerned.”
“That applies to the Keep people, too,” Hale told him. “What can we offer any of them to match what they already have? Comfort, security, plenty of entertainment, a complete, civilized life. All we have up here is danger and hardship and the chance that maybe in a couple of hundred years they can begin to duplicate on land what they already have undersea, without working for it. None of them would live to cash in on the rewards even if they saw the necessity for changing.”
“They responded once,” Sam pointed out. “When … when my father promoted the first Colony scheme.”
“Oh, yes. There’s plenty of discontent. They know they’re losing something. But it’s one thing to talk about romance and adventure and quite another to endure the danger and hardships that make up the total sum. These people lack a drive. Pioneers are pioneers because conditions at home are intolerable, or because conditions elsewhere look more promising or … or because there’s a Grail or a Holy Land or something like it to summon them. Here it’s simply a small matter like the salvation of the race of man—but intangibles are beyond their grasp.”
Sam wrinkled red brows at him. “Salvation of the race of man?” he echoed.
“If colonization doesn’t start now, or soon, it never will. Our korium supplies will be too low to support it. I’ve said that over and over until the words come out whenever I open my mouth, it’s that automatic. The race of man will come to an end in a few more centuries, huddled down there in their safe Keep-wombs with their power-source dwindling and their will to live dwindling until nothing remains of either. But the Families are going to oppose every move I make and go on opposing like grim death, until it’s too late to move at all.” Hale shrugged. “Old stuff. It’s out of fashion even to think in those terms any more, down in the Keeps, they tell me.”
Sam squinted at him. There was conviction in the Immortal’s voice. He believed Hale. And while the ultimate destiny of the race was far too vague a concept to worry Sam at all, his own increased life-span made the next few hundred years a very vital subject. Also, he had a score to settle with the Harkers. And there were almost unlimited possibilities in this colonizing project, if it were handled by a man like Sam Reed.
Fury Page 11
