"We think your wife and child are worth saving, Starn. Are you with us?"
Starn was tempted. He realized that his religious faith had been seriously eroded by Richhold and Higgins. He no longer felt he would be morally wrong in continuing his battle with a man who had once defeated him fairly. And the sense of deep depression with which he had awakened in his artificial body was giving away to a restlessness, a desire to be doing something—anything at all.
But he shrugged. "What would be the use? What happened before would happen again. I'm the same man Nornt has proved he can beat."
"Not quite," replied Higgins. "Rob couldn't read you, remember! You were a blank to him. You would be the same to Nornt and his slavies! He wouldn't even know you were around unless someone was eyeballing you! And he'll find this body of yours isn't easy to kill!"
Starn considered this. What Higgins said was probably true, and that would make a fight with Nornt a very unusual affair! It would be more like a hunt than a battle. The old woodman skills of following sign and tracking would be more critical, perhaps, than the Novo senses. To a man who had always enjoyed hunting, it was an appealing picture.
Slowly he nodded.
"Fine!" exclaimed Higgins. "Now, there's just one problem that can't be solved the way we did before. Your people won't accept you now, because you can't be read—and we don't want them in contact with you, anyway. So the question is; how do we locate Nornt?"
"I think I know where he is," said Starn thoughtfully.
"Something Huill caught from his thoughts when we first came in range and frightened him. He thought about Pile-Up Mountain. I'll look for him there."
8
Pile-Up Mountain was a lonely peak at the end of a minor offshoot of the main range. It stood above a low rolling countryside that, while thickly wooded and certainly fertile, was seldom trod by men. The area had an evil repute, and was the subject of numerous ugly legends. Probably some time in the dim centuries of the past, perhaps all the way back in the years of terror following the fall of Science, deeds of great horror had happened thereabouts.
In the pre-dawn of a crisp winter morning a dark Olsapern flier dropped onto a bald strip of old roadway three miles from the mountain, and Starn leaped to the ground. The flier soared away, to follow, from great altitude, Starn's fortunes through special devices included in his artificial body.
Starn walked rapidly toward the mountain, taking advantage of what darkness was left to get close while there was little risk of being seen. The old roadway brought him close under the mountain's steep eastern slope, where he turned into the thick underbrush and began a slow ascent. By then there was enough light to disclose footprints or other signs of man. He did not unsling his long gun, but carried at the ready the weapon he preferred under the circumstances: a powerful bow. He reached the sheer rockwall that stood around the summit without seeing a trace of human trail. This was not surprising; assuming that Nornt really was somewhere about, he would have no need to send his slavies out on sentry patrols. He could trust telepathy to detect any nearby intruders, with perhaps one lookout on the summit to watch for fires and smoke beyond telepathic range.
There would be a trail somewhere, through a break in the rockwall, leading to the summit. Starn began working his way along the foot of the cliff.
He circled almost halfway around the peak before hitting the path. Then he paused in thought. Should he climb to the summit and kill the lookout? If nothing else, the mysterious death of the slavie would scare Nornt, and a frightened opponent was seldom a clever opponent. The decision was taken out of his hands by the sound of footsteps coming up the trail—the morning relief on his way up to replace the night lookout. Starn readied his bow, crouched out of sight behind some brush, and waited.
Starn did not shoot at first sight. He waited until he recognized the slack emptiness of face that marked the man for what he was. Then Starn put an arrow through his throat. The slavie fell, tumbled a few yards down the slope, and lay still.
Starn readied another arrow and waited. Only a few minutes passed before the lookout came rushing down the path, sent by Nornt to learn what accident had befallen his relief. Starn waited until he reached the fallen man, and stood gazing down at him, before zinging an arrow at his back. But this slavie—or perhaps Nornt himself through his presence in the slavie's mind—had a danger sense similar to Starn's. The slavie jumped sideways almost as soon as the arrow flew and took it in his sleeve. He whirled with long gun raised and fired at Starn, who had dropped to the ground as he brought his own gun into play.
The slavie did not shoot a second time. He simply stared at Starn until a slug smashed through his heart. Nornt was just as shocked as Rob had been, Starn guessed, to see a blank man, particularly an enemy probably presumed dead who rose from the ground to kill his slavies. The thing to do was give him no time to recover his wits. With long paces Starn hurried down the trail.
Ghosts were not prominent in Pack religion, since it was not based on expectations of a surviving personal soul. But there were tales of certain spirits of departed men, particularly men whose deaths had been unusually painful and brutal, which walked in evil places on the earth. And Pile-Up Mountain was supposedly an evil place. Nornt probably had little belief in such tales; else he would not have chosen the spot as his hideaway. But if he could be made uncertain, just for a little while, the result could be most important to Starn.
He rounded a curve in the trail and confronted two slavies. He raised his gun and fired, killing one, then leaped sideways. But Nornt had learned something from his previous brushes with Starn. The other slavie did not shoot immediately, but waited until the leap was completed. His slug ploughed into Starn's chest, knocking him backwards. With his gun recocked, he sat up and plugged the slavie in the act of rushing forward. Starn had little time for curiosity about his wound, from which a blood-red oil was oozing. The point was that he was still functioning, so no vital part had been hit. The Olsaperns had provided some sticky repair patches for such eventualities, so he pressed one over the hole and continued down the trail.
As soon as the terrain opened enough he left the path and crept through the brush, to guard against being caught in an ambush. Moving slowly, he went some three hundred yards before his danger sense awakened suddenly to make him whirl and hit the dirt. He had bypassed an ambush, and now the slavies were spreading out through the woods behind him. He could not see them, but the crackling of bushes told the story. Cautiously he readied his bow and waited until the one headed in his direction came into view. He shot him through the heart.
The noise of the other slavies increased as their search became more frantic, but, as Starn had hoped, they did not close in on his position. Since telepathy was only roughly directional, it could actually be confusing when people were spread out and hidden from each other in unfamiliar surroundings. Neither Nornt nor the other slavies knew just where the dead one had been in relation to them, and Starn's silent arrow had not betrayed his position.
Cautiously he crept away from the sound of the hunt, and continued in the direction he had been going, roughly parallel to the trail.
The path curved back to him, and after peering up and down he stepped into the open and increased his speed. The slavies he had slipped past would soon be brought scurrying back to provide Nornt a close defense, and he had to stay ahead of them.
He came upon the tunnel mouth suddenly, and sprinted for cover through a hail of slugs that spurted from an Olsapern weapon concealed within the dark opening. He was hit three times, twice in the body and once in the left arm. The arm was obviously broken, and he had no time for complicated repairs. He discarded his bow—useless to a one-armed man—and edged with a stumbling gait to a spot from which he could approach the tunnel from the side, unseen until he stepped into the opening itself. This maneuver would have brought defenders hurrying into the open if he had been readable, but as a telepathic blank he got away with it.
He entered the t
unnel in a staggering run and pushed past the Olsapern weapon and the slavie operating it, collecting two more slugs in the lower part of his body. He shot the slavie down and hastily examined the weapon. The Olsaperns had explained the functioning of these automatic guns to him, and it was easy to adjust this one to fire at anybody approaching or entering the tunnel.
He noticed he was leaking red oil quite rapidly now, and his legs were working erratically. Something in his body had been damaged by those last slugs. But he had escaped head wounds, and he guessed his strange bodymachine would keep working in some fashion as long as his brain was undamaged. He turned and limped deeper into the tunnel, which was dimly lit by occasional oil lamps perched in recesses high in the walls.
"Starn of Pack Foser!" the voice of a female slavie called from some distance ahead. "Leave immediately or I will kill your pregnant wife!"
"That will unite her with me, Nagister Nornt!" he responded hollowly. "Go ahead!"
The voice blasphemed the Sacred Gene and fell silent. Starn moved ahead as fast as he could, his eyes and ears alert for possible attacks from the dark side tunnels. Evidently the carved-out underground labyrinth was huge, and he could not guess its original purpose. He followed the lamps which lighted the portion Nornt was using, guessing they would lead him finally to his enemy. A muffled rattle came from the Olsapern weapon back at the entrance, presumably halting the slavies who had followed him down the trail.
But there was enough trouble waiting for him just ahead, where he rounded an oblique turn and faced Nornt and his final line of defense less than one hundred feet away.
Two Olsapern guns opened fire and the slugs knocked him flat on his back. He had caught a glimpse of two slavie women operating them, of a third female armed with an ordinary long-gun, of the wild face of Nagister Nornt glaring hate at him, and behind them all a huddled form which he guessed was Cytherni.
He had rolled behind the angle in the wall, out of range of the guns. His body was riddled with holes! And the tunnel was totally silent, which hardly seemed likely, so his hearing was obviously knocked out. With a clumsy right hand he explored his head and found a gaping hole through his forehead. A slug had passed through the center of his skull, and even yet he was functioning after a fashion!
The Olsaperns must have placed his brain elsewhere in his body, but where he had no idea. He didn't seem to have enough unpunctured area anywhere to contain a cat's brain!
His sight was flickering on and off, and he knew he had little time left. He managed to drag himself erect and lurch forward, his long gun up and ready for one final shot, and his body leaning into the hail of bullets. He stumbled toward the spurting gunfire, forcing himself to keep moving as the slugs tore at his artificial flesh.
He raised his wavering gun to aim at Nornt's frantic form, then hesitated as his sight flicked off. When his eyes came on again he adjusted his aim, but suddenly fell forward on his face when the Olsapern weapons stopped spurting at him. He was having trouble moving any part of himself, but finally managed to twist his head around so he could see what was happening.
The slavie women were slumped like discarded dolls behind their weapons. Nornt's mouth was open and frothy with screams Starn could not hear, and he cowered back in terror when Starn's eyes stared at him. Cytherni was moving. She took a long-gun from a limp slavie woman, raised it, and shot Nornt down. Then she gazed in horror at Starn for an instant before crumpling.
Starn tried to call out to her, but his voice was gone. Soon whatever life his artificial form had ever held was gone as well.
9
The dreams went on and on.
Sometimes there were scenes; sometimes there were thoughts that strung themselves together into patterns that seemed to hold astonishing power, but these patterns were elusive. They were suddenly unrememberable when a dim awareness attempted to grasp and hold them.
Scenes and thoughts came and went.
He was fishing on the creekbank, and whirled to confront an approaching danger, and there was Nagister Nornt screaming soundlessly . . . A snake of steel was crumpling his left arm . . . His father was preaching at the Tenthday service and was shouting: "Where is the flaw in our reasoning?" (No, it wasn't his father, it was Higgins.) He stood up and started to answer the question but couldn't remember what the question was . . . His body was being flexed—was this a dream—while it hung suspended between six glowing suns . . . He was with Huill swimming in the river and the water—so warm—swirled against his bare skin . . . He was arguing with Higgins . . . His mother was cooking breakfast, but he was too tired and sleepy to get out of bed . . . Music was weaving strange patterns and somebody was talking in Book-English . . .
There were more scenes, and some returned again and again. The elusive answers and the flexing and the music and the swirling water. The face of Higgins loomed over him against a smooth white ceiling and it said, "You're awake now."
Starn sat up in bed, wondering how many more times this was going to happen in dream or reality, and realized that indeed he was awake.
He stared around the hospital room, trying to get the fantasies in his mind labeled as such and thrust aside, and to remember his last real moment of consciousness. It had to be in the tunnel, when Cytherni had killed Nornt, but that seemed so long ago! He had been in an artificial body which Nornt's slavies had shot up, and—He looked up at Higgins with a sudden question.
"Where was my brain?"
"Here in this building," the Olsapern replied. He grinned. "We finally got a bright idea on how to defeat a telepath! Nornt couldn't read a mind that wasn't even there! So we kept your brain safely bedded down here, but directing your body through a highly redundant system of transceivers. Nornt must have thought he was fighting a ghost!"
"That's what I tried to make him think," said Starn.
"Otherwise he might have killed Cytherni. Is she all right?"
"Oh yes, she's fine! She and the baby will be in to see you shortly, but I wanted to look you over first. Do you feel normal now?"
"I suppose so," shrugged Starn.
"Still a faithful sheep of the Sacred Gene?"
Starn growled at the frivolous tone of the question, "After the way you've used me, Olsapern, I don't even have faith in my own death anymore!"
"Don't take it too hard, lad!" chuckled Higgins.
"That's done with now! I'm not unsympathetic about your state of mind. You've lived through more weirdness than an ordinary Pack man could possibly endure. I'm not sure I could have stood it myself! But you've got an innate flexibility of mind, lad, that couldn't be stiffened by all the rigidities of Pack law and religion! Frankly, I envy you more than I sympathize with you!"
Starn shook his head at this puzzling speech. He got out of bed and looked around for clothes. "If you're through with me," he grumbled, "I want to get back to Foser Compound. Bring in my wife and . . . baby did you say?"
"That's right," nodded Higgins.
"But . . . but Cytherni was only . . . five months gone!"
"And your baby is now nearly a year old," agreed Higgins. "Quit hunting for clothes and go take a look at yourself in the mirror."
* * *
Starn glared at him, and then strode to the full-length mirror on the door. He gazed at his image for several minutes without speaking.
It was his own body, in perfect condition. He had his own left arm back, and . . . and he was a whole man again.
He realized Higgins once remarking that the brain contained all the information needed to reconstruct its body. No wonder those dreams had seemed so endless! They had lasted more than a year while his body was building.
The wonder of his discovery lessened as he stood gazing at his reflection, but his elation grew. He was beginning to remember—and grasp—some of those thoughts that had eluded him during his long dream-state. What he saw in the mirror fit those thoughts precisely.
So far as his appearance was concerned, the kids in the Pack had been right. His posture was
too erect, his shoulders too horizontal, his belly too flat, and his head too big for him to look like a Pack man. Physically, even allowing some spread for individual differences, he was thoroughly Olsapern!
And it didn't matter! Except that it supported his new thoughts. After all, he had two Novo senses, one major and one minor.
He thought of Cytherni's figure and frowned. In a purely feminine way, her form departed from the Pack norm in the same direction as his. She had shown no Novo senses . . . but then not every individual had to be living proof of his theory.
Almost to himself he remarked, "She couldn't have given Nornt children that resembled him."
"Your wife?" said Higgins. "Probably true. I have a theory that something deep in Nornt's genetic structure knew he had to be defeated. That Sacred Gene of yours abhors regression in the final analysis, and is trying to block wrong-way evolution among the Pack people. The combination of factors leading to environmental and psychosomatic shock when the Science Age collapsed is breaking up now, as the existence of you and your wife and son amply testify. Anyway, when Nornt chose his mate, something right in all his wrongness led him to pick a woman who could not possibly give birth to a telehypnotist. As I told you before, a rapport exists between genetic information and certain unconscious levels of the mind, so—"
"You always have a theory, don't you, Higgins?" Starn broke in impatiently. "A theory, and a framework of facts to hang it on. But somehow, Higgins, your theories always seem to know more than your facts do!"
Higgins shrugged. "That's the way knowledge advances, Starn. A lot of old information, plus a new bit or two, plus a few guesses about how the new bits fit in and what they mean. We keep in mind that our theories are just guesses. They don't get in the way of recognition of new information when it comes along. Not anymore. We stay flexible."
"You do, do you?" grunted Starn disdainfully. "Then tell me this: How is it that you've never theorized that the genetic shock effects of the fall of Science didn't end quickly, within a couple of generations after the event? The fall wouldn't be much of a shock to people who had no personal memory of it, would it? But as Richhold said, genetic changes don't come and go in one generation. If the Pack people were thrown back then, we could still be showing the effects in our shapes today."
A Sense of Infinity Page 38
