THE CATERPILLARS QUESTION

by Piers Anthony

  Jack didn't want to think about whatever other kind of bug or grub or egg it might be.

  The huge rim loomed close, as high as it was thick: about two hundred feet. It looked like a twenty-story building without windows, extending to either side, slightly concave. The wall was absolutely smooth, all too much like the glass of a gargantuan jar except for its opacity. Who could have made a flying device this large? Its mere existence suggested a technology far beyond anything known on Earth.

  Since when had he believed this was anywhere close to Earth?

  Tappy had led him through some kind of space warp or time warp to an alien planet; that had been obvious from the start. Yet how had she known of that aperture? He was sure she had not known that anything like this was going to occur when they started. She had been too forlorn, too sensitive to the hurts of the world. Only now that they were here was she really coming to life.

  Well, not exactly. That evening in the cabin, when they had made love-maybe it was statutory rape to others, but it had been love to the two of them, in those minutes. She had known what she was doing, perhaps better than he had. He had condemned himself for it, but now Tappy's hand was tugging him again. She knew he was losing his focus on the present. He was doing that too much! If they somehow won free of this high-tech trap, then maybe he could think about love.

  "I'm aiming it at the wall," he told her. "I'm turning it on. This is what I'm supposed to do?"

  She nodded yes, emphatically.

  He touched the third orange button.

  A circular section of the wall glowed. Then it disappeared, and some of the ground under it. Now there was a hollow in it, deepening visibly.

  Jack gaped. "It's eating through the rim!" he exclaimed. "Like melting butter, only there's no vapor. The wall is just gone there!"

  Tappy urged him forward, toward it.

  When he stepped forward, correcting his aim so as not to intersect the ground, the circle of indentation became smaller.

  But the center deepened more rapidly. It was as if he held a cosmic blowtorch whose heat was greatest in the center. The original dent now and a smaller but deeper dent inside it-and as he proceeded, that inner dent developed another.

  "It's a come section!" he exclaimed. "I mean, a cone-the ray is coming from this device, and expanding, and it vaporizes-bad word-it disintegrates in an expanding circle. So as I walk into it, it seems to be getting smaller, but it's not, really. Am I making sense?"

  Tappy merely urged him on. They walked into the hole he was making. It was a tunnel now, about ten feet in diameter, forming about twenty feet ahead of them. The radiator seemed indefatigable.

  The radiator! Suddenly Tappy's sleep-talking words came back to him: "Alien menace-only chance is to use the radiator!" This had to be what she had meant: a weapon that radiated a cutting or dissolving beam. The aliens had trapped them, but the radiator was cutting them free. The aliens had set ajar on them, but these bugs were drilling their way out.

  There was a clamor of alarms. The sound was unfamiliar, but --its strident nature was unmistakable. The aliens had finally caught on to what was happening.

  Tappy heard it and jogged him: hurry!

  Jack broke into a run, keeping the brace aimed. The tunnel became smaller as he came closer to the site of action, but it quickened its drilling pace. He was operating closer, and the cone was smaller, so had less metal to drill and was faster. He should -have thought of that before.

  The tunnel became irregular. As he ran, he was waving the beam, and it showed. He tried to keep it steady, but it was impossible. It didn't matter, as long as there was a tunnel they could follow.

  He turned his head, trying to look back as he ran. The tunnel started veering to the side. He had to focus ahead, but he had caught a glimpse of a shape in the tunnel behind them. They were sitting ducks, or at least running ducks, for any shot from behind!

  Then at last the tunnel broke through to light. First a circle, then a full-sized disk opened ahead of them. They were through the rim! But he heard footsteps behind.

  He touched the scarlet button, turning off the radiator. Then he had a better idea. He whirled to point the device back at the tunnel.

  A man was there. He threw himself down, trying to get out of the line of fire. He knew what the radiator would do to his body!

  Human heads appeared above the rim, peering down from its distant top. Jack aimed the radiator at them. They disappeared. He hadn't fired; they had dived out of the way. A bluff was as good as a real attack. He was glad of that, because he was no killer.

  He was just trying to get away.

  He turned again, and ran with Tappy into the thick of the forest, which seemed to have been cut back somewhat by the landing of the ship. They skirted the huge trunks of the trees, now hidden from the ship by the interlocking canopy above. Jack was trying to put as much foliage between them and the ship as possible.

  They had broken out, but it would be no good if the men caught them and hauled them back.

  Why hadn't someone shot at him and Tappy? There had to be weapons, and the two of them had been an easy target in that tunnel. Someone could have fired from cover above the rim, too, before they reached the trees.

  The answer had to be that this was a capture mission, not a kill mission. The way the ship had come down, enclosing rather than flattening, suggested the same. This was a no-squish-bug effort.

  Great-it gave the bugs a real advantage. But why? What was so precious about these bugs to make them worth this phenomenal endeavor?

  "Tappy," he gasped as they ran. "We seem to be getting away, but we won't stay clear long if we don't learn more! Unless you know what's going on here!"

  Her face turned to him, her head shaking yes, then no. That meant that she understood some, but not enough.

  "Then let's get some information!" he said. He was not what he thought of as a bold man, but the past few days had shaken him loose from every preconception he could think of.

  Tappy didn't object, so he set up his trap. "Wait here," he told her. He turned on the radiator and dissolved a tunnel through the thickest part of the forest, where the trees were small and set closely. He followed the developing opening, running behind the cone. The smell of peppermint came from the cut plants. He hoped he wasn't extirpating some animals along with the foliage; he hadn't thought of that in time. Then he curved it until the tunnel end was just out of sight of its beginning. He turned the radiator off and ran back to Tappy. "Now we hide!" he gasped, drawing her to the side.

  They found a place behind a thicket of young orange-barked trees and ducked down, watching the tunnel. The normally noisy animals were quiet now; he hoped that didn't give the two of them away.

  Soon enough a man came running, spied the tunnel, and charged into it. He was carrying a weapon of some sort, which startled Jack: what was the point, if it was not to be fired at the fugitives?

  But he had no time to worry about that. He stepped out into the tunnel, pointing the radiator. "Hey, Joe!" he called.

  The man stopped and looked back, chagrined. He started to bring his weapon to bear.

  "Nuh-uh, Joe!" Jack said, putting a finger on a button of the radiator. "Drop it!"

  The man let the weapon fall to the ground.

  Jack strode toward him, keeping the radiator aimed. He had never intended to fire it at the man, but he was pleased with the success of his bluff. "Now talk, Joe: what's this all about? Why are you after us?"

  The man's mouth tightened. He seemed to understand Jack, but he refused to answer, and the threat of the radiator was no longer persuasive. Strange. And awkward, because the man had called his bluff, and he couldn't do anything about it. It was a mistake, ultimately, to bluff, he realized, because once it was proved empty, all was lost. It was necessary either to be able to follow through on a threat or to make the bluff so bold that 4he other did not dare call it.

  He couldn't carry through. He just couldn't kill a man who wasn't attacking him. He pro
bably couldn't kill even if the man did attack him. He was a sensitive artist, not an insensitive goon.

  Only if Tappy were threatened would heJack had an inspiration. He pointed the radiator at Tappy"Nao!" the man cried, horrified.

  So he had guessed right! It was Tappy they wanted to capture.

  He had suspected they didn't much care about Jack himself; he was nobody, just an ignorant person who had happened to get involved with her. Tappy had known or remembered how to reach this world, so she must have been here before. The aliens must have been waiting for her-and they wanted her alive.

  Larvhrysalis-Imago. There was something about Tappy that made her valuable-so valuable that this monstrous flying cage had been sent to catch her. But she had been given a weapon, and taught its use, so that she remembered once the situation required it. That knowledge must have been Ilypnotically suppressed. Her return to a more familiar environment was bringing back her memory.

  But why give a blind girl a weapon that required sight for its operation? If Jack hadn't been along, Tappy would have been virtually helpless.

  These thoughts were buzzing through his mind as he faced the man. He knew that they did not have much time; at any moment there would be others coming here. But there were questions that had to be answered, lest they fall into the next trap their pursuers sprang.

  "So you do speak English," Jack said. "You may not care much about your own life, but you do about hers. Well, keep quiet and follow us, or I will radiate her." He was ashamed for the lie, but he was afraid Tappy would be subject to some fate worse than death if he didn't use this lever to get the truth. "Find a place we can talk," he murmured to Tappy.

  Tappy immediately moved to the edge of the nulled tunnel and felt her way into the green and purple foliage. Jack followed, pointing the radiator at her. She understood what he was doing.

  "Yao are naot serious!" the man said. He had a strong but indefinable accent, as if this was a language he had learned in a class and hadn't used much. "Yao are with hur! Yao will naot radiate hur."

  Jack used his pencil to touch the scarlet button. The dim light came on. Don't let him call this bluff! he prayed.

  "Aokay! I urncamming!" the man exclaimed, his accent worse.

  There was no doubt that the threat to Tappy really unnerved him, despite his suspicion that Jack didn't mean it.

  Empire of the stars. could she be the daughter of the Emperor, stolen away and now to be recovered? But surely she would want to be returned to her family and her status! Unless this was a hostile force, a usurper who wanted to hold her for ransom or brainwash her and set her up as a figurehead. If she died, they would have no chance to make a pretense of legitimacy, and the loyal subjects would rise up and throw them out.

  But then why send her to a backwater region of a primitive planet like Earth? Why let her suffer as the ward of an unfriendly family all these years? Anything could have happened to her! If they had the technology to give her the radiator, why hadn't they at least fixed her sight? Jack was no psychologist, but even he had seen that she was a desperately lonely and unhappy girl. She was about as unlikely a princess as he could Tappy was better at finding a hiding place than he would have been, because she tended to explore with her hands and body, while he depended more on sight. Soon they were in a niche in the undergrowth where the sunlight hardly penetrated. They would be able to hear any searchers before they got close.

  The man sat on one side, and Jack faced Tappy on the other side, keeping the radiator pointed and his pencil poised. He knew that the moment he got careless the man could jump him. Even if Jack won the struggle, the noise would give their position away and the others would close in. with the best luck, he was unlikely to have much time. He had to make it count.

  "Why are you after Tappy?" he demanded.

  The man's gaze flicked to the girl, and Jack realized that he had blundered already: the man had not known her name. Not her Earth name, at any rate. But he answered. Jack was already getting -used to the accent, and tuned it out in favor of the meaning. "We must restrict the Imago."

  There was a key word! "What is the Imago?" Jack demanded.

  "Why must you restrict it?"

  The man seemed at a loss. "It has to be restricted!"

  "Look, Joe, I'm an ignorant lout from a primitive planet. I don't know anything about this Imago, except that it's gotten me into a

  'M of trouble. So you'd better give me good reason not to wipe her out, and wipe you out, and anybody else who comes after nle, so that I can go home and forget all this. Tell me all about the Imago before anybody else gets here. Give me reason not to radiate everything in sight." He hardly believed himself! He was talking like a thug from a grade F movie. But he didn't have time to figure out how to act like a tormented perfectionist from a grade A film.

  The man told him, somewhat awkwardly. It wasn't that he didn't know it, but that he could not believe that Jack didn't, so he kept skipping over elements that he assumed Jack already understood. In the course of this Jack picked up some background about the empire and the planet they were oil.

  It seemed that there were several components of the empire. It wasn't exactly an empire, but whatever it was was too complicated for Jack to assimilate at the moment, so he used the term as mental shorthand. It included so many stellar systems that there was no reliable survey listing them all. Human beings were on several of its planets, not because they were native but because they had been imported as labor from overpopulated Earth, which planet didn't even miss them. The alien rulers were called the Gaolas it were the gaolers of the empire. They did not care what the human laborers did, as long as they did their jobs; they were allowed to have their own families and entertainments. One of the planets they worked on was this one, where the dominant native species was what Jack thought of as the holikers. The empire was governed by completely alien creatures who had no Y.

  biological and little intellectual association with human beings, but whose technological power was such that no known force could oppose it.

  Except the Imago. Therefore it was to the Gaol's interest to nullify the Imago. The Imago seemed to be another type of alien entity, possessing no body of its own, other than what for want of a better tenn was a spirit. It seemed to be singular, though perhaps it was that only one of its kind chose to with solid creatures. When it did, it manifested only by the enhancement of the powers of that person. Whether it entered other than human hosts was unknown, but probably it did, because sometimes it skipped a generation of human beings, only to reappear seemingly randomly. It seemed to associate with this honker planet, where spirits had more force than they did elsewhere.

  But when it entered a person, it took time to manifest. At first it was the Larva, largely quiescent, inhabiting the person from conception into childhood. That stage seemed to last for about seven years, until the child was six, and the spirit could not be detected. Then it metamorphosed into the Chrysalis. The child did not change physically, but now the symbiotic entity manifested.

  The child developed mental or emotional rapport with other life, including animals and plants, and there was a faint mental aura that sophisticated sensors could detect. After another seven years it metamorphosed to its adult stage, whose nature no one knew except the Gaol who governed the empire. It was conjectured that the rapport with other forms of life expanded into full-scale telepathy and the power to modify the emotions of others. If so, it meant the Imago could take over even the minds of the Gaol and make them do its will. That would give it the capacity to rule or to destroy the empireven if it was based in the body of a blind human girl.

  "Then why don't you just kill it?" Jack demanded. "So it can't mess with your alien masters?" He still hated to talk this way, as if he didn't care about Tappy. His feeling for her was a strange and wonderful thing, not exactly love and not exactly apart from love. Already he recognized the truth of what the man was telling him: Tappy related to other life, and he felt that relation through his mind a
nd heart. He was beginning to understand why he had made love with her, as the Chrysalis of her nature touched him.

  If this was only the suggestion of her mature power, what would be its full expression?

  The man explained: The Imago could not be killed. If its host was destroyed, it simply sought a new host. Then, fourteen years later, the threat to the empire returned. In the early days, perhaps millennia ago, the Imago had so disrupted the empire as to cause its dissolution. Only when the Gaol had learned how to nullify the Imago had they been able to reconstitute and maintain the empire. Now they tracked the Imago diligently, and when it anifested they captured its human or other host, drugged it Ito unconsciousness, and maintained it in tight security within -field that scrambled any possible mental or other emanations.

  'hey kept it in that condition, carefully alive, as long as nature and technology permitted; with luck their reprieve lasted as long a century.

  When the captive Imago-host finally died, the search began , . Its occupation of a new host seemed to be random; no 'e could predict where on this planet it would appear next.

  e Gaol had the power to obliterate the planet, but feared the ago would only manifest on another; it was better to keep it re. So this world was left in its natural state, unlike most other planets. The Gaol intended to locate and nullify the Imago as usual, forestalling any possible threat to the empire's stability.

  If the Imago-host was found and killed, the process would have to begin over. Therefore the empire impressed upon its minions that due care should be taken. Whoever was responsible for the loss of the Imago would suffer in ways no ordinary person could imagine-and so would his family and his community.

  Now at last Jack understood. Tappy was the current host of the Imago. She had been the child of a human colonist on this honker planet. When her expanding empathy for life had manifested at age six, she had been hustled to a place where the Gaol could not quickly find her. There must have been trouble; maybe the minions of the empire had been in pursuit, and Tappy's father had been killed, and she maimed and blinded. But she had gotten free, though at the terrible price Jack had seen. Her injuries had turned out to be an advantage, because they restricted lier, so that she did not call attention to herself. She had been put under a hypnotic block against even speaking the language. All this had been necessary to hide her from the notice of the Gaol, whose search methods had to be sophisticated and unscrupulous. Indeed, the empire must have searched, and finally was on the verge of locating her. So she had had to be moved-and an ignorant Earth native had been hired to transport her. Jack.