by Isaac Asimov
When Faussel came in he was still yawning behind his fist. Obviously a low morning-sugar type. “Before you fall on your face, go out and get some coffee,” Brion said. “Two cups. I’ll have a cup, too.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Faussel said, drawing himself up stiffly. “I’ll call the canteen if you wish some.” He said it in the iciest tone he could manage this early in the morning.
In his enthusiasm Brion had forgotten the hate campaign he had directed against himself. “Suit yourself,” he snapped, getting back into the role. “But the next time you yawn there’ll be a negative entry in your service record. If that’s clear—you can brief me on this organization’s visible relations with the Disans. How do they take us?”
Faussel choked and swallowed a yawn. “I believe they look on the C.R.F people as some species of simpleton, sir. They hate all offworlders, memory of their desertion has been passed on verbally for generations. So by their one-to-one logic we should either hate back or go away. We stay instead. And give them food, water, medicine and artifacts. Because of this they let us remain on sufferance. I imagine they consider us do-gooder idiots, and, as long as we cause no trouble, they’ll let us stay.” He was struggling miserably to suppress a yawn, so Brion turned his back and gave him a chance to get it out.
“What about the Nyjorders? How much do they know of our work?” Brion looked out the window at dusty buildings, outlined in purple against the violent colors of the desert sunrise.
“Nyjord is a co-operating planet, and has full knowledge at all executive levels. They are giving us all the aid they can.”
“Well now is the time to ask for more. Can I contact the commander of the blockading fleet?”
“There is a scrambler connection right through to him. I’ll set it up.” Faussel bent over the desk and punched a number into the phone controls. The screen flowed with the black and white patterns of the scrambler.
“That’s all, Faussel. I want privacy for this talk. What’s the commander’s name?”
“Professor Krafft, he’s a physicist. They have no military men at all, so they called him in for the construction of the bombs and energy weapons. He’s still in charge.” Faussel yawned extravagantly as he went out the door.
The professor-commander was very old, with wispy gray hair and a network of wrinkles surrounding his eyes. His image shimmered then cleared as the scrambler units aligned.
“You must be Brion Brandd,” he said. “I have to tell you how sorry we all are that your friend Ihjel—and the two others—had to die. After coming so far to help us. I’m sure you are very happy to have had a friend like that.”
“Why…yes, of course,” Brion said, reaching for the scattered fragments of his thought processes. It took an effort to remember the first conflict now that he was worrying about the death of a planet. “Very kind of you to mention it. But I would like to find out a few things about you, if I could.”
“Anything at all, we are at your disposal. Before we begin though, I shall pass on the thanks of our council for your aid in joining us. Even if we are eventually forced to drop the bombs, we shall never forget that your organization did everything possible to avert the disaster.”
Once again Brion was caught off balance. For an instant he wondered if Krafft was being insincere, then recognized the baseness of this thought. The completeness of the man’s humanity was obvious and compelling. The thought passed through Brion’s mind that now he had an additional reason for wanting the war ended without destruction on either side. He very much wanted to visit Nyjord and see these people on their home grounds.
* * * *
Professor Krafft waited, patiently and silently, while Brion pulled his thoughts together and answered. “I still hope that this thing can be stopped in time. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I want to see Lig-magte and I thought it would be better if I had a legitimate reason. Are you in contact with him?”
Krafft shook his head. “No, not really in contact. When this trouble started I sent him a transceiver so we could talk directly. But he has delivered his ultimatum, speaking for the magter. The only terms he will hear are unconditional surrender. His receiver is on but he has said that is the only message he will answer.”
“Not much chance of him ever being told that,” Brion said.
“There was—at one time. I hope you realize Brion that the decision to bomb Dis was not easily arrived at. A great many people—myself included—voted for unconditional surrender. We lost the vote by a very small margin.”
Brion was getting used to these philosophical body blows and he rolled with the punches now. “Are there any of your people left on this planet? Or do you have any troops I can call on for help? This is still a remote possibility, but, if I do find out where the bombs or the launcher are, a surprise raid would knock them out.”
“We have no people left in Hovedstad now—all the ones who weren’t evacuated were killed. But there are commando teams standing by here to make a landing if the weapons are detected. The Disans must depend on secrecy to protect their armament since we have both the manpower and the technology to reach any objective. We also have technicians and other volunteers looking for the weapon sites. They have not been successful as yet, and most of them were killed soon after landing.” Krafft hesitated for a moment. “There is another group that you should know about, you will need all the factors. There are some of our people in the desert outside of Hovedstad. We do not officially approve of them, though they have a good deal of popular support. Mostly young men, operating as raiders, killing and destroying with very little compunction. They are attempting to uncover the weapons by sheer strength of arms.”
This was the best news yet. Brion controlled his voice and kept his expression calm when he spoke. “I don’t know how far I can stretch your co-operation—but could you possibly tell me how to contact them?”
Krafft allowed himself a small smile. “I’ll give you the wave length on which you can reach their radio. They call themselves the ‘Nyjord Army.’ When you talk to them you can do me a favor. Pass on a message. Just to prove things aren’t bad enough—they’ve become a little worse. One of our technical crews has detected jump-space energy transmissions in the planetary crust. The Disans are apparently testing their projector, sooner than we had estimated. Our deadline has been revised by one day. I’m afraid there are only two days left before you must evacuate.” His eyes were large with compassion. “I’m sorry. I know this will make your job that much harder.”
Brion didn’t want to think about the loss of a full day from his already small deadline. “Have you told the Disans this as yet?”
“No,” Krafft told him. “The decision was reached just a few minutes before your call. It is going on the radio to Lig-magte now.”
“Can you cancel the transmission and let me take the message in person?”
“I can do that,” Krafft thought for a moment, “but it would surely mean your death at their hands. They have no hesitation in killing any of our people. I would prefer to send it by radio.”
“If you do that, you will be interfering with my plans, and perhaps destroying them under the guise of saving my life. Isn’t my life my own—to dispose of as I will?”
For the first time, Professor Krafft was upset. “I’m sorry, terribly sorry. I’m letting my concerns and worry wash over into my public affairs. Of course you may do as you please. I could never think of stopping you.” He turned and said something inaudible offscreen. “The call is cancelled. The responsibility is yours. All our wishes for success go with you. End of transmission.”
“End of transmission,” Brion said, and the screen went dark.
“Faussel!” he shouted into the intercom. “Get me the best and fastest sandcar we have, a driver who knows his way around and two men, who can handle a gun and know how to take orders. We’re going to get some positive action at last.”
CHAPTER X
“It’s suicide,” the taller
guard grumbled.
“Mine not yours, so don’t worry about it,” Brion snapped at him. “Your job is to remember your orders and keep them straight. Now—let’s hear them again.”
The guard rolled his eyes up in silent rebellion and repeated in a toneless voice. “We stay here in the car and keep the motor running while you go inside the stone pile there. We don’t let anybody in the car and we try and keep them clear of the car—short of shooting them that is. We don’t come in no matter what happens or what it looks like, but wait for you here. Unless you call on the radio in which case we come in with the automatics going and shoot the place up and it doesn’t matter who we hit. This will only be used as a last resort.”
“See if you can’t arrange that last resort thing if you can,” the other guard said, patting the heavy blue barrel of his weapon.
“I meant that last resort,” Brion said angrily. “If any guns go off without my permission, you will pay for it and pay with your necks. I want that clearly understood. You are here as a rear guard and a base for me to get back to. This is my operation and mine alone—unless I call you in. Understood?”
He waited until all three men had nodded in agreement, then checked the charge on his gun. Fully loaded. It would be foolish not to go in armed. But he had to. One gun wouldn’t save him. He put it aside. The button radio on his collar was working and had a strong enough signal to get through any number of walls. He took off his coat, threw open the door and stepped out into the searing brilliance of the Disan noon.
There was only the desert silence, broken by the steady throb of the car’s motor behind him. Stretching away to the horizon in every direction were the eternal deserts of sand. The keep stood nearby, solitary, a massive pile of black rocks. Brion plodded closer, watching for any motion from the walls. Nothing stirred. The high-walled, irregularly shaped construction sat in a ponderous silence. Brion was sweating now, only partially from the heat.
He circled the thing, looking for a gate. There wasn’t one at ground level. A slanting cleft in the stone could be climbed easily, but it seemed incredible that this might be the only entrance. A complete circuit proved that it was. Brion looked unhappily at the slanting and broken ramp, then cupped his hands and shouted loudly.
“I’m coming up. Your radio doesn’t work any more. I’m bringing the message from Nyjord that you have been waiting to hear.” A slight bending of the truth without fracturing it. There was no answer. Just the hiss of wind-blown sand against the rock and the mutter of the car in the background. He started to climb.
The rock underfoot was crumbling and he had to watch where he put his feet. At the same time he fought a constant impulse to look up, watching for anything falling from above. Nothing happened. When he reached the top of the wall he was breathing hard, sweat moistened his body. There was still no one in sight. He stood on an unevenly shaped wall that appeared to circle the building. Instead of a courtyard inside it, the wall was the outer face of the structure, the domed roof rising from it. At varying intervals dark openings gave access to the interior. When Brion looked down the sandcar was just a dun-colored bump in the desert, already far behind him.
Stooping, he went through the nearest door. There was still no one in sight. The room inside was something out of a madman’s funhouse. It was higher than it was wide, irregular, and more like a hallway than a room. At one end it merged into an incline that became a stairwell. The other ended in a hole that vanished in darkness below. Light of sorts filtered in through slots and holes drilled into the thick stone wall. Everything was built of the same crumble-textured but strong rock. Brion took the stairs. After a number of blind passages and wrong turns he saw a stronger light ahead. There was food, metal, even artifacts of the unusual Disan design in the different rooms he passed through. Yet no people. The light ahead grew stronger as he approached, the passageway opening and swelling out until it met the larger central chamber.
This was the heart of the strange structure. All the rooms, passageways and halls existed just to give form to this gigantic hall. The walls rose sharply, the room circular in cross section and growing narrower towards the top. It was a truncated cone since there was no ceiling; a hot blue disk of sky cast light on the floor below.
On the floor stood a knot of men staring at Brion.
Out of the corner of his eyes, and with the very periphery of his consciousness, he was aware of the rest of the room. Barrels, stores, machinery, a radio transceiver, various bundles and heaps that made no sense at first glance. There was no time to look closer. Every fraction of his attention was focused on the muffled and hooded men.
He had found the enemy.
* * * *
Everything that happened to him so far on Dis had been preparation for this moment. The attack in the desert, the escape, the dreadful heat of sun and sand. All this had tempered and prepared him. It had been nothing in itself. Now the battle would begin in earnest.
None of this was conscious. His fighter’s reflexes bent his shoulders, curved his hands before him as he walked softly in balance, ready to spring in any direction. Yet none of this was really necessary. All the danger so far was nonphysical. When he gave this thought conscious thought he stopped, startled. What was wrong here? None of the men had moved or made a sound. How could he even know they were men? They were so muffled and wrapped in cloth that only their eyes were exposed.
No doubt existed in Brion’s mind. In spite of muffled cloth and silence he knew them for what they were. The eyes were empty of expression and unmoving, yet filled with the same negative emptiness as a bird of prey. They could look on life, death, and the rending of flesh with the same lack of interest and compassion. All this Brion knew in an instant of time, without words being spoken. Between the time he lifted one foot and walked a step he understood what he had to face. There could be no doubt, not to an empathetic.
From the group of silent men poured a frost-white wave of unemotion. An empathetic shares what other men feel. He gets his knowledge of their reaction by sensing lightly their emotions, the surges of interest, hate, love, fear, desire, the sweep of large and small sensations that accompany all thought and action. The empathetic is always aware of this constant and silent surge, whether he makes the effort to understand it or not. He is like a man glancing across the open pages of a tableful of books. He can see that the type, words, paragraphs, thoughts are there even without focusing his attention to understand any of it.
Then how does the man feel when he glances at the open books and sees only blank pages? The books are there—the words are not. He turns the pages of one, then others, flipping pages, searching for meaning. There is no meaning. All of the pages are blank.
This was the way in which the magter were blank, without emotions. There was a barely sensed surge and return that must have been neural impulses on a basic level. The automatic adjustments of nerve and muscle that keep an organism alive. Nothing more. Brion reached for other sensations and there was nothing there to grasp. Either these men were apparently without emotions or they were able to block them from his detection, it was impossible to tell which.
Very little time has passed in the objective world while Brion made these discoveries. The knot of men still looked at him, silent and unmoving. They weren’t expectant, their attitude could not have been called interest. But he had come to them and now they waited to find out why. Any questions or statements they spoke would be redundant, so they didn’t speak. The responsibility was his.
“I have come to talk with Lig-magte. Who is he?” Brion didn’t like the tiny sound his voice made in the immense room.
One of the men gave a slight motion to draw attention to himself. None of the others moved. They still waited.
“I have a message for you,” Brion said, talking slowly to fill the silence of the room and the emptiness of his thoughts. This had to be handled right. But what was right? “I’m from the Foundation in the city, as you undoubtedly know. I’ve been talking to the peo
ple on Nyjord. They have a message for you.”
The silence grew longer. Brion had no intention of making this a monologue. He needed facts to operate, to form an opinion. Looking at the silent forms was telling him nothing. Time stretched taut and finally Lig-magte spoke.
“The Nyjorders are going to surrender.”
It was an impossibly strange sentence. Brion had never realized before how much of the content of speech was made up of emotion. If the man had given it a positive emphasis, perhaps said it with enthusiasm, it would have meant, “Success! The enemy is going to surrender!” This wasn’t the meaning.
With a rising inflection on the end it would have been a question. “Are they going to surrender?” It was neither of these. The sentence carried no other message than that contained in the simplest meanings of the separate words. It had intellectual connotations, but these could only be gained from past knowledge, not from the sound of the words. There was only one message they were prepared to receive from Nyjord. Therefore, Brion was bringing the message. If that was not the message Brion was bringing, the men here were not interested.
This was the vital fact. If they were not interested he could have no further value to them. Since he came from the enemy he was the enemy. Therefore, he would be killed. Because this was vital to his existence Brion took the time to follow the thought through. It made logical sense—and logic was all he could depend on now. He could be talking to robots or alien creatures for the amount of human response he was receiving.
“You can’t win this war—all you can do is hurry your own deaths.” He said this with as much conviction as he could, realizing at the same time that it was wasted effort. No flicker of response stirred in the men before him. “The Nyjorders know you have cobalt bombs, and they have detected your jump-space projector. They can’t take any more chances. They have pushed the deadline closer by an entire day. There are one and a half days left before the bombs fall and you are all destroyed. Do you realize what that means—”
