by Isaac Asimov
“No—but I can find a couple of explanations that I would rather explore first, before dragging in an alien life form. There may have been a mutation or an inherited disease that had deformed or warped their minds.”
“Wouldn’t that be sort of self-eliminating?” Brion asked. “Antisurvival? People who die before puberty would find it a little difficult to pass on a mutation to their children. But let’s not beat this one point to death—it’s the totality of these people that I find so hard to accept. Any one thing might be explained away, but not the collection of them. What about their complete lack of emotion? Or their manner of dress and their secrecy in general? The ordinary Disan wears a cloth kilt, while the magter cover themselves as completely as possible. They stay in their black towers and never go out except in groups. Their dead are always removed so they can’t be examined. In every way they act like a race apart—and I think they are.”
“Granted for the moment that this outlandish idea might be true, how did they get here? And why doesn’t anyone know about it besides them?”
“Easily enough explained,” Brion insisted. “There are no written records on this planet. After the breakdown, when the handful of survivors were just trying to exist here, the aliens could have landed and moved in. Any interference could have been wiped out. Once the population began to grow the invaders found they could keep control by staying separate, so their alien difference wouldn’t be noticed.”
“Why should that bother them?” Lea asked. “If they are so indifferent to death, they can’t have any strong thoughts on public opinion or alien body odor. Why would they bother with such a complex camouflage? And if they arrived from another planet what has happened to the scientific ability that brought them here?”
“Peace,” Brion said. “I don’t know enough to even be able to guess at answers to half those questions. I’m just trying to fit a theory to the facts. And the facts are clear. The magter are so inhuman they would give me nightmares—if I were sleeping these days. What we need is more evidence.”
“Then get it,” Lea said with finality. “I’m not telling you to turn murderer—but you might try a bit of grave-digging. Give me a scalpel and one of your fiends stretched out on a slab and I’ll quickly tell you what he is or is not.” She turned back to the microscope and bent over the eyepiece.
That was really the only way to hack the Gordion knot. Dis had only thirty-six more hours to live, so individual deaths shouldn’t be of any concern. He had to find a dead magter, and if none were obtainable in the proper condition he had to violently get one of them that way. For a planetary savior he was personally doing in an awful lot of the citizenry. He stood behind Lea, looking down at her thoughtfully while she worked. The back of her neck was turned up to him, lightly covered with gently curling hair. With one of the about-face shifts the mind is capable of his thoughts flipped from death to life, and he experienced a strong desire to lightly caress this spot, to feel the yielding texture of female flesh.…
Plunging his hands deep into his pockets he walked quickly to the door. “Get some rest soon,” he called to her. “I doubt if those bugs will give you the answer. I’m going now to see if I can get the full-sized specimen you want.”
“The truth could be anywhere, I’ll stay on these until you come back,” she said, not looking up from the microscope.
* * * *
Up under the roof was a well-equipped communications room, Brion had taken a quick look at it when he had first toured the building. The duty operator had earphones on—though only one of the phones covered an ear—and was monitoring through the bands. His shoeless feet were on the edge of the table and he was eating a thick sandwich with his free hand. His eyes bugged when he saw Brion in the doorway and he jumped into a flurry of action.
“Hold the pose,” Brion told him, “it doesn’t bother me. And if you make any sudden moves you are liable to break a phone, electrocute yourself or choke to death. Just see if you can set the transceiver on this frequency for me.” Brion wrote the number on a scratchpad and slid it over to the operator. It was the frequency Professor-commander Krafft had given him for the radio of the illegal terrorists—the Nyjord army.
The operator plugged in a handset and gave it to Brion. “Circuit open,” he mumbled around a mouthful of still unswallowed sandwich.
“This is Brandd, director of the C.R.F. Come in please.” He went on repeating this for more than ten minutes before he got an answer.
“What do you want?”
“I have a message of vital urgency for you—and I would also like your help. Do you want any more information on the radio?”
“No. Wait there—we’ll get in touch with you after dark.” The carrier wave went dead.
Thirty-five hours to the end of the world—and all he could do was wait.
CHAPTER XII
On Brion’s desk when he came in, were two neat piles of paper. As he sat down and reached for them he was conscious of an arctic coldness in the air, a frigid blast. It was coming from the air-conditioner grille which was now covered by welded steel bars. The control unit was sealed shut. Someone was either being very funny or very efficient. Either way it was cold. Brion kicked at the cover plate until it buckled, then bent it aside. After a careful look into the interior he disconnected one wire and shorted it to another. He was rewarded by a number of sputtering cracks and a good quantity of smoke. The compressor moaned and expired.
Faussel was standing in the door with more papers and a shocked expression. “What do you have there?” Brion asked. Faussel managed to straighten out his face and brought the folders to the desk, arranging them on the piles already there.
“These are the progress reports you asked for, from all units. Details to date, conclusions, suggestions, et cetera.”
“And the other pile?” Brion pointed.
“Offplanet correspondence, commissary invoices, requisitions,” he straightened the edges of the stack while he answered. “Daily report, hospital log—” His voice died away and stopped as Brion carefully pushed the stack off the edge of the desk into the wastebasket.
“In other words, red tape,” Brion said. “Well it’s all filed.”
One by one the progress reports followed the first stack into the basket, until his desk was clear. Nothing. It was just what he had expected. But there had always been the off-chance that one of the specialists could come up with a new approach. They hadn’t, they were all too busy specializing.
Outside the sky was darkening. The front entrance guard had been told to let in anyone who came asking for the director. There was nothing else Brion could do until the Nyjord rebels made contact. Irritation bit at him. At least Lea was doing something constructive, he could look in on her.
He opened the door to the lab with a feeling of pleasant anticipation. It froze and shattered instantly. Her microscope was hooded and she was gone. She’s having dinner, he thought, or—she’s in the hospital. The hospital was on the floor below and he went there first.
“Of course she’s here!” Dr. Stine grumbled. “Where else should a girl in her condition be? She was out of bed long enough today. Tomorrow’s the last day, and if you want to get any more work out of her before the deadline, you have better let her rest tonight. Better let the whole staff rest. I’ve been handing out tranquilizers like aspirin all day. They’re falling apart.”
“The world’s falling apart. How is Lea doing?”
“Considering her shape she’s fine. Go in and see for yourself if you won’t take my word for it. I have other patients to look at.”
“Are you that worried, doctor?”
“Of course I am! I’m just as prone to the ills of the flesh as the rest of you. We’re sitting on a ticking bomb and I don’t like it. I’ll do my job as long as it is necessary, but I’ll also be glad to see the ships land to pull us out. The only skin that I really feel emotionally concerned about right now is my own. And if you want to be let in on a public secret—the rest of your
staff feels the same way. So don’t look forward to too much efficiency.”
“I never did,” Brion said.
* * * *
Lea’s room was dark, illuminated only by the light of Dis’ moon slanting in the window. Brion let himself in and closed the door behind him. Walking quietly he went over to the bed. She was sleeping soundly, her breathing gentle and regular. A night’s sleep now would do as much good as all the medication.
He should have gone then, instead he sat down in the chair placed next to the head of the bed. The guards knew where he was, he could wait here just as well as any place else.
It was a stolen moment of peace on a world at the brink of destruction. He was grateful for it. Everything looked less harsh in the moonlight and he rubbed some of the tension from his eyes. Lea’s face was ironed smooth by the light, beautiful and young; a direct contrast to everything else on this poisonous world. Her hand was outside of the covers and he took it in his own, obeying a sudden impulse. Looking out of the window at the desert in the distance, he let the peace wash over him, forcing himself to forget for the moment that in one more day life would be stripped from this planet.
Later, when he looked back at Lea he saw that her eyes were open, though she hadn’t moved. How long had she been awake? He jerked his hand away from hers, feeling suddenly guilty.
“Is the boss-man looking after the serfs, to see if they’re fit for the treadmill in the morning?” she asked. It was the kind of remark she had used with such frequency in the ship, though it didn’t sound quite as harsh now. And she was smiling. Yet it reminded him too well of her superior attitude towards the rubes from the stellar sticks. Here he might be the director, but on ancient Earth he would be only one more gaping yokel.
“How do you feel?” he asked, realizing and hating the triteness of the words, even as he said them.
“Terrible. I’ll be dead by morning. Reach me a piece of fruit from that bowl, will you? My mouth tastes like an old boot heel. Wonder how fresh fruit ever got here? Probably a gift to the working classes from the smiling planetary murderers on Nyjord,” she took the apple Brion gave her and bit into it. “Did you ever think of going to Earth?”
Brion was startled, this was too close to his own thoughts about planetary backgrounds. There couldn’t possibly be a connection though. “Never,” he told her. “Up until a few months ago I never even considered leaving Anvhar. The Twenties are such a big thing at home that it is hard to imagine that anything else exists while you are still taking part in them.”
“Spare me the Twenties,” she pleaded. “After listening to you and Ihjel I know far more about them than I shall ever care to know. But what about Anvhar itself? Do you have big city-states like Earth?”
“Nothing like that. For its size it has a very small population. No big cities at all. I guess the largest centers of population are around the schools, packing plants, things like that.”
“Any exobiologists there?” Lea asked, with a woman’s eternal ability to make any general topic personal.
“At the universities, I suppose, though I wouldn’t know for sure. And you must realize that when I say no big cities, I also mean no little cities. We aren’t organized that way at all. I imagine the basic physical unit is family and the circle of friends. Friends get important quickly since the family breaks up when children are still relatively young. Something in the genes I suppose, we all enjoy being alone. Suppose you might call it an inbred survival trait.”
“Up to a point,” she said, biting delicately into the apple. “Carry that sort of thing too far and you end up with no population at all. A certain amount of proximity is necessary for that.”
“Of course there is. And there must be some form of recognized relationship or control—that or complete promiscuity. On Anvhar the emphasis is on personal responsibility, and that seems to take care of the problem. If we didn’t have an adult way of looking at…things, our kind of life would be impossible. Individuals are brought together either by accident or design, and with this proximity must be some certainty of relations—”
“You’re losing me,” Lea protested. “Either I’m still foggy from the dope or you are suddenly unable to speak a word of less than four syllables in length. You know—whenever this happens with you I get the distinct impression that you are trying to cover up something. For Occam’s sake be specific! Bring together two of these hypothetical individuals and tell me what happens.”
* * * *
Brion took a deep breath. He was in over his head and far from shore. “Well—take a bachelor like myself. Since I like cross-country skiing I make my home in this big house our family has, right at the edge of the Broken Hills. In summer I looked after a drumtum herd, but after slaughtering my time was my own all winter. I did a lot of skiing, and used to work for the Twenties. Sometimes I would go visiting. Then again, people would drop in on me—houses are few and far between on Anvhar. We don’t even have locks on our front doors. You accept and give hospitality without qualification. Whoever comes. Male—female—in groups or just traveling alone—”
“I get the drift. Life must be dull for a single girl on your iceberg planet, she must surely have to stay home a lot.”
“Only if she wants to. Otherwise she can go wherever she wishes and be welcomed as another individual. I suppose it is out of fashion in the rest of the galaxy—and would probably raise a big laugh on Earth—but a platonic, disinterested friendship between man and woman is an accepted thing on Anvhar.”
“Sounds exceedingly dull. If you are all such cool and distant friends, what keeps your birthrate going?”
Brion felt his ears flushing, not quite sure if he was being teased or not. “There are plenty of happy marriages. But it is up to the woman always to indicate if she is interested in a man. A girl who isn’t interested won’t get any proposals. I imagine this is a lot different from other planets—but so is our world. The system works well enough for us.”
“Just about the opposite of Earth,” Lea told him, dropping the apple core into a dish and carefully licking the tips of her fingers. “I guess you Anvharians would describe Earth as a planetary hotbed of sin. The reverse of your system, and going full blast all the time. There are far too many people there for comfort. Birth control came late and is still being fought—if you can possibly imagine that. There are just too many crack-brained ideas that have been long entrenched in custom. The world’s overcrowded. Men, women, children, a boiling mob wherever you look. And all of the physically mature ones seem to be involved in the Great Game of Love. The male is always the aggressor, and women take the most outrageous kinds of flattery for granted. At parties these are always a couple of hot breaths of passion fanning your neck. A girl has to keep her spike heels filed sharp.”
“She has to what—?”
“A figure of speech, Brion. Meaning you fight back all the time, if you don’t want to be washed under by the flood.”
“Sounds rather”—Brion weighed the word before he said it, but could find none other suitable—”repellent.”
“From your point of view, it would be. I’m afraid we get so used to it that we even take it for granted. Sociologically speaking—” She stopped and looked at Brion’s straight back and almost rigid posture. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened in an unspoken oh of sudden realization.
“I’m being a fool,” she said. “You weren’t speaking generally at all! You had a very specific subject in mind. Namely me!”
“Please, Lea, you must understand—”
“But I do!” she laughed. “All the time I thought you were being a frigid and hard-hearted lump of ice, you were really being very sweet. Just playing the game in good old Anvharian style. Waiting for a sign from me. We’d still be playing by different rules if you hadn’t had more sense than I, and finally realized that somewhere along the line we must have got our signals mixed. And I thought you were some kind of frosty offworld celibate.” She let her hand go out and her fingers rustle
d through his hair. Something she had been wanting to do for a long time.
“I had to,” he said, trying to ignore the light touch of her fingers. “Because I thought so much of you, I couldn’t have done anything to insult you. Until I began to worry where the insult would lie, since I knew nothing about your planet’s mores.”
“Well you know now,” she said very softly. “The men aggress. Now that I understand, I think I like your way better. But I’m still not sure of all the rules. Do I explain that yes, Brion, I like you so very much? You are more man, in one great big wide shouldered lump, than I have ever met before—”
His arms were around her, holding her to him, and their lips sought each other’s in the darkness.
SENSE OF OBLIGATION, PART 4, by Harry Harrison
CHAPTER XIII
“He wouldn’t come in, sir. Just hammered on the door and said, I’m here, tell Brandd.”
“Good enough,” Brion said, seating his gun in the holster and sliding the extra clips into his pocket. “I’m going out now, and I should return before dawn. Get one of the wheeled stretchers down here from the hospital. I’ll want it waiting when I get back.”
Outside the street was darker than he remembered. Brion frowned and his hand moved towards his gun. Someone had put all the nearby lights out of commission. There was just enough illumination from the stars to enable him to make out the dark bulk of a sandcar.
The motor roared as soon as he had closed the door. Without lights the sandcar churned a path through the city and out into the desert. Though the speed picked up, the driver still drove in the dark, feeling his way with a light touch on the controls. The ground rose, and when they reached the top of a flat mesa he killed the engine. Neither the driver nor Brion had spoken a word since they left.
A switch snapped and the instrument lights came on. In their dim glow Brion could just make out the other man’s hawklike profile. When he moved Brion saw that his figure was cruelly shortened. Either accident or a mutated gene had warped his spine, hunching him forward in eternally bent supplication. Warped bodies are rare—his was the first Brion had ever seen. He wondered what series of events had kept him from medical attention all his life. This might explain the bitterness and pain in the man’s voice.
