So sometimes the ad-libs make the show. Nobody listens to an angry man, and Wendell is counting on you.
Footsteps sounded outside the window, heard through the open doorway. A group of people crunching up the gravel path. One of the Guards left the library on cat feet, and the one covering me went that one last increment toward becoming one with his weapon. Teach’ himself sat motionless, a granite promontory carved by the pounding sea into a remarkable likeness of a man.
“It begins,” I said, and was annoyed at the hoarseness of the first syllable.
“Yes,” he said, and his voice was just as hoarse.
The guard returned almost at once, with the three people I had been expecting: Dalhousie, Phinney, and Krishnamurti. The Council of Fresh Start. There ensued a long pause, during which all three busied themselves with not meeting my eyes or each other’s, which was ludicrous enough to restore my good humor.
George Dalhousie clumped in first, the doorway fitting him as snugly as ever. George is no bigger than a Kodiak bear, and I’ve seen oxen I believe were stronger. He wore his usual faded denims, and an ancient cracked leather jacket against the morning chill. Big mud-stained engineer’s boots encased his feet. His square tanned face was deeply lined, the eyes bagged. His shapeless cap of pepper-and-salt hair was still damp from the shower, and he had shaved hastily. His expression and spoor were not hard to read: George was horribly embarrassed.
Next came Helen Phinney, as immaculate as ever. Her grey hair was yanked back into its customary tight bun, and her lipstick had been drawn with the same precision as one of her circuit diagrams. She smelled mad. As I had expected, she wore black, and her carriage was rigid, as though she were maintaining her organic integrity by an effort of will. I read her hollow eyes and the set of her mouth, and knew that she had loved Dad very much. (He and I spoke of it once. I asked him why he hadn’t ever married Helen. “She’s white,” he had said shortly and changed the subject). I wondered if she had heard my tape—or even listened to it. She glanced at my stump, then away, and I’d have sworn I saw her smile.
Last to enter was Sarwar Krishnamurti, a man cross-filed under several headings in my mind. Systems Planning Chief. Friend of Jacob Stone. Founding Uncle of the Techno Philosophy. Present unofficial mayor of Fresh Start: the man minding the store, anyhow.
And father of Alia.
He looked as crusty as ever (dammit, all three of them were “as ever.” It seemed to me they ought to be changed somehow, marked by the decision to take my life. Did I look the same to them as before I’d killed Dad?) He was nearly as tall as Dalhousie, massed perhaps half as much, yet there was nothing gangly about him. His Fu Manchu moustache emphasized the lean planed length of his face and the elongated neck. He wore a tweed suit with vest and a wide necktie, which contrasted ludicrously with his leather sandals. From a mouth like a slit in a piece of paper jutted an empty meerschaum identical with the one my father had been smoking the last time I saw him. He had been more than Dad’s second in command—had in some ways been almost a spouse. The two thought alike, dressed alike, worked together, shared so many mannerisms that it was impossible to tell who had originated which. Seeing him I felt just a bit like Hamlet in the first act. Which made his customary expression—purest scorn—more sardonic than ever. He took in my stump, with all the rest of me, in a single sweeping look.
He glanced at his two companions as if realizing for the first time their utter incompetence for the task ahead, which is how he looks at everybody, all the time, and motioned curtly to Collaci. The lean security chief left at once without a backward look, followed by the two Guards. I started to speak, and then subsided, concentrated on measuring my breaths.
The three seated themselves at the opposite end of the table. Dalhousie placed a battery-operated cassette-corder on the table between us and made a few quick level tests, then sat back and left it purring.
Well, pal, here you go. Tell ’em what they have to know. “Howdy, folks.”
“Isham Stone,” Krishnamurti began formally, “we the Council of F…”
“Cool it, Krish. Nobody here but us chickens. You aren’t gonna make Nixon’s Mistake and put that tape in the archives, so why bother pretending this is a legitimate session of the Council? You’re Uncle Krish, Uncle George and Aunt Helen, and my name is Mud—let’s get on with the killing.”
Dalhousie clouded up, but Krish restrained him with only a shadow of a gesture. “What makes you think this is not a legitimate Council session, Isham?”
I didn’t want to get Teach’ in trouble (although I couldn’t quite remember why not), so I skipped the main reason. “The time. The location, and its owner’s mysterious absence. The absence of audience, secretary, Guards and counsel. The ridiculous look on George’s face…shall I go on?”
“That will not be necessary,” Krish said drily. “You are correct. This is a closed session.”
“Star chamber—isn’t that the phrase?”
“Now listen here,” Dalhousie began indignantly.
“Shut up, George,” Phinney told him.
“But Helen, he’s implying…”
“Save it. He’s right. Let’s get on with it.” Dalhousie still looked indignant, but he shut up.
“We shall require from you,” Krish went on as if there had been no interruption, “all the data you have acquired regarding the Musky race.”
I showed him my teeth. “And if you get it—?”
Dalhousie boiled over. “You want a reward for aiding your own race against those living farts?” he roared. “You’re going to withhold vital strategic information and bargain with us?”
“Well, I confess I had some small hope of coming out of this alive, yes.” That jolted him, bringing the guilt back to his face. “If it looks like that can be arranged, and if you manage to convince me that you’re capable of using the data wisely, I might be persuaded to tell you what I know. But frankly I find both propositions dubious.”
“What makes you think that we intend your death, Isham?” Krish asked, utterly poker-faced.
“I’m a big boy now, Krish. Look me in the eye and tell me I’m wrong.”
He steepled his fingers and frowned. “You do seem less naïve than the boy who made that tape recording,” he acknowledged. “It is a shame that you came to wisdom after murdering Jacob.”
“Executing,” I corrected. Helen went white, but Krish cut her off.
“If I allow the correction, it makes you no less a fool. Who appointed you judge, jury, and executioner?”
“My father,” I said simply.
Three mouths opened and shut.
“Dad was the fool,” I went on, “and his stupidity, coupled with pesky bad luck, destroyed most of the world and ultimately himself. It may yet destroy me, and the rest of the human race. But not if I can get you three to listen to what I have to say.”
“Then you will talk?” Dalhousie asked.
“If you can convince me there’s any percentage in it.”
“What will it take to convince you, Isham?” Krish asked smoothly. “A guarantee of your life?”
“No, that’d convince me that you were lying. I’d like you to answer some questions.”
“This is ridiculous,” Phinney burst out. “We don’t need his cooperation. Send for scopalamine and peel him like a grape.” Her eyes were bright.
“Shut up, Helen,” Krishnamurti snapped. “What are your questions, Isham?”
“What will you do with the information if I give it to you?”
They left it up to Krish. He took his time answering, which pleased me—I didn’t want a knee-jerk response. But of course it made little difference.
“You have apparently learned how to communicate with the Muskies,” he said with an expression of distaste. “We feel that in so doing you may have gained information which will help turn the tide in the present combat before our race is annihilated. We need an edge, Isham. Perhaps you can give it to us. If so, it is your duty as a human to d
o so. And if it is a spectacular enough edge, from a public relations point of view, we may—I say ‘may’—be able to grant you your life.”
Boy, I was tempted. “And your ultimate intentions toward the Musky race?”
His answer was immediate. “Its destruction.”
Here it came. The big question. Everything depended on their answers—and whether or not I believed them.
“What if I could bring you—not victory, but peace?”
That rocked all three. They all began talking at once, and it was a while before Krish was able to silence the others. When he had, he paused himself for a long moment, a new expression on his swarthy face. It was the one I had hoped against hope to see, the expression of a man reexamining his axioms.
“The possibility had never occurred to me,” he admitted to me at last. “I’m not certain I believe you. Do you seriously contend that a human-Musky treaty could be negotiated?”
“I think there’s a chance. Do you want to hear about it?”
“Yes.”
Dalhousie started to speak, then thought better of it. He obviously had reservations, but just as obviously he intended to keep them to himself if it would get me to talk. Helen Phinney’s expression was unreadable. Dammit, I could be playing into their hands—but if there was ever to be a chance, it was now. I had to gamble. “All right. Here’s the story.”
Krish’s face was absolutely expressionless, an irregularity on the front of his skull.
“First I must tell you why the War started. Muskies have been around for longer than we have. A lot longer. Their race was born in the days when Earth was still a volcanic hell with an unbreathable atmosphere, and in those days they flourished. Their First Golden Age ended at roughly the same time that life as we know it began to evolve on the planet’s surface, and their numbers gradually fell to a fraction of a percent of what they had once been. But they did not vanish. Their race survived, with the merest shadow of its former glory. Christ only knows how they reproduce, but evolution somehow thoughtfully cross-wired the process to the available food supply—something that might have saved our own race endless centuries of war and bloodshed. On a geologic time scale, they adjusted to the new conditions quite easily. For thousands of years, their ‘food’ supply remained small but relatively stable. So, therefore, did their numbers.
“Then came the change.
“It was shockingly sudden, by their standards, because their individual life-spans are so many times longer than our own. I don’t think they ever fully understood it. In a mere couple of hundred years—practically overnight—the available ‘food’ supply increased hundreds, then thousands of times. Sheer reflex triggered off a breeding explosion, and in the last fifty years their population began to climb drastically, in inexorable geometric progression. Slowly the Muskies came to understand that this demographic upset had been brought about by creatures living on the Earth’s surface—the ones whose emotional broadcasts had been entertaining them for so long. For some reason humans had—from the Musky point of view—chosen to interfere drastically with their destiny.”
“Wait a goddamned minute,” Dalhousie blurted. “I don’t get it. How did we make their food supply increase? What the hell do they eat?”
I grinned at him. “Helen’s figured it out. Haven’t you, Helen? Tell Uncle George what Muskies eat.”
“Air pollution,” she said, whitefaced.
Dalhousie’s face went utterly slack; simultaneously his shoulders knotted and swelled under the leather. The effect was so fascinating I almost missed the way Krishnamurti’s eyes narrowed to slits. I wondered if he’d made the intuitive leap to the solution I meant to propose. I went on.
“See the implications, George? Those funny ground-huggers took to gathering together in bunches and mass-producing food. And then, when they’d artificially boosted the Musky population to an ecologically dangerous level, utterly disrupting an ancient and stable culture, they cut off the food supply literally overnight. The sulfur dioxide, the lead oxides, all the tasty hydrocarbons, all vanished instantly and for keeps. And at the same time all those Indian givers began going berserk, filling the emotional ‘ether’ with broadcasts of terror, agony and despair. They began to slay each other, themselves, and—astonishingly—Muskies. For the first time in history, humans revealed an ability to perceive Muskies, and used it to kill.
“So what did the Muskies do? What would you do, George?”
“My god,” he said hoarsely, and swallowed. “No wonder. No wonder.”
Helen Phinney was tougher; her face was almost unnaturally composed. “It explains much,” she said softly.
“It damned well does,” Dalhousie exclaimed. “That Agro charge…”
“Shut up, George!” Krishnamurti rapped.
“Yeah, George,” I agreed. “You almost slipped and told me that we’ve always known Jordan’s right when he claims that Musky raids tend to center around Fresh Start.”
“Who told—? Oh!” Krishnamurti looked disgusted.
“Right, Krish—Dad again. Ever since Jordan made that charge two years ago, our P.R. department—pardon me, our Good Neighbors Bureau—has been blandly falsifying statistics to prove it’s all a lie. I know—I work in the radio station, remember? Only it ain’t a lie. The Muskies hang around downwind of Fresh Start because it’s a soup kitchen. And they hang around cities for the same reason. When I first breathed New York air unplugged, it seemed worse than it could naturally be after twenty years—and so it was. The Muskies figured some way of hermetically enclosing the city, sealing in the last of the ‘food,’ and they’ve been rationing it out ever since.
“But we’re probably the only place on earth producing new food. In small quantities, yes—but producing.”
“Then you’re with Jordan,” Dalhousie barked. “You’re saying we should shut down Fresh Start, let technological civilization die forever and go back to the Stone Age.” His face was reddening.
“Nuts,” I replied. “I’m saying we should export smog.”
Dalhousie and Phinney went into the jaw-dropping routine again. Krishnamurti’s eyes still looked like paper cuts. Hit ’em while they’re groggy, my man. I plowed on urgently.
“Think about it, George—Helen—Krish. Think of the kind of work you could accomplish if you didn’t have to have three men guard every one working, if you didn’t have to waste time and materials and power Musky-proofing every work-zone, if you didn’t have to devote so much energy to mass-producing hot-shot and compatible weaponry, if you didn’t keep losing good men to Musky raiders. How much more could you accomplish if the farmers and Agros who live around this burg weren’t half-crazy with fear? How would you like free safe access to the tools and equipment of the cities? How would you like to be able to walk safely outdoors with a head cold? How would you like to stop all the killing?” I was startled by my own vehemence, and discovered that I was bathed in sweat.
“What sort of…treaty are you proposing?” Krishnamurti asked quietly.
“A simple symbiosis. If the Muskies promise to leave us alone to rebuild a technology, we promise to do it. We work with them, work out ways to expand at a stable, even rate beneficial to both sides. Dammit, if we use our fucking brains we can have industry and clean air both—the Muskies’ll eat our pollution for us. But it’ll call for understanding and good communications.”
“Which you can provide?” Krishnamurti asked just a hair too smoothly.
“Hell, no,” I said. “I’ve been working on talking to Muskies for weeks now and I haven’t gotten past the ‘Me Tarzan—you Jane’ stage. And that ain’t even the big problem.”
“Explain.”
“Look: Muskies come in groups, called Names. Each Name contains anywhere from three to forty Muskies, and each individual is the Name—talk to one and you’re talking to them all. It’s a group-mind, with certain qualifications that are so subtle I don’t understand them myself.” Sure giving away a lot of free information, old son. Fuck it, I�
�ve got to convince them. “But there are thousands of Names still living, the survivors of starvation and human firepower—and communication between them can only be accomplished through the High Muskies.”
“What the hell are High Muskies?” Dalhousie snapped.
“The aristocracy, George. The elders, the older and wiser heads. The Musky Council, if you will. Their diminished mass keeps them mostly in the upper stratosphere, though I’m not certain whether that’s a matter of preference or necessity. I can’t tell you why they can communicate with any Musky while the Names can’t communicate with each other. I can’t explain the relationships between High Muskies and Names. I can’t even tell you for sure how much of this is fact and how much is guesswork—the distinction gets vague when you’re talking with a Musky. But I can tell you with intuitive emotional certainty that the High Muskies are the key to ending the War. We’ve got to get to talk with one, people, and soon.”
“What do you propose?” Krishnamurti asked again.
“Drop everything and begin constructing some sort of flying machine,” I replied at once. I’d had the walk from New York to perfect this. “From what I know of Fresh Start’s technical capabilities I would suggest a balloon, capable of lifting two or three people and about fifty pounds of electronic equipment. While that’s being done—in fact, before it’s begun—send an expedition to New York to work with Wendell Carlson.” Phinney sucked air through her teeth. “I know we haven’t got any semanticists or philologists, but somebody better qualified than me has to learn to talk with the windriders. I’d recommend Dr. Mike, and anybody else we’ve got who’s good with languages. No sense sending ’em an embassy if the ambassadors can’t speak the lingo.”
“And when the…ambassadors have learned the ‘lingo,’ and the balloon is ready?” Krish prompted, Eastern features impassive.
“Send ’em up and have ’em start learning High Musky. If they can accomplish that, they can try to work out some sort of peaceful coexistence agreement.”
Telempath Page 10
