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That was why we had to run away, because we were only two against many."
"You say they make the bean grow in great quantities?"
"Oh yes. They gather the young plants and make them grow to yield a crop. Then the plants die, but they go out and collect more, in their machines. And they will go on doing this, because the beans are greatly prized by the other humans, on Earth. On Earth there are five thousands of millions of humans . . ." He let the words drift into silence.
The old man made an utterly indescribable sound, but there was no need to translate it. The meaning was clear.
"We must stop them. You are right. It must stop. But how? You will tell me how."
They squatted silently on the surf, wrapped in a halo of pearly mist. Just we two, Anthony thought, but behind us a thousand, or a million if necessary. It was a strangely comforting thought. In rare moments of stillness like this, he was able to dwell on the rapid transformation that had come in his fortunes. From all points within a grand circle roughly one hundred miles in radius and centered on the domes, green people were on the march. A slowly plodding, steady swarm of them, continually in touch, occasionally inspired by melodies, they moved in on the unsuspecting human colony. Anthony had found a common factor between his own people and humans on the level of emotional reaction to music. March melodies, whether from Tannhauser, Aida, or Schubert's Marche Militaire, or even the fiercely nationalistic Marseillaise, all evoked a similar response. He couldn't be sure whether the charm was in the non-verbal reaction to rhythm, or, as he suspected, due to the fact that he was transmitting, all unwittingly, his own sentiments along with the music. Whichever it was, it worked, and the sense of masterful power was intoxicating. But now he was more intent on something quite different.
Lovely squatted by his side, as silent as he, but her attention was cast away to a distant point. On his instruction she had spun a web of close espionage, searching with a thousand eyes and ears, and now they had netted the fish they sought. She stirred.
"It comes nearer, coming this way. Soon we will be able to hear it for ourselves. Shall I try, now?"
"All right," he agreed. "I'm sorry I can't help. Wish I could."
She hushed him with a gende touch, understanding quite well. This was a moment to make him realize his ignorance. He knew that she was reaching out, trying to sense the humans who were within the swamp-car which was rolling their way. Although the very act itself was meaninglessly foreign to him, he could see readily that there had to be a difference between this, and her ability to contact and influence the sub-intelligent responses of some animal. Animals she had known all her life. A roaring thing of metal and power-drives, with glaring lights, porthole eyes, churning wheels and possible weapons was so totally alien to her as to make it a nightmare to visualize. How much more difficult then to reach through that to the minds of the men inside? She snorted a quick breath, and gripped his arm again.
"It is no good. I can feel nothing but confusion. Two men, I think. Or perhaps three. I cannot even be sure of that. It is useless."
"Never mind. We expected snags, remember. Well just have to try our second-string trick. Call up the worm."
She nodded, a wavering jade figure in the mist, and he sharpened his ears, getting ready to run. This tactic could be dangerous. Far away over there—he could manage that much by himself—a quick-footed knot of green men were coaxing and taunting a giant worm, like the one that had scared the life out of him before, on the plain. Into its vegetable-mind they were insinuating the suggestion that there was a large and delicious source of food somewhere quite near. Tantalizingly near. Now, under the direction of their "chief," that intuition would become strong, and the worm would plunge off, seeking to fill its great maw.
He heard the distant gargling bellow, and the growing boom of the swamp-car's engines, simultaneously, from different sides. Beneath him, the damp moss trembled to the heaving approach of a gigantic body. He kept quite still, trying to sense the thing coming. He got a blurred feeling of hunger, of great urgency, and eagerness. Then, out of the mist the huge head loomed up, ringed with violet lamp-eyes. He knew a madly irrelevant moment of wonder,
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that with eyes all round its mouth, this thing would never know whether it was the right way up or not. If it had a "right" way up. But it certainly knew which way it was going. Eighty feet of it rustled by him, almost in touching distance, the massive leather-plated barrel of its body all of nine feet thick. And then he saw the swamp-car, dark and roaring, its goggle-eyes spearing twin beams of light.
Caught by the hard tension of the moment he forgot entirely the dizzy confusion of seeing with his own eyes, and sensing through the little band of people with him, both together, the fractionated feeling of being in several places at once. Leaping up, he plunged after that voracious great thing, saw its blunt head rear and strike massively, at the car, and heard the dull thump of the impact. The worm-head bounced, drew back. A hideous scream blasted the mist as it swung round for another try, the slow curves of its body rippling round into a trapping circle. There came sharp dagger-flames and the spit-crack of a turret-weapon. Anthony fell flat, shouting a warning, knowing that the others had hit the moss as fast as his own reflexes had taken him. Head up, he watched, saw the weapon stammer again and saw large chunks of meat exploding from the worm's carcass.
Some kind of fragmentation projectiles, he guessed, but there was no need to guess about something much more immediate. One of the drawbacks of empathy was its two-way effect. He could "feel" those great tearing wounds, even as the worm felt them . . . dimly, because its sensory capacity was slight, but he felt them, and groaned at the pain of them, just the same. The huge head lifted and flailed down again, flat on the top of the car, hammering it into the soft surface. Then the gouged body flowed massively over the car, beating it deeper down, the blunt tail adding a final hammer-blow as it went over. Back around came the head, insensate now with pain and all-important hunger, and arrowed down, gouging into the soft earth, burrowing under the car, heaving it into the air. Anthony spared a shivering thought for the humans inside as the vehicle lifted and slammed back, upside down, crashing into the soggy surface. The weapon was silent.
Somehow, Lovely was at his side, touching his arm. "Inside," she said, "they are dead, now." And he snatched at
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his instant anger, remembering that for her, unconsciousness equalled death. He wanted live specimens. If they were only unconscious, that would do.
"Have them call off the worm," he said. "And six or seven will have to help upturn that car and get them out of there."
The combined strength of many arms rocked the hapless vehicle, got it swaying, heaved it over. Irrelevancies touched him again. Without training, these people could work in perfect co-ordination instantly, every man knowing exactly what to do, and what all the others were doing. Such potential was breath-taking. He thrust the thought away as he saw the armored access-doors. How could he open those, with bare hands? His violent urgency abated in the need for rational thought. There must be some way to open them from outside.
I'm beginning to think like a savage animal, he thought, and the thought chilled him. In a moment he had the trick of it, found levers and handles and heaved them. The car lay on its side. Through the opening door he could look in and down. Glaring light made him squint. Seat-cushions, shiny with plastic, made a tumbled confusion. Scratch-pads, scribbled sheets, a package of cigarettes, a flask of something, all in a dismal heap against the far wall. In the driving cock-pit was one man, and strapped in the control-seat of the turret-weapon was another. No more. Only two, hanging from their straps, but breathing. And bleeding. He saw it all in one frantically urgent study. Then he flung the door wide and dropped down inside. Lovely was right after him, catlike and wide-eyed.
"They're not dead, only stunned when the car went right over. Help me undo these straps . . . No, have the gang tip this thing further, all the
way upright. Yes?" She nodded gravely, and he felt the vehicle lurch.
It was still a trifle alien to him to have orders passed without so much as a sound, but his rapport was growing with every effort. The man at the gun was bleeding from a simple skull-wound, but the driver was in worse case. By appearance, he had tried to push his face through his console-panel, despite his safety-harness.
Two black eyes and a broken nose, and associated bruises and strains, Anthony thought, and then wondered how he
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could be so instantly sure. The car came down on its hopeless wheels with a thump.
"They're coming round. Now's your chance to work on them."
"I am trying," she murmured. "It is difficult, like speaking words that have no meaning. A confusion." He stepped clear, as far as the small confines of the car would allow, and watched. Both men wore the minimum of shorts, and sandals. One was sandy-haired, the other dark, both about thirty. He knew them to be the technician grade, and wondered, for the first time, just what they thought about this fairy-land of their wealthy employers. Where did they stand in the question of exploitation? He noted, belatedly, that each man wore a gun-belt, and was wryly amused at the thinking behind that. Imagine plunging out into the mist to tackle a worm, with that thing!
Then the man in the weapon-chair snorted, groaned, and lifted his head, shook the black hair out of his eyes, stared round. Even as he saw the two green figures his hand went back, down and up, all in one fast movement, and Anthony reached for the wrist holding that gun. He did it without thought, by sheer reflex, knowing that death stared him right in the eye, only a finger-pressure away. Without bothering to know how, he wrenched that wrist up and a-way.
The weapon went off, in that metal confinement, sounding like a bomb, but the bullet flattened itself vainly on the ceiling. Deafened, frightened, and suddenly savage in his new-found power, Anthony applied a "squeeze" and the black-haired man stiffened, his face purpling, eyes bulging, locked in an invisible grip. Then, staggeringly, Anthony felt the power wane and weaken. It was a distinct sensation of ebbing strength.
"No!" Lovely said distinctly. "You must not kill!"
"You saw what he was going to do to me! And then you, after that, you may be sure. Why shouldn't he be killed?"
"I do not know any why. I only know it is wrong to kill like this."
For a futile second he raged against her sudden awkwardness. "What I want, you want. Remember, you said this?"
"I said it. But not now." Her jaw was stubborn. "It is wrong to kill."
Frustration boiled in him, then it went as suddenly as it had come. This was no time to argue with her naive moral sense, or to wonder whether empathy had anything to do with her stubborn refusal to lend him power. His wits, hardened by many trials, found the way to turn this impasse to his own wishes. He eyed the black-haired Man grimly.
"You heard what the lady said? And she is a lady, even if she's green, and naked, don't forget that. She just saved your life. For the moment, that is. Drop the weapon. You tool" He spun on the sandy-haired man, who was beginning to stir in his seat. "You might as well know what you're up against. There's only two of us here, but there are as many thousands as you care to name outside and all round, so don't try anything stupid."
The man in the driver's seat groaned, put hands to his face to feel, very delicately, of his wounds.
"I've got 'em," he mumbled. "A couple of Greenies talking English."
"It's no illusion I We're real. She objects to having you killed, but she couldn't stop me from tossing the pair of you outside, and letting you try to walk back to base. And that would be the same thing, wouldn't it?"
"What d'you want?" the black-haired one asked. "Who the hell are you, anyway? No, shut up, Hoby, this is real I've seen this one before somewhere. Look, my name's Shaw. Mike Shaw. That wreck there is Hoby Wilson. Now who the hell are you? And can we have that door shut, because this heat is cooking us. No tricks, this is straight." Anthony smiled without mirth, and pushed the armored door closed. He heard the air-conditioning plant humming, felt the temperature begin to fall immediately. Lovely shivered, but it was with pleasure rather than trepidation.
"No tricks," he echoed. "Metal walls make no difference to us. I am Anthony Taylor ..." He hesitated and then, without any uncertainty at all, he added, "King of the Greenies 1"
Shaw started, and stared. "Taylor? Not the missing piano-player? That Taylor? But you were—you are . . . Weren't you a white man, a human?"
"Was I? Does the color of the skin make so much difference? Yes, I was as white and human as you. Now I'm a Greenie. That ought to make you think a bit. And while you're thinking, there's this to add. Where do you stand? What's your attitude?"
"What d'you mean? How do I feel about Greenies?" Shaw rubbed his sore head and frowned. "I've no hard feelings one way or the other. They look like people to me, but the biologists reckon they're not. Me, I'm an electronics technician. Who ever asks my opinions on that kind of thing?"
"You must be nuts," Wilson snarled. "This is just a trick, a glorified talking parrot. Everybody knows Greenies are just dumb animals! You've seen plenty of 'em! What's the matter with you, gone soft in the head?"
Anthony had swiveled his gaze to Wilson and so missed Lovely's gesture, her pointing finger, her blazing scorn.
"I can touch your mind," she said. "It is a crawling thing, sick with ills and fears, a smell! We have people like this, too, but we do not accept them as whole. We judge them defective. You too, I think."
Wilson twisted his blood-stained face into a bare-teeth menace, dragging at his gun exactly as Shaw had done. Anthony felt her pressure strike him as if he shared in the fringe of it. Wilson got the whole of it, the full impact of her wrath, and his struggling figure seemed to wilt and sag in the driver's seat.
"Hey! Hold up!" Shaw cried. "You said it was wrong to kill, remember?" And Lovely's accusative finger drooped. She took in a deep breath.
"You are right. I can feel you, too, but you are not as he is. And this has troubled me. Anthony . . ." She shifted her worried violet eyes to him. "This I have been thinking ever since you said we must strike, and drive out the humans from our planet. Just as we are not all the strong, so it must be with humans. Not all are bad."
Anthony sighed. "There is no time now to explain this to you properly. There is truth in what you say, but it is not as simple as you think."
"Just a minute," Shaw interrupted. "You have to be kidding! Drive us out, away from Venus? How the blazes do you reckon to do that? No offense intended, believe
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me, but you're naked, and defenseless. You're just sitting up and begging for trouble if the big boys in the domes as much as suspect any such move. Like I said, I'm not taking sides in this, but if you started wiping out humans, then I would have to object, like it or not."
"What's more," Wilson sneered, getting over his moment of fear. "Even if you did knock out the domes, and all the people in them, how long d'you think it would be before Earth struck back, eh? And then where would you be, mister?"
Anthony stared at him, at Shaw, and then swung his gaze round to Lovely. He could see and feel her bewilderment. He sighed. "It's true. If we struck at the colony, if we inflicted damage, even the few who do not believe that green people are animals would be swung over to the desire for revenge." As he said it, he sensed that she didn't know the meaning of the word. "Revenge means, quite simply, if you hit me I will hit you afterwards, only harder. Don't try to undenstand, just accept that."
"You mean they don't know about revenge?" Shaw was frankly incredulous.
"Do you think they'd have stood by and let their own people be abused like animals, otherwise? They—I mean 'we'—believe that any adult person should bear his own responsibilities, that co-operation is the right way. . . . Oh, what's the use?"
"Is it true that you collect our bean-plants and take them away, to grow, and then take the beans away to Earth?" Lovely's voice was stern
.
"I'd be a fool to deny it." Shaw jerked his thumb to the rear of the car, indicating a sizeable pile of immature plants, each sealed in a plastic sack. She stared at them, feelings churning. Her evident distress triggered a desperate idea in Anthony's mind. To Wilson in the driving-seat he said, "Start up. Head for Dome One. Prime Base, as you call it."
"Drop dead, Greenie!"
"You're a fool. More guts than brains. Once more, start up, or I'll toss you out and let you walk home. And she won't object to that, because to her it would be no hardship at all. It wouldn't be killing, in her terms."
"Go ahead and toss me out," Wilson snarled. "Where
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would that get you? He can't handle this thing. You'd be stuck just the same."
Anthony smiled, with no humor at all. "Now you're taking me for a fool. If Shaw can't drive this thing he's more stupid than I take him for. I can drive it myself, come to that. You're still being deceived by the color of my skin, but that's your problem. Make up your mind, quickl"
"Don't be a damn fooL or a hero, Hoby. Get going. What's to lose?" Shaw swung round in his seat and got up, oddly awkward. "You can have my seat," he offered, and Lovely smiled at the gesture, making him turn delicate pink. She accepted, settling herself on the resilient cushions and savoring the new sensation. Motors coughed and hummed into life as Wilson settled down to his job with a bad grace. Anthony, balancing himself against the pitching of the floor, went to look over his shoulder.
"I can also read a marker-beacon," he murmured. "Just in case you had any more crazy notions. That thing . . ." and he jabbed his finger at it as it pulsed and died on the panel. "See you follow itl" He went back to sit by Shaw on the padded side-seat.
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