by James White
There was a sudden, unnatural stillness as it deployed its force shield and the wind and rain ceased. The voices of the young Keidi sounded loud and very close. Martin pointed to a tiny clear area of ground below them.
“Climb down there and lie flat,” he said urgently. “Don’t move no matter what happens. And tell your people they have nothing to fear.”
“I will try, off-worlder,” the doctor said. “But I am fearful myself.”
For a few minutes nothing moved except for the small, irregular tremors which were shaking the ground on which they lay. Then the invisible, immaterial cylinders that were die hypership’s tractor beams speared out, came to a focus, and whole trees were lifted gently into the air and, when it was clear that nothing was entangled in their branches, tossed away. The sound of discarded trees crashing onto the lower slopes became continuous.
Beth began by clearing the area outside the transport’s entry locks. Martin watched admiringly, marveling at her precision of control as she raised one particular tree into the air and shook it gently to dislodge a vehicle which had trapped itself in the branches. Plainly she wanted to gain experience rescuing inanimate objects before trusting herself to extricate the living. But very soon her confidence and speed increased and the splintered tree trunks and branches were lifted from above them so that they were able to stand again.
A broad pathway of tumbled soil and small branches lay between the transport and the Keidi trainees along which the rescue vehicles were already moving.
“Oh, nice work”“ Martin said enthusiastically. The doctor did not speak. He was already hurrying toward the group of young Keidi who were lying in their newly created clearing. Some of them were moving and trying to crawl away,
“It was just like weeding a big garden,” she said modestly, “except that the object was to rescue the creepy crawlies as well as remove the weeds.
“But you have another problem,” she went on seriously. “All of the trainees who are able to move have taken to the woods. When I tried to lift the trees off one of them he just took off in a different direction. Talk to them, dammit, we haven’t time to play hide and seek!”
“The doctor will talk to them,” Martin said.
But the doctor had time only for a few hasty and general words of reassurance because he had casualties lying on the ground all around him awaiting attention. Most of them were young Keidi who had suffered limb fractures, heavy bruising, and lacerations from the tree-fells. But there were two older trainees in very bad shape indeed. They had been trying to protect a couple of their smaller charges with their bodies-successfully, because the young Keidi had been seen wriggling from under them and running away.
When Martin tried to lift one of them onto a vehicle, the doctor told him to please go away because his presence was distressing the still-conscious patients.
“I’m just an off-world bogeyman,” Martin said bitterly. “But there’s something I can do. Point me at the nearest escapee.”
Beth did so and reminded him, unnecessarily, that his gas bulbs exploded on contact, that he would have to get close enough to hit his target so as not to waste them on any intervening foliage, and that he should be very careful because the sensors showed most of the escapees to be armed.
Martin was too busy forcing his way under fallen branches to reply. In the unnatural stillness he must have sounded like the Keidi equivalent of a rampaging elephant, which would have done nothing at all to reassure the people he was trying to help.
Suddenly he caught sight of a small Keidi crawling slowly under the branches, dragging one leg stiffly behind him. Martin waited until he had a clear shot and fired. The gas bulb plopped wetly against the back of the target’s head and the Keidi went limp. As he went forward to check on the other’s condition, there was movement in the leaves of a thick bush about twenty meters to his right. Since the arrival of the hypership there had been no wind in the valley.
He swung his gas-gun to bear and fired twice at a tree stump close behind the suspect bush, then dropped flat. There was the sharp crack of a solid-projectile-firing weapon, but the bullet went nowhere near him. Probably the Keidi had pulled the trigger instinctively as the anesthetic took effect.
By the time he had the two sleeping forms draped one over each arm, Beth had cleared a path back to the other casualties. As he placed them in one of the vehicles he announced loudly that they were asleep and uninjured, but it was plain that only the doctor believed him.
Although they had scattered at the arrival of the hyper ship, Beth reported, the remaining trainees had joined up again in a small ravine which ran up the mountainside before dividing into three. When he reached it Martin saw that the rock walls were so narrow that the fallen trees formed a roof over their heads rather than an obstruction. The runaways were climbing fast, much faster than he could manage hampered as he was by the protective suit.
“Can you squeeze a vehicle in here?” Martin asked quickly. “I might as well climb fast and in comfort. And can you block the top end of the ravine before it divides, to keep our friends from scattering all over the mountain. How long do you need?”
“In order:” Beth said, “just barely, but you’ll have to keep your head down if you don’t want it knocked off; can do; and three minutes.”
With its gravity repulsers whining in protest at the steep gradient, his vehicle rounded a bend in the ravine in time to see the log roof ahead of the Keidi collapse into a solid plug of splintered wood, soil, and loose rock — the hypership’s tractors could push just as hard as they could pull. He was still at extreme range for the gas-gun, but there was so much dust and noise up ahead that he doubted if any of the Keidi could hear or see his approach. When he was certain of maximum effect, he loosed off a short burst. In the confined space it did not matter whether he hit his targets or not.
A few minutes later the dust had settled, the fog of anesthetic gas had dispersed, and the four sleeping runaways were in the vehicle.
“There should be five of them,” Beth said. “Wait, I see him! About thirty meters behind you, on the left top edge of the ravine behind a stump. He isn’t moving, but that doesn’t mean he’s unconscious. Be care…”
Martin jumped quickly to one side as he turned, only to be knocked to the ground by two savage, irresistible blows to his chest and shoulder. He blinked the tears from his eyes as a third shot buried itself in the soil a few inches from his helmet.
There seemed to be a small patch of haze, which dispersed before he could be sure it was really there, high on one side of the ravine. It could have been smoke from the Keidi’s weapon. He swung his gas-gun to bear, grunting with the pain which the movement caused in his chest and shoulder. His eyes were watering so badly that he could scarcely see. He fired in the remembered direction and kept on firing until his weapon was empty, then rolled painfully onto one hand and his knees, wondering if he could reach the cover of his vehicle before another bullet found him.
Chapter 30
“YOUR target is unconscious,” Beth said. “I heard shooting. Are you all right?”
Martin grunted again as he climbed awkwardly to his feet. “Yes,” he said.
“My ears and the bio-sensors are calling you a liar,” she said worriedly. “What happened to…”
“I’m all right,” Martin said.
He could not incline the helmet far enough forward to see, but with his fingers he could feel the two long, deep trenches that the bullets had cut in the suit’s chest and shoulder section. He could not move his left arm or inhale without pain, and he thought he had been very lucky indeed to escape with what felt like a broken collarbone and a couple of cracked ribs. But he could not afford to waste his breath on a verbal self-diagnosis-he might need all of it if he was going to recover the last runaway.
A few minutes later as he was struggling to lift the Keidi one-handed into the vehicle, Beth said, “Get in the back with the others and lie flat. I’ll bring you in on remote. Your bio-sensor display worr
ies me, and I don’t want you to pass out, not now. There is another problem…”
It had been a mistake to show the young Keidi everything that was happening outside their transport, she said, because the sight of Martin knocking over their friends with his weapon had made their immature minds jump to a wrong conclusion-that the evil off-worlder’s intention was to kill and ultimately eat all of them. She had tried to reason with them, and had played back the original words of reassurance spoken by their First, but they were too frightened to listen to anyone. She had been forced then to seal the entry ports to keep them from escaping again.
“.. Now they’re taking the interior of the transport apart,” she went on quickly. “The doctor has the others loaded onto vehicles and is waiting outside, but if I open up the ones inside will escape. Gas?” “Gas,” Martin agreed.
On the way back the vehicle lurched and bumped several times, rolling one of the Keidi against his damaged shoulder. He mentioned it to Beth, who said crossly that gravity repulsion vehicles were designed to maintain a fixed distance above the land or road surface, and that it was the ground that was lurching. A few minutes later he heard her telling the doctor that there wasn’t time to unload his casualties and that, with the exception of her life-mate, they should remain in their vehicles until they were off-loaded at the nearest safe induction center. The First, who was still on the transport’s frequency, did not agree.
“They must be brought here!” the Keidi leader said firmly. “Many of their parents are with me and it is wrong to separate them. I insist.”
“But the radiation level in your area is dangerously high,” Beth protested, “and they are young people. They are anesthetized, unable to move, and many of them are injured, and this will complicate and delay the transfer. Unprotected and in the open, they could take only a few minutes exposure without the probability of serious gene damage.”
The First did not reply for a moment, during which Martin was being lifted and pushed through the personnel entry port. When he reached his control console, he saw that Beth was already lifting their transport with one of the hypership’s tractors, The direct vision panels showed only the receding top of the cloud layer.
Around them the Keidi trainees were asleep amid the self-created wreckage of the furniture. The doctor glared at Martin disapprovingly, but could not say anything because of the mask pressed tightly against his speaking horn.
“Land your vessel as close as possible to the entrance of my building,” the First went on suddenly, “and open all entry points. Older members of my Family, those who are too old to worry about further offspring, must be transmitted back to the entrance. They will remove the other casualties from inside your vessel. My own medics will attend the injured, but the doctor may advise if there are special cases. During the transfer the doctor and your life-mate will not try to assist my people in any way and will remain out of sight at all times.
“It is for their own safety,” the First explained harshly. “The feelings of Keidi parents for their offspring are strong and not always logical, and the way the young trainees were rescued has given rise to intense anger and hostility toward both of them. Do you understand your instructions?”
“Do you understand,” Beth said angrily, “that your young Keidi, the ones you feel so strongly and illogically about, will still be at risk. We can take them to another center and send them to you later when…”
“Do as he says,” Martin broke in sharply. “We must think of our obligations.”
He had been thinking about little else since returning to the transport, and hoping that the pain he felt with every breath would not affect his clarity of thought. He had even more time to think as he watched the screen showing the small, limp, and strangely, no longer alien bodies of the trainees being off-loaded. The operation was so fast and well-organized that he doubted whether any of the children were placed at risk, although the same could not be said for the elderly adults who had volunteered, or been told, to make several return trips. Was it a display of bravery and selfless devotion to the children, or of blind obedience to their First Father?
The Keidi leader had influenced the conduct of this assignment from the time, a few minutes after entering planetary atmosphere, his people had fired on their lander. Because of their desire to obtain information and be helpful both to the doctor and the First in the medical emergency involving his granddaughter, they had become personally involved with him and had come off a very bad second best. They had regained the initiative, briefly, during the escape from Camp Eleven, but since then the First had quickly regained control of the situation by maneuvering them into a position where he was running things-the two off-worlders as well as the whole population of his soon to be contaminated and desperately endangered planet-exactly as he pleased.
Although Martin had never been quite sure of what constituted evil in a human being much less an extraterrestrial, he did not think that the First was a completely bad person. He was a brilliant politician, organizer, and tactician, an inspiring leader who had a great dream for the future of his people, and he had the ability combined with the ruthlessness to make that dream come true even after his death. But now, because of the coming of the off-worlders, the entire population would forget their earlier fear and distrust of him and would instead look on him as the greatest benefactor in their history, never considering that for the majority of them-those who were not of his inner Family-the dream would become a nightmare, a future of near slavery.
He was also, as were many of the people he had gathered around him, completely and utterly Undesirable.
More than anything else, Martin wished that his friend Skorta, the Master of Education, and the other Masters of Teldi were here to advise and support him. The Keidi people, the old and very young, the Undesirables and the potential Citizens alike, were not his property in the Teldin sense of the word, but the time had come to grasp his Master’s sword and assume ultimate responsibility.
The time had come, Martin thought sadly, to stop the First from doing even more damage, to end the playing of his planetary power game by removing him and his group of handpicked Undesirable followers from the board.
“I am troubled, off-worlder,” the doctor said suddenly.
Having made a decision which he would probably regret for the rest of his life, not because he thought it wrong but because others with influence over his future career would think so, Martin welcomed the interruption. By giving him something else to think about it decreased the temptation to change his mind.
“The First does not like me and no longer wants me in his Estate,” the Keidi went on. “This does not trouble me because the feeling is mutual. But I hear your life-mate telling the people in the centers that the doors of the matter transmitter rooms are now open, and that they should prepare themselves for transfer to the north and south continents. The people of my city will be confused and frightened by this and worried about what is to come. Will you be able to send me back to them?”
“Yes, Doctor,” Martin said, thinking that the subject had not changed after all. “But not until we know their new location. You may have to wait a few days.”
“I am obligated beyond the possibility of discharge,” the doctor said, “and I have come to realize that the whole of Keida is obligated to your life-mate and yourself. The First will doubtless try to misdirect the discharges toward himself, but my people will be told the truth.
“However,” he went on, “I have had sufficient experience as a healer to know when another person is troubled, even when he is a being of another and visually repugnant species, and I would like, if it is possible, to discharge a small part of my obligation to you. I think that you are troubled. Is there a burden other than your recent hurts that you would like to share with me?”
This is ridiculous, Martin thought wildly as he stared at the leathery, alien features and into the puckering, widely flared mouth of the other’s speaking horn. He had always had a clear idea of wha
t a concerned and trusted psychiatrist or a father confessor should look like, but this was certainly not it.
He surprised himself by saying, “There is a burden, Doctor. I am about to do something very wrong for what I believe are the right reasons. That is what troubles me.”
For a moment the old Keidi was silent, then he said, “The First has the same belief and I do not think it troubles him. But you arc not the First. What is the wrong that you are about to do?”
The docking signal interrupted him at that point, followed by the voice of Beth. Either she had been too busy or was pretending not to have heard their conversation.
“Can you come to Control at once,” she said briskly, “or do you have to visit the medical module first?”
“Yes,” Martin said, “and no.”
The moment for confession had passed.
When they arrived Beth looked at his face, the bullet furrows in his suit, and at the slow, careful way he took his seat, but did not comment. Instead, she nodded toward the main screen and said, “The seismic activity is increasing all over the continent. Most of the centers are feeling it now and the refugees can’t get out and are close to panic… In an earthquake situation their natural instinct is to get outside before the building falls on them and to treat the radiation, which they can neither see nor feel, as the lesser danger. There will be serious casualties if they aren’t moved out quickly. The transmitter rooms are waiting for the destination instructions. So am I.”
Plainly she was still annoyed at him, and he should take a few minutes to apologize and explain.
“Sorry about the way I cut short your argument with the First,” he said, “but there wasn’t time for a debate. I thought that the radiation risk was acceptable, the First certainly thought so, and we both wanted the trainees with him because my idea was to separate…”
“It doesn’t matter,” she broke in angrily, “whether they receive a sublethal dose now,or slowly over the next five generations. I called up the Keida pre-Exodus data and the missile arsenal the First opened up contains virtually all of the fissionable material on the planet. That volcano was dormant and would have remained so for thousands of years if the subsurface detonation hadn’t.;. When it erupts it will make Kratatoa look like a hiccup. All that radioactive filth will be distributed by stratospheric winds all over Keida, and five generations is how long it will take for the radiation to fall to a safe level.
