Infinity One

by Robert Hoskins (Ed. )

  “Dey won’t be. Not if it can be avoided. Dat is one lesson we draw from de past. An empire gets spread too t’in, like de British, and it evaporates. On de odder hand, de Romans stopped too soon. Dey could have taken Germany, soudem Russia, and de Near East; and dey should have, because dat was w’ere deir later enemies came from. Rome might den have lasted longer dan Egypt of de Pharaohs, and a better world dan ours might have grown up inside de framework. Could hardly be worse, no?”

  Roban shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “And still you put your judgment against mine?” Duna replied, turning severe. “Besides, you was supposed to have renounced national ties w’en you joined de Order.”

  “Well—you can’t expect a man to . . . I’ve family there—”

  Duna watched him narrowly. “I have got reports,” he said. “I have seen for myself. Luizo did not pick de best trained assistant he was personally acquainted wit’; he picked de one wit’ de best reason to hate de Domination. And he would not wear de mask he does if he was simply learning details about how anodder planet is put to-gedder.”

  Roban swallowed. “Your, uh, your government will get the information when we’ve worked it out ourselves.”

  “For certain? Brudder, I have been trying to make you see you should cooperate wit’ us. Now I tell you plain, you better do it. De Domination wants to be just, but de justice is strict.”

  “I don’t know anything!” the techno almost shouted. “He hasn’t told me! ” He realized the implications. “That is ... no point in him telling me at the, the present stage of things. He’s the only man here who can—” Go on the offensive, for God's sake. “If your government wanted faster results, it could have brought more than one top-ranker.”

  “Wit’ dat many more chances for trickery?” The tone was a whipcrack.

  After a moment, however, Duna smiled and said quite gently: “Please t’ink on it. Ask Primary Luizo to t’ink. You may not like us Baikalans much, but at de last, we are human beings wit’ you.” He waved around the dome.

  The sun was entirely down, nothing except that misty half-lens of zodiacal light to interrupt the awful majesty of the stars. “If dis shell around us breaks, we are dead. Dat is a big and strange cosmos out yonder, and it was not made for us; we were made for a single tiny corner of it. Do not take chances wit’ our corner.”

  He rose. “Goodnight,” he said and departed.

  The Great Bear walked slowly over heaven. When Roban donned earphones to examine the audio component of a message, he would hear the dry, random rustle and hiss that were the stars’ way of talking to each other. Once the radioscope had eavesdropped on it and the computers had translated what was heard into discourse of bursting atoms and ghost-thin nebulae and cosmic rays spiraling down light-years-long magnetic lines. But that was before anger and valor drowned reason on Earth.

  In another generation, perhaps again.

  Luizo began finding less for his helper to do, as the possible manipulations of available data grew exhausted. Roban was not glad. He didn’t want leisure to fret over why his chief worked ever more feverishly and withdrew ever deeper into himself. The Norrestlander arranged a few excursions outside, gliding dreamily along the crater floor or riding a moonbuggy to the ringwall for a climb up those gaunt steeps. The trips refreshed him less than expected, and the company of Dominist soldiers was not the cause. He was longing for home— Earth: manhome—gray walls and grave courtyards, gardens, bells at dusk, where Australia Station kept watch from a high hill over intensely green Croplands; or gurgle and glitter on Puget Sound, lulling winds, flying gulls and flying sails, little red-roofed villages on the strand beneath pinewoods, odor of smoke and a friendly hail and the brave striding of girls.

  Night wore away toward another furnace sunrise. And Luizo said: “We are through here, I believe. We can best finish on Earth. I want to consult my colleagues.”

  His spare face moved only in the lips, from which the words issued metallic. Roban’s heart stumbled.

  A call flew from peak to peak to relay satellite to peak until it reached Duna at the base whither he had returned. The colonel’s reply was prompt: “Optimum time for raising ship, twenty-nine hours hence. Let countdown begin. I will come bid farewell in person.”

  Luizo interpreted this for Roban when the officer in charge told him about it at dinner. “For my part,” the Primary said, “I shall mostly sleep.” His back was slumped, his eyes and cheeks sunken, as if he were hollowed out . . . but by a flame within that was only burning low, that would not die.

  When they had eaten, he and Roban sought the laboratory to collect their transcriptions, calculations, ciphered notes, and conclusions. Luizo always took them with him when he went to rest, and never left them alone for any significant length of time. “You may wipe the memory banks of our computers,” he said.

  “What? But . . .” Roban gulped. The Nominators’ scientists could be almost as indignant at losing those marks along the trail the Communicators had followed, as they would have been at destruction of the message reels themselves.

  “I said for you to clear the memory banks.” Luizo’s voice rose. “To avoid needless duplication where data storage space is short.”

  That’s a command, Roban knew.

  Well . . . presumably no one 'will realize it’s been done till we’re safely back in Australia. And even if they do, what of it? We need merely claim we took the procedure for granted. Relations are strained enough between Domination and Order that the Baikalans can’t afford to consider it a provocative act.

  And it’ll do them one in the eye.

  He laughed. Leaning close: “Sir, can’t you tell me now what—”

  “No,” Luizo said. “The interpretation remains clouded.”

  His thumb jerked toward the wall. Wait till we're home. Here we too likely have electronic listeners.

  “I, uh, understand, sir.” Roban carried the boxes of material to the room the Communicators shared. Luizo reminded him about his key; he had forgotten it once, and found that the Primary had locked him out. Returning to the lab, the techno spent an hour making the erasures.

  That left him likewise weary. He started for the washroom closest to his doss. Rounding a comer, he almost collided with a blocky form. “Oh! H-h-hello, Colonel.”

  Duna smiled. “Salutation, Brudder. I just got in. Was hoping to catch you two at work. Dey told me you was.”

  “I . . . have finished.” Thank the fates! “My superior has already turned in.”

  “Would you like a drink? I brought a bottle of good gin. Not vodka, gin.”

  Roban was tempted. But no—not with the enemy—and they’d have taken it in the lounge, which meant sitting under those icily strange stars. “I’d better hold off. You, well, you might tell them not to call us for breakfast but leave some food on standby. We both need ten or twelve hours’ rest.”

  “And blastoff soon after. Very well, as you wish. I will see you before you leave. Nice dreams.” Duna waved and continued down the corridor with his horseman’s gait.

  Roban stared a moment at his back. Hoy, I did accept a favor from him after all, didn’t I?

  Not important. People weren’t machines; relationships between them, or between aspects of themselves, had nothing of machine simplicity and invariance.

  Nonetheless, the fact that he couldn’t really hate Duna —nor really love the whole of mankind—bothered him. And what was in those sendings from Outside, that both troubled and uplifted Luizo?

  Sleepiness fled. Another wakeful nightwatch, Roban groaned to himself. God, I can't wait to live again the way men were meant to live! No caging underground sameness, exterior deadly barrenness; no days which were nothing but symbols and calculators; wind, rain, green grass and thunderous surf, music and ceremonies and tales of desperate bravery, falling in love and children running to meet you, jokes, games, the billion tiny illogicalities of a human existence. Those brought peace.

&n
bsp; He let himself into the bunkroom, remembering to re-lock the door. Luizo had written to him, early in the project, that this was crucial to keeping the papers safe. Roban saw why they must be guarded. Given, a chance to photocopy a full record of the Communicators’ work, the Dominists could eventually read it; no cipher is unbreakable. And if the masters of the Order should decide to turn in a false report . . . None of the Baikalans had objected, or made any remark concerning the secretiveness. Roban had speculated that they might plan on arresting him and Luizo, acquiring the material by force. No, he concluded, that would bring the ban down on their realm; and they could ill afford to let their rivals enjoy the Order’s exclusive services.

  The room was a cubicle, sparsely furnished. The sole decorations on its dull gray walls were the official medallion Luizo had hung, four stars linked by trains of waves, and the time-blurred portrait of an unknown woman and child which Roban had sentimentally left in place. A ventilator gusted air that felt a little chill when he removed his clothes; no matter how far they ranged, men did best to take the cycles of mother Gaea with them. Its murmur was soft in his ears. Luizo looked oddly shrunken and helpless, asleep with one thin arm laid over the blanket.

  Roban chinned into the upper bunk, turned off the light, and tried to compose himself. Useless. He did not thresh about, for any position is comfortable in low-weight. But too many questions moved inside his head.

  Three or four hours had passed when the door opened.

  The entry was most quiet. Roban’s first intimation was a faint brightening on his lids. He blinked, and saw a line of wan illumination from the hall. What the demons? He half sat up. The crack widened and a silhouette appeared within.

  They . . . yes, why didn't we think of it, of course they'd have duplicate keys and combinations. Roban rolled over to face the entrance and watched through slitted eyes. He hoped his breathing stayed regular and his heart did not hammer audibly. It prickled along scalp and backbone.

  The intruder stepped through and reclosed the door. There was an instant’s blackness. A stopped-down flash-beam glowed. Reflections picked Duna’s countenance out as a few bony highlights and a glitter of watchfulness.

  He padded across the floor and squatted by the lower bunk. Roban risked leaning over the side for a look. Duna held the flash between his knees. One hand grasped a pressure container. From it snaked a tube ending in a bell mouth, that his other hand was bringing toward Luizo.

  Roban had done battle in waterfront brawls, and hunted bear with crossbows while the Domination still forbade guns to Norrestlanders, and ridden out gales of Cape Flattery. Only later did he recognize that what flared in him now was less rage than joy.

  He swung himself outward in an arc that landed him behind Duna. The colonel heard the thud, bounded erect and sought to whirl around. Roban caught him in a full nelson. Duna hissed an oath, writhed with astonishing power, and kicked. Pain coursed through Roban’s bare shin. He held firm, stood on his unhurt leg and wrapped the other around both of Duna’s. “Gotcha, you bastard!’’ he grunted.

  Duna pressed the trigger on his can. A sickly-sweet whiff reached Roban’s nostrils. For a second his mind spun, his muscles loosened, and Duna broke free.

  A shadow among shadows, the Baikalan snatched for his pistol. Another shadow arose, Luizo, wakened by

  Roban’s massive body striking the bunkframe. The Primary lunged. “I’ve caught ... his gun hand. Help!”

  Roban shook his head. The giddiness went away. He found the dropped dash and played its beam over the struggle. Duna had lost his pressure can. He wrenched to break Luizo’s grip. The old man hung on.

  Roban trod forward. His fist smote. The violence of the blow erupted in his own shoulder. Duna’s head snapped back. He fell, with the peculiar, buckling Lunar slowness, and did not move.

  For a while murk was, and harsh breath.

  Luzio groped to the light switch. The fluorescence seemed bright as topside day. Roban hunkered over Duna. “Is he dead?” The Primary’s question sounded as if from an interstellar distance.

  “No. Sock to the chin. He should rouse in a minute or two.” Roban heaved the Baikalan into the lower bunk.

  Luzio peered out. “Nobody else in sight.” He shut the door.

  “What’s this about?”’ Roban demanded.

  “Obvious.” Luizo’s crisp calm was restored. He stooped for the can, shot the least jet from the tube, and sniffed. “Yes, pentacycline. A common anesthetic. We would have been unwakeable for several hours, while he duplicated our material and put it back. If tomorrow we suspected, what proof could we bring? I should have anticipated the possibility. You did well, Brother. We may never dare speak publicly of such an incident, but I will commend you to the right people.”

  At another time Roban might have glowed. On this night he could ask merely, “What do we do next?”

  Luizo’s dryness restored a measure of balance: “You might start by removing his knife and gun.”

  Roban hastened to obey. The pistol felt oddly heavy in his grasp. Luizo peered at the colonel. “Ah,” he murmured, “he is reviving. Let us see if we can’t utilize the initial confusion.”

  Duna’s lids fluttered. He uttered a snoring sound. Luizo asked him a question in Baikalan. He mumbled and tried to sit. Luizo gave him a jet of gas and, as he sagged, snapped and other inquiry. Duna mushed an answer and lay back.

  Luizo straightened. “He says he came alone, without notifying his fellows. I will assume that is true. Primitive though our narcosynthesis is, we have nothing better, do we?”

  More than ever, he appeared like a hawk stooping on prey. And a tingling went along Rohan’s own veins. Here finally was a time when men must decide and act.. . not any damned machine!

  “Let us get dressed,” Luizo said. “We want the maximum psychological advantage. He is a tough one.”

  “What can we do, sir? I mean, he—’’

  “At worst,” Luizo clipped, “we can kill him, move the corpse elsewhere, and hope the death passes for accident or suicide.”

  Roban was momentarily appalled. “Sir! Is the . . . the issue ... that important?”

  “More.” Luizo paused. “I trust murder won’t be necessary. The risks are high, not to speak of the moral dilemma.” He tugged his beard. “The Domination itself is surely unwilling to run certain other risks. We can try to use that fact. . . . Dress, Brother, and fetch a glass of water. He will need it.”

  That walk down the hall was the longest Roban had taken. Yet he encountered no soul. The hour stood at midnight over Lake Baikal, and the corridor on this level reached as empty as if nothing remained on the Moon except the unseen, susurrating machines.

  When he came back, Duna was hunched on the bunk edge, elbows on knees, face in hands. Luizo offered him the tumbler and, in addition, a tablet from his personal medikit. “Take this. A stimulant and pain killer. You will feel more like yourself.”

  The colonel did. Presently the slackness left his mouth, the haziness his eyes. Though a bruise had already begun to show among the tattoos on his jaw, he sat straight. Luizo confronted him from the single chair. Roban loomed behind, gun in belt.

  “Well,” Duna said across the quietness. “You gave me a hard welcome.”

  “We may have overreacted,” Luizo said. “However—” He pointed to the can where it lay on the floor.

  Duna grinned, winced, and doggedly repeated the grin.

  “An embarrassing situation, right? On bot’ sides, I t’ink. W’en I do not soon notify my men I am safe—”

  “I doubt your men will worry before momwatch, Colonel.”

  Duna stayed motionless. “Ah. Yas. I remember now, from barely awake. ... You should have been an intelligence officer, Primary.”

  “Thank you. I assume you are?”

  “Not as a regular, or I might have worked more smoot’. Dey figured me for de best qualified man to deal wit’ you because I am in a technical corps, and speak not only Inglis but your home language, Primary,
w’ich I suspect is de language of your ciphered notes."

  Luizo raised brows in an otherwise impassive visage. “Then you have already spied?”

  “Glimpses. You gave no chance for more. I had no specific orders, you understand. I was to act at discretion, depending on how you behaved. Wen you showed bad fait’, well, I did w’at looked better dan provoking a crisis. I went ahead by myself, for not making any later scandal.”

  “Why do you accuse us of bad faith? I have explained that translation will be a long-drawn-out process, and that the Order has always been reluctant to announce conclusions until certain they are not premature.”

  Duna sighed. “Don’t let’s make insults. You know my government can keep its mout’ shut. It would not have assigned me if I could not. You could have told me of your tentative ideas. You did not even tell your assistant.”

  “Because you might have planted recording devices on us—which you have, in effect, just admitted doing.” Luizo stabbed a lean finger at the Baikalan. “What sort of faith does that show?”

  Duna scowled. “Credit me wit’ having t’ought about w’at I observed.”

  “I admit I underestimated you,” Luizo said. “Shall we call the game quits?”

  “No.” Watching Duna, Roban suddenly recalled a cougar he had seen readying to pounce.

  The attack, when it came, was in words.

  “W’en is de Kappan ship arriving?”

  “What?” Roban cried. Luizo sat frozen-faced, but hands clenched tight on the arms of his chair.

  Duna leaned forward. Triumph blazed from him. “In about sixty years,” he said. “Dat is a pretty good estimate, no?”

  Through a noise of exploding suns, Roban heard Luizo say—for the first time, weakly—“You must be insane. What gave you any such idea?”

  “I tell you.” Duna rose. He might not yet have been able to do that under terrestrial weight. Here, though, he stood over the Primacy, with legs planted wide, and Roban wondered how the story had ever started that Orientals are expressionless. His hands darted to and fro while he spoke, machine gun fashion.