The Caterpillars Question - txt

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  "Why are you after Tappy?" he demanded.

  The man's gaze flicked to the girl, and Jack realized that he had blundered already: the man had not known her name. Not her Earth name, at any rate. But he answered. Jack was already getting used to the accent, and tuned it out in favor of the meaning. "We must restrict the Imago."

  There was a key word! "What is the Imago?" Jack demanded. "Why must you restrict it?"

  The man seemed at a loss. "It has to be restricted!"

  "Look, Joe, I'm an ignorant lout from a primitive planet. I don't know anything about this Imago, except that it's gotten me into a lot of trouble. So you'd better give me good reason not to wipe her out, and wipe you out, and anybody else who comes after me, so that I can go home and forget all this. Tell me all about the Imago before anybody else gets here. Give me reason not to radiate everything in sight." He hardly believed himself! He was talking like a thug from a grade F movie. But he didn't have time to figure out how to act like a tormented perfectionist from a grade A film.

  The man told him, somewhat awkwardly. It wasn't that he didn't know it, but that he could not believe that Jack didn't, so he kept skipping over elements that he assumed Jack already understood. In the course of this Jack picked up some background about the empire and the planet they were on.

  It seemed that there were several components of the empire. It wasn't exactly an empire, but whatever it was was too complicated for Jack to assimilate at the moment, so he used the term as mental shorthand. It included so many stellar systems that there was no reliable survey listing them all. Human beings were on several of its planets, not because they were native but because they had been imported as labor from overpopulated Earth, which didn't even miss them. The alien rulers were called the Gaol, as it were the gaolers of the empire. They did not care what the human laborers did, as long as they did their jobs; they were allowed to have their own families and entertainments. One of the planets they worked on was this one, where the dominant native species was what Jack thought of as the honkers. The empire was governed by completely alien creatures who had no biological and little intellectual association with human beings, but whose technological power was such that no known force could oppose it.

  Except the Imago. Therefore it was to the Gaol's interest to nullify the Imago. The Imago seemed to be another type of alien entity, possessing no body of its own, other than what for want of a better term was a spirit. It seemed to be singular, though perhaps it was that only one of its kind chose to interact with solid creatures. When it did, it manifested only by the enhancement of the powers of that person. Whether it entered other than human hosts was unknown, but probably it did, because sometimes it skipped a generation of human beings, only to reappear seemingly randomly. It seemed to associate with this honker planet, where spirits had more force than they did elsewhere.

  But when it entered a person, it took time to manifest. At first it was the Larva, largely quiescent, inhabiting the person from conception into childhood. That stage seemed to last for about seven years, until the child was six, and the spirit could not be detected. Then it metamorphosed into the Chrysalis. The child did not change physically, but now the symbiotic entity manifested. The child developed mental or emotional rapport with other life, including animals and plants, and there was a faint mental aura that sophisticated sensors could detect. After another seven years it metamorphosed to its adult stage, whose nature no one knew except the Gaol who governed the empire. It was conjectured that the rapport with other forms of life expanded into full-scale telepathy and the power to modify the emotions of others. If so, it meant the Imago could take over even the minds of the Gaol and make them do its will. That would give it the capacity to rule or to destroy the empire— even if it was based in the body of a blind human girl.

  "Then why don't you just kill it?" Jack demanded. "So it can't mess with your alien masters?" He still hated to talk this way, as if he didn't care about Tappy. His feeling for her was a strange and wonderful thing, not exactly love and not exactly apart from love. Already he recognized the truth of what the man was telling him: Tappy related to other life, and he felt that relation through his mind and heart. He was beginning to understand why he had made love with her, as the Chrysalis of her nature touched him. If this was only the suggestion of her mature power, what would be its full expression?

  The man explained: The Imago could not be killed. If its host was destroyed, it simply sought a new host. Then, fourteen years later, the threat to the empire returned. In the early days, perhaps millennia ago, the Imago had so disrupted the empire as to cause its dissolution. Only when the Gaol had learned how to nullify the Imago had they been able to reconstitute and maintain the empire. Now they tracked the Imago diligently, and when it manifested they captured its human or other host, drugged it into unconsciousness, and maintained it in tight security within a field that scrambled any possible mental or other emanations. They kept it in that condition, carefully alive, as long as nature and technology permitted; with luck their reprieve lasted as long as a century.

  When the captive Imago-host finally died, the search began again. Its occupation of a new host seemed to be random; no one could predict where on this planet it would appear next. The Gaol had the power to obliterate the planet, but feared the would only manifest on another; it was better to keep it. So this world was left in its natural state, unlike most other planets. The Gaol intended to locate and nullify the Imago as usual, forestalling any possible threat to the empire's stability. If the Imago-host was found and killed, the process would have to begin over. Therefore the empire impressed upon its minions that due care should be taken. Whoever was responsible for the loss of the Imago would suffer in ways no ordinary person could imagine— and so would his family and his community.

  Now at last Jack understood. Tappy was the current host of the Imago. She had been the child of a human colonist on this honker planet. When her expanding empathy for life had manifested at age six, she had been hustled to a place where the Gaol could not quickly find her. There must have been trouble; maybe the minions of the empire had been in pursuit, and Tappy's father had been killed, and she maimed and blinded. But she had gotten free, though at the terrible price Jack had seen. Her injuries had turned out to be an advantage, because they restricted her, so that she did not call attention to herself. She had been put under a hypnotic block against even speaking the language. All this had been necessary to hide her from the notice of the Gaol, whose search methods had to be sophisticated and unscrupulous. Indeed, the empire must have searched, and finally was on the verge of locating her. So she had had to be moved— and an ignorant Earth native had been hired to transport her. Jack.

  "Why didn't she return to her family here?" Jack asked.

  The man grimaced. "What family? When the Gaol found out she was gone, poof! So was her community."

  Jack looked at Tappy. She nodded. She had known throughout that she was orphaned. The Earth cover-story had been accurate in essence if not in detail. That was the price of being the host of the Imago.

  "So where are you going?" Jack asked her. For she had certainly been headed somewhere with great urgency.

  "That is what we want to know," the man said. "So we can stop her from getting there. But it no longer matters, because we have captured the Imago."

  "Don't you wish!" Jack exclaimed. "You're not locking Tappy up drugged for the rest of her life! I'll radiate her into nothingness first!" This time he was telling the truth: death was better than that. He saw her nod; she agreed.

  Then there was a faint flash. Jack did not lose consciousness, or even feel pain. He simply lost his volition. The minions of the empire had closed in on them and used some sort of weapon. He had talked too long, and been caught. Worse, he had betrayed Tappy into their power.

  Now other men appeared. "Good job, 'Joe'." one said, mockingly using the name Jack had bestowed on the man. "You kept them distracted until we were sure of our shot."
/>   Jack had after all played the fool. He had been so interested in what he was learning about Tappy that he had not kept properly alert, and they had crept up close. No wonder Joe had been so cooperative, once he got started talking! It hadn't mattered how much Jack learned, so long as he was kept occupied.

  "Get up, follow that man," the new man said to Jack and Tappy, indicating a man who was now standing nearby.

  Jack got up and followed the man, and Tappy did the same. His body was not paralyzed, just his control over it. He had to do what anyone told him.

  "Go to the container and get the null dose," the leader told the one they had been talking to. Now that man got up; apparently he, too, had lost his volition.

  Jack found that though his body obeyed the directive, his mind remained free. He could think anything he wanted, for what little good that might do him. So he pieced together the remaining elements of what had happened.

  The weapons the men carried were not for killing or stunning, but for blocking off the mind's conscious control of the body. They probably generated an intense local field that affected all people in it, but did not extend far. So one shot had taken out all three of them in the niche, but not those standing beyond it. This was surely a necessary limitation. That explained why the men pursuing them had not fired at them before: they had to get within the short range of the will-stunner before using it. The radiator seemed to have no such limit, so had been a fearsome counterweapon. If only he had remained alert with it!

  The anonymous leader made them march toward the huge cage ship, which it seemed was called the container. That made sense; it was used to contain fleeing people. But for the radiator, it would have contained them effectively enough. Now they had lost the radiator. What a mess he had made of this! He should have let the information go, and kept running with Tappy.

  As they approached the ship, he saw that the hole the radiator had carved through the giant rim was smaller. No one was working on it; the thing seemed to be healing itself! At the rate it was going, in a few more hours the injury would be gone.

  Injury? What was he thinking of!

  The rim of the container loomed high. Then a dimple appeared before them, expanding into an opening. Inside was a ramp. They stepped in, and the ramp carried them upward in the manner of an escalator.

  It deposited them somewhere in the middle of the rim. Another door irised open, and they stepped into a beautiful apartment. The walls seemed to be windows on planetary scenes; the illusion would have been perfect, except that each wall showed a different planet. One had a deep green sky with two small bright suns orbiting each other; their dual shadows were slowly changing configurations and shades as he watched. Another was night, with a few scattered stars and a monstrous nebula or galaxy seen end-on beyond them, taking up half the view, wondrously three-dimensional. Another was a cityscape whose buildings curved esthetically to touch each other at different levels; one even made a loop, which was unlooping and extending toward a different building at a fair rate. It was as if the buildings were kissing or copulating. Still another— for the walls were not set square, but angled in the manner of the interior of a faceted stone— showed a ship on a great yellow sea, and the ship flexed to accommodate the passing waves, while tiny people or creatures sported in those waves.

  "Hello."

  Jack would have jumped had he had control of his body. He had been standing immobile, only his eyes moving to take in the wonders of the walls. Now he looked at the woman who had spoken. She sat before a wall looking out over fairly conventional snow-covered mountains.

  She was impressive. It was not that she was young, for somehow he doubted that she was, despite her remarkably firm and slender body. She wore a closed cloak that was opaque only at the fringes; her central torso showed clearly through it, her breasts so well formed that they seemed unreal, her legs slightly spread so that her manicured pubic region was plain. Jack felt an erection starting, an involuntary response to the potent suggestions of her apparel and posture.

  "You may call me Malva," she said. "What may I call you?" She looked at Jack.

  Now he found he could speak. "Jack." But that was all he was able to say; his mouth would not work at his own behest.

  The woman's eyes flicked to Tappy, who remained silent. They returned to Jack. "Tappy," he said. "She can't—" But he was trying to go beyond the immediate directive, and stalled out.

  Malva nodded. "A block. Standard procedure." Her gaze returned to Tappy. "But you will respond appropriately by nodding." Tappy nodded.

  Meanwhile Jack's gaze, drawn to Malva's head when he had to answer her, noted eyes whose irises were red. Not bloodshot, but a deep esthetic cast. Her hair was the same hue, looking natural, though no living woman had ever grown that shade. Perhaps it figured: if she had gone to the trouble to have plastic surgery on her body so she could show it off, she would think nothing of dyeing her hair and using tinted contact lenses.

  "Sit, and we shall talk," Malva said.

  They sat on the blocks that slid out from the wall behind them, where the door had been. They looked like hard plastic, but they were soft, with just enough spring to be comfortable.

  "I serve the Gaol," Malva said. "I am fifty-four Earth years old, but as you can see I am attractive. Without the Gaol I would be far inferior physically and mentally, and I would not have this pleasant residence or the privileges of rank. I say this so that you can appreciate the advantage of the favor of the Gaol. You will not be offered such favor, but you can avoid incurring their disfavor by timely cooperation."

  The wall behind her abruptly changed scenes. Now it showed a classic inferno, a medieval representation of Hell, with tall fires forming the walls. In the foreground was a rack on which a naked human man was bound. A black-hooded tormenter was extending a glowing red rod toward the man's genital region.

  "Any torture your mind can imagine, and a number it cannot imagine, may be visited on your body by the order of the Gaol," Malva said. Behind her the rod touched the man's penis, and the flesh blistered and smoked while the man's body struggled ineffectively, and his mouth opened in a soundless scream of agony. "So I am sure you will not hesitate to answer my simple questions so that I can make a proper report to my masters."

  She looked at Jack. "How did you come to associate with the host for the Imago?"

  Jack stared a moment more at the scene beyond the woman's luscious body. The red-hot rod was now cooking the victim's testicles. The scene could be a mock-up or a recording, rather than any contemporary event, but it was distressingly realistic. He suspected that this was a bluff, similar to his own threat to radiate Tappy, but he decided not to chance it. "I was hired on Earth to drive her to another address."

  "What was the nature of your relationship with her there?"

  Again he saw no reason to equivocate. "I was her companion, and then her lover."

  Malva nodded slightly, unsurprised. The wall behind her returned to the mountainscape. "You did not know her nature, but you felt the effect. She is the Chrysalis."

  "Yes."

  "How did she drop from our screens?"

  Jack gazed blankly at her.

  "You can not answer, or you will not?" she inquired, frowning briefly.

  "I can not. I don't know what you mean." But he had just learned something: there was a choice. Apparently the loss of volition extended only to the body, not the mind. He could not speak unless she asked him to, but his mouth would not say what his mind did not authorize.

  "And she will not. We can not force the Imago." Malva considered a moment, crossing her legs under the cloak. Now her pubic area was not visible, but the underside of her thigh was similarly fascinating. She was an old woman with the body of a young woman, and she knew exactly how to display it. He hardly knew her, and what he was learning he didn't like, but his body had notions of leaping and plunging. "Would some information help you to answer?"

  "I do not know."

  "Are you willing to answer, if yo
u can?"

  Jack did not consider himself a coward, but he knew he was no hero. If they used even the crudest of tortures on him, he would scream out all he knew about anything, or say whatever they wanted him to. He knew that had been the case with the victims of the Inquisition, and he had no doubt that this woman could have him put on exactly such a rack as the wall picture had showed. He and Tappy were captive, already lost; resistance was pointless, especially when he didn't know anything anyway. "Yes."

  "The Gaol supply us with certain techniques of observation," Malva said. Now the panel behind her showed the surface of a planet that looked very much like the one they were on. "The natives are hostile to the Gaol; they do not resist openly, so are allowed to exist, but neither do they volunteer any information." The honkers appeared, marching by in much the manner Jack had seen when he and Tappy had first arrived on this world. "But we do not need them. We are able to survey the natural pattern of life on the planet, and to detect net changes caused by unnatural interference. Every living thing's spirit remains with it until death, and for a time after its death. A dichotomy manifested. We traced it to the unnatural death of two salamanders. Do you understand?"