The Caterpillars Question - txt

by Farmer, Phillip Jose

  "We did kill and eat salamanders," Jack agreed. "But any animal could have done that!"

  "The balance of nature is finely tuned. There was a slight excess in deaths. Next day there was a similar excess, but we could not locate it or confirm it; it was only a probability of outside interference."

  So the creatures they had eaten had given away their presence! Jack had never heard of such a survey, but he had no reason to doubt it. Why should Malva lie to him, instead of torturing him?

  "In due course we found their vacated spirits, and were sure," the woman continued. "We were at that point able to get a fix on the aura of the Chrysalis. Rather than intercept it immediately, we elected to wait to see where it went. That would enable us to root out whatever remaining traitors to the empire were on the planet and diminish the likelihood of any assistance being rendered to the next Imago, should it manifest here. Do you understand?"

  He was appalled, but he did understand. "Yes. You intended to root out every part of the weed."

  "Then, abruptly, the aura faded," Malva said. "We had to act immediately, lest the Imago be lost. We brought the container in and enclosed the region of the aura's last manifestation." She peered closely at Jack. "Something happened in that night which we do not understand. What damped out the aura of the Chrysalis?"

  Suddenly it came clear. The honker! The honker had injected something into Tappy that formed a tight marble-sized ball under the skin between her breasts. A timed-release capsule of a chemical that somehow counteracted the broadcast of the aura the ship was tracking. Tappy, realizing that they were probably being tracked, had talked to the honker when she bought food from him. The honker had accepted the pretext— what need did it have of an Earthly quarter?— and made its preparations. Then it had come and done what was necessary, returning the quartet. It had not been a sexual attack; the honker had a penis which remained unused. It had been a favor to the Imago, which the honkers surely recognized and supported. Because the small operation was painful, it had anesthetized them both, giving it time to do the job, and for the chemical to circulate slowly through Tappy's body, interfering with the manifestation of the distinctive aura. Tappy had not known exactly how the honker was going to help— probably the honker had not known either, until checking with others of his kind— so had been frightened at first. As a child might be frightened of the doctor, despite knowing the doctor was trying to help.

  As long as any of that ball of substance remained with Tappy, the Gaol instruments could not track her. Yet what difference did it make now? Jack had blundered them into captivity anyway.

  Still, if there was any chance at all that Tappy could escape, that marble on her chest would be invaluable. It didn't show under her nightie, even with her jacket hanging open; though her breasts were nascent, the stretch of cloth between them masked the swelling. The minions of the Gaol, so certain of their power, had not bothered to search the captives at all. The marble had escaped notice. Jack was not about to tell this empire quisling about it.

  "Is your silence one of ignorance or resistance?" Malva inquired.

  He wanted to lie, but found he could not. That required too great an act of volition. His choice was between the truth and the refusal to answer. He refused to answer.

  Malva nodded, unsurprised. "So you do know something, and the Imago has corrupted you. Let me remind you of the alternatives. There are possible advantages to cooperation—" The screen behind her showed a bed sliding out from a wall, and to this bed came the image of Malva herself, her cloak dissolving away, her breasts and buttocks quivering as she walked. From the other side came Jack, his clothing dissolving similarly away to reveal the erection he really did have. Malva lay on the bed, smiling invitingly as she spread her legs.

  But Jack knew this was merely a sophisticated show. This woman had no interest in him, only in his information. She might indeed offer sex to him, to obtain it, but the moment she got it she might have his skin made into a lampshade. Meanwhile, the thought of Tappy as a drugged and imprisoned thing, kept artificially alive for most of a century, was such a horror that Malva's temptation became anathema. He remained silent.

  "And disadvantages to noncooperation," Malva continued after a moment. The bed became the rack, the curtains of the room transforming to flames, and the body on the rack became Tappy, her small breasts shaking as she writhed with fear. The Jack figure donned a hood and fetched a blazing red-tipped poker. He extended that tip toward Tappy's genital region, angling it, threatening to rape her with it.

  The substitution of Tappy as the object of torture was startling. Not only did it show the versatility of Malva's control of the images, it betrayed the falsity of them. There was no marble-swelling between the image's breasts. Malva didn't know about that, and he would not tell her. He was unable to look away, but he tuned out the image as irrelevant. Malva was bluffing, and he had found her out, and now his hand was greatly strengthened. He was learning about bluffs!

  "What is your statement?" Malva inquired.

  That gave him more latitude; he no longer had to betray Tappy or be silent. He called Malva's bluff. "You can not torture the Imago. You probably can't torture me either, or you would have done it by now. Your masters don't give you that much authority."

  Malva pursed her lips as the mountains reappeared behind her. "You may be ignorant, but you are not entirely stupid. It is true that I am limited to the mechanisms of oblique persuasion. But it is also true that the end will be the same, and that you will find it far more comfortable to deal with me than with the Gaol. I will proffer one further offer, which will not be repeated. Give me the information I require— I see that you do have it— and I will grant you one year of extremely comfortable life with the woman of your choice, which may be me or a simulation of Tappy or any other you prefer, and subsequent return unharmed to your own planet. Face the Imago."

  Jack obeyed the directive. He turned to face Tappy, who stood without moving. She looked like a street waif in her oversized Jacket over her nightie. Her only expression was a single small tear on one cheek.

  "Imago, I can not force you to do anything," Malva said. "But I can free your host to give your companion an honest answer. You know enough of the Gaol and their human minions to judge whether my offer will be honored if Jack agrees. You know he must make his own decision, based on the truth, so you have no motive to deceive him. Answer him: is my offer valid?"

  The tear accelerated. Slowly Tappy nodded yes.

  "Your answer, Jack?"

  It seemed like folly, since the woman would discover the marble the moment Tappy was stripped for her incarceration. Yet two things stopped Jack from capitulating. The first was that he suspected Malva was still bluffing; she was desperate to make him tell, so was pulling out all the stops, and she wouldn't do that without good reason. So there had to be reason for him not to cooperate. Maybe there was some way to save Tappy. Or maybe it was simply that Malva was expected to handle things, and the Gaol would be annoyed with her if she left a loose end, and would demote her or replace her with a rival.

  The second reason was that no matter how much objective sense it might make, he could not betray Tappy, and this would be a betrayal. Her tear told him that. "No."

  "Go down the ramp and enter the small craft at the exit," Malva said. "It will convey you to the Gaol." Her voice was controlled, but Jack thought he could detect a slight stress in it: the stress of fear or of fury. Whatever else he had failed to do, he had scored against her.

  But his body was already moving, as was Tappy's. That single shot from the null-volition pistol had really fixed them! Apparently the effect continued until nullified, and no other restraints were needed. Not for enough time to get them safely to the Gaol. Malva had to be sure of that, or she would have taken other precautions.

  Now, of course, his doubts loomed. What had he accomplished by his defiance? He hadn't saved Tappy, but he had doomed himself. He was a painter, not a hard-nosed negotiator!

 
There were two seats in the little vehicle, which looked like a gull-wing door car with the doors left open. They got in, but the doors did not swing down. Instead a slight scintillation indicated the presence of a force field that sealed in the car. Then it rolled forward, accelerating like a jet plane, and took off. Those gull wings really were wings! This was an airplane. Jack would have gaped, but no one had authorized him to do so, so his mouth remained closed.

  The plane flew low over the forest, evidently programmed so precisely that the close clearance was no problem. Then it lifted, and Jack saw the huge crater valley where they had entered this world, with its gigantic symbols around the rim. The symbols that moved grandly around, periodically, like the elapsed-time ring on a diver's watch, making a new setting.

  Now, flying over it, he saw that the depression was far too regular to be a natural crater. It was either artificial or had been excavated and reshaped after its formation, for some alien purpose.

  That reminded him of another mystery: the brief redness of the river he had seen. What could have caused that? There was so much about this planet he still didn't know!

  There was a touch on his shoulder. Jack turned to face it, taking it as a command for attention, before he realized the significance of it. Tappy was the only one beside him— and she had done it. She had volition!

  Tappy's finger touched her lips in the signal for silence. You bet! A radio could be monitoring this cabin, as a routine precaution. If she had somehow thrown off the effect of the shot, he would keep her secret. But his own body remained helpless.

  Tappy pointed to the panel before them. He looked, again obeying the implied directive. He could obey her as well as Malva; it didn't matter who gave the orders, or how they were given.

  There was something like a steering wheel there, recessed into the panel. That must be for use by the pilot when this craft was not on programmed flight.

  Tappy's hand extended until it touched the panel, then slid along it until she felt the wheel. She nodded. Then she found Jack's arm and guided his hand to the wheel. She made a gesture of pulling it toward him.

  She was telling him to fly this thing? He looked at her, startled. She nodded yes, knowing his question.

  But he couldn't do that! He had no idea how to operate a normal airplane, let alone this alien craft.

  But the alternative was to let the two of them be flown to meet the Gaol. He had no idea what the aliens looked like, but formed a mental picture of huge sluglike monsters whose proboscises racked out the guts of human beings. Surely false, but it made the point: it was better to crash this craft than to suffer what the aliens had in store for them.

  He had been given his directive. Now his arms and head were free. He took hold of the wheel and pulled it toward him. It didn't come. It was locked in place. Probably it required a special key or code to free it, to prevent exactly such an accident as this one.

  Tappy, aware of his problem, turned around in her seat and reached behind it. In a moment she brought something from a compartment there. It was her leg brace— with the radiator! The fools had dumped it in the craft, for delivery to the Gaol along with the captives. What arrogance of assurance!

  She touched another orange button with her little finger, pointing it out to him. Then she handed him the brace and touched the panel, her hand coming to rest on the wheel.

  Use that on the wheel? It would null it into nonexistence, together with the entire front of the craft!

  But Tappy was insistent. It was a different button she had indicated, and evidently it did a different thing. If not, did it matter? They would be better off to crash and die than to fall into the hands— tentacles?— of the Gaol, he was sure.

  Jack pointed the radiator at the center of the wheel, nerved himself, and touched the large scarlet button. It glowed. Then he touched the correct orange button.

  There was a click. That was all. Nothing changed. He turned off the radiator, lest he brush a functioning button and do something drastic.

  Tappy found his hands and took back the radiator. Jack, frustrated, gripped the wheel again and yanked, if only to show the futility of the act. It came out of its recess and locked into place— and the craft wobbled.

  Jack stifled his astonishment, realizing that, once again, Tappy had known what she was doing. That setting of the radiator had evidently shorted out the locking mechanism, which might be magnetic, and freed the wheel. He had just overridden the programming, assuming manual control. It was that easy. Now all he had to do was fly this thing.

  He turned the wheel, clockwise, just a bit. The craft veered right. He turned the wheel back, and the craft responded. He pushed down, and the craft dropped. He lifted, and it rose. He squeezed it, and the craft accelerated.

  He had the hang of it already! This thing was made for an idiot to fly. That was fortunate, because he was an idiot in this respect.

  Tappy touched his arm. He looked at her. She made a gesture of a circle, then pointed up.

  Fly up? After circling? He didn't think he understood. Why the circle? Unless the circle represented the crater valley— or a compass. They had been going north from the crater, and "up" on a compass could indicate north.

  He leaned toward her. "North?" he whispered.

  She nodded agreement.

  He turned the craft until it was flying north. At the rate it was going, they would soon get there, if it was on this planet. But where was he supposed to land? He could do so only on Tappy's directive, and she was blind.

  How had she thrown off the volition nullification? Suddenly the answer was there: the honker's marble! Not only had it made it impossible for the aliens to track the Imago, it had made their weapon lose its effect on Tappy. Either she had thrown off the effects of the weapon rapidly, or she had never suffered loss of volition at all. She might have faked it, knowing that Jack had no control, until there was a chance to escape.

  If he had betrayed her, and told Malva about the marble, they never would have had this chance. And Tappy had been unable to tell him that. She had had to let him decide himself, and had been afraid he would succumb.

  How glad he was that he had not! He had been more of a man than he had taken himself to be.

  Something flashed on the panel, attracting his gaze. Two little blips were there, blinking. Oh-oh; he had a notion what they might represent.

  He looked around. There, at about seven o'clock on the dial, were two flying craft similar to this one. They were closing fast.

  He knew what had happened. The alarm had been given the moment he overrode the program and assumed manual control. Other ships had been sent out to bring him in again.

  He leaned toward Tappy. "We're in trouble," he whispered. Then he managed one tiny act of his own volition, with great effort: he kissed her ear. Perhaps it was possible only because he knew she would like it.

  Chapter 4

  "Two Gaol airplanes coming fast," he told Tappy.

  He thought, What do I do now?

  The chances were that the planes climbing up below him were faster than his. Even if the speed of his craft matched theirs, he was very handicapped. This was his solo flight, and he had had no training. An aerial dogfight between him and two professionals would last a few seconds. If that.

  "Get a grip on yourself," he muttered.

  That reminded him that squeezing the wheel caused the craft to accelerate. He clamped down as hard as he could on the inflated rim. But the plane was so high up that he could not tell at once if its velocity was increasing swiftly.

  He looked out of the window on his left. The pursuer seemed not to be gaining so swiftly.

  However, his hands would get tired soon. Surely, there must be a control on the panel before him that locked in to whatever speed he wanted. It was a dumb idea to regulate the airspeed of this craft by squeezing on the wheel. The engineers who had designed this certainly did not think like their Earth counterparts.

  However, this machine surely should have something like
the cruise control of a car. When set, it would maintain the desired rate of travel to give the pilot's hands a rest.

  The names on the plates below the lights and switches and buttons on the panel were in a totally unfamiliar alphabet. If it was an alphabet. Maybe the letters were ideographic or syllabic, like ancient Aztec or Chinese or whatever.

  Another glance through the window showed him that, yes indeed, the chaser was eating up the space between his craft and his quarry's. Perhaps its pilot could squeeze harder, but he did not think so. The adrenaline surging through him should give his hands the strength to crush rocks.

  He wished he had a brush big enough to paint the other planes out of the sky. Reality, unfortunately, was not a painting. It was hard objects, some of them moving very fast, objects driven by human beings out to kill him and Tappy.