Wolfling

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “Galyan burned my side as he died,” he muttered to her. “Now I’m dying. So you’ll have to tell them for me, Ro. On Earth. Tell them… everything…”

  “But you won’t die!” Ro was crying, holding him fiercely with both her arms about him. “You won’t die… you won’t …”

  But even as she held him, he slipped out of her grasp and went sliding—this time with no further check or hope of return—down that long tilted corridor into the utter darkness.

  Chapter 11

  When Jim opened his eyes at last to light after that long slide into darkness, it took him a long time with the help of the light to recognize the shapes of things around him. He felt as if he had been dead for years. Gradually, however, vision sharpened. Perception returned. He became aware that he lay on his back on a surface harder than any hassock; and the ceiling he stared up at was white, but oddly grainy and close above him.

  With a great effort he managed to turn his head, and saw shapes that he gradually made out to be a small bedside table, several chairs, and a white screen of the sort used in hospitals. In all, a single room, with a window at the far end that let in a yellow, summer sunlight he had not seen for quite a while. Through the window he could see only sky, blue sky, with a few isolated puffs of white clouds scattered about it. He lay staring at the sky, slowly trying to put things together.

  Obviously he was on Earth. That meant that at least five days must have passed while he was unconscious. But if he was on Earth, what was he doing here? Where was here? And where were Ro and Adok, to say nothing of the ship? All this, leaving aside the fact that he seemed to be alive, when he had certainly seemed to have had no right to be so.

  He lay still, thinking. After a little while, absently, he felt the side where the flame of Galyan’s torch had penetrated as the Highborn had died. But his side felt smooth and well. Interested, he pulled down the covers, pulled up the blue pajama top he seemed to be wearing, and examined that side. As far as he could see, it looked as if he had never been wounded at all.

  He pulled the covers up again and lay back. He felt well, if a little heavy-bodied, as if the lassitude of a long sleep were still clinging to him. He turned his head and looked at the small table by his bedside. It held an insulating plastic pitcher, a glass with some remnants of ice floating at the top of the water within it, and a small box of paper handkerchiefs. The signs were overwhelming that he was in a hospital. This would not be surprising if he still had the deep wound in his side that Galyan’s rod had made. But there was no wound.

  He investigated further. Below the top level of the table by his bed was a vertical surface with a telephone handset clinging magnetically to it. He picked up the handset and listened, but there was no dial tone. Experimentally he tried dialing some numbers on the dial set in the center of the inner face of the handset. But the phone remained dead. He put it back, and in the process of doing so, discovered a button on the vertical surface.

  He pressed the button.

  Nothing happened. After about five minutes of waiting, he pressed it again.

  This time, it was only a matter of seconds before the door swung open. A man entered—a heavy-bodied young man not much shorter than himself, with a thick, powerful-looking body dressed in white slacks and white jacket. He came up to the bed, looked down at Jim without a word, and reached to the bed to take Jim’s left wrist. Lifting the wrist, he counted the pulse, gazing at his wristwatch as he did so.

  “Yes, I’m alive,” Jim told him. “What hospital is this?”

  The male nurse, as he seemed to be, made a noncommittal sound in his throat. Finished counting, he dropped Jim’s wrist back onto the bed and turned toward the door.

  “Hold on!” said Jim, sitting up suddenly.

  “Just lie there!” said the man in a deep, gruff voice. Hastily he opened the door and went out, slamming it slightly behind him.

  Jim threw back the covers and jumped out of bed in the same quick motion. He took three steps to the door and grasped its handle. But his fingers slipped around the smooth, immovable metal as he tried to turn it. It was locked.

  He shook the handle once and then stepped back. His first impulse—quenched almost as soon as it was born by the immediate caution of his now thoroughly awakened mind—was to pound on the door until someone came. Now, instead, he stood gazing at it thoughtfully.

  This place was beginning to look less like a hospital and more like a place of care for the violently insane. He spun about quickly and went to the window. What he saw confirmed the growing suspicion in him of his surroundings. Invisible from his bed, a mesh of fine wire covered the window opening completely, some four inches beyond the window itself. The wire looked relatively thin, but it was undoubtedly strong enough to be escape-proof for anyone lacking tools.

  Jim looked out the window and down, but what he saw gave him little information—merely a width of green lawn bordered on all sides by tall pine trees. The trees were tall enough to cut off the view of whatever lay beyond them.

  Jim turned around and thoughtfully went back to sit down on the edge of his bed. After a moment he lay down and pulled the covers up over him again.

  With the patience that was so much an innate part of him, he waited.

  At least a couple of hours must have gone by before anything more happened. Then, without any advance notice, the door to his room opened and the male nurse came back in, followed by a slight man in his late forties or early fifties with a balding head and narrow face, wearing a white physician’s coat. They came up to the head of the bed together, and the slight man in the white physician’s coat met Jim’s eyes.

  “Well, all right,” he said, turning his head slightly toward the male nurse. “I won’t need you.”

  The male nurse went out, clicking the door shut behind him. The physician, for such he certainly must be, reached out for Jim’s wrist and took his pulse as the other man had done earlier.

  “Yes,” he said, as if to himself, after a moment. He dropped the wrist, pulled back the covers, lifted the pajama coat, and examined Jim’s side—the one that had been wounded. His fingers probed here and there. Abruptly Jim stiffened.

  “Sore?” the physician asked.

  “Yes,” said Jim flatly.

  “Well, that’s interesting,” said the doctor. “—if true.”

  “Doctor,” said Jim quietly. “Is there something wrong with you? Or with me?”

  “No, there’s nothing wrong with you,” said the physician, yanking Jim’s pajama top down and tossing the covers up on him again. “As for me—I don’t believe it. The only thing I believe is what I saw when you came in here—and that was a small perforation in your right side.”

  “What is it you don’t believe, then?” asked Jim.

  “I don’t believe that you had a burned area where that perforation was, a burned area at least two inches wide and six inches deep, six days ago,” said the physician. “Yes, I’ve seen the pictures of your ship on television, and I know what that tall girl told me, but I don’t believe it. In the first place, with that kind of damage done to you internally, you’d be dead long before you got here. Now, I can believe in a small perforation that heals without a visible scar. But I can’t swallow the larger story.”

  “Is there any reason you should?” asked Jim gently.

  “No, there isn’t,” said the physician. “So I’m not going to worry about it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re well and ready for anything—and I’ll so advise them.”

  “Who’s them?” asked Jim.

  The physician stared down at him.

  “Doctor,” said Jim quietly, “for some reason you seem to have a bad opinion of me. That’s your privilege. But I don’t think it’s your privilege to keep a patient in the dark—not only about where he is, but about who it is who are evidently concerned with him. You mentioned a tall girl who told you about me. Is she outside right now?”

  “No, she isn’t,” said the physician. “As for answering your
question, the people who are concerned with you are officials of the world government. And I’ve been told that it’s my duty not to talk to you except as required in your treatment. You don’t require any more treatment, and so I’ve got no more excuse to talk to you.”

  He turned and headed for the door. With his hand on the knob, he seemed to experience a twinge of conscience, for he paused and turned back to Jim.

  “They’ll be sending someone in to see you shortly after I tell them you’re well,” he said. “You’ll be able to ask him all the questions you like.”

  He turned away from Jim once more, tried the door, and found it locked. He pounded on it with his fist and shouted through it to someone who was evidently on the far side. After a moment the door was cautiously unlocked, and he was allowed to slip out through the least possible opening. The door slammed and clicked shut once more.

  The wait was considerably shorter this time. It was no more than fifteen or twenty minutes before the door opened again—and immediately clicked shut once more—behind a man about ten years younger than the physician, with a brown, tanned face and a gray business suit. He came in, nodded unsmilingly at Jim, and briskly drew one of the chairs up to the bed. Jim sat up on the edge of the bed.

  “I’m Daniel Wylcoxin,” the man said. “Call me Dan, if you like. There’s going to be a Government Committee Inquiry, and I’ve been assigned as your counsel.”

  “What if I don’t want you?” asked Jim mildly.

  “Then, of course, you don’t have to have me,” said Wylcoxin. “Actually, the Inquiry has nothing to do with a court trial. That’s to come later, if the Inquiry decides to take that course of action. Actually, you don’t legally need counsel, and if you don’t want me, I’m not going to be forced on you. On the other hand, it’s not likely the Committee would recognize someone else as counsel for you, since—as I say—counsel really isn’t supposed to be necessary for you.”

  “I see,” said Jim. “I’d like to ask a few questions.”

  “Fire away,” said Wylcoxin, leaning back in his chair and laying his arms flat on the armrests of it.

  “Where am I?” asked Jim bluntly.

  “That, I’m afraid, I can’t tell you,” said Wylcoxin. “This is a government hospital for special people and situations where secrecy is required. I was brought here in a closed car myself. I don’t know where we are, except that we’re no more than twenty minutes’ ride from Government Center, where my own office is.”

  “Where’s my spaceship? And where are the woman and the man who came with me?”

  “Your ship is at Government Center spaceport,” said Wylcoxin, “surrounded by security guards that keep everyone at a quarter-mile distance. Your two companions are still aboard the ship—for which you can thank the Governor of Alpha Centauri III. He’s here on Earth, and when government people wanted to move your two friends out and put their own men aboard the ship, the Governor evidently talked them out of it. It seems the woman you have with you is what they call a High-born, and the Governor is evidently scared silly of anyone in that classification. I suppose I can’t blame him—”

  Wylcoxin broke off to look curiously at Jim.

  “I understand the High-born run the Empire?” he wound up.

  “They do,” said Jim flatly. “What am I doing here?”

  “This lady, this High-born—”

  “Her name is Ro,” interrupted Jim grimly.

  “Ro, then,” said Wylcoxin, “met the first government people to come aboard your spaceship after it landed. There was quite a well-known group, I understand, because the Alpha Centauri Governor, who’s visiting Government Center here, recognized the ship as being one belonging to these High-born. Anyway, Ro let them aboard and told them quite a story, including how you got wounded fighting some kind of duel with a Prince of the Empire. She said you were a lot better, but she didn’t object when the government offered to take you to one of our own hospitals for care. Evidently they convinced her that whatever she could do, the kind of medicine you were used to might do you more good in the long run.”

  “Yes,” murmured Jim. “She’s not the suspicious kind.”

  “Evidently,” said Wylcoxin. “At any rate, she let them take you. And here you are. And the Committee’s scheduled to start its Inquiry as soon as you’re well enough to appear before it. I understand the doctor’s already certified you in that respect, so the proceedings will probably start tomorrow morning.”

  “What are they inquiring about?” asked Jim.

  “Well…” Wylcoxin leaned forward in his chair. “That’s the point. As I say, the Inquiry has no relation to any court procedure. Theoretically it’s called simply to supply the government with information, so that it will know how to act about you, your friends, and your ship. Actually, and I imagine you expected something like this, it’s merely a get-together to determine if there’s any reason why they shouldn’t set the wheels in motion to bring you to trial for treason.”

  The final words of Wylcoxin’s sentence fell softly on the still air of the hospital room. Jim looked at him for a second.

  “You said I ‘expected’ it?” Jim echoed quietly. “What makes you think I expected something like this when I got back here?”

  “Why”—Wylcoxin paused and shot him a keen glance—“Maxwell Holland came back after you left Alpha Centauri III for the Throne World with those other High-born, and evidently he reported you as saying then that you meant to pay no attention to your orders, but to raise any kind of hell you felt like raising at the Imperial Court. Certainly Holland is going to testify to that effect tomorrow before the Committee. Didn’t you say what he says you said?”

  “No,” said Jim. “I said I’d have to follow my own judgment from there on.”

  “That might sound like the same thing to the Committee,” said Wylcoxin.

  “It sounds,” said Jim, “like this Committee has already made up its mind to consider me guilty of—what was it—treason?”

  “I’d say they have,” said Wylcoxin. “But then, I’m automatically on your side of it. And your side of it doesn’t look too good from where I sit. You were carefully selected to be the man sent in to the Throne World, and trained at a great deal of trouble and expense, so that you could go among these High-born and observe them. Then you were to report back to Earth with your observations, so government could make up its mind whether we were really a lost bit of this Empire, and bound to consider ourselves a part of it, or whether there was a chance we’d evolved on Earth here entirely separately—and really were a different race entirely from the so-called human beings of the Empire. Right?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Jim.

  “Good, so far,” said Wylcoxin. “But now, according to this Ro, instead of merely observing, you started out by getting into a fight with one of the High-born and knifing him aboard the ship going to the Throne World, then followed that up by joining some military bodyguard belonging to the Emperor when you got there, winding it all up by involving yourself in some kind of intrigue in which the Emperor’s uncle and cousin were killed, as well as several bodyguards. Is that right?”

  “It covers the physical facts of what happened,” said Jim evenly, “but it distorts them, and the situations that gave rise to them, completely out of recognition.”

  “You’re saying that this girl Ro is a liar?” Wylcoxin demanded.

  “I’m saying that she didn’t tell it that way,” said Jim. “Tell me, did you get the story direct from her, or secondhand from somebody else who heard it from her?”

  Wylcoxin sank thoughtfully back in his chair and rubbed his chin.

  “I got it secondhand,” he admitted. “But if the man who reported what she said to me can make it sound the way I made it sound just now to you, then that’s the way government witnesses will be making it sound to the Committee tomorrow morning.”

  “It sounds more than ever like a hanging Committee,” said Jim.

  “Maybe…” Wylcoxin rubb
ed his chin thoughtfully again. Suddenly he jumped to his feet and began to walk up and down the room.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said, stopping in front of Jim. “I wasn’t too happy about being assigned as your counsel. Maybe I’d been brainwashed a little myself.”

  He checked himself.

  “I don’t say that because so far you’ve said anything to make me alter my own feelings about you and the situation,” he said hastily. “I say that simply because you’ve opened my eyes to the fact that there might—I say might— be a certain amount of prejudice on the other side.”

  He sat down again in his chair before Jim.

  “Well,” he said, “let’s hear your side of it. What happened from the time you left Alpha Centauri III until you landed back here?”

  “I got myself taken to the Throne World,” said Jim, looking straight at the other man, “to find out, as you say, whether the Empire was populated by humans we were related to, or whether we were a separate stock from them entirely. Everything else happened after that as necessity dictated.”

  Wylcoxin sat for several seconds after Jim had stopped talking, almost as if he expected Jim to continue.

  “Is that all you’ve got to say?” he demanded then.

  “That’s all for now,” said Jim. “I’ll tell a more complete story to that Committee tomorrow if they care to listen.”

  “You’re deliberately not telling me anything you know that might help you, then,” said Wylcoxin. “Don’t you understand, I can’t be of any use to you unless you’re as open with me as you possibly can be?”

  “I understand it,” said Jim. “Quite frankly, I don’t trust you. I trust your goodwill and honesty toward me, but I don’t trust your capability to understand what I tell you, any more than I’d trust the capability of anyone else who hadn’t been to the Throne World himself.”

  “Why, man,” said Wylcoxin, “that takes in everyone on Earth!”

  “That’s right,” said Jim. “I don’t think anyone from Earth could help me much. Not if Max Holland, as you say, is there to testify against me, and the Committee seems determined to find grounds for bringing me to trial for treason.”