Sense of Obligation

by Harry Harrison

  X

  "It's suicide," the taller guard grumbled.

  "Mine not yours, so don't worry about it," Brion snapped at him. "Yourjob is to remember your orders and keep them straight. Now--let's hearthem again."

  The guard rolled his eyes up in silent rebellion and repeated in atoneless voice. "We stay here in the car and keep the motor runningwhile you go inside the stone pile there. We don't let anybody in thecar and we try and keep them clear of the car--short of shooting themthat is. We don't come in no matter what happens or what it looks like,but wait for you here. Unless you call on the radio in which case wecome in with the automatics going and shoot the place up and it doesn'tmatter who we hit. This will only be used as a last resort."

  "See if you can't arrange that last resort thing if you can," the otherguard said, patting the heavy blue barrel of his weapon.

  "I meant that _last_ resort," Brion said angrily. "If any guns go offwithout my permission, you will pay for it and pay with your necks. Iwant that clearly understood. You are here as a rear guard and a basefor me to get back to. This is my operation and mine alone--unless Icall you in. Understood?"

  He waited until all three men had nodded in agreement, then checked thecharge on his gun. Fully loaded. It would be foolish not to go in armed.But he had to. One gun wouldn't save him. He put it aside. The buttonradio on his collar was working and had a strong enough signal to getthrough any number of walls. He took off his coat, threw open the doorand stepped out into the searing brilliance of the Disan noon.

  There was only the desert silence, broken by the steady throb of thecar's motor behind him. Stretching away to the horizon in everydirection were the eternal deserts of sand. The keep stood nearby,solitary, a massive pile of black rocks. Brion plodded closer, watchingfor any motion from the walls. Nothing stirred. The high-walled,irregularly shaped construction sat in a ponderous silence. Brion wassweating now, only partially from the heat.

  He circled the thing, looking for a gate. There wasn't one at groundlevel. A slanting cleft in the stone could be climbed easily, but itseemed incredible that this might be the only entrance. A completecircuit proved that it was. Brion looked unhappily at the slanting andbroken ramp, then cupped his hands and shouted loudly.

  "I'm coming up. Your radio doesn't work any more. I'm bringing themessage from Nyjord that you have been waiting to hear." A slightbending of the truth without fracturing it. There was no answer. Justthe hiss of wind-blown sand against the rock and the mutter of the carin the background. He started to climb.

  The rock underfoot was crumbling and he had to watch where he put hisfeet. At the same time he fought a constant impulse to look up, watchingfor anything falling from above. Nothing happened. When he reached thetop of the wall he was breathing hard, sweat moistened his body. Therewas still no one in sight. He stood on an unevenly shaped wall thatappeared to circle the building. Instead of a courtyard inside it, thewall was the outer face of the structure, the domed roof rising from it.At varying intervals dark openings gave access to the interior. WhenBrion looked down the sandcar was just a dun-colored bump in the desert,already far behind him.

  Stooping, he went through the nearest door. There was still no one insight. The room inside was something out of a madman's funhouse. It washigher than it was wide, irregular, and more like a hallway than a room.At one end it merged into an incline that became a stairwell. The otherended in a hole that vanished in darkness below. Light of sorts filteredin through slots and holes drilled into the thick stone wall. Everythingwas built of the same crumble-textured but strong rock. Brion took thestairs. After a number of blind passages and wrong turns he saw astronger light ahead. There was food, metal, even artifacts of theunusual Disan design in the different rooms he passed through. Yet nopeople. The light ahead grew stronger as he approached, the passagewayopening and swelling out until it met the larger central chamber.

  This was the heart of the strange structure. All the rooms, passagewaysand halls existed just to give form to this gigantic hall. The wallsrose sharply, the room circular in cross section and growing narrowertowards the top. It was a truncated cone since there was no ceiling; ahot blue disk of sky cast light on the floor below.

  On the floor stood a knot of men staring at Brion.

  Out of the corner of his eyes, and with the very periphery of hisconsciousness, he was aware of the rest of the room. Barrels, stores,machinery, a radio transceiver, various bundles and heaps that made nosense at first glance. There was no time to look closer. Every fractionof his attention was focused on the muffled and hooded men.

  He had found the enemy.

  * * * * *

  Everything that happened to him so far on Dis had been preparation forthis moment. The attack in the desert, the escape, the dreadful heat ofsun and sand. All this had tempered and prepared him. It had beennothing in itself. Now the battle would begin in earnest.

  None of this was conscious. His fighter's reflexes bent his shoulders,curved his hands before him as he walked softly in balance, ready tospring in any direction. Yet none of this was really necessary. All thedanger so far was nonphysical. When he gave this thought consciousthought he stopped, startled. What was wrong here? None of the men hadmoved or made a sound. How could he even know they were men? They wereso muffled and wrapped in cloth that only their eyes were exposed.

  No doubt existed in Brion's mind. In spite of muffled cloth and silencehe knew them for what they were. The eyes were empty of expression andunmoving, yet filled with the same negative emptiness as a bird of prey.They could look on life, death, and the rending of flesh with the samelack of interest and compassion. All this Brion knew in an instant oftime, without words being spoken. Between the time he lifted one footand walked a step he understood what he had to face. There could be nodoubt, not to an empathetic.

  From the group of silent men poured a frost-white wave of unemotion. Anempathetic shares what other men feel. He gets his knowledge of theirreaction by sensing lightly their emotions, the surges of interest,hate, love, fear, desire, the sweep of large and small sensations thataccompany all thought and action. The empathetic is always aware of thisconstant and silent surge, whether he makes the effort to understand itor not. He is like a man glancing across the open pages of a tableful ofbooks. He can see that the type, words, paragraphs, thoughts are thereeven without focusing his attention to understand any of it.

  Then how does the man feel when he glances at the open books and seesonly blank pages? The books are there--the words are not. He turns thepages of one, then others, flipping pages, searching for meaning. Thereis no meaning. All of the pages are blank.

  This was the way in which the magter were blank, without emotions.There was a barely sensed surge and return that must have been neuralimpulses on a basic level. The automatic adjustments of nerve and musclethat keep an organism alive. Nothing more. Brion reached for othersensations and there was nothing there to grasp. Either these men wereapparently without emotions or they were able to block them from hisdetection, it was impossible to tell which.

  Very little time has passed in the objective world while Brion madethese discoveries. The knot of men still looked at him, silent andunmoving. They weren't expectant, their attitude could not have beencalled interest. But he had come to them and now they waited to find outwhy. Any questions or statements they spoke would be redundant, so theydidn't speak. The responsibility was his.

  "I have come to talk with Lig-magte. Who is he?" Brion didn't like thetiny sound his voice made in the immense room.

  One of the men gave a slight motion to draw attention to himself. Noneof the others moved. They still waited.

  "I have a message for you," Brion said, talking slowly to fill thesilence of the room and the emptiness of his thoughts. This had to behandled right. But what was right? "I'm from the Foundation in the city,as you undoubtedly know. I've been talking to the people on Nyjord. Theyhave a message for you."

  The silence grew lon
ger. Brion had no intention of making this amonologue. He needed facts to operate, to form an opinion. Looking atthe silent forms was telling him nothing. Time stretched taut andfinally Lig-magte spoke.

  "The Nyjorders are going to surrender."

  It was an impossibly strange sentence. Brion had never realized beforehow much of the content of speech was made up of emotion. If the man hadgiven it a positive emphasis, perhaps said it with enthusiasm, it wouldhave meant, "Success! The enemy is going to surrender!" This wasn't themeaning.

  With a rising inflection on the end it would have been a question. "Arethey going to surrender?" It was neither of these. The sentence carriedno other message than that contained in the simplest meanings of theseparate words. It had intellectual connotations, but these could onlybe gained from past knowledge, not from the sound of the words. Therewas only one message they were prepared to receive from Nyjord.Therefore, Brion was bringing the message. If that was not the messageBrion was bringing, the men here were not interested.

  This was the vital fact. If they were not interested he could have nofurther value to them. Since he came from the enemy he was the enemy.Therefore, he would be killed. Because this was vital to his existenceBrion took the time to follow the thought through. It made logicalsense--and logic was all he could depend on now. He could be talking torobots or alien creatures for the amount of human response he wasreceiving.

  "You can't win this war--all you can do is hurry your own deaths." Hesaid this with as much conviction as he could, realizing at the sametime that it was wasted effort. No flicker of response stirred in themen before him. "The Nyjorders know you have cobalt bombs, and they havedetected your jump-space projector. They can't take any more chances.They have pushed the deadline closer by an entire day. There are one anda half days left before the bombs fall and you are all destroyed. Do yourealize what that means--"

  "Is that the message?" Lig-magte asked.

  "Yes," Brion said.

  * * * * *

  Two things saved his life then. He had guessed what would happen as soonas they had his message, though he hadn't been sure. But even thesuspicion had put him on his guard. This, combined with the reflexes ofa Winner of the Twenties, was barely enough to enable him to survive.

  From frozen mobility Lig-magte had catapulted into headlong attack. Ashe leaped forward he drew a curved, double-edged blade from under hisrobes. It plunged unerringly through the spot where Brion's body hadbeen an instant before.

  There had been no time to tense his muscles and jump, just space torelax them and fall to one side. His reasoning mind joined the battle ashe hit the floor. Lig-magte plunged by him, turning and bringing theknife down at the same time. Brion's foot lashed out and caught theother man's leg, sending him sprawling.

  They were both on their feet at the same instant, facing each other.Brion now had his hands clasped before him in the unarmed man's bestdefense against a knife, the two arms protecting the body, the two handsjoined to beat aside the knife arm from whichever direction it came. TheDisan hunched low, flipped the knife quickly from hand to hand, thenthrust it again at Brion's midriff.

  Only by the merest fractional margin did Brion evade the attack for thesecond time. Lig-magte fought with complete violence. Every action wasas intense as possible, deadly and thorough. There could be only one endto this unequal contest if Brion stayed on the defensive. The man withthe knife had to win.

  With the next charge Brion changed tactics. He leaped inside the thrust,clutching for the knife arm. A burning slice of pain cut across his arm,then his fingers clutched the tendoned wrist. Clamped down hard,grinding shut, compressing with the tightening intensity of a closingvise.

  It was all he could do to simply hold on. There was no science in it,just his greater strength from exercise and existence on a heavierplanet. All of this strength went to his clutching hand, because he heldhis own life in that hand, forcing away the knife that wanted toterminate it forever. Nothing else mattered. Neither the frighteningforce of the knees that thudded into his body nor the hooked fingersthat reached for his eyes to tear them out. He protected his face aswell as he could, while the nails tore furrows through his flesh and thecut on his arm bled freely. These were only minor things to be endured.His life depended on the grasp of the fingers of his right hand.

  There was a sudden immobility as he succeeded in clutching Lig-magte'sother arm. It was a good grip and he could hold the arm immobilized.They had reached stasis, standing knee to knee, their faces only a fewinches apart. The muffling cloth had fallen from the Disan's face duringthe struggle and empty, frigid eyes stared into Brion's. No flicker ofemotion crossed the harsh planes of the other man's face. A greatpuckered white scar covered one cheek and pulled up a corner of themouth in a cheerless grimace. It was false, there was still noexpression here. Even when the pain must be growing more intense.

  Brion was winning--if no one broke the impasse. His greater weight andstrength counted now. The Disan would have to drop the knife before hisarm was dislocated at the shoulder. He didn't do it. With sudden horrorBrion realized that he wasn't going to drop it--no matter what happened.

  A dull, hideous snap jerked through the Disan's body and the arm hunglimp and dead. No expression crossed the other man's face. The knife wasstill locked in the fingers of the paralyzed hand. With his other handLig-magte reached across and started to pry the blade loose, ready tocontinue the battle one-handed. Brion raised his foot and kicked theknife free, sending it spinning across the room.

  Lig-magte made a fist of his good hand and crashed it into Brion's body.He was still fighting, as if nothing had changed. Brion backed slowlyaway from the man. "Stop it," he said. "You can't win now. It'simpossible." He called to the other men who were watching the unequalbattle with expressionless immobility. No one answered him.

  With a terrible sinking sensation Brion then realized what would happenand what he had to do. Lig-magte was as heedless of his own life as hewas of the life of his planet. He would press the attack no matter whatdamage was done to him. Brion had an insane vision of him breaking theman's other arm, fracturing both his legs, and the limbless brokencreature still coming forward. Crawling, rolling, teeth bared since theywere the only remaining weapon.

  There was only one way to end it. Brion feinted and the Lig-magte's armmoved clear of his body. The engulfing cloth was thin and through itBrion could see the outlines of the Disan's abdomen and rib cage. Theclear location of the great nerve ganglion.

  It was the death blow of the kara-te. Brion had never used it on a man.In practice he had broken heavy boards, splintering them instantly withthe short, precise stroke. The stiffened hand moving forward in a suddensurge, all the weight and energy of his body concentrated in his joinedfingertips. Plunging deep into the other's flesh.

  Killing, not by accident or in sudden anger. Killing because this wasthe only way the battle could possibly end.

  Like a ruined tower of flesh the Disan crumpled and fell.

  Dripping blood, exhausted, Brion stood over the body of Lig-magte andstared at the dead man's allies.

  Death filled the room.