Eight Against Utopia

by Douglas R. Mason

  Wanda was inclined to live and let live with other people’s professionalism, and had a long training in looking as though she was following an argument like a hound dog, when she was really waiting for the next thing; but she put in the question, “How does anyone know that regression has hit rock bottom and the progressive phase has begun? They might still be going back. Anyway what is there to choose between going forward and going back; who is to say which is good and which is bad? Regression could be to a primitive simplicity like a Garden of Eden and progress could be in a self-consuming circle, I think.”

  The equivocal ending was a great relief to Lee Wayne, who was beginning to suspect he had been cherishing a dangerous intellectual.

  Gaul Kalmar said, “I don’t know whether I believe in progress or not. I believe we should be free to try things out and follow a line of inquiry wherever it leads. If it leads to the edge of a pit, common sense would say go round it or check back for another way. But you don’t draw a chalk circle and stay inside it just because some paths might be dead ends. Movement is all.”

  “Movement is the final rest like the nucleus of a nucleus.” Goda said it, as though she was quoting something. It was another statement of the paradox at the heart of all metaphysical arguments and without analyzing it, everyone seemed ready to accept it as a convenient coda.

  At first light the rock was a ragged line just on the horizon. It grew with the light, a massive, irregular lump of limestone, three kilometers long. Coming along at sea level it towered over the small craft.

  Shultz said, “That’s a boulder. A hundred and fifty meters if it’s a centimeter.”

  “Do a circuit, Lee.” Gaul Kalmar had a sketch map supplementing the meager atlas details. “There was once a town on the west side. We’ll stop here for a day or two.”

  One element, featured on the map, was soon seen to have been erased by glacial harrowing. No sandy isthmus connected the rock to the low-lying mainland. It was now an island. Nor was there any trace of harbor works or dockyards. Lee set them down in a small cove, ten meters from a rock-littered beach, which ran back fifteen meters to a steep slope of scree and a bare vertical wall of cliff.

  Through the observation floor in the nose, they could see down through clear water to a sandy bottom with some humped irregularities that could be the footings of silted-up walls. The car rocked gently and small waves slapped against its hull. It was a textbook landfall.

  Tania Clermont, sitting immediately beneath the roof hatch, stood up and reached up for its release catch, confirming Shultz in his belief that she was altogether too beautiful to be left in Carthage. When she gripped the rim to pull herself through, he took a slim ankle in each hand and added a lift which took her up in a smooth flow.

  Had she gone up under her own steam, she might have had time to change direction. As it was, she was two thirds out before she recognized the dark brown mat on the roof as having human form. In the instant of recognition a massive arm “muscled to carry weight,” had encircled her waist. She was plucked from the hatch like a fish through a hole in the ice by a polar bear.

  Shultz felt the weight melt from his hands and saw the brown fur band clamped definitively round the waist overhead. He was on his way through as he spat out, “Tania’s in trouble. Homo habilis tagged on.”

  Only quick reaction time saved him from having his head kicked off as it appeared through the hole. As he ducked down, a broad powerful foot with short, thick toes parted his hair. It was one of those ironies of history, that this man was living between periods when his skill could have got him into big league games. The follow-through took him round in an arc and Shultz was out and standing across the hatch.

  Tania was doing her best to kick in the man’s shins and dent his massive chest. It was like beating at a rug on a wall. He was not tall and her activities had some nuisance value, so he shifted his grip and held her under one arm, then he came with unexpected speed towards the hatch. Limited cranial capacity he might well have, but on this level of action he was doing all right.

  The girl was an embarrassment to both sides, so he threw her well out to sea on the landward side without checking his move. Shultz backed, sizing up a possible grip, and stumbled on an antenna stub.

  They had passed the hatch and Peter Swarbrick was next up. It was not the footballer’s day: a second lethal kick missed Shultz fractionally and then he had a man on his back with a neck lock that threatened to separate his head from his trunk. Out of the tail of his eye, he saw Gaul Kalmar coming through the hole and realized that the jig was up. He flexed his legs and jumped clear of the curve of the roof into the sea, carrying his burden.

  He was a trier. When Swarbrick’s bursting lungs forced him to kick clear, the footballer was off in a racing crawl towards the girl. Kalmar had time to shout at Lee Wayne’s mandrake head, “Get a P7,” and dived in to intercept.

  The punched cards finally dropped in homo habilis’ simplified computer and rang up a clear negative. He veered away and continued his demonstration swim towards the shore. As Shultz pulled Tania aboard and reaction moved her to cling wetly to his helping arms, Lee appeared with a P7 and the man began to wade up the beach. He turned and took a long look at the gray shuttle which had separated him from hearth and home, and then began a shambling run towards the point of the bay. When the whole crew had finally lined up to take the salute, he was climbing the short spur which marked the limit.

  Shultz said, “There you have an example of ethnological beginnings. Future anthropologists will argue that this rock was once attached to the mainland and homo habilis crossed at that time and was cut off. Then he developed along a different path. That’s why he is so different from the smooth sophisticated types as represented by the descendants of the colonists from Carthage.”

  “What descendants?” Gaul Kalmar was looking east. Five specks against the sun were growing into tiny but recognizable forms. They had visitors.

  Nine

  Graphs of acceleration against time and distance and the speed of the approaching craft ran through Gaul Kalmar’s head as he judged the possibility of making a run. Almost at the same time other plans were being checked and discarded by his racing, computer mind. When he moved, it seemed as though his decision had been instantaneous; but he knew it was the best that could be done in the circumstances. Flight was, in fact, useless. If they were shot down over the sea it was the final curtain. The only defense was a war of attrition where Gruber might finally be persuaded that it was just not worth it to go on.

  “Lee, take the car ashore and beach it. They’ll strafe it, but we might salvage something. Dig out the armory we have and as much food as we can carry. We’ll hole up on the plateau and make them pay for any progress they get.”

  They were following homo habilis over the rim, when the first craft swept down into the bay. Whatever armament the Strikecraft had once used was no longer operational. Lee Wayne had mentally blocked off a whole section of his console, which related to firepower, since it no longer worked anything. The same was fortunately true of the new arrivals. A head and shoulders appeared through the hatch and a civil guard took a raking shot at the beached tender with a portable thermal hose.

  It would have been all the same if they had been sleeping late. Nobody, seemingly, was going to knock and ask. A long gash crumbled open along the port side and the shuttle was so much scrap. But the hose was a relatively short-range affair. Much of its value would be lost in a stern chase over rockery.

  As a second craft slid into land on the other side of the gutted tender, men began to spill out of both. A pack remarkably enough still intact, had tumbled out onto the sand and was booted up the beach by a passing guard. A second drop kicked it back and then it split down a seam and clothing was leaking out. Wanda, looking back from the ridge, recognized a diaphanous, turquoise fragment which she had shored against her ruins and was inclined to go back. Lee Wayne grabbed her arm and said, “Skip it, stupid. I’ll get you a fur one.”
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br />   It would not be the same, but she let it go at that. Down below, the very feminine wardrobe was making a Roman holiday. A spare, angular figure coming deliberately from the second craft stopped the homely fun. It was Gruber himself and the mime was unmistakable. He was setting up a dragnet round the island.

  The coast was indented with caves, like bites out of a loaf. In the one over the ridge, there was hardly any beach at all and the rock came down sheer. Homo habilis had left crooked toe footprints on the narrow strip and had gone on.

  Perhaps he had climbed out. But if so, he had used suction pads. There was no visible way of making even a start on the blank face at the end of the bay. Gaul gestured towards the sea and they waded in. A short swim took them round the point and left a moment’s puzzle for the pack.

  The next beach opened up possibilities. It went farther back and rose in gentle slopes. The rock itself was less smooth. Cracks, ledges, and fissures made a climber’s training ground. There was no time to make any kind of plan. Kalmar took a general survey, as they went up the beach, and led off up the first pitch.

  Already looking pale, Goda was coming up between Swarbrick and Shultz; Jane Welland and Wanda were together behind the leader. Cheryl Bentham and Wayne were last. Tania seemed to be making a solo climb over to the right of the group. She had a smooth rhythmic way of climbing which made her look at home on a rock face. Strong, light, and with superb balance, she was making it seem easy. But the route she had chosen was deceptive and a promising lead was rapidly taking her to a pitch which could only be tackled, if at all, by roped specialists.

  At first, her dilemma went unnoticed. Swarbrick and Shultz had enough on with Goda. Gaul Kalmar was ahead and could not see the problem. Wayne, level with her, but twenty meters left was first to see. He called across, “You’re goosed there, Tania. You’ll have to go down a bit and come up farther over this way.”

  She nodded, but it was to signify “message received and understood” rather than any intention of following advice. Even the professional psychologist had an Achilles’ heel of amour propre. Relations were still cool with Lee Wayne and she was reluctant to owe him a thing. Moreover, she was enjoying the climb and had begun to have confidence in a skill which she had never suspected she possessed. So she carried on along a narrowing ledge, which would have taxed even Swarbrick. Then she began to go up, on holds which were invisible to the others.

  It looked as though she would make out. Lee Wayne went on, finding enough to keep him busy on-his own route. The leading trio reached the top and went over the lip.

  Goda in a state of near collapse, was being hypnotized into movement by Swarbrick’s repetitive encouraging chat and by Shultz, climbing with one arm round her shoulders. Kalmar reappeared and helped them over the last three meters. Then they were all up and toy figures appeared below, wading ashore from the point, with equipment held up out of the wet.

  Over the top a hundred meters of easy slope led to the crest of the plateau. They were halfway along, before the symmetry of the grouping showed that they were now eight.

  “Where’s Tania?” Gaul Kalmar was rapidly reverting to a berserker phase. He had been pushed far enough by the long arm of Gruber’s special police. Left to himself, he would have been going back and making an insane bid to take a heat hose and wrap it round its operator’s neck. But the fact of leadership kept him steady.

  Lee Wayne said, “She was coming up into a bad patch. I told her to detour. I’ll take a look.”

  “I’ll go.” Shultz was already moving back. Swarbrick followed him. “Take them on, Gaul. We’ll be all right. They’ll have a job to use that gear and climb.”

  From the edge they could see the girl, foreshortened to a trim circular head, set between widespread, stretching arms and angled legs. She had forced a way on until it was impossible to move in any direction without breaking a tenuous cohesion to the rock. Only a rope would get her out.

  Three meters above her head it was a fair climb. She had very nearly made out. The nearest guard was still fifty meters below her and moving very slowly, with the clumsy load of a thermal hose slung on his back. Frank Shultz began to go down.

  When he was near enough, he said, “For God’s sake, Tania, how did you do it? You must be the star female climber of all time. Just hang on and we’ll have you out.”

  “Don’t bother about me, Frank,” her voice was very steady but tired. It was as though she had come to a decision about something. “Get back to the others while you can. Go on. They won’t harm me. One thing I’d like you to know, though. I didn’t bring them here. I had a beam concentrator but I dropped it overboard, way back. Tell Wanda that, will you?”

  Shultz recognized that this was a time when one did not advertise one’s forethought, and said nothing about the substitution. Later perhaps—if there was one—it would get its laugh.

  “You can tell her yourself when we get back. Think about me. I went to a lot of trouble to get you so far. You’re for me. I want you ‘to have and to hold’ as they used to say.”

  “I’d like that, Frank, but I don’t see it. Please get back. There isn’t a chance here.”

  Swarbrick had joined him at the extreme limit of the viable route. Below them the leading guard had found a shelf that he could stand on. He was looking up, speculatively, assessing the range. He began to ease off the shoulder straps of the hose.

  Tania was flat against the rock. She could feel the smooth texture of the stone against her cheek, and she was conscious of her body, in a moment’s vivid realization of its total shape as it made an outline like a template laid on the stone.

  Curiously she was not at all afraid, either of the untenable position she was in, or the guard below. She felt feather light and infinitely clear-headed. Life in Carthage, from early times as a child to the recent past, when she had worked in the mental therapy unit, was somehow present as a single flat picture without time lapse. She had side-stepped the illusion of chronology and she knew that this was the end of the line for her. No regrets bothered her. Looking at the full pattern she saw that her share of it was not helpful to the grand design, but the knowledge came too late to alter anything. Nothing had been done in malice. It was a job. And anyway she had believed that stability, even the sterile stability of Carthage, had been worth preserving.

  The leading guard was steadying himself with his knees braced against the rock and his body arched back to give him an angled shot. It was extreme range for total destruction, but the issue could not be in doubt. She looked up at Shultz. He had buckled together two straps and was attempting to reach down to her. The free end was still a good meter away.

  She said, “It’s all right, Frank. Really it’s all right. Tell Gaul that I hope it goes well. It’s a pity about you and me. Just a bit of the mosaic that didn’t gel. A kind of non sequitur. Good luck.”

  The thought crossed her mind that if she let go, the two men would stop their efforts to get her away. Then a kind of obstinate pride checked the move.

  The difference in time was only marginal. An intense white beam crawled up the face of the rock turning it to bubbling lava. Heat was unbearably intense. Then the guard jerked it forward to reach the limit of range and the tip of it took her in the center of the back like a lash.

  Shultz and Swarbrick reached the top with clothing scorched brown in the searing blast of heat which swept up past the girl. Frank Shultz found what he was looking for in a loose mass of limestone; it weighed a good forty kilograms. He plucked it out of the ground without noticing the torn skin of his hands and went with it to the edge as if it had been a cardboard model.

  He stood poised, legs apart, with the massive irregular slab over his head. It would have been preferable to disembowel the guard and stuff his guts down his throat, but he did not see how he could manage it on the cliff face. He was seeing him redly and shook his head to make sure that he was seeing him in the right place. Then the rock went down, true and fast and if Swarbrick had not grabbed him round t
he waist, he would have followed it.

  The man was killed before he began to fall. In the short interval from the beginning of the action, no other guard had reached a higher point than his, now vacant, shelf. There was a general stop and upward-turned faces looked at the edge expecting a bombardment. In some ways it was a lost opportunity.

  When nothing more happened, they began to move up again. Tania Clermont was an incised shadow on the cliff.

  Gaul Kalmar had brought the main party to a necessary halt beyond the brow of the first ridge. Impossible to assess from below, the cap of the rock was decayed like a rotten molar. Freezing and thawing, captive pockets of moisture had crumbled the surface into loose granular aggregate. Foothold was precarious. Every move sent a shower of small stones sliding away into wide crevasses, which cut the surface every way, like crisscross axe cuts in a tree stump.

  They were faced with a two-meter gap and a landing on the opposite side on a three-meter strip before the next. Jane Welland took a short run and made a sliding landing well within the limits.

  Shultz and Swarbrick came up as Wanda was making a start. A look at Frank Shultz’s face was enough to stop any inquiry. Swarbrick said, “Hold it, Wanda. I’ll go over and be ready to catch you.”

  After the third ravine it was reasonable to expect the guards on the skyline, but they were taking the cliff very slowly. There was no way off the top, so they had all the time in the world.

  At the fourth it looked as though Kalmar was finished. It was the kind of jump that only Swarbrick could make. He went to the edge and leaned over. “It narrows. Climb down and up?”

  Cheryl Bentham said tiredly, “Isn’t this where the defenders burn their possessions and draw lots for one to kill the rest. For me it would be a change for the better.”

  No head had yet appeared. Gaul Kalmar had an instant’s thought of the position they would be in at the bottom of the cleft with one single heat hose spraying down. He joined Swarbrick. There was a way certainly and the germ of an idea about it. Farther left there was an overhang. If they traversed along and got under it, they might even have a temporary respite. After all there were a lot of crevasses to search.