by J F Bone
With the full power of the Confederation turned to giving Niobe what she wanted, it wasn’t long before the oysters were under control. We established a systematic seeding procedure for the starfish that kept arriving by the freighter load. In a few months Bergdorf reported that an ecological balance had been achieved.
“BUT didn’t the starfish create another pest problem?” Perkins asked.
“Not at all,” Lanceford said. “I told you that the Niobians had an odd sense of taste. Starfish proved to be quite acceptable to the Niobian palate. They merely added another item to Niobe’s food supply.”
Perkins shuddered delicately. “I wouldn’t eat one of those things in a million years.”
“You’re going to have to eat vorkum if you expect to survive on this world. Compared to vorkum, a starfish is sheer pleasure! But that wasn’t the end of it,” Lanceford added with a smile. “You see, shortly after things had simmered down to normal Kron dropped into my office.
“ ‘I think, friend Lanceford,’ he said, ‘that we are going to have to create a permanent organization to keep unwanted visitors out. This little affair has been a needed lesson. I have been reading about your planetary organization, and I think a thing like your Customs Service is vitally needed on our world to prevent future undesirable biological importations.’
“ ‘I agree,’ I replied. ‘Anything that would prevent a repetition of this business would be advisable.’
“So that was how the Customs Service started. The insigne you will recognize as a starfish opening an oyster. Unfortunately the Niobians are quite literal minded. When they say any biological importation will be quarantined and examined, they mean Confederation citizens too!
“And that, of course, was the entering wedge. You’ll find things quite homelike once you get out of here. The natives have developed an organization that’s a virtual copy of our Administrative Branch. Customs, as you know, is a triumph of the bureaucratic system, and naturally the idea spread. Once the natives got used to a permanent government organization that was available at all times, it was only a question of time before the haphazard tribal organization became replaced by a planetary union. You could almost say that it was an inevitable consequence.”
Lanceford grinned. “The Niobians didn’t realize that the importation of foreign Customs was almost as bad as the importation of foreign animals!” He chuckled at the unconscious pun. END
THE MISSIONARY
What value has a promise when you make it to the Father of Evil? To slay him, I could promise anything—and still be free of sin. Indeed, his death would make me holier.
MY LEG itched. The knitting fracture beneath the cast was letting me know in no uncertain terms that a simple fracture is simple in name only. There is nothing like a nagging, unscratchable itch. It doesn’t really hurt, but after awhile it can become unadulterated torture,—and all you can do is grin and bear it. Ultimately you stop grinning.
To make matters worse, I had Wolverton for company. Zard knows, I despised the man enough before I saw him and contact had only served to change my dislike to active loathing.
He sat across from me, draped bonelessly in the contoured comfort of a Yarkhide chair fashioned for him by one of his Halsite retainers—a tall, angular man of indeterminate age, sandy-haired, lean-cheeked, beak-nosed, with piercing yellow eyes that flashed golden under tufted brows. His face was leathery and hatched with innumerable fine wrinkles, but his eyes and voice were young.
To give the devil his due, he had a wonderful voice—cajoling, persuasive, domineering and demanding. He could use it with all the skill and passionate conviction of a Bearer of the Word. His tongue was a weapon—a club and a rapier—and I had been pounded and pierced with it for nearly two weeks. I hated it, but I had to listen for I was literally a captive audience.
“As I was saying last time,” Wolverton continued, “rabbits have nothing on the human race. Given a halfway favorable opportunity and sufficient time, humanity can make a planet look like the Australian bush. Men don’t understand it until it’s too late—and then, stifled by their own swarm, they either degenerate or strike out to find a new world where a man can breathe. Always they go in pairs—male and female—and pretty soon another world becomes another rabbit warren.”
“What’s a rabbit?” I asked.
Wolverton looked at me and laughed. “It’s obvious you’ve never been on the Inner Worlds, have you?”
I shook my head. “I am an Adept,” I said. “I am satisfied here in Promised Land.”
“Thought so. You wouldn’t be asking about rabbits if you had. The early colonists took them along as food animals,—and it’s touch and go whether men or rabbits are the dominant species on some planets.”
He didn’t explain any further, but I got the general idea.
“But that isn’t the point,” Wolverton went on, his voice mellow and persuasive. “Rabbits maintain a fairly balanced ecology because they’re more subject to natural forces which we humans ignore or circumvent. We change environment to meet our needs—and in those rare instances where environment changes us, we adapt to it and change ourselves. Take Samar for example, normally a human being is monogamous either by nature or by law—but what happens when women outnumber men?”
I stiffened. I had heard of Samar from traders and from the Word itself. “Samar,” I said, “is a disgrace—a sink of iniquity—a foul blot upon the face—”
“Oh stop it,” he said wearily. “You can’t blame environmental forces. Nor can you blame men for adapting to them. Sure, you can point with holy horror at Samarian social, customs, but even so, they aren’t as bad as your ancestors’. They don’t murder excess girls.”
“They should,” I retorted brutally. “The old days were harsh, but they were necessary. One man must cleave to one mate. The Word demands it. Polygamy must be stamped out at the source if Faith is to survive.
“But it did no good population-wise,” Wolverton said. “You’re now exceeding safe growth limits for your territories. That’s why you want mine.”
“Lies,” I muttered.
“Not at all. And you know it. Your people already want my land. Soon you will need it. And in a few centuries, you won’t be able to exist without it!! His voice was flat with certainty.
“Lies,” I said, but my voice wasn’t as certain as his. I had seen the crowding in the towns and fields of Promised Land, and we did need Wolverton’s Holding to absorb good farmers who had no land to farm. Wolverton was right about that. We had lived up our naturally tillable acreage and reclamation projects were slow to provide needed soil. Deviants were already appearing who defied the Word by advocating birth control. Yet the Word said, “Be fruitful and replenish the land.”
“Back in the Dark Ages on a planet known as Earth,” Wolverton went on inexorably, “a man named Malthus predicted our birth rate would fight a losing battle with famine. So far we have managed to avoid it by laws, by finding new frontiers, and by improving food technology. But laws and technology can only retard the growth, and frontiers are getting even harder to find. Time is catching up with us.”
“I don’t see—,” I said. Wolverton looked at me grimly. “I know you don’t,” he said. “I haven’t made the slightest impression.”
“You’ve made an impression, all right,” I assured him with equal grimness.
He shrugged. “There are all kinds of impressions,” he commented wryly, “and not all of them are good.”
“Yours has not been,” I said boldly. “I place my trust in Zard, not in the voice of Evil.”
“That blank, sanctimonious stare!” he said acidly. “You Worders—gah! You’re so filled with catechism and cant that you won’t see a fact if it hits you in the face. Of all the possibilities on this benighted planet, the one with all the proper qualities turns out to be mentally defective.” He glared at me. “I don’t know why I waste my time. Ordinarily I’d condition you and let it go at that.”
“But you won’t,”
I said confidently.
He winced and I smiled. It wasn’t often that I won an advantage over him, and the taste of it was sweet in my mouth.
“The power of Faith,” I said sententiously, “is the greatest force in the universe. It even restrains you.”
He looked at me with the pitying contempt an adult has for a not-too-bright child. “What you need is an education,” he said slowly. “You’ve never had a chance.”
I groaned inwardly. Always he tried to shake my faith—but he had failed before and would fail again for my course was unalterably clear. “Avoid the smooth tongue of Evil lest ye lose your immortal soul. For the Evil will come to judgment—and the tortures of Hell are everlasting.” So said Zard in the days of his Teaching—and so we all believed. The Word of Zard was more than a symbol. It was a way of life, and Promised Land had bloomed and flowered under it.
Admittedly I was ignorant of the heathenish jargon Wolverton advanced. I knew nothing of nucleonics, spaceways, genetic factors, chromosome patterns, economics or sociology. Nor did I care. Our people had known it once but they had passed it by as childish—as men put aside the games of children. For us there was the Word. For did not Zard write in letters of fire upon the riven rock, “Be steadfast in thy faith. Fix thine eyes upon the joys of heaven and abjure Evil. For the Faithful Man is a bright beam in the Almighty’s eye and naught shall harm him who walks the fourfold path of Righteousness. Zard’s words were comfort. Wolverton’s were pain. I was thrice thankful I had learned the Word. It was so much a part of me that not even Wolverton could shake my belief. I was strong—in faith and in will. For I was an Adept—next only to a Bearer of the Word.
Wolverton with his machines could contain my powers—but that was all. He could not capture my soul. And that was what he wanted. My body was useless to him. He had many bodies of flesh and metal to serve him, but none had my powers to seek into the hearts of men, to know their inmost thoughts, to bring things to me by the power Zard had given. To kill, if need be.
It was because of my powers that I was here, nursing a broken leg, helpless in the house of the Father of Evil, a prisoner of a primitive idol worshipper who exalted his machines above the Word.
Wolverton eyed me speculatively. “If you would get the idea through your thick head that you are eventually going to join me—that you are not going to leave here until you do—that you are going to see things as they really are and not as you wish they were—we’d both have an easier time and I wouldn’t be forced to keep a Halsite watching you, or waste power blanketing this place with ultra frequencies. But if I have to take ten years to pick the scales off your eyes one by one, I’ll still do it and count it time well spent. You see, you are unique. There’s no one quite like you anywhere in the known Universe—and what’s more, you are necessary.”
I laughed at him and rejoiced in the black anger which came to his face. Then the lines smoothed and the hard glitter vanished from his golden eyes—and again I was afraid. Not for myself, but for my soul.
“Well, let’s try again,” Wolverton said with forced cheerfulness.
I tried to find his true meaning—but he was blank—a smooth, cold-hard surface which I could not penetrate. Not like the others. They were soft and fuzzy. Their pictures were not clear—distorted—wavering—unreal, but that was due to Wolverton’s machines. I could not communicate with them, but I couldn’t even reach Wolverton. And as usual, my failure increased my determination. He was inhuman, a soulless monster, blacker than the Pit of Night. The Bearers were right. Promised Land would never be safe until we were finally rid of him. Wolverton must die.
But Wolverton was not dead. He survived and prospered. His Halsite mercenaries guarded his island Holding—and the broad reaches of his lands, innocent of the plow, were as lush and untamed as they had been in the days of the first-comers.
The followers of the Word could gain no foothold on his lands—for behind Wolverton was the might of his machines, which men could neither influence nor withstand. Wolverton’s ancestor had found this world, and therefore the Holding was his—half a million square miles of island kingdom that cried in darkness for the Word. The fierce Halsites Wolverton employed and the hidden telltales scattered through his lands inevitably found trespassers and most of these were promptly and urgently returned to Promised Land. But not all. Adepts who tried to kill him never returned.
It was infuriating. It was a disgrace to our world. It was intolerable. And so it was that I had volunteered to kill Wolverton with an ancient weapon of horrid power, and in the bright cleansing flame of the explosion purge our world forever of the face of Evil.
But Evil, it seemed, was not defenseless. High as I was—I was seen from below and a flaming lance of power reached up from the forest to touch me,—and I fell. In shameful cowardice I dropped the Weapon without setting the detonator.
Hurtling down to certain death, I berated myself and swore a mighty oath on Zard’s bones never again to give way to weakness of the flesh if I were permitted to survive. For it was borne upon me as I fell toward the rocky ground below that I had never really expected to die despite my proud boasts of sacrifice.
And Zard heard my prayer and was merciful—yet tempered his mercy with a stern reminder of his power. For although I recovered enough control to break the force of my descent, I did not escape completely. I did not die on the cruel rocks, but as punishment for my sins of pride and cowardice, my right leg was snapped between ankle and knee—a reminder that while Zard was merciful, he was also just and meted out punishment when it was deserved.
A Halsite found me an hour later—faint and weak with pain and shock. I could not reach him as he advanced upon me warily. But his fierce crest flattened back upon his head when he saw my helplessness and his yellow fangs bared in a travesty of a human grin as he came forward with gliding steps, lifted me in his huge arms, and ran with catlike leaps down the mountainside. My weight was nothing to him, nor was the pain of my broken leg. At the third dizzy leap and jarring landing, I fainted and knew no more until I opened my eyes and saw Wolverton.
I was lying on a couch in a small inner courtyard. Around me towered his fabulous stronghold—a mighty pile of metal and stone anchored to the top of a hill, bristling with structures of metal and weird spiderwork fabrications that rotated endlessly on gimbals. My head was filled with buzzings and dizzy pin-wheels of color as he bent over me and examined my torn and dirty sacramental robe. “Hmm—an Adept,” he said—“Wonder what you’re adept at?”. He chuckled. “You’re lucky that my boy obeyed orders and brought you in. You had no business over my land. And judging from that bomb you were towing, you were loaded for bear.”
I looked at him curiously. “What’s a bear?” I asked.
“It’s a—” he stopped abruptly and scowled. “You’re pulling my leg,” he accused.
“I am not!” I said firmly. “I haven’t touched your leg, although you have broken mine.”
He winced. “I asked for that,” he said. “I mean, you were carrying an Atomic.”
I nodded. “I was,” I said calmly, “and if it hadn’t been for that Halsite—”
“You wouldn’t have done anything except destroy yourself,” he interrupted. “This place is shielded like a Base Fortress. But I didn’t want you dead,” he chuckled. “You’re more useful alive.”
I choked back a gasp of pain.
He noticed it. “Well,” he said, “let’s have a look at you.” He gestured at the Halsite. The humanoid produced a long knife, and slit through my tight underdrawers, exposing my leg from ankle to thigh. The shame of it was almost more than I could bear. Wolverton looked, whistled through his teeth, and turned to the Halsite.
“Fetch doctor,” he said.
The humanoid grinned, flapped his ears in acknowledgment, and disappeared into the dark interior of the pile with a catlike bound.
And presently he came back with the doctor. She was an apostate, the barred, tattooed circle of the Faith still visibl
y on her right wrist—a natural blonde—big-boned and graceful—carrying a small medikit. She set it down, opened it, took out a fluoroprobe and examined my leg, ignoring my ritual gesture of abomination.
Her diagnosis was swift and impersonal. “Transverse fracture of the tibia and fibula,” she said. “No complications. Probably it will be difficult to set since the leg muscles are so well developed, but it should heal within two weeks under stimuray.”
I was embarrassed. To be examined by a female, and an apostate at that, was bad enough, but to hear the diagnosis spoken so plainly was unbearable.
I retched violently—and it wasn’t entirely a ritual spasm.
Wolverton chuckled as he turned to the doctor. “This one’s a real hardshell,” he said. “Better check for psi potential when you get back to the infirmary—we don’t want to get caught with our pants down like we did last time.” He laughed—a high-pitched cackle that grated on my nerves and turned to face me. “Don’t worry,” he went on. “You will get used to doc. You’ll have to. She’s the only medic we have.”
The doctor looked at me with complete distaste.
“Do your worst,” I said bitterly. “After your unclean hands have touched me, I can stand anything.”
“I’ll do my best—even for you!” the doctor said. She looked into my eyes until her own slid aside from the force of my superior will. “You probably can stand anything—and possibly even more,” she admitted grudgingly. She gestured to the Halsite who picked me up as though I were a child and carried me into the building down corridors, past courtyards and fountains to a small white room where he laid me on a table and held me while the doctor set my leg—ignoring my flinching revulsion to her touch.
So that was how I came to be seated in a wheelchair with a Halsite at my back, listening to Wolverton’s voice—the Voice of Evil. The Halsite who attended me scratched idly at an insect bite on one massive arm and eyed me speculatively. But I had seen quite a few Halsites these past two weeks and so I didn’t feel particularly disturbed. My itching leg occupied most of my attention.
