The Ecolog, page 17
With a sigh Briggs handed the girl the mask, saying, "This is yours, Garbage."
Unhesitatingly she took it and slipped it on. It fitted perfectly.
Briggs looked at her and said softly, "The Queen is dead. Long live the Queen."
Phillips, when he had recovered from his shock, protested, "You can't mean you intend to perpetuate the same form of government here as before! We could institute a parliamentary democracy, redistribute the wealth, free the people…"
Briggs shook his head slowly. "Not here, Mike. Not in this part of the galaxy."
"But why?" Mike persisted.
Briggs pointed toward the sun. "That looks like the sun that shines down on our own home Earth, but it's not. Ours is a population-one star, while this one is population-two, like all the stars outside the main disk of the galaxy. Within the main disk there can be democracy, widespread wealth, high technologies shared by the entire population, but not outside the main disk."
Mike exploded, "Nonsense! You're reading your own ultraconservative prejudices into the stars."
Briggs raised his voice. "You don't understand, Mike. Population-one stellar systems contain ample supplies of metal. Population-two systems contain almost none. Unless I am sadly mistaken, all the metal in this stellar system is contained in this one moonless planet, and nearly all the metal on this planet is here in Abbutututikan. There's helium here in plenty—the continents are probably floating on pockets of helium big enough to supply fleets of dirigibles for eons—but there's only enough metal to supply one tiny oasis of high technology, Abutututikan. For the rest of the world there's enough for a few swords and knives and essential tools, but that's all. I suspected something like this from the start, as soon as I saw we were outside the main galactic disk. When the cans we found in the abandoned city were plastic, I was sure of it."
Mike was stunned. "You knew all along…"
The commodore nodded wearily. "Something like the Ecolog was inevitable." He turned toward the soldier Myron. "Correct me if I'm wrong, sir, but I believe I've finally worked out the last few details, the things that I must admit I've not fully understood until now. The Ecolog is not really immortal, is she?"
Myron turned pale, but it was Klain who answered, almost inaudibly, "That's right."
Briggs pressed on. "She's not one person, but many."
"Not exactly," said Myron. "Every 40 years a new Ecolog puts on the mask, the mask that hides from the masses the signs of age. All the Ecologs are clones, all grown from bits of skin cut from the body of the original Ecolog, who brought our forefathers to this planet and founded this colony. Unfortunately the cloning process is not perfect. Each duplicate Ecolog is slightly different. Some have defects, major or minor, that do not show up at once. To get one perfect Ecolog, we must raise over 1,000 imperfect ones. The imperfect ones are called garbage girls and killed.
Briggs sighed, "Many are called, but one is chosen."
"That's right," said Myron. "Only one is allowed to reach the age of 22."
Mike was shaken. "It's a cruel system."
Briggs answered, "No more cruel than Mother Nature. The Ecolog has substituted human judgment for natural selection. It's survival of the fittest on a rational, scientific basis." His voice hardened. "But there is still one more secret. Myron, the original Ecolog is not altogether dead, is she?"
The soldier hesitated; then he said, "No, sir."
Klain looked up, startled. It seemed there were things even he did not know.
"Take me to her," Briggs commanded.
The original Ecolog lay in a tank, eyes closed, perfectly still, not breathing, her heart not beating, yet she was not dead. Her bodily processes continued, but at such a slow pace they could not be detected without highly sensitive instruments. Briggs, looking down at her, recognized her state as one he'd seen back in India, on the home planet. Forms of autohypnosis were used there that could induce a deep trance more profound than hibernation—almost suspended animation. In such a state the processes of age were slowed too, almost to a standstill.
Briggs spoke softly, but his voice echoed in the dim, underground chamber. "I thought as much. You can't get living clones from dead tissue."
The woman in the tank was naked. Her body was covered with little scratches where bits of flesh had been taken for cloning. Each was marked by a tiny scab, but none of the scratches had completely healed; the trance slowed down the healing process as well.
Briggs noticed a metal band around the woman's forehead. (It was bizarre how perfectly she resembled an older Garbage… the same form and height, the same long blond hair.) "Can I communicate with her?" he asked, his eye tracing a wire that led from the metal band out of the tank and into a machine set in a niche above.
"Yes," said Myron, in a low voice.
He handed Briggs a similar metal band with a similar wire linking it to the machine. Briggs slipped it on over his head.
"Close your eyes to cut out distractions," instructed Myron.
Briggs closed his eyes.
Little by little he became aware of thoughts that were not his own, thoughts that had a finer, more delicate tone than any he was familiar with. Someone else was sharing his mind; a powerful, calculating intelligence that was nevertheless unmistakably feminine. Visions began to fade in and fade out, visions of things he had never seen, people he had never met. A small starship of ancient design and its crew of six men and six women, plus the womanly mind through whose eyes he watched them. A coven! He knew he was looking at the original colonists on their trip to this planet. Everyone who lived here was descended from this group of 12—or the Ecolog herself.
He saw a landing on a mountaintop and the construction of the first crude huts of Abbutututikan. There were dawns and noons and dusks. There was the formation and adjustment of an artificial Van Allen belt on the fringes of the atmosphere, the liberation of vast amounts of oxygen from the water in the seas and the gradual terraforming of the environment. There was the planting of seeds they'd brought with them and the destruction of native plant forms and the attempt, unsuccessful, to fill the new land with familiar animals.
It was all part of a plan, a billion-year plan. The Ecolog made the plan; then she slept. Her clones carried it out. Gradually Briggs became aware of a face. It was a face he had learned to call by the name Garbage.
A voiceless voice spoke softly to him.
I see you are a stranger.
Yes.
I see your name is Abraham.
Yes, said Briggs in his mind.
It is a meaningful name, Abraham. I see its meaning stretching into the shadows of the most distant past. It is not an easy name to wear, is it?
Sometimes it is hard.
So is mine. I am the Ecolog. Our names are much alike. They both mean responsibility.
Briggs felt cool blue eyes looking into him, seeing everything, rejecting nothing, judging nothing. He had always wanted someone to understand him, at the same time as he dreaded it. With awe and love, he watched the Ecolog become transparent to him, as he knew he was becoming transparent to her. He could sense it all; the great plan for the founding of a Utopian civilization, the courage and determination to carry out the plan, the rush of images of an unhappy childhood, the half-hidden images of eating, tearing, rending, the animal subconscious, the hypnotic writhing of a stunted, frustrated eroticism. For a long time, there were no words. He and she stared into each other. That was enough.
At last she said, I see you wish to use my master computer.
Yes.
Upon the result of your computations depends the survival of my planet.
Yes.
Use my computer. I trust you with my world.
Briggs had been shaken by his wordless conversation more than he would ever admit. The Ecolog was behind him, in another room, no longer in communion with his innermost being; yet, in another sense, she would never be far from him again, as long as his memory continued to function.
The lights in this room were brighter, though the air was still cool with the coolness of a deep cave. The master computer stood before him, silent, dark, waiting.
After his communion, he had gone to the radio room of the dirigible and made radio contact with the Corregidor. The crew had been so hysterically glad to hear from him, particularly Christina Enge, yet he had not been able to respond fully to them. He was so tired. And the Ecolog had been so close to him that no one else would ever be as close.
They had radioed down the data for the computer.
He looked at the computer.
There was dust and spots of rust on it, and it was covered with the webs of the strange creatures that, on this planet, filled the ecological niche of spiders.
The girl called Garbage stood beside him. He glanced at her. She wore the mask of the Ecolog, but for him she was only a shadow of the real Ecolog, the silent body in the tank.
She said, "We haven't used this machine for 25 years."
He said, "Turn it on."
She touched the stud. Banks of lights snapped to life, began to blink out their coded signals. A soft hum began to drone from behind the gray metal panels.
The rust and the dust worried him somewhat but there was little he could do about it.
He shrugged. In his hand was a plastic card banded with strips of bonded germanium. Each separate atom in the germanium bands was able to hold a simple code. Yes or no. Off or on. And out of this multitude of separate positives and negatives could be built any mathematical process known to man.
His hand was sweating slightly as he placed the card in the computer's read unit.
It was the new Ecolog who pressed the stud for "Program Start."
In a single flash the card was read. The computer began its deliberations with only a few changes in the pattern of flashing lights, changes only an expert could notice, let alone interpret.
Side by side Briggs and the new Ecolog awaited the answer. He took her hand. They watched the screen where the answer would first appear, an instant before the printout unit would begin to record it.
Briggs expected a simple answer.
Would the star take an energy tap large enough to refuel the Corregidor? Or would it explode?
The screen lit up. Briggs began to read.
"BLKJHGFD IUYT MNV"
"What does that mean?" demanded the Ecolog.
Briggs's voice was worried. "Nothing at all."
"Maybe it needs a minute to settle down to business," she said.
The computer said, "45 68 BCHFXXR WQ )( *&^%"
Briggs smelled ozone, heard the telltale crackle of electricity arcing. His hand darted toward the "Program Stop" stud, but the computer beat him to it. Every light on the panel went out at once. A thin wisp of smoke curled up from under the read unit. The computer was dead.
"Can it be repaired?" demanded Briggs.
She shook her head. "We no longer have anyone who knows how."
"Maybe someone from the Corregidor… ." Briggs had located the snaps that released the easy access panel. He unsnapped them, opened up the machine and peered inside.
The individual modules were intact, but the problem lay with the insulated wires leading from one module to another. The insulation was almost all gone. On closer examination, Briggs could see a horde of tiny insects contentedly chewing on what insulation remained. He watched them for a long time, thinking about all the pain and hardship, all the struggle and loss of life that had brought him to this moment. All, all for nothing.
He sighed and replaced the panel.
"What are you going to do now?" demanded the Ecolog. There was a kind of faith in her voice, a certainty that even now Briggs was not defeated, that even now he would have some new ingenious scheme. From behind her eye-slits, her blue eyes peered at him expectantly.
He returned her gaze, thinking of all he had gone through with her, thinking of the other Ecologs: the one who'd tried to kill him, the one in the tank who'd been, for a few minutes, like his second self.
"What are you going to do now?" she repeated, more sharply.
"Abandon and destroy the Corregidor. If I'm not imposing, I'd like permission for my crew and myself to live the rest of our lives on your planet." His voice was flat and toneless.
Numbly, as if in a dream, Commodore Briggs stood at the porthole in the Corregidor's secondary control room, his feet held to the deck by magnetic boots, watching the Manta One dwindle to a dot silhouetted against the glowing half-sphere of the planet's dayside. The little shuttlecraft had been retrieved by remote control as soon as the Ecolog's power-jammer had been turned off, only to be pressed into service for the sad task of transporting the crew, in groups of ten, down to the surface. The other shuttleships were being readied for the same purpose.
At his side stood the new Ecolog.
The mask of authority had transformed her. The fearful fugitive he had met in the abandoned city had vanished without a trace. She was now truly a queen; her every movement, the very way she stood showed it. Briggs wondered idly, Which is her real self? Her innermost consciousness or the role she plays in her society?
It was one of those somewhat profound, philosophical questions that can't be answered, yet which are the foundation of our whole way of understanding reality. If it was her role that was her real self, then the Ecolog was indeed as immortal as she pretended. If it was her innermost self, then her immortality was a fraud.
"Dutton," called Briggs.
"Yes, sir," answered the chief engineer, seated at the nearby control console. The man seemed to have aged in the past few days. His thin face was more lined than Briggs remembered it, his crew-cut hair even grayer.
"Take over the helm," said Briggs.
"Aye, sir," said Dutton, still the by-the-book officer he'd always been. Dutton, perhaps, was one of the lucky ones who were the same inside as outside. Or maybe he wasn't. Briggs watched the man intently for a moment, wondering if he wasn't, after all these years of shared service, still a stranger.
"Come along," said Briggs to the Ecolog.
He led her to his cabin, where he began to open his drawers and stuff his few belongings into his dufflebag and foot locker. It was a comical undertaking in zero gravity, where a sock or pair of shorts might escape and drift across the room. The Ecolog laughed at his antics, and he laughed too, but she did not pitch in and help him. She had her dignity to think of.
He found a picture of himself in his gaudy graduation uniform, taken on the day he'd gotten his sheepskin at New Annapolis.
The Ecolog said softly, "That's you, isn't it?"
He nodded slowly. "Yes, when I was young, just starting out. Now I'm old and finished."
"No, no, don't say that. There is work for you in Abbutututikan. A whole new career! You can be to me what Klain was to my predecessor."
"I don't know if that's possible. The ways of your court are strange. Your civilization has greatly diverged from the rest of humanity. I don't know if I could go along with your monopoly on knowledge, though I see the reasoning behind it, or if I could accept the wholesale slaughter of what you call the 'special girls.' "
She rested her hand on his arm, saying, "We'll change all that. I was planning to anyway. It's the only means I can see for arresting our society's slow slide into oblivion. The people will be taught! I promise you that. And the special girls will no longer be killed, but given useful work to do out among the people. I need you here to give me new ideas, to guide me and my colony back into the mainstream of mankind."
He sighed. "Yes, perhaps it will work out. But it isn't a starship. It isn't leaping from planet to planet down the arms of the nebula. It isn't facing danger and winning. Winning has always been important to me, my dear. Mike Phillips thinks it's an unhealthy obsession, a sign of my basic insecurity, my need to constantly prove myself. It may be that he's right, and that what I've needed all my life and been unconsciously searching for is one really crushing defeat, one resounding failure. If I can survive it and come out on the other side, I won't be afraid of failure any more. Failure will be my friend." His voice had gradually grown more bitter.
She took his sullen face in her delicate hands and turned it toward her. She said, "There is no defeat until you surrender. You have not surrendered, only shifted to a new battlefield."
"Let me see your face."
"All right."
He removed her mask, put his great bearlike arms around her. She kissed him tenderly on the lips. He returned the kiss, feeling the terrible tension of the last few days begin to drain away. He wanted to cry, but could not.
Their lips parted. He could feel her warm breath on his cheek as she whispered, "You see? You'll be as much a giant here as anywhere. You'll always be a giant, no matter where you are."
They were both startled by a raucous bleep on the intercom. Chief Engineer Dutton's voice blatted out at them. "Commodore Briggs! We've just picked up a message on tight laser from the planet's surface. Ground station telescopes have spotted two Lorn starships on the other side of the globe. They're decelerating to make orbit."
The commodore hesitated only an instant before giving his command. "Discontinue disembarkation. Make the stellar tap. We're going to fight 'em!"
Roughly, he pulled himself free from her arms and dove for the door.
CHAPTER 11
The process was swift. As the gravatic shifter tapped into the raw energy of the nearby star, the Corregidor came back to life. The lights burned brighter. The intercom— which now barked orders from Dutton—sounded louder. The artificial gravity returned and quickly built up to a full one G, making his steps firm as Briggs strode toward the secondary control room. He could hear the Ecolog's running footsteps behind him, but he paid no attention.
By the time he reached the room, the tap had been completed. Mike Phillips, Dutton, Hughes and DeCarli were strapped in their seats, looking up through the canopy at the sun.
