The Ecolog, page 5
She clambered over the windowsill and found herself in a narrow passage between the buildings. She hesitated, wondering which way to run.
A flashlight flickered inside the room behind her.
"I see him, Lieutenant! This way!"
A distant voice somewhere beyond one end of the passage answered, "Aye, sir!"
She ran toward the other end.
A moment later she was in the open street, pounding along with head down and cornsilk hair streaming behind her.
She glanced back over her shoulder. One of the men was still after her and gaining. If only she had some shoes… the stones hurt her feet. Once she'd had shoes, so long ago she could hardly remember.
She ducked into an alley, then stopped abruptly. It was dark here, so dark she had almost run into the wall at the dead end without seeing it. Now there really was no escape.
She bent down and picked up a rock, weighing it in her hand, as the running steps grew steadily louder.
CHAPTER 4
Commodore Briggs had been misled by the small footprints—certainly some barefoot child could not be a menace—and had entered the mouth of the alley without his usual caution. He was thus totally unprepared for the impact of the heavy rock.
The rim of his helmet cushioned some of the blow— otherwise he would have been a dead man—but the stone rebounded and struck his forehead hard enough to stun him and make him drop his flashlight. The light bounced with a clatter across the paving stones and came to rest, still shining, but pointed away from him toward the street. As he staggered backward, trying to keep his balance, his unseen attacker rushed furiously out of the gloom and butted him in the stomach.
With a grunt Briggs fell, but as he went down his gloved hand lashed out and closed on a slender ankle. The attacker fell on him with a low, animallike growl, and he felt fingernails claw at his cheeks, seeking his eyes. Briggs was dazed and dizzy, but managed somehow to fend off those eager talons. His opponent was not very strong, but quick, desperate and utterly ruthless. They struggled in near silence; both were panting hoarsely but neither cried out until Briggs heard running footsteps approaching and called, "Phillips! Over here!"
Mike appeared at the mouth of the alley, gun in hand, crouching and peering into the blackness.
Briggs shouted, "The flashlight, you fool! Get the flashlight!"
"Aye, sir." Mike lunged forward and snatched up the light, swinging it instantly in the direction of the fight.
"Not in my eyes, damn it!" shouted Briggs, temporarily blinded. "Hang on to this rascal, will you? Before he gets away from us!"
"I've got him, sir."
With a sigh of relief, Briggs released his grip on the ankle. There was a sound of ripping cloth, then a cry of astonishment from Mike. "He's a… a she!"
The lithe stranger was running again. Briggs could hear the slap of bare feet on paving stones, could dimly see Mike standing with some shredded rags in his hands, staring.
"Don't just stand there, Phillips!" bellowed the commodore, but Mike seemed paralyzed.
At the mouth of the alley Briggs glimpsed a flash of flesh, a young girl running in the nebula-light. She was sprinting for the opposite side of the street, long tangled hair streaming behind her.
Briggs drew his stinger pistol, aimed and pulled the trigger.
The only sound was a faint snick as the tiny self-propelled homing dart flew from the muzzle.
The girl sucked in her breath sharply, took a few awkward steps, then fell sprawling, face down on the roadway.
"Did you kill her?" demanded Mike, dismayed.
"Of course not. I used the barbiturate darts, not the poison ones." Briggs clambered to his feet and stood, swaying,
"There's blood on your forehead, sir," said Mike.
"Oh? You don't say." The commodore removed a glove, touched his forehead experimentally, examined the dark stain on his fingertip. "I'll be all right."
The two men walked over to the unconscious girl.
"Pick her up, Lieutenant," commanded Briggs.
"Me, sir?"
"Who else?"
Mike handed Briggs the flashlight, then stooped and picked her up in his arms.
"Let's take her to the Manta, Lieutenant." Briggs's voice was gentle.
"Yes, sir."
The soldier snapped awake.
From the direction of the city two figures were approaching on foot.
"Halt! Who goes there?" demanded the soldier, a faint quiver of fear in his voice.
"Briggs and Phillips," came the reply. The commodore's voice was unmistakable. But something was wrong. Phillips was in his underwear and carrying what appeared to be a corpse.
Briggs, as he came closer to the Manta and its guard, noticed the puzzlement on the soldier's face. "We found a native. A girl. She didn't have any clothes of her own, so Mike decided to lend her his."
Indeed, Mike was carrying a girl, her arms and legs dangling awkwardly, and she was dressed in Mike's tan coveralls—a few sizes too big for her.
When Mike spoke, his teeth were chattering. "May I please go inside and w-warm u-up, sir?" he asked.
"Set the girl down on this dune here," Briggs commanded.
Mike set her down very carefully, saying, "She's regaining consciousness, sir."
"So much the better, Mister Phillips, and now… dismissed!"
Thankfully, Mike hurried toward the shelter of the shuttlecraft while the commodore knelt beside the faintly stirring form of the stranger. The guard looked on with curiosity.
Briggs asked softly, "Who are you, young lady?"
The girl opened her eyes. "What? Where?"
"I see you speak English."
She did not reply, but looked around her with a puzzled expression. At last her gaze fell on the Manta.
"No!" she cried out in sudden terror.
"What's wrong?" Briggs asked soothingly. "That's only our flying machine."
She sat up abruptly. "It's evil!"
Briggs chuckled. "Not evil really. A bit unreliable perhaps but—"
"No! Evil! It brings death!"
"Not at all. Why, if anything happens to the mother ship, this machine can actually save life. It can act as a sort of lifeboat."
She shook her head vigorously, her long hair swirling. "No! Not life! Death!" She tried to rise to her feet, but Briggs grasped her by the shoulder.
He said, "Calm down, my dear. I shall do my best to act like a gentleman if you will try to act like a lady."
She caught sight of the dried blood on his forehead. "Oh, did I hurt you?"
"It didn't feel too bad at the time, but I must admit I'm getting a frightful headache now."
She was calmer, more concerned than frightened. "I'm sorry, but you should not have chased me. I do not like to hurt people. I never bother anyone who does not threaten to take me back."
"Back where?"
"You know where! You must know!" Her hysteria was returning.
"Hush now. I'm not going to harm you. I just want to get to know you. Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Commodore Abraham Briggs, commanding officer of the starship Corregidor."
She stared at him without comprehension.
"And now," he prompted, "who are you?"
"You don't want to know."
"Yes I do."
Nervously she twisted a lock of her long blond hair. Finally she whispered, "I am Garbage."
Briggs slept badly, in a sleeping bag under the left wing of the Manta. Pain kept him awake. His battered body, particularly his throbbing head, could find no comfortable position on the dune though he tossed and turned for hours. He finally dozed off, only to be brought back to consciousness by the first light of dawn. He watched the sky grow brighter and thought about things.
He had been dreaming about the attack on the Corregidor, about the explosion that had been almost the first warning of the Lorns' attack. There had been a violent shock and then a rush of air as the cabin atmosphere was sucked out through the punctured canopy. Briggs had held his breath and dived into a closet, a little compartment where tools were kept, then slammed the door behind him. The compartment had not been air tight, but it had retained enough air—and retained it long enough—so Briggs was still alive when his rescuers cut through the back of the closet.
In his dream, as in the actual event, everyone else in the control room had done nothing to save themselves. Briggs remembered their expressions. Some were surprised, some barely beginning to be afraid, but the overall impression was one of an unearthly peace: a detachment, a passivity. There were other closets opening onto the bridge, other near-air-tight chests and compartments available, but only Briggs had made a move to get into one. Everyone else had been… philosophical.
To Briggs this brief incident, when he had lived and everyone else on the bridge died, summed up his whole experience. The other officers had died with dignity. Briggs had scrambled for safety like a panicked chimpanzee and had survived.
Briggs had cared.
The others, deep down, had not.
When he'd gone to the meeting of the surviving officers he'd found them seriously planning to blow up the ship.
Once men had been different: when the domain of humanity was expanding; when each day brought news of some new planet colonized, some new alien race defeated. Now men asked whether humanity had any right to those hard-won colonies, whether it was worthwhile to go out among the stars and struggle for mastery of the galaxy. Perhaps, it was said, men should stay home, find inner peace through meditation (or at least pleasure through drugs, sex and luxury); perhaps it was even immoral to struggle.
Perhaps it was immoral to care what happened to the human race.
But Briggs cared.
At that moment, as he looked up at the stars that now grew faint with the approach of dawn, Briggs felt a terrible aloneness. Was he the only one who cared? If that was so, maybe it was no use going on. Briggs could give up. Without him, his crew would certainly give up. If other crews also gave up, humanity, without the protection of the starfleet, would have little choice but to give up. But what did it matter?
After Man was gone, the Lorns would mind the store.
Briggs buried his face in his hands, fighting an enemy he'd fought so many times before, an enemy more deadly than any Lorn… himself.
Once again he won.
He crept out of his sleeping bag and shuffled across the sand toward where the girl who called herself "Garbage" was sitting up and rubbing her eyes, childlike, with the backs of her fists. A few paces from her a guard stood at ease, watching her without interest.
Briggs crouched on his haunches beside her.
"Good morning, young lady."
"When will we eat?"
"Soon, my dear, soon. But while we're waiting I thought you and I might have a little chat."
"Eat first, then talk." She was pouting.
"We'll have breakfast soon enough." Briggs could hear sounds of movement inside the Manta. "Tell me, do you have any family?"
She shook her head, her long blond hair swishing. "No. No family."
"Any friends?"
"No."
"Is there anyone else living in that city?" He gestured toward the silent walls that now seemed almost to glow in the early morning light.
"No. I was alone."
"But how did you survive all alone like that?"
She shrugged. "I killed small animals. Sometimes I found things in cans. There is water in the wells."
"Amazing! And that was enough for you?"
Again she shrugged. "I am Garbage."
"Who gave you that name?"
"I gave it to myself. I have no other. When there is something that nobody wants, that's garbage, isn't it?"
"Are you something nobody wants?"
"Once I lived with the rulers. They tried to kill me. They did not want me." She glanced at the Manta with a worried frown. "They hunted me with flying machines."
"We won't hunt you," he reassured her.
"I believe you… since you have not killed me when you could. If you had come from them and had found my hiding place here, I would be dead by now."
Briggs paused, uncertain how to proceed. At last he said, "Do you know where these rulers live?"
"Of course. Once it was my home, but I will never again—"
"Will you lead me to it?"
Her eyes widened. "Don't ask me that!"
"Why not?"
"The Ecolog! She is so powerful! She is 300 years old, yet still young. She will never die. And she has absolute control!"
"Nevertheless," Briggs said grimly, "we must go to her."
Briggs ordered the crew of the Manta to open up all the parachutes on board and make clothing and tents suitable for a long desert trek. Mike Phillips began by carefully cutting out a dress for the girl called Garbage. It was light and white and loose-fitting, little more than a long rectangle of cloth with a hole cut in it for the head and a sash of the same nylon material to hold it in at the waist; plain and styleless, yet perfect for the environment.
He went on to make similar garments for himself. Garbage, wearing her new clothes, stood over him and watched as he worked in the shadow of the ship's wing. Finally she said, "I wish I could do that."
Mike glanced up at her with surprise. "Didn't you ever learn things like this?"
She shook her head. "Oh no. At court all our clothes were made by machines."
Mike ruefully examined his handiwork. "I'm sure they did a better job than I can. We don't have any needles or thread, let alone sewing machines or fabric melders. Even if we had them they wouldn't work without power."
She sighed. "Making clothing looks so difficult. I suppose only men can do it, not women."
"Why, that's not so. Anyone can do it. There was a time when it was considered exclusively women's work. Can you cook?"
"Cook?" She looked puzzled.
She didn't know the meaning of the word.
He said, "You know, can you prepare food for eating?"
"I can kill small animals," she answered brightly. "I kill them, tear them apart, then eat them. Is that what you mean?"
"Aren't they too tough to eat?"
"I got used to it. The food at court was better. Machines made the food at court, and men controlled the machines. Men are clever with their hands; they are good at keeping machines running."
Mike's square-cut features darkened into a frown. "Wait a minute. I don't understand. If women don't sew or cook, do they take care of children?"
"Oh no. Men and machines do that too."
"Then what do women do?"
"Why, they give commands, of course!" She began to giggle.
Mike bent to his work, now cutting out hoods and capes for himself and the girl. After a few minutes' silence, he said, "If women were the rulers at court, as you say, why did you leave?"
She sat down on the sand, not looking at him. "I had to leave. They were going to kill me."
"Kill you? Why?"
"I was not good enough."
"How were you different from the others?"
"I don't know. It seems to me I was exactly the same." She laid a particular stress on the word "exactly." Then she raised her head and regarded him seriously as she went on, "Others like me had been killed. The Ecolog does the killing herself, with a jewel-hilted sword. I was next. I slipped out of the court city, down the mountains. The Ecolog's men followed me in flying machines. They shot at me, but missed. I kept on, hiding in the daytime, traveling at night, until I came to the town where you found me. No people lived in the town. It had been abandoned, but there was canned food left behind and some gardens."
"Why did all the people leave?"
"The Ecolog commanded them to leave, of course. The city was becoming, I suppose, ecologically untenable. So many cities do that. One after another the cities are being abandoned." Her voice had become dreamy, faraway, but now her tone hardened abruptly. "One day I was treated like a princess, the next hunted like an animal. The Ecolog has no right to treat me like that." She laid her hand on his arm. "Your leader, Briggs, is a most powerful person, is he not?"
"In his way…"
"Even though he is a man, he commands like an Ecolog."
Mike gave an ironic chuckle. "He commands, all right."
"Do you suppose he might be powerful enough to… to defeat the Ecolog, to kill her?"
"It's possible, but I don't think that's what he has in mind."
"Still, it might be arranged." She withdrew her hand from his arm, but her voice was gentle as she continued, "Do you know? I feel somehow I was born to rule, to command, just like your leader and the Ecolog."
Mike looked at her small sun-browned body and could not repress a smile.
She said scornfully. "You think I'm crazy, don't you? This man Briggs has asked me to lead him to the Ecolog. Up to this very minute I had been planning to pretend to lead him there, then, the moment he was off guard, I was going to slip away and leave him without a guide in the desert." Mike found her laugh somewhat disturbing. "But now I've changed my mind. I will lead him where he wants to go. Yes, and then see what happens."
She laughed again and Mike, in spite of the steadily rising temperature of the desert, felt for an instant a cold chill.
Briggs and the crew had been sleeping in shifts through the day. Now, as the sun lay low near the horizon and their shadows stretched long across the red dunes, he checked to see that all was ready. Having scuffed out a message in the sand for the Corregidor, he ordered his little caravan to move.
Briggs, Phillips and the girl walked side by side in the lead; the others fell into rough formation behind, two abreast.
"Shouldn't we leave someone to guard the Manta?" Mike asked, with a worried glance over his shoulder.
