Quarantine: The Complete Stories, page 31
He rose abruptly in that hot narrow space between the shelves and benches, disturbed by the slight man’s silence. Sweat poured down his bloodless face. His fat hands shuddered and clenched again, and he shook his head unbelievingly.
“Don’t you worry about Atlantis!” he shouted desperately. “I’ll take care of everything. I’ll carry back your artifacts, and all your psionic notes and records. I see now why men must know the truth—”
Dismay took his voice. He reached anxiously to touch the worn little man at the finder, and stumbled numbly back. The smiling man was dead.
IV
When the awakening natives of Earth began testing their first crude space rockets, a small group of secret agents was assigned to delay any premature discovery of the station on the moon. Infiltrating tribal councils, they scoffed at the importance of space research and whittled down appropriations. Penetrating administrative units, they fostered procrastination and blunders in judgment. On the launching pads, they sabotaged rockets that had somehow reached the testing stage. Hampered by the Covenants, however, they were no match for the blind, prehuman beasts of ignorance and fear and power-lust. They had to look on while the savage tribal rivalries lifted more and larger rockets aloft, carrying the hapless planet into the contact crisis.
OLD MARK WHTTHERLY coughed and wheezed and shivered feebly, as the history of that murdered explorer faded into the dimmed stillness, almost as if he had witnessed his own dissolution. Penwright leaned to whisper to his fellow signalmen. Their laughter rang out shockingly.
“Your Equity, that was—us!” Coral flitted to Scarlet as he turned from the scanner. “Mark’s tape proves that Earth is our home planet. What that naked jungle boy invented was our own galactic civilization. These people are our mother race, in spite of all they have forgotten. You can’t let anybody murder them!”
“Please, Coral!” Penwright reproved her with his cool lean grin, and turned smoothly to the bench. “If your Equity feels that the savage attack from Earth is going to allow us time for any more such entertainments, we have one more transcription to offer as evidence. It shows these degenerate beasts for the nasty vermin they are.”
Scarlet glared at the doorway with a genuine spleen. If Flintledge was holding out for a lower price on Earth, he would teach the crook a lesson. Let the Earth burn!
“If they are worse than their judges, they deserve no pity.” She stared at Penwright, and then again at Scarlet.
Deliberately wolfish, he licked his pale lips while Penwright was placing his tape in the scanner. The dome hushed and dimmed, fading into the living image of an angry man puffing noisily into the austere office of Rivers, Newbolt’s predecessor as station commandant. The caller was a heavy, hairless man with shrewd little ice-green eyes sunk deep in fat yellow flesh. He had a genial smile when he was getting what he wanted. Just now he was not.
“Here we’ve come a good hundred light-years, and you can see who I am.” He riffled his psionic identification films under the commandant’s nose. “I am a collector. I intend to collect at least one of these queer anthropoids, in spite of all your silly red tape.”
The shimmering films attested his distinguished scientific attainments. He was authorized to gather specimens for the greatest zoo in the inhabited galaxy, and the quarantine service had been officially requested to expedite his search.
“I see.” Rivers nodded respectfully, trying to conceal a weary frown. The delicate business of safeguarding Earth’s embryonic culture had taught him to deal cautiously with such unexpected threats. “Your credentials are certainly impressive. We’ll give you whatever help we can. Won’t you sit down?”
The collector wouldn’t sit down, He was thoroughly annoyed with the commandant. He doubted loudly that the quarantine regulations had ever been intended to apply to such a backward planet as Earth, and he proposed to take his specimen without any further fiddle-faddle.
Rivers, who came from a civilization which valued courtesy and reserve, gasped in spite of himself at the terms that came through his psionic translator, but he attempted to restrain his mounting impatience.
“Biologically, these creatures are human,” he answered firmly. “And we are stationed here to protect them.”
“Human?” The collector snorted. “When they’ve never got even this far off their stinking little planet!”
“A pretty degenerate lot,” the commandant agreed regretfully. “But their human origins have been well established, and you’ll have to leave them alone.”
The collector studied the commandant’s stern-lipped face and moderated his voice.
“All we need is a single specimen, and we won’t injure that.” He recovered his jovial smile. “On the contrary, the creature we pick up will be the luckiest one on the planet. I’ve been in this game a good many centuries, and I know what I’m talking about. Why, if you allowed us to advertise for a specimen, half the population would volunteer.”
“You can’t advertise,” Rivers said flatly. “Our first duty here is to guard this young culture from any outside influence that might cripple its natural development.”
“Don’t upset yourself.” The fat man shrugged. “We’re undercover experts. Our specimen will never know that it has been collected, if that’s the way you want it.”
“It isn’t.” The commandant rose abruptly. “I will give your party every legitimate assistance, but if I discover that you have tried to abduct one of these people I’ll confiscate your ship.”
“Then keep your precious pets,” the collector grunted ungraciously. “We’ll just go ahead with our field studies. Live specimens aren’t really essential, anyhow. Our technicians have prepared very authentic displays, with only animated replicas.”
“Very well.” Rivers managed a somewhat sour smile. “With that understanding, you may land.”
He assigned two inspectors to assist the collector and make certain that the quarantine regulations were respected. Undercover experts, they went on to Earth ahead of the expedition, and met the interstellar ship a few weeks later at a rendezvous on the night side of the planet.
The ship returned to the moon, while the outsiders spent several months traveling on the planet, making psionic records and collecting specimens from the unprotected species. The inspectors reported no effort to violate the Covenants, and everything went smoothly until the night when the ship came back to pick up the expedition.
Every avoidable hazard had been painstakingly avoided.
The collector and his party brought their captured specimens to the pickup point in native vehicles, traveling as Barstow Brothers’ Wild Animal Shows. The ship dropped to meet them at midnight, on an uninhabited desert plateau. A thousand such pickups had been made without an incident, but that night things went wrong.
A native anthropoid had just escaped from a place of confinement. Though his angered tribesmen pursued, he had outrun them in a series of stolen motor carts. They blocked the roads, but he got away across the desert. When his last vehicle stalled, he crossed a range of dry hills on foot in the dark. An unforeseen danger, he blundered too near the waiting interstellar ship.
His pursuers discovered his abandoned cart, and halted the disguised outsiders to search their trucks and warn them that a dangerous convict was loose. To keep the natives away from the ship, the inspectors invented a tale of a frightened man on a horse, riding wildly in the opposite direction.
They guided the native officers back to where they said they had seen the imaginary horseman, and kept them occupied until dawn. By that time, the expedition was on the ship, native carts and all, and safely back in space.
The natives never recaptured their prisoner. Through that chance-in-a-million that can never be eliminated by even the most competent undercover work, he had got aboard the interstellar ship.
The fugitive aborigine was a young male. Physically, he appeared human enough, even almost handsome. Lean from the severe prison regimen, he carried himself defiantly erect. Some old injury had left an ugly scar across his cheek. His thin lips had a snarling twist, but he had a poised alertness and a kind of wary grace. He was even sufficiently human to possess clothing and a name. His filthy garments were made of twisted animal and vegetable fibers and the skins of butchered animals. His name was Casey James.
He was armed like some jungle carnivore, however, with a sharpened steel blade. His body, like his whole planet, was contaminated with parasitic organisms. He was quivering with fear and exhaustion, like any hunted animal, the night he blundered upon the ship. The pangs of his hunger had passed, but a bullet wound in his left arm was nagging with unalleviated pain.
In the darkness, he didn’t even see the ship. The carts were stopped on the road, and the driver of the last had left it while he went ahead to help adjust the loading ramp. The anthropoid climbed on the unattended cart and hid himself under a tarpaulin before it was driven aboard.
Though he must have been puzzled and alarmed to find that the ship was no native conveyance, he kept hidden in the cargo hold for several days. With his animal craftiness, he milked one of the specimen animals for food, and slept in the cab of an empty cart. Malignant organisms were multiplying in his wounded arm, however, and pain finally drove him out of hiding.
He approached the attendants who were feeding the animals, threatened them with his knife, and demanded medical care. They disarmed him without difficulty and took him to the veterinary ward. The collector found him there, already scrubbed and disinfected, sitting up in his bed.
“Where’re we headed for?” he wanted to know.
He nodded without apparent surprise when the collector revealed the mission and the destination of the ship.
“Your undercover work ain’t quite so hot as you seem to think,” he said. “I’ve seen your flying saucers myself.”
“Flying saucers!” The collector sniffed disdainfully. “They aren’t anything of ours. Most of them are nothing but refracted images of surface lights, produced by atmospheric inversions. The quarantine people are getting out a book to explain that to our fellow creatures.”
“A good one for the cops!” The anthropoid grinned. “I bet they’re still scratching their dumb skulls over how I dodged ‘em.” He paused to finger his bandaged arm, in evident appreciation of the civilized care he had received. “And when do we get to this wonderful zoo of yours?”
“You don’t,” the collector told him. “I did want exactly such a specimen as you are, but the stuffy quarantine officials wouldn’t let me take one.”
“So you gotta get rid of me?”
The psionic translator revealed the beast’s dangerous desperation, even before his hard body stiffened.
“Wait!” The collector retreated hastily. “Don’t alarm yourself. We won’t hurt you. We couldn’t destroy you, even to escape detection. No civilized man can destroy a human life.”
“Nothing to it,” the creature grunted. “But if you ain’t gonna toss me out in space, then what?”
“If the quarantine people caught us with you aboard, they’d cancel our permits and seize everything we’ve got. Somehow, we’ll have to put you back.”
“But I can’t go back.” The anthropoid licked his lips nervously. “I just gut-knifed a guard. If they run me down this time, it’s the chair for sure.”
The creature’s dark, frightened eyes studied the collector cunningly, “If you put me back, you’ll be killing me.”
“On the contrary.” The collector’s thick upper lip twitched slightly, and a slow smile oozed across his wide putty face, warming everything except his frosty little eyes. “Human life is sacred. We can arrange to make you the safest creature of your kind—and also the happiest—so long as you are willing to observe two necessary conditions.”
“Huh?” The anthropoid squinted. “Whatcha mean?”
“You understand that we violated the quarantine in allowing you to get aboard,” ‘the collector explained patiently. “We, and not you, would be held responsible in case of detection, but we need your help to conceal the violation. We are prepared to do everything for you, if you will make and keep two simple promises.”
“Such as?”
“First, promise you won’t talk about us.”
“Easy enough.” The beast grinned. “Nobody’d believe me, anyhow.”
“The quarantine people would.” The collector’s cold eyes narrowed. “Their undercover agents are alert for rumors of any violation.”
“Okay, I’ll keep my mouth shut.” The creature shrugged. “What else?”
“Second, you must promise not to kill again.”
The anthropoid stiffened. “What’s it to you?”
“We can’t allow you to destroy any more of your fellow beings. Since you are now in our hands, the guilt would fall on us.” The collector scowled at him. “Promise?”
The anthropoid chewed thoughtfully on his thin lower lip. His hostile eyes looked away at nothing. The collector caught a faint reflection of his thoughts, through the translator, and stepped back uneasily.
“The cops are hot behind me,” he muttered. “I gotta take care of myself.”
“Don’t worry.” The collector snapped his fat fingers. “We can get you a pardon. Just say you won’t kill again.”
“No.” Lean muscles tightened in the anthropoid’s jaws. “There’s one certain man I gotta knock off. That’s the main reason I busted outa the pen.”
“Who is this enemy?” The collector frowned. “Why is he so dangerous?”
“He ain’t so dangerous,” the beast grunted. “I just hate his guts.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I always wanted to kick his face in.” The creature’s thin lips snarled. “Ever since we was kids together, back in Las Verdades.”
“Yet you have never received any corrective treatment, for such a monstrous obsession?” The collector shook his had incredulously, but the anthropoid ignored him.
“His name is Gabriel Melendez,” the creature muttered. “Just a dirty greaser, but he makes out he’s just as good as me. I had money from my rich aunt and he was hungry half the time, but he’d never stay in his place. Even when he was just a snotty-nosed kid, and knew I could beat him because I was bigger, he was always trying to fight me.” The beast bared his decaying teeth. “I aim to kill him, before I’m through.”
“An incredible obsession!” The collector recoiled from the grim-lipped beast and his red-fanged violence. “What has this creature done to you?”
“He took the girl I wanted.” The beast caught a rasping breath. “He put the cops on me. At least I think it was him, because I got caught not a month after I stuck up the filling station where he works. I think he fingered me. I aim to get him.”
The beast glared down into the collector’s bright little eyes. They looked back without blinking, coldly reptilian with their lack of brows or lashes. Abruptly, the animal subsided.
“Okay, okay!” He spat deliberately on the spotless floor and grinned at the collector’s involuntary start. “What’s it worth, to let him live?”
The collector shook off his shocked expression.
“We’re undercover experts and we know your planet.” A persuasive smile crept across his gross face. “Our resources are quite adequate to take care of anything you can demand. Just give your word not to kill again, and not to talk about us. And tell me what you want.”
The anthropoid rubbed his hairy jaw, as if attempting to think.
“First, I want the girl,” he muttered huskily. “Carmen Quintana was her name, before she married Gabe. She may give you a little trouble, because she don’t like me a little bit. Nearly clawed my eyes out once, even back before I shot her old man at the filling station.” His white teeth flashed in a gorilla grin. “Think you can make her go for me?”
“I think we can.” The collector nodded blandly. “We can arrange nearly anything.”
“You’d better arrange that.” The anthropoid’s thin brown hand nodded again. “And I’ll make her sorry she ever looked at Gabe!”
“You don’t intend to injure her?”
“That’s my business.” The beast laughed. “Just take me back to Las Verdades. That’s a little ’dobe town down by the border.”
The anthropoid listed the rest of his requirements, and crossed his heart with a ritual gesture of his tribe to solemnize his promises. He knew when the interstellar craft landed again, but he had to stay aboard a long time afterwards, living like a prisoner in a sterile little cell, while he waited for the outsiders to complete their underground arrangements for his return. He was fuming with impatience, stalking around his windowless room like a caged carnivore, when the collector finally unlocked his door.
“You’re driving me nuts,” he growled at the hairless outsider. “What’s the delay?”
“The quarantine people.” The collector shrugged. “We had to manufacture some new excuse for every move we made, but I don’t think they ever suspected anything. And here you are!”
He dragged a heavy piece of primitive luggage into the room and straightened up beside it, puffing and mopping at his broad wet face.
“Open it up,” he wheezed. “You’ll see that we intend to keep our part of the bargain. Don’t forget yours.”
The anthropoid dropped on his knees to burrow eagerly through the garments and the simple paper documents in the bag. He looked up with a scowl.
“Where is it?” he snapped.
“You’ll find everything,” the fat man panted. “Your pardon papers. Ten thousand dollars in currency. Forty thousand in cashier’s checks. The clothing you specified—”
“But where’s the gun?”
“Everything has been arranged so that you will never need it.” The collector shifted on his feet uncomfortably. “I’ve been hoping you might change your mind about—”
“I gotta protect myself.”
“You’ll never be attacked.”
“You said you’d give me a gun.”
