Collected Short Fiction, page 646
He shook himself. “Divert me,” he said harshly.
At once a more than humanly soprano voice began to sing from somewhere inside his flyer: “Si, mi, chiamano Mimi . . .”
“No. Not opera.”
The voice fell silent. A holograph of a chessboard appeared on the communications panel, the pieces set up for a game; White’s King’s Pawns slid forward two spaces and waited for his reply.
“I don’t want to play chess, either. Wait a minute. Set up a probability matrix for me. Estimate the chances of the star Almalik granting me a priority.”
“With running analysis, or just the predicted expectancy, Mr. Quamodian?” asked the voice of the flyer.
With analysis. Keep me amused.”
“Well, sir! By gosh, there’s a lot of stuff you got to consider, like—”
“Without the comedy dialect.”
“Certainly, Mr. Quamodian. These are the major factors. Importance of human race in universal civilization: low. Approximately point-five trillion humans, scattered on more than a hundred stellar systems in three galaxies; but these represent only about one one-hundreth of one per cent of the total population of universal civilization, even counting multiple and group intellects as singles. Concern of star Almalik with individual human Andreas Quamodian, negligible.”
What about the concern of Almalik for the Companions of the Star?” cried Quamodian angrily.
“Coming to that, Mr. Quamodian. Concern rated as well under noise level on a shared-time basis, but inserting the real-time factor makes it low but appreciable. So the critical quantity in the equation is the relevance of the term ‘rogue star.’ I have no way of estimating the star Almalik’s reaction to that, Mr. Quamodian.”
“The rogue stars are the most important phenomena in the universe,” said Quamodian, staring out at the ramp.
“In that case—hum—allowing for pressure of other affairs; you haven’t kept up with the news, but there have been some unpleasant events on Earth—let’s see, I give it point seven probability, Mr. Quamodian. One hundred fourteen variables have been considered. They are respectively—”
“Don’t bother.”
“It’s no bother, Mr. Quamodian,” said the machine, a little sulkily. They were all moody, these companionship-oriented ship’s control mechanisms; it was the price you had to pay for free conversation. Quamodian said soothingly:
“You’ve done well. It’s just that I’m upset over the danger represented by the rogue star.”
“I can understand that, Mr. Quamodian,” said the machine warmly, responding at once. “A threat to one’s entire race—”
“I don’t give a hoot about the human race!”
“Why Mr. Quamodian! Then what—”
“It’s Molly Zaldivar I care about. Make a note of this, you hear? Never forget it: The welfare of Molly Zaldivar is the most important thing in the universe to me, because I love her with all my heart In spite of—” Quamodian thought bleakly of Molly Zaldivar, and Cliff Hawk, and the day years before when she had told him that it was Hawk she loved.
“In spite of everything,” he finished. “Now shut up. The monitor’s signalling—I guess my priority was approved!”
II
Molly Zaldivar, nine years before. Molly was tall and lively, a girl who sang and accompanied herself on an Earth guitar, a girl who was loved by many a being in the university where she and Andy Quamodian met. It was easy for Quamodian to know why he loved her: the laughter in her voice, even when die sang the saddest ballads of the old mother world; the skin tones that changed from wannest ivory to tawny gold under the queer shifting light of the triple star in the university’s sides. But—half the students did not “hear,” at least on the audio frequency range used by human beings; many of them did not see with “visible” light. Yet all were fond of Molly Zaldivar.
There were only three hundred humans in the school. Andy Quamodian, already serious, a little pudgy, dark and slow. Molly Zaldivar, like a golden flame, her bright hair catching ruddy glints from the red giant star above them, her dark eyes flashing the violet light of the dwarf. And—Cliff Hawk.
Even after nine years, Andreas Quamodian still scowled at the thought of Cliff Hawk. He was a rogue in the society of men, a rogue in the university, brooding, angry. Tall, gaunt, restless, he had shaggy black hair and burning blue eyes. Where Molly and Quamodian had come from old Earth itself, sent to the university on linguistic fellowships to learn the myriad communications-forms of the galaxies, Cliff Hawk was a technician. His ancestors had roamed the Reefs of Space, fugitives from the old interplanetary empire called the Plan of Man. Their prideful blood still burned in his veins. He loved Molly Zaldivar—carelessly and roughly, with a certainty that she would sacrifice her own career for any of his whims. Whereas Andy Quamodian only worshipped her.
When it came time for Molly Zaldivar to choose, she really had not had a choice. Andy Quamodian could see that now—what choice between plodding little Andy Quam and the dark, dangerous man from the borderlands of space?
But he had not seen it at the time; and the moment when Molly Zaldivar sent him away still burned, nine years later . . .
“You are not paying attention, Mr. Quamodian,” the flyer reprimanded him. “The control dome is signalling.”
“What?—Oh, sorry.” Quamodian gave orders, and the flyer swam back into the stream of traffic. A stalked horror of a citizen with members like bamboo shoots and a frond of brain tissue like a skirt around its waist had paused, was waiting for him to precede it into the transflex tube.
“Your attention, sir!” flashed the control dome. “The multiple citizen Cygnus is fully qualified to issue priorities for intergalactic travel. Almalik, spokesman star for the citizen, has granted you priority for immediate transit to Earth. You may enter the transflex cube.”
“Thanks,” grumbled Quamodian, and guided his flyer into the luminous cavern of the cube.
A veteran of a good many intergalactic transits, Quamodian had never learned to enjoy them. The effects of transflection varied with the individual. Some felt nothing; a few reported pleasure or exhilaration. Most, to whom transit was unpleasant or terrifying, resorted to sleep drugs or hypnosis to make the experience pass quickly. Quamodian merely endured it.
He watched the dark diaphragm contract behind him and at once felt the flyer seem to pitch and veer. Rotated out of space and time, routed by computation through the congruent folds of a dozen or a hundred parallel universes, he felt as he always did: lost, and stunned, and queasy.
The blue walls flickered and dissolved into a darkening, grayish haze. A queer roaring came hollowly from nowhere, swelling in his ears. Numbing cold drove through him, as if every tissue of his body had somehow been plunged into the dark zero of the space between galaxies . . .
But then the careening flyer steadied. “Prepare to emerge, Mr. Quamodian,” it sang in his ear, and the roaring storm of sound and sensation died away.
The shining walls were real again. But now they were greenish-gray instead of blue, and painted in bold black characters with the identifying characters of the Wisdom Creek Station on Earth. Ahead of him the exit gate expanded.
There was no traffic here, no waiting line of citizens enduring the delays that beset their important business, no bustle of intergalactic civilizations. It was quiet and pastoral.
Andy Quamodian leaned forward as the flyer glided out of the cube and looked for the first time in his adult life on the warm, broad acres that were lit by the single sun of Earth.
Twenty minutes later the charm and the nostalgia were gone, and Quamodian was snapping furiously at his flyer. “What do you mean, you can’t reach Miss Zaldivar? I just sent her a message . . .”
“Your message has not been delivered, Mr. Quamodian. Her communications circuits have been blocked; she wishes to accept no calls.”
“Nonsense! And the local office of the Companions of the Star . . .”
“Also blocked, Mr. Quamodian. A local custom. I have been assured that in fourteen hours, local time, they will be at your service, but until then—”
“Don’t be a fool!” Quamodian shouted. “I can’t wait that long! Here, I’ll go to the office myself!”
“Certainly, Mr. Quamodian.” The flyer began to settle toward a dusty plaza in front of the transflex tower. “Of course,” it added apologetically, “you will have to go on foot. By local custom, flyers are not permitted to operate more than one hundred meters from the transflex center at this time.”
“Great Almalik! Oh, very wen.” Fussily Quamodian collected himself and stamped out of the opening door. “Which way?”
A voice by his ear answered, as the flyer activated its external speakers: “Down this street, Mr. Quamodian. The gold building with the ensign of the Companions.”
He turned and stared. Behind him, the flyer quietly rose, drifted back to the tall, tapered, black transflex tower and settled to wait at its base. Quamodian was alone on the planet of his birth.
He was, he realized, more atone than he had expected. He knew that parts of Earth were still scarcely populated—nothing like the teeming metrapolises of the hub-worlds of the universe, nothing like even the relatively minor planets of his university training and recent practical experience.
But he had not expected Earth, even this part of Earth, to be empty.
Yet there was not a soul in sight He peered back toward the transflex tower: his waiting flyer, motionless and peaceful; nothing else. He looked down a long artificial-stone boulevard: a school building a hospital, a few supply centers . . . and no one in sight. He saw a park with benches and a playground, but no one was near any of them; saw parked vehicles, seemingly abandoned, a library without readers, a fountain with no one to watch its play.
“Ridiculous,” he grumbled, and walked toward the building that glinted in the sun.
Earth’s single star was hot, and the full gravity of his home planet was more than Andreas Quamodian had been used to for a good many years. It was a tiring walk. But there was something pleasant about it, about the dusty smell of the hot pavement and the luminous young, green leaves of the trees that overhung the walk. Peace lay over the village, like a benediction of Almalik.
But Quamodian had not come to Earth in search of peace. He increased his stride, and chugged up the walkway, beside the flagpole that bore the standard of the Companions of the Star: the thirteen colored stars of Almalik in the clotted ellipses of their intricate orbits, against a black field of space.
The door did not open for him. Quamodian nearly ran into it; he only stopped just in time.
“What the devil’s the matter here?” he demanded, more surprised than angry—at least at first. “I am Andreas Quamodian, a monitor of the Companions of the Star. Admit me at once!”
But the bright crystal panel did not move. “Good morning, Citizen Quamodian,” said a recorded robot-voice. “The Wisdom Creek post of the Companions of the Star is closed today, in observance of local religious custom. It will be open as usual on Monday.”
“I’ll report this!” Quamodian cried. “Mark my words! I’ll call the Regional Office of the Companions of the Star—”
“A public communications instrument is just to your left, Citizen Quamodian,” the robot-voice said politely. “It is cleared for emergency use even on Starday.”
“Emergency, eh? You bet it’s an emergency!” But Quamodian had had enough of arguing with recorded voices. He stalked along the flank of the gold-colored ceramic building to the communications booth, angrily dialed the code for the Regional Office . . . and found himself talking to another recorded voice.
“Companions of the Star, Third Octant Office,” it said briskly.
“Oh, confound—Never mind. Listen. I am Monitor Quamodian.
I am in Wisdom Creek to investigate a reported emergency, and I find the local office closed. This lax operation is highly irregular! I demand the office be opened and—”
“Monitor Quamodian,” reproved the robot voice, “this is impossible. Under our revised covenant with the Visitants, no local posts operate on Stardays so that local personnel may be free to engage in voluntary religious activities. Even Regional Offices are machine-operated during this—”
“But this is an emergency! Can’t you understand?”
“Monitor Quamodian, my sensors detect no emergency situation in Wisdom Creek.”
“That’s what I’m here for! I—well, I don’t know the exact nature of the emergency, but I require immediate assistance—”
“Our Wisdom Creek post will open promptly at midnight, local time,” the voice informed him blandly. “Competent assistance will be available then.”
“Midnight will be too—”
But the line clicked, buzzed and settled to a steady hum.
Muttering with anger, Quamodian tried Molly Zaldivar’s code. But his flyer had been right; there was no answer.
Puffing with irritation as much as fatigue, Quamodian lowered himself to the steps of the office of the Companions and scowled at the empty street. How many hundreds of thousands of light-years had he spanned to be here, on this day, in this back wash of life? What tremendous forces had he enlisted to hurl him across the gulfs of space, to race against the dreadful fears that Molly Zaldivar’s message had conjured up He licked dry lips and wiped perspiration from his brow. He was a hero, ready to rescue maiden, townspeople, world itself. But none of them appeared to want to be rescued.
III
Twenty-five miles southwest of Wisdom Creek, Molly Zaldivar did want to be rescued. At that moment she wanted it very badly.
Her old blue electric car had whined up the rocky mountain road, three thousand feet above the plain; below her she saw the flat, dry valley with the little town of Wisdom Creek huddled around the twin spires of the Transflex tower and the church. But now the road went no farther. It dipped, circled a spur of the mountainside, and went tumbling into the other valley beyond. From here on she would have to walk . . . But that she could not do.
Above her she heard the restless, singing rustle of the creature Cliff Hawk called a sleeth. She could not see it. But she could imagine it there, tall as a horse but far more massive, black as space and sleek as her own hair. And she knew that at that moment she was closer to death than she had ever been before.
She tiptoed silently back to the car, eyes on the rocks over her head. The singing sound of the creature faded away and returned, faded away and came back again. Perhaps it had not detected her. But it might at any moment, and then—
Molly entered the car and closed the door gently, not latching it Breathing heavily—partly from nerves, partly from the thin, high air around her—she picked up her communicator and whispered, “Cliff? Will you answer me, Cliff, please?”
There was no sound except for the faint sound of the sleeth, and the even fainter whisper of wind around the mountaintop.
Molly bit her lip and glanced over her shoulder. She dared not start the car’s motor. It was not very loud, but the sleeth was far too close; it was a wonder it hadn’t heard her coming up the trail. But the road sloped sharply away behind her. If she released the brakes the old car would roll on its out-of-date wheels; it would rattle and creak, but not at low speeds, much. Not at first. And Cliff had told her that the sleeth would not wander more than a few hundred yards from the cavemouth. She was very close now, but the car would roll out of range in not much more than a minute . . .
But then what? Cliff did not answer. She had to see him—had to stop whatever he was doing, teamed with the rude, hard man who owned the sleeth. She would never be any closer than this, and what hope was there that the sleeth would be elsewhere if she tried again another time anyway?
“Oh, please, Cliff,” she whispered to the communicator, “it’s Molly and I’ve got to talk to you . . .”
There was a rattle of pebbles and dust, and Molly craned her neck to look upward in sudden terror.
There was the sleeth, eyes huge as a man’s head, green as the light from a radium-dial watch. It was perched over her, the bright, broad eyes staring blindly across the valley. It was graceful as a cat, but queerly awkward as it floated in its transflection field, clutching at the rubble with claws that were meant for killing.
It did not seem to have seen her. Yet.
Molly froze, her ears tuned to the singing rustle of the sleeth. Its huge muscles worked supply under the fine-scaled skin, and the eyes slowly turned from horizon to horiaon. Then it drifted idly back behind the rock, and Molly dared to breathe again. “Oh, Cliff,” she whispered, but only to herself. She could not bring herself to speak even in an undertone to the communicator.
But even terror fades; the monkey-mind of a human being will not stay attuned even to the imminent threat of death. Molly became aware of her cramped position on the scarred plastic seat of the car, cautiously straightened her legs and sat up.
If only Cliff Hawk would hear her message and come.
If only the sleeth would drift over to the other side of the mountain, give her a chance to make a mad dash for the cavemouth and the men inside.
If only—she was stretching for impossibles now, she knew—if only poor Andy Quam would respond to her plea for help and come charging out of the transflex tower with weapons and wisdom and the strength to do whatever had to be done to stop Cliff from going through with this dreadful work . . .
But they were all equally impossible. Cliff couldn’t hear her, the sleeth wouldn’t go away. And as for Andy Quam—
Even in her fear she couldn’t help smiling. Poor old Andy, sober and serious, loving and stuffy, full of small rages and great kindnesses . . . of all the rescuing heroes a girl might imagine, surely he was the most unlikely.
The singing sound of the sleeth grew louder again, and fearfully she looked upward. But it did not appear.
Even the Reefer would be welcome now, she thought—that gaunt yellow-bearded giant who was Cliff Hawk’s ally in his folly. She was afraid of the Reefer. He seemed like a throwback to a monstrous age of rage and rapine, a Vandal plundering a peaceful town, a Mau-Mau massacring sleeping children. He had always been polite enough to her, of course, but there was something about him that threatened devastation. Not that any additional threats were necessary. What Cliff was doing was bad enough in itself! Creating sentient life at the atomic level—trying to breed living, thinking tissue of the same stuff that was at the core of the sapient stars themselves. And worst of all, trying to duplicate in the laboratory the kind of life that made some stars rogues, pitted them against their fellows in a giant struggle of hurled energies and destroying bolts of matter.
