Collected Short Fiction, page 688
The chimp whimpered, bobbing on all four limbs as he braced himself against the rocket thrust. “They will! They’re mad, Ben James. They killed the T’Worlie. For nothing—just killed him. And they almost killed me.”
“What were you doing?”
“Nothing! Well, I—I was watching their mating ritual. But that wasn’t it—”
“You idiot,” groaned Pertin. “Look, can you climb in here with me?”
“No, Ben James, I don’t have the strength.”
“It’s either that or let them catch you.”
The chimpanzee whimpered in fear. Then abruptly, on the upsurge of the ship against its shock absorbers, sprang to the side of the cocoon. Pertin grabbed at him and pulled him inside just as the next thrust caught them. Doc Chimp weighed some two hundred pounds at Earth’s surface. The delta-V gave him a momentary weight of nearly half a ton, all concentrated on Pertin’s shoulder and chest. He grunted explosively. The chimp was caught with part of his side still across the metal lip of the cocoon, but he made no sound beyond the steady sotto-voce mumble of fear.
Pertin tried to make room behind him, in a place where the cocoon had never been designed to take a load. It tried its mechanical best to give support to the double mass. It was not adequate to the job. Pertin discovered when the next thrust came that his arm was still caught under the chimp. He helped, managed to free it on the upsurge, discovered it was not broken. He slammed down the privacy curtain, hoping the Sheliaks would not look inside if they came.
“Now,” he panted, “what did you say about Nimmie?”
“He’s dead, Ben James. They killed him. I didn’t mean any harm,” the chimp sobbed. “You know how the Sheliaks reproduce—by budding, like terrestrial plants. The young ones sprout out of the old ones and grow until they’re mature enough to be detached.”
“I know.” Pertin had only the vaguest acquaintance with Sheliaks, but everybody knew that much. They didn’t have sexes, but their conjugation provided a union that shuffled up the genes.
“Well, that didn’t look like fun to me, but I wanted to see. Nimmie told me to go away. He couldn’t—he was in one of the spare cocoons, and couldn’t move. But he said they’d be mad.” The chimp switched his position and Pertin shouted in pain as his upper thigh took part of the chimp’s weight on a rocket thrust. “Sorry, Ben James. It was disgusting, the way they did it! Any two of them can get the urge. They sort of melt down and flow together like jelly. All the body cells migrate, pair off and fuse. Finally they form again into a sort of cactus-shaped vegetable thing that buds off haploid, mobile creatures. Those are the Sheliaks we see.”
“You wanted to watch that?” asked Pertin, almost able to laugh in spite of discomfort, in spite of Nimmie, in spite of everything.
“Yes, Ben James. Just for curiosity. And then there’s my friend, Fireball. He’s the Sheliak who was here all along. He was nice, Ben James. I miss him.”
“I didn’t know you knew any Sheliaks.”
“Not well. But he was with me, helping to guard all of you. And we talked.”
“You sound as if he’s dead, too.”
“Might as well be. That union is a sort of individual suicide. It’s something you do for the race and because your glands push you that way. But it’s the end for the individual. It wipes out all conscious memory and individual personality. I guess that’s why Fireball couldn’t understand our notions of sex.
“Anyway,” he said, “it was all right while Fireball was here alone. He wasn’t lonely; or anyway, he didn’t want any other Sheliaks around. When they’re in danger, you see, they just can’t help conjugating. It’s a survival mechanism. The radiation was danger, and he knew that the only way for him to keep alive was to stay away from his own people. When the new ones came aboard he was actually afraid of them. He knew when they came close they were likely to set off a biological process they couldn’t control. And when it was over—”
The chimp swallowed. He thrust himself up on an elbow, regardless of pain, and stared into Pertin’s eyes.
“He didn’t know me, Ben James! The two new ones that were half him, they came after me. The T’Worlie saw what was happening and tried to stop them—and that’s how I got away, while they were killing him. So I ran. But where is there to run to in this ship?”
WHEN they could move again they found the T’Worlie easily enough. He was floating upside down, purplish drops of blood, perfectly round, floating beside him. The little vibrissae around his sphincter mouth, more like cat’s whiskers than anything on a proper earthly bat, were perfectly still. Nimmie was rigid. The pattern of five eyes was unmoving. The intricate pattern of blotches of color on his filmy wings was fading,.
There was no one else around. “What’ll we do with him, Ben James?” chattered the chimp.
“Throw him out into space, I guess,” Pertin said harshly. Normally the mass would Be useful in the tachyon receiver, but there were to be no more incoming tachyon transmissions.
It didn’t do to think of that. He stared at the T’Worlie. A slow incrustation of a thick gel was matting the fluffy surface of Nimmie’s chest, and where it had once protruded sharply, like a bird’s wishbone, it was crushed and concave.
Pertin felt the muscles on his face drawing taut, perhaps partly because of the intense vinegar reek. He said, “Why would the. Sheliaks break up equipment?”
The chimpanzee stared at the mess in the room. Bright green and orange transistors and microchips were scattered like jigsaw pieces in the air. “I don’t know, Ben James! None of that was that way when I ran out of here. Do you suppose they just lost their temper?”
“Sheliaks don’t lose their temper that way. They broke up instruments on purpose. What was coming in before you decided to play Peeping Tom?”
“Oh—” The chimp thought. “More reports on Object Lambda. The density was confirmed. Very low. Like a sparse cloud of interstellar gas.”
“We already knew it was Cloud-Cuckoo Land. That couldn’t have had any effect on them.”
“Something did, Ben James,” cried the chimp. “Look, we’ve got to do something. They’ll be looking for me, and—”
“Unless,” said Pertin thoughtfully, “it wasn’t the Sheliaks who did it. The robot was. up to something. And there are still a couple of Purchased People not accounted for me, and—”
“Too late!” howled the chimp. “Listen, Ben James! Somebody’s coming!”
BUT it wasn’t the Sheliaks who came in on. them—it was Angel, the silver pseudo-girl, the heavy-planet creature in human form. Her fingers were outstretched toward them, listening, as her great foil wings drove her forward.
Behind her came the Scorpian robot.
They made an eerie pair, the striking orange-eyed girl with her coif of metallic hair and steel-bright body hues and the mechanical creature shaped like a metal octopus. Its central body was a massive disk, the color of the pseudo-girl’s flesh, and its silvery tentacles made a fringe of snakes, around it. A greenish membrane that bulged above the upper surface of the disk fluttered, producing a drum-roll of sound.
Pertin’s I’mal translator obediently turned it into recognizable words: “Do not resist. We wish you to come with us.”
“Where?” he demanded.
There was no answer, at least not in words. Pertin was caught in something like a metal whip that stung a trail of fire around his waist. It was one of the robot’s tentacles. It pinned his arms and the pseudo-girl launched herself at him, her metal fist catching him full in the face. Floating as he was, the blow was robbed of some of its force, but it doubled him, flung him back against the robot’s lash, dazed with pain and sobbing for breath.
He heard a cry of anguish from Doc Chimp, but could not turn to see what was happening. The vinegary smell of the dead T’Worlie penetrated his nostrils, mixing with the tang of his own blood.
“Why?” he croaked, and tried to raise his arms to defend himself as the girl dropped toward him again. She did not answer. She was on him like a great silvery bat, metal feet kicking, shining fists flying. The lights went out. He lost touch with space and time.
Pertin was not wholly unconscious, but he was so close to it, so filled with pain and confusion, that he could hardly remember what happened next. He had a fugitive impression of great shapes whirling around him, then of being carried away while someone behind him sobbed his name, the voice diminishing slowly in the distance.
Much later he opened his eyes.
He was alone in a part of the ship he knew only sketchily. A large open cocoon hung from a wall and inside it was what looked like one of the Purchased People. Pertin’s face was swollen and his eyes were not focusing well at all—he squinted, but could not make out the features on the person in the cocoon. It appeared to be male, however, and it appeared to be in the last stages of dissolution.
It moved and looked toward him. A caricature of a smile disturbed the weeks-old beard and the dry tongue licked the lips. A cracked voice muttered something, the tone hoarse and indistinguishable.
“Who are you? What do you want?” demanded Ben James Pertin.
The figure rasped a sort of hacking cough, that perhaps was meant for a chuckle. It tried again and this time its words came clear enough—clear and familiar in a way Pertin had not expected.
“I want to talk to you, Ben,” it croaked. “We have a lot in common, you know.”
Pertin frowned, then his swollen eyes widened. He pushed himself toward the swathed figure, caught himself at the lip of the cocoon and stared down.
The eyes that looked up at him were pain-filled but familiar. He was looking into his own, battered, obviously dying face.
VIII
PERTIN remembered a time—months ago.
He had gone to the tachyon transmitter and light-heartedly enough given his blueprint to the scanners and allowed one self of him to be beamed to the Aurora. It had not seemed like an important thing to do. At that time it had not been clear to him that the Aurora was a doomed ship. At that time he had had no one to consult but himself—Zara Doy had still been only a casual acquaintance, a new girl from Earth with a pretty face. “Ben Frank,” he whispered. “Right as rain,” croaked the ghastly voice. “And I know about you. You’re Ben James Pertin and you’ve been aboard two weeks now. Not very thoughtful of you, failing to visit a dying relative.”
“But I thought you were already dead! They said—I mean, I wouldn’t have had to come, if—”
“Blaming me, Ben James? Well, why shouldn’t you? How long have I lain here blaming you—and me—and all the Ben Pertins there ever were.” A spasm of coughing racked him, but he talked right through it. “I wanted them to think I was dead. Only fair, isn’t it? They were killing me—and now I’ve killed their Project Lambda.”
“You?”
“With a lot of help. My Sirian friends were the first and best, but there have been plenty since. It was the Sirians who told me you were aboard—you gave one of them quite a start when he saw you in the instrument room. Wrecked his mission, you did.”
Coughing drowned out the voice. Ben Frank convulsively clutched at the cocoon monitor controls. A warning panel lit over the bed. He was very near death, but the cocoon was not yet defeated—it metered colored fluids into the external blood supply that was trying to replace the destroyed blood cells.
“I only have a few minutes,” Ben Frank Pertin gasped. “I don’t mind. But I’m not finished, Ben James. You have to finish for me. Destroy that probe. I don’t want it to succeed. I don’t want Sun One to get its orbiting body around Object Lambda.”
“But then we—we’ll all have died in vain!”
“Of course it’s in vain. What’s the sense of all this? A chunk of useless matter—thousands of light-years from anywhere—going nowhere. Project Lambda! Do you know how many lives it has cost? I want you to wreck it for me, Ben James, so those fools on Sun One will know better than to try this same stunt another time—”
“But it’s not a stunt,” objected Ben James Pertin. “It’s important. That object is something special, solid but like a cloud—”
“Cloud-Cuckoo Land! It’s not worth a single life. Anyway, it’s done already, Ben James. My friends are wrecking the probe right now. I only called you here because—”
He paused, coughing terribly. The face that was so much like Ben James’s own was aged with the weary agony of radiation death.
“Because,” he gasped, “I want some part of me to stay alive. If you keep the tachyon receiver you can live, Ben James. Weeks—maybe months! But once it goes there will be no more food, no more air, no more fuel. I want—”
But what he wanted to say at the last Ben James Pertin would never know. His duplicate suddenly gasped for breath, made a strangling sound and was still.
After a moment Ben James pulled the privacy screen over the face that was his own and turned to leave.
Halfway to the launch chamber he ran into the Sheliaks.
THEY were in pursuit of two beings, one of them the Purchased People woman, the other Doc Chimp. The Sheliaks looked strange and in a moment Pertin realized why. They were, smaller than they had been. Essentially they were children now, some of their mass lost when they budded. But their behavior was childish only in its reckless disregard for consequences. As far as their quarry was concerned, it was lethal.
Pertin did not pause to speculate on issues. Doc Chimp was in danger and Ben dove to the rescue.
He collided with one of the Sheliaks. It was like tackling a six-foot lump of chilled, damp dough. No bones, no cushioning fat, just a great dense mass of muscular fiber. The Sheliak automatically cupped around him and, linked, they went flying into the wall. The corridor spun around him, a nightmare of blue-green light and red-black shadow and corpse-colored beings.
“Stop!” roared Pertin. “Wait—listen to me—” But no one wanted to talk. They were all on him, thrusting, striking, crushing, using whatever offensive capacities their mobile anatomies gave them. He fought back, using skills he had never known he had. His hands were black and slippery with blood, no doubt much of it his own. Bravely the woman and Doc Chimp had turned back to fight, but it was three of them against more than a dozen Sheliaks and the issue was not in doubt.
What saved them was Angel, the silver pseudo-girl. Her carven face remote as a statue’s, she drove toward them with great sweeps of her wings. Coronas of electrostatic fire haloed her fingers and wingtips—something gun-shaped and deadly was in her hands. The Sheliaks, all at once and in unison, turned to meet her. The gun-shaped thing hissed and a white jet crackled toward them. It passed near enough to Pertin for him to feel a breath of icy death, but it did not strike him. It grazed the Sheliak who held him and at once the being stiffened and began to drift. Behind them, where the jet had struck, the wall became hidden under a broad patch of glittering frost. A cloud of white vapor billowed around it.
In the haze Pertin caught sight of Doc Chimp and the Purchased People woman, momentarily forgotten as the Sheliaks turned against the stronger foe. The woman was badly hurt. Doc Chimp was helping her, his hairy face turned fearfully toward the Sheliaks. Pertin joined them and the three of them moved inconspicuously away.
When they were two corridors away and the sounds of battle had diminished they paused and inspected their injuries. Pertin himself had only added a few bruises to a total that was already too large to worry about. The chimp was even more battered, but still operational. The woman was worse off. She was bleeding profusely from a gash on the upper arm. Her face was grotesquely puffed, both eyes were blackened and one leg was bent at an angle anatomically impossible to a whole bone. But she did not appear to feel pain.
When Pertin spoke to her, she answered in English, “They don’t consider it important. It will not prevent moving about and performing necessary functions.”
Doc Chimp was groaning and sobbing in pain. “Those Sheliaks!” he cried, feebly trying to groom his matted fur. “They’re wholly out of control, Ben James. They tried again to wreck the probe—may have done it by now if they’ve got enough power of concentration to remember what they were doing when we diverted their attention. And if Angel hasn’t killed them all.”
Pertin said with a confidence he didn’t feel, “She’ll stop them. As long as we’ve got her on our side—”
“On our side?” cried Doc Chimp. “Ben James, you don’t know what you’re saying. She’s worse than they are!”
“But she tried to rescue you.”
The Purchased woman said calmly, “That is wrong. She merely wanted to kill the Sheliaks.”
“That’s right, Ben James. She’s against all organic beings now. She’s not ionizable, you see. Radiation doesn’t bother her. The only thing that can kill her is deprivation of energy sources and that means the tachyon receiver. Once it’s gone she will die as soon as the fuel runs out.”
Pertin said slowly, “Is it the same with the Scorpian robot?”
The battered face nodded, the stub of the green plume jerking wildly.
Pertin said, “that means we have to assume all nonorganic beings will feel the same and try I’d prevent the launch. What about the other organics?”
The Purchased woman recited emotionlessly: “The T’Worlie, all dead. Boaty Bits, more than half destroyed—the remainder too few to make a collective entity intelligent enough to matter. Sirians and Core Stars races not observed in recent hours and must be presumed dead or neutralized. Sheliaks, destructive and purposeless.”
Pertin absorbed the information without shock, without reaction of any kind other than a strange impulse to laugh. “But—but whom does that leave to see that the launch occurs?”
“Nobody!” cried Doc Chimp. “Nobody at all, Ben James—except us!”
THEY reached the launch chamber ahead of the Sheliaks after all. No one else was there.
The capsule, tiny bright tachyon crystal at its heart, lay silent and unmoving, connected to the main bulk of the ship by only a canopy designed to be jettisoned. Destruction had raged all around it, but it was still intact.
