No One Goes There Now, page 5
The boy looked obdurate. “You haven’t answered what I asked,” he protested. “Will you? Ever?”
Pierce leaned on the tabletop, searching his son’s pouting face. “I promise. After we land, we’ll go into the matter as far as you like.”
Leighton’s demeanor informed him he was to be reminded.
As they left the saloon, the boy glanced backward over his shoulder. He tugged his sire to a halt. “Pierce, look!”
The blanked disc of the ruby star was now accompanied by two fairy crescents, swimming in the tank’s false perspective.
“Dan,” breathed Director Grey.
* * *
“There, beyond the long meadow on the left!”
Still Hushed with landing excitement, Pierce followed the line of Holt Morrow’s hairy arm to a cluster of domes on the fringe of a gentle savanna.
“That’s where we first landed,” informed Holt. “It’s as pretty a spot as there is on this lump.”
“Hasn’t the importance of a good first impression for colonists been overstressed?” asked Pierce.
“Yeah,” admitted Holt, “if you ask me it has. But the head-thumpers run this part of the show. Ever tried arguing with one of them?”
Grey thought back over the three periods since his investiture. “From what I’ve seen so far, it would be difficult to gather anything but a good first impression.”
“Yeah; ’tis a pretty lump. Hey, I do believe the Navy’s arrived,” observed Holt, busy maneuvering.
Beyond the upturned faces waiting as the aircar pitched and settled in a roped-off section of meadow, Pierce could see the ogive prow of a black shuttle. “What would a military vessel be doing way out here?” he wondered.
“Search me,” shrugged Holt, locking the controlboard.
A smiling Roberts led the group of officials who met them before the central dome. “Pierce, you will enjoy this. We’ve placed audiovisual equipment out in the assembly area. Hearing their first reactions should be interesting. And I thought you might want to say a few words later.”
“By all means.” Grey nodded to Ladeen and the others. Standing apart was a portly aristocrat whom he took to be from the military ship. “Have we met, ser?”
Roberts was apologetic. “Forgive me. Commander Garrigues, allow me to present Pierce Grey, planetary Director.” Garrigues touched his forehead, his ample chest, the pommel of his ceremonial rapier, and made a rather clumsy deferential bow. “My mind, my heart, my sword,” he said formally. “The honor is entirely mine, ser Director.”
‘We’re most happy to have you, Commander,” said Grey. “But what brings a naval vessel to an unintegrated system?” Garrigues adjusted his cape self-importantly. “The Planners decided, er, that this would be an expedient venture for our shakedown cruise, ser Director. Relentless was commissioned but a short time ago, you see. She is the last word, ser Director.
“In a nutshell, it was decided that she should provide a security force for this newly won domain. It is my honor to offer members of my bully squad as Public Assassins until suitable colonials can be recruited.”
“I see,” Pierce said slowly. “That was thoughtful. However, Dan is only entering the earliest phase of stage two immigration. We can hardly expect trouble from one shipload of voluntary colonials, especially with large numbers of explorers electing to remain.”
“To be sure, ser Director. But competent Public Assassins do not grow on every tree and bush. It is vital to have the proper sort of tough-minded Assassins.”
Grey nodded, wondering just what it was the commander was trying to say.
Behind him necks craned as Holt Morrow announced, “Here’s the first shuttle!”
* * *
Tanis and Polct stood concealed in a bower of green, watching the shuttles descend, watching the parti-colored tide of humanity ebb across the meadow, watching with every perceptive sense attuned to the waves of human thought washing over them.
They are indeed many, O Tanis, marveled Polct. They are as blades of grass, or leaves of the trees. May one ask if all Humans are coming here?
Not all, young Polct, though they seem numberless indeed. One senses a basic flaw within the species: the inability to restrict reproduction at will. Nor is it a true fault. Such inability is far from uncommon among younger races. An extremely broad base for genetic selection is a natural concomitant of the lower evolutionary scale.
Understanding is, grudged Polct, yet such numbers are a cause for wonderment. 1 will mull it and seek fuller understanding.
By all means. Tanis observed the immigrant arrivals silently for a moment. Do you grasp the wide variance of mental frequency among them? Perhaps it is because emotion and logic are so intermixed.
I do sense it, O Tanis. When one attunes fully, or at least so supposes, the wavelength is immediately filled with overtones of emotion and physical sensation. It is confusing.
Aye, though we were used to the others, the first who came. Their thinking is much more orderly. In fact, among them are several minds of strength.
I do so believe, agreed Polct. Mayhap it would be opportune to commence sampling with these newly arrived, in order to truly analyze their mental processes.
Not yet, thought Tanis. A nodal point has not yet been reached, nor is it our decision. Sampling is within the province of Higher Ones. They will act when sampling becomes provident.
The shuttles descended in roaring flame. Polct watched entranced as the throng multiplied before him to monumental proportions.
A wonderment! he thought once again.
* * *
Distant voices filtered to Morrow and the others as the immigrant tide ebbed slowly into the broad meadow.
“—green; it’s all green!”
“—not at all what I expected—”
“Whoosh! Look at those trees!”
“—and we can have children—”
Naturally, there were others, the inevitable few.
“Oh, just you look at that swamp!”
“—so tired. Ebbie, I feel so heavy; I can’t breathe—” Morrow snickered good-naturedly as the shuttles disgorged their droves, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands: heavyset, barrel-chested men; pale, cheated, barren women—barren in prime maturity; dark-skinned people, light-skinned people, and those in between; people no longer able to endure the cheek-by-jowl crowding, the rigidly enforced birth-controls, the pitiful existence offered by a basic citizen’s allowance and narrowly channeled lives.
Holt could pick out individuals with crooked noses and bitter mouths, those who were sleek and well-groomed, gowned in the latest seminude fashions, those who were unloved and unlovely, who were sloppy and who did not care. There were almost no children among them. These solar, largely unmutated colonials—voluntary, if you had the raw guts to use that term— were pioneers. Later, Holt reflected, after Dan absorbed these and the other voluntaries who would follow them, the Planners would send another sort of colonists entirely. Then there would be many children—infants and toddlers, unwanted babies accompanying unwanted parents into the depths of an unheeding universe. And they would have rather seedy companions, these parental criminals: murderers, cowards, psychosexual degenerates, and a sprinkling of cool, touchy aristocrats who had made a fatal mistake and found it, to their never ending surprise and dismay, to be irreversibly damning!
Yes, he thought grimly; patrician lice would bring their swords, their haughty air of challenge with them into this green paradise, together with their insufferable formality, their quadruply damned Convention!
Morrow straightened, suddenly attentive. “Look!” he said urgently. “Look there, under the trees!”
Roberts searched until he distinguished a pair of wraithlike, matchstick figures blending with the foliage in near-perfect natural concealment. “Yes, I see them.”
“Spooky blasted Danii!” Morrow stroked his chin with a calloused thumb. “I’d give a goodly sum to know what they think of all this,” he said rhetorically.
Roberts’ tone was misgiving. “We may not know that for some time.” He faced the Director. ‘Whenever you are ready, Pierce.”
Grey preceded them into the nearer dome. As a technician prepared the communicator, Holt asked, “What’s the trouble, Pierce?”
“I know I’m acting silly,” the Director choked, his eyes misted, “but it’s such a beautiful place. It will grow with fantastic speed. We will reshape the deserts, the continents themselves…I feel very humble, shouldering such responsibility.”
“We all do,” Roberts told him. “They’re newcomers now, bewildered and afraid. But they will soon become indigenes, far too busy to reminisce over the disappointments and failures of other times and places. On Dan, we have every chance to help in the creation of something truly worthwhile.”
“I’ll second that!” chimed Holt. “And we’re spreading. The fourth planet, Carthia, already sports a mite of breathable atmosphere.”
Then a technician threw Pierce his cue. Someone announced the Director of Dan; Pierce faced the pickup with a solemn smile. ‘Welcome, my friends,” he began. “Dan bids you welcome…
* * *
Late one shimmering afternoon Holt Morrow stopped off at the Directoral Seat, hoping Pierce could find time for a chat.
He was stewing about something as the receptionist announced him. He entered the Director’s chamber, whistling distractedly through his teeth, failing to notice Grey’s agitation, the short, angry line of his mouth, nor the manner in which Roberts stood, hands clasped behind his narrow back, contemplating Sharax, the rising capital.
“Stupidity!” greeted Holt, throwing his kepi on the Director’s cluttered desk and plopping into a lounge. “Some peabrained ground-pounder just asked me where he could buy hydroponic equipment. Imagine! With umpteen million square kilos of the most arable land these old eyes have ever seen, the jerkjolly wants to grow crops indoors1.”
Holt looked inquiringly from Roberts to Grey. “What’s eating you two?”
The Director plucked a communications flimsy from his desk top and let it settle through the air into Morrow’s lap. Puzzled, Holt noted the Imperial black facsimile medallion and its omnipresent slogan. He read it half through before realizing he’d missed something, and returned to the first paragraph.
“Stage three!” His astonished yelp rang in the large chamber. He looked from one to the other expectantly. “Sequestrees —now? How’n the name of Eternal Rightness do they expect us to handle third-stage misfits now?”
Pierce came around the desk purposefully. “Think what it means, Holt. Solar trash! We’ll get every fop, every young buck who lives by his sword, every freewheeling work-dodger who’s stepped on the toes of Convention for the past two cycles!” The Director’s eyes blazed; his lips were bloodless.
Morrow knew. It had been some time since he’d last set foot on any so-called civilized planet—especially one of the sunward worlds—but his memory was undimmed. In younger times he’d enjoyed the atmosphere: brawling degenerates who invoked Code Duello as a matter of casual amusement. It had been keen pleasure to wear a sword in his youth.
But Holt also knew what unalloyed third-stage vermin could do to a raw, unintegrated planet like Dan. He’d seen the rather awful results once, long ago.
“So that’s why Garrigues and his trained apes showed up out here,” he muttered. “They appear to be cleaning house Earthside. Have you filed a protest?”
“Immediately,” snapped Grey. “It was ignored; absolutely and completely ignored.”
“Hm-m-m.” Holt caught Roberts’ eye. “Lovelock?”
“Beyond any doubt,” said the commander without hesitation. “The Star Council is more and more pressed for viable planetary area each period. It is a simple matter to justify such an ill-considered action under those circumstances. Weldon probably instigated it. It has his stamp.
“I would guess that he inveighed upon the Planners to adopt ruthless measures to alleviate the backlog of sequestrees awaiting shipment. And they went along with his suggestion. They usually do in the end.”
“One thing you can count on,” assured Morrow, “is a goodly percentage of sword-happy aristocrats if our batch comes from anywhere around Sol. They’ll be twenty times tougher to handle than ordinary mamas and papas and weirdos.”
“I realize that,” acknowledged Grey with a pained expression. “I plan to have a long session with Garrigues about it. We’ll want large numbers of Public Assassins in the streets when they land. And I want to be certain the commander will wake cryothermic Imperial Marines quickly enough to get them on the ground and do us some good if things show signs of getting out of hand.”
“And how!” endorsed Holt. “It could get real sticky, Pierce. Now you can be glad all us explorer types decided to hang around. Teach ’em a thing or three, won’t we, Roberts?”
The commander smiled grimly. “It will definitely help, of course, but—”
“Help! It’ll do a damned sight more than help!” cried the offended Morrow. “Just let a few of those long-nosed, pussyfooting, highborn buckoes tangle with Creighton, Albans—or me! They’ll wish they’d stayed home and kept their noses clean!”
Roberts gave his old friend a sober look. “Aren’t you a bit long in the tooth for that sort of thing?”
“Long in the—” Holt swelled up like a balloon. ‘What, exactly, do you mean by that? I can hold my own when the going gets bumpy, Roberts! Don’t fret about that! I’m going to clean my old rapier tonight and strap it on in the morning.”
“All right, you two,” conciliated the worried Director. “Very soon now, we’ll have enough strife on Dan to satisfy everyone.
“Let’s explore every possible avenue we can, first. No third-stage vermin are with us yet. Let’s see if we can devise some scheme to circumvent the Planners, or stall them. It would probably take an emergency of some sort on Dan to dissuade them. Can either of you imagine anything that might serve?”
Morrow sulked while the slender Roberts put his mind to work. “I wouldn’t become too hopeful on that score,” Roberts said after a time. “I’m afraid we would have to tell some very unlikely tale to even get a hearing. The Planners can be hard-headed and unheeding when they so desire.
“As I said before, it is quite easy to justify dumping trash anywhere out of sight. Especially when you are seventy-eight light-years distant and totally lack conscience…
Roberts, in disgust, returned his attention to the view.
Holt coughed discreetly, fidgeted for a moment, then placed his stubbled chin in the palm of one hairy hand and began to whistle tunelessly through his teeth.
It proved to be all they could do about it.
IV
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
From the legendary Ante Bellum
dramatist Shakespeare’s Cymbeline.
a.d. 1610 (old style).
At midevening the patrician Arena situated on the Palace reservation itself, already crowded with dining aristocrats, swiftly became even more so as a stream of orbiting aircars dropped down one by one to deposit haughty, black-caped swordsmen and their provocative ladies atop the roofpark. They strolled the balmy night through quiet gardens, crossed a vaulted gallery lined with paintings, tapestries and statuary—each piece set in splendid isolation suggestive of some long-departed, less-crowded epoch—passed along a mirrored hall subtly lighted to enhance the glamour of any costume, and entered the vast foyer paneled in rare natural wood from Earth’s extinct forests.
The grand stairway formed an extravagant backdrop against which every entrance was made—low-risered travertine, twenty meters wide at the base—to be met by the impeccable maitre d’ who tyrannized squads of liveried page boys.
Elan Grey, irked because his favorite airborne dining cupola had been taken for the evening, sat at Camon’s table on the declassé second tier, boredly drinking champagne, trying not to listen to Elyse’s recital of a tidbit of Palace scandal.
“—nouveau riche,” indicted Elyse. “It always shows. Not that she’s a social climber compared to that dreadful Derrenfurth creature, or anything like the stereo actress who made such a bisexual fool of herself at Eunice’s last party— Camon, you’re not listening.”
“I say, Elan,” hissed Camon, “there she is again! The golden goddess!”
Elan put down his glass and turned. Alone on the severe expanse of stair, a vision descending as indeed a goddess might into the mundane tinkle of cutlery and the murmur of subdued conversation, was a very lovely girl. Her skin was of satiny gold-bronze; her bare-bosomed gown of poured gold. Even the irises of her gold-lashed eyes were tinted a delicate golden shade.
“By the sacred Convention!” breathed Elan. “Who is she?”
“I haven’t the foggiest,” insisted Camon. “No one knows her. She was here several weeks ago. In fact, I think I mentioned her to you on vidicom that night you didn’t bother to join us.”
“She certainly must want attention,” smarted Elyse.
“She’ll get it,” guaranteed Camon.
Elan ignored manners and stared, half-hypnotized. One had to take care in his judgment these times. Transvestitism was commonplace, since homosexuality was encouraged—another of the endless population curbs. But no berdache ever moved like that, or exuded femininity in such a pulse-speeding way.
“A golden goddess,” Grey mused, “and alone by some outrageous freak of circumstance. Excuse me.”
He rose before cold reason overwhelmed the sudden, impulsive notion, and wended his way between tables, head high, breathing quickened, the black tunic clutching him tightly across the chest.
He paused just beneath her and bowed lithely, but not too low. “Good evening, milady. How nice to see you again,” he invented. “Will you honor us by joining my friends and me?”
