The Humanoids- The Complete Tetralogy

by Jack Williamson

  “A month ago . . .” Keth peered into his mask-like features, searching for some certainty. “They could be here now.”

  “If they aren’t . . .” Brong’s tone was sardonic, “I’m a liar.” Keth hesitated. “Bosun, I don’t know how to take you.”

  “People never do.” His sad tone sank. “I’m the ultimate oddball. A miserable misfit from the day I was born, because I’m half Leleyo. A hard fate, Crewman.”

  His yellow glove gestured as if to sweep the whole Zone away.

  “Imagine it, Crewman! Never to be understood, never accepted as a fellow being. Look at these!” He spread the gloves. “I gave these hands for the Crew. In return, was I sworn in?

  “Not by your high-minded father, Crewman. Because he always disliked me. Hated me, really. Sometimes feared me. Even now, when I’m alone in charge of the station here and spending my little savings to ship palladium back to Kai, I haven’t been admitted to his precious Crew.”

  He paused to sigh forlornly.

  “The Leleyo have been kinder.” His voice had fallen. “They’ve come, in season, to visit me here. They’ve taught me something of their science of the mind, and even shared their secrets. But still, I’m not Leleyo.”

  Fixed on Keth, his sharp little eyes seemed defiant, almost accusing.

  “I’m afraid of bloodrot, Crewman. Afraid to step outside the perimeter without golden armor and UV sterilamps around me. Afraid even to touch the people I love most, on pain of a dreadful death.”

  They were still on the windy terrace. Though Keth wore a thick, yellow winter coverall, he shrank from a dusty gust as If its chill had driven through him.

  “If you must ask why I never tell all you want to know, there’s your answer.” He gestured again toward the tantalizing strip of gray-blue haze beyond the bottom of the street. “My friends have taught me things they forbid me to reveal.”

  Keth nodded, uncertain what to say. He liked the little man, yet his sympathy and awe were mixed with a lingering skepticism. Brong’s voice was too fluently persuasive, his black stare too warily keen, his stiff brown mask too hard to read.

  “Forgive me, Crewman, if I sometimes seem a little bitter.” Brong was apologetic now. “I’m with you—with your father and the little that’s left of the Crew—against the humanoids. I’ll do whatever I can.”

  They went back to the first floor office, and Brong bowed him to the desk beneath that youthful holo of his father.

  “I want to see Admiral Vorn,” he said. “But first, I wonder what delays the humanoids. If they’ve really been there so long on the Dragon, what are they waiting for?”

  “Who knows?” Brong shrugged. “They move to their own sense of time and follow their own Prime Directive. But I’ll risk a guess that the feyo trees are rhodo sources, as Cyra Sair suspected. The humanoids fear rhodo weapons. I’d guess they’re waiting to be sure they won’t encounter some rhodo defense.”

  “I want to investigate those sources,” Keth said. “If I can get a sanicraft—”

  “Don’t!” Brong recoiled from him, startled. “Look at this, Crewman, before you speak of sanicraft.”

  He stripped off one thick glove to display his mechanical hand, its delicate joints and tapered levers precisely shaped of bright yellow metal. It slowly closed to make a golden hammer, fell to shatter a marble paperweight on the desk, snatched a flying fragment out of the air and crushed it to splinters.

  “A useful tool, but you might not be so well repaired.” He held it out for Keth to inspect. “A slight mischance at the perimeter gate. My safety suit off, I shook hands with a Leleyo friend who hadn’t been decontaminated. The inspectors saw the incident, luckily. The rot never got into my blood.”

  He peeled off the other glove.

  “Both hands gone, Crewman, just because I touched a friend. I was lucky though, knowing your wonderful mother. She designed these for me.”

  “You knew my mother?”

  “A rare and splendid woman.” His sad eyes lifted to that pale holostat. “Your father’s a hard man, Crewman. We’ve had bitter differences, but I always admired your magnificent mother.”

  “My father never talked about her.” He peered into Brong’s frozen face. “Can you tell me—”

  “A strange and tragic story, Crewman, but it will have to wait.” Brong was darting to the door. “Here’s your spacebag, and we must call the Admiral.”

  16

  Bloodrot Infection from a common Malilian pathogen (thought to be a phenotype of the rockrust microorganism), swiftly fatal to normal human beings.

  Zone Command occupied the tiny city’s highest tower. Waiting in a wide-windowed anteroom, they could see the whole Zone. The spacedeck at the tower’s foot, bristling with shuttles and launchers. Dark narrow streets twisting down toward steep bare slopes of dark stone and dirty snow. A pale blue glow beyond—from the UV screens, Brong said, along the new perimeter.

  Farther beyond, Malili! Gray-blue haze and steel-blue cloud, reaching out forever toward the yellow-green horizon. An infinite ocean of hostile enigma, deadly to him and all his race, but home for Nera Nyin.

  “I knew a girl back on Kai—” On impulse, he turned to Brong. “Her name was Nera—”

  “Nera Nyin!” Though nothing ever altered that long woeful face, Brong’s voice rang with admiration. “I helped arrange her visa. A rare beauty, Crewman. If you knew her, you were lucky.”

  “I was,” he said. “Till she disappeared from Kai.” A wild hope shook him. “Will she—will she be back here?”

  “Don’t ask me, Crewman,” Brong’s yellow-gloved hands spread wide. “They’re nomads, remember. A good many have called on me over the years, perhaps because we’re kinsmen. But only in the polar summer. With winter on us now, they’re gone till another year.”

  “I’d give anything to see her.”

  “Forget her, Crewman.” Brong’s hard brown face looked somehow sadder. “I’ve loved more than one Leleyo girl, but they never stayed long. I doubt they know how much they hurt you. Their whole frame of things is different . . .

  “Keth Kyrone!”

  His own name surprised him and alarmed him a little, though the calling voice rang warm with welcome. A tall and elegant woman came smiling out to greet him.

  “I’m Vythle Klo.” She took his hand. “We met at Vara Vorn, remember? On Chelni’s birthday.”

  “I remember.” He recalled her as cool and aloof, but he liked her cordial manner now. “You were on the Navarch’s staff.”

  “I came out with the Admiral.” Her tone seemed cheerful. “Life’s different here. I think you’ll like the Zone.”

  Wearing a blankly affable grin, Torku Vorn met them in the doorway. He had lost flesh, perhaps to the greater gravity, but even here he moved with an effortless animal ease.

  “Glad to see you, Kyrone.” He gripped Keth’s hand with a powerful paw and led him into a high-windowed office with another awesome view of the steep-sloped Zone and cloud-cloaked Malili. “For Chelni’s sake.” His red grin faded. “What’s your news about the humanoids?”

  “No news, really. My father believes they took the Fortune the way they took the Kyrone. I’ve come to beg for help. Palladium to make a rhodo weapon. Funds to pay for it. Aid for a search expedition—”

  “Forget the expedition.” Vorn cut him off. “We’re short of sanicraft, even for perimeter maintenance. And shorter of suicidal drivers.” His narrowed eyes turned ironic. “Better talk to Bosun Brong.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “Who can I trust?” Vorn stood a moment, staring at the remote greenish horizon. “If the humanoids are coming—” He swung slowly back to Keth, his heavy face foreboding. “If they really drove my brother to his death—if they’ve got Chelni now—”

  “I’m afraid they have.”

  “If you can prove it, I’ll do anything your father wants.” Emotion slowed his voice. “I’ve lived the way I liked to, Keth, doing most of what I wanted. If I can’t do
that—if they try to wrap me up in the suffocating care Brong talks about—I want to go the way Brong says my brother did.”

  “We need your help to prove anything.”

  “We can’t mount any sort of expedition.” A deep frown furrowed his heavy red face. “With winter coming in, we’ll be ice-locked. I can supply a few kilograms of palladium, but I’m afraid your larger problem is the man outside.”

  He nodded toward the anteroom where Brong was waiting. “Get to know him. Listen to his tales and watch his tricks. If he really went with my brother to the Dragon, learn how he got back. If he can see the humanoid bases there now, tell me how. If he’s lying, it won’t be the first time. If he’s honest—” The massive head shook. “Our time’s running out.”

  “He’s a puzzle to me,” Keth said. “I’d hoped you knew him better.”

  “Nobody knows him.”

  “I’ll learn what I can.”

  “Let me know what you discover.” Vorn gripped his hand to end the meeting. “Chel loves you, Keth.” His deep voice throbbed. “I think she needs you now.”

  The wind seemed colder as they walked back to the station, the greenish sky stranger above the gray granite canyons. Brong trotted beside him, speaking as glibly about the historic landmarks they passed, gesturing as easily with the yellow gloves, as if he had never known a secret.

  “You brought equipment, Crewman?” In the office, Brong picked up his spacebag. “Shall I help you set it up?”

  “Not yet.” He moved to sit at the desk. “I want to hear about my mother.”

  “A dark and dreadful story.” Brong’s small, black eyes stared at him, innocent and wide. “But if you wish to hear it, come into my room.”

  Inside the cluttered room, he beckoned at a holostat above the untidy cot where he evidently slept. A woman in an odd, gold-colored coverall.

  “A goddess, Crewman.” His sad voice sank. “I worshipped her.”

  An ache in his throat, Keth stepped closer. He bad never seen his mother’s picture. Her eyes were as brown as his own, in a vivid, ray-tanned face. She was smiling.

  “She was kind to me.” With a doleful sigh, Brong kicked aside a pair of muddy boots to make room for him to sit on the cot. “Consider that, Crewman. Do you see what it means? Kind to a halfbreed—to a miserable wretch born to a life without love.”

  Sinking down to an empty crate that had held cans of melonade syrup, he spread his metal hands eloquently wide.

  “You must grasp the burden I was born to, Crewman. People used to fear that I was a bloodrot carrier. No basis for it, of course, because my own mother had lived to bear me. But I nearly died from some other obscure jungle infection. Crippled for years, stunted and scarred for life. People feared my touch.”

  He snuffed and wiped his narrow nose.

  “All except my native friends—and you see what happened when I touched them.” Ruefully, he raised the golden hands. “If you care to hear the whole tragic story, my own unlucky mother was a xenologist from Kai, here to study Leleyo linguistics. My father became her native informant.

  “A golden giant named Ilo Auli—I saw his picture once—happened along when she’d stalled her sanicraft outside the perimeter. He helped her out of the bog and followed her home. She got him sanitized—if not sterilized—and brought him into the Zone.

  “She got pregnant. Amusing, I imagine, to her fellow researchers, but to them it became a bitter misfortune. When her duty tour was over, she wanted to take both of us back to Kai. Permission refused. The deck inspectors said they were afraid of latent bloodrot. More afraid, I guess, of all they didn’t know about Malili.

  “With her visa running out, she had to go home alone. No longer welcome, my father slipped back across the perimeter. Left me behind—she’d told him I wouldn’t be immune. So I grew up alone.

  “I was kept around the research projects the first few years as a biological curiosity. In isolation at first, till the experts decided I wasn’t actually carrying any sort of bloodrot. Later, I stayed alive however I could. Hawking curios on the spacedeck. A cabin boy in the old Crew barracks, till that shut down. A cargo handier for the Vorns. A sanicraft machinist. That’s how I learned to drive, testing sanicraft. And how I met your parents. An eager young couple, new to the Zone. They didn’t know the score against me—not at first, anyhow—and we got to be friends. Even when they heard the tales—”

  He paused, sad eyes on the holostat.

  “Even then, they weren’t afraid. Your father was a bold man, Crewman. But your angelic mother—” His eyes filled and he blew his nose. “Forgive me if I don’t control myself, but she never let me feel I was a death-breathing freak.

  “They’d come out with Crewman Vesh to begin a new survey—the last big project the Lifecrew ever mounted. The Vorns paid for it, hoping we’d find more thorium. Your father wanted us to look for evidence of humanoid contact with the Leleyo.”

  “And you found—”

  “Nothing humanoid.” Brong’s small eyes glinted, perhaps with a veiled amusement. “Very few natives. At first I drove your mother’s craft. But then—”

  His melancholy voice faded out. For a time he sat silent, looking blankly down at his gleaming hands, lost in some moody recollection.

  “Your father’s a jealous man, Crewman.” He moved abruptly on the crate, as if spurred by old anger. “Pulled me out of your mother’s machine, I guess because she’d made these hands for me. Sent me out with Vesh on a mission he must have thought was suicidal. For poor old Vesh, it really was.

  “It was about this season of the year, because the hands had delayed us with the time they took to heal in place. Far too late for where he sent us. We ran into ugly weather—fog and flood. A howling blizzard, like you never see on Kai.” He shivered in his shaggy coverall. “We finally crashed through the ice into a frozen river. I left Vesh there, still in the craft, buried under drifting snow.”

  “How did you get back?”

  “Don’t ask me how.” Brong flinched as if the question hurt him. “Out of my head most of the way, till they woke me up in the isolation ward down at the perimeter emergency station.”

  “You’re good at escaping.”

  “I survive.” Narrowed a little, his eyes had a secret gleam. “An art I had to learn when I was very young. If you had led my bleak and bitter life, you wouldn’t wonder at it.”

  17

  Rockrust Common Malilian microorganism, the oldest and most primitive life on the planet; it metabolizes and crumbles most metals. Its bloodrot phenotype attacks the iron in hemoglobin.

  Brong shuddered again. “Winter!” he whispered. “A winter moontime when I got back inside the perimeter. The Zone frozen in. When I was able, your father set me to overhauling our two remaining sanicraft. Your mother was pregnant, and you were born that spring before the thaw.

  “She was bent on one more trip, to find a feyo tree—”

  “A braintree?” Keth bent to search the blank brown mask. “Are they really rhodo sources?”

  “Crewmate Sair kept asking that.” Brong shrugged. “I never saw one. The natives speak of feyo trees; braintree was your mother’s translation. She had seen my own mother’s xenology notes back at Crater Lake and brought copies of charts Ilo Auli had drawn. One chart showed a feyo tree growing on a river bend a few hundred kilometers east. She wanted to look for that.

  “And your father—your father let her go!” Anger crackled in his voice. “Though I begged him to stop her, and begged her to give it up, and even begged the Vorns to cut off fleet support. After all that had failed, I begged to drive her, but your father wouldn’t allow it.

  “The driver she took was an old Zone hand. Rated expert—but not expert enough. Your father put me on monitor duty down at the station, logging their reports and plotting the route they took.

  “It was an early spring suntime when they set out. Too early for the driver. He skidded on thawing ice he should have avoided and slid into a canyon. Smashed most of
their UV sterilamps and damaged the armor.

  “All contact was lost till your mother got out in her safety gear to fix the antenna. When her report got through, they were already done for. Rockrust. Your mother’d had some kind of showdown with the driver. He’d wanted to make a hopeless dash back toward the Zone. She’d made him go on.

  “A bad time for me—”

  Brong blew his nose.

  “Because I’d seen too much of the rust. Melting good steel into stinking blue muck so fast you wouldn’t believe it. They lived three days. I watched them, Crewman, to the last. Couldn’t sleep. Nor endure the hard way your father said she’d made her own bed.

  “Before they died, they did see the tree. Close enough in their scopes, but beyond a great river in flood, swollen from the thaws and choked with floating ice. The river bends there, around a solitary cone-shaped peak. The plug of an old volcano, your mother said. The tree grows on a flat shelf on the north slope, high over the river.

  “A queer tree, your mother said—though most plants here look odd to you Kai dwellers. Trunk bright green and strangely thick. Limbs tapered and paler, branching into straight twigs, red as blood. No leaves at all.

  “You’ve seen it yourself.” He squinted at Keth. “On that toy cup. Anyhow, that’s where they finally stalled. Rust crumbling everything. Drive train frozen. In her last transmission, your mother said they were getting into safety suits. Hoping—hoping to cross on the ice—”

  His voice broke, and he wiped his wet eyes.

  “Forgive me, Crewman, but I loved your mother.”

  “I wish I’d known her,” Keth whispered.

  Brong sat silent, blinking up at the holostat.

  “Did you ever meet the Leleyo?” He tried to probe again. “Outside the perimeter?”

  A group of them, that same summer.” Brong shrugged as if to shake off his grief. “On a cruise with your father—one I never asked to make. Funded by a new Zone Commander—a greedy brute named Zoor. He wanted contacts with the natives. An idle labor pool, as he saw them, immune to all the hazards of the planet and able enough to loot it for him, if he could only teach them the Kai work ethic. As for your father . . .” Brong paused, peering solemnly at Keth.