Protector

by Larry Niven

  Pictures, for instance. Phssthpok understood photographs, and he understood graphs. But the three works of art on the back wall were neither. They were charcoal sketches. One was of the head of a native like Phssthpok’s captive, but with a longer crest of hair and with weird pigmentation around eyes and mouth; the others must have been younger editions of the same species. Only heads and shoulders were shown. What was their purpose?

  Under other circumstances the design on Brennan’s spacesuit might have provided a clue.

  Phssthpok had noticed that design and understood instantly. For members of a cooperative, space-going species, it would be useful to code one’s suit in bright colors. Others would recognize the code at great distances. The native’s design seemed overcomplex, but not enough so to rouse Phssthpok’s curiosity.

  For Phssthpok could never understand the human concepts of art and luxury. Luxury? A Pak breeder might have appreciated luxury, but was too stupid to make it for himself. A protector had no motivation. A protector’s desires were all connected to the need to protect his blood line. As for art, there had been maps and drawings among the Pak since before Pak history. But they were for war.

  You didn’t recognize your loved ones by sight anyway. They smelled right.

  Reproduce the smell of a loved one? Phssthpok might have been led to think of that, had the painting on Brennan’s back been anything else. It would have been a brilliant idea! A method of keeping a protector alive and functioning long after his line was dead. If only Phssthpok had been led to understand representational art…

  But what could he make of Brennan’s suit?

  Its chest was a copy in fluorescent dye of Salvador Dali’s “Madonna of Port Lligat”. There were mountains floating above a soft blue sea; there were objects which refused to touch each other; there was a supernally beautiful woman and child, with windows in them. There was nothing for Phssthpok.

  One thing he understood very quickly.

  It was the solar storm warning in the instrument panel. When Phssthpok opened it and ascertained its purpose, he found it surprisingly small. Curious, he investigated further. The thing was made with magnetic monopoles.

  In one kangaroo leap Phssthpok was crossing interplanetary space. He fired half the gas charge in his pistol, then composed himself to wait out the fifteen minutes of fall.

  He’d jumped toward the cargo section. It would be necessary to tie the native down against acceleration. Already a cursory inspection of the native’s ship had cut his search area in half. The native itself might carry knowledge even more valuable. Even so, Phssthpok bitterly regretted the need to protect the native; for the time involved might mean life or death.

  The natives used monopoles. The natives must have a means of detecting them. Phssthpok had captured a native—a hostile act. And Phssthpok’s ramscoop-drive section held a bigger mass of south poles than this solar system!

  Probably they were after him now.

  They couldn’t catch him in any reasonable time. Their drives would be a touch more powerful, since their gravity was about 1.09. But they wouldn’t have ramscoops. Before their bigger drives could make a difference they’d be out of fuel.

  Provided he started in time.

  He braked to meet the cargo section, used his softener and ducked through the twing hull. He reached for a handhold without looking, knowing where it would be, his eyes searching for the native.

  He missed the handhold. He floated across the empty space while his muscles turned to jelly and melted.

  The native had broken through the net and was burrowing among the roots. His belly had become a hard, distended bulge. There was no sentience in his eyes.

  And all the rules were changed.

  The robot was a four-foot, upright cylinder floating placidly in one corner of the Struldbrugs’ Club reading room. Its muted two-tone brown blended with the walls, making it almost invisible. Externally the robot was motionless. In its flared base fans whirred silently, holding it two inches off the floor, and inside the featureless dome that was its head, scanners revolved endlessly, watching every comer of the room.

  Without taking his eyes off the reading screen, Lucas Garner reached for his glass. He found it with careful fingertips, picked it up and tried to drink. It was empty. He held it aloft, wiggled it and, still without looking up, said, “Irish coffee.”

  The robot was at his elbow. It made no move to take the double-walled glass. Instead, it chimed softly. Gamer looked up at last, scowling. A line of lighted print flowed across the robot’s chest.

  “Terribly sorry, Mr. Garner. You have exceeded your maximum daily alcohol content.”

  “Cancel, then,” said Luke. “Go on, beat it.”

  The robot scooted for its corner. Luke sighed—it was partly his own fault—and went back to reading. The tape was a new medical tome on “The Aging Process in Man.”

  Last year he had voted with the rest to let the Club autodoc monitor the Club serving robots. He couldn’t regret it. Not a single Struldbrug was less than one hundred and fifty-four years of age, by Club law, and the age requirement went up one year for every two that passed. They needed the best and most rigid of medical protection.

  Luke was a prime example. He was approaching, with little enthusiasm, his one hundred and eighty-fifth birthday. He had used a travel chair constantly for twenty years. Luke was a paraplegic, not because of any accident to his spine, but because his spinal nerves were dying of old age. Central nervous tissue never replaces itself, never. The disproportion between his thin unused legs and his massive shoulders and arms and huge hands made him look a little apelike. Luke was aware of this and rather enjoyed it.

  His attention was wholly on the tape he was speedreading when he was disturbed again. A barely audible murmur of voices filled the reading room with a formless, swelling whisper. Regretfully Luke turned to look.

  Someone was walking in his direction, using a purposeful stride which could not have been matched by any Struldbrug. The man had the long, narrow frame of one who has spent some years on a stretch rack. His arms and the skin below his larynx were negro dark; but his hands and his heavily lined face were the black of a starless night, a true space black. His hair was a cockatoo’s crest, an inch-wide strip of snow-white rug from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck.

  A Belter had invaded the Struldbrugs’ Club. No wonder they whispered!

  He stopped before Luke’s chair. “Lucas Garner?” His voice and manner were grave and formal.

  “Right,” said Luke.

  The man lowered his voice. “I’m Nickolas Sohl, First Speaker for the Belt Political Section. Is there someplace we can talk?”

  “Follow me,” said Luke. He touched controls in the arm of his chair, and the chair rose on a ground-effect air cushion and moved across the room.

  “You really caused an uproar in there.”

  “Oh? Why?” The First Speaker sprawled limp and boneless in a masseur chair, letting the tiny motors knead him into new shapes. His voice was still quick and crisp with the well known Belter accent.

  Luke couldn’t decide whether he was joking. “Why? For one thing, you’re nowhere near admission age.”

  “The guard didn’t say anything. He just sort of stared with his jaw hanging.”

  “I can imagine.”

  “You know why I’m on Earth?”

  “I heard. There’s an alien in the system.”

  “It was supposed to be secret.”

  “I used to be an ARM—a member of the UN Technological Police. They didn’t retire me until two years ago. I’ve still got contacts.”

  “That’s what I heard.” Nick opened his eyes. “Excuse me if I’m being rude. I can stand your silly gravity lying in a ship’s couch, but I don’t like walking through it.”

  “Relax then.”

  “Thanks. Garner, nobody at the UN seems to realize how urgent this is. There’s an alien in the system. He’s performed a hostile act, kidnapped a Belter. He’s
abandoned his interstellar drive, and we can both guess what that means.”

  “He intends to stay. Tell me about that, will you?”

  “Simple enough. You know the Outsider ship came in three easy-to-assemble parts?”

  “I found out that much.”

  “The trailing section must have been a re-entry capsule. We should have guessed there’d be one. About two and a half hours after Brennan made contact with the Outsider, that section suddenly disappeared.”

  “Teleport?”

  “No, we’ve got one film panel that shows a blurred streak. The acceleration was huge.”

  “I see. Why come to us?”

  “Huh? Garner, this is humanity’s business.”

  “Let’s not play games, Nick. The Outsider was humanity’s business the second you spotted him. You didn’t come to us until he pulled his disappearing act. Why not? Because you thought the aliens would have a better opinion if they met Belters first?”

  “No comment.”

  “Okay. Why tell us now? If the Belt scopes can’t find him, nobody can.”

  Nick turned off his massage chair and sat up to study the old man. Garner’s face was the face of Time, a loose mask that seemed to cover ancient evil. Only the eyes and teeth seemed young; and teeth were new, white and sharp and incongruous.

  But the old man talked like a Belter. He talked in straight lines; he didn’t waste words, and he didn’t play games. He was the sharpest flatlander Nick had met yet.

  “Right,” said Nick. “That’s the trouble. We’ve found him.”

  VI

  All the rules were changed.

  Phssthpok grabbed for a handhold and pushed down to Brennan. Brennan was limp now, his eyes half closed with the whites showing under the lids, his hand still clutching half of a root. Phssthpok set him rotating to make an examination.

  All right.

  Phssthpok climbed through the hull and made his way back to the large end of the egg. There he crawled back inside, emerging in a cubicle just big enough to hold him.

  He needed a place to hide.

  If he must stay in this system, he would have to abandon the rest of the ship. It would be like hiding all his children in the same cave, but there was no help for that.

  It could have been worse. Though the instruments in the cargo hold were designed only to drop that section from orbit around some planet, the gravity polarizer would take him anywhere he wanted to go within GO Target #1’s gravity well. Except that he would have to do everything right the first time. Except that he could only land once. As a ship’s drive, the gravity polarizer had many of the virtues and faults of a paraglider. He could aim it anywhere he wanted to go, even after he’d killed his velocity…provided that he wanted to go down. The polarizer would not lift him against gravity.

  Compared to the fusion drive controls, the controls around him were fiercely complicated. Phssthpok began twisting dials and pushing buttons. The “plastic” line at the big end of the egg separated in a puff of flame. The twing around him became transparent…and slightly porous; in a century it would have lost a dangerous amount of air. Phssthpok’s manlike eyes took on a glassy look. The next moves would take intense concentration. He hadn’t dared tie the native down or otherwise restrict him. To avoid crushing him, he would have to keep the internal and external gravities exactly balanced. The hull, which was the working part of the polarizer, might heat too much and melt at these velocities. Phssthpok’s velocity indicator was good only for gross measurements.

  In what was now the rear screen, Phssthpok could see the rest of his ship. He twisted two dials the barest fraction, and it vanished.

  Where to now?

  He’d need weeks to hide. He couldn’t hope to hide on GO Target #1 - 3, considering their technology.

  But he could only land once. Where he came down, he’d have to stay. And space was too open to hide in.

  Phssthpok began to search the sky for planets. His eyes were good, and planets were big and dim, easy to spot. That one was GO Target #1 - 3. That one was a gas giant, with a ring. Hide in the rings? But that too was a one-way trip with the gravity polarizer.

  That one. He’d studied it closely when he had a telescope. That was his hiding place.

  Phssthpok gave vent to an E-flat whistle. He had no choice; he had had no real choice in quite some time. That planet was his target. When the time came to leave he’d have to hope the native could signal his kind.

  “You’ve found him?”

  “Sort of. He went through a smuggler trap near the end of his trip. We were looking for a bird who has the habit of coasting through populated regions with his drive off. The details aren’t important. A heat sensor found the Outsider, and a camera caught a section of his course and stayed on him long enough to give us velocity, position, acceleration. Acceleration was huge, tens of gees. It’s near certain he was on his way to Mars.”

  “Mars?”

  “Mars, or a Mars orbit, or the moons. If it was an orbit we’d have found him by now. Ditto for the moons; they both have scope stations.”

  Luke began to laugh. Nick closed his eyes with a pained expression. As the laughter began to rise, he sat up and stared in amazement.

  Luke’s laughter held more concentrated evil than Nick would have imagined possible. Hardened criminals had gone straight after hearing Lucas Garner laugh.

  Mars was the junkheap of the system. In truth there were few useful planets in the solar system; Earth and Mercury’s dawn belt and Jupiter’s atmosphere just filled the list. But Mars had proved the bitterest disappointment. A nearly airless desert, covered with craters and with seas of ultrafine dust, the atmosphere poisoned by nitric oxide. Somewhere near the pole was an abandoned base, very old, the remains of Man’s third and last trip to the rusty planet. Nobody wanted Mars.

  When the Free Belt Charter was signed, after the Belt had proven by embargo that Earth needed the Belt more than the Belt needed Earth, the UN had been allowed to keep Earth, the Moon, Titan, rights in Saturn’s rings, mining and exploratory rights on Mercury, and Mars.

  Mars was just a token. Mars hadn’t counted until now.

  “You see the problem,” said Nick. He’d turned the massage unit on again. Little muscles all over his body were giving up under Earth’s unaccustomed strain, stridently proclaiming their existence for the first time in Nick’s life.

  “Sure. Considering the way the Belt is constantly telling us to stay off their property, you can’t blame the UN for trying to get a little of their own back. We must have a couple of hundred complaints on file.”

  “You exaggerate. Since the Free Belt Charter was signed, we’ve registered some sixty violations, most of which were allowed and paid for by the UN.”

  “What is it you want the UN to do that they aren’t doing?”

  “We want access to Earth’s records on the study of Mars. The Belt has never been interested in Mars. We want permission to search the deserts for the Outsider. We want permission to land.”

  “How far have you gotten?”

  “There are only two things they can agree on. We can search all we want to—from space. For letting us look at their silly records they want to charge us a flat million marks!”

  “Pay it.”

  “It’s robbery!”

  “A Belter says that? Why don’t you have records on Mars?”

  “I told you, we were never interested. What for? Mars is a useless planet.”

  “How about abstract knowledge?”

  “Another word for useless.”

  “Then why aren’t you about to pay a million marks for useless knowledge?”

  Slowly Nick matched his grin. “Just stupid, I guess. How the blazes did Earth know they’d need to know about Mars?”

  “They didn’t. That’s the secret of abstract knowledge. You get in the habit of finding out everything you can about everything. Most of it gets used sooner or later.”

  “I’ll authorize payment of a million marks to the
UN Grand Library. Now how do we land?” Nick turned off the massage chair.

  “You picked the right word. We. Can you fly a two man ship?”

  “Blindfolded.”

  “You’ve flipped.”

  “Blindfolded.”

  “You’re hired as my pilot at a dollar a year. I can get a ship ready in six hours.”

  “Not I. Look, Nick. Every so-called diplomat in the UN knows how important it is to find the Outsider. But they can’t get moving. It’s not because they’re getting their own back with the Belt. That’s only part of it. What counts is that the UN is a world government. It’s unwieldy by its very nature, having to rule the lives of eighteen billion people. Worse than that, the UN is made up of individual nations. The nations aren’t powerful nowadays. Someday not too soon, even their names will be forgotten. But today national prestige can get in the way of the total good. You’ll be weeks getting them to agree.

  “Whereas there’s no law against a UN citizen going anywhere he wants to, or hiring anyone he wants to. A number of our round-the-Moon pilots are Belters.”

  Nick shook his head as if to clear it. “Garner, I don’t get it. You can’t think we can find the Outsider in a two-man ship. Even I know about Martian dust. He’s hidden under there, and there’s no way to get at him without a complete radar net.”

  “Right. But when the UN realizes that you’ve started searching Mars, what do you think they’ll do? You being hired as a pilot is a technicality, obvious to anyone. Suppose we find the Outsider? The Belt would get the credit.”

  Nick closed his eyes and tried to think. He wasn’t used to such circular logic. But it looked like Gamer was right. If they thought he was going to Mars, with or without a flatlander for company, they’d send a fleet to start searching first.

  “So I need a flatlander to hire me as a pilot. Fine. But why you?”

  “Because I can get a ship. I’ve got contacts.”

  “You’ve got to be nuts. How old are you?”

  “Too old to waste my few remaining years in the Struldbrugs’ Club. Too young to be retired. Shake hands, Nick.”