by C. L. Moore
"I've never been topside myself," Sam told him. "What's it like?"
"You've seen it in the projectors, relayed from planes above the jungles. So have most people. And that's the fallacy—seeing it from above. It looks pretty. I'd like to take a projector down into the mud and look up at all that stuff towering over and reaching down, and the mud-wolves erupting underfoot and the poison-vines lashing out. If I did, my whole crusade would fall flat and there'd be an end of the colonizing." He shrugged.
"I've made a start, you know, in the old fort," he said. "The Doonemen had it once. Now the jungle's got it back. The old walls and barriers are deactivated and useless. All that great technology is dead now. Whole rooms are solid blocks of vegetation, alive with vermin and snakes and poison plants. We're cleaning that out, but keeping it clean—well, that's going to take more than these people have got. Why, the lichens alone will eat through wood and glass and steel and flesh! And we don't know enough about the jungle. Here on Venus the ecology has no terrestrial parallel. And it won't be enough simply to hold the fort. It's got to be self-supporting."
"That'll take money and backing," Sam reminded him. "The Families are dead against it—now."
"I know. I think they're wrong. So does the Logician."
"Are you working alone on this?"
Hale nodded. "So far I am."
"Why? A good promotion man could get you all the backing you need."
"No good promotion man would. It'd be a swindle. I believe in this, Reed. With me it is a crusade. I wouldn't trust a man who'd be willing to tackle it, knowing the truth."
A beautiful idea was beginning to take voluptuous shape in Sam's mind. He said, "Would you trust me?"
"Why should I?"
Sam thought back rapidly over how much of the truth he had already told Hale. Not too much. It was safe to go ahead. "Because I've already risked my neck to warn you," he said. "If I'd gone ahead with the job Harker gave me, I'd be collecting a small fortune right now. I didn't. I haven't told you why yet. I guess I don't need to. I feel the way you do about colonizing. I could make some money out of promoting it—I won't deny that. But nothing like the money I could make killing you."
"I've just told you the thing can't succeed," Hale pointed out. But there was a light in his eyes and more eagerness in his manner than Sam had yet seen.
"Hooked!" Sam thought. Aloud, he said, "Maybe not. All it needs is plenty of backing—and I mean plenty! I think I can provide that. And we've got to give the crusaders a substitute goal for the real one, something they think they can collect on in their lifetime. Something they can collect on. No cheating. Shall I try?"
Hale pinched his chin thoughtfully. At last he said, "Come with me to the Logician."
Sam hedged. He was afraid of the Logician. His own motives were not the kind that could stand the light of clear reason. But Hale, essentially romanticist as he was, had several centuries of experience behind him to bolster up his apparent naiveté. They argued for over an hour.
Then Sam went with him to see the Logician.
-
A globe spoke to them, a shining white globe on an iron pedestal. It said, "I told you I can't foretell the future, Hale."
"But you know the right answers."
"The right answer for you may not be the right one for Sam Reed."
Sam moved uneasily. "Then make it two answers," he said. He thought it was a machine speaking. He had let down his guard a trifle; machines weren't human. Willy-nilly, he had given the data it required. Now he waited uneasily, knowing the hours of his deadline were slipping away while Kedre and Harker waited for news of the Companion's death.
In the silver globe shadows swam, the distorted reflection of the Logician's long, sardonic face. Robin Hale could trace the likeness but he knew that to one who didn't know the secret the shadows would be meaningless.
"The Keep people aren't pioneers," the Logician said unnecessarily. "You need recruits from the reformatories."
"We need good men," Hale said.
"Criminals are good men, most of them. They're merely displaced socially or temporally. Any antisocial individual can be thoroughly prosocial in the right environment. Malcontents and criminals will be your best men. You'll want biologists, naturalists, geologists—"
"We'd have to pay tremendous sums to get even second-rate men," Sam objected.
"No you wouldn't. You'd have to pay—yes. But you'll be surprised how many top-flight men are malcontents. The Keeps are too circumscribed. No good worker is ever happy operating at less than full capacity, and who in the Keeps has ever used more than a fraction of his ability since the undersea was conquered?"
"You think we can go ahead then?" Hale asked specifically.
"If you and Reed can get around this current danger—ask me again."
"Hale tells me," Sam put in, "that the Logician disagrees with the Families about colonization. Why won't you help us against the Families, then?"
The shadows moved in the globe; the Logician was shaking his head.
"I'm not omnipotent. The Families mean well—as they see it. They take a long view. By intrigue and influence they do sway the Council decisions, though the Council is perfectly free. But the Families sit back and decide policy, and then see that their decisions are carried out. Nominally the councils and the governors run the Keeps. Actually the Immortals run them. They've got a good deal of social consciousness, but they're ruthless, too. The laws they promote may seem harsh to the short-lived, but the grandchildren of the apparent victims may live to thank the Families for their harshness. From the Families' viewpoint common good covers a longer period of time. In this case I think they're wrong.
"The race is going downhill fast. The Families argue we can't finance but one colonizing effort. If it fails we're ruined. We'll never try again. We won't have the materials or the human drive. We've got to wait until they give the word, until they're convinced failure won't happen. I say they're wrong. I say the race is declining faster than they think. If we wait for their word, we'll have waited too long ...
"But the Families run this planet. Not the Logician. I've opposed their opinions too often in other things for them to believe me now. They figure I'm against them in everything."
To Robin Hale it was an old story. He said impatiently when the voice paused, "Can you give us a prognosis, Logician? Is there enough evidence in now to tell us whether we've got a chance to succeed?"
The Logician said nothing for a while. Then a curious sound came from the globe. It was a chuckle that grew to a laugh which startled Hale and utterly astonished Sam Reed. That a machine could laugh was inconceivable.
"Landside will be colonized," the Logician said, still chuckling. "You've got a chance—a good chance. And a better chance, my friend, if this man Reed is with you. That's all I can say, Hale. I think it's enough."
Sam froze, staring at the shadows swimming in the globe. All his preconceived ideas turned over in his head. Was the Logician after all a fraud? Was it offering them mere guesswork? And if it could be this wrong on the point of Sam's dependability, of what value was anything else it said?
"Thank you, Logician," the Free Companion was saying, and Sam turned to stare anew at Robin Hale. Why should he thank a machine, and especially as faulty a machine as this had just proved itself to be?
A deep chuckle sounded from the globe as they turned away. It rose again to laughter that followed them out of the hall, wave upon wave of full-throated laughter that had something of sympathy in it and much of irony.
The Logician was laughing from the bottom of his lungs, from the bottom of his thousand-years experience, at the future of Sam Reed.
-
" 'If we can get around this current danger—' " Sam quoted the Logician. He was sitting beside a transparent plastic table, very dusty, looking at the Free Companion across it. This was a dim secret room the Slider owned. So long as they sat here they were safe, but they couldn't stay forever. Sam had a fair idea of how ma
ny of the Families' retainers were reporting on his movements and Hale's.
"Any ideas?" Hale asked.
"You don't seem much worried. What's the matter? Don't you believe me?"
"Oh, yes. I'll admit I mightn't believe just any man who came up to me in a crowd and said he'd been hired to kill me. It's easy to say, if you're working up to a favor. But I've rather been expecting the Families to do something drastic, and—I trust the Logician. How about it—have you any ideas?"
Sam looked at him from under scowling red brows. He had begun to hate Hale for this easy acquiescence. He wanted it. He needed it. But he didn't like Hale's motive. Hale wasn't likely to intrust the success or failure of his crusade to the doubtful integrity of a promoter, which was the role Sam aspired to now. Even though the Logician—moved by flawed logic—had pronounced favorable judgment and even though Hale trusted the Logician implicitly, there was another motive.
Robin Hale was an Immortal.
The thing Sam had sensed and hated in the Waltons and Harker he sensed and hated in Hale, too. A tremendous and supreme self-confidence. He was not the slave of time; time served him. A man with centuries of experience behind him must already have encountered very nearly every combination of social circumstance he was likely to encounter. He had a pattern set for him. There would have been time enough to experiment, to think things over carefully and try out this reaction and that until the best treatment for a given set of circumstances would come automatically to mind.
It wasn't fair, Sam thought childishly. Problems that shorter-lived men never solved, the infinitely resourceful Immortals must know backward and forward. And there was another unfairness—problems the ordinary man had to meet with drastic solutions or compromise Hale could meet simply by waiting. There was always, with the Immortals, that last, surest philosophy to fall back on: This, too, will pass.
The Immortals, then, were random factors. They had extensions in time that no non-Immortal could quite understand. You had to experience that long, long life in order to know ...
Sam drew a deep breath and answered Hale's question, obliquely enough.
"The Families—I mean specifically the Waltons and Harkers—won't strike overtly. They don't want to be publicly connected with your death. They're not afraid of the masses, because the masses have never organized. There's never been any question of a revolt, for there's never been any motive for revolt. The Families are just. It's only with intangibles like this colonizing crusade that a question may come up, and—I hope—that may make it a dangerous question for them. Because for the first time the masses really are organized, in a loose sort of way—they're excited about the crusade." He squinted at Hale. "I've got an idea about how to use that, but—" Sam glanced at the dusty televisor screen in the wall above them—"I can't explain it yet."
-
"All right." Hale sounded comfortable and unexcited. It was normal enough, Sam told himself, with a suddenly quickened pulse as he realized consciously for the first time that to this man warfare—that glamorous thing of the dead past—was a familiar story. He had seen slaughter and wreaked slaughter. The threat of death must by now be so old a tale to him that he faced it with unshaken nerves. Sam hated him anew.
"Meanwhile"—he forced himself to speak calmly—"I've got to sell myself to you on the crusading idea. Shall I talk a while?"
Hale grinned and nodded.
"We've got the unique problem of fighting off converts, not recruiting them. We need key men and we need manpower. One's expendable. The other—you can protect your key men, can't you?"
"Against some dangers. Not against boredom. Not against a few things, like lichens—they can get into an air vent and eat a man alive. Some of the germs mutate under uv, instead of dying. Oh, it isn't adventure."
"So we'll need a screening process. Malcontents. Technical successes and personal failures."
"Up to a point, yes. What do you suggest?" The laconic voice filled Sam with unreasonable resentment. He had a suspicion that this man already knew most of the answers, that he was leading Sam on, like a reciting child, partly to test his knowledge, partly perhaps in the hope that Sam might have ideas to offer which Hale could twist to his own use. And yet—under the confidence, under the resourcefulness that all his experiences had bred, the man showed an unconquerable naiveté which gave Sam hope. Basically Hale was a crusader. Basically he was selfless and visionary. A million years of experience, instead of a few hundred, would never give him something Sam had been born with. Yes, this was worth a try ...
"Of course, not all the failures will do," he went on. "We've got to find the reasons why they're malcontents. You had technicians in the old days, when the wars were going on?"
Hale nodded. "Yes. But they had the traditions of the Free Companions behind them."
"We'll start a new tradition. I don't know what. Ad astra per aspera, maybe." Sam considered. "Can you get access to the psych records and personal histories of those old technicians?"
"Some of them must have been saved. I think I can. Why?"
"This will come later, but I think it's our answer. Break down the factors that made them successful. The big integrators will do that. It'll give us the prime equation. Then break down the factors that make up the current crop of technicians—malcontents preferable. x equals a successful wartime technician, plus the equivalent of the old tradition. Find out who's got x today and give him the new tradition.
"It'll take careful propaganda and semantic buildup. All we need is the right channeling of public opinion now. Catchwords, a banner, a new Peter the Hermit, maybe. The Crusades had a perfect publicity buildup. I've given you a solution for your technicians—now about the manpower and the financial backing." Sam glanced at the quiet Immortal face and looked away again. But he went on.
"We'll have to screen the volunteers for manpower, too. There are plenty of good men left in the human race. They won't all fold up at the first threat of danger. We'll set up a very rigid series of tests for every potential colonist. Phony them up if we have to. One set of answers for the public, another for us. You can't openly reject a man for potential cowardice, or the rest might not dare take the test. But we've got to know."
"So far—good," Hale said. "What about money?"
"How much have you got?"
Hale shrugged. "Pennies. I've got a foothold, cleaning out Doone Keep. But it'll take real money to keep the thing going."
"Form a company and sell stock. People will always gamble. Especially if they get dividends—and the dividends they want aren't merely money. Glamour. Excitement. The romance they've been starved for. The reason they go in for secondhand thrills."
"Will rejected volunteers buy stock?"
Sam laughed. "I've got it! Every share of stock will pay a dividend of thrills. All the excitement of volunteering with none of the danger. Every move the colony makes will be covered by televisor—with a direct beam to the receiver of every stockholder!"
-
Hale gave him a glance in which anger and admiration were mingled. Sam was aware of a little surge of gratification at having startled the man into something like approval. But Hale's next reaction spoiled it.
"No. That's cheap. And it's cheating. This is no Roman holiday for the thrill-hunters. And I've told you it's hard work, not romance. It isn't exciting, it's drudgery."
"It can be exciting," Sam assured him. "It'll have to be. You've got to make compromises. People pay for thrills. Well, thrills can be staged landside, can't they?"
Hale moved his shoulders uncomfortably. "I don't like it"
"Yes, but it could be done. Just in theory—is there anything going on landside right now that could be built up?"
After a pause, Hale said, "Well, we've been having trouble with an ambulant vine—it's thermotropic. Body heat attracts it. Refrigerating units in our jungle suits stop it cold, of course. And it's easy to draw it off by tossing thermite or something hot around. It heads for that instead of us, and gets burne
d into ash."
"What does it look like?"
Hale went into details. Sam sat back, looking pleased.
"That's the ticket. Perfectly safe, but it'll look ugly as the devil. That ought to help us screen out the unfit by scaring 'em off right at the start. We'll just have your men turn off their refrigerating units and stage a battle with the vines, while somebody stands by out of camera range with thermite ready to throw. We'll send out a message that the vines are breaking through—cover it with televisor—and that does it!"
"No," Hale said.
"The Crusades started as a publicity stunt," Sam remarked. But he didn't press the point just yet. Instead he mentioned the fact that both of them would be dead within thirty-six hours now unless something could be worked out. He had seen a flicker in the wall screen. It was time to bring up the next subject on the agenda.
"The Families could get rid of us both in ways that look perfectly innocent. A few germs, for instance. They've got us cold unless we do something drastic. My idea is to try a trick so outrageous they won't know how to meet it until it's had a chance to work."
"What do you mean?"
"The Families depend tremendously on their own prestige to maintain their power. Their real power is an intangible—longevity. But public faith in their infallibility has kept them on top. Attack that. Put them in a spot where they've got to defend us."
"But how?"
"You're a public darling. Harker gave me a forty-eight hour deadline because he was afraid you might turn up a henchman at any moment who could step into your shoes and carry on the crusade even if he got you out of the way." Sam tapped his own chest. "I'm the man. I've got to be, to save my own skin. But it offers you an out, too. We halve the danger if either of us is replacable—by the other. It wouldn't solve anything to kill either of us if the other lives."
"But how the devil do you expect to make yourself that important to the public in the few hours you've got left?" Hale was really interested now.
Sam gave him a confident grin. Then he kicked the leg of his chair. An opening widened in the hall and the Slider came in sniffling.