The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  Sam looked at him through the thin protection of his eye shields. It might have been yesterday they met last, Hale had changed so little. Or—no, he had changed, but in ways too subtle for the eye to catch. The voice told more of the story. He was still thin, still brown, still quiet, a man whose mind was attuned to patience because of the years behind him and the centuries ahead. He could accept any defeat as temporary, and any victory as evanescent.

  This change in him was temporary too, but no less real for that. He had not quite the quiet enthusiasm of voice and manner that Sam remembered. The thing he had been working toward with high hope when they parted was an accomplished fact now, and a finished failure. But it was so brief a thing in the total of Hale's experience—that was it, Sam realized, staring at the man.

  Robin Hale remembered the Free Companion days, the long war years, the time generations past when the last vestiges of mankind had been free to roam the seas, free to face danger. It had been matter-of-fact enough, Sam knew. A business, not a swashbuckling romance. But emotions had run high and the life the Free Companions led was nomadic, the last nomads before mankind returned wholly to the shelter of the Keeps, the stagnation of the underseas. The Keeps were the tomb, or the womb, or both, for the men of Venus, who had begun their life as wild tribesmen on Earth.

  Sam was beginning to feel the first stirrings of interest in his own kind as a long-term investment for a long-lived Immortal.

  "Are you a volunteer?" Hale asked.

  Sam came back to himself with something of a jolt. "No," he said.

  "I didn't know Sam Reed had a son." Hale was still looking at him with that quiet, speculative stare that Sam found hard to meet. Could one Immortal know another, through any disguise, simply by those mannerisms no man could wholly hide? He thought it likely. It didn't apply to himself—yet, for he was not yet immortal in the sense that these others were. He had not acquired the long-term view with which they kept life at bay.

  "I didn't know myself until just lately," he said, making his voice matter-of-fact. "My mother changed my name after the Colony scandal."

  "I see." Hale was noncommittal.

  "Do you know what happened to my father?" That was pushing things. If Hale said, "Yes—you're Sam Reed," it would at least settle this uncertainty. But if he didn't, it need not mean he had failed to recognize Sam.

  The Free Companion shook his head. "He dream-dusted. I suppose he's dead by now. He'd made enemies after the bubble burst."

  "I know. You ... you must have been one of them."

  Hale shook his head again, smiling faintly. Sam knew what the smile meant. One neither hates nor loves the ephemeral short-lived. Temporary annoyance is the worst they can evoke. Nevertheless Sam was not tempted to reveal himself. Olympians had the god-prerogative of being unpredictable. Zeus tossed thunderbolts on impulse.

  "It wasn't Sam Reed's fault," Hale said. "He couldn't help being a swindler. It was born in him and bred in him. Anyhow, he was only a tool. If it hadn't been Sam, it would have been someone or something else. No, I never hated him."

  Sam swallowed. All right, he had asked for that. Briskly he moved on to the next point. "I'd like your advice, Governor Hale. I've only learned who I really am lately. I've been checking up. I know my father was a crook and a swindler, but the government found his caches and paid back everything—right?"

  "Right."

  "He left me nothing—not even his name, for forty years. But I've been investigating, just in case. There was one asset my father had when he dream-dusted, and that wasn't taken away from him. A land-grant. Forty years ago the government issued him a patent on certain Venusian land areas, and that grant's still valid. What I want to know is this: Is it worth anything?"

  He tapped his fingers on the desk. "Why did you come to me?"

  "My father was with you when the Colony started. I figured you'd know. You'd remember. You're an Immortal; you were alive then."

  Hale said, "I knew about that patent, of course. I tried to get hold of it. But it was in your father's name, absolutely watertight. The government wouldn't release. As a matter of fact, land-grants aren't revokable. There's a reason. On Venus all colonies presumably have to depend for existence on the Keeps, and it would be easy to cut off supplies if necessary. So you've inherited that patent, eh?"

  Sam said, "Is it worth anything?"

  "Yes. The Harkers would pay you a good deal to suppress the information."

  "The Harkers? Why?"

  -

  "So I couldn't start a new colony," Hale said, and his hand on the desk opened slowly from a tight-balled fist. "That's why. I started this Colony, after your father—after the collapse. I went ahead anyway. The good publicity we'd built up boomeranged. We had to start on a skeleton crew. Just a few, who believed in the same things I did. Not many of them are still alive. It was a tough life in the beginning."

  "It doesn't look so tough," Sam said.

  "Now? It isn't. The Colony's been emasculated. You see—what the Harkers did was try to stop me from even starting the Colony. They couldn't stop me. And after I'd started, they didn't dare let me fail. Because, eventually, they want to colonize Venus, and they don't want the psychological effect of a failure chalked up in history. They couldn't let me fail once I'd started, but they wouldn't let me succeed either. They didn't believe I could succeed. So—"

  "So?"

  "Attrition. Oh, we worked hard the first year. We did it with our fingernails. We didn't lick the jungle, but we started. We got the Colony cleared and built. It was a fight every step, because the jungle kept pushing back in. But we kept going. Then we were ready to reach out—to establish a new beach-head. And the Harkers stopped us cold.

  "They cut off our supplies.

  "They sat in the Keeps and made sure there wouldn't be any volunteers.

  "The equipment dwindled. The power dwindled. The machines stopped coming.

  "According to the original charter, we had to show an annual profit. Or the government could step in as administrator till matters got on an even basis again. They couldn't take my grant away from me, but they could cut down the blood supply so the Colony wouldn't be able to show a profit. That's what they did, thirty-four years ago. Since then, the government has been administrator here—maintaining the status quo.

  "They administer. They give us enough supplies so we won't fail. But not enough so we can go forward. They don't want us to go forward—because there's the risk of failure. They want to wait until there's no risk. And that time will never come."

  Hale looked at Sam, a deep fire beginning to glow far back in his eyes under the scowling brows. Was he talking to Joel Reed—or to Sam? It was hard to be sure. Certainly he was saying more than he would say to the casual visitor.

  "My hands are tied," Hale went on. "Nominally I'm Governor. Nominally. Everything here has come to a full stop. If I had another patent—if I could start another colony—" He paused, looking at Sam from under meeting brows. "They won't grant me a patent. You can see how important yours is. The Harkers would pay you very well to suppress it."

  That was it, then. That was the reason behind his freedom of speech. He had finished, but he did not look at Sam. He sat motionless behind his bare-topped desk, waiting. But he made no plea and no argument.

  For what could he offer the man before him? Money? Not as much as the Harkers could offer. A share in the new colony? By the time it would begin to pay off any short-term man would be long dead.

  On impulse Sam said suddenly, "What could you do with the patent, Governor?"

  "Start over, that's all. I couldn't pay you much. I could lease the patent from you, but there'd be no profit for many years. They'd be eaten up by the costs. On Venus a colony has to keep moving, spreading out. It's the only way. I know that now."

  "But what if you failed? Wouldn't the government come in again as administrator—the same thing over again? Wouldn't they see you did fail?"

  Hale was silent.

  Sam hamm
ered at him. "You'd need a big stake to start a new colony. You—"

  "I'm not arguing," Hale said. "I told you you'd get more money from the Harkers."

  -

  It was Sam's turn for silence. A dozen possibilities were already taking shape in his mind—ways to raise money, to circumvent the Harkers, to spread propaganda, to make the next colony a success in spite of all opposition. This time he thought he could do it. He had all the time in the world and it would be worth his while now to invest it in a successful colony.

  Hale was watching him, a flicker of hope beginning to show through the fatalistic inertia which had dulled all he said until now. And Sam was a little puzzled by the man. With all that long life behind him, all that unthinkable maturity which must be the sum of his experiences, still he had turned once and was ready to turn again to Sam Reed, short-lived, immature to the point of childishness from an Immortal's view. Hale was ready to let his most cherished venture fail for lack of ideas and initiative, unless this man before him, short-lived as a cat and as comparatively limited in scope, could take over for him.

  Why?

  A vague parallel with the social history of Old Earth swam up in Sam's memory. Somewhere in his reading he had encountered the theory that those countries on Earth which the Mongol hordes invaded in very ancient times had been so completely vitiated by the terrible experience that they had never again been able to regain their initiative. With all the resources their countries offered, the people themselves remained helpless to use them or to compete with other peoples who had not been robbed of that essential spark.

  Perhaps the same thing had happened to Robin Hale. He was the only man alive now who had fought with the Free Companions. Had he expended in those wild, vigorous years the spark that would move him now if he still possessed it? He had the centuries of experience and knowledge and accumulating maturity, but he no longer had the one essential thing that could let him use them.

  Sam had it, in abundance. And it occurred to him suddenly that perhaps of all men alive he alone did possess it. Hale had the long life but not the will to use it. The other Immortals had initiative enough, but—

  "If we wait on the Families, the time never will come to move," Sam said aloud, in a marveling voice, as if he had never heard the idea before.

  "Of course not." Hale was calm. "It may be too late already."

  Sam scarcely heard him. "They think they're right," he went on, exploring this new concept which had never dawned on him before. "But they don't want a change! They'll go right on waiting until even they recognize they've waited too long, and then maybe they'll be a little bit glad it is too late. They're conservatives. The people on top are always conservatives. Any change has to be for the worse where they're concerned."

  "That applies to the Keep people, too," Hale told him. "What can we offer any of them to match what they already have? Comfort, security, plenty of entertainment, a complete, civilized life. All we have up here is danger and hardship and the chance that maybe in a couple of hundred years they can begin to duplicate on land what they already have undersea, without working for it. None of them would live to cash in on the rewards even if they saw the necessity for changing."

  "They responded once," Sam pointed out. "When ... when my father promoted the first Colony scheme."

  "Oh, yes. There's plenty of discontent. They know they're losing something. But it's one thing to talk about romance and adventure and quite another to endure the danger and hardships that make up the total sum. These people lack a drive. Pioneers are pioneers because conditions at home are intolerable, or because conditions elsewhere look more promising or ... or because there's a Grail or a Holy Land or something like it to summon them. Here it's simply a small matter like the salvation of the race of man—but intangibles are beyond their grasp."

  Sam wrinkled red brows at him. "Salvation of the race of man?" he echoed.

  "If colonization doesn't start now, or soon, it never will. Our korium supplies will be too low to support it. I've said that over and over until the words come out whenever I open my mouth, it's that automatic. The race of man will come to an end in a few more centuries, huddled down there in their safe Keep-wombs with their power-source dwindling and their will to live dwindling until nothing remains of either. But the Families are going to oppose every move I make and go on opposing like grim death, until it's too late to move at all." Hale shrugged. "Old stuff. It's out of fashion even to think in those terms any more, down in the Keeps, they tell me."

  Sam squinted at him. There was conviction in the Immortal's voice. He believed Hale. And while the ultimate destiny of the race was far too vague a concept to worry Sam at all, his own increased life-span made the next few hundred years a very vital subject. Also, he had a score to settle with the Harkers. And there were almost unlimited possibilities in this colonizing project, if it were handled by a man like Sam Reed.

  He was beginning to see the dawning flicker of a magnificent idea.

  "The patent's yours," he said briskly. "Now look—"

  -

  Robin Hale closed the shuttered door of Administration behind him and walked slowly down the plastic path, alone. Overhead the glowing rayness of the Venusian day lighted briefly with a flash of blue sky and sun, filtered diffused through the impervium overhead. Hale glanced up, grimacing a little against the brightness, remembering the old days.

  A man in brown overalls some distance away, was leisurely moving a hoe around the roots of growing things in one of the broad beds of soil dug from Venus' overfertile ground. The man moved quietly, perhaps a bit stiffly, but with the measured motions of one who knows and enjoys his work. He lifted a gaunt, long-jawed face as Hale paused beside the shallow tank.

  "Got a minute?" Hale asked.

  The man grinned. "More than most," he said. "What's on your mind?"

  Hale put a foot on the rim of the tank and crossed his arms on the lifted knee. The older man leaned comfortably on his hoe. They looked at each other for a moment in silence, and a faint smile on the face of each told quietly of the things they had in common. These two, of all the men now alive, remembered life under an open sky, the succession of night and day, sun and moon, the natural rhythms of a world not ordered by man.

  Only the Logician remembered a day when the soil of an open planet had not been man's deadly enemy. Only he of all the workers here could handle his hoe in leisurely communion with the turned dirt, knowing it for no enemy. For the others, the very sight of soil meant dangers seen and unseen, known and unknown—fungi in the brown grains they hoed, bacteria of unguessable potentialities, mysterious insects and tiny beastlings lurking ready for the next stroke of the blade. This soil, of course, had been processed and was safe, but conditioning dies hard. No one but the Logician really liked these beds of open ground.

  Hale had been surprised only superficially when he first thought he recognized the gaunt figure wielding the hoe as he backed slowly along a path between brown seed beds. That was not very long ago—a few weeks, perhaps. He had paused beside the tank, sending his subordinates on ahead, and the older man had straightened and given Hale a keen, quizzical look.

  "You're not—" Hale had begun hesitantly.

  "Sure." The Logician grinned. "I'd have come topside a lot sooner, but I've had a job needed finishing. Hello, Hale. How are you?"

  Hale had said something explosive.

  The Logician laughed. "I used to be a dirt farmer back on Earth," he explained. "I sort of got the itch. That's one reason, anyhow. I'm a contingent volunteer now. Used my own name, too. Didn't you notice?"

  Hale hadn't. Much had happened to him since he last stood in the Temple of Truth and listened to this man's voice coming impressively from the oracular globe. The name of Ben Crowell hadn't caught his eye, though the volunteer lists were scanty enough these days that he should be able to recite them from memory.

  "Somehow I'm not very surprised," he said.

  "Needn't be. You and I, Hale, we're the o
nly men left now who remember the open air." He had sniffed elaborately, and then grinned up at the impervium dome. "We're the only ones who know this isn't. Did you ever locate any more of the Free Companions? I've wondered."

  Hale shook his head. "I'm the last."

  "Well"—Crowell struck off a random runner with his hoe—"I'll be here a while, anyhow. Unofficial, though. I can't answer any questions."

  "You haven't done that even in the Temple." Hale was reminded of a grievance. "I've been to see you maybe a dozen times in the last forty years. You wouldn't give me a single audience." He looked at the Logician and for a moment illogical hope quickened in his voice. "What made you come landside—now? Is something going to happen?"

  "Maybe. Maybe." Crowell turned back to his hoe. "Something always does sooner or later, doesn't it? If you wait long enough."

  And that was all Hale had been able to get out of him.

  Hale was remembering that conversation now as he told the Logician what had just happened.

  "Is that why you came up here?" he demanded at the end of his story. "Did you know?"

  -

  "Hale, I just can't tell you. I mean that. I can't."

  "Don't you know?"

  "That hasn't got anything to do with it. Don't forget every talent's got its drawbacks, too. It's not so much prescience I've got as it is infallibility—and that's fallible by definition. I told you once it was more horse sense than anything else." Crowell seemed mildly irritated. "I'm not God. Don't start thinking like the Keep men—wanting to shift every responsibility. That's one thing wrong with Venus today. The leave-it-to-George fallacy. George isn't God either. And God Himself can't change the future—and still know what's going to happen. Minute He meddles, you see, He introduces a new factor into the equation, and it's a random factor."

  "But—"

  "Oh, I've interfered a time or two," the Logician said. "Even killed a man once, because I figured nothing worse could happen than letting that particular fella live. Turned out I was right, too—in that case. Only I don't interfere any more than I can help. When I do, I step in as the random factor, and, since I'm in it, it isn't easy to look at the whole equation from outside. I can't predict my reactions—see?"