The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  A new voice said, "You're right. I agree. But Reed had to get the fort built strong. You were here five years ago; you know what it was like."

  "He's in too much of a hurry. Discipline—there's too much of it. He's got plans of his own, and we're not told what they are. Colonizing landside isn't all of it. Sure, we needed that fort five years ago—and we needed it strong. But what about all this top secret armament work? Nobody's supposed to know about the new gun emplacements on the walls—the electric-spray blasters, and the gas throwers. But they're being set up."

  "The jungle?"

  "Seventy-five miles away now!" French said. "And some of these new weapons—they don't make sense! Kalendar, you're a logistics man. Tell 'em."

  Kalendar stood up, a short, swarthy figure in a neat blue uniform. "They'd be useful for defense against human enemies. They could fight off and smash an onslaught by tanks, for example. But they're more powerful than we need even against a thunder-lizard. Besides, there are long-range cannon being cast and set up—they've got everything from radar calibration to video reactors. They'll throw a shell five hundred miles away and hit the target. What are they going to be used against? Another battery aimed at the fort? And our new plane construction program—you don't colonize by plane!"

  "Exactly. What's Reed expecting?" French asked. "Attack from the Keeps? The Keeps don't fight. They're living a life of glory down there, taking it easy, while we work ourselves to death."

  A low growl of resentment arose. These men didn't like the people of the Keeps—jealousy, probably. But the sound hinted at something new on Venus, just as this secret meeting foreshadowed a result Sam had not expected. For Sam had always been used to dealing with Keep people, and this was a new breed of men.

  Ben Crowell puffed at his pipe and watched interestedly.

  There was a burst of argument now, violent and angry. The plotters talked a lot—naturally! It was an escape from discipline. They were taking out their emotions in hot argument instead of in action. When they stopped talking, the volcano would probably erupt.

  Ben Crowell settled himself more firmly, his back against a packing case.

  "—whatever Reed's planning—"

  "—let the Keep people do some work—"

  "—how much more time are we going to give Reed?"

  "How long are we going to sit and take it?"

  French hammered for silence.

  "We've got several plans. But we've got to figure well ahead. Suppose we kill Reed—"

  "That wouldn't be easy. He doesn't take chances!"

  "He can't win if most of the colony's against him! And it will be. We've got to spread our organization. Once we get rid of Reed—and Hale—we'll be on top and able to stay there. We'll have the fort. And there isn't a thing on Venus that can smash the fort!"

  "Hale's no fool. Neither is Reed. If they get wind of us—"

  French said: "Every man takes a lie-detector test before he leaves one of our meetings. No traitors live."

  -

  "I haven't lived a thousand years without figuring out how to fool a lie-detector," the Logician said to Hale.

  Hale turned away from his light-latticed window that looked down so far on the walls which had once seemed so high to them all. He said coldly, "I know you were at that meeting. I have spies, too."

  "Did your spy recognize me?"

  "He didn't recognize anybody. He got there afterward. But he smelled pipe smoke and that rank tobacco of yours. Anyway—I know a little about what goes on around here."

  "What, for example?"

  "I know when discipline begins to fail. When men are sloppy about saluting. When they don't polish their brassards. I learned discipline in the Free Companies. I saw the crack-up start in Mendez's company before his men killed him. I noticed signs of trouble here months ago. That's when I put my spies to work. I knew what to expect, and I was right. It's beginning."

  "What?"

  "Mutiny. I know a few of the ringleaders—not all."

  "Does Sam Reed know?"

  "I've discussed it with him. But—I think he discounts the danger. He's been guarding himself so thoroughly he mistakes personal safety for colony safety. I want you to tell me what's going on. I know you can. If you don't, I can get the information elsewhere, but I'd like to discuss it with you if you're willing."

  "I know you can find out elsewhere," Crowell said. "I'll be glad to talk. I've been waiting for you to ask me, hoping you would, because I couldn't volunteer anything without upsetting the pattern. I got into this passively, you know. Guess I looked like a malcontent. God knows why. No, I do know. Do you?" He squinted at Hale over the hand that cradled his pipe.

  Hale shook his head. "No, I ... wait. Maybe I do." He strolled to the window again and looked down at the busy courts. There was much more of a pattern to the activities in Plymouth Colony than there had been five years ago. Discipline had stiffened into iron rigidity. It seemed to the average man that as the need for discipline lessened with their growing conquests of the land, the meaningless forms of it grew more and more inflexible.

  "Sam has his reasons," Hale said, looking down. "I don't know what they are, but I can guess. His time's running out. The balance is going to shift pretty soon. Men are losing faith in immortality and beginning to wonder. Sam knows the balance is tilting already, but I don't think it's dawned on him what he's weighing in the balance. Men. And not Keep men any longer. Men like you and me, who know what independence means. No wonder they spotted you for a malcontent. You've lived in a world where every man had to shift for himself or go under. So have I. I suppose the marks of it are plain on us."

  "Right." Crowell grinned. "Keep people want their leaders to do their thinking for them. Our men landside have had to think for themselves. Those who didn't—well, they just don't survive. It's the old pioneer feeling come back, son, and I like the feel of it. It means trouble, but I like it."

  "Trouble is right. Serious trouble, unless we move at the right time."

  "Now?" Crowell was watching the Free Companion keenly.

  "Not yet," Hale said, and the Logician's smile was faint, but satisfied. "No, not quite yet. Partly I want to sound this thing out, see how far it's going to spread. Like the Man Underground plant, you've got to locate the root. And partly—I don't know, exactly. I've got a sort of feeling that something's working out in these mutinies and plots that shouldn't be crushed. It's the pioneer spirit, all right, and I feel the way you do. I like it. Mutiny isn't the answer, but mutiny's a good sign, in a way."

  "You going to let them go ahead, then?"

  "No. I can't do that. At this point they still need Sam and me, no matter what they think. Let the mutineers take over and they'd wind up down in the Keeps again, sinking back into the old apathy. This is a crucial period. Sam's got some sort of plan I don't understand yet, but I'm betting on Sam to come out on top. Sam can take care of himself. His reaction to the mutiny, if he took it seriously, would simply be to stamp it out. And at this point that might mean stamping out the independent spirit of pioneering along with it. I'll have to think it over, Crowell. No use asking you for suggestions, is it?"

  Crowell peered intently into his pipe, which had gone out. He poked ineffectually at it with a calloused finger. "Well," he said slowly, "I don't think you need much advice, my boy. You're on the right track. Don't interfere any more than you've got to. There are natural processes at work leveling themselves off and the longer they operate on their own, the better. You know something? I think just living up here landside has done one mighty big service to these people. They've discovered Time again. Down below day and night don't mean much. One season's pretty much like another. But here, you see time passing. You get the sense of its being later than you think. These boys and girls started out with the idea they were going to live forever. They had a long-term view. They were willing to work for a colonization they hoped to enjoy themselves, in person, two-three hundred years from now. But that's passing. Time's passing
. And they're suddenly waking up to it. No, I'd let these natural forces level off if I were you. As you say, Sam Reed can take care of himself."

  "I'm going to let him," Hale said. "You'll keep an eye on these meetings, then? I know they've got a lot of schemes under way, but nothing's near completion yet, is it?"

  "They're still blowing off steam. They'll act, but not for a while."

  "Spy away, then. I won't move until I have to. I'll wait—that is, unless Sam moves first."

  -

  Sam moved first.

  As usual, he timed himself carefully, integrating every detail, and his action was spectacular, which made a few people wonder what Sam had up his sleeve. But, of course, they couldn't be sure. Some of them never were sure, even after the fantastic gambit was played. As a gambit it was effective—it was check, though not quite checkmate, and the arena from now on would follow even more closely the imagery of the old poet and his great translator—a checkerboard of nights and days. As for the Opponent—the Unseen Player—not even Sam had penetrated that mysterious symbolism. Who was the Player? The Harkers? Venus? Another part of Sam?

  He knows about it all ... He knows ... he knows ...

  It was a chilling thought, but, Sam realized, there wasn't anybody who "knew about it all." Certainly not the future, and even the present was difficult enough to interpret in every detail and trend.

  Still, he was ready; zero hour had struck, since he had got word certain secret arrangements of his own had been completed. He was in one of his private offices in the great tower he reserved for his own use. Part of that tower was top secret. But this office wasn't; port windows looked seaward toward the archipelago, now covered with farms and little settlements, though the protective pillboxes remained.

  He avoided Hale's gaze. He was examining a flat cube on the table before him. It was like a very deep picture frame. But what it held was a siren web, flushing slowly from rose to deep scarlet. Sam opened a silver box on his desk, took out an insect, and fed the siren web through a miniature hinged door. A faint odor of perfume escaped at the same time, and there was a low, rhythmic humming.

  "Put it away," Hale said. "I've smelled that odor too often! What about Crowell?"

  Sam slid the siren web frame aside. "I didn't know he was working for you. He was one of the mutineers, that's all. So I had him arrested with the others."

  "Why did you act without telling me? Why wait till I was forty miles away on an inspection trip?"

  "You got here in half an hour," Sam said. "Anyway, I had to move fast. I've found out that there's more to this plot than you ever suspected, from what you've been telling me about it. Crowell may be your man, but he's an inefficient spy."

  "I want him released."

  Sam shrugged. "Of course. But his usefulness is over, isn't it?"

  "Not necessarily."

  "A visor call would have done the trick. You needn't have rushed back here."

  Hale said, "I didn't want any chance of a slip-up. Crowell's got to be released. Accidents do happen. The wrong order, the wrong interpretation by a guard—"

  "I've never seen you so concerned about any one individual. Why is Crowell so important?"

  Hale hesitated. Finally he said, "Well—I trust him."

  Now it was Sam's turn to pause. He said softly, "Trust? You mean you'd trust him with a gun behind your back?"

  Hale nodded.

  "Maybe some day I'll find a man like that," Sam said wryly. "So far I haven't. Well, let's get Crowell released. It's almost time for the trial."

  "You're holding it today?"

  "Yes. I've found out so much—unexpectedly—there are dangers. Worse ones than we'd suspected. Our enemies are better armed than we know. Perhaps they've got Keep backing. I don't know. But I haven't time to tell you now; I've arranged for Venus-wide videocasting of the trial, and the Keeps will be tuning in in a few minutes. Come along. You'll find out what the setup is."

  But he paused long enough to feed the siren web another insect. Hale said, with strong distaste, "Where did you get that thing?"

  "Oh, it's a trophy."

  "Young one. Going to keep it? It'll grow—"

  "I expect it to."

  "It'll grow dangerous. It's a siren web, Sam."

  Sam said, "Still, imagine it twenty feet across. Up on the wall there—"

  "With you walking into its mouth."

  "I'm not a good hypnosis subject, remember? Anyway, I'll take precautions when it really gets big. Polarized glass or a stroboscopic attachment, a special filtering tonometer for its siren song, some gadget to cut the scent to safety level—the trial's starting. Let's go."

  They went out together.

  -

  Hale said, "How many mutineers have you rounded up?"

  "About seventy. Some of them will be useful in the right places. Others are too dangerous to let live—" Sam stopped abruptly. He had almost said too much.

  Crowell's release came first, but afterward they went to the room where the trial was to be held. Batteries of visor screens were already set up. There were guards, plenty of them. And the seventy-odd prisoners, unmanacled, were herded together in a railed pen.

  Sam started talking abruptly. He was talking to the colony and the Keeps as well as to the prisoners. He began by describing the activities of the malcontents, his growing suspicion of such an underground organization in the colony—"a colony expanding every hour, succeeding in conquering landside so in a day to come men will be able to live under the open sky—every man and woman on Venus!"

  He had arrested the plotters. But the plot had ramifications stretching deep underground. There had been a great deal of secret theft—theft of vital equipment, technological equipment, even materials for weapons. Why?

  The screens focused on the prisoners.

  "You men are cat's paws," Sam told them. "Originally you were the ones who started this potential rebellion, but someone else has taken it over. Someone who has kept his identity completely secret. Either you don't know who he is or you won't tell me. You've been questioned. Who is your secret leader?"

  Silence.

  "What are his plans? Is he a Colony man?"

  Silence.

  "We have proof. The equipment went somewhere. And there's other evidence. We'll find him, and the rest of his band; he's a menace not only to the colony but to the Keeps. If such a man should seize power—"

  The menace hung unspoken over Venus.

  "We will find him eventually. We ask the Keeps' cooperation in this. But now—you men have been guilty of treason. You plotted to overthrow the colony government and take control. After that, you intended to rule the Keeps as well."

  A man thrust himself forward from the other prisoners. His voice cried thinly across the visors.

  "I'm older! We're all older! Where's the immortality you promised us?"

  Sam said contemptuously, "I'm not a fool, Commander French. I've known for a long time that this plot was going on, and I knew most of the men involved. Why should I give people like you immortality—to plot further? None of you have been given the immortality radiation treatment for many months. You had nominal treatments, to quiet your suspicions—but immortality isn't for traitors!"

  His face hardened.

  "Governor Hale and I have been waiting, hoping to locate the top man in your organization. Certain events forced us to move now. We still intend to get the top man and render him harmless to civilization, but the present problem is what to do with traitors.

  "I condemn you to death."

  The silence began and ticked on and on—longer on landside than in the Keeps. For the colonists knew time now.

  Sam made a little gesture.

  "You will be taken under escort back to whatever Keeps you may elect. None of you may return. The colony is closed to all of you. So is the immortality treatment. You had your chance to live for a thousand years, and you chose a traitor's way instead.

  "You will not be harmed. You will be taken back
to the Keeps—and be free. Until you die. And you will die not in a thousand years from now, but in thirty, forty, fifty, perhaps. I withdraw the boon of immortality from you, and therefore I condemn you to death by natural causes.

  "Go back to the Keeps. We don't want you here."

  He brought his hands together in the conventional gesture.

  "The trial is over."

  -

  Trial: A testing of capacity—

  "Message to all Keeps: You will no longer pay korium ransom to Plymouth Colony. You will pay it to the Venusian Provisional Government. We are taking control of the planet. We have means to enforce our demands. Message to the Plymouth Colony: ground all your planes or be destroyed—"

  Triangulation couldn't locate the source of the message. It kept moving. And it was always at sea. Apparently the call was being shifted rapidly from transmitter to transmitter—planes, perhaps, though no radar apparatus recorded unauthorized planes in the Venusian atmosphere.

  Sam's answer to the challenge was brief—"Surrender!"

  "We have means to enforce our demands—"

  Sam's face appeared on all vision screens, in the Keeps and in the colony.

  "An all-out offensive has been organized from Plymouth Colony. For the first time the mutineers have come out in the open. Now we can find and smash them. We will find them. Television reports on our progress will be relayed as we proceed. Special ships and plane crews are being sent to guard the sea areas above every Keep. We are taking all possible precautions. Unauthorized plane approaching Plymouth Fort has been fired on; it is retreating southward. I must direct certain operations; one of our Operations Officers will take over and keep you informed."