The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  He said abruptly, not listening to her: "Kristin, I've got to get back to the Unit. Fast."

  "You think it was Torren?" she asked fearfully. "But, Ben, what could you do?"

  "Torren? Maybe. Maybe Byrne. I'm not sure. I've got to be sure. Help me, Kristin. Let's go."

  "To the village first, then," she said firmly, setting her marble-hard forearm beneath his elbow to steady him. "You'll never make it unless we patch you up first. Would Torren really do a thing like that to you, Ben? The nearest thing to a son he'll ever have? I can't believe it."

  The dry snow squeaked underfoot as they climbed the hill.

  "You don't know Torren," Fenton said. He was breathing unevenly, in deep gasps, partly from pain, partly from weariness, mostly because the air in the respirator was not coming fully enough to supply his increased need. But the outer air was pure poison. After awhile he went on, the words laboring a little.

  "You don't know what Torren did to me, thirteen years ago," he said. "Back on Earth. I was sixteen, and I wandered out one night in one of the old Dead Ends—the ruined cities, you know—and I got myself shanghaied. At least, that's what I thought for three years. One of the gangs who worked the ruins got me. I kept thinking Torren's men would find me and get me out. I was young and naive in those days. Well, they didn't find me. I worked with the gang. For three years I worked with them. I learned a lot. Things that came in handy afterward, on some of the jobs Torren had for me—

  "When I was tough enough, I finally broke away. Killed three men and escaped. Went back to Torren. You should have heard him laugh."

  Kristin looked down at him, doubtfully. "Should you be talking, Ben? You need your breath—"

  "I want to talk, Kristin. Let me finish. Torren laughed. He'd engineered the whole thing. He wanted me to learn pro-survival methods right at the source. Things he couldn't teach me. So he arranged for me to learn from—experts. He felt that if I was capable I'd survive. When I knew enough, I'd escape. Then I'd be a tool he could really use. Work-hardening, he called it."

  Fenton was silent, breathing hard, until he got enough breath to finish. "After that," he said, "I was Torren's right hand. His legs. His eyes. I was Torren. He'd put me into an invisible Planetarium, you see—a Centrifuge like the thing he grew up in, the thing that made him into a monster. That's why I understand him so well." He paused for a moment, swiped vainly at the face-plate as if to wipe away the sweat that ran down his forehead. "That's why I've got to get back," he said. "Fast."

  -

  Only Torren knew all the secrets of the Unit. But Fenton knew many. Enough for his purpose now.

  When the rising floor inside the column of the round shaft ceased its pressure against his feet, he stood quiet for a moment, facing the curved wall, drawing a deep breath. He grimaced a little as the breath disturbed his arm, splinted and strapped across his chest under his shirt. With his right hand he drew the loaded pistol from its holster and, swinging it from the trigger guard, used his thumb to find the spring hidden in the curved wall.

  The spring moved. Instantly he swung the pistol up, the grip smacking into his receiving palm, his finger touching the trigger. The hollow pillar in which he stood slid half apart, and Fenton looked straight at Torren in his water bed.

  He stood still then, staring.

  The colossus had managed to heave himself up to a sitting position. The huge hands gripped the edge of the tank and, as Fenton watched, the great fingers curved with desperate fury on the padded rim. Torren's eyes were squeezed shut, his teeth bared and set, and the room was full of the sound of his harsh, wheezing breath.

  The blind, gargoyle face hung motionless for an instant. Then Torren exhaled with a gasp and let go. There was a tremendous wallowing splash as the Protector of Ganymede plunged back into the water bed.

  Fenton's gaze lowered to the long strip of floor beside the bath where a row of tiles had been lifted to expose the intricate complex of wires leading into the banked controls by which Torren ruled his palace and his planet. The wires lay severed on the floor, tangled fringes of them ripped and cut and torn out. It was almost as much a mutilation as if Torren's actual nerve-fibres had been torn. He was as helpless as if they had been.

  There was a table set up a little distance from the bath. The key wires in the flooring snaked across the tiles toward the table. Upon it a control box had been set up, and the audio and video devices which were Torren's ganglia.

  At the table, his profile to Fenton, Bryne sat, his long, thin body humped forward intently, the pale eyes fixed upon his work. He had a privacy-mute on the microphone he held to his mouth and as he murmured his fingers played lightly with a vernier. He watched the green line ripple and convulse across the face of an oscilloscope. He nodded. His hand struck down quickly at a switch, closed it, opened another.

  "Bryne!" The breathless bellow from the tank echoed among the pillars, but Bryne did not even glance up. He must have heard that cry a good many times already, since this phase of his work began.

  "Bryne!"

  The shouted name mounted in a roar of sound up the well to the star-reflections far above and reverberated to a diminishing whisper that blended with Torren's heavy breathing. Again the huge hands slid futilely over the rim of the tank.

  "Answer me, Bryne!" he roared. "Answer me!"

  Bryne did not look up. Fenton took a step forward, onto the open floor. His eyes were hard and narrow. The blood had gone out of his face until the pale scar along his jaw was almost invisible. Torren, seeing him, gasped and was silent in the midst of another shout. The small eyes sunk in fat stared and then shut tight for an instant over a leap of strange, glancing lights.

  "Why don't you answer him, Bryne?" Fenton asked in an even voice.

  Bryne's hands opened with a sudden, convulsive gesture, letting the microphone fall. After a long moment he turned an expressionless face to Fenton. The pale eyes regarded the gun muzzle and returned to Fenton's face. His voice was expressionless, too.

  "Glad to see you, Fenton," he said. "I can use your help."

  "Ben!" Torren cried, a thick gasp of sound. "Ben, he's trying ... that ... that scum is trying to take over! He—"

  "I suppose you realize," Bryne said in a quiet voice, "Torren sent a helicopter to bomb you when he found you were getting away from him. I'm glad he failed, Fenton. We're going to need each other."

  "Ben, I didn't!" Torren shouted. "It was Bryne—"

  Bryne picked up the microphone again, smiling thinly.

  "It's going to be perfectly simple, with your help, Fenton," he said, ignoring the heavy, panting gasps of the Protector in the tank. "I see now I might have taken you into my confidence even more than I did. This was what I meant when I told you Torren hadn't very much longer to rule. The chance came sooner than I expected, that's all."

  "Ben!" Torren was breathing hard, but his voice was under more control now. He swallowed heavily and said: "Ben, don't listen to him. Don't trust him. He ... he wouldn't even answer when I told ... wouldn't even pay any attention ... as though I were a ... a—" He gulped and did not finish. He was not willing to put any name to himself that came to his mind.

  But Fenton knew what he meant. "As though I were a ... monster. A puppet. A dead man." It was the horror of utter helplessness that had disarmed him before Bryne. For thirty years Torren had sought and claimed power by every means at his command, driven himself and others ruthlessly to combat the deepest horror he knew—the horror of helplessness. It was that which frightened him—not the fear of death.

  "Don't waste your sympathy, Fenton," Bryne said, watching him. "You know Torren better than I do. You know what he planned for you. You know how he's always treated you. When he saw you escaping, he sent the 'copter to make sure you wouldn't get away. He isn't human, Fenton. He hates human beings. He hates you and me. Even now he'll play on your sympathy until he gets you to do what he wants. After that ... well, you know what to expect."

  Torren shut his eyes again, not quit
e soon enough to hide the little glitter of confidence, perhaps of triumph, in them. In an almost calm voice he said: "Ben, you'd better shoot him now. He's a plausible devil."

  "Just what are your plans, Bryne?" Fenton asked in a level voice.

  "What you see." Bryne's gaunt shoulders moved in a shrug. "I'll pretend he's ill, at first. Too ill to see anyone but me. This is a Maskelyne vodor I've got here. I'm working out a duplicate of his voice. It's a coup d'état, Fenton, nothing new. I've got everything planned thoroughly. I've done nine-tenths of the management of Ganymede for years now, anyhow. Nobody's going to wonder much. With your help, I can get the rest of the empire for us, too."

  "And what about me?" Torren demanded thickly.

  "You?" The pale eyes flickered toward him and away. "As long as you behave, I suppose you can go on living." It was a lie. No falser statement of intent was ever spoken. You could tell it by the flat tone of his voice.

  "And the Ganymedans?" Fenton asked.

  "They're yours," Bryne said, still flatly. "You're the boss."

  "Torren?" Fenton turned his head. "What do you say about the Ganymedans?"

  "No," Torren breathed. "My way stands, Ben." His voice was an organ whisper. "My way or nothing. Make your choice."

  The slightest possible flicker of a smile twitched the corner of Fenton's lip. He swung his pistol higher and sent a bullet exploding straight into Bryne's face.

  The gaunt moved like lightning.

  He must have had his farther hand on a gun for some seconds now, because the two explosions came almost as one. In the same instant he sent his chair clattering backward as he sprang to his feet.

  He moved too fast. His aim was faulty because of his speed. The bullet whined past Fenton's ear and smacked into the pillar behind him. Fenton's shot struck Bryne an invisible blow in the shoulder that spun him half around, knocked him three-quarters off his feet. He scrambled desperately backward to regain his balance. His foot caught in a tangle of ripped-up wiring beside the water bath, and he went over backward in slow motion, his pale stare fixed with a strange illusion of calmness on Fenton's face as he fell.

  For an instant he tottered on the brink of the bath. Then Torren chuckled a vast, deep, terrible chuckle and with tremendous effort lifted a hand far enough to seize Bryne by the wrist.

  Still expressionless, still with that pale, intent stare fixed upon Fenton, Bryne went backward into the tank. There was a surge of heaving water. Bryne's suddenly convulsed limbs splashed a blinding spray and his hand groped out of nowhere for Torren's throat.

  Fenton found himself running, without intending to or—he knew—needing to run. It was pure impulse to finish a job that needed finishing, though it was in better hands than his, now. He put his good hand on the rim of the huge tank, the revolver still gripped in it, leaning forward.

  Bryne vanished under the oily, opaque surface. The incalculable weight of Torren's arm was like a millstone pressing him down, merciless, insensate as stone. After a while the thick, slow bubbles began to rise.

  Fenton did not even see the motion Torren made. But when he tried to spring backward, it was too late. A vast, cold, slippery hand closed like iron over his. They wrestled unequally for several slow seconds. Then Torren's grip relaxed and Fenton stumbled back, swinging his half-crushed fingers, seeing his revolver all but swallowed up in Torren's enormous grasp.

  Torren grinned at him.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Fenton grinned back.

  "You knew he was lying," Torren said. "About the bombs."

  "Yes, I knew."

  "So it's all settled, then," Torren said. "No more quarreling, eh, son? You've come back." But he still held the revolver watchfully, his eyes alert.

  Fenton shook his head.

  "Oh, no. I came back, yes. I don't know why. I don't owe you a thing. But when the bombs fell I knew you were in trouble. I knew he'd never dare bomb me in sight of the 'visor screens as long as you had any power on Ganymede. I had to find out what was happening. I'll go now."

  Torren hefted the revolver thoughtfully. "Back to your Ganymedans?" he asked. "Ben, my boy, I brought you up a fool. Be reasonable! What can you do for them? How can you fight me?" He rumbled with a sudden deep chuckle. "Bryne thought I was helpless! Step over there, Ben. Switch on the 'visor."

  Watching him carefully, Fenton obeyed. The snowy hills outside sprang into view. Far off above them, tiny specks upon the blue-lit clouds, a formation of planes was just visible, humming nearer.

  "About ten minutes more at the outside, I'd say," Torren estimated. "There are a lot of things about this set-up nobody even guesses except me. I wonder if Bryne really imagined I hadn't thought of every possibility. I allowed for this years and years ago. When my regular signals stopped going out an alarm went off—out there." The huge head nodded. "My guards would have got here in another ten minutes whether you came or not. Still, son, I'm obliged. You spared me that much time of feeling—helpless. You know how I hate it. Bryne could have killed me, but he could never have held me helpless very long. I owe you something, Ben. I don't like being obligated. Within reason, I'm willing to give you—"

  "Nothing I want," Fenton cut in. "Only freedom for the Ganymedans, and that I'll have to take. You won't give it. I can take it, Torren. I think I know the way, now. I'm going back to them, Torren."

  The huge hand floating at the surface of the water turned the pistol toward Fenton.

  "Maybe you are, son. Maybe not. I haven't decided yet. Want to tell me just how you plan to stop me on Ganymede?"

  "There's only one way." Fenton regarded the pistol with a grim smile. "I can't fight you. I haven't any money or any influence. Nobody on Ganymede has except you. But the Ganymedans can fight you, Torren. I'll teach them. I learned guerrilla warfare in a hard school. I know all there is to know about fighting against odds. Go on and put your new towers up, Torren. But—try and keep them up! We'll blow them apart as fast as you can put them together. You can bomb us, but you can't kill us all—not soon enough, you can't."

  "Not soon enough—for what?" Torren demanded, the small eyes burning upon Fenton's. "Who's going to stop me, son? I've got all the time there is. Ganymede belongs to me!"

  Fenton laughed, almost lightly.

  "Oh, no it doesn't. You lease it. But Ganymede belongs to the solar system. It belongs to the worlds and the people of the worlds. It belongs to your own people, Torren—the Thresholders who are going to inherit the planets. You can't keep the news of what's happening quiet here on Ganymede. The Earth government owns the towers. When we blow them over the government will step in to find out what goes on. The scandal will get out, Torren. You can't keep it quiet!"

  "Nobody will care," Torren grunted. But there was a new, strange, almost hopeful glint in his eyes. "Nobody's going to war over a little satellite like Ganymede. Nobody has any stake here but me. Don't be childish, Ben. People don't start wars over an ideal."

  "It's more than an ideal with the Thresholders," Fenton said. "It's their lives. It's their future. And they're the people with power, Torren—not the Earth-bred men like me. The Thresholders are the future of the human race, and they know it, and Earth knows it. The new race on Mars with the three-yard chest expansions, and the new people on Venus with gills and fins may not look much like the Ganymedans, but they're the same species, Torren. They'll go to war for the Ganymedans if they have to. It's their own hides at stake. Ideals don't come into it. It's survival, for the Thresholders. Attack one world and you attack all worlds where Thresholders live. No man's an island, Torren—not even you."

  Torren's breath came heavily in his tremendous chest.

  "Not even me, Ben?"

  Fenton laughed and stepped backward toward the open pillar. On the screen the planes were larger now, nearer and louder.

  "Do you know why I was so sure you hadn't ordered those bombs to kill me?" he asked, reaching with his good hand for the open door. "For the same reason you won't shoot me now. You're crazy, Torren. You know you
're crazy. You're two men, not one. And the other man is me. You hate society because of the debt it owes you. Half of you hates all men, and the Ganymedans most of all, because they're big like you, but they can walk like men. Their experiment worked and yours failed. So you hate them. You'll destroy them if you can."

  He found the door, pushed it open wide. On the threshold he said:

  "You didn't adopt me on a whim, Torren. Part of your mind knew exactly what it was doing. You brought me up the hard way. My life was spent in a symbolic Centrifuge, just like yours. I am you. I'm the half that doesn't hate the Ganymedans at all. I'm the half that knows they're your people, the children you might have had, walking a free world as yours would have walked if your experiment had come out right, like theirs. I'll fight for them, Torren. In a respirator and mask, but I'll fight. That's why you'll never kill me."

  Sighing, Torren tilted the pistol. His thick finger squeezed itself inside the guard, began slowly to tighten upon the trigger. Slowly.

  "Sorry, son," he said, "but I can't let you get away with it."

  Fenton smiled. "I said you were crazy. You won't kill me, Torren. There's been a fight going on inside you ever since you left the Centrifuge—until now. Now it's going on outside, in the open. That's a better place. As long as I'm alive, I'm your enemy and yourself. Keep it on the outside, Torren, or you will go mad. As long as I'm alive I'll fight you. But as long as I'm alive, you're not an island. It's your battle I'm fighting. You'll do your best to defeat me, Torren, but you won't kill me. You won't dare."

  He stepped back into the pillar, groping for the spring to close the door. His eyes met Torren's confidently.

  Torren's teeth showed under grimacing lips.

  "You know how I hate you, Ben," he said in a thick, fierce voice. "You've always known!"

  "I know," Fenton said, and touched the spring. The door slid shut before him. He was gone.

  Torren emptied the revolver with a sort of wild deliberation at the unmarred surface of the pillar, watching the bullets strike and richochet off it one by one until the hall was full of their whining and the loud explosions of the gun. The pillar stood blank and impervious where Fenton's face had been.