The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  Suddenly and harshly he laughed. "Well, I've got a Team!" he said. "My own. My own backers, my own Integrator. Everything you tried to take away from me when you got me kicked out. Now you know what it's like. Maybe you think I'll take you in. I'm not the fool you think, Harding. I know you! You have to be top dog or nothing. But you've made the last mistake of your life." He hefted the microphone and laughed his harsh, mirthless laugh.

  "I've got the drop on you, even without a gun. You can't touch me, you fool. I see it in your stupid face. But I can kill you!"

  Turner made an unsteady, bleating sound and swung round violently toward Harding, blood spattering from his wrist.

  "It isn't true!" he said hysterically. "You can kill him if you try! Pull the trigger, Harding! This is suicide if you don't!"

  Mayall showed his teeth. "That's right," he said. "But he can't do it. We were closer than brothers once. Cain and Abel." He laughed. "Any last words, Harding?" He lifted the microphone. "All I have to do is recite a series of numbers into this," he said. "It's automatic. The field reacts to the same group only once, in progressive series, so you needn't bother trying to memorize it. Then the frequency hits you both. I may let you die right now, or I may—"

  "You won't do a thing," Harding said, smiling. "You can't, George. It would constitute an injury to me, and you can't do it."

  Mayall flourished the mike, breathed gently into its black mouth. His eyes burned at Harding over the instrument. Everything was very still around them. Distant surf hissed upon sand, the brush rustled in a light breeze, machinery thudded like the beat of blood deep inside the arteries of the body, as if the island were alive. Three gulls sailing over on narrow wings turned curious heads sidewise to observe, yellow-eyed, the motionless men below. Beyond Mayall's bearded head the heaven-pointing muzzle of the spaceship loomed like a silver halo. Invisible above it hung Venus, blanked out by the blue dazzle of the day but swinging as if on tangible cord that linked it irrevocably to Akassi. Sixty-one thousand of the ex-Earthborn pinned high upon the chart of the heavens by a diamond pinhead waited, though they did not know it yet, the outcome of this conflict on Akassi.

  "I'm free," Mayall said, holding the mike against his mouth. "I know when I hate a man. I can kill you whenever I choose."

  "You said that before," Harding pointed out. "Go ahead."

  "All I have to do is give the series into the mike," Mayall said.

  "Yes. Go on. Do it."

  Mayall drew an oddly unsteady breath and said into the microphone:

  "Three-forty-seven-eighty … ah … eighty-two." He paused briefly. "Eighty—five," he corrected himself. And waited.

  Nothing happened.

  The brush rustled. The surf breathed against the shore. Mayall flushed angrily, gave Harding a quick, defensive glance, and said into the mike, "Cancel. Three-forty-seven-seventy-five—"

  The breeze whispered among leaves. The distant throb beat like blood in their ears. But no shadow stooped out of the sky and no shiver in the air answered Mayall's command.

  Turner laughed, a half-hysterical giggle. "So it's true" he said. "You can't!"

  Mayall's face went dark with anger and a pulse began to throb heavily in his forehead. He shook the microphone, cursed the insensate machinery and stammered the numbers a third time into the diaphragm, stumbling twice as he spoke them.

  For a timeless moment the three men stood motionless, waiting.

  Then Turner laughed aloud and wheeled ponderously upon Harding. Ten feet of space separated them, and Harding had let his gun-hand drop—

  The impact of the fat man's sudden onslaught caught him off guard and sent him staggering. The gun flew out of his hand as Turner's great, unstable bulk all but knocked him off his feet. They reeled together for an instant.

  When they got their balance again Turner's huge forearm was locked across Harding's throat, blood from his wounded wrist trickled down Harding's shirt, and Turner's good hand pressed the point of a small, cold, very sharp knife against Harding's jugular.

  The fat man was breathing hard.

  "All right, Mayall," he said with a painful briskness, though his voice still shook. "My turn now. If this whole idea's a trick, let's find out about it! I don't know what you've got to gain by lying to me, but you can't kill me unless you kill Harding. Go ahead—turn on the paralysis again. But before you can give your signal, I can cut Harding's throat. Go on. What's stopping you?"

  Mayall's face darkened terrifyingly with rage. The grizzled beard jutted straight out with the set of his jaw, and the pulse at his temple throbbed.

  "Don't tempt me, Turner!" he said in a grating whisper.

  Turner laughed again. "Is it true?" he asked incredulously. "I almost think it is! I almost believe you've got to save Harding's life! All right, then." The knife-point pressed deeper. Harding felt the sharp twinge of breaking skin, and then a sticky trickling. "I'll kill him unless you do as I say."

  "I wouldn't bet on it, Turner," Mayall said in a choked voice. "I—"

  "I've got to bet on it," Turner wheezed past Harding's ear. "It's my one chance. I'm gambling for my life. And I'll win. You'd have turned on the paralysis by now if you dared. How do you walk through it, Mayall? No, never mind. I want to know first of all what this game is. No, Harding, don't move!"

  He shook Harding a little. "I want some answers! Are you working in cahoots with Mayall? Why did you come here, if you knew you couldn't protect yourself from him? Unless you're working together, I don't see—"

  Mayall made a sudden, involuntary gesture of rejection.

  "You think I'd work with him? You think I could ever trust him again?"

  "Shut up!" Turner said. "No—stop it, Mayall!" The knife-blade quivered at Harding's throat. Mayall paused rigidly, the microphone halfway to his lips, eyes on the knife as he struggled against almost unbearable compulsion.

  The last thing Harding saw was Mayall's thin lips moving as he hissed into the diaphragm. Then darkness fell—total blindness, sudden and absolute.

  For the second time in ten minutes Harding had a strong illusion of just having died. His first idea was that the knife at his throat had gone in, and this blindness was the first failure of the senses that presages total failure—but he could still hear. The surf still whispered on the far-off shore. Invisible gulls mewed overhead and Turner's wheezing breath caught with a gasp close to his ear.

  He could still feel. Sunlight was warm on his cheek, and Turner's thick arm across his throat jerked with some sudden shock of astonishment. Turner grunted and the arm went a little slack.

  Then all Harding's reactions snapped into instant alertness. Somehow Mayall had given him this one split-second chance to save himself if he could. Theoretically, he knew what had happened. Frequency juggling was a familiar trick, and phase-cancellation of vibration must have been the process Mayall's hiss into the mike set in motion. The frequencies of the visual spectrum-were being cancelled now, by a broadcast of other frequencies in the right phase. But visual only, since he could feel the sun's infrared heat on his face. If Mayall had an infrared viewing apparatus handy Harding would be clearly visible now.

  He worked it all out neatly in a corner of his mind while his body sprang almost of its own accord into this instant's hesitation that slowed Turner's reactions. Harding's right arm struck upward and outward inside the curve of Turner's arm as it held the knife to his throat. He felt the pressure of the blade cease, and Turner grunted heavily as Harding's elbow drove into the pit of his stomach. For an instant they struggled fiercely together in the blinding dark. Then Harding sprang free.

  Brush crackled and heavy feet thudded rapidly on the ground, diminishing in distance as Turner, gasping for breath, blundered away through the dark. Harding stood still, breathing heavily, feeling sunlight warm on his face as stared about in the intense and total blackness.

  The very completeness of it told him one interesting fact—there must be a roof over the island. It was almost impossible to create dark
ness in the open air. In all probability some intangible dome of ionization hooded Akassi in, something that could be varied at will, used to reflect downward any frequency-beams aimed up, a simple matter of angle-of-incidence calculation you could work out in your head. Somewhere on the island a device was broadcasting a beam in the right frequency to cancel the vibrations of light blazing down from the hot, invisible tropic sky.

  Mayall's voice spoke out of the darkness, after a long, reluctant pause.

  "Are you all right, Ed?"

  Harding laughed at the note of hope in the question.

  "Disappointed?" he asked.

  Mayall's breath went out in a long sigh. "I hoped he'd get you. I did what I could, but I was praying for the knife to go in. At least, I can get Turner."

  "Don't," Harding said with some urgency. "Let's have the light again, George. But don't kill Turner yet. I want to talk to you first. If he dies the whole espionage network he controls will fall apart, and we're going to need it. Do you hear me?"

  The darkness went crimson before Harding's eyes, quivered, shredded and was gone. Day was blinding. He put up a hand to shield his eyes, seeing through his fingers Mayall's sardonic grin, the lips turned downward in a familiar inverted grimace.

  "I hear you," he said. He lifted the microphone and spoke into it, his eyes still holding Harding's gaze. "Sector Twelve," he said into the mike. "Twelve? Mayall speaking. There's a fat man crossing the hills toward you. Kill him on sight." He lowered the mike and showed his teeth at Harding. "You've got maybe fifteen minutes to live," he said. "Just until I get my Team together and dope out a way to kill you. Maybe I can't beat the compulsion alone. But there are ways. I'll find one."

  "You're cutting your own throat if you kill Turner."

  "It's my throat," Mayall said. "I give the orders here. He can't get away." Suddenly he laughed. "This island's a living thing, Harding. A reacting organism with sense organs of its own and an ionized skin over it. I've got surrogate sensory detectors all over the place. They can analyze anything on the island down to its metallic ions and transmit the impulses back to … to headquarters. I've set up an optimum norm, and any variation will put the whole island in motion. Turner's like a flea on a dog now. The island knows where he is every second."

  "We're going to need him," Harding said.

  "You're going to be dead. You won't be interested."

  Harding laughed. "Never very practical, were you, George? You were always a bright boy, but you theorize too much. You need somebody on your Team like me. Only luck kept Turner from drilling you. Luck—and me. Look at you, standing there unarmed. What was the idea, coming out like that? The island might have been crawling with Turner's men."

  Mayall grinned his wide, thin-lipped, inverted grimace.

  "Ever have hallucinations, Ed?" he asked, his voice suddenly very soft. "Maybe that's the real reason they threw you off the Team. Ever hear voices out of nowhere? Look at me closely, Ed. Are you sure I'm real? Are you sure?"

  For a moment longer the tall, gaunt, stooped figure stood there vividly outlined in the sun. Then Mayall smiled and—faded.

  The trees showed through him. The silver bullet of the spaceship towered visible behind the ghost of George Mayall. The ghost went dim and vanished—

  Mayall laughed softly and unpleasantly out of nowhere.

  Harding was aware for a moment of a tight coldness at the pit of his stomach. It couldn't happen. It hadn't happened. He had dreamed the whole thing, or else—

  "O.K., George," he said, trying to hide the sudden limpness of his relief. "I get it. Where are you, then? Not far, I know. You can't project a tri-di image more than a hundred feet without a screen—or five hundred with relays. Let's stop playing games."

  Low down in the brush Mayall laughed thinly all around him. Harding felt the hair creep on his scalp. It was not the laughter of a sane man.

  "Start walking," Mayall said. "Toward the settlement over the hill. By the time you get there, I'll have a way figured out to kill you. Don't talk. I'll ask questions when I'm ready."

  Harding turned in silence toward the gap in the hills.

  From the hilltop he could see the settlement glinting in the sun. There was the square Integration Building with its familiar batteries of vanes on the roof, and the familiar tower thrusting a combing finger up against the sky. Long sheds lined the single street. There was a fringe of palm-leaf huts around the buildings, and farther off, over a couple of rolling green hills, the lofty tower of the spaceship balanced like a dancer on its hidden fins.

  Still farther out were black rock cliffs, creaming surf and a lime-green sea with gulls wheeling over it. Brown figures briefly clad in bright colors moved here and there about the buildings, but Harding saw no sign of Mayall. Only the machinery thumping endlessly at mysterious tasks throbbed like the island's heart.

  He started slowly downhill. A palm tree leaning stiffly forward over the path rustled, cleared its throat with a metallic rasp, and said:

  "All right, Ed. First question. Why did they throw you off the Team?"

  Harding jumped a little. "Where are you, George?"

  "Where you won't find me. Never mind. Maybe I'm in my getaway ship, all set to take off for Venus. Maybe I'm right behind you. Answer my question."

  "Rugged individualism," Harding said.

  "That doesn't mean anything. Go on, explain yourself. And keep walking."

  "I was kicked off," Harding said, "because I was so different from you. Exactly your opposite, as a matter of fact. You were the leader of the Team and you held the rest down to your level because you weren't adaptable—remember? It didn't show up because you were leader and set the pace. Only when a new man came in did your status-quo limitations show. The new man, in case you've forgotten, was I."

  "I remember," the palm tree said coldly.

  "You fizzled. I skyrocketed," Harding said. "I had too many boosters. They finally figured I was getting into abstract levels far beyond the Team, which is as bad as being too slow. So I was fired for undependable irrationality, which I prefer to think of as rugged individualism. Now you know."

  Ten feet ahead a flowering shrub chuckled.

  "That's very funny. You were the stupid, unadaptable ones—you and the rest. You couldn't realize I was simply developing along a new line, a different path toward the same goal. I wasn't lagging behind. I was forging ahead of you. Look around you. This island's the living proof. You kicked me into a pretty unpleasant gutter and I pulled myself up by myself. Not easily. I built a living island here. You can have six feet of it, and that's all."

  The bush sighed. "I've dreamed of killing you," it said, rustling gently. "But I'd have left you alone if you'd stayed out of my way. I've never forgotten, though. And I'm going to get even, when the time comes—with you, and the rest of the Team, and Earth. And Earth!"

  Harding whistled softly. "So that's the way it is," he said to the empty air.

  The moss underfoot said bitterly: "That's the way it is. I don't care what happens to Earth now. Earth's overreached itself. Let it blow up. It and its Teams. I'll throw a shield around Venus that no power in the solar system can crack."

  "Maybe that's your trouble, George," Harding told the moss. "You think in terms of shields that can't be cracked. Sooner or later the pressure from within may force a crack. Growth can't be stopped. That was what went wrong on Team Twelve-Wye-Lambda, remember?"

  The moss was silent.

  "Anyhow, it checks," Harding went on, trudging downhill. "Central Integration when I … ah … left the Team, was sending out dope-sheets on an enormously complex plan under way on Venus. That would be you, George. Stuff too complex to figure out and counter without a lot of work among the Teams linked up in units. Obviously the Secessionists had themselves an Integrator at last. It didn't take a Round Table session to find out who they'd subsidized."

  The moss laughed.

  "It was a mistake to let me go," it said. "Do you want to know the real reason? It's t
he reason why no Integrator that Earth ever sets up can control Venus. The basic logic's wrong. Their key principles are based on Venus being a social satellite of Earth—and the balance has shifted. I've shifted it, Ed. Venus is no protectorate planet any more. That's Apollonian logic. Not a single Integrator on Earth is based on the Faustian viewpoint, which in this case is perfectly simple—Venus is the center of the new Empire!"

  "You think so?" Harding murmured.

  "I made it so! Every single premise the Earth Integrators base on a … a geocentric society has got to turn out wrong. Or multiordinal, anyhow—valid only as long as the truth of Earth's power is maintained. I stopped believing in the old truth-concepts of the Earth Empire—and they threw me off the Team.

  "But right here on Akassi is the only Integrator that works from the basic assumption that Venus is the System's center."

  "All right," Harding said calmly. "Maybe I agree with you."

  "No," an airy whisper said above the whisper and rustle of a red-flowering vine that hung across the path. "Not necessarily. How do I know you've really been kicked off the Team? How do I know you're not a Trojan horse?"

  "There isn't much you can be sure of, is there?" Harding asked. "Your Team here can't be very efficient. You've forgotten basic psych. Why do you suppose you've dreamed of killing me?"

  "Prescience," the vine said quietly.

  "Displacement," Harding told it. "Who would you be wanting to kill? It couldn't be—yourself?"

  Silence.

  "What kind of a Team have you got, anyhow?" Harding asked after a moment. "If it can't answer a simple question like that, it can't be worth much. Maybe you need me, George, even more than I need you."

  "Maybe I haven't got a Team," the vine said behind him, in a die-away voice as the distance lengthened between them.

  "You'd be a maniac if you hadn't," Harding told the empty air flatly. "You've got to have a Team, if you're operating an Integrator. One man couldn't keep up with it. You need a minimum of seven to balance against a machine like that. You have a Team, all right, but an incompetent one. I'll tell you exactly what you're got—either discarded misfits or untrained men. That's all there is available. And it isn't good enough. You need me.