by Jerry
Little John Five was no problem. He could think like a living thinker, but he was conditioned by computers and computers can’t think. Computers now—they know the meaning of acceptance. And Jonna . . . well, she was a pammie, and Earth pammies are sort of special, and seem to be able to know a great many things without needing to be told. Acceptance is easier for them.
By this time, of course, I knew all about the terrible things the Pod had done to Jonna on Orel (we had known about the Mindpod by our own mindnet from the moment they landed there, and had been watching) and also about the threat to Earth. And we had worked out a plan.
To do it, we would have to get into the caves under the big basket-cradle, the Little John called it, which held the Orellian cruiser on the surface of Orel. (Orel is mostly porous under the surface, great chains and tangles of holes and caves.) We could then try to get into the cruiser itself and see what we could do from there.
Getting to Orel was a lot harder than it had to be, mostly because of Will Hawkline’s insistence on understanding everything we did. When I told him that the Zado High Council would convene for the ritual which would take us to Orel, he wanted to know where the council would meet, and I had to explain that it didn’t actually meet at any certain place; the mindnet could be cast wherever the Council Zados happened to be. Then I had to tell him what to do with his own mind, which is just accept. And at first he wouldn’t and then he couldn’t, and I had a time, I tell you, showing him how he could. I didn’t want him to see me laughing, and really, that was the hardest part.
I got them all comfortable and convened the High Council and we started to weave the Net that would send us to Orel. And wouldn’t you know the moment the Ceer-reality began to fade around us, up pops Will Hawkline, bolt upright, demanding to know what’s happening, and of course he broke the net and we had to start all over.
I was going to speak to him but Jonna said, “Let me,” and went and sat down beside him. She took both his hands and looked into his eyes and said, “Will—just let it happen. Trust,” she said. “Trust. Go with me.” And while she held him with her hands and her eyes I quickly convened again. We got a good Net this time. The glowing sound-beds of shimmer lifted us and blip! we were in the caves on Orel.
Whatever Will Hawkline or any of them were going to say then, they didn’t say it. Not so much because of the caves themselves, the crazy light (there are patches of luminescent rock, blue and green, and reddish moss and fungus that glows purple) and the odd smell of the air; none of this. It was the meercath standing there, scratching its stomach with one of its little hands. It was wearing a harness with a heat weapon stuck on it. It was the first meercath the Earth folk had ever seen and I guess I don’t blame them for being upset. Jonna made a little scream and the Little John opened his big eyes wide, and Will Hawkline slapped a weapon out of his belt and whsssht! blew the meercath’s big head right off.
I was not pleased about that. I had never thought to tell them, but I had a shield around us just like the one we put around Ceer, and the meercath never knew we were there. But now that Will Hawkline had used his weapon, the whole planet, or anyway the Mindpod, knew it and knew where we were. I didn’t tell him this. Zados do not say things that make anyone unhappy. Will Hawkline was pleased and it was too late to correct what he had done. I took the heat weapon away from the dead meercath and gave it to Will Hawkline and showed him how to use it, and asked him for his; I told him the Mindpod could find us instantly if it was used again, but the meercath’s weapon would be harder to trace.
Then we ran. Oh, we ran! I led them through the caves and into the labyrinth under the cradle, and you know I couldn’t create the shield while we were moving that fast. Another meercath saw us and set up that horrible wailing cry, and in a moment it was coming from everywhere. We ran through the green and blue, through patches of purple, and soon there came the bright orange flare of the heat weapons.
At last we were where I wanted us to be, right under the cradle, but it happened to be a blind corridor as well. If the meercaths found us here it would be a bad thing. As long as we were running they would try to bring us down with their heat-things, but if they had us trapped they would catch us and pull us apart and bite. That’s the way the Mindpod trained them.
There was only one thing I could do—make a little mindnet and get us out of there. But I would need their help. Jonna and Little John Five seemed to understand right away what I needed—just to relax, give themselves to me and the net—and oh, how I wished Will Hawkline was a little less curious, a little less brave, and maybe a little more stupid! I will give him credit: he tried, but then he saw the meercaths, two, three, then seven, eight, nine of them. I instantly threw up the shield—I didn’t need their help for that—and they could not see us, and in a moment they would have moved on to search somewhere else. But Will Hawkline could see them as clearly as we can see the stars here on Ceer, and he raised the meercath heat-thing I had given him and sent a great orange flash down the corridor. Two of the meercaths went down howling, and then they all knew for sure where we were.
Will Hawkline went down on one knee and steadied his weapon, and I thought, “That is the tool-craziest slowpoke in all the Known and Unknown!” I shouted in words and inside their heads to Jonna and the Little John: give me you! and they did, and while the meercaths were wading through the horrible mess Will had made in the corridor, I flung the energy they gave me, together with my own, against the soft rocks overhead and a huge section came crashing down, shutting it off.
In the sudden silence and swirling dust I said to Will Hawkline, “Now if you can’t do what I ask, don’t do anything!” as gently as I could. Maybe it was this or maybe the way Jonna and the Little John looked at him, but he became very quiet and almost helpful.
I called on the Ceer net with the precise locus, and as around us the cave faded away, metal walls, flat and dark, took their place. We were inside the Orellian cruiser, and almost before we could take a breath, we had that crazy spinny inside-out feeling of space travel, zero time. The cruiser had lifted. It was a close thing.
It probably took us a little while to be able to think straight—you pups and pammies will never know what a wringing out you get from traveling that way. Once I got my wits back, I looked around. Flat metal walls. Dark. I made it a little lighter. Jonna and Will were stretched out, I guess still waiting for their minds to catch up with them. Little John Five was sitting up wagging his big head.
“Five,” I said, “can you think-in to the computer on this cruiser?”
He looked at me. If he was surprised to see me shining in the dark he didn’t say so. He closed his eyes and made some sort of effort. He opened his eyes and said, “It’s different . . .”
“You have to expect that. But isn’t it the same in some ways?”
He closed his eyes again. After a while he nodded his head. “In a lot of ways.”
“Can you learn it?”
“I think so.”
“You do that, Five. Think-in all the way. Think-in so far that when they start looking for us with their finder-thing, they will think you are another part of their own computer. Can you see out of their see-it thing? I want to know where we are,” I said. “I’ll help,” I said.
He tried hard. I picked up what he mindsaw and made it shine on the dark wall. It was like a window. There was a planet . . .
“My God,” I heard behind me, “that’s Earth!”
“There’s Avalon—see?”
“All right, that’s where we are. I would like to know when we are,” I said.
“I do not have the referents,” the Little John said.
“I do. Look!” Will Hawkline cried out. In the picture, from the curve of the planet’s shoulder, came a tiny golden spark. “A scout,” said Jonna Verret. “It’s . . . could it be . . .”
Across the picture came a line of fire, at almost the exact moment the scout winked out in that special way a craft flares when it slips into faster-t
han-light. A moment later another spark appeared, the fire speared out and sliced into the tail section just before the ship disappeared. Somehow, the faster-than-light change came when it was strangely brighter than the first one.
“It—it’s us. Me. They’re going to do terrible things to—to her.”
I decided to do a kind thing. I used a piece of the net and made it say to Jonna, deeply, “Sleep.” And I said to Will Hawkline, “Sleep.” They slept. They slept so deeply that even the Mindpod’s probes and search-sees wouldn’t know they were there. Then I said to the Little John: “Five: they are hidden in a special way, and I can put up my own shield. By now you know how they will search; can you make yourself seem like part of their computer? So much so they will not find you?” He said he could. Then I told him what to do.
When it was right, I got the net to bring Will Hawkline and Janna up and up through their deeps until they were normally asleep, and then I woke them.
Immediately Little John Five said, “The computer reports stowaways. A meercath has told the commander.”
I said, “That’s all right.”
The Little John said, “The commander has ordered a search.”
I said, “That’s all right too.”
Jonna said, “Can we hide somewhere?”
I said I didn’t think so—not for long.
Jonna said, “You can’t mean for us just to sit here until they come for us!”
“They won’t take us without a fight,” Will Hawkline said, and he took the meercath heat-thing out of his belt; and wouldn’t you know before I could say another word the door of the compartment crashed open and there stood a meercath guard. Will aimed his weapon and of course nothing happened because I had taken the charges out while he slept. I had neglected, however, to remove one patch of stupidity or his appalling bravery. As the giant meercath opened his mouth to squall, Will Hawkline flung himself across the compartment and shoved the weapon between all those big teeth and into the meercath’s throat. And he didn’t stop with that. With the momentum of his rush he placed a hand on the meercath’s head and vaulted up and around, clamping his legs above and below the meercath’s long snout, forcing its jaws closed. I remembered then that all big lizards, especially the one with long jaws, might have, like a meercath, a bite powerful enough to nip someone my size in two, but the muscles that open the mouth are comparatively weak, and it’s easy to hold the mouth closed. So the guard, scrabbling at Will Hawkline with its clever tiny hands, whimpered and died, and sounded no alarm.
Panting and exultant, Will Hawkline came back. “Help me drag this thing inside.” Well, I helped him. And I thought, how can I tell him, without making him unhappy, that he had just done the worst possible thing he could do? Zados don’t make people unhappy. How could I tell him that if he had let himself be captured, he would have been taken to the commander on the bridge, where we might be able to do something, but that now he has killed a guard, the other guards would bite his silly brave head off? How could I tell him that the most important thing of all was for the Little John not to be discovered, that he couldn’t now be detected except if he were seen, and guards looking for their missing meercath would certainly see him? I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say it. He was so smiling and proud.
“Will,” I said, trying so hard to be gentle, “See Jonna there.” And when he looked I threw the shield around her and she was gone. He gaped and took a step toward where she had been and I took the shield away. “See Little John Five.” And I threw the shield around Five and then removed it and put it around Will Hawkline. “Will,” I said, “you can see Jonna. You can see me. You can see Five. But they can’t see you. Is that right, Jonna? Five?” They nodded their heads and I took down the shield.
“Why are you talking to me as if I were a child?” Will Hawkline asked, so maybe my gentling did not work as well as I thought it would.
I said, “We are going to use the shield. And I want you to understand that no matter how close you come to anyone, they can’t see you. No matter how much you want to attack one of them, you must not. We are going out there and find a search party searching, and we are going to put Little John Five into some place they have just searched, because he has work to do and they can’t detect him anymore. And then the three of us are going to the bridge where the commander is, and we are going to do it without getting our legs torn off and our heads bitten by them. Do you understand?”
“You’re still talking to me as if I were a child,” said Will Hawkline.
“Well,” I said, “I love children. Let’s go.”
I opened the door and put up a shield big enough for all of us. We could see no meercaths but we could hear sounds to the left, snuffling and stamping. I waved them to follow (we could see each other inside the shield) and we went that way. Sure enough there was a squad of meercaths right around the corner, opening and closing doors. We stayed close to the wall and moved right down on them, and I don’t think the three Earthers really and truly believed in the shield until this moment. One by one the meercaths passed us as we stepped quietly out of their way, until they were gone.
I opened a door. “In you go, Five. Tell me when it’s all done.”
He smiled. This was the first time I ever saw a Little John smile. “I will,” he said and closed the door.
The Little John had given me the cruiser’s own computer picture of the big jug, and I had it well in my head. It was huge and a lot more complicated than it had to be, and it was full of machines and inventions and ups and throughs. And meercaths.
The bridge was way down in the middle of the cruiser with layers and layers of shells within shells all around it that could be sealed off, one from another, in case the big dark cruiser was damaged in space. The bridge was a sort of metal cave all studded with the pictures given it by the computer—pictures from the see-outs, the feel-outs, the how-fasts, how-soons, where-are-we’s, and so on—and big ugly meercaths watching them. On a high place in the middle stood the commander, a special meercath, extra big.
Invisible under the shield, we stepped past the guard at the bottom of the ramp up to the high place, and went and stood behind the commander. We watched for a while, how he did the things a commander does to make a cruiser go. Mostly it was sticking out the tummy and looking fierce at one after another of the meercaths who were actually doing something.
From the compartment deep inside the cruiser where we had hidden him, Little John Five mindspoke me: “I’m all finished, Althair.” It was a very weary mindspeak.
So I took the shield off Will Hawkline and Jonna Verret. But I kept mine.
You know, it seemed like forever that they stood there in plain sight, not knowing that they could be seen, while the commander strutted back and forth, not knowing they were there. Then one of the meercaths tending the little lights glanced up at the command post, froze for a second, and slowly stood up off his tail. (Meercaths sit on their tails.) Then another glanced, stared, and rose, and another. They began a funny little murmur among them, as if they were afraid to say anything to the commander.
And oh, it seemed like such a long while before the commander thought to look behind him, and there were Will Hawkline and Jonna Verret looking him in the eye and smiling, quite used by now to being invisible, and not knowing they were not.
The commander’s huge mouth slowly came open, and slowly he raised his little right hand, and he pointed a claw at Jonna. He said, in Earth talk: “You! You! You’re the one who disappeared!” And only then did she realize she could be seen. “Althair! Althair!” she cried, but I didn’t say anything. Will Hawkline sidled in front of her, maybe thinking he was still invisible, maybe thinking he could protect her or attack the commander, maybe both; but the commander made it clear he could see him too. His pointing claw swung toward Will Hawkline. “You! I saw your picture from Earth. The Time Center . . . you’re the Coordinator. You’re Will Hawkline!” He whirled around and yelled, “This is what we want! He has the back-time inv
ention in his head! Detonate the planet! Destroy Earth!”
“Oh . . . Althair!” Jonna’s soft hurt cry was the last thing I heard as the cruiser hung over Earth and a meercath slammed his hand down on the planet-smashing control.
There was a spiraling whirl and a blink of black, and a staggering, sickening feeling like traveling in zero time.
It was traveling in zero time.
And the terrible lightnings stroked out from the cruiser, red from this side, blue from that, green from below and a terrible yellow from above, and they met in a river of coruscating white as they plunged into the heart of the planet below, cracked it, kindled it, scorched and exploded it and turned it into a furious little star.
And the planet was Orel, and with it went the Mindpod, whoever they were, and never again would they move through the worlds, taking and killing.
But oh! my pups, my pammies: Oh! I stood with the Earth people and felt drowned in color and I couldn’t breathe for shock and sorrow. Yes, the Mindpod was gone, and no, they would no longer menace us, or Earth, or anyone else: but oh, Orel and its little animals, its brave grass and the swirls and swarms of life in its seas; any hope it might have to evolve and grow, gone, gone forever from the universe. Oh yes, there are lots more worlds and lots more life, but sometimes, when you have done a good thing, you have to look at all of the good thing, and wonder forever if there couldn’t have been a better way, a way wherein nothing died.
We watched the death of Orel, all of Orel, layer after layer boiling and swirling; lava, explosions of gas, torn mountains, insane winds and oceans flowing into space. Never mind the Mindpod; never mind the meercaths; I cried for a world and all the life on that world, which can never be known again except in memory.