“It maintains the structure of the Federation,” Ticos said, “because we learned finally that such a structure was absolutely necessary. Tampering with it isn’t tolerated. Even the suggestion of civil war above the planetary level isn’t tolerated. The Overgovernment admittedly does that kind of thing well. But otherwise you do hear a great many complaints. A recurrent one is that it doesn’t do nearly enough to control the criminal elements of the population.”
Nile shook her head. “I don’t agree! I’ve worked with the Federation’s anticrime agencies here. They’re efficient enough. Of course they can’t handle everything. But I don’t think the Overgovernment could accomplish much more along those lines without developing an oppressive bureaucratic structure—which I certainly wouldn’t want.”
“You feel crime control should be left up to the local citizenry?”
“Of course it should, when it’s a local problem. Criminals aren’t basically different from other problems we have around. We can deal with them. We do it regularly.”
Ticos grunted. “Now that,” he remarked, “is an attitude almost no Palach would be able to understand! And it seems typical of our present civilization.” He paused. “You’ll recall I used to wonder why the Federation takes so little obvious interest in longevity programs, eugenics projects and the like.”
She gave him a quick glance. Not rambling, after all? “You see a connection?”
“A definite one. When it comes to criminals, the Overgovernment doesn’t actually encourage them. But it maintains a situation in which the private citizen is invited to handle the problems they create. The evident result is that criminality remains a constant threat but is kept within tolerable limits. Which is merely a small part of the overall picture. Our society fosters aggressive competitiveness on almost all levels of activity; and the Overgovernment rarely seems too concerned about the absolute legality of methods used in competition. The limits imposed usually are imposed by agreements among citizen organizations—who also enforce them.”
“You feel all this is a kind of substitute for warfare?”
“It’s really more than a substitute,” Ticos said. “A society under serious war stresses tends to grow rigidly controlled and the scope of the average individual is correspondingly reduced. In the kind of balanced anarchy in which we live now, the individual’s scope is almost as wide as he wants to make it or his peers will tolerate. For the large class of nonaggressive citizens who’d prefer simply to be allowed to go about their business and keep out of trouble that’s a nonoptimum situation. They’re presented with many unpleasant problems they don’t want, are endangered and occasionally harassed or destroyed by human predators. But in the long run the problems never really seem to get out of hand. Because we also have highly aggressive antipredators. Typically, they don’t prey on the harmless citizen. But their hackles go up when they meet their mirror image, the predator—from whom they can be distinguished mainly by their goals. When there are no official restraints on them, they appear to be as a class more than a match for the predators. As you say, you handle your criminals here on Nandy-Cline. Wherever the citizenry is making a real effort, they seem to be similarly handled. On the whole our civilization flourishes.” He added, “There are shadings and variations to all this, of course. The harmless citizen, the predator and the antipredator are ideal concepts. But the pattern exists and is being maintained.”
“So what’s the point?” Nile asked. “If it’s maintained deliberately, it seems rather cruel.”
“It has abominably cruel aspects, as a matter of fact. However, as a species,” said Ticos, “man evolved as a very tough, alert and adaptable creature, well qualified to look out for what he considered his interests. The war centuries honed those qualities. They’re being even more effectively honed today. I think it’s done deliberately. The Overgovernment evidently isn’t interested in establishing a paradisiac environment for the harmless citizen. It’s interest is in the overall quality of the species. And man as a species remains an eminently dangerous creature. The Overgovernment restricts it no more than necessity dictates. So it doesn’t support the search for immortality—immortality would change the creature. In what way, no one can really say. Eugenics should change it, so eugenics projects aren’t really favored, though they aren’t interfered with. I think the Overgovernment prefers the species to continue to evolve in its own way. On the record, it’s done well. They don’t want to risk eliminating genetic possibilities which may be required eventually to keep it from encountering some competitive species as an inferior.”
Nile said after a pause, “Well, that’s mainly speculation, Ticos.”
“Of course it is. But it’s no speculation to say that the Hub still has its Tuvelas and that they’re as thoroughly conditioned to act at peak performance as they ever were in the pre-Federation days. Further, there’s now a relatively huge number of them around. That’s what makes the position of the Parahuans and their potential allies impossible. They aren’t opposed by a narrow caste of Guard-
ians. They’d hit automatic Tuvela strategy again wherever and whenever they tried to strike. A few, a very few, of the Palachs realized that. Moga was one of them. That’s why he killed himself.”
“Moga killed himself?”
“At the crucial moment in the lab,” Ticos said, “you rather cravenly dropped flat on your face. Since nobody was pointing a gun at me, I remained standing and watched. Moga couldn’t foresee exactly what would happen, but I knew he’d been aware of the purpose of my specimens for some time. He understood that he and the group which came into the lab with him would have to die if we were to escape. We had to escape to keep the Voice of Action checked. When the moment came, Moga was quite ready. The others didn’t find time to squeeze their gun studs. He found time to pitch that bag at you so you would get your gun back. You see, he knew you were a very competent but still very vulnerable human being. He didn’t believe at all in the legend of the invincible Tuvela. But he had to do what he could to help preserve the legend. He had a cold, hopeless hatred for humanity because he had realized it was the superior species. And as he said, he was in deathly fear for Porad Anz. The Everliving as a whole were simply unable to understand that mankind could be superior to them. The concept had no meaning. But they could be persuaded to withdraw if they became convinced that the freakish supermen who ruled humanity were truly invincible. So, in effect, Moga conspired with me, and later with you, to produce that impression on them . . .”
He paused, shook his head, yawned deeply. Nile watched him.
“You see, I . . . uh, what . . .” His voice trailed off. His eyes were half closed now, lids flickering. After a moment his head began to sag.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Huh?” Ticos raised his head again, shook it. “I don’t know,” he said hesitantly. “There was—mental confusion for a moment . . . swirling bright lights. Don’t quite know how to describe it.” He drew a deep breath. “Part of the nerve charge effect, I suppose?”
“Yes, it is,” she said. “Neural agitators are dirty weapons. You never know what the results will be. The particular kind of thing you’re experiencing can build up for hours. When it does, it may cause permanent brain damage.”
Ticos shrugged irritably. “What can I do about it? I’ve been blocking the stuff, but it seems to be leaking through to me now.”
“Sleep’s indicated. Plenty of sleep—preferably not less than a day or two. After that you should be all right again.”
“The problem there,” Ticos said, “is that I don’t believe I’ll be able to sleep without drugs. And we don’t—” He glanced at her. “Or do we?”
“We do. I saw balath seeds on the way here and brought a few along.”
He grunted. “Think of everything, don’t you? Well, I’ll be no good to the cause in the shape I’m in; that’s obvious. Better give me the balath and get on about your Tuvela business. Try to make it back here though, will you?”
“I will.” The natural end to the balath sleep was death—for the human organism, in about a week. Ticos knew that if she couldn’t get him to the mainland and to antidotes presently, he wouldn’t wake up again.
He took three soft-shelled seeds from her hand, said, “Hold your breath—good luck!” and cracked them between his fingers, close to his face. Nile heard him breathe deeply as the balath fumes drifted out from the seeds. Then he sighed, slumped back and slid down out of sight into the pod. After a few seconds, the pod cover closed over the vacated opening. Well, he’d be as safe in there for a while as he could be anywhere in this area.
She reset the belt, checked her gear. Then paused a moment, head turned up. Something—a brief muffled thudding, as much body sensation as sound. It seemed to come from the sky. She’d heard similar sounds twice before while Ticos was talking. Evidently he hadn’t heard them. They might have been the rumble of thunder, but she didn’t think it was thunder.
Lightweight again, she moved back quickly along the living cables to the floatwood bough which intersected the incubator and on to the barrier hedge. She laid her hands for a moment against the hedge’s branches. They opened quietly for her, and she slipped out into the forest.
For a minute she stood glancing about and listening. The thudding noise hadn’t been repeated and there were no other indications of abnormal activity about. A great racket was starting up in the sea-haval rookery; but the sea-havals, young and old, needed no abnormal activities to set them off. Nile descended quickly through the forest until she heard water surge and gurgle below, then moved back to the lagoon.
The sky was almost cloudless now, blazing with massed starshine. She gazed about the lagoon from cover. At the base of the forest across from her a string of tiny bright-blue lights bobbed gently up and down. Were they looking for her over there? She twisted the otter caller.
Sweeting appeared, bubbling and hunting-happy, eager to be given fresh instructions. The tarm was dying or dead. The otters had rammed a fresh battery of poison thorns into it when it came out into the water, and shortly afterwards it sank to the lagoon’s root floor, turned on its side and stopped moving. Next they discovered a large group of armed Parahuans prowling about the floating pads and other vegetation in the central area of the lagoon. The otters accompanied them in the water, waiting for opportunities to strike. Opportunities soon came. By the time the search party grew aware of losses in its ranks, eight lifeless Oganoons had been left wedged deep among the root tangles.
“You didn’t let yourselves be seen?”
Sweeting snorted derisively.
“Waddle-foot jumps into water. Doesn’t come up. Is sad, heh? Sea-haval eat him? Guardian Etland eat him? No otters there then.”
Nile could picture it. A subsurface swirl in the dark water, three or four slashes, another flopping body hauled quickly down towards the roots . . . and no slightest indication of the nature of the attacker. The remaining Parahuans had bunched up together on the pads, keeping well away from the water. When lights began to flash and several boats approached, bristling with guns, Sweeting and her companions moved off. From a distance they watched the boats take the search party away.
Presently then: “Bloomp-bloomp! Big gun—”
Which explained the thudding noises Nile had heard. Great geysers boiled up suddenly from the area where the Parahuans had been waylaid. The fire came from a hidden emplacement on the far side of the lagoon. Sweeting described pale flares of light, soft heavy thumps of discharge. A medium energy gun—brought into action in hopes of destroying what? The Tuvela? The Palachs would have no other explanation for what had happened out there. And if they’d realized by now that their great tarm was also among the dead or missing . . .
“What were they shooting at later?” she asked.
Sweeting tilted her nose at the sky, gave the approximate otter equivalent of a shrug. “Up there! Kesters . . .”
“Kesters?”
Kesters it seemed to have been. Perhaps the gun drew had picked up a high-flying migratory flock in its instruments and mistaken it for human vehicles. In any case, some time after the discharge a rain of charred and dismembered kester bodies briefly sprinkled the lagoon surface.
Nile chewed her lip. Parrol couldn’t possibly be about the area yet, and that some other aircar should have chanced to pass by at this particular time was simply too unlikely. It looked like a case of generally jittery nerves and growing demoralization. Ticos had questioned whether the Voice of Action would be able to maintain the organization of the forces which were now under its sole control.
“And this last time?” she asked. Water stirred at her left as she spoke. She glanced over, saw that the wild otter pair had joined them, lifted a hand in greeting. They grinned silently, drifted closer.
“Wasn’t us,” Sweeting told her. The fire had been directed into the lagoon again, near the western end of the island. The otters hadn’t been anywhere near those waters. Another panic reaction?
“What are they doing over there?” Nile asked. She nodded to the north, across the lagoon. The pinpricks of blue light moved slowly along the base of the forest.
The otters had investigated them. A flotilla of small submersibles had appeared, presumably dispatched by the great command ship in the depths. Each was marked by one of the lights—purpose unknown. They were stationing sentries in pairs along the edge of the forest.
Nile considered it. The beginning of a major organized drive to encircle the Tuvela in the lagoon—assuming the energy gun hadn’t got rid of her? It seemed improbable. Sentries normally were put out for defensive purposes. They had at least one gun emplacement over there, perhaps other posts that looked vulnerable to them. They might be wondering whether the Tuvela would presently come out of the water and start doing something about those posts . . .
How open were the sentries to attack?
The otters had been considering the point when Sweeting picked up Nile’s signal. The Parahuans were stationed above water level, at varying heights. One pair squatted on a floatwood stub not much more than fifteen feet above the lift of the waves. There was no visual contact between most of the posts.
Nile had seen Spiff and Sweeting drive up twenty-five feet from the surface of the sea to pluck skimmingkesters out of the air . . .
“If you can pick off that one pair before they squawk,” she said, “do it. It will keep the rest of them interested in that side of the lagoon for a while. Stay away from there afterwards . . . and don’t bother any other waddle-feet until you hear from me.”
They agreed. “What you doing now, Nile?” Sweeting asked.
“Getting a fire started so Dan can find us.”
IX
She moved steadily upward. The ancient floatwood trunks swayed and creaked in the wind; lesser growth rustled and whispered. The uneasy lapping of the ocean receded gradually below.
When she had come high enough, she turned towards the sea-haval rookery. The thickest sections of the oilwood stand rose somewhat beyond it. A swirl of the wind brought the rookery’s stenches simmering about her. Vague rumblings rose through the forest. The area was quieter than it had been in early evening, but the gigantic feedings and the periodic uproar connected with them would continue at intervals through the night. She kept well above the rookery in passing. It was like a huge dark cage, hacked and sawn by great toothed beaks out of the heart of the forest. Intruders there were not viewed with favor by the sea-havals.
She was perhaps three hundred feet above the rookery and now well over towards the southern front of the forest when she came to an abrupt halt.
Throughout these hours her senses had been keyed to a pitch which automatically slapped a danger label on anything which did not match normal patterns of the overall forest scene. The outline which suddenly impressed itself on her vision was more than half blotted out by intervening thickets; but her mind linked the visible sections together in an instant. The composite image was that of a very lar
ge pale object.
And that was enough. She knew in the same moment that another tarm had been brought to the island by the Parahuans.
Nile stood where she was, frozen with dismay. There was no immediate cover available here; the slightest motion might bring her to the tarm’s attention. The massive latticework of the forest was fairly open, with only scattered secondary growth between her and the clusters of thickets along the great slanted branch where the giant thing lay. The wild otters had reported seeing two of the creatures when the Parahuans first arrived. This one must have been kept aboard the big headquarters ship since then. It had been taken back to the surface to be used against her, had approached the island through the open sea to the south—
What was it doing in the upper forest levels? Had it already discovered her?
The answer to the first question came immediately. The wind carried the scent of all life passing through the area to the west and along the lagoon up to the tarm. It was lying in wait for an indication that the human enemy was approaching the big blockhouse. A defensive measure against the Tuvela . . . And it was possible that it had, in fact, made out her shape, approaching along the floatwood branches in the night gloom, but hadn’t yet defined her as human because she didn’t bring with her a human scent.
Nile took a slow step backwards, then another and a third, keeping her eyes fixed on what she could see of the tarm. As she reached the first cluster of screening growth, the great body seemed to be hunching, shifting position. The bushes closed behind her. Now the tarm was out of sight . . . and it was difficult to avoid the thought that it had waited only for that instant to come swinging cunningly through the floatwood in pursuit, grappling branches with its tentacle clusters, sliding along the thicker trunks. She ran in lightweight balance towards a huge central bole, rounded it quickly, clutching the gnarled surface with hands and grip-soles, hesitated on the far side, eyes searching the area below.
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 193