She gathered that the matter looked quite favorable, but that they couldn’t give her definite information yet. One of them was still inside the Siren, analyzing it. She was to take the container back to her room now, and return with it in the evening. Then they would be able to tell her more.
IV
“Well?” Pilch inquired, when they met two days later in Ceyce.
“They can do it,” Trigger said. “They couldn’t explain how—at least not in a way I understood.”
“You hardly look overjoyed,” Pilch observed. “What’s the hitch?”
Trigger shrugged. “The time element. They live so long, they never really seem to understand how important time is to us. Getting the Sirens tamed down would take them a while.”
“How much of a while?”
“That was a little blurry. Anything having to do with time tends to be with them. But I’m afraid they meant something like a couple of centuries.”
Pilch shook her head. “We can’t wait that long!”
“I know,” Trigger said. “What I told them was that I was in a little bit of a hurry with the Sirens, so I’d better shop around for faster results.”
“How did they react?”
“They seemed to think it was a good idea. So—I’m on the move again.” Trigger smiled soberly. “What are the other approaches you had in mind?”
“At the moment, I have two suggestions,” said Pilch. “There are a few Service xenos in whom I’d have some confidence in the matter. They’re among our best operators. However, they’re on an assignment outside the Hub. Even if they were to interrupt what they’re doing—which they shouldn’t—it would take them well over a month to get here.”
“I’ll be glad to take the specimen to them,” said Trigger.
Pilch nodded. “We may wind up having you do just that. On the other hand, you may need to go no farther than Orado. There’s a psi there who’s a very capable xenotelepath. She isn’t in the Service and doesn’t let it be generally known that she’s a psi. But, if she feels like it, it’s quite possible she’ll be able to determine whether the Sirens have intelligence, and whether it’s a type and degree of intelligence that will permit communication with them. If that should turn out to be the case, we’d be over the first great hurdle.”
“We certainly would be!” Trigger agreed. “How do I get in touch with her?”
Pilch produced a card. “Here’s her name and current address. Send her a teleletter, outline the situation, inquire whether she’d like to investigate the specimen for you, and so forth. If she’ll do it, she’s your best present bet.”
“I’ll get at it immediately.” Trigger studied the card, put it in her purse. “Telzey Amberdon. How much can I tell her?”
“Anything you like. Telzey’s come by more information about the Federation’s business than most members of the Council should have. But she doesn’t spill secrets. I’ll give you a Class Four Clearance to send her, to keep it legitimate.”
“What kind of fee will she want?” asked Trigger. “I might have to make arrangements.”
“I doubt she’ll want a fee. Her family has plenty of money. She’ll work for you if the proposition catches her interest. Otherwise, she won’t.”
“I should be able to make it sound interesting enough,” Trigger remarked. “Supposing she gets herself into trouble over this like some of your xenos?”
Pilch said, “Nobody’s suffered permanent damage so far. If she winds up needing therapeutic help, she’ll get it. I wouldn’t worry too much. Telzey’s a little monster in some respects. But I’ll be around the area a while, and you can contact me through any Service center.” She looked at her timepiece. “We’ll go to the Ceyce lab now, and get you equipped with your mind shield.”
“Well, as to that,” said Trigger, “I already have one. Not quite, but very nearly.”
“Eh?”
Trigger explained about her resident Old Galactic, and that he’d been doing something to her nervous system for the past two days. They went to the Service lab anyway; Pilch wanted to know just what was being done to Trigger’s nervous system. Tests established then that she, indeed, had a shield. It permitted contact with her conscious thoughts but sealed off the rest of her mind with a block which stopped the heaviest probe Pilch tried against it. However, it was a block which became nonexistent when Trigger didn’t want it there.
“Any time I decide to get rid of it permanently, it will start fading away,” Trigger said.
Pilch nodded. “I noticed there’d been provision made for that.” She reflected. “Well, you won’t need the shield I’d intended for you. They’re giving you something that seems more effective. So I’ll be running along.”
She left. Around evening of that day, Trigger’s Old Galactic let her know he’d finished his work. She went back to his home tree and held her wrist against it until he’d transferred again, thanked them all around for their trouble, and returned to her room. The letter to Telzey Amberdon was already prepared. It didn’t mention the Old Galactics but was candid about almost everything else, specifically the subject of risks. Trigger flew in to Ceyce and had the letter dispatched to Orado at an interstellar transmitter station. Telzey Amberdon should receive it some six hours later.
That night, after the lights were out in the garden house and Trigger was asleep in her room, a visitor came to Mantelish’s garden. Three Tainequas on their way to their quarters saw, but didn’t notice, the cloaked shape moving toward them under the starblaze, went on talking in their soft voices, unaware of the shadow drifting across their minds, unaware of the visitor passing them a few feet away.
Pilch moved deeper into the garden and into the dimness under the great trees. Now and then she stopped and stood quietly, head turning this way and that, like a sensing animal, to go on in a new direction. At last, she halted before the tree where Trigger had conferred with the Old Galactics, and stayed there.
Awareness stirred in the tree, slowly focused on her. There was a long pause. An inquiry came.
Pilch identified herself. After a time, the identification was acknowledged. Your purpose?
She brought up assorted unhurried impressions of Trigger’s Siren specimen, of the Siren worlds, of the effects produced by Sirens, of their inaccessibility to psi contact . . .
Yes. The Hana species.
What did they know of it?
Pilch gathered presently that they’d never encountered a Hana before this. They’d had reports. Not recent ones. They’d believed the species was extinct.
Was it as dangerous as it appeared to be?
Yes. Very dangerous.
The slow exchange continued. In Pilch’s mind, impressions formed. Time, space, and direction remained wavering, unstable concepts. But, by any human reckoning, it must have been very long ago, very far away in the galaxy’s vastness, that a race of conquerors brought Hanas to many civilized worlds. Presently those worlds were destroyed. The Hanas had swifter weapons than their ability to produce euphoria and mindless dependency in other species. Pilch watched as psi death lanced out from them, and all other minds in a wide radius winked out of existence. She saw great psi machines brought up to control the Hanas, and then those machines shredded into uselessness as their own energies stormed wildly through them. On a planet, while a semblance of its surface remained, the Hana species seemed indestructible, spreading and proliferating like a shifting green flood, sweeping up into furious life here as it was annihilated there.
They died at last when distant space weapons seared all worlds, many hundreds of worlds by then, on which they were to be found until no life of any kind remained possible. Then the great race the Hanas had fought hunted long and far, to make sure none remained alive in the universe.
But it appeared that one remote planet, at least, had been overlooked in that search.
Near daybreak, a small aircar lifted from a forested hillside a little to the north of Mantelish’s garden and sped away toward Ceyce, Trigger
awoke an hour later, had breakfast, watched a few Tainequas moving about the garden from the veranda of her room, settled down to read. Around noon, the telewriter in Mantelish’s office on the ground floor began clanging. Trigger hurried down, took a letter capsule from the receiver.
It appeared Telzey Amberdon’s time next week would be mainly occupied with college graduation exams. However, she did want to see Miss Argee’s Siren and discuss her plan with her, and would be pleased to meet her on Orado. If it happened to be convenient to Miss Argee, she had the coming weekend free—that being Days Seventy-one and Seventy-two of the standard year.
It was now Day Seventy. Trigger called the Psychology Service Center in Ceyce and left a message for Pilch. She packed quickly, loaded the Siren container into her aircar, and headed for Ceyce Port. Within the hour, she was on her way to Orado.
V
Trigger met Telzey Amberdon next morning in a room she’d taken in the Haplandia Hotel at the Orado City Space Terminal. She was startled for a moment by the fact that Telzey seemed to be at most seventeen years old. On reflection, she decided then that a capable young psi, one who knew more Federation secrets than most Council members, might mature rather rapidly.
“Ready to be euphorized?” she asked, by and by.
Telzey nodded. “Let’s check it.”
Trigger switched off the psi block on the Siren container, and Siren euphoria began building up gradually in the room. Telzey leaned forward in her chair, watching the Siren. Her expression grew absent as if she were listening to distant voices. Trigger, having seen a similar expression on Pilch now and then, remained silent. After a minute or two, Telzey straightened, looked over at her.
“You can shield it again,” she said.
Trigger restored the psi block. “What was it like?”
“Very odd! There was a wisp of psi sense for a moment—just as you switched off the block.”
Trigger looked interested and thoughtful. “No one else reported that.”
“It was there. But it was gone at once, and I didn’t get it again. The rest was nothing. Almost like a negation of psi! I felt as if I were reaching into a vacuum.”
Trigger nodded. “That’s more or less how the Service xenos describe the sensation. I brought along a file of their reports. Like to see them?”
Telzey said she would. Trigger produced the file; and Telzey sat down at a table with it and began scanning through the reports. Trigger watched her. A likable sort of young person . . . Strong-willed probably. Intelligent certainly. Capable of succeeding where Pilch’s xenos had failed? Trigger wondered. Still, Pilch wouldn’t have referred to her as a little monster without reason.
The little monster presently closed the file and glanced over at Trigger.
“That certainly is a different kind of psi creature!” she remarked. “Different from anything I’ve come across, anyway. I don’t know if I can do anything with it. I’m not your last hope, am I?”
Trigger smiled briefly. “Not the last. But the next one’s more than a month’s travel time away.”
“Do you want me to try? Now that you’ve seen me?”
Trigger hesitated. “It’s not exactly a matter of wanting anyone to try.”
“You’re worried, aren’t you?” Telzey asked.
“Yes, I’m worried.” Trigger acknowledged. “I seem to be getting a little more worried all the time.”
“What about?”
Trigger bit her lip gently. “I can’t say specifically. It may be my imagination. But I don’t think so. It’s a feeling that we’d better get this business with the Sirens straightened out.”
“Or something might happen?”
“That’s about it. And that the situation might be getting more critical the longer it remains unsettled.”
Telzey studied her quizzically. “Then why aren’t you anxious to have me try the probe?”
Trigger said, “There hasn’t been too much trouble so far. In the labs, where they’ve been trying to modify the Sirens biologically, there’s been no trouble at all. Except, of course, that some people got addiction symptoms before they started using psi blocks and mind shields. But you see, all they’ve accomplished in the labs is to put some checks on the Sirens.” She indicated the container. “Like stopping this one’s growth, keeping the proliferation cycles from getting started, and so on. Meanwhile, there’ve been indications that the chromosomal changes involved have gradually begun to reverse—which, I’ve been told by quite a number of people, is impossible.” Telzey said, “The midget here might start to grow again?”
“Yes, it might. What it means is that the labs haven’t really got anywhere. Now, the Psychology Service xenos didn’t get too far either, but they did learn a few definite things about the Siren. They got into trouble immediately.”
Telzey nodded.
“And you,” Trigger said, “are supposed to be better than the Service xenos. You should be able to go further. If you do, it’s quite possible you’ll get into more serious trouble than they did.”
Telzey said after a moment, “You think the Siren doesn’t intend to change from what it is? Or let us find out what it really is?”
“It almost looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“On the psi side it might look that way,” Telzey agreed. She smiled. “You know, you’re not trying very hard to push me into this!”
“No,” Trigger said. “I’m not trying to push you into it. I don’t feel I should. I feel I should tell you what I think before you decide.” Telzey looked reflective. “You’ve told other people?”
Trigger shook her head. “If I started talking about it, generally, it might turn us back to the extermination program. I think that’s the last thing that should happen.” She added, “Pilch probably knows. She’s looked around in my mind now and then, for one reason and another. But she hasn’t said anything.”
“Pilch is the one who recommended me to you?” Telzey asked.
“Yes. Have you met?”
Telzey shook her head. “I’ve never heard of her. What’s she like?”
Trigger considered.
“Pilch is Pilch,” she said. “She has her ways. She’s a very good psi. She seems to be one of the Service’s top executives. She’s a busy lady, and I don’t think she’d bother herself for a minute with the Sirens if she thought they weren’t important. She told me there was a definite possibility you’d be able to get into communication with our specimen—that’s assuming, of course, there’s something there that can communicate.” Trigger thought again, shrugged. “I’ve known Pilch nearly two years, but that’s almost all I can tell you about her.”
Telzey was silent for over a minute now, dark-blue eyes fixed reflectively on Trigger.
“If I told you,” she said suddenly, “that I didn’t want to get involved in this, what would you do?”
“Get packed for a month’s travel plus,” Trigger said promptly.
“I don’t think it will be at all safe to push ahead on the psi side here, but I think it will be safer generally than not pushing ahead.”
Telzey nodded.
“Well, I am getting involved,” she said. “So that’s settled. We’ll see if Pilch is right, and it’s something I can handle—and whether you’re right, and it’s something that has to be handled. I can’t quite imagine the Sirens as a menace to the Federation, but we’ll try to find out more about them. If I don’t accomplish anything, you can still pack up for that month’s trip. How much time can you spend on Orado now?”
Trigger said, “As much time as it takes, or you’re willing to put in on it.”
Telzey asked, “Where will you stay? We can’t very well work in the Haplandia.”
“We certainly can’t,” Trigger agreed. “We’d have half the hotel in euphoria if we left the Siren unshielded for ten minutes. I haven’t made arrangements yet. The labs where they work on Sirens are all a good distance away from population centers, even though the structures are psi-blocked. So I’ll b
e looking for a place that’s well out in the country, but still convenient for you.”
“I know a place like that.”
“Yes?”
“My family has a summer house up in the hills,” Telzey said. “Nobody will be using it the next couple of months. There’s Ezd Malion, the caretaker; but he and his wife have their own house a quarter of a mile away.”
Trigger nodded. “They’ll be safe there. Unless there are special developments. The Siren euphoria couldn’t do more than give them sunny dispositions at that distance.”
“That’s what I thought from the reports,” said Telzey. “And we can keep the Malions away from the house while we’re working. There’s nobody else around for miles. It’s convenient for me—I can get there from college in twenty minutes. If there isn’t something you want to do, why don’t we move you and the Siren in this afternoon?”
VI
The Hana dwarf dreamed in its own way occasionally. Its life of the moment had been a short one and might not be extended significantly; but its ancestral memory went back for a number of generations before it began to fade, and beyond that was a kind of memory to which it came only when it withdrew its attention wholly from the life of the moment and its requirements. It had taken to doing it frequently since realizing it was on a Veen world and no longer in contact with its kind.
That form of memory went back a long way to the world on which the Hanas originated, and even to the early period of that world when they gained supremacy after dangerous and protracted struggles with savage species as formidable as they, and came at last to the long time in which the world remained in harmony and they kept it so, living the placid and thoughtful plant existence they preferred, but not unaware of what went on outside. Disruptions occurred occasionally when some form of scurrying mobile life, nervously active, eternally eating or being eaten, began to become a nuisance, to crowd out others, or attempt to molest the Hanas. Then the Hanas would beckon that overly excitable species to them and start it on the path which led it eventually to the quietly satisfactory existence of the plant.
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 214