by Ted White
“What are you getting at?” she said. She knew what I was getting at; she just wanted me to be the first to put it into words.
“It’s something we have to know,” I said. “It’s something we must find out. Somebody is going to have to share a meal with him.”
Chapter Four
In the back of my mind an insane little line kept repeating itself like an endless tape loop: Who should it be? Me? Who should it be? Me? Who—?
“I don’t think you have the right to ask that of me,” Dian said.
I sighed. “No, you’re right. I don’t.” I stood up. “I’m sorry to have involved you in this, Dian.” I slid back the door.
“Wait,” she said, her voice very low. “Just a minute.”
I closed the door and turned back to face her. Her head was bowed and I couldn’t see her expression. I waited.
“I—I guess the man has gotten to me,” she said. Well, that made two of us—each in his own way, of course. “But…I just don’t know if I could go through with something like that. I just don’t know….”
“I have a suggestion,” I said. “Why don’t you take him out sightseeing today? You know—the hovercraft cruise, the moldy old landmarks, all the tourist stuff. All public, all in the bright light of day. Take your time, see if he brings it up again. Maybe he won’t. But don’t make up your mind in advance; see how you feel when he makes the proposition—if he does. How does that strike you?”
“I—don’t know,” she said, but she looked up at me with a small smile. “I guess that might be an idea.”
I leaned over her and lightly kneaded her bare shoulders. “Remember,” I said, “it’s all for the good of the Bureau.”
She straightened up, shrugging off my hand. “Oh, you—!” she said, but the look she gave me was that of the old, mischievous Dian.
The next several hours were spent at routine work. I Called Bjonn and told him Dian would be taking him sightseeing, and then I plowed into the exhausting details we’d been furnished by Data Central on Farhome, following the debriefing of the Longhaul II crew and staff. It was, for the most part, dry and boring: a welter of facts and figures, tables and tabulations which constituted the scientific code for the substance of what Farhome really was.
The thing is, the Longhaul II, an interstellar ship designed for use only in orbit or weak gravitational fields, could land only a shuttle craft (a so-called lifeboat, but no one has yet tested their potential for deep-space survival)—and the amount of gear that could be carried in such a small craft was minimal. So what I had to work with was largely useless: spectrographic readings of Farhome’s atmosphere (no significant improvement on those brought back by the original probe), and a lot of other data on the atmospheric content, trace elements in commonly grown food sources, general makeup of the planet’s crust, salt content of Farhome’s oceans, and so on. It was broadrange stuff, no doubt of immense value in determining the nature and variety of goods to be shipped out next trip, but having little of value to me. Only one section stood out amid all this weights-and-measures data: the observations of the ship’s resident shrink on the colonial society. I had that put on printout, and sat back to absorb it more fully.
The average family on Farhome had at least six children. Of the 873 original survivors of the cold-sleep, 460 were women, outnumbering the men by forty-seven. Apparently accommodations were reached in what remained an essentially monogamous society so that every woman became a mother. (None of the colonists had been contracted in marriage to any other colonist at the time they were selected.) The goal was six children, spaced over twelve years, during which the women joined the men in setting up their first townsite and developing nearby farms. (The Deep Space, designed with lifting surfaces for its one-way trip, had been glided in, and furnished food from its stores and prefab hydroponic units for the early months. It stayed in production on a supplementary basis, I learned, more than twenty years thereafter.) There were nearly three thousand in the second generation, fairly equally divided in sex. Current projections had Farhome’s total human population at over eleven thousand. Of these offspring, a significant number, perhaps one in six, were the products of the ship’s supplementary sperm bank, which was intended to combat genetic drift in such a small, relatively closed community. There was talk of supplying a fresh addition to that sperm bank on the Longhaul II’s next trip.
But obviously, from what I’d noted, genetic drift or no genetic drift, there had already been changes worked in Farhome’s colonists.
The shrink noticed them too, if less perceptively.
“It has been noted,” he noted, “that the social structure of the colonists is far more fluid than might have been expected. Despite the strong need for survival skills and specialization, and for the resultant differential in status, class, etc., between agricultural workers and industrial technicians, no actual class structure has been observed.
“Particularly noticeable is the colonists’ unusual willingness to communicate at length with this observer, despite the interruption thus imposed upon their tasks. One meets unfailing courtesy, unruffled tempers, and a welcome reception anywhere one goes. Fights, disputes, altercations are apparently so rare as to be remarkable. Although the colonists have evolved a political structure commensurate with their needs in such an open and unpopulated land, they have made no provision for policing their society. They have provided no courts, or other means of dealing with disputes. Crime seems unknown to them. When queried, they remark that they have little time for the trappings of an idle society. This observer found their sincerity unmistakable, but nonetheless naive, and predicts that within the next generation—observable on the next journey to Farhome—population density will require the adoption of these institutions.”
He’d given the colonists a battery of tests, and found that to the man they ranked within the top percentiles of intelligence and personality adjustment—although he questioned the validity of the latter tests, and remarked in passing that inasmuch as a proper curve had not yet been established for the colonists as a whole, his findings were relevant only to Earth norms.
I suppose if you’re used to measuring everything around you, the only way you can relate to something new is to say, “I found different measurements.” He surely didn’t know what he had.
The environment of Farhome was not particularly hostile—at least within the area settled. A few native plants had been cautiously tested and found edible. A number of native animals were domesticable. A small town—it simply can’t be described as a city; it has less than a hundred dwellings, all individual and set on their own acreage—constituted the main concentration of the colonists, but outlying farms were being established, and mechanized industries had been located near deposits of petroleum and ores. A typical scene, on the tapes, showed a low, sprawling dwelling in the foreground with plantings of varying hues of green surrounding it. To one side would be a garden, and beyond a backdrop of rolling hills that were purple in the distance. The sky was usually heavy with the puffy undersides of gray-gold clouds, which helped to filter out much of the local solar radiation. The whole picture looked very much like an idealization of our own less populated past, and a bit like a put-up job. Staring at it I couldn’t help wondering if a man wouldn’t feel a bit lost and alone in such an empty place.
We used to think the discovery of a world like Farhome was the answer to our own overpopulation problems. We were wrong. A man named Leiberson did a study and a breakdown for us. At the present, the population is more or less stable at twenty-seven billion. If an interstellar ship were filled to its capacity (for life support) with new colonists, it could not hold more than a few thousand—and it would be forced to dump them out on their new world without any luggage, any cherished possessions from their past.
Say three thousand colonists a ship; round-trip time to Farhome is roughly thirty years. Seven ships, if all were diverted to the task—which is impossible right now. Twenty-one thousand people every thi
rty years. Sure.
There’s been some loose talk about building a vast fleet—mostly from a few demagogues after they’d heard from the Longhaul II that the colony on Farhome was thriving. But it costs billions to build an interstellar ship, and at the present state of the art it takes about ten years to do it. Supplies have to be ferried into orbit, an enormous expense in itself. They’re building refractories on the Moon, but that’s a separate project and one not expected to pay dividends for the next fifty years.
The way Leiberson figured it, it would cost the present population of Earth the entire lifetime earnings of every living man, woman and child to export one hundredth of their number to Farhome within this century.
Besides, how many of us would really want to settle a desolate planet with fewer than a million neighbors stretched out over a landmass almost double that of Earth’s? The solutions—if they are ever to be found—will have to be home-grown.
I had a buzz from Dian late in the afternoon, just as I was getting ready to go home. Her picture was blurry, but she looked radiant. “Tad? Will you meet us at Bjonn’s hotel? I really want to see you.”
I told her I’d meet them there, and cleared the board. I’d finished taping my prelims, and I was exhausted. I joined the changing of the shift (thank God I don’t get on the swing shifts any more; rank hath its privileges) at the lifts, and used my priorities for a pod, picking up a few grim looks in the process. I’m inured.
Minutes later, I was pushing my way into the lobby of the Stiles Arms, and taking an uncrowded lift up to Bjonn’s floor. I shook out my clothing and popped a pill for sweat odor, wishing at about that moment that I could be in my own ‘fresher in my own apt.
Dian opened the door at my first knock, and at first ‘I didn’t notice the difference in her. She invited me in, her eyes sparkling, but I was too tired. I just didn’t notice.
Then Bjonn said, “We’re glad to see you again,” and I looked up. There was a note of something—almost gleeful?—in his voice, and the “we” was subtly underscored.
Dian had moved to his side, looking pert and diminutive against his tall figure, and suddenly I understood. The “we” was no figure of speech.
Something had happened.
Dian was changed.
“It’s so marvelous, Tad—so wonderful!” she said. “We want to share it with you.” Her eyes were focused directly on mine—why had I never before noticed the color of her eyes?—and the accents of sincerity changed her entire speech pattern.
I saw that, and in that moment I realized in an intuitive flash that the bubbly, happy Dian I’d always known was a facade, a defense that held me—all of the world—at arm’s length. And now it was gone, and here before me stood a different Dian. She stood straighter, taller. The funny little quirky smile she used to wear, a lopsided way of smiling as she cocked her head the other way, was gone. Her face looked relaxed and open, in a way I’d never seen it.
And I knew, in the instant I saw and recognized these things, a fierce and violently passionate stab of jealousy. He’d reached her. In some strange fashion he had seduced her—seduced her mind.
She was alien now, too.
“Sit down, Tad,” Bjonn said. “You look troubled. Is something disturbing you?”
Yes, I wanted to scream at him—You are, you smug bastard!
But I just shook my head. “I’m tired,” I said. “I’ve spent a long day at the office.”
Dian laughed a slow, warm laugh. It was very musical, very relaxed, the sound of a woman satisfied.
“Poor Tad,” she said. “Poor Tad.” She seemed almost intoxicated.
Bjonn flashed her some sort of look and then she was contrite. “I’m Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to sound patronizing. But you’ll understand.”
“Easy, now,” Bjonn said to her. He seemed to be cautioning her. “Not all at once.”
“I guess I haven’t had time to become used to it,” she said. “Oh, Tad, I’m free!”
I shook my head again. “Must be a loose connection,” I said. “I hear sound, but it doesn’t match with the picture.”
“Tad, I want you to relax, to put your day’s worries from your mind. It is all so unnecessary, you know,” Bjonn said. He moved to the window control, dimmed them, and left the room deep in shadow. Then he led Dian to a low couch opposite the chair I’d found to sink into. His face was highlighted by the remaining glow, his features half lost and etched in appearance. Dian snuggled up against him like a kitten. “Dian has told me about your assignment,” he added.
That, too! “Thanks,” I told her, the sarcasm rolling in heavy droplets from my voice. “I hope you didn’t forget anything or leave anything out.”
“You mustn’t feel she has betrayed you, Tad,” Bjonn said. His voice was somehow disembodied, but very close, almost overpoweringly intimate. “It was in your own best interests.”
“You just twisted her around your little finger, and she told you all,” I suggested. “‘It’s in Tad’s own best interests,’ you told her, and she just couldn’t resist telling you.”
“It’s not that way at all, Tad,” Dian said in a dreamy tone. “Not that way at all.”
“What I’m about to offer you will make your assignment superfluous,” Bjonn said. “She knew that.”
“Forgive me if I doubt that like hell,” I said.
“Why are you so tense, Tad?” Dian said. “No one is threatening you.”
“No?”
“No,” Bjonn said. “You are among friends, here, Tad. The closest friends you have. Can you believe that?”
“Can you prove it?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Then tell me just what the hell is going on here,” I demanded.’ “Why the dim lights, all this, uh, seductiveness? Just what is it you two are pulling?”
“Tad, you are being so hostile,” Bjonn said. His voice was very gentle. “It is difficult to offer you a token of love when you are trying so strongly to repulse us.”
“Let it all go, Tad,” Dian broke in. “Let yourself go free! You don’t have to fight all the time. Look at me, I thought I did, but now—”
“Okay, okay, enough,” I said, waving my arms. “Just tell me what you want of me. Just lay it on the line, huh?”
“We’d like to share a meal with you, Tad Dameron,” Bjonn said.
“Please, Tad?” Dian added.
I got to my feet, groped for the door, and ran down the hall. In the lift I threw up, soiling my moccasins.
Chapter Five
The buzz of my home infomat woke me a half hour earlier than usual. I ignored it for the customary three bursts, turned over and was half asleep when it started up again. Which meant it was urgent, because someone had keyed in an override in the courtesy-disconnect, and wasn’t content to leave a message.
I stumbled out of my bednook and thumbed the audio; I had no desire to face someone just yet. “Yeah,” I muttered. “Okay, okay.”
“Tad—” it was Tucker’s voice, hard as grit. “I want a visual contact.”
Reluctantly, I thumbed visual. “Christ, boss, I was asleep—”
“That’s all right. You’re awake now.” He looked grim—more grim than I’d ever seen him.
I tried to shake the cobwebs out of my brain. My eyes kept sliding out of focus, and either the vertical hold was slipping on the infomat screen, or I was. It was probably me. “Look, I’m really not functioning yet,” I said, a little crankily. “It takes me time to wake up in the morning.”
“Tough,” he said. “I want to talk to you, and I want to talk to you now.”
You’d think they owned a man, just because he worked for them. “Okay,” I said. “You’re talking.”
“What happened last night?” Tucker said—less a query than a command.
“Last night?” I said, trying to arrange my thoughts in some sort of orderly sequence. “Last night….”
“Come on—snap up!” Tucker said. “Something happened last night and I
want the straight story—now!”
“Last night….” I repeated. “It seems to me that I was sick last night. Took some pills….” To judge by the racket going on in my head not all of them had worn off yet. “It’s still very fuzzy. Look, boss, can’t it wait a little?”
“Dameron, you’re on the spot,” he said. “And I want answers from you—straight answers. No more evasions. Straighten out your head, and tell me this: What happened to Dian last night?”
“Dian…” I said. “She—she went over.”
“She what?”
“Joined Bjonn. Sold out to him.”
“Suppose you spell it out for me.”
“Called me up, told me to meet her at his hotel. When I got there—really just early evening, you know … I was working at the office. I was doing my prelims—”
“I know,” he said, interrupting me in a savage voice. “I’ve scanned the whole lot of your prelims. Get back to the point, you poor overworked, underpaid, civil servant!”
“Uh, yeah. Well, she was like him.”
“Like who? Bjonn? How do you mean that?”
“Same thing—all the little things about him, you know? Hell, I don’t know what it is; I just know when it’s there and I can spot it. You know.”
“Meaning, she also seemed ‘alien’ to you.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“And you’ve got no idea how it happened.”
“No, I didn’t say that. I know how it happened.”
“Would it be too much,” Tucker asked in a buttery tone, “to share your knowledge of this subject with the man who is your superior?”
“She shared a meal with him,” I said.
Silence. Tucker stared at me for a moment, his face totally devoid of expression. He looked like solid granite.
“She… shared… a… meal… with… him,” he repeated, very slowly, very distinctly, as if I was a very stupid or very young person—or maybe both. “And just how did this come to happen? As I recall, I spoke with her only twenty-two hours ago, and she was so shocked by the idea that she couldn’t even face me and talk about it. As I recall, she told me—on that very same occasion—that she never planned to see the man again. In fact, she told me flat out that even if it came as an order, she wouldn’t do it. And now you are telling me she not only saw this Bjonn—she shared a meal with him?”