Test of Fire (1982)

by Ben Bova

  For long moments no one said a word. All the Councilors turned to Lisa, waiting for her reaction.

  Alec sat rigid with tension, staring at his mother like the rest of them.

  At last, Lisa said very softly, "We are beginning to hear repetitions of previous discussions. A motion has been made to put the question to a vote. Who will second the motion?"

  "One moment, please." LaStrande again. "I suggest that we change from our usual voice vote to a secret ballot. To assure complete freedom of choice."

  "Very well," Lisa said. Her eyes closed and her voice sounded infinitely weary. "If there are no other objections . . ."

  Why? Alec raged silently at her. Why vote now, before these stupid arguments have been laid to rest? Then he saw the withering look Lisa was firing at Sylvia Dortman and he suddenly understood.

  She wants to get the vote in while she still has the majority. She's afraid that our support is crumbling away.

  The Councilors voted by pressing the appropriate button on the tiny panels set into the table at each of their places. Their votes were registered by the computer and displayed on the viewscreen on the wall. Fifteen Council members, eight votes needed to carry the election.

  The screen flickered and showed: COUNCIL VOTE. SIX VOTES FOR MORGAN. FOUR VOTES FOR KOBOL. FIVE ABSTENTIONS.

  Twisted around in his chair to read the screen, Alec felt fear for the first time. Five abstentions!

  They could swing the vote to Kobol. Just four of them could!

  "We'll have to take another ballot" Lisa said.

  "Madam Chairwoman."

  It was Kobol. He had stayed silent through the debate so far, as propriety demanded. But now he rose to his feet, a lanky unfolding of knees and elbows.

  "There's been enough debate," he said slowly, nasally, "to convince me that further discussion could split the Council into antagonistic factions and cause divisions among us that might not be healed for years. I think the time has come for a compromise, in the interests of peace and unity."

  "What do you have in mind?" Lisa asked.

  With a humorless smile, Kobol replied, "If we look only at the various physical and mental tests that we've all been subjected to, there's no question that Alec is the best qualified man to head the expedition Earthside. What we're arguing about here is a question of trust—or guilt, really."

  Alec could not take his eyes off Kobol's face.

  Something was going on behind the mask he wore.

  "No one wants to head this expedition more than I do," Kobol continued. "I think I'd do a good job of it, despite my limp. I've been Earthside before, I know what to expect. I'd be prepared to fight off any opposition we might meet—even if it was Doug Morgan and his barbarian army."

  A sigh of understanding went around the table.

  "But I also know that for me to insist on heading the expedition could cause irreparable damage here: friend against friend, jealousy and hatred instead of harmony and cooperation."

  What's he driving at? Alec ached to know.

  "So I would like to withdraw my name from consideration as the expedition's commander . . ."

  The Councilors gave a collective gasp.

  ". . . providing I can be named deputy commander, serving under Alec."

  Alec felt as if he'd been led up to a mountaintop and then pushed off. The whole Council seemed stunned, but soon enough they recovered and began to murmur, nod heads, look back and forth at one another. Kobol sat down while they chattered.

  Lisa called for order.

  LaStrande asked to be recognized. "I've never seen such a generous, unselfish move in this chamber. I suggest that we name Alexander Morgan commander of the expedition and Martin Kobol deputy commander—by unanimous voice vote!"

  Everyone cheered. The actual vote was a formality.

  Smiling, relieved, happy that the impasse had been broken, the Councilors filed out of the chamber. Each one of them shook Alec's hand— and Kobol's. Alec stood by his chair, still in turmoil inside, until no one was left in the room except himself, his mother, and Kobol.

  Lisa stood behind her chair. It struck Alec that she was using it like a shield, keeping it between herself and Kobol.

  "Is that what you wanted?" she asked him, in a low voice.

  Kobol grinned at her. "Not entirely. But it's a step in the right direction."

  Alec started around the table for his mother.

  She said to Kobol, "Martin, I want to . . . thank you. It took a considerable amount of sense and courage to suggest this compromise."

  "I'm always willing to settle for half a loaf, when it looks sure that I won't get any if I don't compromise."

  Alec reached her side, but she was still focused on Kobol, who had also come closer. Now he was only a pace or two away from Lisa, within arm's reach.

  "You're still determined to rule the Council, aren't you, Martin?"

  "The Council—and everyone on it."

  She smiled at that. "And you believe you can use this expedition to enhance your position? Even as deputy commander?" Lisa put a subtle emphasis on the word deputy.

  "Of course," he answered. "Why do you want Alec to head the expedition so badly? He'll be a Council candidate, won't he, when he comes back? Someday you'll try to maneuver him into the chairmanship, after you decide to step down."

  "Why not?" Lisa said.

  "Because I'll be chairman by then," Kobol said, with iron certainty in his voice.

  She laughed. "You're dreaming, Martin."

  "Some dreams come true," he replied, shrugging. "You've dreamed big dreams, god knows. And now one of them's coming true. Your son's going to avenge your husband's treason. Clear the family name. Preserve your power on the Council."

  Lisa reached an arm out toward Alec. He took her outstretched hand, and she pulled him close to her.

  "That's right," she whispered back to Kobol, in a low, breathless hiss. "Alec is going to achieve greatness. And you can't stop him."

  "Stop him?" Kobol chuckled. "I'm going to help him. I've voluntarily placed myself under his command, remember?"

  "Yes," she said. "Of course you have."

  For a nerve-stretching moment the three of them stood there: Alec by his mother's side, Kobol facing them both. Alec saw that his mother had locked her gaze on Kobol, whose eyes were hidden, unfathomable. But the fire in Lisa's eyes was something Alec had never seen before, something beyond fear, beyond malice, much stronger even than hatred.

  At last Kobol took a step backward. With a muttered, "If you'll excuse me . . ." he headed for the door.

  After the door slid shut behind him, Lisa turned to her son. "He'll try to ruin you, subvert your authority, perhaps even wreck the expedition."

  "I know," Alec said. "He'll try to kill me."

  She shuddered and grasped his arm tightly. Alec pulled her to him and let her lean her head against his shoulder.

  "No, no, he wouldn't . . . Martin wouldn't go that far." But she looked up at him with real fear in her eyes. "I shouldn't have pushed you so hard. I shouldn't have forced you . . ."

  "You didn't force me to do anything."

  Her eyes closed wearily for a moment. "Alec, you're still a child. You don't understand any of this. I can manipulate you, the Councilors, everyone ..." She looked away, toward the closed door.

  "Almost everyone."

  "I can take care of Kobol," he insisted.

  "Can you? Will you know what to do, when the time comes?"

  "Yes." He was dead calm inside now. "When the time comes, I'll kill him."

  "No! It mustn't come to that! I don't want you even to think that way. If it comes to violence, he'll kill you. He'll strike when you least expect it. He could be a thousand kilometers away and he'll still be able to reach you. It mustn't come to violence, Alec, or you'll end up the dead one."

  Alec pulled away from her. "I can take care of myself. And him. And you, too."

  She gazed at him, the expression on her face slowly changing, shifting, a
s she appraised her son.

  "And your father?" she asked. "What about him?"

  The old sickening wave of hatred rose inside Alec again. "I can take care of him, as well."

  "He'll come looking for you, as soon as he learns that we've landed an expedition on Earth."

  "Let him," Alec said. "If he doesn't, then I'll go looking for him."

  "And when you two find each other . . .?"

  Alec's fists were clenched so tightly that his fingernails were cutting into his palms. "When I find him, I'll kill him."

  Lisa Ducharme Morgan smiled. "Tell me again," she said softly.

  "I'm going to kill him," Alec repeated. "For all he's done to you, Mother. I'm going to find him and kill him."

  Chapter 11

  He was born in a ditch alongside the road that twisted through the hilly wooded territory between bombed-out Knoxville and abandoned Oak Ridge. His mother left him half-immersed in rain water that had accumulated in the muddy bottom of the ditch. Her only act of mercy toward him was to bite off the umbilical cord and knot it.

  He never saw her.

  If a pair of scavengers had not passed by a few hours later he would have died. If the woman of the pair — girl, actually, she was barely past fourteen — had not lost her own week-old baby a few days before they would have left the infant squalling there in the mud. As it was, the man scowled and grumbled when his woman took up the redfaced, naked baby.

  "Leave 'im fer the varmints" he told her.

  But her eyes welled up and she started sputtering and he relented.

  They had been following in the wake of a larger band of raiders, a few dozen ragged men and women who scoured the countryside, picking it clean of everything edible, wearable, or tradable.

  The band had a few guns, a clever hard-faced leader who knew how to set up an ambush, and the desperation of hunger. The two scavengers had tried to join the band, but had been rebuffed angrily and threatened with death if they got close enough to be seen again.

  So the two of them hung well behind the band, gleaning what they could from their leavings. It was not much. When the band attacked a farm or village they usually burned what they could not carry.

  "Yer maw must've been one o' them raiders" the girl told her foundling child, once he was grown up enough to halfway understand her.

  "Prob'ly her man din't want t' be saddled with a newborn baby and made her leave yew fer us t' find."

  Her man would nod and mutter to himself when she crooned the story to the youngster. Feeding an extra mouth was not to his liking. Besides, the baby's crying meant they had to stay even farther behind the raiders than they had before. He wandered off one day, less than a year later, as the autumn rains began to strip the trees of their leaves. Two weeks later she found him nailed to a tree, his gut sliced open to make a nest for teeming maggots. From the look on his face he had still been alive when they did it.

  She stopped wandering then and built a crude hut of sticks and mud for herself and her baby.

  They nearly starved that winter; only her forays into the shattered, haunted remains of suburban Knoxville saved them. It was pure desperation; everyone new that the buildings and streets were poison. Lingering agonizing death lurked in them, invisibly. But she slunk through the shadows night after night to take the cans of food from the abandoned store shelves that others were too frightened to touch.

  By the time he was six, she was obviously dying of cancer. She hung on for four years of pain and terrifying strange growths that twisted her body horribly. He buried her and faced the world alone, a skinny pinch-faced ten-year-old who knew how to run and hide in the woods, but little else.

  After months of living alone, trapping small game and avoiding all human contact, he was snared by a wandering gang of teenaged boys.

  They had split off from a larger, older band of roamers and were on the prowl for food, fun, and women when they found him with a brace of rabbits tucked into his ragged shorts. Their first thought was to take the rabbits and roast him along with them over a hot fire. But their leader, wise beyond his years, asked the emaciated youngster how he caught the rabbits.

  Once they realized how much he knew about hunting and surviving in the woods they adopted him into the band. He was officially named Ferret, partly because of his looks, partly because of his quick furtive movements, but mainly because he killed small game by biting through their throats.

  Ferret he was, and by the time he was twenty years old he had risen to second-in-command of the band, which now numbered more than fifty men and their women. It was the most feared band of raiders throughout the rolling, wooded hills around Oak Ridge.

  * * *

  The satellite station revolved at a steady one g.

  Alec had spent at least one hour a day over the past five years in the lunar settlement's big centrifuge, feeling six times his normal weight. His Earth-gened muscles had always responded to the full one-gravity load without complaint.

  But here on the space station, after nearly a solid month of six lunar gravities, he was worried.

  He woke in the mornings tired and aching. His back felt sore, the sullen kind of pain that never quite goes away. His pulse drummed in his ears after the simplest exertions, such as climbing a ladder from the sleeping deck to an observation blister.

  At least the blister was in the zero-gravity hub of the satellite station. Alec warned himself against spending too much time there; it would be too easy to allow his complaining body to subvert the purpose of his will.

  Kobol was already there when Alec poked his head up through the hatch in the blister's floor.

  The older man was sitting at one of the observation ports, safety belt latched loosely across his lap, peering intently through one of the stubby telescopes built into the bulkhead.

  The observation blister had four such ports, spaced around its circular perimeter, and a fifth station dangling from the center of its domed ceiling. Taking up most of the floor space was a horseshoe set of consoles and viewscreens, where an observer crew of three monitored all the automated sensors that kept watch on the Earth.

  Alec floated weightlessly up through the hatch.

  Touching his slippered feet to the bare metal floor, he bent over slowly and pushed the hatch shut. The action made him drift toward the horseshoe console. Reaching for the console's edge, he pushed off and glided toward an empty port.

  The sight of Earth so close still made him gasp.

  A huge curving blue immensity streaked with dazzling white, constantly changing as it drifted past the observation port, colors shifting, different textures revealing themselves as it slid past his widened eyes. It's so huge, Alec thought. And so . . . alive.

  "That's the east coast of North America,"

  Kobol's voice drifted to him, like an ancient woodwind playing in its upper register, too refined to be impolite, but condescending, bored by the need to explain everything to inferiors.

  "I know," Alec snapped. "And our prime target area . . ."

  "Look through your number three 'scope,"

  Kobol said. "I've got it slaved to mine."

  Alec sat lightly on the swivel chair and leaned toward the little telescope on his right.

  "Clouds ..." Kobol muttered.

  Through a break in the white, Alec glimpsed brown and green ripples like old lava flows along the edge of a ringwall. But there were no craters in view. These ripples were razorback ridges, hundreds of meters high. Or so he had been told.

  "There ... in the clearing . . ."

  Alec caught a glimpse of gray, a slightly lighter form that looked like a lopsided letter X.

  "That's the airport," Kobol explained as clouds covered the scene again. Alec pulled away from the telescope and turned toward Kobol, who was still talking. 'The Oak Ridge complex is only a few kilometers from the airport. If it's still intact, that's where we'll find both processed and raw fissionables—enough for half a century, at least."

  Nodding, Alec pushed awa
y from his seat and glided to the monitoring consoles.

  "Any activity in that area?" he asked the youth sitting in the center chair.

  He turned to face Alec. "Nothing much ... at least, nothing we can detect. No vehicles, of course. No fires or signs of life that the infrareds can pick up. The area's heavily forested; I don't think we'd be able to detect small numbers of people moving around in there."

  Alec glanced at the fifty-odd screens that blinked and glowed across the curving bank of consoles. The other two technicians were steadily watching the screens, touching dials, making notations.

  "We've got the strength to handle small numbers of raiders," Alec said. "You keep your sensors alert for larger bands."

  The youth smiled. "Yessir. We'll do that."

  The smile irritated Alec. He's only a year or so younger than I am, but I'm in command, by order of the Council, so he has to call me "sir." He wouldn't grin like that at Kobol.

  Then he noticed Kobol watching him, face impassive behind his brows and mustache.

  Abruptly, Alec went back to the hatch and made his way down to the living and working area of the station.

  Speed. Speed and firepower. Those were the keys. Alec lay on his bunk and watched the tapes play out on his viewscreen. His compartment was no bigger or better than anyone else's: a bare little cell with a bunk, a desk, a chair, and a viewscreen.

  We've got to get in and out before anyone realizes we've landed, Alec told himself. He knew that his fifty men, armed with automatic rifles and lasers, could deal with any ragtag band of barbarians that might stumble across them. But the observers had occasionally seen larger groups, more organized, marching along the crumbling old highways. Some on horses. Even a few mechanical vehicles now and then.