Poul Anderson's Planet Stories

by Poul Anderson

  "I don't see how you could have any kind of civilization without communication."

  "Oh, but they had that, through the symbiosis. The desert—whispers." She spread her hands. "No, I can't describe it. I've only felt the very outermost fringes of it."

  "My Martian," he smiled, with a certain underlying sadness. "My beautiful little Martian."

  "What?" She looked at him, surprised, not understanding flirtation, and the pity was stronger in his heart. Poor kid, poor lovely kid, it wasn't right. . .

  "This is Kreega's main rallying point in Syrtis," she went on, trying to cover her confusion. "There is a permanent garrison, an arsenal, a small factory, but it can all be moved out in a hurry if that should ever be necessary."

  They walked slowly around the place, saying little, avoiding each other's eyes. It was strong, all right, thought the man, though he wondered what chance it would have against a full-dress attack. It was built atop a mesa rising over the rugged hills of Syrtis, a place scored and seamed with ancient canyons and dry riverbeds, caves and crags and hidden fastnesses. Here and there the crumbling square-built ruins of towers and walls older than human history rose out of rock and bush, their hard outlines blurred by the wind till they were another part of the landscape.

  On the west side of the mesa a steep rubbled slope dropped half a mile to the lower hills. Atop it, behind a three-foot parapet, was a wide dusty terrace beyond which rose the low rambling walls of one of the old buildings. A solitary guard stood on the cliff edge some distance off, leaning on his disc-gun and staring into the westering sun. Otherwise no one was in sight. The two humans paused and stood looking over the Martian hills.

  It was a grim and bitter landscape, tawny rust-streaked rock fantastically jumbled into soaring crags and raw bluffs and steep-walled ravines, hard splashes of mineral color, red and blue and ocher and umber, against the naked stone. Here and there were clumps of brush and low twisted trees, thorny and dusty and dull gray-green of hue.

  The shadows were long in the thin chill light of the shrunken sun, sliding edges of darkness against which the crags loomed sharp and savage. Sand blew with a dry whisper between bushes and rocks, whirled and hissed on the faint mordant wind and gnawed at the crumbling stone. Once Fredison saw something slink gauntly out of a cave, a lean feathered thing like a wolf snuffling out after food, and another time a huge-winged bird flapped its slow way overhead—otherwise only stillness and death and the rustling sand. Above him the sky was a deep blue-black with a tinge of green, a high unearthly heaven where stars twinkled faintly even in the daytime.

  Mars.

  The girl sighed beside him and he saw her looking at the land as if it were a holy vision. "Isn't it beautiful?" she whispered. "Isn't it beautiful?"

  "That? Phyllia, that's the damnedest creepy desert I ever saw in my life. You can call that naked hacked-up hagridden scenery beautiful?"

  "But it is," she cried, and there was a strange appeal in the lustrous dark eyes that turned to him. "Can't you see it? Can't you see the bigness and the loneliness and the cleanness of it? Out here you can be alone with God and with the life which is Mars. You can belong and still be yourself—Oh, Lars, it's home!"

  He shook his head, wonderingly. "Let's go inside," he said.

  She sighed, and there was a blurring in her eyes. She turned her face away and led him into the building.

  It was long, full of echoing stone halls and bare stone cells. It could have been some austere Syrian monastery in old days on Earth. Now and again a Martian padded by, another shadow in the great dim length of the corridors, and Fredison's amplifying earphones caught the remote twanging of music. Not human music—this went up and down an eerie scale such as man had never known. It was charged with the weird windy desolation outside and the man's nerves recoiled from it.

  They came finally to a new steel door. "Airlock to my quarters," said Phyllia. "I hope you won't mind—the air in there is pretty thin and chilly by Earth standards. I'll give you the extra room."

  "Thanks," he said, a little thickly. He wondered how to let her know tactfully that it might be putting too much of a strain on his self-control. Well, maybe that was Kreega's idea.

  No—no, he didn't think Martian minds ran in such channels. It occurred to him again what gross and uncouth monsters humans were by their standards. And nevertheless, they had treated him decently so far, and they could win honest and gentle Earthlings to their cause. They couldn't be the murderous fanatics of propaganda.

  Not that they'd scruple to kill him, if it came to that.

  The girl's rooms were furnished with a little more comfort than he had expected, though still not a great deal. There were rugs on the floors, a couple of delicately carved chairs and tables, some vases of quiet shimmering loveliness. Could the Martians do that?

  There was an anachronistic kitchen—he thought of her alone here, cooking and eating and sleeping in loneliness, and the pity returned. A broad window overlooked the enormous landscape and he wondered at the mind which could find beauty and serenity in its raw wilderness.

  "Are you here all the time?" he asked.

  "Oh, no," she laughed. "I'm working or talking with the Hrokkai—the Martians—out roaming the deserts, traveling all over the planet seeing other natives and our human friends, doing a lot of our business with other men. I keep busy, Lars, and I have a lot of fun."

  He shook his head, feeling the sadness close down more heavily. Perhaps the worst part of it was that she didn't imagine any need for pity, that she was actually happy here—or wasn't that good? What is proper and normal anyway? Would she really have been happier as an empty-lifed butterfly on Earth?

  On one of the tables stood a stereograph of a middle-aged human couple. "Your parents?" he asked.

  "Yes." Her voice dropped suddenly low. "They were killed by a bunch of human bandits. Owlie-lovers, they were called, but the men were only after their money."

  "Oh, Phyllia ..."

  He had her in his arms, he never remembered how, and he was kissing her very gently and breathing the fragrance of her hair. She was stiff for a moment and then she sighed and leaned against him and her arms crept up around his neck.

  "Lars, Lars ..."

  "Come away with me, Phyllia. Come away from here, this isn't right for you, you should have a home and children and—Oh, darling, darling, come away with me."

  "I can't, Lars, and you can't, we're caught up in this together and we can't ever run from it. But stay with me, Lars."

  "I love you." He said it with a great dawning wonder. "Why, I'm in love with you!"

  She laughed, softly, close against him.

  The door groaned behind them. They drew apart, she was blushing fiercely and breathing hard, but their hands stayed locked together.

  Kreega entered, coughing in the sudden thickness of the air. A couple of his followers were beside him, weapons in hand. Even as he watched them, Fredison felt the floor quiver under his feet and heard a muffled booming.

  The Martian chief spoke, flat and hard as an iron blade, "They have come. They have found us out and now they are coming against us in force. Fredison, whose side are you on?"

  V

  "Lord, no—!"

  "Kraagh-ixch-aythorr—"

  Even in that wild moment, Fredison noticed with a sudden desolation how the instinctive words which ripped from her were Martian.

  "They are sending bombers over," said Kreega.

  "But you said this place was secret!" exploded Fredison.

  'It was," replied the Martian leader. "But the imperialists have their own spies, no doubt, and occasionally they capture one of us who has some real information and drug or torture it out of him."

  The stone walls rumbled and shivered. Outside the window a fine veil of sand and dust drifted up against the darkening sky.

  "Or that spaceship behind us," said the girl. Her voice came swiftly, suddenly taut and cool as if this were an old story. "They would have suspected we would leave Ear
th and could have mounted ships along our probable orbit. If one of them spotted us it could have followed till close enough to Mars, then it would have radioed Patrol headquarters to pick us up on radar and follow us in."

  Brrroooom!

  Kreega's chill yellow eyes swung to Fredison. "This is no time for idle talk," he snapped. "They are after you and the energy sphere. Will you activate it for us?"

  "What good would it do?" he protested desperately. "I can't use it against bombers."

  "At the very least, you and your knowledge can be destroyed," said the cold voice.

  Fredison looked at Phyllia and met her dark tear-bright gaze. For a very long time they stood looking at each other and their hands drew apart as if the gulf between planets had opened before them.

  "I can't fight the Mars Patrol," he whispered. "It was all right to fight Clinton's thugs but this is the government of Earth, the government I helped elect. Those aren't bandits up there, they're decent boys, humans like us, doing a job. I can't kill them."

  "You just got through saying you couldn't fight bombers anyway," said Kreega dryly. With a vicious bite, "Decide now, Fredison, or we will shoot you down!"

  The floor rocked under them and concussion roared against their eardrums. Fredison saw a jagged split opening in one wall and felt the thin outward rush of air. Phyllia had fallen to the floor. She crawled up, shaking her head dizzily so that the long fair hair swirled about her face. When she looked back at him he saw that there was blood on one cheek.

  "Come on," he snarled. "I'll do it.

  They tumbled into their airsuits, frantically as the atmosphere poured away from them. The Martians dropped their guns and helped, lacing, zipping, bolting down helmets and powerpacks. In moments the humans were armored.

  They fled out into the corridors. The dust of broken stone whirled underfoot, misting the airhelmets until it was as if they ran through gray fog. Fredison saw Martians scurrying on their way to their posts for a futile gallantry of defense, leaping shadows in the trembling halls. The bomb-thunder crashed and roared about them.

  They emerged from the rear of the building and dashed across an open courtyard. The last sunlight blazed on the metal flanks of the bombing rockets, wheeling and soaring high overhead, a dozen steely monsters raining murder down on the fortress. Great gouts of fire and dust fountained heavenward, walls and towers sprang into a hail of stone, the ground shook underfoot. Fredison saw three Martian interceptors spurt flame and climb for the enemy.

  Into a farther building, along a hallway, down a stair hewn into rock ten thousand years before . .. Another metal door, blatant in its newness against the dying old Martian work, an airlock, into a long low-ceilinged room glittering with physical apparatus. Fredison stripped off his gauntlets and flung his helmet back even as he sped for the bench on which lay the energy globe.

  Dakka and Hraestoh were standing by the bench. "What do you want, Dr. Fredison? Name it and we'll get it."

  He rapped out the list: vacuum tubes, rheostats, variable condensers, resistors, and began fiddling with the oscilloscope already set up. "Have to get the frequencies just right," he muttered, "or the thing won't work."

  His hands seemed to have a life of their own, plying tools, creating the circuit without conscious thought. Down here the bomb-concussion sounded faintly, a broken rumbling hardly to be sensed above the clamor of his heart. "Why aren't you fighting the bombers with more pursuit rockets?" he asked. "Those three I saw going up may get one or two and then they'll be shot down. You ought to have guided missiles, too."

  "But we haven't," said Kreega wearily. "Those things don't suit our style of fighting, even if we could afford them. The rockets we just now sent are indeed going to their destruction but they may hold off the attack just a little, just long enough." He sagged into a chair and Fredison realized how old and tired he was.

  "Those aren't atomic bombs," said Phyllia. She sat down on the arm of Kreega's chair and stroked his feathered head with tender fingers. "Tordenite, I think, strong stuff but not atomic."

  "Certainly not," said Kreega. "They don't want radioactivity. They are simply reducing us now, softening us for their infantry and armor. The Ares must be somewhere nearby. It will discharge its forces when all our works here are flattened. Then they'll move in and kill as many of us as they can."

  The bombs bellowed overhead. The thing he was building grew under Fredison's hands.

  A buzz came from the telescreen in one corner. "Call on the standard wavelength," said Kreega, "It must be the Earthlings." He got up and limped over to the instrument and flicked its receiver on.

  The blurred image sharpened. Fredison saw a human face, a bald and double-chinned man with a ruthless forcefulness in the nose and jaw and pale eyes—Clinton. By the gods, Clinton himself, chief of Security!

  "I want to speak to Kreega," he said. His voice was strong, reverberant with the arrogance of power.

  "This is he." Against that bulking image the Martian seemed small and thin and frail, a futile gray ghost, a withered autumn leaf waiting to be whirled off by the winds of winter.

  "Kreega," said Clinton, "I want Fredison alive. I know you have him and the Mars Patrol is coming in to get him You may, of course, try to kill the man first or do something equally silly, so I am prepared to offer generous terms."

  He paused expectantly. When Kreega said nothing, he went on, "In exchange for Fredison, amnesty for all native rebels and for such humans as you may designate, and a conference between your group and the government of Earth at which such grievances as you feel you may have can be adjusted. I am empowered by the Cabinet to make this offer or, if you refuse, to take whatever measures seem best to me. And I warn you those will be harsh measures."

  "And how do I know you will abide by such terms?" asked the Martian scornfully.

  "They will be broadcast over the entire planet and beamcast to Earth as soon as you agree. Your own agents, listening in here and on Earth, will be able to tell you that that is the case. Thereafter we could not back down without the government falling and a new election which would remove all of us from office. You know that much about Earth, at least."

  "And what concessions could I expect?"

  "We are prepared to offer Mars equal status with all other nations, representation in the Federation parliament, internal independence subject to the usual democratic guarantees, and economic assistance. All you have striven for all your life, handed you on a silver platter in exchange for releasing this man you have kidnapped." A sly politician's look glittered in Clinton's ice-pale eyes. "If you turn down such an offer, Kreega, your own people will disown you."

  The Martian looked back toward the two humans. His expression was unreadable.

  "Come over here, Fredison," he said.

  Slowly, the physicist rose and walked over into iconoscope range. He carried the energy globe in his hands, encased in the framework of the disruptor.

  "So you are alive," said Clinton. "I'm glad of that. I hope you appreciate what trouble we've gone to rescue you."

  "Rescue!" Fredison's laugh jarred the sudden stillness of the room. 'You did your bloody damnedest to capture me yourself, and you know it. What can I expect once I'm in your hands?"

  "Honor, riches, all the usual rewards of great achievement. I can't see your work running loose this way, it's a mortal danger to all humankind and it's my job to protect the race. But now your power can be put to work doing something constructive."

  "Such as helping a Unionist revolt?" said Fredison. "Oh, it's obvious what you're after, Clinton. Once you have me, you can afford to concede everything because in a few months you'll have the means to taking over the whole Solar System."

  "You're impugning the loyalty of a legitimate party. And in any case I am not a Unionist, I ran as a Technicist and you ought to know it."

  "I do. I also know, as everyone does who's not blind, that the Technicist Party is a Unionist dummy. They didn't run a man against you in your district, did they? Yo
u aren't suppressing their illegal private armies, are you?" Fredison laughed again, without mirth. "Oh, no, Clinton, you and your sort have been trading on the political innocence of the scientists for too long now. I read something besides technical journals, and I talk to more people than just my colleagues."

  "Fredison, this is treason. You're going against your government—against your very race. All you can accomplish is your own death—for nothing. If you don't concede to us now I'll declare martial law and the whole owlie race will be hunted down like the animals they are."

  They had stopped bombing. A great and terrible hush had fallen and only the humming of the telescreen broke the stillness. Phyllia stood rigid beside Fredison, the hand that touched his was cold. Kreega was like a carven image in gray stone. The other Martians crouched tense on the floor—not a movement, not a whisper.

  The man shook his head at last, blindly. "No," he said. "I don't like any aspect of this thing but I like yours least of all. There are worse things than death, even racial death. You've hunted me across the Solar System and now you've got me cornered and it's time I started fighting back."

  "You fool—"

  Kreega blanked the screen. For a moment longer he stood without moving and then he pulled his weary body erect and the old war-flames danced in his eyes.

  "What will you do?" he asked.

  "Oh, Lars, Lars, Lars!" Phyllia was in his arms, sobbing, kissing him, pulling his face down to hers. After a long while he looked up to meet Kreega's bleak gaze.

  "I don't know," Fredison said. "Have you any ideas? Maybe it is best to dissolve the globe now, wipe everything out, hope for some turn of luck after we're dead. I don't know."

  "Not yet!" The Martian was suddenly galvanized. "There are ways out of this place, and the Ares can't be so far off. Before all the Powers, we'll carry the fight to them!"

  The man held the girl close, not thinking, not believing or hoping, straining himself to this moment and this woman. They hadn't long to live and life was desperately sweet. He had her now and that was almost enough.