At the back of his mind he was able to stand off and review the big picture dispassionately. It was one he had lived through many times before. It began, always, with the simple directive. “Planet Such-and-Such, having been passed as suitable for colonization, is now transferred to the jurisdiction of the Colonization Pre-Settlement Section.” There would follow the classification coding and specific recommendations as to number and type. So far as Barclay was concerned, this much was academic. Where he came in was when it came to allocation of materials, men and programmes, and a fully equipped expedition was despatched to the planet in question to get on with the hard work.
This was his seventh such operation. This was Planet Oloron, classified as suitable for five prototype Settlement Units, to be devoted mainly to Agronomy, secondary ore and chemical extractions, and with an eye to later developments as a Cultural and Recreational Centre. Thus the task was explicitly set out. Five Units, each one a precise square mile of surface, to be hewn from the wilderness and transformed into an area where eager colonists, in groups of one thousand at a time, would be able to set their feet, have a safe breathing space, and then set away to build a life, a future, a civilization. Five Units, five technical squads, and five colonels each intent on outdoing the others in performance in order to earn himself a star. Standards were high, competition fierce, and the rewards considerable. It was the reward, the thought of it, that kept Barclay driving hard. He was able to look back with grim satisfaction on an unbroken row of seven stars, but he chose rather to look ahead. Just one more step ahead. One more star, and it was virtually certain that he would be kicked upstairs.
His head went back fractionally as he thought of it, thought of the huge mother ship up there, hanging in its stationary orbit 23,000 miles out. Up there, to sit and watch and issue remote orders, or advice, and every once in a while to slip a grudging word of commendation and praise. Up there, out of this ceaseless rat-race of driving and supervising and carrying the load of responsibility. This morning more than ever he felt that almost frightening need to make that last jump. It had to be right, this time!
A cue-light winked at him from the right-hand top-corner of the screen. He touched a switch and the spot grew into a quadrant, showing the impassive green dome of the robot-clerk of Central-Com.
“Awaiting your clearance, ready to transmit data-state to HQ.”
“Very well. I’m finished inspecting it. Data approved and clear,” he cancelled the call and the data in the same movement, then buttoned for his Executive Aide, watching the screen yield him a side-view of a face held out to the ministrations of an orderly-robot wielding a depilator. Major Dannard, catching the glow of the screen from the corner of his eye, halted the robot with a sign and swung round.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Morning, Dannard. Just finished checking the state. No serious complaints, but I would like to see the Med. Centre structure pushing along just a bit faster. And the Perimeter Screen detail seems to be lagging. A bit of ginger needed there.”
“Yes, sir!” Dannard’s endorsement was immediate and unquestioning, his smile a careful blend of respect and pride. “We’re doing very well, otherwise, wouldn’t you say, sir?”
“We’re a week ahead, yes. And we stay that way. No easing off to rest on laurels. We ought to be able to wrap up Stage Three by tonight.”
“Tonight?” Dannard was caught into a moment of surprise, but wiped it away in favour of absolute agreement. “If you say so, sir.”
“I do say so. Major constructions complete by tonight. Commence interior fitting-out first thing tomorrow.” He cut the picture with a finger and turned to eye the forlorn figure of Richard Caddas. As always, the sight tore at his emotions, rubbing them raw. “Forlorn” fitted Caddas as adequately as any one of half a dozen other deprecatory adjectives would have done. He looked lost, unhappy, like a small, soft-eyed puppy inviting concern. His thin frame drooped, making a mockery of his uniform. The Colonization Arm was military only in structure, not in function, and no one, least of all Barclay, expected machine-like discipline. But you could at least expect a man to stand up and look like a man. He swallowed the blistering reproof that hovered on his tongue, controlled his own hard and weather-worn features, and struggled to be sympathetic.
“Good morning, Rikki. Nightmares again?”
“I feel a wreck.” Caddas slumped into his chair, scowling as the serving robot brought his regular breakfast of heavily sweetened fruit-juices and meal-mush. “I don’t remember any dreams, thank God. That would be too much.”
Barclay wrested his gaze from the distasteful meal, thinking he had never loathed anyone quite as much as he did this futile weakling opposite him. And yet he had to be patient, polite, even affectionate, against all his instincts. “Not much longer,” he said. “We’re nearing the end of this one, lad. And, with any kind of justice at all, this is the last one. One more commendation and I shall be out of field-work altogether. A desk-job for me, and a comfortable sinecure for you. No more worries. No more bad nights.”
“It’s all right for you,” Caddas grumbled petulantly. “You can live on prospects and forget the present. I can’t. I’m drenched in it. If I so much as tried to imagine what lies in store, just for today, I wouldn’t be able to bear it. You don’t know what it’s like!”
It was an old cry, and Barclay retorted to it in kind, mouthing the phrases almost without thinking. “Of course I know, lad. I’m the only one who does know. Don’t I do everything I can to make it easy for you ? Why, if it wasn’t for me you’d have been grabbed by the psycho-technicians long ago, with their drugs and exercises and shocks, trying to cure you.”
“But there’s nothing wrong with me!” Caddas insisted, his feeble face twitching at the picture conjured up. “Why won’t they believe that, Jack? Why is that no one will believe I’m just sensitive?”
“I believe it, Rikki. And I’ll look after you. Now just get on with your breakfast. I’ve a lot to do today.” Barclay pushed away from the table and went to stare, without seeing, at a huge wall-chart. Phrase and counter-phrase had come as easily and meaninglessly as a ritual, and yet, after five years of it, there was still the disgust. There was plenty wrong with Caddas, enough to have kept the psycho-technicians curious for months, but Barclay wanted him as he was, needed him as he was, repulsive habits and everything. Because without Rikki Caddas, and his idiosyncrasies, he, Jack Barclay, was a pushful nobody.
The mismatched pair went out into a bright sun-warmed morning, as were all mornings on Oloron. This would be a sub-tropical paradise some day, Barclay mused, programming the ground-car for the Medical Centre as his first objective. A pleasant place to live, for anyone lucky enough to have nothing to do but enjoy life, but for Barclay and the squad under him it was just one more job to fight, a thousand decisions to make every day, something to get done with as quickly as possible. The planet’s name had been rapidly neologized into “Oh, roll on!” a name which set the tone precisely.
The ground-car lifted, swooped round in a tight arc, and pointed itself along a plastic-surfaced highway towards the starkly unlovely squareness of the almost-finished Medical Centre. Glassite windows threw back the sun’s light. Lieutenant Caddas moaned suddenly.
“My arm. Jack, my arm! It hurts!”
“Which arm?” Barclay demanded.
“Right arm. Shoulder, now. And my head!”
Barclay used a precious second to assure himself there was no visible cause for the distress, then slid into a time-worn routine.
“A name, Rikki. Give me a name.”
“Cross. Cross a field. Crushing. Falling down. It hurts.’’
“All right, lad. Bite your teeth on it while I stop it.’ Barclay snatched up the microphone from the car’s dash board, thumbed it. “Lieutenant Crossfield! This is Colonel Barclay. Hear me. Stop and check.’”
It was a standard code-call which got an immediate response from the maze of construction ahead. A siren wailed a warning.
Constructor-robots froze. There was the dying hum of power-starved motors. Barclay’s needle-sharp eyes raked the scene. He found the imminent disaster just seconds faster than the lieutenant in charge. High up there, his arm crooked round a T-girder, an engineer clung and leaned to take a transit-sight across the top of the building. Unknown to him, a robot-controlled hoist was in the act of laying a second T-girder alongside the first, its detectors masked by the load it carried. In twenty seconds that clinging arm, shoulder and head would have been mashed to strawberry pulp.
Barclay waited while Lieutenant Crossfield served out a blistering reproof, and an abashed technical sergeant acknowledged it. Then he lifted a hand to return Crossfield’s salute, cutting short the red-faced apology.
“Your good fortune I happened to be handy, Lieutenant. You’ll have Major Dannard along soon to check on progress. We should complete Stage Three today. But not that way!” He made a thin smile and swung the car round, setting its controls for the power-plant area.
“All right now, Rikki?”
“The pain’s all gone.” Caddas smiled in spaniel gratitude. “You fixed it for me. You always do. You’re so understanding.”
“The hell I am!” Barclay mused as the car slid into speed. “I’ll never understand how you do it, nor am I sure I want to. Just so long as I know what you can do, and can use it.” They hummed past a clanking, groaning trench-digger which plodded through the swirl of fumes from its own operations, fusing and stamping the earth back over the conduits it had just laid. Ahead lay the three glittering golden hemispheres of the power-plant centre. This section of the unit-complex was going well and Barclay was bent on nothing more than a token visit, just to let everyone know he was on the job. His mind, free of tension for the moment, flicked back to just such a moment as this, on another planet, long ago. Five years ago.
Youthful, pushful and ambitious, newly-made Captain Barclay, with a photostat directive in his hand and rage in his mind. Storming into the construction-control central office, hell-bent on finding the slip-wit who had prepared this damn silly directive. An insult to intelligence, it was. Run up by a fool. Why, the basic errors were so obvious a child could see them. What the hell? And he had found a child, in the thin disguise of a very new sub-lieutenant, cringing before the computer panel. Weeping! It was that last item that had stopped Barclay in his tracks. He had never seen a man cry before. The halt had given young Caddas just time enough to explain that he “knew” the programme-stats were going to come out wrong, but what could he do? He was just the button-pusher. Other people fed in the command-data. Intrigued, Barclay had asked him if he also knew which of the choice-point inserts was “wrong”. That had been more fantastic still. Caddas had indicated one input-section, had immediately confessed that he knew nothing about it, at all, but that he “knew” it was creating all the distress.
Barclay could shiver now, as he recalled what he had done then. He had rested the machine. None of his business. He had withdrawn the card-group indicated. Also none of his business. He had had the good fortune to be able to see, immediately, a simple error—a card slipped into the stack upside down—and was able to rectify it. Caddas, given the backbone, could have done as much himself. But what was more important, what had riveted Barclay’s attention, was the way in which Caddas had lost his distress the moment that error was put right. The change was as sudden, and as inexplicable, as faith-healing. The rest was history, a history of hard work, trial and error, confirmation, and the realization that Barclay had found, here, a goose that would lay him all the golden eggs he could ever want, if only he was handled properly.
Caddas stirred and shivered by his side. “I’ve really got ‘em today,” he mumbled. “Now I feel a sort of prickling sensation all over!”
“You what! ?” Barclay whirled on him, then made his voice behave. “A needle-tickle feeling, all over?”
“That’s right. D’you think it’s a chill or something?”
“We’ll see.” Barclay reached for the microphone again, feeling a chill all his own. This could be a tricky one. Radiation-hazard, but not yet. His mind raced, gambling with shadowy, half-understood values. Not leakage, or he would have had the warning long ago. Not gradual, but sudden. Somebody was about to do something he shouldn’t. “Give me a name, Rikki. A name?”
“Marks. Markers. Something like that. Scratch-marks. Itching...” Caddas was muttering to himself now and fidgeting about in his seat. Barclay looked up and either side at the towering hemispheres, thumbed the microphone.
“Major Yoslif?”
“Colonel?” The reply was instant and crisp. Barclay swept the scene, scanning the clutter of cranes and block-buildings, and saw a yellow helmet, a hand upraised. He wheeled the ground-car by manual to come alongside the major, who stared in attentive curiosity.
“You have a Marks, Markers, Marcus—someone with a name like that employed here?”
Yoslif frowned, then nodded. “Sergeant-technician Marcus, yes.”
“Good! Have him stop whatever he is doing, at once, and join us in your office. At once!”
“Sir!” Yoslif swung away, lifting his left wrist to his mouth and speaking into the microphone there. Barclay spun the car again to bring it to a halt outside the planning-control shack. Without advertising it, he watched Caddas closely, intensely, and was shakingly relieved to see the mumbling stop. The petulantly untidy figure sat up, brushing away the drooping lock of brown hair that fell persistently over one eye.
“It’s gone, now,” he said. “It must have been that juice this morning. There wasn’t nearly enough sugar in it. You’ll have to fix that robot, Jack. I’m sure it’s not programmed properly.”
“I’ll have it seen to as soon as we get back for lunch, Rikki. Now come along, and bring your recorder.” To himself, Barclay added, “At least try to look like a secretary.” Not for the first time, it occurred to him to wonder just what his command thought about Lieutenant Caddas. It must surely be obvious, even to the dullest, that the man was absolutely useless for anything practical. Mess-room gossip, he mused sourly, must range all the way from hints of nepotism to the extremes of obscenity, but never in a thousand years would any of them come near to guessing the truth.
Major Yoslif stood bolt erect by his own desk and masked his feelings. “May I know why the Colonel wishes to see this Sergeant Marcus ?”
“I’m hoping he’ll tell us that when he arrives. Ah, this ought to be the man. Prompt, if nothing else.”
Marcus, large and red-faced, squared up to the desk and made a rough salute. “You wanted to see me, Colonel, sir?”
“Tell me, sergeant, exactly what you were about to do when you were sent for?” Marcus furrowed his red face into folds of bewilderment, then dug in a cross-pocket for a crackling paper diagram.
“My section, sir, deals with internal sensors, thermocouples, counter-points. I was taking a squad of four, to enter Coolant Conduit Three-B and install...”
“Let’s have the chart down here,” Barclay indicated the desk-top and lent a hand to hold down one curling corner. Marcus jabbed with a thick finger, tracing the outline of the conduit and coming to rest on the access-door.
“In there, sir.”
“You’re not wearing a dosimeter.”
“No, sir,” the sergeant was patient. “That conduit is from Reactor Three. It’s dead cold, sir. Nothing in there yet.”
“You’re quite sure?”
Major Yoslif intervened, leaning over. ‘That’s correct, Colonel. Reactor Three will not he needed to go critical until...”
“Are you quite sure that conduit is from Reactor Three ?”
Yoslif frowned, peered closer, traced the diagram back with a finger. Marcus objected, after a moment.
“Not that one, sir. Look, there’s the figure. C.C. 3-B, right there. This is the pipe we ...” his stubby finger traced back, and his thick voice choked off suddenly.
“Quite so!” Barclay sat back and sighed. “The lettering stand
s between two pipe-diagrams. It could easily be read as either. But one is cold, and the other is not. You were about to open a functioning conduit line, Marcus.” It would have been pointless to say more, for the burly sergeant-technician had slumped into a shapeless heap on the floor. Yoslif’s hard-planed face was grey.
“An understandable error, Colonel.”
“Understandable, yes, but deadly, nevertheless. I want tighter control, Major. No more of this. I can’t be at your elbow all the time. You must learn to anticipate possible troubles. We’re ahead of schedule, but that does not mean we can tolerate carelessness. Come, Rikki.”
Back in the car again, Barclay glanced at his watch and fought off the growing sense of weight on his shoulders, the weight of his own legend. The more he demonstrated his superhuman efficiency, his uncanny knack of being able to smell trouble, the more his underlings were awed, impressed and unconsciously willing to let him go on pulling them out of one careless mess after another. He set the car skimming back to control HQ and lunch, and realized that he was trembling. This couldn’t go on much longer. This had to be the last time.
New Writings in SF 6 - [Anthology] Page 16