The task of making the penetration he reserved for himself. His men gave him argument about this, but they had to admit that he was best equipped for the job. Though there were no telepathic defenders for his special sense to surprise, his ability to act instantaneously and effectively served him well in any tight spot where there was little time for thought.
The first barrier was a fence of steel mesh, intended mainly to keep animals and hunters from straying onto dangerous ground. The party quickly chopped a slit in the mesh, and Starn stalked forward through the forest which continued for several hundred feet inside the fence. With him were Huill and a perceptor, Jaco. Six more men followed twenty yards behind, spreading out only slightly to explore the sides of the route and under urgent orders to take no chances. Their essential duties were to mark the trail clearly and to back up the threeman point, protecting its rear and coming to the rescue if that proved necessary. At intervals behind them followed two four-man squads, and then a string of twoman teams.
This needle of men was wide open to flank attack, but with defenses automated Starn expected no such counter. The unmanned weapons along their flanks would almost certainly stay poised for a frontal assault, and the only defenses the raiders needed to worry about were those almost directly ahead of them.
Have we sprung a warning system yet? Starn wondered.
"No," hissed Huill. "The Olsaperns are still thinking about their work, not about us."
Starn looked a question at Jaco, who shrugged an answer. He was percepting nothing worth reporting.
They came to the edge of the forest. Beyond lay what was once a clearing but now had grown a fair amount of cover in the form of bushes and young evergreens—a promising sign of neglect. The buildings clustered at the mine shaft rose into view no more than two hundred yards away. The only visible barrier was another fence, this a high one of strung barbed wire, some distance inside the old clearing. The scene looked dreary and deserted under the thick clouds and hard-blowing rain.
"Slowly," warned Starn, and he moved forward with Huill and Jaco close behind. Suddenly his long-gun pushed back against his chest, stopping him in his tracks.
"We're at the Metal-Stopper," he hissed over his shoulder. "I'm going to try to push through." He got a firm purchase with his cleated boots and shoved forcefully against his long-gun. It broke clear of the unseen barrier and he fell forward a few inches, to be stopped by the knife and hatchet attached to his belt. Another hard lunge put these metal objects past the barrier also. As he had theorized, the Metal-Stopper was electromagnetic, and whatever electrical fields supported it were partially shorted out by the heavy rain. Beyond this point the earlier raiders had gone armed only with stone and wooden weapons.
"Try to get through," he told his companions.
"They know we're out here now!" Huill reported as he, too, pushed his ironware past the barrier, with Jaco close behind.
"WARNING TO INTRUDERS!" a mechanical voice bellowed in Book-English. "YOU ARE TRESPASSING ON A HEAVILY-DEFENDED INSTALLATION OF . . . OMBINE! RETU . . . EDIATELY, OR WE WILL NOT . . . SEQUENCES! REPEATING! WARN . . . UDER . . . ARE TRESPASS . . . FENDED INSTALL . . . "
"That's scaring them more than it is us!" chuckled Huill. "They think if their loudspeakers are out of whack, their weapons might be, too!"
"What are the weapons like?"
"They don't know. They were all installed before their day, and are kept secret from them so telepaths can't read them. But they're wishing they had some really good stuff out here!"
Starn nodded. "Let's move on."
They walked forward slowly, Starn not bothering to stay under cover of the bushes, which he figured would be a waste of time and add dangerous footage to the length of their trail.
"Something's moving!" Jaco hissed.
"Down!" yelled Starn, hitting the dirt. A split-second later a fearsome tat-tat-tat! startled them, and twigs and leaves were shredded over their heads.
"That's a rapid-fire gun!" yelled Huill.
"Where is it?" Starn shouted back.
"Beyond the barbed wire!"
We could use something like that, thought Starn. He motioned to the others and began crawling forward on his belly. He had not gone far when the gun's chatter ceased.
"It's jammed," reported Jaco.
"Anything else moving up there?"
"No."
Cautiously Starn rose to his feet. Nothing happened, so he walked on toward the fence.
"Ferrik in the back-up didn't duck fast enough," said Huill. "Bad flesh wound in the shoulder. He's being tended."
Starn nodded and kept moving. The fence, he saw, was of horizontal heavy-gauge, single-strand barbed wire, the strands about a foot apart. This was as far as the long-ago raiders had gotten, because the wire was electrified and they had lacked the means of attacking it. They had spread out along it in search of a weak spot, and that had cost them dearly.
The electricity was on, as Starn could tell from steam rising from the wet insulators on the fence posts. The rain was helping them again by shorting the wires to some degree.
"Did Houg get that chain through?" he asked.
"Yes," reported Huill.
"Tell him to bring it up."
Houg came warily forward from the back-up group, lugging a length of heavy chain.
"Put it down here," said Starn, "and all of you move back a little." As they did so, he picked up the chain, swung it in his hand to get the feel of it, and then tossed it into the barbed wire. A noisy uproar of sparks erupted as the iron links looped over the lower four strands and shorted them into the soggy ground.
"Wow!" complained Houg.
Starn's expectation was that the sparks would burn through the wire strands, or at least weaken them enough for him to finish the job with a quick, fairly safe swipe of his hatchet. After watching the sparks briefly, he decided the hatchet would be necessary to part the heatresistant wire.
He wiped the hatchet handle as dry as he could get it and moved up to kneel carefully beside the dancing chain, ignoring the sparks leaping about him. He leaned forward on his left arm, took precise aim at the wires and brought the hatchet down in a firm stroke.
There was an instant of elation as he felt the blade slice through the strands, but after that a sudden nightmare of pain and confusion. The loose ends of the wire whipped and coiled like unleashed spring-steel snakes. One caught him murderously in the groin, shredding his protective leather and his flesh like so much wet paper, before jerking away to roll into a tight coil against the nearest post. Another grabbed his left forearm and didn't let go. It wrapped the arm in a tearing, bone-snapping grip, and dragged him hard into the post.
Dimly he heard Huill shouting something about "Memory Metal," and felt his companions tugging at him. I know about things like that, he thought in a strangely detached way. A rubber band that goes back to its original shape after it has been stretched a long time. But who would have thought a coil of wire could be made with such a strong memory, and one that would last for so many decades!
He pulled his mind back to the job and ordered, "Never mind me! Go get that gun! And other weapons!"
He didn't know if the order was obeyed or not.
4
The bed fabrics felt sleekly soft to his hands, and the bed itself strangely smooth. When he opened his eyes the flat whiteness of the ceiling overhead told him he definitely was not in Foser Compound.
An Olsapern hospital-prison? He had heard of such places from certain elderly Pack men who had been in them after being wounded and captured in skirmishes with the Olsaperns. They had been healed, given the Treatment, and released.
Suddenly remembering the slashing barbed wire, he lifted his left arm to examine it. It was strong and whole. But it wasn't his arm. A graft. He wondered who it had belonged to as he studied it, comparing its fingers—a little too long and thin—to those of his right hand.
But he had received another injury. He quickly reached under the cover to exp
lore with anxious fingers. What he didn't find left him with a dismal empty feeling. Despite his father's position as the Gene's Voice of Pack Foser, Starn had never been overly occupied with the forms of religion, but his faith was deep nevertheless. There was for him an essential rightness in the concept of the Ultimate Novo, the completely-sensed man of the future, the reason beyond reasons for man's existence in his present confused, troubled, and unfulfilled shapes. He was trending toward the Ultimate; that was his highest task.
And Starn had been specially blessed with a new sense, one that he had expected—with what he hoped was due humility—would be preserved in his offspring to bring the Ultimate Novo into being far sooner than most people would dare hope—perhaps while the name of Starn of Pack Foser was still recalled in the legends.
But he would produce no offspring now! That strand of barbed wire had seen to that!
The realization was numbingly bitter. Had the Sacred Gene forsaken him for unworthy pride? Or was his special sense of no value after all, something that should not be passed on?
And what of his wife, whose expectation of children was, if possible, stronger than his own?
But of course, he realized with a start, childlessness was a price he would have had to pay, regardless of that barbed wire, once he fell into the infidel hands of the Olsaperns. It was part of the Treatment. The Olsaperns did two things to men of the Packs taken in battle. They installed a psychological block that would prevent a released man from fighting the Olsaperns again. And they performed an operation to render him sterile, so he could breed no new enemies to attack their sons.
There was a certain comfort in this thought, because the danger of the Treatment was one that had to be faced by any man dedicated to the armed support of his Pack. That dedication made the danger acceptable, even to a special individual like Starn, because the Pack's heritable potential was more important to the Ultimate than that of any one of the Pack's members.
The door of the hospital room opened and an Olsapern walked in—one of the few Starn had ever seen in the flesh, so he studied him curiously. He looked human enough, except that he was closely shaven instead of trimmed, which gave him an odd young-old look. Other than that and his pure-white clothing, he might have passed for a Pack man—a little large, perhaps, but so was Starn.
"Awake at last, huh?" grunted the Olsapern. "I'll get you some breakfast." He left without waiting for a reply.
Starn decided that, thanks to the skills of the Olsapern medics, he felt like getting up. He found clothing, and managed to figure out how to dress himself before the orderly returned.
The food was good despite its unfamiliar taste. When he had eaten he prowled around the windowless room, tried the door and found it locked, and finally sat down on the bed. He did not rise when the door opened to let in a middle-aged man, somewhat taller than himself, in gray jacket and trousers.
"You're Raid Leader Starn of Pack Foser," the man said, not making it a question.
Starn nodded.
"My name's Higgins. I'm Director of Domestic Defense," the visitor said.
The title meant little to Starn, except that he could not recall any ex-prisoners of the Olsaperns telling of encountering such a person. He said nothing.
"That raid of yours made a real glom!" the older man finally remarked.
After a pause, Starn said, in the best Book-English he could muster, "I was not conscious to witness the outcome."
"Speak your dialect!" Higgins said impatiently. "I can understand it. As for the outcome of your raid, none of your men got much farther than you did. Two of them, named Jaco and Houg, were killed, and another besides yourself was captured. His name is Huill. He was questioned and Treated and returned to your Pack a week ago."
"Seven days?" asked Starn. "How long have I been here?"
"About three weeks."
A long time to be unconscious! thought Starn.
"You really glommed things!" Higgins grunted. Crossly Starn responded, "What's your complaint? You beat us off, didn't you?"
"Yeah, we beat you off, but not before you softened the mine's outer defenses, and spied some of our interior layout! And you Pack people, with your lousy telepaths, can't keep secrets! So when Nagister Nornt came along a day later he helped himself to weapons none of you should have, much less Nagister Nornt!"
Startled, Starn asked, "What has he done with the weapons?"
"For one thing he's forced your Pack to hand over your wife! And he shot up two of our trading posts!" Starn sat in stiff silence, trying to conceal his sick dismay.
"One consoling thought for you," the Olsapern added, "is that your wife was already pregnant."
"Cytherni pregnant?" gasped Starn.
"She was waiting until after the raid to tell you, and the telepaths were keeping her secret. Nornt will not make a slavie out of her as long as she's cooperative."
"You got this from Huill?"
"Partly. We made him talk freely."
"Where's Nornt now?"
"If I knew, I might not be here!" growled Higgins.
"We've got to recover those weapons! And kill him if we get the chance! He's trouble now, and could be big trouble in the future!"
* * *
Starn had been about to demand his immediate release, so he could hunt Nornt down and rescue Cytherni. But the words "big trouble in the future" made him pause.
Yes, the Ultimate Novo would definitely be "big trouble in the future" for Higgins and all the obsolete Olsaperns! And though Starn wanted Cytherni back, and wanted to be the known father of his unborn child, the fact remained that he could give Cytherni no more children. And Nornt, distasteful though the thought might be, could! Also, Nornt could very well be in direct line to the Ultimate! Personal animosity had to be thrust aside for such a profound religious consideration.
He saw that Higgins was watching him with an air of almost friendly expectancy. A very clever fellow, this Higgins! The way he seemed to take for granted that Starn was his ally against Nornt was so convincing that Starn had been almost taken in! But Higgins had let slip a telling reminder that he was an Olsapern, while Starn and Nornt were Pack men.
It was a mistake, Starn decided, to even converse with this man. So he sat in silence.
Higgins fidgeted and growled, "No trafficking with the enemy, huh? O.K., if you're the kind who'll let his only child be destroyed by that creature Nornt, there's no point in talking!" He started for the door.
"Hold it!" snarled Starn. "Nornt won't destroy my child!"
Higgins turned. "No? Do you think he'll let your child grow up to challenge his own brood? Nornt believes in his own bloodline, not yours!"
"That's absurd! It's against the creed of the Sacred Gene!"
Higgins shrugged. "All I know is what I was told by the men who returned your friend Huill to Foser Compound. They parleyed with your Pack chief, who told them what Nornt had thought when he discovered his prize was pregnant. He doesn't mean to let your child grow up, creed or no creed! Oh, he'll make a pretense for a few years, to keep the child's mother content. But when the child's about six . . . well, it will 'wander off' some day and never be found! And not being a telepath, your wife won't learn the truth from Nornt!"
"That's the kind of lie I ought to expect from degraded infidel scum!" roared Starn, surging to his feet and facing the bigger man.
But Higgins showed no anger nor intention to fight. He smiled, and shook his head sadly.
"I don't wish to argue religion with you, Raid Leader," he said. "That would only raise animosity between us, and stir up side issues at a time when we ought to work together for a common cause. But let me point out a couple of facts. One, if I'm lying, you'll find that out soon enough when you return to your Compound, so the lies would have gained me nothing. Two, if Nagister Nornt is a step toward where your Sacred Gene wants humanity to go, then your Gene has chosen a most despicable vessel!"
"The ways of the Gene are mysterious to the eyes of man," Starn quoted st
ernly.
"They are that!" sighed Higgins. "So mysterious that he can lead you in reverse for centuries and you still think you're going forward!"
"The way of the Gene has no turning!" snapped Starn. He stared at the Olsapern in disgust. "Even your primitive Science should tell you that! The ancients knew that evolution moved steadily ahead, as relentless as death and time!"
"That was one of the errors of the Science Age," said Higgins easily. "They knew so much that they didn't know how much was still unknown! Don't try to tie me down to the beliefs of Science, Raid Leader! That age fell under its own weight, and good riddance! It was just another experience men should learn from, although many men, including your own ancestors, learned less than they should!
"There are relationships, Raid Leader, that ancient scientists never recognized. They specialized too much to see the broad interweavings of nature. For example, they never observed the linkages between certain unconscious levels of the mind and the information of heredity which is coded in DNA molecules. Consequently, they would have denied as readily as you do that the profound psychological shock which hit the human race when the Science Age toppled could have any direct effect on our evolutionary process. They would have said the extreme change in environment would make certain traits more suitable for survival than if the Science Age had continued, but this would merely be a change in the selection vector, not in the evolutionary force itself.
"But we know differently today, Raid Leader. The state of the human mind can communicate with the genetic code structure, thereby changing the structure. And the collapse of human morale that went with the collapse of Science was a clear message—a signal to retreat!—to the codons of the vast majority of the race! About the only people who escaped the reversal were the few who realized that the Science Age should fall, that despite its victories it had turned reactionary and anticreative."
A Sense of Infinity Page 35