The wonder of it to Starn was that Cytherni had been able to portray herself with such amused objectivity.
Why had she done the pair of portraits? His guess was that they had a religious significance to her, that they were an apologetic memorial to a god she no longer worshiped: the Sacred Gene, deity of the Packs.
"I know who would like to have them, and wouldn't find them funny at all," she remarked.
"Who?"
"The grandparents. The one with you in it for your folks, and the one I'm in for mine."
Starn nodded thoughtfully. Yes, his own parents would cherish that lifelike representation of Billy, especially so since they had never been permitted to learn that Starn himself had survived the conflict with Nagister Nornt. So would Cytherni's people in Pack Diston. Continuity of genetic inheritance was all-important to Pack people. A concrete reminder of Billy's existence would mean much to his grandparents.
"Do you suppose we can send them the portraits?" asked Cytherni.
"We can ask Higgins about it tonight," said Starn. "It will be up to him to say if it's all right."
"You'll ask him?" Cytherni persisted.
"Yes, after supper when he's full of venison steak."
She nodded her satisfaction.
But Starn had little doubt that Higgins' answer would be negative. Because . . . well, he could imagine a number of reasons the Defense Minister might consider important.
That was when the idea struck him. He fought against it for a while, dismayed by the personal unhappiness it could bring to his wife—and also to himself and to Billy.
But he had a strong conviction his scheme would work, while nothing else would.
So, if Higgins did turn down their request, and if Cytherni's desire to get the portraits to the grandparents was as determined as Starn suspected, then . . .
"Why so silent, lover?" Cytherni asked.
"Oh . . . thinking about my work," said Starn, "trying to figure out how to make some progress with it." Which was true enough.
Cytherni smiled encouragingly. "Give yourself time, Starn. You'll do it."
"Maybe." He stood up. "I'll give it a little more effort before supper."
He walked back toward his workshop, but detoured into the flier port on the way. If he tried his scheme, there were preparations to be made, precautions to be taken, things to be checked.
He spent several minutes going over the flier, and examining the emergency supplies and equipment in its luggage compartment. He added a few more items from his workshop and the kitchen shelves. Then he stood in the port, gazing at the craft in momentary uncertainty. There would be at least one tracking device on the flier, probably several. Without question, he and Cytherni were kept under close surveillance by Higgins' department. Nothing less than that would make sense. While he and Cytherni had been welcomed into Olsapern society and given all the freedom of other Olsapern citizens, the fact remained that they were enemy aliens by birth and upbringing. The Minister of Domestic Defense would have had to be stupid indeed not to keep close tabs on their behavior.
So the ship contained trackers—and for that matter so doubtless did his own body, and Cytherni's, perhaps Billy's as well. And a tracker could do double duty as an auditory pickup, a bug. On his forays against Nagister Nornt, Starn's fortunes had been followed from a distance, through such devices in his body, by Olsapern observers and mop-up men.
The trackers in the flier, he decided, would have to be left undisturbed. But not those in himself, his wife, and son. They had to be put out of action when the proper time came.
And he wasn't at all sure he could knock out the trackers by the method he had in mind! If he failed, his scheme was doomed from the beginning—and the Olsaperns certainly would not allow him sufficient freedom afterward to try again.
A man had to be pretty desperate, he suddenly realized, to forge ahead with so risky an enterprise. But if he passed up the opportunity Cytherni had unwittingly provided, when, if ever, would he get another?
He couldn't back down.
After Higgins and Starn were settled down to the enjoyment of a couple of pre-supper drinks, the conversation was inconsequential for a while. Then Higgins asked in a slighting tone, "Well, lad, I suppose you're still trying to make sense out of the Novo senses?" Starn nodded. He had hoped Higgins would bring the subject up during this visit. "Yes, I'm still at it. In fact, I think I'm making some progress. There's something I'd like you to look at while you're here."
Higgins grimaced. "No thanks. Such things are out of my line. If you think you've discovered something worth consideration by others, take it up with some expert in the field."
"Such as who?" demanded Starn with a humorless grin. "You have no experts on the Novo senses—only experts in saying the field isn't worth studying."
Higgins shrugged. "Well, they ought to know! I wish, Starn, that you would get this pointless obsession out of your system, and devote yourself to valuable work. It's a shame for a creative talent such as yours to go to waste. I mean that! You've got one of the best minds on Earth, and one that has become well-educated since you left the Packs. Why can't you put it to work on one of the major unsolved mysteries of science, for instance?"
"Aside from the fact that I think what I'm doing is more important," Starn answered slowly, "there's also the point that I haven't lived with my Olsapern education long enough to use it with the ease a creative researcher needs. My memory's full of new information, but somehow that information is not wholly available to my thinking processes. For example, I've learned a great deal about microlek circuitry, but I don't think I'll ever be able to use that learning to discover a useful new circuit. In the work I'm doing now, when I need to devise a circuit, I seem to fall back on what I've known about basic electricity ever since I was a boy."
He shook his head and added, "Even if my mind is all you say it is, I can't compete with Olsapern scientists who grew up knowing things I've just learned for the first time. I wish I could. If I could really bring Olsapern science to bear on the problem of the Novo senses, well, I imagine the results would startle all of us! That's what gripes me, Higgins. You have people with the background and ability to break open a vast area of knowledge—knowledge about man himself!—but these people's minds are completely closed. Your so-called experts won't give the Novo senses the briefest attention!"
Higgins chuckled. "We've been over all this before, Starn. I've explained the limitations of Novo senses that make them a dead end. The human nervous system has to function within its structural boundaries. Your best telepaths, for instance, have a range of little more than half a mile. But through the use of his vocal chords, aided by languages and electronic devices conceived by his fertile imagination, the ordinary man can communicate over distances of millions of miles.
"So, when you start trying to develop Novo senses, you can't go very far before you come to an impassable barrier, erected by the limited size and power of the human brain. That stops you cold! Whereas, if you would forget these Novo senses, and put your bet on the unlimited ability of the imagination to devise means of extending and strengthening our natural abilities—means such as languages, telescopes, power tools, powered vehicles, and so on—no stopping place is ever reached!"
"But what you refuse to see," complained Starn, "is that the Novo senses are natural abilities, just waiting to be extended and strengthened! You're concentrating on aiding only a few of our senses while neglecting a vast unexplored range!"
Higgins frowned. Starn had never expressed his views in just that way before, and it gave the Defense Minister a thought to pause over. "In a way, that's true, Starn. But by its very nature, science has to be universally applicable. The results of an experiment must be verifiable by another experimenter, working under strictly specified and controlled conditions. And the products of science, therefore, must be useful to everyone. Even if telepathy were likely to survive as a human sense—which it is not, of course—the scientist could not afford t
o waste much of his energies trying to produce a . . . a pathoscope . . . to permit telepaths to read minds over great distances. Not unless telepathy became universal. At this time not even a majority of Pack men have it."
"We don't know that," objected Starn. "We only know that a minority of people have enough telepathy for it to be useful. Maybe everybody has a touch of it, waiting to be amplified and extended. That's one of the possibilities we ought to be investigating."
"However," grinned Higgins, "none of the regular senses are subliminal. We have enough sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch to use very well the way we're born with them. I can't take this idea of 'hidden senses' very seriously."
"What you say reminds me of what the common-sense folk said when inventors were working on the first aircraft," Starn remarked. " 'If God meant for man to fly, He would have given us wings."'
Higgins laughed. "Trying to win an argument with you, Starn, is a task I hope my life never depends upon!
You always have a comeback! Unfortunately, though, scientific discoveries aren't made by winning debates. Discoveries require demonstrable proof, not argument."
"And you or nobody else is about to look at what demonstrable proof I have," Starn finished sadly. "Oh, well. How's your own work going, Higgins?"
"Fine."
"The defense system's working like a well-oiled machine, huh?"
Higgins puckered his lips. "I wish you wouldn't bring up the word 'oil,"' he complained wryly. "That's one of my biggest headaches."
"Oil is?" asked Starn as if he didn't know.
"Yes."
"Isn't oil easy to produce?"
"Well, that depends on the oil. Some kinds are very difficult to synthesize out of vegetable products. We must still depend on natural petroleum deposits for those. The trouble is that the deposits were badly drained during the Science Age, to use as fuel, of all things!" He sipped his drink and added, "Of course we've located new deposits, but they're subject to strict conservation restrictions, which allow us to tap only twenty percent of known reserves at any time. As of right now, we've used sixteen percent, and no new oil has been discovered lately. I'd hate to see us forced by necessity to ease our conservation policy, and start plundering the planet the way our ancestors did."
Starn nodded. "Cut down on your need for the oils you can't synthesize," he suggested.
"Oh, we've done that. But for certain types of heavy defense equipment—"
"That's what I mean. Cut down on your need for defense equipment. Make peace with the Packs." Higgins laughed. "Not only does it take two to make a fight, lad; it takes two to make peace once the fight has started. When I say 'defense' equipment I'm not employing a euphemism. You know as well as I that it is the Packs who really have the tradition of combat. You yourself were a warrior by profession! If we want to keep our land orderly, we have to keep Pack raiders out, and keep their conflicts among themselves down to a reasonable level. No, we need the defenses we have in operable condition, Starn."
"I suppose so," the younger man replied. "Tell me, Higgins, can you get the oil out of deep shale deposits?"
"Shale underground? Yes, a special sweating process was developed years ago for that. Why do you ask?"
"Because I know where such a deposit is," Starn replied casually, although this was the disclosure he had been building toward. "It's about thirty miles southwest of Norhog Mountain. The oil shale is seventy feet thick, lies about twenty-six hundred feet below the surface, and has an area of a little more than nine square miles." Higgins put his drink down so hard that some sloshed onto the table. "What . . . how . . . ?"
Starn got up and pulled a map from his desk. "This shows its outline, marked in red," he said, handing the map over.
Higgins clutched the paper and stared at the marked area. Finally he looked up. "Are you sure about this? Deep shale deposits aren't easy to detect, the oil experts tell me. Whose equipment did you use, and how did you happen to go looking for oil? I thought you were all wrapped up in this Novo sense business."
"This is Novo sense business," said Starn. "The equipment I used was some I made myself, based on the ancient dowsing rod. Only I didn't use the equipment myself. Billy was the operator. He seems to have a stronger perception sense. We hit upon that shale oil deposit by accident during a short camping trip I took him on in late spring. I made a game out of it for the boy. We crisscrossed the area in the flier for an hour or so while he mapped the deposit's boundaries."
Higgins threw the map down with a grunt of disgust.
"I should've guessed it would be something like that, coming from you!" he huffed. He finished the remains of his drink and stared angrily at the wall while Starn refilled his glass.
"I thought of drilling an exploratory well, to prove the oil is there," said Starn, "but decided to leave that up to you. If you need oil so badly, you can't afford not to send somebody out there to take a look."
"Nonsense! There's no oil there!"
"There might be, for all you know," Starn replied. "If you need an excuse, you can always say you were looking through some old geological studies and found previously ignored indications that the area might yield oil."
"Forget it, Starn! I'm not wasting anybody's time by sending them on a wild-goose chase!"
Starn shrugged and changed the subject. But he noticed that Higgins glanced sideways at the map several times before Cytherni called them to supper.
The venison steak quickly brought Higgins out of the grumpy mood Starn had gotten him into. "I'll leave it to others to gush over your paint-sculptures, Cytherni," he said when he finally pushed away from the table. "What you do in the kitchen is art enough for me!"
"Thank you," she murmured modestly.
"Cythie's done a couple of pieces since you were here before," Starn said, "that you might like. Come take a look at them, won't you?"
Higgins regarded him with friendly suspicion. "Nothing Novo-sensey about them, is there?"
"No," Starn laughed. "No more of that tonight."
"All right."
Cytherni led the way into her studio where Higgins admired the busts of Billy with genuine approval. At length Starn said, "We were thinking the boy's grandparents would enjoy these more than anybody else. Could you arrange to have one delivered at Foser Compound and the other at Diston Compound?"
Higgins thought about it for a moment, then shook his head regretfully. "I'm afraid not. It would be unwise to remind your families of yourselves, and especially of your son. Those portraits would be a constant source of agitation, I'm afraid. The Packs recognized you as a remarkable man, Starn, with an ability that was unheard of—your trick of acting swiftly, without an instant of forethought that a telepath could detect. If they were reminded by these portraits that you had a son who is in our hands, there's no telling what ridiculous lengths they would go to, trying to get him away from us. It's best for everybody, Starn, for them not to know for sure that Cytherni ever recovered from her trauma sufficiently to give birth to her child, or to have even the slightest suspicion—which one of these portraits might arouse—that you are alive."
He looked at them and saw the deep disappointment in Cytherni's face. "I'm really sorry," he said sincerely.
"I know the grandparents would love to have these, but . . . well, I'm sorry."
"That's O.K.," said Starn. "We know how it is."
But Cytherni said nothing, and had a stubborn glint in her eyes, Starn noticed.
As soon as Higgins'flier lifted away into the dark night Cytherni erupted. "Starn, I'm not going to just forget—" He put his hand over his mouth and looked meaningfully at her. She fell silent.
"Let's go inside," he said. "Did you see the drawings Billy brought home from school this morning?" he asked.
"They're over here. Maybe he's an artist, too. Come take a look."
"He didn't say anything to me—" Cytherni began in a puzzled tone, following Starn to the desk.
He picked up a note pad and wrote on it: "Don
't answer out loud. How badly do you want the portraits delivered?"
She took the pad and scrawled in large angry letters:
"VERY!"
Starn wrote: "O.K., we'll deliver them ourselves."
Cytherni: "How and when?"
Starn: "By flier. We leave before dawn."
For a moment Cytherni seemed about to reject the idea. She wrote: "We can't leave Billy by himself." Starn: "We'll take him along."
Cytherni: "Higgins will throw a fit!"
Starn: "Let him." He was glad he was writing instead of saying all this. A frog of guilt was clogging his throat. Cytherni: "I'll go alone. You stay with Billy."
Starn: "We share everything including trouble. We all go, or nobody goes."
Cytherni's eyes moistened, and suddenly she kissed him. "All right," she wrote, "what do we have to do?" Starn: "Leave that to me. Let's get to bed." Aloud he said, "Well, what do you think of Billy's art?"
"Perhaps he takes more after you than me," she said. Starn chuckled.
2
At four a.m. Starn woke. He rose quietly and went into his workshop where he paused uncertainly, asking himself if, in the near-dawn of a new day, he really wanted to go through with this.
His determination overrode his misgivings. He sat down at the bench on which the small dowser machine was perched and picked up the sensor unit. Slowly, he explored his arms and legs with the device, moving it along his skin with only a fraction of an inch keeping it from touching him. He needed to practice that, because when he was through with himself he would have to search Cytherni and Billy the same way, but without waking them.
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