"There is such a thing as good faith," his image glowered at Rob. "At least there is among civilized men. You have shown little evidence of good faith in this whole affair, Foser."
"Don't talk to me about honor, Olsapern!" the Pack chief snapped back. "You can't regard us as animals and still expect us to give you the respect due to equals! Certainly we're not fools enough to tell you anything about a weapon you would delight in using against us!"
"We have no intention of using any weapon against you!" stormed Higgins. "We never have! All we've ever done has been protect ourselves against your childish attacks—attacks that were aimed more often than not at posts we established solely to assist you!"
Rob replied coldly, "We've learned from Cytherni that Starn had a more likely explanation for your trading posts."
"You're citing Starn as an authority?" sneered Higgins.
"But never mind answering that. We're getting away from the basic point I'm trying to make, that we've never fought an aggressive battle with Pack men. On the record, you don't have the slightest excuse for withholding information about weapons developed by a man who is a danger to us all!"
"But on the other hand," retorted Rob, "I notice you are deadly afraid of letting any knowledge of Olsapern weapons fall in Pack hands. Not once has an engineer or a scientist come south of the Hard Line."
"Aren't we justified in that?" Higgins demanded.
"Haven't we been given every reason to expect that better weapons would make the Packs bigger and bloodier nuisances?"
"Not if you would drop that silly attitude of superiority!" blared Rob. "Close down those insulting trading posts! Ask our permission when you want to dig a mine in Pack country! And when you have to deal with us at all, stop sending your village idiots as envoys! It's no skin off our noses if you don't follow the Sacred Gene; neither do the animals of the forest! We don't fight you because of religion, but because you're so despicable!"
Higgins looked startled. "That's a surprising revelation, if true."
Rob was silent for a moment, then said, "The members of Pack Foser, as well as the travelers from other Packs who are here at the moment, agree that it is true. Although we have perhaps thought otherwise in the past."
"Very well," said Higgins. "If it's your price for cooperation in the present emergency, we'll be glad to withdraw our trading posts and have no more dealings with the Packs than are absolutely essential in the future. You can starve when a drought ruins your primitive agriculture, or die in an epidemic for lack of decent medicine. To use your own phrase, that's no skin off our noses."
Rob frowned but did not speak.
Higgins continued: "As for quelling the danger that Starn poses, my scientists and engineers can do the job if you'll give us what you've learned about those devices of his. Unfortunately, he left nothing at his home to give us a clue to his approach. So, if you will tell us what you've learned from Cytherni and Billy about the construction of his inventions, we'll get busy."
Rob shrugged. "They don't know. Cytherni wasn't interested enough to learn, and Starn sidetracked Billy when the boy became curious about the structural details of the gadgets. About all we know is that he used that menergy stuff in the things he made in the mountains. Billy has some vague ideas about other details, but I can't make enough sense out of them to describe them." He stared thoughtfully at Higgins' image. "If you want to make some headway on Starn," he said, "you'd better send a team of scientists down here. Maybe they'll know what kind of questions to ask Billy, to bring out what he does know.
"And besides, Higgins, the Packs will be able to see cooperating with you much easier if the work is done here, where we can be sure we know what's being accomplished, and that you're not preparing any unpleasant surprises for us. You'll have close access to Billy, and to other persons with well-developed Novo senses. It's not going to help you to build extensors for those senses unless you have the senses to apply them when they're complete."
Higgins fidgeted unhappily. "Sending scientists down there is out of the question," he said with a lack of conviction, "and it has been demonstrated that we normals often have touches of these senses."
"Touches is about all," said Rob.
"Damn!" cursed Higgins. "I wouldn't listen to such a nonsensical proposal for a minute if these new devices of Starn's didn't have such a disturbing potential!"
"Nor would I have suggested it," came Rob's tart reply. "We have no stomach for the close association with Olsaperns this emergency is forcing on us. But the point is that if we put our differences aside temporarily, and solve this problem quickly, the association can be kept brief. The way things are going, it could drag on for months—even years if Starn comes up with something new! Let's take the bitter pill quick, Higgins, and quit agonizing over it!"
Finally Higgins nodded grudgingly. "I'll take it up with our council and let you know," he agreed.
6
At first Starn traveled by night and slept by day, staying in deep valleys as much as possible. His reason for this was to elude telepathic detection if Pack-Olsapern teams were continuing the search for him.
Most of the searching, he assumed, would be done during daylight hours, and a sleeping mind is harder to detect, and still harder to identify, than one that is awake.
He tried to push himself severely enough during each night's trek to be dog-tired by dawn, so that he would sleep soundly until nightfall.
The pace began to tell on him in less than a week, and he eased off a bit. By then he was far from the spot where Billy had been taken, and could feel reasonably safe from anything except chance discovery or a massive search . . . or, of course, a search conducted with strongly extended Novo senses.
By now, he guessed, the Packs and the Olsaperns would be working hard—and together—on sense extensions, if they were ever going to work together at all. He had tried to leave nothing behind that would be too helpful to them; he had even risked returning to the scene of his escape from the Foser raiders, after he saw the fliers lifting away, to retrieve the Novo energy transmitter from the oak tree, but found that the bears had returned ahead of him and had left little to worry about.
He kept moving southward at a leisurely, cautious rate. Movement itself brought some risk of discovery, but summer was drawing to a close and he had no real idea how long he could remain untaken. Months, perhaps, in which case he wanted to seek winter quarters in a warm southern clime.
But the mountains were petering out, and at last he was forced to halt by the near certainty that Packs were living in the foothills ahead. In fact, he retreated northward a long march, to get out of range of winter hunting parties. There, in a cove that was both secluded and sheltered, he threw up a tight lean-to and settled down to wait.
It was with some wonder that he realized that matters which had been of vital concern to him only a few weeks ago now seemed distant, and of little pressing interest. This, he mused, was probably what happened when people went "back to nature." The draining demands of extracting food, shelter, and other bodily comforts from a primitive environment left little energy for other pursuits.
Thus, he thought a little about improving upon his menergy-powered devices, but no ideas came, so he did nothing more than think. His creative unconscious was not presented with an urgent need to produce new ideas, so it failed to produce.
Also, in his imagination he could see joint teams of Olsapern scientists and strong-sensed Pack men hard at work, exploring avenues that he—neither scientific nor strongly-sensed—could not even be aware of. What was the point of trying to compete with something like that? More often his thoughts were of Cytherni. Of course she had learned from Billy, if she hadn't guessed before, that what had happened was not the result of an accidental fall from the flier. What would she be thinking of her loving husband now? Even a full explanation of the reasons for his actions, Starn fretted, might sound awfully empty to her. The point would still remain, as he had known it would from the beginning, that he
had used her, not with her knowing compliance, but as an unwitting tool. How could any explanation make that right?
The weeks dragged by and summer faded. The mountain forest flamed with autumn reds and yellows. Starn eyed the empty sky with growing impatience. With every passing day the guessed-at activities of Pack men and Olsaperns seemed less important, and the need to see Cytherni and settle things with her one way or the other grew more insistent.
When the shadow of a hovering flier passed over him at last he almost yelled and waved, like a stranded castaway at the first sight of a rescuer. Before he recovered from this reaction he realized he had given his true feelings away to such an extent that it would be silly to make a pretense of trying to escape again, or to do battle with his captors. Indeed, it was also too late to activate a Novo transmitter to blind any telepaths aboard to his thoughts. His game was over. He waited quietly.
A dropline snaked from the flier and one man came down. Starn walked forward. When he saw who it was, he said, "Hello, Rob."
Rob's feet touched the ground and he stood glaring angrily at Starn. Without trying to control his thoughts, Starn waited patiently while the telepath learned what he wanted to know.
"I'm usually called Foser now," Rob said rather stiffly. Then: "So you were never a threat, after all."
"How could I be?" shrugged Starn. "If I were both a gifted Novo and a knowledgeable scientist, maybe I could have hid out somewhere and developed the means of producing a revolution. But I was neither of those things. All I could do, with Billy's help, was make a start. That was enough, I hope, to get you and the Olsaperns into action, to produce the revolution I couldn't."
He grinned at the glowing Pack chief. "Looks like I succeeded. You've found me, at any rate. And what's that strange-looking helmet you're wearing?"
"A defense against your energy transmitter. A shield, but one I can read through."
"Sounds impressive," approved Starn. "Do you have much more stuff like that?"
"Too much more!" snapped Rob. "If you have anything to pack, pack it! If not, let's be on our way."
The dozen or so Pack men and Olsaperns on the flier watched Starn with various shades of silent disapproval as he climbed in and took a seat. Rob settled down near him as the flier headed north.
"Where are we going?" Starn asked.
"To the Compound," was Rob's short reply. In a moment he relented slightly and added, "The Olsaperns take you from there, according to our agreement. I don't know where. Don't care either."
"Are Cytherni and Billy at the Compound?"
Rob nodded. "They'll be staying there . . . or . . . well, the Olsaperns can have them, too, as far as I'm concerned! I'm fed up with the lot of you!"
The discovery of the manner in which he had been had by Starn was plainly annoying to Rob, despite the fact that the Olsaperns had been had just as thoroughly. Starn's antics had forced both peoples to spend months in unwilling—and to them unnatural—association and cooperation, and to learn now that he had been developing no monstrous weapons must come as a blow. They had been collaborating against a nonexistent danger.
"I'm sorry, Rob," Starn said softly. "It had to be done, and there was no other way I could do it."
"It didn't have to be done!" snarled Rob. "Things were going fine the way they were! Now you've got everyone confused and upset—and I might add you've caused your old father more heartbreak than any father deserves, much less a fine, gentle man like Virnce! You've undermined the faith of the Packs disastrously!"
The reference to his father stung Starn. He had known it would grieve Virnce, the Speaker at the Tenthday Services, to learn his own son had turned iconoclast. But it was a grief that had to be borne.
"If the faith of the Packs can be undermined by a few new facts," he said slowly, "it isn't much of a faith. Just as the science of the Olsaperns has already proved it isn't much of a science," he went on with a glance at the defensemen, "by rejecting new facts until they were shoved down its throat.
"The point is that, separately, the Packs and the Olsaperns were both wrong. Together they might be right—or at least closer to right. Both sides claim to love the truth. All right. Think of all the truth you've learned while working together! That helmet you're wearing. Whatever kind of gadget you used to locate me. Probably a lot of other things I don't know about. You understand your Novo senses better, and can use them more effectively. And Olsapern science has been broadened immeasurably. These are the fruits—"
"Bitter, unhealthy fruits!" hissed Rob.
"You don't know that," said Starn. "I'm not sure you even think it. You've merely been thrown off-balance because the world is changing after all these centuries, and you're not used to change. Nobody is."
"The world has always been changing," Rob argued.
"We've been progressing steadily toward the Ultimate Novo."
"At a snail's pace, maybe we have. The Packs don't have to lose that goal of the ideal, fully-sensed man. But with the help of Olsapern science, which you've ignored up to now, don't you think you might reach your goal much quicker?"
"Ugh!" Rob grunted in disgust, and turned away. Talk, Starn realized, would not make much impact on Rob's feelings—or, for that matter, on the course of events his actions had set in motion. What had been accomplished had been accomplished, and that was irretrievably that. His scheme had worked, and would open human horizons to undreamed-of breadth.
Also, it was a source of annoyance to a lot of people, including Rob, and of genuine personal grief to some, such as Starn's father, and to Cytherni—and thus in all likelihood to Starn himself.
The successful revolutionist sat in silence, lost in glum thoughts, for the remainder of the flight.
A large prefabricated building had risen in Smirth's meadow not far from the Compound, to house the joint research projects of Pack men and Olsapern scientists. It was surrounded by smaller sheds and numerous tents. The flier landed in a cleared area near the main building's entrance.
"Follow me," Rob ordered, and led Starn inside. There a heated discussion was in progress among a sizable group of people from both sides of the Hard Line. Rob entered right into it, but Starn, not being telepathic, spent several minutes trying to figure out what was being debated. Meanwhile he was largely ignored by everyone present, including the image of Higgins which, after a passing angry glare at him, returned its attention to the argument.
These people, thought Starn, with a left-out feeling, are all experts—some for what they know and some for what they are—and I'm a mere layman. A troublesome layman, at that.
They used terms he couldn't guess the meaning of, but he kept trying to follow the argument until he finally caught on.
Word of his capture, and of his harmless recent activities, had of course been radioed ahead of the flier. So the people in the research center were discussing ways and means of concluding their joint project, now that the reason for it had been removed.
Starn laughed rather loudly, a derisive bark that brought all eyes on him.
"Nonsense!" snapped Rob, and several other telepaths grumbled.
"What's he thinking?" a scientist demanded.
"I'm thinking you'll never make it," Starn replied.
"Now that you've started researching together, neither of you will dare break off the relationship. The Pack men have learned too much science to be trusted to work alone by the Olsaperns, and the Olsaperns could do too much with their own Novo senses to be trusted by the Packs!
"All you have to do to end your collaboration is learn to trust each other completely," he finished with a grin.
"But if you could do that you wouldn't object to working together in the first place!"
Higgins' voice rumbled from a speaker: "I suppose you counted on this, too, didn't you?"
Starn shook his head slowly. "No. I never thought it through quite to this point. Other things could have happened. For one thing, you might have learned before now to like each other, because basically you
're all pretty good folk.
"All I tried to do," he continued, "was to enable both sides to change their minds just enough to start working together, and to take the potentials of extended Novo senses seriously. You could have avoided all this, Higgins, if you hadn't refused to see plain facts when they were laid before you. Before any of you would look at the facts, the facts had to become a threat. That's what I made them. I don't believe either of you was afraid of what I, personally, would do with whatever I discovered, but you were afraid of what either of you would do to the other if just one of you got your hands on my gadgets.
"Something slightly like this happened back in the Science Age, you know. Everybody who was supposed to have good sense thought space travel was absurd, until a madman named Hitler started using giant rockets to carry weapons. Hitler was beaten too quickly for his enemies to team up and outdo him at building space rockets. After the war they started competing rocket programs, and explored separately because they were afraid to let any one nation take full control of space.
"If Hitler had lasted longer, and his enemies had gotten started in space on a cooperative basis, probably they wouldn't have dared to split up when the war ended. That's why I couldn't let you catch me too soon, and why I had to have something new and frightening to show you when you came after Billy. You had seen the threat by then, and that was enough of a mind-changer to start you working separately, just as the old nations did on space travel. I had to keep the threat going long enough after that to make you change your minds about working together as well. And now that you've—"
"Oh, shut up and get out of here!" roared Higgins.
"We're going to work out a sensible plan to discontinue this project, young man, and we don't intend to be disrupted by your defeatist propagandizing! Get him out of there, won't you, Foser?"
"Scram, Starn!" snapped Rob. "We'll have no more troublemaking from you!"
Starn shrugged and wandered out of the building, feeling thoroughly deflated. He was no sooner outside than a small boy, belted with an assortment of unlikely gadgets and festooned with dangling wires, streaked up to him.
A Sense of Infinity Page 45