Rogue Star

by Frederik Pohl

  The Reefer's laughter boomed. "Scare you, Monitor Quamodian?"

  "No! Or—yes, maybe. I don't think it is unreasonable of a mere human being to question his ability to deal with as tar!"

  The boy, who had been watching them silently, turning from face to face, coughed and interrupted. Changing the subject he said, "Say, preacher! What's the matter with the moon?"

  A dozen degrees over the horizon the gibbous moon floated, almost invisible, so dark a red was it. It was leprously stained and discolored, by no means the brilliant white fat crescent it should have appeared.

  "It's the sun," said Andy Quam gloomily. "Remember how red and angry-looking it was when it set? After those sunbolts struck? The moon's just reflecting it. And this man thinks he can destroy the thing that did that!"

  "Worth a try, Monitor," boomed the Reefer cheerfully. "Mind if I borrow your flyer?"

  "For what?"

  "Why, for the hunt. It's a bit of a walk from here to the hills on foot," the Reefer apologized. "As I don't have the sleeth to 'take me there any more, I'd appreciate the use of your flyer. It's long past Starday now, no reason not to use it."

  Rufe cried out sharply. "Preacher! Listen—what's that sound?"

  Quamodian raised his hand imperiously, silencing the Reefer's booming voice. They listened. Then Quam's face twisted. "It's Molly," he cried, turning to run toward the house. "She's calling my name!"

  But when Andy Quam burst through the door of the girl's room she was lying wide-awake, looking at the ceiling. Slowly she lowered her eyes to look at him. "Andy," she said. "I should have known you'd come. I've always been able to rely on you."

  Quamodian's ears burned. "Are you all right?" he demanded. ''I heard you calling ..."

  She sat up on the edge of the bed. "All right? I suppose so." Her face was a mask of tragedy for a moment. "Poor Cliff," she whispered. "It's strange! I thought he was talking to me, in my dream. But it wasn't really him—it was something huge and strange. A monster." She shook herself.

  Then, gloriously, she smiled. There was tragedy beneath the smile, but it was clear to Andy Quam that she was making an effort to be cheerful. "I dragged you all the way across space," she said. "I'm sorry. I've always been a trouble to you, Andy dear."

  "Never a trouble," he said, speaking from a depth of passion that shook him. Molly was touched. She reached out and patted his arm. "Is there anything to eat?" she asked, incongruously, "It's been a long time!"

  Rufe was happy to oblige when Quamodian relayed the girl's request to him, producing more sandwiches and milk, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of food. "Won't your family mind you taking us in like this?" asked Andy Quam. "We're eating you out of house and home!"

  The boy's face clouded. "It's all right, preacher," he said.

  Quamodian frowned at him. "Come to think of it," he said, "where are your family? It's pretty late for them to be at the Starchurch."

  "Oh, they're not there anymore. They—they've gone away for a while."

  Andy Quam stopped in the middle of the humming little kitchen, busy generating new supplies of bread and milk and meats to replace those the boy had drawn from its programs, and said firmly, "You're biding something, Rufe. Why?"

  "Aw, don't ask me, preacher. It's just—well, it's kind of private."

  But then Molly Zaldivar came out of her room, looking remarkably refreshed and restored, and Andy Quam let the matter drop.

  For half an hour they were all at ease, Molly as friendly and affectionate as ever in the old days on Exion Four, the boy beside himself with pleasure at pleasing Molly, even the Reefer almost jolly. The huge man from space demanded to know whether Quamodian would join him in his hunt for the rogue. For a moment, in 'that warm room, it almost seemed like a reasonable idea, and Quamodian let himself think about it—a long chase, a view-hallo, the quarry at bay. But it was fantasy. This was no beast of the forest but an inimical creature of linked plasmas whose size and might were utterly incomprehensible to humans. To hunt it was like setting a snare for a supernova.

  Then Andy Quam saw Molly hiding a yawn, and realized with a start how utterly exhausted he was. "Let's get some sleep," he ordered, and fussed over them all until they had sorted themselves out into various rooms. Only then did Quamodian let himself sprawl out on the couch in the living room, the door to Molly's room just past his head, ready to spring up at any alarm.

  It had been a good many hours, and a good many millions of parsecs, since he had slept. When he closed his eyes he was unconscious almost at once, and slept like the dead.

  Chapter 16

  Where was the rogue? As well try to fix the position of an electron in its blurred orbit around a nucleus; it was under the hill and in it, suffusing the skies around, inhabiting the body of the sleeth that soared tirelessly and patiently over the house where Molly Zaldivar slept, penetrating and entering every hidden place within hundreds of miles, and reaching out into near space.

  But if its position had no exact geographic boundaries, at least there were loci of special consequence. It did, for example, occupy the great animal bulk of the sleeth. It concentrated at least a sizeable part of its being in the electron cloud that seeped through the rock and clay of the base of the hill. And it found other special areas of interest to toy with.

  It found, for one, the antique handling machine that Cliff Hawk had used to help him construct his tunnel workshop. It was a minor puzzle to the rogue, but a faintly interesting one; the machine had obvious purpose, and it spent some moments working out that purpose and how to achieve it. Then, the machine solved, it spent a few moments now in what can only be called pleasure. Power in motors, it thought. My power. Spin gears. Drive through rubble. It reached out with its metal arms and picked up bits of debris—a yellow cylinder of helium, the half of a thousand-pound armature, bent out of shape in the explosions. It threw them about recklessly, madly ...

  Then it had had all it could enjoy of that particular game, and turned to .another.

  The robot inspector was a greater puzzle, but a lesser plaything. It was no particular joy to operate, since its transflection drives were too similar to the sleeth's, or the rogue's own, to be novel. But the rogue was aware that somehow the robot had been guided by other influences, far away, and that some part of it was still trying to respond to those influences as their messages crackled Into its receptors. They were an irritation to the rogue, these repetitious exhortations on behalf of the star Almalik; it did not like them.

  It had, by now, begun to acquire emotion.

  One particular emotion troubled it, that inexplicable urging toward Molly Zaldivar which it had felt, ever more strongly, as Cliff Hawk's patterns of thought asserted themselves and fitted themselves into the organization of the rogue's own habit-structure. The rogue did not find this incongruous. It had no standards by which to judge incongruity. But it found it troubling.

  There was a solution to things which were troubling. It could act on the impulse, and see what came of it.

  It could attempt to add Molly Zaldivar to itself.

  Chapter 17

  "Mol-ly. Mol-ly Zaaal-di-var ..."

  Molly woke slowly, surfacing inch by inch from sleep. She was unwilling to wake up. Sleeping though she was, a part of her mind remembered what waking would bring back to her hi utter, unwanted clarity. Cliff's death, the birth of the rogue, the terrible danger that the man she loved had unloosed on the universe.

  "Mol-ly..."

  Butt someone was calling her name. Resentfully she opened her eyes and looked around.

  No one was in the room. It was still dark; she had not slept for more than an hour or two.

  "Who is it?" she whispered. No response. Molly shivered. It was eerie, that disembodied voice, unlike any she had ever heard. It was impossible to dismiss it as the ragged end of a dream, half remembered on waking; it was real enough. It was even more impossible to ignore it and go back to sleep.

  Molly stood up, threw the robe Rufe had found for he
r over her shoulders, and padded to the door of her room. She opened it just a crack. There was the living room, with Andy Quam asleep on the couch. He stirred painfully as she looked at him, grimaced, mumbled some sleep-evoked phrase and was still again—all without opening his eyes. Poor Andy, she thought warmly, and sadly; and closed the door without sound.

  Whoever had called her, it was not Andy Quam.

  She went to the window, threw back the curtains—and gasped in -terror.

  There it was, hovering just outside the double French panes on its shimmering transflection fields.

  The sleeth!

  The great blind eyes stared emptily at her, the metal-tipped claws caught reflections of cold fire from the sinking moon. The shimmering field pulsed rapidly, and from the pane of glass she. caught the faint vibration of sound that had called her from sleep: "Mol-ly. Come. I—want— you."

  For an instant stark terror flooded her, and she half turned to run, to shake Andy Quam awake and beg for protection against this fantastic monster that called her name. But the utter wondrousness of it held her. The sleeth could not speak; nothing the Reefer had said about it gave it a voice. Nor could it have known her name, not in any way that she could hope to understand. And anyway, the sleeth was no longer even an animal in its own independent right; it was only a captive of the thing that Cliff Hawk had made, and had been killed by.

  She flung open one side of the French window. She didn't know why; obviously, if the creature intended her harm, the flimsy glass and frame could not protect her. "What—what do you want?" she breathed.

  But it only repeated, "Mol-ly. Mol-ly, come."

  The sound came from the glass itself, she discovered; somehow the creature was vibrating to form frequencies that she could hear as words. It was even stranger, she thought, than if it had suddenly formed lips, palate and tongue and spoken to her.

  It was terrifying. Worse than terrifying; without warning, she was filled with a revulsion so fierce that she almost screamed with the pain of it.

  "No," she whispered. "No!" and closed the window.

  "Come," sang the sleeth—or whatever it was that controlled die sleeth. The huge creature danced patiently on hs shimmering fields, waiting for her to accede to its demand. "Come," said the tinny, bodiless voice again. ""Mol-ly. Come."

  Insane to be talking to this thing, in a perfectly ordinary room, through a perfectly normal window! "Nol! she said strongly. "Go away!"

  Did the thing understand her words? She had no way of knowing. It merely hung there silently for a moment, regarding her with those great blind eyes.

  Then it moved, slowly and remorselessly, like a Juggernaut. It bobbed silently forward, thrusting the unopened window out of the way as though it were air. An almost soundless crack and a faint patter of shattered glass on the carpet were the only noise it made as it came toward her.

  The great, deadly claws reached for her.

  Molly drew a breath to scream, tried to turn and run ...

  Something bright and murderous flashed from those blind eyes. It was like an instant anesthetic, like a blow from behind that drives out awareness before the mind quite realizes it has been struck. Down went Molly Zaldivar into paralysis and dark, stunned and helpless. She felt herself falling, failing, failing ...

  The last thing she remembered was those great claws grasping her. Incredible, she thought, they don't hurt ...

  And then the world closed in around her.

  Quamodian woke painfully in broad daylight that poured through the windows. He found himself on a couch, with a synthetic copy of some animal fur over him for warmth, his head throbbing, his bone§ aching. He felt vaguely ill, and for a moment could not recall where he was.

  Then he remembered. The enigma of the sunbolts. The nightmare of the Reefer and the sleeth. The death of Cliff Hawk. The birth of the rogue...

  He forced himself to sit up and look at the world around him.

  Pinned to the arm of the couch was a note, scrawled with a photoscriber in a huge, clumsy hand:

  Preacher, I didn't want to wake you. I went to tell Miss Zaldivar's folks she's all right. Meet you there if you want. P.S., I left everybody sleeping because I thought you all needed it. Food in the kitchen.

  Rufe

  Sleeping they still were, to judge from the mighty rasping snores that came from the little cubicle Rule had given the Reefer. There was no sound at all from Molly's room. Andy Quam hesitated, his hand on the door; but there was no sense disturbing her, and surely nothing could have got past him to harm her in the night...

  He left the house and stepped out into the bright morning.

  Bright it was. Yet, thought Andy Quam, there was something strange about it, and in a moment he realized what it was. The colors were wrong. There was no« cloud hi the sky, but -the air had a lowering quality, as of storm clouds. He squinted up at the sun and perceived the reason.

  Red, sullen, blotched, the disk of the sun still had not recovered from whatever had roiled it yesterday. It was not the familiar sun of Earth, as men had portrayed it in a thousand books and songs. It was somehow like the snake-haired sun of that far world where he had left Cloth-ilde Kwai Kwich.

  He limped across a wide square, reviving somewhat as he moved. It had been a strenuous day. And a worrisome one, he thought, remembering with wrinkled brow all the unanswered problems and unmet challenges it had offered.

  Perhaps this new day would clear some of them up, he thought—but without much confidence.

  He gave the Starchurch a wide berth, hailed a passing citizen and found himself directed to the home of Molly Zaldivar's parents. It was past the Central Municipal Plexus, he discovered, which fit hi well enough with his plans; he could use more information if he could get it.

  But the Central Municipal Plexus did not turn out to be the combination library-town hall he had expected.

  He walked across a queerly perfect circle of stained and blackened cement. It was puzzling, it seemed to have no place in this countrified idyll of a town. Immediately a recorded voice spoke to him:

  "Welcome, guest! You have landed at Wisdom Creek Historical Monument. It is a section of the original village of Wisdom Creek, reconstructed exactly as it was on the winter day, many years ago, when the Visitants firstarrived."

  Andy Quam spoke up, addressing his remarks to thin air, for there was no speaker hi sight. "I don't want a historical tour," he snapped. "I want some information."

  But there was no response. This was a low-grade programmed instructor, he realized with irritation. Not even homeostatic, merely programmed to respond to his mass-sensed presence with a recorded lecture. He walked through a thick gate ...

  And found himself in something 'that, for a startled moment, made him think he was in Hell. The air stung his eyes. It choked him, with a reek of industrial fumes and imperfectly oxidized mineral fuels. Blinking and squinting, he made out that he was surrounded by grimy rows of hideous little brick and wooden huts.

  Far down a street was a human figure, faced away from him and motionless. Vexed, Andy Quam stamped toward it, ignoring the revolting spectacle around him.

  He approached a squat gray pile of concrete on which was etched the legend, Plan of Man. A voice from the air cried brightly: "Welcome guest! This structure, a part of the Central Municipal Plexus Exhibit, represents a primitive Tax Office. Here each citizen reported to the Plan of Man the number of tokens he had received for his work in the previous sidereal year, whereupon he was forced to give up a share of 'them. Here too was the ration office, where he received permission to barter what tokens he had left for articles of clothing and other necessities. Here too was the draft office, where young men and women were impressed for training in the use of crude but adequate weapons of the time. Here too was that most central and fundamental institution, the Planning Office, where every action of every citizen was dictated and reviewed and corrected by a primitive central computer. Here, guest, was the very nerve center of the fundamental coercive a
pparatus of the state!"

  Andy Quam trudged grimly on, ignoring the senseless prattle. There was entirely too much realism in this exhibit for his comfort, he thought with distaste. The very air was polluted with the hydrocarbons and fly-ash and photo-chemicals of primitive combustion products. And the man he was approaching was oddly dressed hi what must have been the costume of the time: a thick fiber uniform, a brutally chopped haircut, something about his neck which looked like a massive metal collar, certainly too heavy and too tight to be comfortable. He stood stark still facing the entrance of the building, his right arm raised hi a motionless salute.

  "Excuse me," called Andy Quam. "Can you help me find the home of Juan Zaldivar?"

  He caught himself, realizing at once that it was only a lifelike dummy. Another recording explained cheerfully:

  "The human form you see, guest, is the replica of a Risk.So self-directed men and women were designated. The iron collar worn by each Risk contained an. explosive decapitation charge, which could be detonated instantly by the Planning Machine in the event of any suspect action."

  Soberly, stiffly, the figure dropped its salute, turned until its mass-sensors located Andy Quam and haltingly bowed. "Oh, great Almalik!" cried Quamodian, exasperated. "All I want is directions! How can I reach, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Zaldivar?"

  Silence, except for the questioning hum of a carrier signal.

  "Isn't anybody listening?" he shouted.

  Silence again, then, doubtfully, "Guest, you are invited to return to the Wisdom Creek Historical Monument, which has been restored and maintained by the Companions of the Star for public information."

  "I am a Companion of the Star! I am Monitor Andreas Quamodian, and I insist on your answering my question!"