“Forgive me, Biset,” he said, in a gentler tone, “but your questioning was getting a little personal, you know.”
“It’s not for myself I question or speak,” she said, and her pale eyes flashed momentarily like winter ice in a glimpse of sunlight from a cloud-thick sky. “I am the voice of the Police.”
He chilled a little, inside—but he hid the signs of his reaction under a calm face.
“I see,” he said, quietly. “Of course, that makes a difference. But these are pretty strange statements you’re making. What would a member of an arbite revolutionary group be doing, going as an indent to Belben? Certainly, someone like that would want to stay on Earth, where they could be useful to whatever plans the organization has.”
“We don’t know the answer to that, yet,” said Biset “But it’s a fact that many of the Colony Worlds are more lax than they should be in reporting the presence of criminals from Earth back to the World Police. Witness the fact that your former friend Paul Oca is thought to have left Earth for one of those colony installations.”
So, thought Giles, the World Police had joined the Oca Front in their conclusion about Paul’s whereabouts. That meant he must find Paul before the Police did, if there was to be any hope of a successful assassination. The Police were limited by law to attempts at rehabilitation that in no way forced or damaged a criminal’s personality. Their methods, of analysis and discussive persuasion, worked well enough on the circumscribed minds of arbites. They would never dent the educated intellect and will of an Adelborn like Paul; and Paul, under Police guard, would continue to survive as a symbol for the arbite revolutionaries, who could go on recruiting in his name.
“Is he?” Giles said, now. “I wonder how he got there.”
“He had help—from the Black Thursday organization, we believe,” Biset answered. “In fact, whoever it is aboard who belongs to that organization may be a courier to him.”
“Oh?” said Giles.
A sudden, sharp interest kindled in him. If this woman was right and he could find out who the Black Thursday courier was before she did, the courier might be able to lead him directly to Paul. Of course that would mean protecting the Black Thursday member long enough to let him or her make contact—and that in turn might make necessary the killing of Biset The deep training of a lifetime rose in him against the thought It was bad enough to have to kill an equally competent member of his own class, like Paul. To murder a helpless arbite, one of the class he and his family had dedicated their generations to guiding toward the day when no one need be bound to a lifetime on the wheel of duty any longer, that was—
He blocked further thought on that topic, deliberately. What needed to be done would have to be done. There was no turning aside from necessity. If he must kill an arbite to reach Paul, then he must kill an arbite ... that was all there was to it.
“Honor, sir,” the voice of Biset jarred on his ear, “are you listening to me?”
“What? Oh, forgive me” said Giles. “I have to keep part of my attention on the screen, here.” He nodded at the screen of his instrument console, which showed the Engineer still at work on the motors.
“Of course. I’d forgotten. Forgive me instead, sir,” she said. “But what I have to tell you is important. I was saying that while I’ve got no actual proof yet who the Black Thursday member is, I am already fairly certain in my own mind. I’m sure it’s the girl called Mara.”
“Mara! Her name came from Giles’ lips a little more forcefully than he liked.
“Yes, sir,” Biset was saying, “and that’s why Tm speaking to you about it now. I need definite proof, or the girls admission to some third-party witness, before I can do more than hold her for temporary questioning once we reach Belben; and you’d be surprised how some of these hard-core arbite revolutionaries can resist and avoid making an arrestible admission during the period of temporary questioning the law allows us.”
“Of course ,” murmured Giles, his mind spinning with this information. “I’ll help in any way I can.”
“The Adelman needn’t involve himself unduly ...” Biset was saying, but Giles hardly heard her. Much to his own surprise, a section of his mind was rejecting vigorously the notion that Mara could be in any way connected with the Black Thursday group. That organization’s name dated back to a wild attempt by a group of obviously self-deluded arbites to force their way into a session of the Adelborn Council—the decision-making body for all Earth. The arbites had been carrying banners and placards calling on the Council to shorten the term of the lifetime work contracts presently required for lower-class education.
Naturally, the protesters had been unarmed... . All, that was, but one of them. One young man had a stolen Police shortgun from the depot where he was on contract as a warehouseman. He was foolish enough to produce this weapon, which he probably did not even know how to fire, and wave it around. Naturally, the Council guards themselves opened fire, and the protesters were cut into smoking ruins.
The day had been a Thursday, and this newer, grimmer, underground organization among the arbites had chosen to name itself the Black Thursday. Its members were a far cry from simple neurotic placard-carriers. The rumor was that they boasted of the weapons each one carried; and the few suspected individuals the Police had been able to round up had reportedly carried poison capsules they had been able to swallow as soon as they had been arrested and before they could be interviewed and questioned.
It was an ugly sort of fanaticism, Giles thought, that would lead a man or woman—even an arbite man or woman—to choose death rather than the possibility of being argued out of obsession with that fanaticism, back into rationality and a useful life. Try as he might, he could not see Mara as that type of irrational. He remembered her smile as she had commented that picking ib fruit was not the most demanding job in existence. The kind of person who could be a Black Thursday member with a poison capsule hidden about him could not be the sort of person to joke and smile like that, certainly. No, it was unthinkable....
He roused himself from his thoughts.
“Sorry,” he said to Biset “I got occupied for a moment with what the Engineer’s doing there. Would you tell me again?”
“I was saying, Honor, sir,” Biset repeated, “there’s no need for you to put yourself to the trouble of any unusual effort, or any action unbecoming an Adelborn. The girl is young and you are, after all, of the opposite sex and of the higher classes. It’s not unknown that an Adelman ...”
Uncharacteristically, for once, Biset’s voice wavered. She caught herself up sharply and went on.
“It’s not unknown that an Adelman should find himself attracted—temporarily, of course—to an arbite. And of course these Black Thursday people like to think they’re as good as any Adelborn. Tm sure if your Honor will simply avoid rejecting her when she finally gets to the point of making advances to you, you’ll soon have her talking quite freely to you. The minute she says anything compromising, you need only tell me. I’ll take charge from that point on.”
“You’re that sure, are you,” demanded Giles, “that she’ll make advances, as you put it, to me?”
“I’m positive of it,” said Biset, crisply. “A man—pardon me, sir—an Adelborn like you doesn’t know these arbites the way I do. They’d all sell their soul to be one of the upper classes.”
Giles looked at her tight-held lips. She was probably right he told himself, glumly, but somehow it was sickening to hear her put it in words like that Well, duty was duty, and in this case it was as much in the interest of the Oca Front as of the Police to see the Black Thursday arbites captured, or put out of business. But who could have thought that pretty, bright-looking little Mara—
A new thought exploded suddenly on the battleground of his mind. He looked sharply at Biset.
“Just a second,” he said. “We’re forgetting something. You say you’re a member of the Police, but I’ve only got your word for that, or for any of this you’ve been telling me. For al
l I know you could be a Black Thursday member yourself, and Mara could belong to the Police.”
“Of course, sir. Quite right,” she answered.
Her fingers went to the tab at the top of the vertical seal line of her coveralls, hesitated a second, then grasped the tab and pulled it down no more than a couple of inches. The coverall collar gaped open, revealing the thin, corded column of her neck, shadowed within. Against the dimness of that shadow, something tiny burned and glowed like a speck of living green fire.
Giles frankly stared. He had heard of the Police identispores, but had never seen one before in his life. What he was looking at, he knew, was a miniature bubble of crystalline transparency, in the heart of which was buried a special spore, the cultivation of which was one of the most jealously guarded secrets of the Police and the Council. The bubble would be glued with a physiological glue to the flesh of Biset’s neck, and from the bubble itself a nearly invisible hair of a tube would be reaching down into a nearby blood vessel. Up that tube, as up a capillary, some of Biset’s blood would reach and nourish the spore, which—as long as it was alive— would glow with its own, unique color, unlike the color of any of its sister spores.
Removed from its connection with Biset’s bloodstream, that spore would die and its individual light would go out Even if placed immediately in contact with the bloodstream of any other person, it would die. It had been cultured on Biset’s individual body chemistry, and any other body chemistry was poison to it.
“My ident card,” Biset was saying.
Giles looked down and saw her holding a small white card, also enclosed in a few millimeters of crystalline transparency—a material that made tampering with it almost an impossibility. A perfectly ordinary arbite identification card, except that one corner of it was colored green. Giles took the card from her hand and held it up so that the colored corner was only a fraction of an inch from the minuscule living jewel at her throat. The colors matched.
“Yes,” he said, letting his breath out in something that almost became a sigh. “Thank you. I believe you now.”
He handed back the card. She took it with one hand, resealed the collar of her coveralls with the other.
“I can count on your help then, Honor, sir?”
“Yes,” he said, heavily, “you can count on it. Wait—” The sudden sharp note in his voice arrested her as she started to turn away.
“The Police serve the Council and the Council represent the Adelborn. I am the only Adelborn here. You’ll do what I say— and I say you’ll take no steps to arrest or question anyone on this ship without coming and getting my permission first. You’ll do nothing whatsoever in the line of Police duty without checking with me first. Is that understood?”
Her face was unreadable. She hesitated for just a second, and in that second, the Captain’s voice spoke.
“Now!” it exploded, in Albenareth, suddenly from the grille of the console before Giles. Giles jerked into full alertness. He had let his thoughts run away from him, while his attention was lulled by his own lack of understanding of the purpose behind most of the actions of the Engineer shown on the screen. Now he woke suddenly to the fact that what he had taken for a continuing effort of work on the part of the spacesuited figure had become a sort of aimless pawing at the cover of the remaining motor, like the fumblings of a drunk man.
“Adelman!” said the Captain’s voice. “Do you hear me? Now you must act. Use your mechanical to take hold of the Engineer. Gently, now—about the body ... gently ...”
Tensely, Giles maneuvered the rods and their finger studs. The alien waldoes were like the equivalent machine of human design in that they were far more powerful than the flesh-and-blood hands directing them; and Giles concentrated on using them as lightly as possible to take hold of the Engineer around what in human terms would have been his waist.
He was too gentle. He got a six-finger grip on the Engineer and then lost it The spacesuited body bobbled away, floating above the hull of the lifeship, tethered only by its umbilical connections. Giles made a grab for it—-but instinctively used two mechanical fingers in the human manner instead of the Albenarethian three, and the Engineer floated free again.
The voice of the Captain shouted something from the grille in front of Giles, but Giles was concentrating too hard on his job at hand to listen or translate what was said. He tried once more, delicately, with all three fingers on each metal arm; and this time he caught the Engineer firmly.
The grating sound rumbled through the hull of the lifeship. In Giles’ screen the images of the motors began to shrink as the Captain activated the vehicle carrying Giles’ mechanical device and the Engineer back toward the airlock.
“Stand by, Adelman!” said the Captain’s voice from the grille —and this time Giles heard and understood him. “Now comes the difficult part. You will have to lift him around the corner into the airlock, and place him so that he does not float out when I close the outer lock door.”
Giles grunted. No doubt it would be a maneuver that any trained Albenareth could accomplish without thinking. But for an untrained human like himself, it was as delicate as balancing a plate on edge and then letting go of it to reach for another plate to balance on top of the first. He must release the Engineer with both waldoes, hoping that the alien would hold his position on the lip of the airlock while Giles got a new grip from another angle that would allow him to move the Engineer all the way inside the lock.
If he fumbled, the Engineer would drift out of his present position, and the two-move series would have to begin all over again. And the Engineer—if he was not already dead—was coming closer to death by the minute.
A little, distant section of Giles’ mind took this moment to laugh at him. Here he was straining every effort to save the life of a being to whom death was the greatest of rewards, and the culmination of all other rewards. But, strangely, knowing that the Albenareth thought so made no difference to Giles’ body and mind in this moment. He was not Albenareth; he was human. And the pattern of humans was to fight death in themselves or in anyone for whom they felt love or responsibility, down to the last moment of hope, and the last line of defense.
Delicately, Giles freed his six mechanical fingers from their grasp on the middle part of the spacesuited figure. Quickly, he rotated both the finger-support rods, to change the whole angle of their attack on the body they were trying to lift. Then he moved them in for another six-finger grip on the Engineer.
The Engineer had already begun to float away from contact with the lifeship; but Giles, operating above himself under the adrenaline of the moment, made a fair recatch of the other’s figure with all six fingers of the two mechanical hands. For a second he merely held position, waiting for the wave of relief to pass, then slowly he began to swing the Engineer down into the airlock itself.
The move inside went smoothly, but the bight of the umbilicals still floated out into space, through the open outer door. They would keep the outer door from sealing properly, unless they were also brought fully into the lock.
Giles risked a great deal. He had been so aware of his inability to use the two hands of the waldoes separately that he had not even practiced doing so. But now, with the Engineer safely within the lock, he could not risk letting the spacesuited alien float out again. Delicately, he concentrated on holding the Engineer down upon the airlock floor with one mechanical hand, while with the other he reached for the umbilicals.
For a moment he felt the division of attention and frustration that anyone feels who is trying for the first time the old trick of patting his head with one hand while rubbing his stomach in a circular motion with the other. Then his groping mechanical fingers hooked the floating umbilicals and drew them back into the airlock.
They were barely inside the lock when the outer door began to close. Clearly the Captain had been watching and had no intention of letting a second be lost. When the outer lock door was swung to sufficiently so that neither Engineer nor umbilicals could es
cape to block its closing, Giles unwrapped his aching hands from around the two rods, turned about, and slumped against the inner hull of the lifeship, panting. His upper suit was soaked with sweat and clung to him.
The Captain had been right. What Giles had just done had been no job for an arbite. It had required not only a healthy body in good nervous and physical condition, but someone with enough personal self-confidence to gamble on the abilities of that body.... Giles woke suddenly to the fact that he had an audience. All the arbites on the ship, it seemed, with Mara and Biset in their front rank, were clustered just beyond the gap in the first screen, silently watching him.
He opened his mouth to order them back, but the voice of the Captain, buzzing loudly on the human words, beat him to it.
“Back! Out! Adelman, tell your people to get out of our way—and help me after I open the lock!”
“You heard him!” panted Giles. “Get back. Sit down on your cots. Stay out of the way. We’ll be coming through with the Engineer in a minute and I want the way open!”
They melted away before him. He turned to join the Captain, but the Albenareth motioned him back.
“Stop!” said the alien, in her own language. “Touch him and you’ll injure yourself!”
The Captain was right, Giles saw, as the inner airlock door slowly swung wide to reveal the Engineer. His spacesuit was covered with frost, as the whole inner part of the lock had been when they had first opened it, and was again now. The Captain stepped forward into the lock, extending hands around which she had once more wrapped plastic sheeting for protection. Awkwardly, but swiftly, she disconnected the umbilicals and lifted the motionless figure of the Engineer through the inner lock door into the body of the lifeship.
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