“All right” Giles said. “Tell me. This Association—what is it?”
“What is it?” Biset said, turning to him. “What do you think it is? An Association, a network, of all the arbites who did the real work under you so-called Adelborn. Police, administrative, production, and service personnel of high rank like myself.” She interrupted her own tirade. “Did you think I was just an ordinary Policewoman? I’m Deputy Chief of the Investigative Arm, Northeast European Sector. It’s me, and a few thousands like me—but thousands controlling thousands apiece—who’re the Association, the real arbite underground that set out to get rid of you Adelborn almost from the first day you were in power.”
She turned her back to speak pointedly to Mara.
“Get busy,” she said. “Shoot him—your way. Let’s get things moving.”
“Just a minute,” said Giles. He spoke out of a pure instinct to play for time that seemed to be running out His head was whirling with what he had just learned, and certain conclusions of his own that developed inescapably from it He groped for words that would annoy Biset enough to keep her talking.
“So,” he said, to the older arbite woman, “you aren’t a convert of Paul’s after all. I thought you’d come to believe in him.”
Biset took the bait.
“Believe?” She almost spat the words. “In him?” The last word was expelled from her lips as if it had been a poisonous toad. “These other fools may believe in daydreams. I belong to the people who’ve made things happen—from the beginning when your kind took overl Do you think I’d listen to people like him— or her?”
She glared from Paul to Mara.
“It’s not a simple job,” she said venomously, “to get rid of millions of people over the face of an entire planet in twelve hours. We need those six more months of quiet—perfect quiet while things are set up—so that no Adelborn gets curious or alarmed. And this fool”—she threw a glance at Paul—”had to go and let your amateur Oca Front sleuths track him down here to 206-40, in spite of all we could do in the World Police to cover up for him. Whether you killed him or brought him back, there’d be no way to hush up the fact he’d come this far and been given asylum by the aliens and humans here. That had to trigger off an investigation by Adelborn in the Police ranks, and our own plans for a tidy elimination would have been turned up, too.”
She stopped talking abruptly. Giles spoke quickly.
“So you knew I was headed for 20B-40?” he said. Then he shook his head. “No, of course, you couldn’t have known.”
“Couldn’t?” flared Biset “Of course we knew. I came on board for the trip particularly to take care of you. I brought these”—she flung her hand out at the other arbites in the room with a sweeping motion—”as a team to help me. A team pulled from the lower ranks of the Association, a team that knew nothing but how to obey orders....”
She paused to look at Mara.
“All but this one. This one I was forced to take to keep the good will of the Black Thursday idiots!”
“That’s very interesting,” said Giles—and he meant it “Then just tell me one thing—”
But Biset was through being conned into conversation.
“I’ll tell you nothing,” she said, turning to Mara. “All right girl, you’ve got the weapon. Shoot him, and let’s get going!”
Mara lifted her hand holding the gun. Its slim barrel became a tiny ring with a black dot in its center facing Giles. Beyond that ring, Giles could have sworn he saw something in Mara’s face that did not match the pointed weapon—something that begged him to understand.
Then there was a little wink of light from the black dot at the center of the metal circle—and darkness came instantly.
He awoke—if it could be called that, because it was a sick and uncertain return to consciousness—and found himself in some small, dimly lighted space with darkness surrounding it Mara’s face was a few inches in front of his own. He was able to recognize it quite clearly, although it went in and out of focus as he watched. He became aware that her hands were doing things to his body— strapping him in, in fact, to the seat of a vehicle—a seat of the rock buggy that had brought him out here.
“What’re you doing?” he tried to ask, but the first word that came out was more like a blurred grunt than anything else.
“Hush ...” Her voice barely breathed in his ear as she worked with her face close to his. “Save your strength. Don’t talk. Listen ... There wasn’t any choice. I had to shoot you a second time. They think I placed the bum so that you’ll die in about fifteen minutes, well before the buggy brings you back on automatic controls to the main Complex. But I didn’t angle the shot the way they think. If you can get to a doctor in the next couple of hours, you’ll be all right. You must live. You must... .” Her lips brushed his cheek faintly as she tightened the strap around his shoulder and chest. “It’s all I can do. I’m almost as much in Biset’s hands as you are. But remember ... don’t do anything until the buggy gets you to the Complex. Then punch the control keys for the nearest hospital. Don’t waste time trying to reach the local police. You understand?”
“Yes,” he said, or thought he said. But evidently she understood. Her head nodded slightly, and her face moved away from him, out of his field of vision.
He found himself staring through the windshield of the rock buggy, directly at the closed metal doors he had entered earlier, now glinting metallically in the buggy’s headlights. After a moment, the doors parted and the buggy jerked into movement. It rolled forward, out of the doors and onto the rocky, lunarlike landscape of 20B-40.
The distant white dwarf sun was high in the sky now, and the jumbled rocky plain before the windshield of the moving buggy was a panorama in black and silver, in which the headlights of the buggy paled almost to invisibility. Over everything rose the dome of the night and the stars, with all other habitations, including the main dome of the Complex, invisible in the further distant darkness, around the horizon. The buggy jolted and swayed as it went, in spite of its excellent suspension, crossing the boulder-studded and uneven ground.
The jolting intruded a slight nausea into the aura of dullness and discomfort that encased Giles like a bottle. He was not conscious of any specific pain, but a sort of general uncomfortableness seemed to have soaked all through him, even into the marrow of his bones. He was dull-minded, weak, and heavy.
It required a great effort, but he finally forced his mind to think about where he was and what was happening to him. The effort itself woke him slightly, perhaps pumping a little adrenaline into his bloodstream. He became more aware, but at the same time his discomfort sharpened. He was conscious of two overlapping areas of heavy painlike pressure, as if a large bruise was being pressed on by some intolerably heavy weight. One of the areas involved his left shoulder, and the other was just above his breastbone. It had been in the shoulder that Biset had shot him, he remembered muzzily. The pain over the breastbone must be where Mara had burned him a second time with the laser.
The why of all these things nagged at his dulled mind. Why go to all the trouble of shooting him, just so, and then sending him back to the central Complex in his rock buggy?
He made an effort to sit up, to see what, if anything, had been done to the rock buggy itself—and his right foot caught against something on the floor at his feet. With a second great effort, he pulled himself up to look down at it. The body of Hem lay there, as if it had tumbled from the seat beside him; and the laser handgun was still tucked in the waistband of the gray slacks.
Every moment was like lifting some great weight, but movement was possible. Slowly, in several successive, jerky efforts, Giles managed to bend forward, reach down, and pick up the weapon. He curled his finger around the trigger button and pointed it at the surface of the buggy seat beside him. He pressed the button.
Nothing happened. The weapon’s charge was either exhausted or removed. Effortfully, he shoved the useless, but still dangerous-looking weapon inside his
jacket and leaned heavily against the backrest of his seat.
He felt exhaustion imprisoning him like soft but massive fetters. The buggy jolted onward, headed toward the main Complex dome, still invisible on the night horizon.
He passed out a second time....
16
He came to, suddenly, choking on the bitter taste of bile in his throat.
He had been sick ... or rather his body had tried to be sick, but found nothing in his stomach except digestive juices to expel. The raw, searing throat-and-mouth bum of the internal acids had brought him back to himself again.
He felt clearer-headed now. He was aware of his body in a more normal sense, and the pressure areas were beginning to send signals along his nerves in a more normal fashion—not yet as sharp pain, but rather as deep-seated aches. Under the acid taste lingering in his throat, he was conscious of a raging thirst, and his eyes burned and gritted as if he had been staring into dust-filled air, unblinkingly, for some time. Beyond this, however, his mind was newly alert, with the abnormal alertness of someone under a high fever. He looked down at his feet and saw the body of Hem, still there. He looked ahead through the windshield of the moving buggy and saw the tall black semicircle of the main Complex dome, now partially occulting the stars ahead.
Feverishly, with a rush, the whole plan of Biset and her underground arbites tumbled into understanding before him. Barsey knew he had set forth to visit the caretaker of a dead friend’s dwelling. Now he would be on record as returning with one of the arbites who had shared his shipwreck—and that arbite shot to death, while he, himself, showed two bums through him and an empty weapon at hand. Plainly, from what Mara had said, he had been intended by Biset to be a corpse like Hem by the time the buggy rolled automatically into its stall at the main Complex.
That meant an investigation by the World Police—the only ones competent to investigate in a case where an Adelman was suspected of something illegal. Biset, herself, as a fellow survivor of the lifeship journey, would be automatically disqualified from investigating. That meant an investigator must be applied for from Earth, must make the trip out and spend days or weeks—weeks, undoubtedly, thought Giles, if the World Police were as infiltrated with Biset’s arbite underground Association members as the Policewoman had claimed. Whoever was sent out would almost certainly be a member of that Association and would spin out the investigation as long as the Association needed or wanted it spun out.
That would give the underground the six months Paul and Biset had mentioned, or as much time as it needed to prepare for the wholesale slaughter of the Adelborn and the work arbites.
Giles made himself move. He managed to reach out and switch on the voice control to the autopilot of the rock buggy.
“Change destination,” he croaked at it, as the small white light on the panel before him lit up. “Go to ... the place where the Albenareth are. The alien area in the main Complex. I want to locate an Albenareth Captain....”
For a moment he doubted that his words had conveyed any clear and adequate order to the autopilot. But then, abruptly, the vehicle altered direction. Giles fell back in his seat, panting. There was nothing to do now but wait—and hope that this new destination he had ordered was not too far away in terms of time.
The buggy rocked and jolted along. After a while, he was able to see that they were close to the high metal wall that was the base of the main Complex dome, and running along parallel to it. They would be headed toward a different entrance from the one at which they had originally emerged. After some fifteen minutes, Giles saw such an entrance approaching. But the doors of it did not dilate as they got close, and his buggy went on by. He lapsed into a state that was half doze, half actual unconsciousness.
The buggy stopped with a jerk.
He roused himself and looked around. He was already inside the dome, in a parking area. Some twenty meters from him was a building that seemed to grow out of the dome itself, and in a wall of the building facing him was a transparent section beyond which the head of an Albenareth looked at him. The thin mouth moved, as if speaking.
Belatedly, Giles punched on his intercom.
“Repeat, your business here?” an alien voice was asking in the human tongue. “You have arrived and flashed a recognition signal, but you have not answered my question. What do you want?”
“Sorry ...” said Giles thickly. “Intercom off. Sorry. I want to ... I want to meet with the Captain Rayumung again.”
“Which Captain Rayumung? We have a number of individuals here of that rank and honor.”
“The ... Captain Rayumung who lost her ship in an explosion ... who came to this world in a lifeship with a number of humans, of which I ... am one. I am an Adelman, of Steel. She’ll know me. Will you call her?”
There was a small pause before the voice spoke again.
“I identify the individual you refer to. She is now Rayumung past-captain. I will try to locate and message her. Will you come inside?”
Giles started to move without thinking, and found the strength was not in him.
“I ... have to wait out here for her. I’m sorry. Tell her ... so. I apologize. Ask if she’ll come here to me. But hurry.”
“All dispatch is always made.”
The state of doze-unconsciousness moved back in on Giles as the intercom fell silent. He roused again to the sound of a tapping on the transparent pane to his right, against which his head had been resting.
He straightened up, turned, and looked.-An Albenarethian face was staring in at him from just beyond the transparency. Was, Hem visible to it, in the shadows at his feet? With a surge of alarm, he fumbled with the latch of the door below the transparency. It opened, and he half fell, half stepped out to face the alien figure beyond.
“Captain Rayumung?” he managed, in Albenareth.
The dark eyes looked down into his.
“I am a past-captain now,” said an alien voice in human speech. “But I know you, Adelman. What do you want with me?” Giles leaned back against the body of the rock buggy to keep from falling. His knees were treacherously weak. They would start to shake visibly in a minute. He tried to go on speaking in Albenareth, but the effort was too great.
“I promised you something,” he said in his own language. “I promised to tell you who set the bomb that destroyed your ship.” The alien face watched him. The alien voice buzzed its human words.
“That no longer matters. After further consideration I have given up the life I carried. It will be matured and borne by another. So all connections are broken, and it no longer matters how my ship died.”
“Doesn’t matter ...” He stared at her, sick with the weakness from his wounds, unable to think how to deal with this new defeat “You gave up your.... Why?”
“I had no honor of achievement to pass on. It was you who piloted your humans to safety. Dishonor canceled is no shame, but neither is it of any assistance. It would be good to find and bring justice upon whoever killed my shipmates and my vessel, but it is nothing to do with the life I conceived. I have given that away. Only for the prospect of achieved honor would there be reason in keeping the relationship with my child that is now parted; and where is there any such prospect? For a ship and all who served it are lost, and that is a thing which nothing can change.”
“But,” said Giles, “if that loss could still lead to some great good for the Albenareth—all the Albenareth—what then?”
“Great good?” The dark eyes watched Giles’ face closely. “For all our holy race?”
“Yes,” said Giles.
“How could that be? And how could you, being only human, know what would be a great good for the Albenareth?”
“Because in this case it’s involved with what has to be great good for humans.”
“There can be no such involvement,” said the Captain. “In no way are we alike, human.”
“Are you sure?” Giles asked. His legs were close to the end of their strength. Imperceptibly, he began to slide
down the side of the rock buggy against which he was leaning. The Captain stood silent. “You lived with me—and the other humans—all those days on the lifeship. Are you so sure still that we aren’t alike, so sure there’s no chance we could have anything in common?”
The tall figure before him blurred.
“Perhaps ...” said the Captain’s voice. Suddenly, two casually powerful hands caught Giles by the shoulders and lifted him, held him up, pressing him against the side of the buggy. “Are you ill?”
“A little ... hurt,” said Giles.
He moved his lips to say more, but there was no strength in him to form words. Dimly, he was aware of the head of the Captain bending forward as she looked past him, into the buggy. This close, she could not miss seeing the body of Hem.
Giles waited for her demands for an explanation, for the alarm that she would now surely give. But nothing of the sort happened. Instead, he felt himself held aside as the door of the buggy was opened, then lifted in, with the body of the Captain hiding the assistance she gave him from the transparent panel where the other member of her race still sat watching.
He was thrust into his seat and the seat clamps folded in automatically to hold him there. The door of the buggy closed. A second later the door on the buggy’s other side opened and the tall shape of the Captain moved in to take the seat beside him. She reached for the controls; the buggy moved, pivoted, and drove out through the door in the dome shell where he had entered.
She headed the buggy directly outward from the dome. After a moment, she spoke.
“I am a past-captain,” she said. “And I will die now as planet-bound as if I had never known space; nor will there be shipmates who remember me. But there is something here that is unfinished. You defied me to save the least of your slave humans, and here with you is one who is dead and you are clearly more than a little hurt. Also you asked me if perhaps there was not something in common between human and Albenareth after all, and that question troubles me. Before our time on the lifeship I would have had no hesitation in rejecting such an idea. Now, I do not know....”
Lifeboat Page 17