Menace Under Marswood

by Sterling E. Lanier

  She looked at him long and hard, the amber, slanted eyes seeming to weigh his Very soul. Then she sighed, as a good child does when told that he only can go to the circus next week. "I understand," she said in her soft, husky voice. "I wish it were not so. But we may have a journey together; in fact, that is what is planned. Things may change."

  As he left the room, shaken in body and spirit, she made no move toward him and his last glimpse was of her sitting, bemused, on the big divan. She could not have showed more plainly that she loved him. And he had been forced to reject her, a rejection that hurt him more than he would have believed possible. Extraordinary though it seemed, he apparently was falling in love with a member of a jungle race sworn to destroy everything he had been trained to uphold. Yet he did not seem to mind!

  Slater returned to Mohini and explained that he had to see the colonel at once. She had no objection. The other two were still under their masks and the afternoon run of the lessons had some time to go yet.

  There was no guard at Muller's quarters and Slater was admitted by the commandant himself. Though he had been invited in before, the room still held his interest. There were many loaded bookshelves, some of the volumes in languages that meant nothing to Slater. But there were also curious art pieces, many of primitive Earth art and, he had been told, valuable. A mask of wood, a Biafran antiquity, hung next to a painting of Martian hawks by Ferruco, the planet's best-known artist. The colonel had said that the curved throwing stick of polished wood that hung over the door was an ancient woomera of old Australia, a special kind called a kirris, used only for warfare and never for the hunt. Other mementos and curiosities were scattered about. The only visible weapon besides the boomerang was a very short, heavy Rucker bow. It was in the hands of Thau Lang, who sat at ease in a carved wooden chair, rubbing down the polished dark wood with a cloth and some oil. He nodded gravely as Slater came in.

  Slater said quickly, "I need some advice, sir. And I think the konsel better hear it too."

  He told the whole story, attempting to conceal nothing, but stumbled a bit when he came to the part that concerned his own feelings about Danna. Somehow he got through it all. The two older men listened in silence, occasionally glancing at one another but not interrupting.

  "You were right to come to me," Muller said when Slater was through. "This is most important. I know a little bit about the Dream Tea and the konsel much more. I have never heard of this effect or any such dream, nothing remotely like it. What about you, Thau?"

  "I have heard of it. But only—how do you say, Louis—secondhand. Such strange dreams have come occasionally, it is said, to men who have taken the Dream Tea when near one of the forbidden lands, the bad countries. Few care to speak of such things openly, and Danna is very, very young to be a Wise Woman. She probably has not heard of this, but there are older women of my clan who know about such dreams—they are meant as a warning by evil spirits, at least that is the explanation I have heard. I simply made a note of it in my secret files since I planned to go to the bad country some day myself—at least before I die."

  Muller rose and began to pace the room, hands behind his back. "This sort of thing is a special study of mine. I've read about everything in five languages on it and a lot more that I got translated. I know the effects of most Terran and Martian hallucinogens, from the peyote buttons to the mutated Rauwolfia that makes up the main ingredient for that cup of tea you just had, Slater. But what I can't seem to learn anything about are the temporal effects, the distances covered in space and time by these happenings. Because there is an element of predictability and this sort of experience does show the future, however dimly—and the past, sometimes. But I have never dared ask what the I-Corps files on the subject have. Afraid of a reprimand, I guess."

  He wheeled suddenly and glared at Slater. "How strong was this feeling that you had seen something familiar, something you recognized?"

  "Well—it's hard to pin it down, sir, but it was strong enough to make me feel that it was important. I've never been that scared in my life, but still I knew I'd noticed something, maybe some things. I just can't seem to recall what it or they were."

  "Hmph. And you're no chicken, either. Well, let it alone for now and try to sneak up on it mentally later. Otherwise, if you're anything like me, you'll never get it. That weird boatman of yours, now. Did he make you think of anything? I have an idea of my own, but it's one I'd rather mull over a long time before producing."

  "No—nothing in particular, just something alien and malignant. Wait! I did have a feeling! That ... if the creature's helmet had been removed, I might have seen the face that I saw on Danna's medal." The old konsel stiffened as Slater spoke and he realized belatedly that he had not mentioned the medal.

  He backtracked and described the whole thing again. It was quickly obvious that Thau Lang was shocked.

  "Louis," he said abruptly, "and you, too, young Slater, this is a terrible thing you tell me, if what you say is true. Louis, you know more of the True People than any other off-planet man. You and I have a plan to bring peace to Mars, one that we have shared for many years. But this is something that no outsider, not even a blooded warman or clanwoman, should know. The medals of the Wise Women and the ones that we konsels get, they are given at secret ceremonies that no one outside must hear of, on pain of death." He paused, his face a graven mask, the chevrons of the senior warmen standing out on his lined forehead.

  "I do not ever mention my medal except to an equal. I will not show it now. It is here-—" He tapped his breast. "But I will say to you both, under secrecy, that it resembles a smaller one like Danna's. Young Slater, do you know what you are saying about our most sacred emblem?" His voice was agonized and sweat beaded his forehead.

  "Calm, calm, old friend." Muller's answering voice was deep and reassuring. "You are a konsel, a senior warman, not a child. You have a new thought, that the True People may have been in the grip of some alien force for many, many years. That your sacred secret was foisted on you by something that is using you and your people. It may be so and yet—it may be nothing of the kind. The Dream Tea tells many half-truths and not so infrequently a sheer fantasy, with no truth at all—only the ego wish of the one who dreams. So take heart. Even if—I say, if—there is a connection of some kind between your medals and the evil we seek, then you will need a man's full strength to untangle the evil web. This is no time to fall to bemoaning past mistakes. We must be alert, keep our eyes open, and watch for new things, new ideas, new interpretations. And you are no longer alone." He leaned over and lightly punched the sinewy shoulder of his friend. "Some day you will tell me, if you think it fit, how you got those medals."

  Chapter Six – A Menacing Start

  THAU LANG was chagrined.

  "You are right, I cannot afford to be weak. Thank you, Louis. As you say, it is better not to be alone in a case like this. We had—" He paused, head cocked on one side. "A runner comes this way, Louis. Someone needs you, I think."

  A peremptory knock brought them all to their feet. Muller opened the door and a breathless sergeant saluted and handed him a message flimsy. "Duty officer said this was marked Most Urgent, Colonel, so I ran."

  "Thank you, Sergeant, you were quite right. Say nothing to anyone, and tell the duty officer and the communications man who took the message the same. Clear?"

  "Yes, sir!" In a second the man was gone, striding up the passage. As his footsteps died away, Muller's impassive face relaxed a little and he sighed as he reread the flimsy.

  "This would have to happen now! Of all the infernal damned luck! No, wait! I won't believe this is luck, by God! Too many coincidences make a pattern." He tossed the message to Slater. "Here. Read it aloud."

  Slater read the eight-word message slowly, as much due to tiredness as anything else. "Pelham escaped. Believed heading your way. More follows." It was signed by the governor of Mars, Slater noted.

  Thau Lang sat up at this. Even the Ruck was not thick enough to keep out P
elham's story. No one needed to ask which Pelham. If there had been a thousand men of that name on the planet, the fact that the governor sent a personal comm would have made it plain who was meant. In an emergency there was only one Pelham.

  "Junius Brutus Pelham is loose again. JayBee," Muller said. His tone was soft, musing, as if he was reminiscing to himself rather than talking to others. For five years, long Martian years, the most dangerous man on Mars had been securely caged. Clever attorneys, paid with much of the loot Pelham had secreted and which the government's best efforts had been unable to locate, had beaten the X Chamber. But they could do no more. Life imprisonment was the best they could get him, and the settlements had almost risen in revolt even so. For JayBee Pelham, as they called him, was no ordinary criminal, or even killer. He was a monster, a throwback to some age of Attila or Timur, or to use a somewhat more recent example, the warped animal who had created German Naziism. A murderer a dozen times over, Pelham was also a criminal genius. And more, for the man could attract adherents, men and women who were themselves no common thugs; people of great talent who believed Pelham to be their Messiah.

  The People's Work Force, the political party he organized, had no real program beyond hazy utopianism and Free Everything, but it had JayBee and that made it a standing menace. Before he was exposed for a thief and murderer, the PWF had won many local elections and come very near to dominating the Martian Union, the planet's unicameral legislature. But the Planetary Security Service, working with I-Corps of the UN Command, learned of the criminal conspiracy Pelham headed, and it was they who finally hunted him down. His exposure wrecked the party beyond recall. The evidence was too clear, for all save the fanatics—and there were few of them. When they realized that they had come so close to electing a demagogue and spellbinder who was as dangerous as a plague bacillus, a vast wave of nausea swept over the older cities that held the majority of Mars' citizens.

  Still, the police and military almost failed to get their man. Even while the net was closing, JayBee and his inner circle did the unexpected—they took to the Ruck and vanished. To most of the planet, they seemed to have committed suicide.

  I-Corps and the high command on Mars were not so sanguine, however. They had come to respect Pelham's abilities and were unwilling to assume that he was dead until the body was on display. The thought ran around the council chambers like lightning. "What if Pelham somehow managed to join the Ruckers?" Pelham and the Ruckers in combination? The very idea was a nightmare!

  The finest "bush" experts of the UN forces were consulted. Rewards for information from True People informants—there are always a few, though the information they would give was very limited—were doubled. And a number of hunting groups were formed. One was led by Muller, then a major, but already known to be the best man in the Ruck on the planet, at least in Terran uniform.

  Two months later, acting on intuition, scraps of information, and computer forecasts, Muller found his man in an arid section of the great Elysium plain. Pelham had not been able to get outside help, and his extraordinary powers were gravely weakened away from the areas under civilized control. He and his little band of the faithful were it, and they surrendered without a fight. Many people who knew nothing about the matter tended to discount the fabled Pelham ability after that, but Muller was not one of them, as he now explained.

  "He talked quite freely to me on the way back to the copter LZ. We had a bit of a wait and he was a little delirious.

  "Consider what he did. Knowing almost nothing of the Ruck, he managed to remain hidden and unkilled by the True People for two months. His group, five men and three women, were ill but not dying. I honestly think they were getting better! He never stopped experimenting, did JayBee—on people, plants, clothes, anything he could reach. Listen to what he told me, will you: 'I made a mistake, Major, a bad one. I never paid any real attention to the Ruck before. Next time I'll know better. This is where the action is, not in the Enclaves, and this is where the power is. Look for me next time and you'll have a little trouble.' He actually smiled at me. He has great charm, you know.

  "Well, I laughed at him, which was my mistake. I was sure he could not escape the X Chamber. Now he's loose at the worst possible time and in the worst possible area. Add another factor to an already dubious equation."

  "Could he be behind this, sir—I mean, the very thing we are investigating?"

  "No, I don't see how that's possible, Slater. There's an active, guiding element involved, but one that just isn't Pelham. I'll tell you this—and I may even be wrong about what I said earlier—Pelham is now probably pretty much of a Ruck specialist. He gets books, and you can bet there's a leak, even in a MaxSec prison like Orcus Center. He still has followers, that we know. We didn't get them all, and some of them are still probably hidden in places where they can cause a lot of trouble. As well as seeing that JayBee got all the dope on whatever interested him. Oh yes, he's a Ruck expert now. And whatever is going on out there, he knows something about it, whether he actually started it or not. And he's going to be mixed up in it from now on too." Muller paused as if thinking.

  "I'm going to talk to the High Command and the governor on my own set. There may be more information. Slater, go get some sleep. You have more tapes to audit tomorrow. Thau, you look tired too. Get some rest. We may not have too many chances in the days ahead." Despite Muller's gloomy words, he smiled as he spoke.

  This gives him a charge, all this worry and excitement, mused Slater as he shuffled wearily back to his own quarters.

  FRIDAY MORNING found Slater back on his couch again and by noon the previous night's rest was spent. His brain seethed with newly acquired knowledge of the Ruck and its inhabitants: human, lower animal, and plant. Lunch break gave him a half hour of respite and then it was back to the taped pictures and voices. By late afternoon he and the other two looked as if they had been pulled through a vise. When the last tape ended he got up and stretched wearily. Feng and Nakamura had some minutes to go and he was about to head for his room and a shower when a sinewy brown arm encircled his neck from behind.

  "What about our bargain, louse? I know you types leave tomorrow. I thought you were going to try and get me on to the strength." Two firm prominences pressed into the back of his sweat-soaked uniform, and he was aware that Mohini had on some musky scent that cut through his tiredness like a knife. Yet what Slater felt was a rising irritation.

  "Now look, gorgeous, what can I really do? You know it would take I-Corps permission to get you taken along. By now you know pretty well what we're looking for, because the I-Corps dope has been issued to all you types. And you know about Pelham too, don't you?" He had turned in her grip and was holding her firmly by the waist, looking hard into the deep-brown eyes as he spoke.

  "Yes," she admitted. "Intellicom told us about Pelham. No one else, though. The planet news services haven't got it yet and they aren't meant to either. The longer we have without outside attention the better. But what about me?"

  "For God's sake, Mohini, be reasonable! What on Mars can I do about it?"

  "You can speak to Muller, that's what, you jerk! He's the boss on this thing and he can do anything he wants to. And you're his fair-haired boy. If you ask him the right way, suggest that a woman operative, I-Corps type, could be useful—and I damned well could too—he might think it was a great idea."

  Slater stood irresolute, holding her by the waist still. It was a shock to realize that the garrison thought Muller liked him that well. Was it true? Could he really ask such a favor? He did not hear the door open behind him, but he saw the startled look in Mohini's eyes and felt her pull away suddenly. He turned only in time to see the door slide into its recess.

  "Who the Hell was that?"

  Mohini smoothed her hair in the gesture of a woman who needs her confidence restored. "Only your cannibal from down the hall. Who cares what she thinks anyway? Hey!"

  Slater ran but he could not make the length of the corridor in time. The guard was
gone from the door, but it was shut, and although he pounded on it, it would not open. "Danna!" he called, trying to keep his voice down, "let me in!" He could hear no answer. After five minutes of futile effort, he gave up and went away. He had to get ready for a final briefing with the Old Man that evening and he badly needed even a few moments to rest to get his thoughts in some kind of order. But all he could think of was a sad, small figure sitting on the big couch. What had she thought when she had seen him with his hands on Mohini? Ten minutes later he was in his own quarters, in the depths of sleep, utterly dreamless, the slumber of total exhaustion.

  HIS COMM buzzer woke him in pitch darkness. His watch said two in the morning, and he had no sooner discovered that fact then Nakamura was pounding at his door.

  "Come on, Lieutenant, Sir Pathan. We have a lot to do, or had you forgotten all the briefing yesterday?"

  Slater shaved and dressed in seconds and headed for the I-Corps cellars at a run. He had forgotten nothing, but there was precious little time for all that had to be done. As he left the room, he clipped the flat impervium box to his belt. Grabbit was coming too, rules or no rules.

  He found Thau Lang and a short, square Rucker warman he had never seen before deep in conversation with Danna Strom and her two male companions. To one side, Nakamura and Feng were being painted with dark stain by two I-Corps enlisted men. The short Rucker turned and glared at Slater as he came in.

  "You going to be this late out in the bush, Lieutenant?"

  Despite the familiar voice, Colonel Muller's disguise was so good that Slater had been completely taken in by it. The worn leathers and fur hood, the faded chevrons apparently cut deep into his forehead, the belt of ferkat hide, and the gaudy hand-carved grips on the issue lasgun, all were perfect.

  Muller smiled at his expression. "You'll be this pretty too, but not if you stand around all day. Get over there and get into the juice with the others. Once that's done, we have a lot more junk to get ready."