The Great Hydration

by Barrington J. Bayley

  “Roncie Reaul Northrop, resident upon the star vessel Enterprise.”

  Northrop spluttered. “That’s ridiculous! I’m a bondman! I’m not responsible!”

  “Normally, that would be correct,” Amundsen replied calmly. “A bondperson takes an oath of obedience and so is not accountable for acts ordered by his or her master. However you broke your bond when you informed on your masters to the Commission. You are therefore responsible for your part in the rehydration project, which was a substantial one.”

  “If it weren’t for me you wouldn’t be here!” Northrop protested.

  Amundsen remained cold. “The law is not to be trifled with. The charge stands.” He nodded to Shelley. “Now you may proceed.”

  Shelley shuffled his papers. “As to the second charge, it has no substance. All my principals have done is to rectify a natural calamity which took place only a hiccup ago in geological time. I cite the precedent of Sauram, Runne and Harker, Partners, who diverted an asteroid on course for Alar IV. I further cite the precedent of Haynam and Khaire, Partners, who rendered assistance to T358 III after a comet struck, reverting and stabilising the climate. Neither of these operations was deemed illegal within the meaning of the statute.”

  Northrop jumped up raving. “Why are you crucifying only me? What about the rest of the staff? Their bonds are null and void by reason of revocation of licence! Why aren’t all their names on the charge sheet?”

  “It is a fine legal point, and one which has been amply dealt with by precedent,” Amundsen told him implacably, “and not in your favour. “You will resume your seat.”

  “As for the third charge,” Shelley went on after Northrop had subsided in defeat, “it falls down with the second one.” He swallowed. “I now request that the Commission allow a submission from the long-term possessors of the planet, who are also signatories to our treaty.”

  The Tenaciteans had been briefed previously on the form the proceedings would take. An aged Tlixix shuffled closer on the screen. A hoarse but dignified voice came through, rendered into comprehensible speech.

  “What the Earthman says is true. Dehydration is not our world’s natural condition. If your laws are just, they will grant us the status quo ante.”

  It fascinated Northrop, despite his predicament, to hear the creature speak in archaic legal phrases. It didn’t know any Latin, of course. The translator had simply cottoned on.

  The lobsters were proving to be good lawyers.

  Not so the Artaxa. One leaped to his feet and seemed about to attack the screen on which the hearing had been displayed. The translator rendered his protests in a reedy, aggressive tone.

  “The Tlixix belong to the past! They are but one tribe, and we are many! It is our world, and has been waterless since the time of our arising!”

  The Tlixix retorted in domineering fashion. “We own you. We created you from lower animals. You have no right to exist at all, except at our behest.”

  The translator was unable to handle the stream of invective which this statement provoked. It issued a mish-mash of meaningless noise.

  “May I say something?” Karl Krabbe asked, with a show of affability. “Frankly, I don’t know what this fuss is all about. There’s no doubt at all that the lobsters were the political masters of this planet when we arrived, and are biologically superior. You wouldn’t do business with somebody’s horse or pet dog, would you?”

  The second Artaxa jumped up. “But for your interference in flooding the world with an evil fluid, the Tlixix would have been exterminated by now! They do not belong in our world!”

  “It is you who will be exterminated,” the Tlixix informed him.

  “Enough,” said Commissioner Amundsen. “I order a twelve hour recess for evaluation of evidence.”

  He stood up and glared at the partners, with a look which seemed to say, you have saddled the state with a difficult situation.

  Which was true. If Krabbe & Bouche—and Northrop—were guilty then the administration had a dilemma: either allow the rehydration to persist, with the consequent extermination of all dehydrate tribes, or reverse it, followed by the massacre of the Tlixix. The only way out of the mess was to relocate either the dehydrates or the Tlixix on a more suitable planet, which would be immensely complicated and expensive.

  All others in the room followed protocol and rose also. “Fine,” Krabbe said, as though the recess had been partly his idea. “May we return to our ship meanwhile?”

  Amundsen said crisply. “You will take your rest in the holding cells.”

  He swept out. Northrop could not help but notice Joanita’s fluttering eyelashes, or the Commissioner’s attempt to mask his reaction as he left.

  Despite his continuing tiredness, Northrop did not think he would get any real rest during the adjournment. Lying on a narrow bunk in a metal-lined cell, he tossed and turned, marvelling at the legal tangle in which he had trapped himself.

  Yet at some point he must have fallen asleep. He had no idea how long it had lasted when a hand on his shoulder shook him awake.

  “Roncie.”

  It was the thrilling contralto of Joanita Serstos. Northrop forced his drooping eyelids open. Her face hovered over him, misty in his bleary gaze. A glistening grey tab was stuck to her temple. Had she cut herself?

  “Get up. Let’s go.”

  The cell door was open. Wonderingly Northrop obeyed. He rose and followed Joanita. A short walk brought them to the Investigations Room. Waiting there were: Krabbe, Bouche, Spencer, Shelley. In other words, the rest of the Enterprise’s delegation.

  Each bore a grey tab on the temple, like Joanita’s. Northrop raised a hand and felt his own forehead. He had a tab, too. He tugged at it.

  Joanita chuckled. “Don’t pull it off, Roncie, or you’ll fall asleep again. It won’t come off, anyway. I used adhesive.”

  Northrop’s confusion was clearing. He was beginning to understand. He looked straight at the partners.

  “Why?”

  “We’re saving your bacon, Roncie,” Krabbe replied dryly. “Let’s get out of here.”

  The party filed through the room’s main door, opposite the exit leading to the cells. An alarm began to shrill.

  No one seemed perturbed by it. Down the corridor two guards lay sprawled on the floor, snoring.

  Led by Boris Bouche, they headed for the skin of the Commission ship, and came to the docking port. A light was on over it, showing that a vehicle was docked on the other side. The inner door was open. O’Rourke stood by it waiting for them. His face betrayed no unusual tension, only his habitual frown of concentration—his badge of determined professionalism.

  “Is everything in order, sirs?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  Northrop hung back, wondering whether to run back down the corridor and lose himself in the bowels of the Invicta. He was afraid to go with the partners now they knew what he had done. They had the legal right to kill him. He felt lost, trapped, a born loser.

  Seeing him about to sidle away, Krabbe glared. “What is it now, Northrop?” he snapped.

  “Leave him here if that’s what he wants, Karl,” Bouche said, a dismissive sneer on his face. “It’s what he deserves.”

  “There’s no point in being vindictive, Boris. Or in leaving ourselves short of a top class professional engineer. We’ve no one to replace Northrop.”

  “Dummett could do it.”

  Krabbe shook his head. “He’s an amateur. He doesn’t have Northrop’s qualifications.”

  He advanced on the quaking Northrop. “All right, Roncie, this is what goes down. You’ve disgraced yourself, there’s absolutely no doubt about that at all. But despite everything, you can still start over. We’ll give you a chance to renew your oath to us, if you mean it this time. No jumping ship, no sending sneaky messages behind our backs. But nobody’s forcing you. You won’t go into the brig, this time.

  “If that’s not good enough for you, then stay here. And face the Commission’s
charges all on your own. Believe me, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes if that happens. Amundsen will squash you like a fly.”

  Northrop blanched. Krabbe pressed home his advantage.

  “Tell you what, I’ll even throw in Joanita, how’s that?”

  Just like she was a piece of meat, Northrop thought. Yet he had to admit that the prospect sent a thrill running through him. He couldn’t resist glancing at her sidelong. Joanita took him by the hand. “Come on, Roncie, don’t be a damned fool.”

  Limply aware that in truth this was the only way out of the legal trap he had set himself, he allowed her to lead him through the port. The eight of them made the lighter’s cabin crowded. O’Rourke handled the controls. He disengaged from the port and ferried them the short distance to the Enterprise. Behind them, the Invicta lay dead in space, effectively unmanned.

  Minutes later they had gathered in what was generally known as the Ops Room. Joanita was applying a freezing cold liquid to the grey patches, enabling her to peel them off. Boris Bouche rubbed the frigid sensation from his temple with his fingers. He glanced accusingly at Northrop.

  “Take a lesson from this, Roncie. Some people still know how to serve their masters. Miss Serstos has behaved magnificently.”

  “Yes, I think I’ve worked out why she was included on the defence team,” Northrop replied, in his best sarcastic voice. He added, “I take it you’ve used a neural damping field.”

  “Obviously. But first we had to switch off the Invicta’s electronic defences. That was Joanita’s job.”

  Pulling a tab off Shelley, Joanita smiled with pleasure at the praise she was receiving. “Three hours in the Commissioner’s private quarters! That old stick is sure going to be mad when he wakes up.”

  Krabbe too had a broad smile on his face. “Bureaucrats are such fools! All she had to do was flutter her eyelashes and Amundsen was practically giving her the keys to the kingdom!”

  You had to hand it to the partners, Northrop thought. They really knew how to exploit people’s talents.

  A neural damper was not a common device, but as a pursuit ship the Invicta would be protected against that and similar perils by a buffer field. The partners’ answer was simple. Get Joanita to disable the buffer.

  The grey tabs were an antidote. They stimulated the brain’s mechanism for consciousness arousal, the ascending reticular system, and so kept one awake even inside a damping field. Joanita would have been wearing one when she turned the buffer off. O’Rourke, watching like a spider on the Enterprise, would have seen the buffer go down and projected the damper in almost the same instant. With everyone around her unconscious, all Joanita had to do then was find her way to the cells and apply tabs to the partners and their bondmen.

  A most resourceful woman. An asset to the firm of Krabbe & Bouche, Partners.

  Northrop wondered briefly if he had unwittingly played a part in the theatrical performance at the hearing. Had his defection already become known?

  No, he didn’t think so. Krabbe’s shock had been genuine.

  “A neural damper,” he repeated. “That’s illegal technology.”

  He had not seen it or the reticular stimulator before, though he had heard the latter could be a mind-bending torture instrument, keeping a victim awake indefinitely. Bouche answered with a dirty chuckle.

  “Sure it is. But I’m not certain we actually used it. At least, I doubt if Amundsen will put it in his report. He’ll be too embarrassed.”

  “Let’s go,” Krabbe ordered.

  The drive was engaged. The Enterprise shot off into interstellar space, to look for pastures new.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Holding the traditional oak rod in his right hand, for the second time in his life Roncie Reaul Northrop intoned the words that put him in fealty to Karl Henry Krabbe and Boris Oliver Bouche, Partners. They held similar oak rods. They promised to protect him and to treat him well. Remuneration was not mentioned. By custom that resulted from some vague notion of ‘reciprocal good will’ that was supposed to arise between master and bondperson.

  Northrop knew what was coming next. The short ceremony over, its record safely locked in the ship’s files (alongside the first identical ceremony) it was customary for the master to give his new slave a moral homily. This one would not be like the first. Karl Krabbe put on the pained and anxious expression Northrop had seen so many times when he was about to give someone a dressing-down.

  “You do understand, Roncie, that this time it’s real? This time you can’t go through the form then change your mind like you did before. Conduct like that is bad for you, bad for us, bad for everybody. Now I’m going to be straight with you. I know you resented it when we stopped you leaving us. I suppose you imagine we were thinking only of ourselves, but that’s not true! After all, we can always get another nuke man. No, we had your welfare in mind just as much, if not more so, as ours. We take our oaths seriously, even when you don’t. We’re responsible for you, you’re like family. Let’s face it, where were you when we recruited you? In a bar, half drunk, with no money and no prospects. A drifter and a bum. You may be a fine engineer, but when it comes to taking charge of your own life you’re hopeless. Without us to take care of you, you’ll never amount to anything.”

  Northrop felt uncomfortable. Krabbe and Bouche were adept at the avuncular act. But he didn’t like to admit that there was something to what Krabbe had said. He liked to think of himself as an individual.

  Then why had the partners’ offer seemed such a haven, that first time?

  Krabbe was finishing his speech. “So whatever criticisms you have of us, I want you to voice them now.”

  He said this with an air of fairness rather than confrontation. Northrop ground his teeth.

  “I don’t like people who are prepared to extinguish entire races for the sake of profit!” he blurted out.

  Krabbe blinked, as if taken aback.

  “Maybe you just don’t understand business.”

  Boris Bouche, who up to now had sat by saying nothing, stirred and intervened. “If you have such high and mighty ideals, Roncie, why did you cooperate with the rehydration project? You could have sat in the brig and refused to have anything to do with it.”

  “I was under bond,” Northrop muttered.

  “So what? If it meant that much to you, you could have refused orders and taken the consequences.”

  “I did do something,” Northrop said defensively. “I sent a warning to the Stellar Commission. I had hoped they would stop the project before any harm was done.”

  “Did you? I looked at the communications log. It has no record of your transmission. The log can’t be falsified. The only way it doesn’t register a call is if you fail to contact the destination before sending. You transmitted blind rather than risk discovery, didn’t you? Your message had maybe a five per cent chance of being received.”

  Bouche licked his lips, a wolf getting ready to pounce. “Your character is weak, Northrop, as Partner Krabbe says. It’s neither one thing nor the other, neither good nor bad. You’re incapable of making decisions and sticking to them. You need the discipline of the firm to give you strength of purpose. While you’re with us you have the opportunity to develop and strengthen your personal qualities. In fact, we insist on it. Remember that this is a two-way relationship. We can renounce the bond too. If you disappoint us again, we may have to do that. In which case I have no doubt you will end up as a derelict.”

  Northrop was silent. Better not to disclose how he had tried to sabotage the project a second time by warning the dehydrates. That had not really influenced events, anyway.

  “I did accomplish something. The Commission will have to sort matters out, accommodating both sides, though I suppose in the end that will mean giving either the lobsters or the dehydrates a new world and moving them there.”

  Bouche propped his head on his hand, his lopsided smile becoming almost sad. “You really think so? Governments are very ethical, of course. They alwa
ys do the right thing. The harm wrought by those wicked gogetters has to be put right! Let me explain how it will be done. Shelley has looked at the legalities of it. He thinks they point to the lobsters keeping a watered Tenacity and the dehydrates being relocated to another desert planet. That’s a very expensive option. The decision is too big to be made in situ, aboard the Invicta. It will have to be made by some committee back home. Also the project will have to be costed and funded, and that’s a Treasury matter. So the issue gets batted back and forth for a while. Eventually, as a first step, the Treasury releases funds for a fact-finding mission. It rushes to Tenacity, only to report that it’s too bad, nothing can be done, the dehydrates are extinct. No further funds are required.

  “See how it works? Delay is the bureaucrat’s best friend. Anyway half the dehydrates are dead already even as we speak. Who cares? They are an artificial lifeform which would never have evolved by itself. The lobsters made them for a specific purpose, and that purpose is over. So you see, Roncie, your little act of treason, feeble as it was, didn’t alter a thing. We’ve done our job. We’ve given the lobsters what they wanted, and we’ve got their signatures on the contract. There’ll be a good return on it eventually, and there’s a share for you too.”

  There was a slight shifting sensation as the Enterprise changed course yet again, seeking to shake off the Invicta’s pursuit that would now be taking place.

  Northrop’s heart sank. The pursuit had little or no chance of tracking them down, and it would not persist for long.

  But every day it lasted lessened the dehydrates’ already slender chances of survival. His mind filled with images of the brave desert warriors, struggling to beat the odds stacked against them.

  Boris Bouche was pure cynic. He assumed that everyone was as unprincipled as himself, including the Stellar Commission and all other arms of government. But for the sake of the green men of Tenacity, the blue men, the black men, the men of every colour on the small planet, fighting and striving with all the courage and intelligence they could muster, he hoped that Bouche, for once, was wrong.