“Normality? What is normal? I prefer to think that the way we are now is normal. For us.”
He said, “The Lady Mother is offering us an ideal solution to our problem. We should accept the offer.”
“The Lady Mother. Carlin. Pansir. All the pussycats, and at least one of them a pussycat in heat. I’m disgusted with you, Nick. You aren’t fussy, are you? Well, I am. These Doralans are good for only one thing — and that’s not screwing. Don’t tell me that you didn’t enjoy your share of … of … Dimilin, wasn’t it? She was quite good eating.”
He got up from her bunk, where he had been sitting beside her.
He said, “Think about it. I’ve already decided — and you have to go along with me. I’m the spaceman, the navigator. Without me you can do nothing. You’ll come to realize that we shall be doing the right thing.”
“Where are you going, Nick? To Carlin, I suppose.”
“No.”
“Or is it her high and mightiness now? Is she trading in her pet cat for a pet … poodle?”
“No. Unlike some people I’ve had a heavy day. I want to get some sleep. By myself.”
He let himself out into the deserted alleyway, walked the short distance to the open door of his own cabin. As soon as he entered the room he was aware of a familiar scent. Carlin! he thought at first — then realized that it was not. The aroma was essentially male. It was coming from his bed. Sitting on the couch, his green eyes luminous in the semidarkness, was Pondor.
“Do you mind if I come in?” asked the man sardonically.
“You may enter,” replied the animal.
“And you may get the hell out of here.”
“With pleasure, but not yet. Shut the door. There are keen ears aboard this ship.”
Falsen shut the door.
“I do not like you, Mr. Falsen,” said the cat, “but there are those aboard this ship I like still less. And we do have something in common.”
“Something in common?” echoed Falsen.
“We are males, both of us, in female territory. More, we are Terran males … .”
“I thought that you regarded yourself as Doralan.”
“By birth, but not by ancestry. I am loyal both to my sex and to my planet of origin. I am loyal, too, to the Lady Mother, as I think that you now are. There are loyalties — and loyalties … .”
Falsen stared at the animal, wondering just how much intelligence was housed inside that tiny skull. Many a human of his acquaintance could not have expressed himself so well.
He said, “Yes. I am loyal to your mistress.”
“I believe you. I am sure that you will help her to get the ship back home. You are loyal, and I am loyal — but there are things I know that I have not told her. I am loyal to my sex. I know that should she discover that there are males aboard this vessel, in addition to yourself and myself, she would take severe disciplinary action — and not only against the officers responsible for their presence. That I do not wish to see.” He continued with quite surprising but quite natural coarseness, “As long as Carlin and certain others are getting well-fucked when they want it, it will keep them quiet.” Cats, even mutated, highly intelligent and multilingual cats, could not laugh, but Pondor managed a derisive mewing sound. “I have reason to believe that you have been a pacifying influence.”
“That’s none of your business!”
“But it is, Mr. Falsen. I want a quiet life. I don’t want to stir up more trouble than there has been already. You do not want any more trouble either. You just want to do your work. But be careful, at all times. Do not trust the Lady Carlin. Do not, especially, trust the Lady Prenta. She is jealous of you.”
“And Pansir?”
“She likes you. And many people who, at first, were suspicious and contemptuous of you — an alien male! — now respect you. As do even I.”
“Thank you,” said Falsen without sarcasm.
“So, do your best, and guard your back at all times. Now I will go.”
Falsen opened the cabin door. The animal jumped down from the bunk and, tail held high, stalked out into the alleyway.
CHAPTER 35
The next day was, by the standards of this world, fine.
It had stopped raining and there was no wind. The ruddy sun, glaring through the high overcast, was a clearly defined disk rather than a fuzzily amorphous ball of dull incandescence. Outside the ship the air was unpleasantly hot and steamy, heavy with the cloying reek of rotting vegetation. Moist vapor eddied up from the stagnant pools, from the wet ground itself.
It was not a day for hard physical work, but the work had to go on. There was the inertial-drive unit to be dismantled and its components to be carried back inside the vessel for reassembly. There was that minor mountain of assorted stores to be shifted back into the holds from which they had been off-loaded. There was the integrity of the ship’s structure to restore.
Falsen was one of the lucky ones. He, together with the Lady Mother, Pansir and two airshipwomen, was up in the blimp, away from the worst of the heat, well clear of the organized confusion, the shrill orders, the continual clattering buzz of the mini-innies as they fetched and carried, obedient to the control boxes of Carl in and her engineers.
Linda was not with him. She was sulking somewhere inside the spaceship. He had seen her at breakfast and, after the unsatisfying meal, had asked her if she had given further thought to the Doralan captain’s proposal. She had told him that she still had to make up her mind. And then a junior officer had come knocking at her cabin door, telling Falsen that the Lady Mother wished to see him.
So, now here he was, seated in relative comfort in the rather cramped control cabin of the blimp, enjoying the motion-engendered breeze that blew in through the open windows. He looked down at the ship, at the tiny scarlet-uniformed figures scurrying around her like a swarm of ants. No doubt Carlin and Prenta would be fighting like cat and dog — or like two cats each obsessively jealous of the other. When he boarded the blimp a quarrel had been developing over the use of the mini-innies.
“We have been taking risks,” said the Lady Mother. “All the stores and equipment left outside overnight. We are fortunate that the … beasts left us alone. Is your bio-sensitive radar functioning, Lady Pansir?”
“Yes, Gracious Lady. It was not too badly damaged when the big airship crashed, and was easily repaired.”
“Good. Then, we shall fly over the lake and see what we can see.”
Pansir took the controls from the crewwoman she was training as coxswain, brought the airship around until it was heading for the distant hills. After the alteration of course she called the novice back to the wheel, issued brief orders in her own language.
She smiled at Falsen and said, “I was telling her to keep her steady as she goes.”
Falsen looked into the screen of the bio-sensitive radar. It was alive with little flecks of light, especially as the blimp passed over the pools. He remembered the arthropod that Linda had caught on his first morning on this planet. So much had happened since that day. And how much more would happen before the Doralan spaceship, her survey mission completed, lifted off on her homeward voyage? Very little, he hoped. In spite of Linda’s objectives, he had made up his mind to revert to true humanity, even though it would mean living out his life in an alien culture. The alternative no longer appealed to him.
The blimp flew steadily on.
They were fast approaching the hills that rimmed the lake. There was turbulence over the ridge, and Pansir was obliged to take the controls again. But it was nothing serious, little more than a strong updraft. Maintaining course and altitude was child’s play for Pansir, who had demonstrated her ability in the big airship to cope with far more severe conditions. If it had not been for the great leech’s revival the dirigible might never have been lost.
They were over the lake now, engines stopped, drifting. The mirrorlike surface of the water was unruffled, perfectly smooth. Yet the body of water was swarming with life. Shoals
of gleaming specks swam in the screen of the bio-sensitive radar with, now and again, luminous blobs that indicated the presence of something much larger. Falsen left the screen, joined the Lady Mother at one of the side windows, looked directly down. With this line of sight he could see a few meters below the surface, although not with any great clarity; the water was too muddy.
Something big swam into his field of view. It was one of the giant leeches, moving slowly and sinuously. It vanished in the murky depths. Then there was a shoal of tiny beings that might have been either fishes or arthropods. Pursuing them came another of the leeches.
“But where are the things that come out onto dry land?” asked the Lady Mother.
“They must be nocturnal animals,” said Falsen.
“When I put in my report,” she said. “I shall say that this world is not suitable for our use and urge that we endeavor to discover planets approximating more closely to our own — or more exploitable. After all, Mr. Falsen, your Survey Service made the first landing here, took one look and said, ‘Not for us!’ And then somebody high in your government said, ‘Let the Doralans have it.’ ”
“But you’ve paid for it now,” said Falsen.
“We have, and that is the tragedy of it. Lives, valuable lives, have been lost. But did not one of your poets write, ‘If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God, we have paid in full … ’?”
“Something like that, Gracious Lady,” said Falsen.
“But somebody — or something — must pay their share,” she went on.
He said, “I still find it hard to understand your desire to take revenge on mindless predators.”
“Mindless, Mr. Falsen? Individually mindless, perhaps — but there is the planetary mind. Perhaps the concept is unfamiliar to you, perhaps not. A dim yet powerful intelligence resenting outsiders — resenting, even, such beings who have evolved in its own territory and who have attained real intelligence of their own and are using this tool to engineer changes in the environment. Your own history has examples enough of such resentment — earthquakes and freak storms, plagues … attacks both biological and physical upon those whom the world mind considers undesirable.
“The pattern, here, can be discerned. There have been the raids made by the beasts upon my people. There was the freak storm that destroyed the airship.”
“I could have brought the ship through the storm, Gracious Lady,” said Pansir stiffly from behind them. “If it had not been for that leech running loose … .”
“Still inside the pattern, Lady Pansir,” said the captain.
Falsen turned his head to look at her. He had realized suddenly that she was a religious fanatic and therefore dangerous. If she knew of his and Linda’s true nature, she would have them destroyed without compunction — if she knew how to do it. Almost certainly she did not; that was some consolation. But it was a great pity that she was this way. He had not only respected her but felt a growing affection for her. He would have to comport himself very carefully if he were ever to take up that promised appointment at the Doralan Space Academy.
“Yes,” the Lady Mother went on, “before we leave, the act of revenge — retribution — must be taken. This world mind must be taught that we Doralans are not to be trifled with.”
“We have a saying on Earth,” said Falsen, “that seems opposite. It points out the futility of farting against thunder.”
The Lady Mother was not shocked. She smiled at him tolerantly, condescendingly.
“Futile or not, there are some gestures that must be made. Even if my ecologist were still living, the gesture would be made.” She turned away from the window. “Very well, Lady Pansir. You may take us back to the spaceship.”
CHAPTER 36
When they flew over the spaceship they could see that much had been accomplished during their absence. The mountain of off-loaded stores had been diminished and the inertial-drive unit reduced to a scatter of component parts, already being carried, piece by piece, through the reopened hole in the shell plating, back to their proper place inside the hull. The buzzing clatter of the mini-innies, handling both the pieces of the drive and packages of stores, was clearly audible in the blimp’s cabin, as were the orders being shouted in high, clear voices by Carlin, Prenta and other officers.
At the controls again, Pansir drove the little dirigible down, slowly circled the spaceship at control-room level. Most of the big viewports were clear; only one was obscured by mud, the black ooze that had now dried to a crinkled crust. The Lady Mother stared, almost wistfully, into what was the throne room of her little realm. Falsen could almost read her thoughts. Soon now, she had to be thinking, she would be sitting there in state, fusion power at her fingertips, directing the ascent from this dismal world, the escape to the clean emptiness of interstellar space.
For her, thought Falsen, the voyage back to Dorala would not be her last one. Her powerful friends and relatives would see to it that she was not grounded. But for him it would be his last trip.
He could see quite well into the control room.
Already, much of the instrumentation had been restored to working order; telltale lights glowed — red, green, white and amber — on panels. A scarlet-uniformed junior officer was working on something, making adjustments.
The captain said, “Soon I shall have my ship back. There is the inertial drive to be reassembled but that should not take long. The integrity of the hull must be restored. And, of course, the Mannschenn Drive controls must be recalibrated. Do you know anything of the correct procedures, Mr. Falsen?”
“Only what I have read in textbooks, Gracious Lady.”
“A pity. I was hoping to be able to avail myself of your expertise again.”
Not in anything involving the Mannschenn Drive you won’t! thought Falsen. He knew what recalibration entailed, working at the control panel in the Mannschenn Drive room in close proximity to the uncannily precessing rotors, exposed to the full intensity of the-temporal-precession field, an intensity far greater than that experienced while the Drive was working normally in deep space. Should he be involved too closely in the operation, there would be the very real danger that he would not be able to control himself. And that would mean good-bye to his dream of starting a fresh life on Dorala.
“If all goes well,” went on the Lady Mother, “we should be ready for the recalibration late tomorrow afternoon.”
Meanwhile, Pansir had taken the blimp still lower, holding it so that they could peer into the hole cut in the shell plating, the aperture through which the mini-innies were carrying the components of the inertial drive. Buzzing angrily, one of the little machines, a gleaming spindle grasped in its claws, flew past the control cab with only millimetres of clearance.
An angry voice, Carlin’s, burst from the speaker of the transceiver. The only word that Falsen could distinguish was a name, Pansir’s. The pilot looked enquiringly at the captain, who issued a brief order in her own language. The airship rose steeply.
The Lady Mother smiled and said to Falsen, “We were getting in the way, it seems. The Lady Carlin said, ‘Get that bloody gasbag out of here!’ ”
“Shall we land now, Gracious Lady?” asked Pansir.
“Yes.” She smiled tiredly. “If the Lady Prenta can let us have a ground crew, that is.”
There were further exchanges on the radio telephone, after which six crewwomen detached themselves from the gang working around the stores, walked to the stubby mooring mast.
Not long thereafter Falsen was assisting the Lady Mother down the short ladder that had been set up from the ground to the door of the blimp’s control cab.
Together they walked back to the ship.
CHAPTER 37
“They are recalibrating the Mannschenn Drive tomorrow afternoon,” said Falsen.
“So what?” said Linda.
“So, we’d better keep out of sight. Either shut ourselves up in our cabins or get well clear of the ship.”
“Why?”
�
�During recalibration, the field builds up, for short periods, to abnormally great intensity. During such … flashes, we may not be able to control ourselves.”
“I’m tired of controlling myself,” she muttered sullenly. “If you hadn’t let yourself be conned into taking this schoolmastering job, there’d be no need for us to control ourselves.”
“In any case,” he told her, “we should have to control ourselves until the ship is spaceworthy.”
“I’m sick of this charade!” she flared. “And I warn you now, I’ll be sicker still when I try to settle down with you as an instructor’s wife in that bloody Academy!”
“You’d be sicker still if we had to live like wild animals on some savage world. Oh, you might like to revert every now and again, just as any human enjoys a holiday awày from the big cities, in the woods or on the seashore. But all your life? You wouldn’t like it. Even people like us need the attention of a dentist now and again, are subject to failing eyesight and deteriorating digestive functions, and all the rest of it. There’s one killer who’s bound to get us in the end: old age.”
“Old age will get us no matter where we are — either on Dorala or on a planet of our own choice.”
“On a planet of our own choice — and we might be years finding it! — it’d be much faster than on a world with a well-developed medical science.”
“Would you live forever?” she sneered.
“Given the chance, I’d like to try,” he said.
CHAPTER 38
They had gotten away from the ship, were standing, watching by a wide, stagnant pool three kilometers from the vessel. The sun was sliding slowly down the western sky.
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