by E. C. Tubb
‘Rubbish! What about me? I—’ Koenig broke off, conscious of Bergman’s expression. ‘What’s the matter, Victor? Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘I’m wondering what’s happened to your memory, John. You were alone with her in her room, remember? When we decided she was to be allowed the run of the Moonbase. And you spoke with her a couple of times since.’
‘So?’
‘What happened in her room, John?’
‘Nothing.’ Koenig was adamant. ‘We spoke and she stood before me and . . . and . . . nothing.’
Nothing but a vague memory of something wonderful. A touch, a kiss, perhaps? He couldn’t remember.
‘Nothing,’ he said again. ‘It’s all a coincidence. And you’re forgetting the evidence. Enalus couldn’t have been responsible for Markham’s death. He was fit and well when he left her, and she didn’t leave her room. We have proof of that.’
‘Tomlinson’s word.’
‘Proof.’
‘All right, then, John, proof. But why be so upset? If she is innocent, then Enalus has nothing to be afraid of.’
‘Innocent?’ Koenig swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood upright. Again his senses swam to a momentary nausea and he wondered what else had been fed into his blood. Sedatives, perhaps? Antibiotics? Glucose and saline together with extract of liver? ‘Innocent? Victor, you talk as if she were on trial.’
Bergman said flatly, ‘She is.’
‘By whose authority?’
‘Helena—’
‘Dr Russell is in charge of nothing but the Medical Section. She has no right to arrange a trial without my knowledge, any kind of a trial. Where is she? What has been going on? How long have I been here? Damn you, man, answer!’
Koenig heard the echoes and realised he had been shouting. An orderly looked into the room, her face startled, leaving to make room for Mathias, who came directly towards the two men.
‘Commander! This is ridiculous! Get back on that bed immediately!’
‘Go to hell!’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. Where is Dr Russell?’ Koenig snarled deep in his throat. ‘Where is she? Damn it, do I have to take this place apart to find her?’
‘She’s in Main Mission. Commander—’
Koenig was already on his way.
She stood before the Moonbase monitoring screens watching the light and colour on the panels, the depicted scenes showing the various areas and those within them. A group sat in rapt enjoyment of a trio playing a complex melody on instruments fashioned of laminated metals and crystal, taut plastics and delicate ceramics. In Eden couples wandered along the paths, halting to enjoy the music of the fountain, the crops now well-established all around. In a starlit chamber with a transparent roof, deep chairs and secluded alcoves formed a rendezvous for the romantic.
Scenes that flickered and changed around one that held steady.
‘Helena—’
She said without turning, ‘You should be in bed, John.’
‘Safely out of the way while you pass your judgements?’ His tone was bitter. ‘You disappoint me, Helena. I thought you were above the petty emotions of jealousy and envy, yet here you are engaged on a witch hunt. What harm has Enalus ever done to you?’
She turned to face him and he was shaken by the sudden fury blazing in her eyes.
‘More than you can imagine, John. And don’t make the mistake of thinking that I have no emotions. Or are you implying that I’m not a real woman at all? Not as real, for example, as the thing you grew in a garden. Is that it?’
Bergman said soothingly, ‘This is a test, John, nothing more. Helena?’
‘This isn’t a trial,’ she said. ‘I’m not a judge and I would never presume to be a jury. But there is something we must know. Paul is helping me to find out. Sandra?’
‘No change in temperature or ionic levels, Doctor,’ she reported from her instruments. ‘No trace of energy transfer as yet.’
‘What are you looking for?’ Koenig looked around Main Mission. Aside from Morrow, the personnel was as he expected, but a relief man sat at the main console. ‘Where’s Paul?’
‘Here.’ Helena gestured at the static screen. ‘With Enalus.’
They were framed like lovers in the panel edged with metal and alive with glowing colour. From the speakers came the sound of breathing, the soft strum of a guitar, the small noises of weight shifting on the bed where they sat. Paul Morrow had his back against a wall, the guitar in his hands, the girl at his side and leaning very close.
‘Paul,’ she murmured, ‘play again, Paul, and tell me how you learned to make such wonderful music.’ Her hand lifted to caress his fingers. ‘You are so strong, so wonderful.’
Koenig snarled his rage.
He felt it rise within him, a hot, tormenting flood that tinged the picture with red and sent the blood to roar in his ears.
‘No,’ he said. ‘No! Get them out of there! Enalus! You can’t! Enalus!’
At his side Bergman said quietly, ‘Hypersensitivity, as we suspected, Helena. Is there nothing we can do?’
‘No, Victor. This is one battle he must win alone.’
A battle of logic against emotion, of self against responsibility. He had derided Helena for being jealous, and now that same emotion threatened to tear him apart, to ruin his mind and crush his soul. He had sneered at her envy and now he would have given the rest of his life to be sitting where Morrow sat, to have the girl beside him as close.
‘Paul,’ she whispered again, ‘do you like me a little? Do you trust me? I am so helpless here. I have no friends. I need a friend, Paul. Will you be my friend?’
‘How can she do that?’ Sandra was watching. ‘Look what she’s doing to him!’
Helena said sharply, ‘Watch your instruments. The levels?’
‘Remain the same, but—’
‘She isn’t human, Sandra. Remember that. She isn’t human!’
And, perhaps, the more appealing because of it. An ideal holds more attraction than reality. The comfort of an illusion is not quickly thrown away. And no man, attacked at his basic, primeval, survival-structure, could resist the triggers of his biological drive.
‘Enalus—you are beautiful! Enalus!’
She moved closer towards him, the mane of her hair falling over his face, shielding them both from the watching electronic eye. His hands fell from the guitar, one circling her waist, the other coming up to rest on her shoulder.
‘Personal contact,’ whispered Bergman. ‘As I suspected. It would have to be something like that.’
A touch. A kiss—why couldn’t he remember?
Koenig drew in a deep breath, conscious of a battle won, of emotional turmoil stilled. Burned out, perhaps, a demon exorcised.
Sandra said quickly, ‘Doctor! The levels—’
‘Sound the alarm. Have security move in. Quickly, girl! Quickly!’
On the screen Paul rolled from the enfolding embrace, his eyes glazed, his skin deathly pale.
Bergman said, ‘Well, there it is. Enalus is the cause of the anemia. The episode with Paul proves that beyond question. The amazing thing is that, even now, he insists that she didn’t even touch him.’
‘A defence mechanism,’ said Helena. ‘I suspected it from the first. Any newly born creature must try to ensure protection against the environment. Enalus, from the first, emitted either a chemical or an electronic cloud of particles that caused a reaction in every male coming close to her.’ She added dryly, ‘I don’t think I need to elaborate just what those reactions were.’
Love, pity, compassion, jealousy—Koenig had felt them all. The love that had gripped him in the Medical Section when first seeing the creature, the response to her plight when, later in her room, he had been overwhelmed with pity, an emotion perhaps even stronger than love.
‘No one affected could endanger her in any way,’ mused Bergman. ‘Tomlinson lied, of course. She must have left her room to visit Markham, and he kn
ew it, just as Paul lied in an attempt to protect her. As all the men with whom she came into contact lied as to the extent of their relationship. As they will continue to lie. They can’t help it.’
As he couldn’t help his anger, thought Koenig. The rage that had turned his responsibility into nothing against the need to protect the girl. As he still felt the need to protect her.
‘She’s dangerous,’ said Helena, as if reading his thoughts. ‘An alien creature who has no conception of anything other than the need to survive. You must remember that at all times, John—you and everyone else in Alpha.’
‘You seem good at remembering, Helena.’
‘But I’m not the commander, John. I can’t order that thing to be destroyed. You can.’
‘No! I—’
‘You must,’ she insisted grimly. ‘One man is dead already because of her. It could have been two if we hadn’t reached Tomlinson in time. More have lost blood to that . . . vampire. Are you going to risk the Moonbase for the sake of a delusion?’
‘Helena, you’re being unfair.’ Bergman looked at her from where he sat at the desk in Koenig’s office. ‘You must remember that John has been exposed to the creature’s defence-mechanism. He has been conditioned to protect her at any cost, and he isn’t alone. There are others who will fight to the death to prevent you from hurting Enalus.’
‘If the men won’t destroy her, then the women will,’ snapped Helena. ‘They won’t be affected by the thing’s defensive mechanisms.’
‘Perhaps not,’ admitted Bergman. ‘And I know from Nancy Coleman that you won’t go short of volunteers. But suppose the men stand before her—will your women kill them in order to get at Enalus? And will the men permit the women to come close, knowing what they intend?’
‘Civil war,’ said Helena bleakly, ‘and of the worst possible kind. Men against women, and neither side can hope to win—not unless they are willing to destroy the Moonbase. Damn you, Victor. What can we do?’
‘Think.’ He leaned back, face graven with thought, looking detached and a little remote as he steepled his lingers. ‘Consider alternatives and try to be compassionate. Enalus is, first and foremost, only trying to survive. That is the prime objective of any organism. She seems to need blood in order to achieve that end. Now, is there any substitute she would accept instead? How much blood is essential to maintain her existence? Can we afford it? Could we reach some kind of a compromise? Is there any way in which—’
Koenig leaned back, barely listening to the flow of words, knowing they were only dressing to cover the real problem. Not an impasse, as had been suggested, but an outright confrontation.
And what if Enalus decided to take over Alpha?
The hum of his commlock broke an ugly train of thought and Koenig glared at the screen. The operator was quick to apologise.
‘I’m sorry, Commander. I know you are in conference, but it’s Dr Mathias. He says it is urgent.’
‘Very well.’ At least the interruption would provide a momentary relief from trying to solve the insoluble. ‘Put him on the communications post.’
The screen flared to life and Mathias looked at the assembly.
‘Commander! Professor! Dr Russell! I’ve discovered something that could be important. It has to do with the blood of the anemia victims.’
‘The blood?’
‘Yes, Doctor. We have both been concerned at the absence of a visible wound that precludes the actual removal of blood from the body as would be the case in true vampirism. And when we checked we counted only the red corpuscles, correct? Well, I got to thinking and did a total count of all cells, both red and white. There was a shortage of red, right enough, but not a noticeable diminution in the total. What appears to have happened is that the red cells somehow lost their pigment.’
‘Their pigment! But how?’ Bergman blinked, then said, ‘Of course! The haemoglobin! Helena, that means—’
‘It means that Enalus didn’t want blood at all,’ she said. ‘She wanted the iron it contained. The haemoglobin. Remove it and you produce anemia. John, don’t you see, she wanted the iron!’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was hard now to look at the screen—to see the image it displayed, the figure held fast in the room, one that had once held so much loveliness, so much grace. The change had been too sudden, thought Koenig, too great. And yet something still remained—the hair, long, fine, a shimmering waterfall that clothed the shoulders, the upper torso, the face. The emitted particles that still affected all who came physically close, making slaves of every male aside from Bergman, who seemed, in some remote fashion, to be immune.
Or, if not immune, then less affected than the others. As he was less affected now that he saw her only on a screen.
‘John, has she fed yet?’ Helena joined him where he stood at the monitor. She was tense, nerve and sinew keyed as if she were an engineer defusing a bomb. A good analogy, perhaps, but she could never be certain if she was defusing or triggering a device that could destroy them all. ‘Has Victor given her the ration?’
‘He’s doing it now.’
Koenig watched as Bergman entered the room, female security guards passing him through, women wearing complete space armour, armed, under strict orders to shoot if Enalus should attempt to leave her quarters. He carried a large container in his hands. It held an allotropic form of iron, one devised and produced by Helena, a chemically accurate substitute for that carried in the blood and which gave the red cells their colour.
‘Enalus?’ He set it on a low table. ‘How do you feel?’
‘I am well, Victor.’ The music of the voice remained, the initial mental contact long augmented by vocal communication, another facet of the defence mechanism. When had it happened, Koenig wondered. After I had accused her of using mental telepathy? Had she adapted, then, to conform? ‘You have brought me more iron?’
She lifted the container and turned so that her back was towards Bergman and the scanner of the monitor. Beneath the mane of her hair her shoulders moved a little as she lowered her face over the jar. Then she straightened and turned again and set it down empty.
‘More, Victor. I must have more.’
‘You will get it,’ he promised. ‘Together with food. You still need food?’
‘Yes. Food and water, but, most of all, iron. I need it as you need salt. You understand, Victor? To me it is life.’
A life that had hung in the balance. Koenig remembered the discussions, the savage intensity that had almost turned into physical violence. The discovery of her need for iron had given them a weapon against her. It was a revealed weakness that had altered the entire situation. Now there had been no need to take violent action against her. All they need do was to refuse her access to the essential element.
‘She will die,’ said Helena. ‘Deprived of it, she will cease to exist. John, we are safe!’
‘At the cost of what?’ Bergman had glared his frustration. ‘A new form of life, Helena, and you want to destroy it. Are we barbarians? Have we no mercy, no tolerance? Must we kill simply because we cannot understand?’
‘She is alien.’
‘She deserves a chance.’
‘She should be eliminated.’
‘She could teach us things we don’t even suspect exist.’ Bergman appealed to Koenig. ‘John, we can’t waste this opportunity. We had to destroy the parasite, that I agree, but not Enalus. She—please, John, not Enalus.’
They had watched him, one wanting him to decide to destroy, the other for him to be merciful. For a moment he had hesitated and then—had Enalus herself guided his decision?—had said, ‘There is no need to be hasty. Let us hold her safe, feed her the iron and see what happens. You agree, Victor?’
‘Yes, John. Of course!’
‘Helena?’
‘You are the commander, John. I hope you don’t regret it.’
A wish she repeated as they now stood together facing the screen.
‘She was so lovely and now—John, wo
uld it have been better to have let her die?’
‘No.’
‘But look at her. As a woman I can understand what she must be feeling. If I were in her place—’
She broke off as he took her by the shoulders and turned her to face him. ‘You’re not, Helena. And don’t make the same mistake you’ve warned me against so often. Enalus isn’t a woman. She is an alien creature. She isn’t human, Helena.’
It was his turn to give her strength, to bolster her clinical detachment and to point out the absence of need of a woman’s pity. Yet it was hard for Helena not to feel compassion. Hard for anyone who had known Enalus not to compare what she had been with what she had become.
On the screen she moved again, slowly, turning like a billowing sail in the wind, huge, rounded, shapeless. A swollen travesty of the lithe young girl she had once seemed.
Watching her, Koenig felt a yearning regret
‘Metamorphosis,’ said Bergman. ‘It has to be. It’s the only thing that explains all the facts as we know them. Enalus is on the verge of undergoing change.’
‘Helena?’
‘Victor is right, John.’ She glanced at her notes. ‘And it will be soon. Her size has remained static for the past two days and she has ceased all ingestion of all food and liquids, including the iron. She seems now to be dormant, and no movement has been observed for the past three hours.’
‘But metamorphosis?’ Koenig moved impatiently about his office. ‘She came from a plant, remember? How can a fruit change its shape?’
‘On Earth it can’t,’ admitted Bergman. ‘I’ve spoken to Nancy about it and she is positive. But we are dealing with an alien form of life, John, and one that must follow alien rules. And even on Earth there are some pretty exotic forms of life-cycle. Think of bees, for example. The grubs are the same, but when sealed into their cells, they are fed differently and the diet determines the shape they will adopt as adults: some are workers; some are drones; others are queens. Termites have an even greater variation.’