Nova 1

by Anthology

  “But not the doctor,” Wordman said grimly. “He’d have to know the truth almost immediately.”

  “Yes, sir, I should think so.”

  “And he hasn’t reported Revell.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Have you gone to pick him up yet?”

  “Not yet. We just got the report.”

  “I’ll want to come with you. Wait for me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wordman traveled in the ambulance in which they’d bring Revell back. They arrived without siren at Dr. Allyn’s with two cars of state troopers, marched into the tiny operating room, and found Allyn washing instruments at the sink.

  Allyn looked at them all calmly and said, “I thought you might be along.”

  Wordman pointed at the man who lay, unconscious, on the table in the middle of the room. “There’s Revell,” he said.

  Allyn glanced at the operating table in surprise. “Revell? The poet?”

  “You didn’t know? Then why help him?”

  Instead of answering, Allyn studied his face and said, “Would you be Wordman himself?”

  Wordman said, “Yes, I am.”

  “Then I believe this is yours,” Allyn said, and put into Word-man’s hands a small and bloody black box.

  The ceiling was persistently bare. Revell’s eyes wrote on it words that should have singed the paint away, but nothing ever happened. He shut his eyes against the white at last and wrote in spidery letters on the inside of his lids the single word oblivion.

  He heard someone come into the room, but the effort of making a change was so great that for a moment longer he permitted his eyes to remain closed. When he did open them he saw Wordman there, standing grim and mundane at the foot of the bed.

  Wordman said, “How are you, Revell?”

  “I was thinking about oblivion,” Revell told him. “Writing a poem on the subject.” He looked up at the ceiling, but it was empty.

  Wordman said, “You asked, one time, you asked for pencil and paper. We’ve decided you can have them.”

  Revell looked at him in sudden hope, but then understood, “Oh,” he said. “Oh, that”

  Wordman frowned and said, “What’s wrong? I said you can have pencil and paper.”

  “If I promise not to leave any more.”

  Wordman’s hands gripped the foot of the bed. He said, “What’s the matter with you? You can’t get away, you have to know that by now.”

  “You mean I can’t win. But I won’t lose. It’s your game, your rules, your home ground, your equipment; if I can manage a stalemate, that’s pretty good.”

  Wordman said, “You still think it’s a game. You think none of it matters. Do you want to see what you’ve done?” He stepped back to the door, opened it, made a motion, and Dr. Allyn was led in. Wordman said to Revell, “You remember this man?”

  “I remember,” said Revell.

  Wordman said, “He just arrived. They’ll be putting the Guardian in him in about an hour. Does it make you proud, Revell?” Looking at Allyn, Revell said, “I’m sorry.”

  Allyn smiled and shook his head. “Don’t be. I had the idea the publicity of a trial might help rid the world of things like the Guardian.” His smile turned sour. “There wasn’t very much publicity.”

  Wordman said, “You two are cut out of the same cloth. The emotions of the mob, that’s all you can think of. Revell in those so-called poems of his, and you in that speech you made in court.” Revell, smiling, said, “Oh? You made a speech? I’m sorry I didn’t get to hear it.”

  “It wasn’t very good,” Allyn said. “I hadn’t known the trial would only be one day long, so I didn’t have much time to prepare it.”

  Wordman said, “All right, that’s enough. You two can talk later, you’ll have years.”

  At the door Allyn turned back and said, “Don’t go anywhere till I’m up and around, will you? After my operation.”

  Revell said, “You want to come along next time?”

  “Naturally,” said Allyn.

  THE WHOLE TRUTH

  by Piers Anthony

  Science fiction resembles the detective story in many ways: the deepening mystery, the adventure, the chase, and—only too often —the corpse, all building toward the finally revealed ending. Here these elements are combined with another famous—or rather infamous—theme, that of the lady and the tiger. Piers Anthony presents us with a tiger-lady and asks us to solve the problem before he reveals the solution . . .

  Unfortunately, the impersonal military regulations said, multiple-manned stations were not feasible at this time. Numerous learned articles had been published refuting the validity of this policy, but they were under civilian bylines and therefore ignored. That was why Leo MacHenry was a lonely man.

  He had been warned that his imagination might conjure company from the vacuum, just to break the monotony of fourteen months of isolation. Such cautions were unnecessary; he knew better than to yield to hallucination. One million dollars was good pay even in the face of rampant cool-war inflation, for a single tour—but it would do him little good in the psycho ward. Thus he was cautious about crediting what he saw.

  Still, it did look like a man. A live one.

  The figure drifted directly toward the station, brightly illuminated by this system’s nameless sun. Behind it were the stars, clear even in this seeming day because of the absence of obscuring atmosphere. An intermittent jet of gas shot out from the suit, suggesting the tail of a comet as the light caught it momentarily. Braking action; weightlessness was a far cry from masslessness, and a collision at speed with the station would flatten the visitor in ugly fashion.

  Leo watched it through the small scope. What he saw was a standard UN space suit of the type suitable for survival-of-wearer up to four days in deep space, conditions permitting, and somewhat longer in a semiprotected situation. That was sufficient margin for rescue in most cases—if rescue were, according to the manual, feasible at all. Evidently there had been a wreck in space, and this survivor had been close enough.

  And that was suspicious. Leo’s station was mounted on a planetoid that orbited a numbered star far from Sol. Human traffic was sparse here. There was potentially valuable real estate in this system and Earth wanted to hold a lease on it so that other starfaring creatures would stay clear, but it would be years before proper development occurred. The odds against a human shipwreck here at this time, let alone a single survivor—well, it was improbable.

  Yet this was persistent for a hallucination. His instruments picked up the visitor, and he was not given to misreading their signals. He had been on duty two weeks; the novelty was only now beginning to wear down, and in any event it was a little soon for cross-referenced mind-warping. It was now fairly safe to assume that what he saw was real, physically.

  The odds remained bad, however. He had not wanted to think about the next most likely prospect, but now he had to. What he saw could be a Dep.

  The Deps were an alien species whose stellar ambition matched Man’s own. Their technology lagged slightly behind Earth’s, but they made up for this by other abilities. Because they were GO star-system residents of an Earthtype planet, their needs were basically parallel to Man’s, and that meant specific competition for choice worlds. A state of war did not exist currently, but the peace, to put it euphemistically, was uncertain.

  The UN suit fired a last burst from its center of gravity—jokes were rife and obvious—and contacted the surface of the planetoid. It tumbled and bounced, the wearer not expert at this maneuver. Then it righted itself and attempted to walk toward the station.

  Leo smiled grimly. Walking on a low-G rock was not the same as doing it on a smooth metal hull. Here the magnetic shoes had nothing to cling to, and friction with the surface was virtually nil. The figure rose slowly into the black sky rather than going forward.

  Why hadn’t he spotted the wreck? It should have been well within the range of his instruments, and the telltales should have Christmassed.
That was another augury in favor of a Dep intruder: a deliberately landed spy. Though it was not like them to oversight such an important detail as a fake wreck.

  The Deps: vernacular for Adepts, in turn the informal term for the species that could change its physical features at will to match those of any similar animal. Man was similar. Coupled with this was a certain force of personality that, it was said, caused the viewer to overlook minor discrepancies. Thus a Dep spy could be frighteningly effective. He looked like a man, and his faked identification seemed to check out. Even machine inspection was not always proof against error. Cases were on record where an identified Dep had been passed in spite of mechanical protest. The operator had been sure the device was malfunctioning, since the subject was obviously human.

  Strenuous measures had been required to root out Dep spies from Earth’s environs, and some innocent humans had been liquidated in the process. But the job had been done. Computerized laboratories were capable of identifying suspects and passing sentence, and were not affected by the subjective aura. The threat of Dep infiltration, while still present, was no longer serious.

  The suited figure finally got its bearings and made respectable progress toward the entry port. Leo had to make his decision soon.

  Space was large, suit-range small. Human survivor of unobserved wreck: thousand-to-one odds against? Million-to-one?

  On the other hand, how about a Dep infiltration attempt, here and now? Maybe only ten-to-one against.

  He could blast the human-looking figure where it stood. He had more destructive power under his thumb than Man had been capable of imagining through most of his history. He could devastate men, ships and even small planets. He was the guardian of this system, equipped to make intrusion by aliens entirely too costly to be worthwhile.

  But suppose the visitor were legitimate? Overwhelming as the odds against it were, it was possible. Should he risk murder?

  The visitor was at the port. He could not ignore it. A human would soon die out there, as the suit ran down; an alien would arrange somehow to sabotage the station.

  It would be safer to blast it. His duty required that he act with cognizance of the odds. Nothing should jeopardize Earth security.

  Yet—he was lonely. Two weeks had impressed him forcefully what fourteen months would be like. If he blasted now, he would not know whether he had done right or wrong. Not for thirteen and a half months, when the relief ship took in the frozen toasted fragments and analyzed the flesh.

  Loneliness was bad, but that grisly uncertainty would be worse. And if the body were human . . .

  He was fairly secure, physically. He could admit the visitor and make his own investigation. He would be reprimanded, of course. It was not his business to take chances.

  He was lonely. His resistance to temptation was not that good. He pressed the stud that opened the lock.

  The figure entered. The port swung shut, resealed. Air cycled into the chamber. Now Leo could talk to his guest without employing monitored radio.

  “Identify yourself,” he said. “You have fifteen seconds before I fry you with high voltage.”

  Muffled through the helmet, the nervous reply came: “Miss Nevada Brown, colony ship Expo 99. Please don’t—fry me!”

  A woman!

  Nonplussed, he drew his hand back from the incinerator control. He had not been bluffing. Whatever language the visitor spoke, human or alien, the meaning of his challenge would have been clear. No person got into space without becoming aware of the hairtrigger reflexes of station operatives.

  Those reflexes were sadly disordered now! A man he could have dealt with. A woman—how could he kill her? Even if she were a Dep—and this was distinctly possible—it was hardly in him to—to do what was necessary. Spaceships he could blast; women, no. His conditioning was not that good.

  “Take off your suit and deposit any weapons on the shelf,” he said, trying to restore gruffness to his voice. Weapons? The weapons a woman wore were part of her body. “I’m watching you.” And he remembered belatedly to turn on the screen. He really was shaken.

  Obligingly she stripped the bulky segments away. The process took some time, since a UN suit was intended to be safe, not convenient. He noted with guilty disappointment that she was adequately covered underneath. Some people wore their suits nude, to facilitate circulation of air and heat.

  A woman! Human or Dep? On the verdict hung months of delight or torment worse than either loneliness or guilt. If she were really from a colony ship—

  Hands quivering, he punched for information from the register.

  Expo 99: WORLD’S FAIR, LOCATION MADAGASCAR, 1999. ATTENDANCE, CUMULATIVE, 42,000,000 PAID. POINTS OF SIGNIFICANCE—

  He cut it off and punched a correction. It was the Ship he wanted.

  In the interval the girl had emerged from her suit. She was a young brunette, slender rather than voluptuous, and not shown to best advantage by the rumpled coverall she wore. Her hair was quite short, in the fashion of most women who went to space— apart from so-called entertainers—and her ears stuck out a bit. Not the kind he would have looked at even once, back on Earth with his million-dollar retirement fund.

  But this was not yet Earth. This was isolation for another thirteen and a half months, while his station orbited its numbered sun and at length returned to a favorable orientation for rendezvous. For that lean period, any woman would be lovely, particularly a young one.

  Any human woman.

  He looked at the register’s message: data insufficient.

  Leo punched a clarification, but he already knew what it meant. There was no such ship. The girl was a phony.

  Incinerate her?

  She was pathetically fragile in her tousled state, and breathing rapidly from nervous energy. She was well aware of her danger.

  It flashed through his mind: even a Dep female would be company.

  He released the inner lock and admitted her to the station.

  He met her in the comfortable day room. She was still unsteady in the gravity field, after her time in free-fall. Her shoulders and breasts sagged slightly, as though they had lost their tonus in space. She had tried to straighten her outfit, to make herself presentable; but a moment of primping could hardly undo days of suit-confinement. Particularly when the natural attributes were modest. As a pinup she was not that good.

  “Sit down,” he said curtly, refusing to address her by name.

  “Thank you.” Grateful but not graceful, she took one of the overstuffed chairs. The station was small, but the day room was intended to be as homey as “feasible,” to mitigate the starkness of the duty.

  “I believe you are an agent of an alien power,” he said. “Specifically, you are a Dep spy.”

  Her mouth opened. She wore no lipstick or other makeup, such things not conducive to survival in space. Her eyes were shadowed by fatigue, not artifice. Her teeth were subtly uneven. He knew her for an alien creature, yet every detail was painfully human.

  “Hold your comment,” he said, preventing her from speaking. He knew he had to do this rapidly or his nerve would break. He was not a military man, though for this single tour he was subject to military regulations. Discipline in the soldier-sense was more a sometime concept than gut-reality to him. “My name is Leo Mac-Henry and I have no Scottish or Irish blood that I know of. I am a civilian mercenary on duty for fourteen months, most of which lie before me. I am being well paid for this service because personality tests indicate that I am more likely to survive with my wits intact than a conventional soldier would be. I mean to complete my tour honorably and retire to rich living and overindulgent amours for the ensuing fifty years.

  “I am keyed in to this station in such a way that I cannot leave it even to walk the surface of the planetoid without destroying it and myself. Only the relief ship has the equipment to re-key for the next observer. My brain waves are continually monitored by the main computer. If they stop—that is, if I should die or suffer some drastic mental chang
e, such as entering a drugged state—the computer will detonate this station immediately. The radius of total destruct is well beyond the distance any person could travel in a space suit, because of needle shrapnel and lethal radiation. There are other safeguards of more devious but effective nature. My point is that I am to all intents and purposes invulnerable here. I made you leave your weapons”—she had had a heatbeamer and a knife, both standard for a UN suit—“only to prevent you from attempting anything foolish before I had a chance to talk to you. I may look ordinary, but any serious attack on me will bring your demise or our mutual destruction. This in turn will summon a competent Earth-fleet ready and eager for trouble.

  “I run this station. No other person can do so much as open a door except at my direction, because of the electronic and neural keying. You cannot leave, you cannot obtain food, you cannot even use the sanitary facilities without my cooperation. I intend either to execute you or to hold you here until the relief ship arrives, at which point I will turn you over to the appropriate authorities for interrogation and probable liquidation.

  “I will, however, give you one chance for freedom, since your presence here will be a severe blot on my record. If you wish to leave right now you may do so; I will let you take off in your suit and return to your compatriots with the news that my station is in business for the duration. I suggest that you accept it; it is an easy way out for both of us.”

  He turned his back on her to hide his own nervousness. He had done it. He had made his speech, and it was all true, except that his discipline was not that good. Not that good at all. He could let her go, but if she decided to stay he—even if she were a Dep spy—

  He was lonely and, suddenly, woman-hungry. He would try to keep her prisoner, but inevitably come in time to treat her less as a suspect and more as—as what she seemed. Already he was sorely tempted. Perhaps that was what the Dep command had counted on. That he would penetrate the ruse but submit to a gradual, emotional subversion. A year was plenty of time to do the job. A year of propinquity, and he would no longer care. He would have a new loyalty. After that—