by Anthology
She looked up at him. “I—I don’t know what to say, Mr. Mac-Henry. Except that I’m not—what you said. I don’t know why you don’t believe me. But I can’t go. My ship isn’t there any more. I—I didn’t want to say this because I’ll get in trouble, but I— jumped ship, and it went on without me. I knew I was breaking the law, but it was my only chance. To get back to Earth. So I guess you’ll have to lock me up, if that’s what you want.”
She was going to play it out, and she was letter-perfect! He felt, oddly, relieved. Her departure would have been a confession of guilt, and he would have had to shoot down the alien ship the moment he spotted its location. This way there was at least a chance she was real. A chance he knew he was foolish to hope for. The subversion was proceeding too rapidly, but he was helpless to inhibit it because his will to do so was uncertain.
“Your ship wasn’t wrecked?” he asked. “The—Expo 99?”
“Did I say that?” She was prettily surprised. “I meant the Exton 99. We called it Expo, but that was just slang. Yes, it couldn’t hang around for a solitary deserter, and—”
Leo left her in mid-sentence and strode to the control room. He punched for the revised designation.
Exton 99: ONE OF A SERIES OF COLONY SHIPS BOUND FOR THE SO-CALLED ADEPT SPHERE PERIMETER, PERSONNEL SELECTED BY INVOLUNTARY LOT—
Ouch! That was one of the press-gang fleets that filled their complements by pseudo-random drafts on the labor force. Volunteers for adverse locations were few, so this was a legalized piracy of talent similar to the old-time military service call-ups during the frequent wars-to-end-wars. Somehow the rich or influential seldom got called: another time-honored corruption. Graft or draft was the word. Selection for such an expedition meant a lifetime of hard service and a death on some frontier world for the unhappy recruit.
Yet politically it was sound. It eased unemployment on Earth while strengthening the planet’s galactic posture. New worlds had to be tamed and developed, and this system accomplished it on a crash basis. The volume of space Leo’s own station guarded would eventually be colonized this way. The majority of the voters were beyond the age or health of eligibility, so from their safety approved the draft.
Democracy, as the exported minority discovered, was not invariably fair. Leo had obtained his exemption by qualifying for his present tour, but he retained no sympathy for the system. It was merely yet another form of involuntary servitude.
No wonder Nevada Brown had jumped ship when she had a chance! Life on Earth was crowded but affluent; life elsewhere was grim. She must have watched for her opportunity and made her move when the ship slowed for a course correction. Colony ships seldom proceeded directly to their destinations, since it was dangerous to pinpoint these for enemy observers. The “enemy” constituted obstructive families of draftees as well as competitive alien species.
He owed an apology to his guest. She was human.
Oh-oh. This was the way the Dep influence worked. He had been well briefed on this. While Nevada stood in the airlock he had verified that her given identification was spurious. Now that he had talked to her directly, he had changed his mind. It was too easy to call his first assessment an error. It had been an objective one, while what followed was more likely to be subjective. He had wanted to believe her story, and had substituted the name of a real ship for the one she had invented.
Though why she hadn’t given him a real ship the first time, when the Dep researchers had surely had the information . . .”
He returned to the day room, perplexed. Nevada had not moved. She was still rumpled, legs slightly bowed, nose a little too long, not homely so much as imperfectly pretty. Even her youth did not become her particularly; she had not yet mastered the studied grace of the experienced woman, the flair for accenting the desirable and phasing out the undesirable.
All of which argued in her favor. A Dep courtesan would have been a beauty, since all her details would have been under control. Nothing about her would rankle.
Yet—he was alert for the Dep perfection. So it stood to reason his suspicions could best be allayed by token imperfections . . .”
Yet again: she could be valid. Her story was now a good one, that he could not disprove. He had figured the chances for a human shipwreck here. But a deliberate desertion in the vicinity of a manned observation station, by a colonist with a legitimate grievance—that was far less improbable. Perhaps only ten to one odds against. The same as those against overt infiltration by a Dep spy, by his crude reckoning. That evened the odds; she was as likely to be human as Dep.
Except that a Dep would naturally present him with a convincing story.
What was he to believe? He wanted to accept her as human. That would be so much simpler and so much more pleasant. But he stood to lose fortune, life and mission if he made a mistake. The wrong mistake.
The right mistake, of course, would be to kill her and discover subsequently that she had been human. He would not be held culpable in the circumstances.
She continued to sit there, watching him with brown eyes but not speaking. The odds were with the execution—murder—but he just wasn’t that reasonable.
He could obtain accurate odds for all eventualities by punching for them, but he preferred to settle this his own way. The consequence of his decision would fall on his head and soul, not the computer.
“I am not sure about you,” he said at last. “You may be human and you may be Dep.”
Again he wondered whether the mistake of accepting a Dep lover might not be worth it. There was subtle and unsubtle fascination about—
“I can tell you about myself,” she said eagerly. “Where I was born, who my folks are—things no alien could know—”
“Forget it. I wouldn’t know them either. You could make up anything.”
“Couldn’t you look it up in your computer? Doesn’t it list everything that—”
“The register is encyclopedic, not omniscient,” he said sharply. “It has every fact I might reasonably need or want to know— but it can’t list every teen-age girl in the overpopulated world.”
“I’m twenty-two,” she said, offended. “They don’t draft you until you’re—”
“Anyway, the name, even if listed, wouldn’t prove a thing. A Dep would research it before coming here.”
“Oh.” She pondered a moment, still justifiably nervous. “But there must be things I know that you could verify that an alien couldn’t. I’ve spent my life on Earth, after all. Maybe we know some of the same people and—”
“No. The only things I could verify that way would be suspect because I did know them. I would think you had told them to me, but actually I would be picking them out of my own memory.” She stared at him, her small chin rumpling as though she were about to cry. “You mean—I can’t use anything you don’t know, because I can’t prove it, and I can’t use anything you do know because—?”
“Yes. So I’m afraid I’m going to have to”—she stiffened— “hold you prisoner, until the ship comes.” He was a ludicrous weakling; he should have simply shot her. In fact, he was admitting defeat, if she were a Dep. It might mean the destruction of the station, or his own betrayal of his world, but he simply lacked the fortitude to do what was necessary. He was not that good a guardian.
“Oh. I thought you were going to—I guess that makes sense, though. To turn me over to the authorities, I mean, since you can’t be sure.” Her relief was pitiful. She knew now that she wouldn’t be killed, whichever way it went.
She stood up. “A Dep would know—enemy secrets, or something, too. So it would be right. I guess I should go to the cell now. I hope it’s clean.”
“There is no cell. You’ll have to use this room.” And a Dep would have known that, too.
She looked around, comprehending. “Oh.”
“I’ll reprogram the life-services equipment to provide for your needs. You’ll have to ask me for any reading matter you want, and I’ll have printouts made. Most of what we have
here is technical, though. The station wasn’t set up for—entertainment.”
“But what will you do?” she inquired with half-coy solicitude. “I mean, you can’t stay in the control room all the time, or in the storeroom, or whatever.”
He shrugged.
“But it really makes you more of a prisoner than—” she cried, breaking off unfinished.
In more ways than one, sister! “Nevada, it would be convenient if there were some way to determine for certain what you are,” Leo said. “Even an inconvenient way. But there isn’t, since I don’t have a lab here. So we’ll just have to make do—unless you want to leave now.”
“I guess I should,” she said. “But I’d die, and my willpower is not that good. Isn’t there any way to—” Her eyes brightened suddenly. “You say the ship isn’t coming for over a year?”
Leo nodded. “Barring a blowup.”
“And I’ll just have to stay here until they can identify me for sure? And if I’m human it’s all right, but if I’m alien, trying to sneak into Earth’s defenses, they’ll kill me?”
“Close enough. I explained all that before. You aren’t going to accomplish anything if you’re a spy, so you might as well quit. If you go now, you can save your life and my reputation.” But he was bluffing.
“So it really doesn’t make any difference what happens until the ship comes,” she said excitedly. “Except that it would be a lot nicer if I could prove to you I’m human.” She was smoothing herself out now with motions more suggestive than practical.
“Yes. But if you’re thinking of the classic ‘proof,’ it’s no good. A Dep can make sex too. Better than a real woman, they say. That changes nothing.”
“You’re wrong,” she said with new confidence. “Give me a few days to—to get to know you. Then I—I’ll prove it. Really prove it. It’ll be rough, but you’ll see.”
The reliefship captain was shocked. “You admitted an intruder? Here near the Dep frontier? Do you realize what this means?”
“I realize,” Leo said. “It was a chance, but I’ll gladly stand court-martial for what I did. But I intend to introduce in my own defense evidence that I kept good watch and even repelled an alien probe that might ordinarily have overcome the station and made this entire system hostile to Man. They were going to radiation-bomb it, you see, so we couldn’t develop it for centuries. I think they’re getting desperate, to try that. That should count for something.”
“Repelled a probe?” The captain seemed to have been left behind.
“A Dep fleet that meant business. Less than a month ago. They fired saturation missiles, trying to knock out this station first. Must have cost them a fortune. I would never have nullified them all if Nevada hadn’t acted as an additional spotter. She called them off by coordinates, so I was able to devote my full attention to gunning them down. Quadrupled my efficiency. Good thing, too; it’s tricky trying to intercept meteor-shower type shells. The Deps hadn’t expected a coordinated defense to their surprise attack.”
“Of course not,” the captain said. “That’s an overt act of war —unless they managed to cover it up somehow. It changes the whole picture. But why should a Dep spy help you to—why, obviously she had been sent to incapacitate you in advance.”
Leo grinned. “I could say my charm converted her to my side, but it wouldn’t stick. She’s human. I verified that. I knew I could trust her, and we had a lot to fight for.”
“Mr. MacHenry, there is no way you could have been sure of that. You have no laboratory. The Deps are unexcelled at disguise and indirection.”
“On the contrary. We have the very best laboratory. The one no alien can fool. All it takes is—”
He was interrupted by the sound of a baby crying.
The captain didn’t make the connection immediately. “I tell you the Deps are too good at—” Then he paused, mouth open.
“Not that good, Captain. They can’t hide the whole truth,” Leo said, smiling with something more than victory. “Which reminds me. It will be your privilege to perform the ceremony for Nevada and me, now that the job is done. I want little Nev to have a proper name, and naturally my wife will be entitled to remain with me on Earth.”