Tongues of the Moon

by Philip José Farmer

  "We haven't got anything hidden under them," said Saavedra loudly. Nevertheless, he and Quiroga obeyed. Saavedra was a tall powerfully built man whose handsome face had a family likeness to his cousins. His hair was much darker, but his eyes were blue, and his nose was much bolder.100

  "I have a gun beside me on this seat," Broward said. "I hope I won't have to use it. I would like it if I never had to use a gun again."

  "There has never been a time in man's history when somebody, somewhere, wasn't using a weapon," Saavedra replied. "But that is no reason for thinking that the future has to be like the past. We are in a situation new to the world."

  "You talk like a man I could like," said Broward. "Tell me, what is the situation on Mars?"

  "I don't know what use the information will be to you," said the commandant. "But I will do almost anything to keep that bomb—if there is such a bomb—from being delivered. I..."

  "There is such a bomb. Believe me."

  "I can't afford not to believe you. The situation on Mars? It is not what anyone would expect."

  Saavedra paused, and Broward said, eagerly, "What do you mean?"

  Saavedra took a deep breath, then exploded it. "Rats!" For a moment, Broward misunderstood him. "Who are rats?"

  "Rats. The rats themselves. The rats on Mars."

  Broward said that he did not understand.

  "There are rats on Mars," Saavedra said slowly. "Rats from Earth. They are in our bases in every conceivable hiding place. And they are thriving in that complex of caverns that exists beneath the base of Osorno. Perhaps you do not know it, but Osorno was built about a tangle of caverns that must run for hundreds of miles under the surface. It was discovered when the base was first established, about twenty years ago. It had an atmosphere, although not as thick as Earth's, of course."

  Broward said, "You Argentineans kept quiet about it, but we heard of it. You pumped more air into it, didn't you?"

  "Yes. We found the first indigenous life of Mars. Several species of plants that flourished without sunlight. And some very small creatures unlike anything on Earth. Blind and brainless.

  "Anyway, the rats that stowed away on the ships, though how they did it, I don't know, adapted there and bred mightily. We have known for some time about them; occasionally, we found one in Osorno. Not only there but the other bases, too, though how they traveled to there is another mystery."

  "There were some rats on the Chinese base," Broward "But these were exterminated. I believe that rats have Journeyed across space with us because they are like us in many ways. Intelligent, highly adaptable, omnivorous, curious, ! vicious."

  "Perhaps so," said Saavedra. "In any event, they did not constitute a direct threat. But something happened to them ; in the caverns below Osorno. They must have caught and eaten the little creatures that thrive there. And, in so doing, must have been bitten now and then and become infected with a disease that afflicts the creatures. This was a mild among the animals of Mars, but, in the bloodstream of the rats, the microbes mutated.

  "That is the theory of our scientists. The first we of it, we found a few dying rats in our store-rooms and occasionally in the corridors. Then, a man became sick with an undiagnosable malady. He had intense headaches and backaches, his kidneys felt as if they were on fire, he vomited, he alternately suffered from high fevers and raging chills. His tearducts became inflamed, and he wept. "When the second man fell sick, we named the disease el fuego de Iagrimas—the 'fire of tears.' Since the rats were suspected, we made a campaign to exterminate them. We killed thousands, but I doubt we got all of them. They are such cunning creatures; they want so hard to live. By that time, one man was spreading the sickness to another. It appeared in all the bases. I think that the disease grows slowly, that many must have been infected before the violent symptoms became present"

  "Is it fatal?"

  "One person out of twenty has died so far," replied Saavedra. "And the rest are immobilized. Those who have recovered are very weak. It is true that two people out of ten do not seem to be affected. But these are very busy and overworked taking care of the sick."

  "Then Mars is prostrate?"

  "As if the hand of God had struck," said Quiroga. "Why should He strike us?" said Saavedra angrily. "We are not atheists. If He wished to strike anybody, it would be the godless Soviets." "I would say that He—if He did it—has struck mostly at Earth," replied Broward. "And He hasn't spared the Soviets on the Moon, either, although He did his damage by causing them to slay each other. That is, if He thought it necessary to intervene."

  "How many personnel do you have here?"

  "Ten. The Soviet and South African attacks took many. And after the sickness, all but ten were transferred back to Mars."

  "Has Quiroga told you of my offer?"

  "Yes. I thought he was mad, but he convinced me. Rather, the fact that you saved his life when you did not have to and that you had no need to ask for help to carry out your mission, convinced me. You must hate your leader and the ideology of the Soviets as much as I hate that madman, Howards, and his anti-Christian policies." Broward's eyebrows rose.

  Saavedra said, "Yes, Howards has always posed as a Christian. But he has cooperated with the Church only when it suited him. Where the Church resisted, Howards has always managed to get rid of the opposition. Of course, always in a subtle or underhanded manner. But my brother, a priest, was one of those who were killed—accidentally— when be spoke out against Howards' confinement of the Pope to his house."

  "You are ready to go ahead?" asked Broward. "It seems to be our only salvation. But what guarantee do I have that your commander will not enslave or kill us?"

  "No more guarantee than I have that you will not betray me," said Broward. "But I plan to get rid of my chief just as you plan to get rid of yours. To do that, I may need your help. First, will you swear on your honor and to your God?"

  "I will swear. I do swear."

  "Then here is what we must do."

  Several hours later, the scout returned the two Argentineans to the port. Broward then lifted the little ship from the moonlet and hurled it at top speed towards the area to which the navigational computer directed it. This took an hour and a half. Then, automatically, the radio broadcast the pretaped code call.

  For the minutes that it took the waves to get to the area where a robot relay vessel should be located, Broward chafed. Then, he became even more impatient while counting the minutes it would take for the waves to travel back to his ship with the message that the code had been detected, amplifed, and was being sent on to the vessel supposedly waiting near the Moon.

  Since Broward had arrived in the neighborhood of Mars, Earth had slid around the great curve of the sun and was barred from straight-line communication with the red planet. the relay ship had been following Broward—he hoped— had established a position where it could receive and transmit messages both from the scout ship and the Moon. On schedule, Broward's receiver came to life. His call had been picked up and was sent on its way. Broward, not wanting to wait any longer, then gave his report in the code-form he had prepared on the flight out. This would be passed on, and Scone could digest it, then ask his questions.

  The slow torturing moments twisted him. What if there was do one on the Moon to receive? Or what if the Axe had triumphed and were now trying to decipher the code? "Broward!" Scone's voice said, speaking in English. Broward almost whooped with joy. The fact that Scone was not using code indicated that the menace of the Axe fleet no longer existed.

  "Broward! We received your report. So Mars is dead! Well done. But are you sure that the bomb did the damage it was supposed to? You said that you had delivered the bomb and that it had created the expected havoc in Mars' crust and that the bases on the surface appear to be destroyed. But what about any ships that the Axe might have had in flight at the time the bomb struck? What about Deimos and Phobos? Are they still occupied by the enemy?

  "You will investigate them first. Then, you will land o
n Mars and examine the base of Osorno. Afterwards, return to a point where you can contact the relay and send us a report. We must make sure.

  "Meanwhile, for your information, we have utterly defeated the Axe armada. All ships were put out of commission except for two destroyers. These eluded us and are probably on the way back to Mars. Watch for them. If you sight them, avoid them. Note in what direction they are proceed-As long as they exist, we cannot breathe easily. We suffered heavy losses in gaining victory. Do you hear me?"

  "I hear you," replied Broward. "But, before I return to Mars, I would like to speak to my wife. She is all right, isn't she?"

  The almost intolerable waiting period passed. Scone's voice sounded again, "Broward! I do not like your disobeying my orders. But, in this great moment of triumph, I inclined to overlook it. Especially since you did carry out mission on which so much depended.

  "Unfortunately, you cannot talk to your wife, "Or to mine.

  "What do I mean by this? Just this. You may or may not know that it is now the law that every man is to have a mate, even if this means that one woman must have two or more to ensure this. So, I told Ingrid Nashdoi that she must share you with me. She refused and is, therefore, now under arrest. I am sure that she will change her mind later on. She is just having difficulty adjusting to the new ways inevitable because of the conditions. Once she gets over her irrationality and sees the logic of the law, she will agree. "Perhaps, you would like to speak to her and try to get her to see reason?"

  For at least a minute Broward was speechless, his gaze fixed on the speaker as if he could not believe what had come from it. Then, his face a bright red, he roared out obscenities and threats. The veins on his neck were purple columns. He shook his fist, he dredged up every foul name he could think of, and he also told Scone his true sentiments about Scone's methods and philosophies. But he did not tell Scone what he planned to do on Mars. Breathing harshly, tears running from his eyes, he finally quit his tirade. He did not wait for a reply from Scone because be had little doubt of what it would be. From now on, as far as he was concerned, Scone had another war on his hands. Later, after he had cooled down somewhat, he realized that he had reacted exactly as Scone wished. Again, the crafty tiger of a man had killed two birds with one stone— a mixed metaphor that happened to be true. He had gotten Broward to carry out a mission for him and then gotten rid of him. He had placed Ingrid in a position in which, by rejecting Scone, she was breaking a vital law. And he had used this very fact to drive Broward to open rebellion. Thus, he hoped that, when Ingrid had given up hope of seeing Broward again, she would decide to accept Scone.

  That was not quite true, Broward told himself. In the first place, Scone had several times only killed one of the

  birds, even if he had thought he was getting both. It was true that Broward had returned from Earth with the bomb, but Moshe Yamanuchi was alive and had an excellent future. Moreover, the Mars question was not settled, far from it Perhaps, Scone was not as clever as he thought himself to be.

  Thus, Broward found moments of consolation, although these alternated with worries over what would happen to Ingrid and with rage at Scone. Deimos came into view, and he was too busy from then on to think much about Scone or Ingrid.

  As he had planned, he took the scout to the bottom of a very narrow crevasse. This was on the side that faced Mars. While the menacing orb hung above him, seeming to be falling towards him, he worked with the tapes. Finally, having checked his instructions, he put on his spacesuit and left the ship. The port closed after him, and he tested the effectiveness of his orders by pointing a pencil-sized emitter at it The coded frequencies were accepted; the port swung open.

  Broward then lifted himself by means of his gravpak from the fissure and shot over the nightmarish surface towards his destination. He was not worried about locating the ship again. When he wished to retrace his way, he would circle the moonlet at a distance far enough away so he could send a radio signal with the pencil-transmitter and be assured that it would cover the area. The ship, on detecting the signal, would rise up from the crevasse until it was within sight.

  Outside the port at which he had left the two Argentineans, Broward pressed the activation button. The port opened, and he stepped inside. Quiroga and Saavedra, clad in their service uniforms, were waiting for him.

  "I am happy that you returned," said Saavedra. "Frankly, I had my doubts..."

  "Are things ready for us to take off?" Broward asked.

  He walked down the corridor with the two while Saavedra talked.

  "Events are working out even better than I had hoped. Almost as if somebody were helping us. Shortly after you left, we received a message from Osorno. A supply boat was coming; this we expected. But we are to send half our personnel back to Mars to help take care of the sick or to replace those who have become sick. So, we won't have to think of an excuse to get down to Mars."

  "Did my idea to substitute me for one of your men work?"

  Saavedra laughed and said, "So far. I sent my cousin and an electronic maintenance man to a remote sector with orders to repair some equipment there. Pablo knocked him out and locked him up in a room with food and water. But he took off the poor fellow's uniform and identification tags and cards. They're waiting in another room right now. Pablo will bandage your face."

  They walked down several corridors, then Quiroga and Broward went into an empty barracks while Saavedra continued. Here, the Moonman took off his garments and replaced them with those of Juan Pedro Malory. Since the commandant had been thoughtful enough to pick a victim Broward's size, the uniform fitted him almost exactly.

  "A little tight around the chest," said Broward. "But it'll do."

  Quiroga picked up some bandages. Broward sat down in a chair and allowed the young man to wrap the windings around his face. When the job was done, Broward's face was entirely covered except for the eyes.

  "You are supposed to have had an accident while repairing the equipment."

  Broward grunted and said, "I know. It was my idea."

  "Pardon me. I am talking from nervousness. It helps. But listen. The men going with us will be told beforehand about you, Malory, rather. During the trip, you lie down and pretend to be sick. If anyone asks you anything, just groan. Or mumble a little. Your Spanish is intelligible and fluent, but your accent would give you away as a foreigner."

  "What about when we get to Osorno? Will we have any trouble contacting this General Mier you spoke of?"

  "I hope not."

  Saavedra entered the room. "You hope not what?"

  Quiroga told him, and the colonel said, "He is the only man with enough power to help us."

  "I hope so, too," said Broward, speaking in Spanish. "I may as well tell you that we have," and he glanced at his wristwatch, "twenty-four hours. If we are not back here by then, we will all be dead within a short time after that."

  Saavedra walked up to Broward and seized his wrist.

  "What are you doing?" said Broward. He started to rise.

  "I am not attacking you," answered Saavedra. "Give me your watch. There is none like it among us. You do not want anybody to question you about it, do you?"

  "Yes. What do you mean?" answered Saavedra.

  "At the end of that time, the ship will automatically leave its hiding place and start on its mission to deliver the bomb."

  "Dios mio! Why did you arrange that?"

  Broward smiled grimly. "I owe my people that much. Also, I wanted insurance that you would carry out your bargain. By the way, don't send men out to look for it while we're gone. Its receptors are active. If anybody but me approaches it, it will take off by itself. And even I will not then be able to find it."

  Stiffly, Saavedra said, "I gave you my word"

  Broward shrugged and said, "Ordinarily, that would be enough, I assure you. But there is too much at stake. Shall we go?"

  The colonel nodded, and they walked to his office. Here, the duffel bag of Malory was waiting. Broward pick
ed it up, noticing the curious stares from a sergeant who accompanied them. The soldier, however, said nothing. Their arrival at the exit port was timed by the colonel to coincide with the landing of the supply boat. He did not want the other men who were to accompany them to get too close a look at Broward. After all, some of those who knew Malory well might notice a difference in Broward's walk or stance. These identified a man as much as anything.

  There was an unavoidable delay. The officer commanding the supply ship had to report to the colonel. The

  cargo had to be unloaded. Saavedra had to sign various reports that he had received all the goods listed. He did this quickly, so quickly that the supply officer made a joke about Saavedra's former thorough and time-consuming check of incoming materials.

  "Perhaps you want to get rid of us swiftly so that you will not catch the fire of tears."

  "That is not likely," replied the colonel coldly. "I am returning with you to the source of infection."

  The officer's jaw dropped. He said, "Back there? I did not know you had orders to go back. Who relieves you?"

  "That is none of your business, but I will tell you. I have appointed a lieutenant to take charge. I am needed at Osorno. That should be enough for you."

  The officer reddened, but he said nothing more except in the line of duty.

  On the supply ship, Broward followed Quiroga and Saavedra to a small cabin near the center of the ship. If anybody thought it was strange that an enlisted man should sit with officers, they said nothing. Thereafter, there was little chance for anything to be noticed. The flight officer came through to check that all passengers were in the stasis areas. A few minutes later, the take-off buzzer sounded. The pilot gave a few instructions and warnings, and they were off towards Mars. Twenty minutes later, they were in the landing port of Osorno.

  Saavedra said, "Follow me. I will handle everything." He looked at his wristwatch and shook his bead. Like the other two, he could not keep his mind off the ship waiting for automatic instructions at a certain time. Every second was a step closer to doom's day.