05-A Gift From Earth

by Larry Niven

She had tried to concentrate on the sound of her heartbeat, but even that had disappeared. It was too regular. Her mind had edited it out. Similarly with the darkness behind her closed, bandaged eyelids: the darkness was uniform, and she no longer sensed it. She could strain her muscles against the soft, swaddling bandages that bound her, but she sensed no result, for the slack was small fractions of an inch. Her mouth was partly open; she could neither open it further nor close it on the foam rubber mouthpiece. She could not bite her tongue, nor find it. In no way could she produce the sensation of pain. The ineffable peace of the coffin cure wrapped her in its tender folds and carried her, screaming silently, into nothingness.

  What happened?

  He sat at the edge of the grass on the hill above the Hospital. His eyes were fixed on its blazing windows. His heart beat softly against his knee.

  What happened? They had me. They had me!

  He had walked away. Bewildered, helpless, beaten, he had waited for the magnified voice to shout its orders. And nothing had happened. It was as if they had forgotten him. He had walked away with the feel of death at his back, waiting for the numbness of a sonic stun-beam or the prick of a mercy-bullet or the roar of the officer's voice.

  Gradually, against all reason, he had sensed that they were not going to come for him.

  And then he ran.

  His lungs had stopped their tortured laboring many minutes ago, but his brain still spun. Perhaps it would never stop. He had run until he collapsed, here at the top of the hill, but the fear that drove him was not the fear of the organ banks. He had fled from an impossible thing, from a universe without reason. How could he have walked away from that plain of death with no eye to watch him? It smacked of magic, and he was afraid.

  Something had suspended the ordinary laws of the universe to save his life. He had never heard of anything that could do that ... except the Mist Demons. And the Mist Demons were a myth. They had told him so when he was old enough. The Mist Demons were a tale to frighten children, like the reverse of a Santa Claus. The old wives who found powerful beings in the mist beyond the edge of the world had followed a tradition older than history, perhaps as old as man. But nobody believed in the Mist Demons. They were like the Belt miners' Church of Finagle, whose prophet was Murphy. A half-bitter joke. Something to swear by.

  They had me and they let me go. Why?

  Could they have had a purpose? Was there some reason the Hospital should let a colonist sneak to its very walls, then let him go free?

  Could the organ banks be full? But there must be someplace they could keep a prisoner until there was room.

  But if they thought he was a crew! Yes, that was it! A human figure on Alpha plateau — of course they'd assume he was crew. But so what? Surely someone would have come to question him.

  Matt began pacing a tight circle at the top of the low hill. His head whirled. He'd walked to certain death and been turned loose. By whom? Why? And what did he do next? Go back and give them another chance? Walk to the Alpha-Beta Bridge and hope nobody would see him sneaking across? Fly down the cliff, vigorously flapping his arms?

  The awful thing was that he didn't know it wouldn't work. Magic, magic.

  Hood had talked about magic.

  No, he hadn't. He'd practically turned purple denying that magic was involved. He'd been talking about — psychic powers. And Matt had been so involved in watching, Polly that he couldn't remember anything Hood had said.

  It was very bad luck. Because this was his only out. He had to assume that he had a psychic power, though he had not the remotest idea what that implied. At least it put a name to what had happened.

  "I've got a psychic power," Matt announced. His voice rang with queer precision in the quiet night.

  Fine. So? If Hood had gone into detail on the nature of psychic powers, Matt couldn't remember. But he could fairly well drop the idea of flying down the Alpha-Beta cliff. Whatever else was true of man's unexplored mental powers, they must be consistent. Matt could remember the feeling that he wouldn't be noticed if he didn't want to be, he had never flown, nor even dreamed of flying.

  He ought to talk to Hood.

  But Hood was in the Hospital. He might be dead already.

  Well ....

  Matt had been eleven years old when Ghengis, or Dad, brought two charms home for gifts. They were model cars, just the right size for charm bracelets, and they glowed in the dark. Matt and Jeanne had loved them at sight and forever.

  One night they had left the charms in a closet for several hours, thinking they would grow brighter when they "got used to the dark." When Jeanne opened the closet, they had lost all their glow.

  Jeanne was near tears. Matt's reaction was different. If darkness robbed the charms of their powers —

  He hung them next to a light bulb for an hour. When he turned off the light, they glowed like little blue lamps ....

  A tide of small, loosely packed clouds was spreading across the stars. In all directions the town lights had gone out, all but the lights of the Hospital. The Plateau slept in a profound silence.

  Well ... he'd tried to sneak into the Hospital. He'd been caught. But when he stood up in the glare of spotlights, they couldn't see him. The why of it was just as magical as before, but he thought he was beginning to see the how of it.

  He'd have to risk it. Matt began to walk.

  He'd never planned for it to go this far. If only he'd been stopped before it was too late. But it was too late, and he had the sense to know it.

  Strictly speaking, he should have been wearing something bright. A blue shirt with a tangerine sweater, iridescent green pants, a scarlet cape with an S enclosed in a yellow triangle. And ... rimmed glasses? It had been a long time since grade school. Never mind; he'd have to go as he was.

  A good thing he liked flamboyant gestures.

  He skirted the edge of the bare region until he reached the houses. Presently he was walking through dark streets. The houses were fascinating and strange. He would have enjoyed seeing them by daylight. What manner of people lived in them? Colorful, idle, happy, eternally young and healthy. He would have liked to be one of them.

  But he noticed a peculiar thing about the houses. Heterogeneous as they were in form, color, style, building material, they had one thing in common. Always they faced away from the Hospital.

  As if the Hospital inspired them with fear. Or guilt.

  There were lights ahead. Matt walked faster. He had been walking for half an hour now. Yes, there was the supply road, lit bright as day by two close-spaced lines of street lamps. A broken white line ran down the curving middle.

  Matt stepped out to the white line and began following it toward the Hospital.

  Again his shoulders were unnaturally rigid, as with the fear of death from behind. But the danger was all before him. The organ banks were the most humiliating imaginable form of death. Yet Matt feared something worse.

  Men had been released from the Hospital to tell of their trials. Not many, but they could talk. Matt could guess a little of what waited for him.

  They would see him, they would fire mercy-bullets into him, they would carry him on a stretcher into the Hospital. When he woke, he would be taken to his first and last interview with the dread Castro. The Head's burning eyes would look into his, and he would rumble, "Keller, eh? Yes, we had to take your uncle apart. Well, Keller? You walked up here like you thought you were a crew with an appointment. What did you think you were doing, Keller?"

  And what was he going to say to that?

  5: The Hospital

  Asleep, Jesus Pietro looked ten years older. His defenses — his straight back, tight muscles, and controlled features--were relaxed. His startling pale eyes were closed. His carefully combed white hair was messy, showing the bare scalp over which it had been carefully combed. He slept alone, separated from his wife by a door which was never locked. Sometimes he thrashed in his sleep, and sometimes, ridden by insomnia, he stared at the ceiling with his arms folded and
muttered to himself, which was why Nadia slept next door. But tonight he lay quiet.

  He could have looked thirty again, with help. Inside his aging skin he was in good physical shape. He had good wind, thanks partly to his borrowed lung; his muscles were hard beneath loose wrinkles and deposits of fat; and his digestion was good. His teeth, all transplants, were perfect. Give him new skin, new scalp, a new liver; replace a number of sphincter and other autonomic muscles ....

  But that would take a special order from the crew congress. It would be a kind of testimonial and he would accept it if it were offered, but he wasn't going to fight for it. Transplants and the giving of transplants were the right of the crew and their most powerful reward. And Jesus Pietro was ... not squeamish, but somehow reluctant to exchange parts of himself for parts of some stranger. It would be like losing part of his ego. Only the fear of death had made him accept a new lung years ago.

  He slept quietly.

  And things began to add up.

  Polly Tournquist's films: Someone had slipped through his net night before last. Keller's getaway last night. A gnawing suspicion, only an intuition as yet, that ramrobot package #143 was even more important than anyone had guessed. Wrinkled, uncomfortable sheets. His blankets, which were a trifle too heavy. The fact that he had forgotten to brush his teeth. A mental picture of Keller diving head-down for the mist ... it kept coming back to haunt him. Faint noises from outside, from the wall, noises already an hour old, noises which hadn't awakened him but which were still unexplained. His twinges of lust for the girl in the coffin cure, and the guilt that followed. His temptation to use that ancient brainwashing technique for his own private purposes, to make the rebel girl love him for a time. Adultery! More guilt.

  Temptations. Escaped prisoners. Hot, wrinkled bedclothes'

  No use. He was awake.

  He lay rigidly on his back, arms folded, glaring into the dark. No use fighting it. Last night had fouled up his internal clock; he'd eaten breakfast at twelve-thirty. Why did he keep thinking of Keller?

  (Head down over the mist, with the fans pushing hard on the seat of his pants. Hell above and Heaven below, going up into the unknown; lost forever, destroyed utterly. The dream of the Hindu, realized in physical form. The peace of total dissolution.)

  Jesus Pietro rolled over and turned on the phone.

  A strange voice said, "Hospital — sir."

  "Who is this?"

  "Master Sergeant Leonard V. Watts, sir. Night duty."

  "What's happening at the Hospital, Master Sergeant?" It was not an unusual question. Jesus Pietro had asked it scores of times at early morning hours during the last ten years.

  Watts' voice was crisp. "Let me see. You left at seven, sir. At seven-thirty Major Jansen ordered the release of the deadheads we picked up last night, the ones without ear mikes. Major Jansen left at nine. At ten-thirty Sergeant Helios reported that all the deadheads had been returned to their homes. Mmmm ...." Shuffling of papers in background. "All but two of the prisoners questioned today have been executed and stored away. The medical supplies section informs us that the banks will be unable handle new material until further notice. Do you want a list of executions, sir?"

  "No."

  "Coffin cure proceeding satisfactorily. No adverse medical reactions from suspect. Grounds reports a false alarm at twelve-oh-eight, caused by a rabbit blundering into the electric-eye barrier. No evidence of anything moving on the grounds."

  "Then how do they know it was a rabbit?"

  "Shall I ask, sir?"

  "No. They guessed, of course. Good night." Jesus Pietro turned on his back and waited for sleep.

  His thoughts drifted ....

  He and Nadia hadn't been getting together much lately. Shouldn't he start taking testosterone shots? A transplant wouldn't be necessary; many glands were not put in suspended animation, but were kept running, as it were, with a complex and exact food/blood supply and a system for extracting the hormones. He could put up with the inconvenience of shots.

  Though his father hadn't.

  A younger Jesus Pietro had spent much time wondering about his own conception. Why had the old man insisted that the doctors connect the vas deferens during his gonad transplant? An older Jesus Pietro thought he knew. Even sixty years ago, despite the centuries-old tradition of large families, the Plateau had been mostly uninhabited. Breeding must have seemed a duty to Haneth Castro, as it had to all his ancestors. Besides, how must the old man have felt, knowing that at last he could no longer sire children?

  An older Jesus Pietro thought he knew.

  His thoughts were wandering far, blurred with impending sleep. Jesus Pietro turned on his side, drowsily comfortable.

  Rabbit?

  Why not? From the woods.

  Jesus Pietro turned on his other side.

  What was a rabbit doing in the trapped woods?

  What was anything bigger than a field mouse doing in the woods?

  What was a rabbit doing on Alpha Plateau? What would it eat?

  Jesus Pietro cursed and reached for the phone. To Master Sergeant Watts he said, "Take an order. Tomorrow I want the woods searched thoroughly and then deloused. If they find anything as big as a rat, I want to know about it."

  "Yes, sir."

  "That alarm tonight. What sector?"

  "Let me see. Where the — ah. Sector six, sir."

  "Six? That's nowhere near the woods."

  "No, sir."

  And that was that. "Good night, Master Sergeant," said Jesus Pietro, and hung up. Tomorrow they'd search the woods. Implementation was becoming decidedly slack, Jesus Pietro decided. He'd have to do something about it.

  The wall slanted outward, twelve feet of concrete crosslaced with barbed wire. The gate slanted too, at the same angle, perhaps twelve degrees from vertical. Solid cast-iron it was, built to slide into the concrete wall, which was twelve feet thick. The gate was closed. Lights from inside lit the upper edges of wall and gate, and tinged the sky above.

  Matt stood under the wall, looking up. He couldn't climb over. If they saw him, they'd open the gate for him ... but they mustn't see him.

  They hadn't yet. The train of logic had worked. If something that glows in the dark stops glowing when it's been in the dark too long, hang it near a light. If a car goes up when it's rightside up, it'll go down fast when it's upside down. If the cops see you when you're hiding, but don't when you're not, they'll ignore you completely when you walk up the middle of a lighted road.

  But logic ended here.

  Whatever had helped him wasn't helping him now.

  Matt turned his back on the wall. He stood beneath the overhanging iron gate, his eyes following the straight line of the road to where its lights ended. Most of the houses were dark now. The land was black all the way to the starry horizon. On his right the stars were blurred along that line, and Matt knew he was seeing the top of the void mist.

  The impulse that came then was one he never managed to explain, even to himself.

  He cleared his throat. "Something is helping me," he said in an almost normal voice. "I know that. I need help to get through this gate. I have to get into the Hospital."

  Noises came from inside the wall, the faintest of sounds: regular footsteps, distant voices. They were the business of the Hospital and had nothing to do with Matt.

  Outside the wall nothing changed.

  "Get me in there," he pleaded, to himself or to something outside himself. He didn't know which. He knew nothing.

  On the Plateau there was no religion.

  But suddenly Matt knew that there was just one way to get inside. He stepped off the access road and began hunting. Presently he found a discarded chunk of concrete, dirty and uneven. He carried it back and began pounding it against the iron gate.

  CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

  A head appeared on the wall.

  "Stop that, you half-witted excuse for a colonist bastard!"

  "Let me in."

  The head remained
. "You are a colonist."

  "Right."

  "Don't move! Don't you move a muscle!" The man fumbled with something on the other side of the wall. Both hands appeared, one holding a gun, the other a telephone receiver. "Hello? Hello? Answer the phone, dammit! ... Watts? Hobart. A fool of a colonist just came walking up to the gate and started pounding on it. Yes, a real colonist! What do I do with him? .... All right, I'll ask."

  The head looked down. "You want to walk or be carried?"

  "I'll walk," said Matt.

  "He says he'll walk. Why should he get his choice? Oh. I guess it's easier at that. Sorry, Watts, I'm a little shook. This never happened to me before."

  The gateman hung up. His head and gun continued to peer down at Matt. After a moment the gate slid back into the wall.

  "Come on through," said the gateman. "Fold your hands behind your neck."

  Matt did. A gatehouse had been built against the wall on the inside. The gateman came down a short flight of steps. "Stay ahead of me," he ordered. "Start walking. That's the front entrance, where all the lights are. See? Walk toward that."

  It would have been hard to miss the front entrance. The great square bronze door topped a flight of broad, shallow steps flanked by Doric pillars. The steps and the pillars were either marble or some plastic substitute.

  "Stop looking back at me," snapped the gateman. His voice shook.

  When they reached the door, the gateman produced a whistle and blew into it. There was no sound, but the door opened. Matt went through.

  Once inside, the gateman seemed to relax. "What were you doing out there?" he asked.

  Matt's fear was returning. He was here. These corridors were the Hospital. He hadn't thought past this moment. Deliberately so; for if he had, he would have ran. The walls around him were concrete, with a few metal grilles at floor level and four rows of fluorescent tubing in the ceiling. There were doors, all closed. An unfamiliar odor tinged the air, or a combination of odors.

  "I said, "What were — "