by John Brunner
He swung around and set off the way he had come, his steps suddenly much brisker.
“And, come to think of it,” he added when he had gone a few metres, “if you’re leaving here anyhow, I wonder if you’d be willing to go—wherever you’re going—by way of Earth.”
Erik gaped at him. He said, “Clear to Earth from Yan? But that’s almost the longest trip you can make across the go-board! Where’d I get the credit for a programme like that?”
“It could be arranged. In principle, though?”
“Hell, I’ve wanted to visit Earth ever since I was a kid! Mostly I have to go where I’m sent, though, by the drug-merchants I mainly work for.”
“Then you have no need to worry about costs. I can programme you; it’s a matter of elementary hypnotic indoctrination.” Dr Lem hesitated. “There would be a condition, of course.”
“I might have guessed. Hurt me with it.”
“That you make it your first business, on arrival, to contact the committee on human-alien relations of the High Planetary Senate and report in detail on Chart’s plans.”
“That’s all?” Erik said incredulously. “Why, sure! And cheap at the price!”
“Good.” Dr Lem strode up the steps to the door of his house and pushed open the door. Pompy came crooning to meet him. Since he had been bound for the Yannish section of Prell he had left her at home.
Lights sprang up. Automatics whirred faintly, sensing the number of visitors and activating the services. “If you want refreshment, help yourselves,” Dr Lem said, and headed straight for the communet console. Almost as he sat down his busy hands were engaged on its board.
“You know,” Erik said, watching curiously over his shoulder, “that was the first thing that struck me about this here enclave of yours. You got communet facilities like I never saw any place else. Just for these—how many?—three hundred people and a few kids?”
“There’s a purpose behind it,” Dr Lem answered briefly. “You’re quite right—these facilities are as advanced as what you find on Tubalcain, and in fact that’s where the system was designed and built. The informat is so big, it could cope with a city of six or eight million people. Ah!”
On the screen, data flashed: “Galactic Common Statutes”, and then a string of sub-heads. He punched the number of the one he wanted.
“Let him get on with it,” Marc said, and Erik complied, turning away and coming to sit down on the big soft horseshoe-shaped settle in the centre of the room. Alice had leaned back and closed her eyes; there was an unhappy downward turn to the corners of her mouth.
“The communet has to be very comprehensive,” Marc went on. “Matter of fact, it was partly because of the ‘net that I moved out of reach of it, out of the enclave. Consider: here’s this little community of humans, three hundred and some as you just commented, with no contact except via the go-board with any other human world—and you don’t just make a go-board trip without preparation, on the spur of the moment. You have to be programmed with a hypnotic route-map, as it were. A long one may take hours and call for a very skilled practitioner to implant it firmly, especially if you’re not a first-rate subject—”
“Don’t tell me!” Erik said with a wince. “I used to be a fine subject. Then I ran into some stuff called gifmak, and…” He mopped his plump brown face. “Never mind. What I mean, I get tired much more easily now. Still, if I have the chance to visit Earth for free, I’ll risk it Go on about the ‘net you have here. Sounds kind of interesting.”
“Well, it’s to counteract the effects of isolation, you see. And, maybe more to the point, the pressure from this very stable, very strong Yannish culture next door. It got at me. In fact it’s still there, right under my skin, so deep that half the time I find myself thinking sort of wistfully, ‘I’d love to see the golden age of Yan brought to life! There’s nothing I want more!’ Which is true enough. I just don’t want it so much that I can help Chart do this monstrous thing he was talking about.”
“He actually wanted you to help him?”
“Oh, not literally wanted me to help catch the wilders—just to sort out the ambiguities and metaphors in the Mutine Epics which he’s going to use as a script. Hey!” Marc sat bolt upright. “Dr Lem!”
“What is it?” Not looking around.
“Did you know that Shyalee left me, and Rayvor left Alice?”
“I hadn’t heard. I can guess the reason, though. Have they been convinced that there’s now a grand undertaking among their own people which they can join in?”
“More or less.”
Dr Lem nodded and gave the board a final tap before turning his back on it. He looked very tired. He said, “I think it has adequate material. I’ve asked for a simulated verdict assuming that we send Erik here to Earth and apply for an injunction to protect the wilders from Chart.”
“Will it take long?” Marc asked.
“A minute or two, perhaps. By the way! Did I hear you say that Chart plans to use the Mutine Epics as the script for his performance? Can he? I’d always believed that even the hrath group among the Yanfolk didn’t fully understand the text.”
“Chart thinks he’s found the twelfth book, the key which turns the Epics into a technical manual.”
Dr Lem started. He rotated his chair again, and tapped on the communet board. “Where did he locate it? Did the Yanfolk give it to him?”
“He thinks it’s compressed into the Mutine Flash.”
Dr Lem stopped dead-still for an instant, then went on tapping. “Very ingenious,” he said under his breath. “And it could so easily be true. So easily! If the dramaturges wanted to leave a guide for their descendants… Only the dust garbles the solar spectrum, correct?”
“That’s what he thinks,” Marc confirmed with genuine respect.
“Hmm! I wonder if it’s even more than a set of instructions, then. I wonder if it could be a continual reinforcement, like our communet… You were asking about that just now, Erik. Marc was quite right to say it’s a defence against pressure from our Yannish neighbours. Without it, there’d be a risk of people drifting away. For example, you’ve no doubt heard that sexual relations with a Yannish partner can be extraordinarily gratifying, and that fact alone would have been explosive even without the constant awareness of the relics, some of which we couldn’t duplicate and none of which we understand.”
“You mean,” Erik said slowly, “this here enclave wasn’t set up, like I assumed, to let the Yanfolk adjust to us humans, find out if they could stand living in our company. You make it sound exactly the opposite.”
“Correct.” Dr Lem gave a sad smile. “It’s to find out whether we can put up with the Yanfolk.”
“You’re joking!” Erik said, wide-eyed. “What could these backward—?”
A voice from the communet interrupted him. “This is your informat speaking. Owing to data just coded into my banks by Dr Yigael Lem I have transmitted to Earth an orange emergency signal. Take no further action, repeat no further action, until instructed from Earth. The warden has been routinely informed of this alert.”
Stunned silence. Erik was the first to break it. He said, “Well, then, I guess I don’t get my trip to Earth after all.”
XVII
Ten minutes later there was uproar. First to react, naturally, was Chevsky himself, who called up in such a state of fury that he could barely choke out coherent words. Marc, Alice and Erik sat nervously at Dr Lem’s back while the old man patiently repeated, altogether five or six times, that this “orange alert” had been as much a surprise to him as to the warden.
“Instead of going on at me,” he snapped finally, his patience exhausted, “why don’t you ask the informat what it involves? I never heard of any such thing before!”
Chevsky, gulping great draughts of air, gave a vigorous nod. “I’ll do that! And don’t you try making any more trouble! We’re sick of your self-righteous meddling, understand?”
The screen blanked. Almost in the same instant, there was
a distant white flash through the window which gave a View of the Northern Range: the first of the summer storms was breaking out. The timing was so apt, one could almost have believed that the dramaturges were indeed returning to transform their planet into what the Mutine Epics claimed it once had been, a single centrally conceived work of art.
And then Ducci called, to say that the go-board had been remotely pre-empted by a trigger-signal from Earth, of which of course he as technical director had at once been notified, and to ask what in the galaxy was going on—and some of Dr Lem’s neighbours, in hastily-donned gowns, came from bed to put the same question face to face—and in the end the old man had to throw up his hands helplessly and plead with them all to wait and find out.
But the next development was even more startling. From the spot where it had rested since its original landing, Chart’s ship soared upward silently and began to drift in a north-westerly direction.
“He’s not going away, is he?” Marc said, having run to the window which faced the ship. “I guess that would be too much to hope for!”
“No, that’s a local course,” Dr Lem said. “I’m an old man, Marc, and there were still many many starships when I was young. I’ve seen them on atmospheric courses before. He’s just removing himself from our vicinity. Putting himself under the inarguable jurisdiction of the Yanfolk.”
“What Harry told me—I mean what Rayvor told me,” Alice said softly, “was that when he was finished here Chart would have become a copy of the Yanfolk. An ape in reverse.”
“I think it’s only too likely,” Dr Lem said. “I was never so sure of the possibility that I made specific inquiries, but now I can see it’s always been hanging over us—the risk that any social system strong enough to control millions of people for thousands of years might also be strong enough to take control of isolated humans.”
“I don’t get that,” Erik said in a puzzled tone.
“Don’t you?” Marc rounded on him, clenching his fists. “Hell, it’s what could so easily have happened to me! Being caught up, being digested, into an alien pattern! There have been hints that this was happening, and I never realised until now. Dr Lem, there are so few children in the enclave, aren’t there?”
“Right. And those few play at shrimashey, until one or more of them get crushed unconscious under the pile.” Dr Lem wiped his face with the back of his hand. The night was not particularly warm, but they were all perspiring.
Suddenly, through the window facing the direction of the go-board, there was a brilliant blue glow which lit up the sky more brightly than the Ring. Erik jumped.
“What’s that?”
“Unless I’m much mistaken, the arrival of the biggest consignment ever to use the Yan go-board,” Dr Lem said. “A large party of humans, and a lot of equipment. Perhaps we ought to go and meet them on their way into Prell.”
He was right in two respects. The party was enormous—more than a hundred people—and it was accompanied by a vast deal of equipment, most of which was autonomic and floated around under its own control like obstinate thistledown. He was wrong, though, about them heading for Prell. They made immediately towards the informat dome, and by the time Dr Lem and his companions arrived they found that Ducci, Chevsky, and several other people from the enclave were already present.
The dome, naturally, was not guarded. Anyone could enter it at any time. It was proofed by a coating of impervium against the risk of meteorites striking this far north of Kralgak, and its internal circuitry was all very solid-state indeed. Apart from its consultation consoles, its interior was featureless, a single hollow volume of a pleasant yellow material, normally visited only by an occasional maintenance worker except when it was used for town’s meetings.
But now it was alive with strangers, who all seemed to know exactly what they were here for and were busy with mysterious little portable devices, touching the walls and floor, calling to one another in obscure technical jargon, discussing problems in little groups of three to six. Bewildered, Dr Lem stopped dead in the entrance and looked about him. He had forgotten to tell Pompy not to follow him, had only realised she had picked up his scent when he was already several hundred metres from home, and had decided against taking her back there. Now she lowered herself flush to the floor, all her legs tightly folded, and stared about her with the same astonished intensity as her master.
“This looks like,” Marc began as he too took in the scene, and had to hesitate to be sure he was choosing the right image—“this looks like a military operation.”
“I’m not quite sure what that means,” Alice muttered. “Is it…? Oh! You mean Yan is under attack?”
“I think it’s more likely to be defended,” Marc said. “Try and keep up with Dr Lem.”
But Dr Lem wasn’t going any further than the point he had just reached, for a tall woman in blue—dark-haired, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, with an authoritative manner, carrying a shoulder-mounted data-unit in a sleek blue case—had spotted him and forced her way through the unexpected crowd to confront him. She said, “You’re Yigael Lem!”
“Ah… Yes, so I am.”
“My name is Trita Garsonova.” The data-unit was talking quietly, without interruption, to her right ear. “You filed information concerning a plan by Gregory Chart to pith and programme intelligent primitives.”
“Was that what brought this—this army here?”
“Naturally. Did you learn of this plan personally?”
“No, I heard of it from Marc Simon over there—”
“There he is!” A bull roar among the crowd, and Warden Chevsky came shouldering his way towards Dr Lem. “Just let me get my hands on that little—”
“Stop,” said the woman in blue. She did something with a device hung from the belt of her tight coverall, and Chevsky stopped, his feet walking absurdly on the spot. He gaped at her.
“But I’m the warden here!” he burst out.
“You’ve just been indicted for gross dereliction of duty,” the woman said. “You’ll have a hearing. But any Earthsider temporarily on Yan is automatically under your jurisdiction, and as far as we can make out from the informat records there you not only haven’t attempted to prevent Chart committing this disgusting crime, but you’ve actively encouraged him.”
“I didn’t know about—”
“Shut up,” Garsonova said, and made another adjustment to her belt. Chevsky’s mouth continued to move, but no sound reached them. Belatedly, Dr Lem recognised the effects of a police muffler. It had been almost forty years since he last encountered one.
There are advantages in living on Yan. Things like that can safely be forgotten.
“Good! Now… Ah yes: that’s Marc Simon—and that’s Alice Ming, according to my data—and that’s… The brown man, the plump one?”
“A recent arrival. Erik Svitra.”
“Oh, yes. A drug-tester. Did he come here to try and exploit sheyashrim?”
Dr Lem blinked, startled. “I’m not sure. I think perhaps yes. Uh—how do you know about the drug?”
Garsonova regarded him with cold eyes. She said, “Who in the galaxy do you think I am, doctor?”
“I—I’ve no idea. This is all so unprecedented!”
“And unprecedented things aren’t part of the Yannish pattern,” Garsonova nodded. “I see. No wonder you left it so long before you started putting pertinent data into your informat! I’m beginning to wonder why we bothered to set up such an elaborate device here; no one seems to have taken advantage of it! Still, you do appear to have a small hard core of people here with a trace of common sense. I want to assemble them somewhere convenient and have a talk. It’s going to be like pulling hot coals out of a fire with our bare hands now, but we’ll have to try.”
And, less than thirty minutes later, in Dr Lem’s house: the Shigarakus, Pedro Phillips, Hector Ducci, Harriet Pokorod, Marc, Alice and—more or less by accident—Erik Svitra. Garsonova glared at them.
“For your information, first of
all, I’m the Chief Emergency Executive of the Standing Committee on Human-Alien Relations of the High Planetary Senate of Earth. Is that a resounding enough title for you, or do you want the rest of my official posts? I have eight altogether. I’m a qualified social psychologist, I’m a Degree Two Scholar in non-human linguistics, and I’m also a Scholar of Cybernetics and Data-processing. And right now I am very damned angry!”
They stared at her blankly.
She gave a sudden laugh, and leaned back in her chair. “Oh, not entirely with you, or your fellows in the enclave here. Mainly with the bureaucrats and politicians I’m responsible to. But I’m slightly angry with you, I have to admit. Didn’t it cross any of your minds that letting Gregory Chart loose on a non-human planet was about the last thing Earth could possibly tolerate?”
“I think we all thought that Earth would be—would be unable to interfere,” Dr Lem said after a pause. “In fact when we first asked our informat, that’s what it replied.”
“Hmm! Bad circuit-design there somewhere,” Garsonova muttered. “Chart does his best to be a law unto himself; he’s not, of course, but he tries hard. Obviously you tapped into the wrong category. Look, let me start by making clear what your situation is—if you don’t already know.”
“I think I do,” Marc said. “Though I didn’t realise clearly until this very night. This impression that Earth couldn’t take a hand must be deliberate. It’s to generate self-reliance and force self-confidence.”
“Neatly put,” Garsonova approved. “So far we’ve never run across a non-human star-travelling species. But we’ve encountered seven quasi-humanoid intelligent races, and one of them—this one—is so remarkably like us, we can be sure beyond a doubt we shall very shortly be faced with a race that’s an out-and-out rival. The likeliest human group to encounter them is a distant colony, more remote than any of the present ones. That little outpost has to be able to stand up for itself, to make the right decisions, to behave with the right courtesy, firmness, whatever, to deal on level terms, as it were. You here on Yan are a—a test-bench. A pilot project. Didn’t you realise?”