A Gift From Earth

by Larry Niven

  You'd rather not turn off the current? Fine. It won't hurt him. He'll just go on sleeping. He'll sleep through a hurricane. You'll have to wake him occasionally to eat, drink, evacuate, exercise. If you don't plan to keep him long, you can skip the exercise.

  Suspects weren't kept long in the vivarium.

  Heavy footsteps sounded outside the door. The vivarium guard jerked alert. When the door opened, he was at attention.

  "Sit down there," said one of Hobart's escorts. Hobart sat. Tears had streaked his sunken cheeks. He donned his own headset, dropped his head back, and was asleep. Peace spread across his face. The bigger guard asked, "Which one is Keller?"

  The vivarium guard consulted a chart. "Ninety-eight."

  "Okay." Instead of taking off Keller's headset, the man moved to a panel of one hundred buttons. He pushed number ninety-eight. As Keller began to stir, they both moved in to attach handcuffs. Then they lifted the headset.

  Matt Keller's eyes opened.

  His new escorts lifted him to his feet with a practiced motion. "On our way," one said cheerfully. Bewildered, Matt followed the pull on his arms. In a moment they were in the hall. Matt snatched one look behind him before the door closed.

  "Wait a minute," he protested, predictably jerking back against the handcuffs.

  "Man wants to ask you a few questions. Look, I'd rather carry you than do this. You want to walk?"

  The threat usually quieted them down — as it did now. Matt stopped pulling. He'd expected to wake up dead; these moments of consciousness were a free bonus. Someone must have gotten curious.

  "Who wants to see me?"

  "A gentleman named Castro," the bigger guard tossed off. The dialogue was following its usual pattern. If Keller was an average suspect, the Head's dread name would paralyze his brain. If he kept his wits, he'd still choose to use this time in preparation for his interview, rather than risk a sonic now. Both guards had been doing this for so long that they'd come to see prisoners as faceless, interchangeable.

  Castro. The name echoed between Matt's ears.

  What did you think you were doing, Keller? You came in here like you had an engraved invitation. Thought you had a secret weapon, did you, Keller? What did you think you were doing, Keller? WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU--

  One instant the suspect was walking between them, lost in his own fears. The next, he had jerked back like a fish hooked on two lines. The guards instantly pulled apart to string him between them, then regarded him in sheer disgust. One said, "Stupid!" The other pulled out his gun.

  They stood there, one with a sonic loose in his hand, looking about them in apparent bewilderment. Matt jerked again, and the smaller guard looked in shocked surprise at his own wrist. He fumbled in his belt, got out a key, and unlocked the handcuff.

  Matt threw all his weight on the other steel chain. The bigger guard yelled in anger and pulled back. Matt flew into him, inadvertently butting him in the stomach. The guard hit him across the jaw with a backhand swing of his arm. Momentarily unable to move, Matt watched the guard take a key from his pocket and unlock the remaining handcuff from his own wrist. The guard's eyes were strange.

  Matt backed away with two sets of handcuffs dangling from his arms. The guards looked after him, not at him but in his general direction. Something was very wrong with their eyes. Fruitlessly, Matt tried to remember where he'd seen that look before. The gateman last night?

  The guards turned and sauntered away.

  Matt shook his head, more baffled than relieved, and turned back the way he had come. There was the vivarium door. He'd had only one backward glimpse, but he was sure he'd seen Harry Kane in there.

  The door was locked.

  Mist Demons, here we go again. Matt raised his hand, changed his mind, changed it again, and slapped the palm three times against the door. It opened at once. A round, expressionless face looked through and suddenly acquired an expression. The door started to close. Matt pulled it open and went in.

  The round guard with the round face genuinely didn't know what to do. At least he hadn't forgotten that Matt was here. Matt was grateful. He swung joyfully at the guard's double chin. When the guard didn't fold, Matt hit him again. The man finally reached for his gun, and Matt took a firm grip on the appropriate wrist, holding the gun in its holster, and swung once more. The guard slid to the floor.

  Matt took the guard's sonic and put it in his pants pocket. His hand hurt. He rubbed it against his cheek, which also hurt, and ran his eyes down the row of sleepers. There was Laney! Laney, her face pale, with one thin scratch from temple to chin, her auburn hair concealing the three-pronged headset, her deep breasts hardly moving as she slept. And there was Hood, looking like a sleeping child. Something began to unwind inside Matt Keller, a warmth uncoiling to spread through his limbs. For hours he had been all alone with death. There was the tall man who'd spelled him for bartender that night. Night before last! There was Harry Kane, a cube of a man, strong even in sleep.

  Polly wasn't there.

  He looked again, carefully, and she still wasn't there.

  Where was she? Instantly the aquarium tanks of the organ bank flashed into his mind's eye. One tank had held skins, whole human skins with barely room between them for the clear conducting nutrient fluid. The scalps had some hair, short and long, blond and black and red, hair that waved in a cold fluid breeze. Rejection classes C, 2, nr, 34. He couldn't remember seeing the space-blackness of Polly's hair. It might or might not have been waving in the aquarium tank. He hadn't been looking for it.

  Convulsively he made himself look about him. That bank of buttons? He pushed one. It popped out at the touch of a finger. Nothing else happened.

  Oh, well, what the hell ... He started pushing them all, letting his forefinger run down a row of ten, down the next row, and the next. He had released sixty when he heard motion. The sleepers were waking.

  He released the rest of the buttons. The murmur of awakening grew louder: yawning, confused voices, clatterings, gasps of dismayed shock when prisoners suddenly realized where they were. A clear voice calling, "Matt? Matt!"

  "Here, Laney!"

  She wove her way toward him through people climbing groggily out of their contour couches. Then she was in his arms, and they clung to each other as if a tornado were trying to pluck them apart and whirl them away. Matt felt suddenly weak, as if he could afford weakness now. "So you didn't make it," he said.

  "Matt, where are we? I tried to get to the void edge — "

  Somebody bellowed, "We are in the Hospital vivarium!" The voice cut like an ax through the rising pandemonium. Harry Kane, Leader, assumed his proper role.

  "That's right," Matt said gently.

  Her eyes were two inches from his, dead level. "Oh. Then you didn't make it either."

  "Yes I did. I had to get here on my own."

  "What — how?"

  "Good question. I don't know exactly."

  Laney began to chuckle.

  Shouting from the back of the room. Somebody had noticed an Implementation uniform on one of the newly awakened. A scream of pure terror changed to a yell of agony and died abruptly. Matt saw jerking heads, heard sounds he tried to ignore. Laney wasn't laughing anymore. The disturbance subsided.

  Harry Kane had mounted a chair, He cupped his hands and bellowed, "Shut up, all of you! Everyone who knows the map of the Hospital, get over here! Gather round me!" There was a shifting in the mass. Laney and Matt still clung to each other, but not desperately now. Their heads turned to watch Harry, acknowledging his leadership. "Take a look, the rest of you!" Harry shouted. "These are the people who can lead you out of here. In a minute we're going to have to make our break. Keep your eyes on — " He named eight names. Hood's was one. "Some of us are going to get shot. As long as one of these eight is still moving, follow him! Or her. If all eight are down, and I am too"— He paused for emphasis. "Scatter! Make as much trouble as you can! Sometimes the only sensible thing to do is panic!

  "Now, who got
us out of this? Who woke us up? Anyone?"

  "Me," said Matt.

  A last buzz of noise died. Suddenly everyone was looking at him. Harry said, "How?"

  "I'm not sure how I got in here. I'd like to talk to Hood about it."

  "Okay, stick with Jay. Keller, isn't it? We're grateful, Keller. What do those buttons do? I saw you fooling with them."

  "They turn off whatever it is that makes you go to sleep."

  "Is anyone still in his couch? If so, get out of it now. Now, somebody push those buttons back in so it'll look like there was a power failure. Was that it, Keller? Did you just accidentally wake up?"

  "No."

  Harry Kane looked puzzled, but when Matt didn't elaborate, he shrugged. "Watson, Chek, start pushing those buttons in. Jay, make sure you stick with Keller. The rest of you, are you ready to move?"

  There was a shout of assent. As it died, a lone voice asked, "Where to?"

  "Good point. If you get free, make for the coral houses around the south void and Alpha-Beta cliffs. Anything else?"

  Nobody spoke, including Matt. Why ask questions to which nobody knew the answers? Matt was unutterably relieved to let someone else make the decisions for a while. They might be just as wrong, but ninety-eight rebels could be a mighty force, even moving in the wrong direction. And Harry Kane was a born leader.

  Laney moved out of his arms-but kept a grip on one hand. Matt became conscious of the handcuffs dangling from his wrists. They might hamper him. Jay Hood moved up beside him, looking rumpled. He shook hands, grinning, but the grin didn't match the fear in his eyes, and he seemed reluctant to let go. Was there one person in this room who wasn't terrified? If there was, it wasn't Matt. He pulled the sonic loose from his pants pocket.

  "All out," said Harry Kane, and butted the door open with a wide shoulder. They streamed into the hall.

  "I'll take only a minute of your time, Watts." Jesus Pietro relaxed indolently in his chair. He loved mysteries and proposed to enjoy this one. "I want you to describe in detail what happened last night, starting with the call from Hobart."

  "But there aren't any details, sir." Master Sergeant Watts was tired of repeating himself. His voice was turning querulous. "Five minutes after your call, Hobart called and said he had a prisoner. I told him to bring him to my office. He never came. Finally I called the gate. He was there, all right, without his prisoner, and he couldn't explain what had happened. I had to put him under arrest."

  "His behavior has been puzzling in other ways. That is why I ask, Why didn't you call the gate earlier?"

  "Sir?"

  "Your behavior is as puzzling as Hobart's, Watts. Why did you assume it would take Hobart half an hour to reach your office?"

  "Oh." Watts fidgeted. "Well, Hobart said this bird came right up to the gate and started banging on it with a rock. When Hobart didn't show right away, I thought he must have stopped off to question the prisoner, find out why he did it. After all," he explained hastily, "if he brought the bird straight to me, he'd likely never find out what he was doing banging on the gate."

  "Very logical. Did it occur to you at any point that the 'bird' might have overpowered Hobart?"

  "But Hobart had a sonic!"

  "Watts, have you ever been on a raid?"

  "No, sir. How could I?"

  "A man came back from the raid of night-before-last with the bones of his nose spread all over his face. He, too, had a sonic."

  "Yessir, but that was a raid, sir."

  Jesus Pietro sighed. "Thank you, Master Sergeant. Will you step outside, please? Your bird should be arriving any minute."

  Watts left, his relief showing.

  He'd made a good point, thought Jesus Pietro, though not the one he'd intended. Probably all the Hospital guards had the same idea: that a gun was ipso facto invincible. Why not? The Hospital guards had never been on a raid in the colonist regions. Few had ever seen a colonist who wasn't unconscious. Occasionally Jesus Pietro staged mock raids with guards playing the part of colonists. They didn't mind, particularly; mercy-weapons were not unpleasant. But the men with the guns always won. All the guards' experience told them that the gun was king, that a man who had a gun need fear nothing but a gun.

  What to do? Interchange guards and raiders long enough to give the guards some experience? No, the elite raiders would never stand for that.

  Why was he worrying about Implementation?

  Had the Hospital ever been attacked? Never, on Alpha Plateau. A colonist force had no way to get there.

  But Keller had.

  He used the phone. "Jansen, find out who was on guard at the Alpha-Beta Bridge last night. Wake them up and send them here."

  "It will be at least fifteen minutes, sir."

  "Fine."

  How had Keller gotten past them? There had been one aircar on Gamma Plateau, but it had been destroyed. With the pilot still in it? Had Keller had a chauffeur? Or would a colonist know how to use the autopilot?

  Where the Mist Demons was Keller!

  Jesus Pietro began to pace the room. He had no cause for worry, yet he worried. Instinct? He didn't believe he had instincts. The phone spoke in his secretary's voice. "Sir, did you order two guards?"

  "Bridge guards?"

  "No, sir. Intrahospital guards."

  "No."

  "Thank you." Click.

  Something had set off the grounds alarms last night. Not a rabbit. Keller might have tried the wall first. If the grounds guards had let a prisoner escape, then faked a report--he'd have their hides!

  "Sir, these guards insist you sent for them."

  "Well, I damn well didn't. Tell them — just a minute. Send them in."

  They came, two burly men whose submissive countenances unsuccessfully hid their ire at being made to wait.

  "When did I send for you?" asked Jesus Pietro.

  The big one said, "Twenty minutes ago," daring Jesus Pietro to call him a liar.

  "Were you supposed to pick up a prisoner first?"

  "No, sir. We took Hobart to the vivarium, put him to beddybye and came straight back."

  "You don't remember being — '

  The smaller guard went white. "D-Dave! We supposed to p-pick up someone. Keeler. Something Keeler."

  Jesus Pietro regarded them for a full twenty seconds. His face was curiously immobile. Then he opened the intercom. "Major Jansen. Sound 'Prisoners Loose.'"

  "Wait a minute," said Matt.

  The tail end of the colonist swarm was leaving them behind. Hood brought himself up short. "What are you doing?"

  Matt dodged back into the vivarium. One man lay on his face with his headset on. Probably he'd thought he was safe once he was out of the couch. Matt snatched the headset off and slapped him twice, hard; and when his eyelids fluttered, Matt pulled him to his feet and pushed him at the door.

  Watson and Chek finished pushing buttons and left, running, shoving around Hood.

  "Come on!" Hood yelled from the doorway. Panic was in his voice. But Matt stood rooted by the thing on the floor.

  The guard. They'd torn him to pieces!

  Matt was back in the organ banks, frozen rigid by horror.

  "Keller!"

  Matt stooped, picked up something soft and wet. His expression was very strange. He stepped to the door, hesitated a moment, then drew two sweeping arcs and three small closed curves on its gleaming metal surface. He hurled the warm thing backhand, turned, and ran. The two men and Laney charged down the hall, trying to catch the swarm.

  The swarm poured down the stairs like a waterfall: a close-packed mass, running and stumbling against each other and brushing against walls and banisters and generally making a hell of a lot of noise. Harry Kane led. A cold certainty was in his heart, the knowledge that he would be first to fall when they met the first armed guard. But by then the swarm should have unstoppable momentum.

  The first armed guard was several yards beyond the first corner. He turned and stared as if his eyes beheld a miracle. He hadn't moved wh
en the mob reached him. Someone actually had the sense to take his gun. A tall blond man got it and immediately forced his way to the front, waving it and yelling for room. The swarm flowed around and over the limp Implementation policeman.

  This hallway was long, lined with doors on both sides. Every door seemed to be swinging open at once. The man with the gun closed his fist on the trigger and waved it slowly up and down the hall. Heads peered out the doors, paused, and were followed by falling bodies. The colonist swarm slowed to pick their way around the crewish and half-crewish fallen. Nonetheless, the fallen were all badly or mortally injured when the swarm passed. Implementation used mercy-weapons because they needed their prisoners intact. The swarm had no such motive for mercy.

  The swarm was stretching now, dividing the fast from the slow, as Kane reached the end of the hall. He rounded the turn in a clump of six ....

  Two police were parked indolently against opposite walls, steaming cups in their hands, their heads turned to see where the noise was coming from. For a magic moment they stayed that way .... and then their cups flew wide, trailing spiral nebulae of brown fluid, and their guns came up like flowing light. Harry Kane fell with a buzzing in his ears. But his last glimpse of the corridor showed him that the police were falling too.

  He lay like a broken doll, with his head swimming and his eyes blurring and his body, as numb as a frozen plucked chicken. Feet pounded past and over him. Through the blanketing numbness he dimly sensed himself being kicked.

  Abruptly four hands gripped his wrists and ankles, and he was off again, swaying and jouncing between his rescuers. Harry Kane was pleased. His opinion of mobs was low. This mob was behaving better than he had expected. Through the buzzing in his ears he heard a siren.

  At the bottom of the stairs they reached the tail of the swarm Hobart was scared Hobart was scared — Laney in the lead, Matt and Jay Hood following. Matt panted, "Stay! Got ... gun."