A Gift From Earth

by Larry Niven

  He saw the larger infrared source move away, leaving behind a second source smaller than a car but comfortably bigger than one man.. That jerked him alert, and he moved to the window to check. It was there, all right, and —

  He lost interest and returned to the infrascope. The cloverleaf—shaped source was still there, not moving, the right color to be four unconscious men. A man—sized source separated itself from the milling mass around the abandoned car, moving toward the cloverleaf source. Seconds later there was pandemonium.

  Gasping, wheezing, running for their lives, they pelted out of Parlette Park and into a wide, well—lighted village walk. Matt gripped Laney's wrist as they ran, so that she couldn't "forget about him" and wander off on her own. As they reached the walk, Laney pulled back on his arm.

  "Okay. We can ... relax now."

  "How far... to the Hospital?"

  " 'Bout... two miles."

  Ahead of them the white lights of Implementation cars faded behind a lighted dome of fog as they chased an empty car on autopilot. A yellow glow touched the fading far end of the walk — the lights of the Hospital.

  The walk was a rectangular pattern of red brick, luxuriously wide, with great spreading chestnut trees planted down the middle in a pleasantly uneven row. Street lights along the sides illuminated old and individualistic houses. The chestnuts swayed and sang shrilly in the wind. The wind blew the still—thinning fog into curls and streamers; it cut steel—cold through wet clothes and wet skin to reach meat and marrow.

  "We've got to get some clothes," said Matt.

  "We'll meet someone. We're bound to. It's only nine."

  "How could those crew stand it? Swimming!"

  "The water was hot. Probably they had a sauna bath waiting somewhere. I wish we did."

  "We should have taken that car."

  "Your power wouldn't have hidden us. At night they couldn't see your face in a car window. They'd have seen a stolen car, and they'd have bathed it in sonics, which is just what they must be doing now."

  "And why did you insist on stripping that policeman? And having got the damn suit, why did you throw it away?"

  "For the Mist Demons' sake, Matt! Will you trust me?"

  "Sorry. We could either of us use that coat."

  "It's worth it. Now they'll be looking for one man in an Implementation uniform. Hey! In front of me, quick!"

  A square of light had appeared several houses down. Matt stepped in front of her and stooped, hands on knees, so she could use his shoulder as a gun rest.

  It had worked on four police in Parlette Park. It worked now. A crew couple appeared in the light. They turned and waved to their hosts, turned again and moved down the steps, hunching slightly against the wind. The closing door cut the light from them and left them as dim moving shadows. As they touched the brick, they crossed the flat trajectories of two hunting slivers.

  Matt and Laney stripped them and left them propped against a garden hedge for the sun to find.

  "Thank the Mist Demons," said Matt. He was still shivering inside the dry clothes.

  Laney was already thinking ahead. "We'll stick with the houses as far as we can. These houses give off a lot of infrared. They'll screen us. Even if a car does spot us, he'll have to drop and question us to be sure we're not crew."

  "Good. What happens when we run out of houses?"

  Laney didn't answer for a long time. Matt didn't press her. Finally she said, "Matt, there's something I'd better tell you."

  Again he didn't press her.

  "As soon as we get through the Wall ... if we get through the wall ... I'm going to the vivarium. You don't have to come along, but I've got to go."

  "Won't that be the first thing they expect?"

  "Probably."

  "Then we'd better not. Let's hunt down Polly first. We ought to keep the noise down as long as possible. Once your Sons of Earth come charging out, assuming we get that far, those doors will drop right away. In fact, if we — " At this point he glanced over at her and stopped.

  Laney was looking straight ahead. Her face was hard and masklike. So was her voice, deliberately hard.

  "That's why I'm telling you now. I'm going to the vivarium. That’s why I'm here." She seemed about to break off ; then she went on in a rush. "That's why I'm here, because the Sons of Earth are in there and I'm one of them. Not because you need me, but because they need me. I need you to get me in. Otherwise I'd be trying it alone."

  "I see," said Matt. He was about to go on, but — no, he couldn't say that. He'd leave himself wide open to be slapped down, and in this, mood Laney would do it. Instead he said, "What about Polly's big secret?"

  "Millard Parlette knows it too. He seemed eager to talk. If he isn't, Lydia will get it out of him anyway."

  "So you don't need Polly anymore."

  "That's right. And if you've got the idea I'm here for love of you, you can forget that too. I'm not trying to be boorish, Matt, or cruel either. I just want you to know where you stand. Otherwise you'll be counting on me to make intelligent decisions.

  "You're transportation, Matt. We need each other to get in. Once we're inside I'll go straight to the vivarium, and you can do, whatever you have to to stay alive."

  For some time they walked in silence, arm in arm, a crew couple strolling home along a distance too short to use a car. Other crew appeared from time to time. Mostly they walked quickly, bent against the wind, and they ignored Matt and Laney and each other in their hurry to get out of the cold. Once a good dozen men and women, varying from merely high to falling—down drunk, poured into the street ahead of them, marched four houses down, and began banging on the door. Matt and Laney watched as the door opened and the partygoers poured in. And suddenly Matt felt intensely lonely. He gripped Laney's arm a little tighter, and they went on.

  The brick walk swung away to the left, and they followed it around. Now there were no houses on the right. Just trees, high and thick, screening the Hospital from view. The barren defense perimeter must be just the other side.

  "Now what?"

  "We follow it," said Laney. "I think we ought to go in along the trapped forest."

  She waited for him to ask why, but he didn't. She told him anyway. "The Sons of Earth have been planning an attack on the Hospital for decades. We've been waiting for the right time, and it never came. One of the things we planned was to go in along the edge of the trapped woods. The woods themselves are so full of clever widgets that the guards on that side probably never notice it."

  "You hope."

  "You bet."

  "What do you know about the Hospital defenses?"

  "Well, you ran into most of them last night". A good thing you had the sense to stay out of the trapped woods, There are two electric—eye rings. You saw the wall; guns and spotlights all over it. Castro probably put extra men on it tonight, and we can bet he closed off the access road. Usually they leave it open, but it's easy enough to close the electric—eye ring and shut off power to the gate."

  "And inside the wall?"

  "Guards. Matt, we've been assuming that all these men will be badly trained. The Hospital's never been under direct attack. We're outnumbered — "

  "Yes, we are, aren't we?"

  "But we'll be dealing with guards who don't really believe there's anything to guard against."

  "What about traps? We can't fight machinery."

  "Practically none in the Hospital — at least, not usually. There are things Castro could set up in an emergency. In the slowboats there could be anything; we just don't know. But we won't be going near the slowboats. Then there are those damn vibrating doors."

  Matt nodded, a swift vicious jerk of his chin.

  "Those doors surprised us all. We should have been warned."

  "By who?"

  "Never you mind. Stop a second... Right. This is the place. We go through here."

  "Laney.

  "Yah? There are pressure wires in the dirt. Step on the roots only as we go through." />
  "What happened Friday night?"

  She turned back to look at his face, trying to read what he meant. She said, "I happened to think you needed me."

  Matt nodded slowly. "You happened to think right."

  "Okay. That's what I'm there for. The Sons of Earth are mostly, men. Sometimes they get horribly depressed. Always planning, never actually fighting, never winning when they do, and always wondering if they aren't doing just what Implementation wants. They can't even brag except to each other, because not all the colonists are on our side. Then, sometimes, I can make them feel like men again."

  "I think I need my ego boosted about now."

  "What you need right now, brother, is a good scare. Just keep thinking scared, and you'll be all right. We go through here .... "

  "I just thought of something."

  "What's that?"

  "If we'd stayed here this afternoon, we'd have saved all this trouble."

  "Will you come on? And don't forget to step on the roots".

  10: Parlette's Hand

  Darkness covered most of Mount Lookitthat.

  The crew never knew it. The lights of Alpha Plateau burned undimmed. Even in the houses along the Alpha-Beta cliff, with a view across Beta Plateau toward the distant, clustered town lights of Gamma and Iota ... tonight that view was blanked by fog; and who was to know that the clustered lights were dark?

  In the colonist regions there was fear and fury, but it couldn't touch Alpha Plateau.

  No real danger threatened. On Gamma and Iota there were no hospitals where patients might die in dark operating theaters. No cars would crash without street lights. Spoiling meat in butcher shop freezers would cause no famine; there were the fruit and nut forests, the crops, the herds.

  But there was fear and fury. Was something wrong, up there where all power originated? Or was it a prank, a punishment, an experiment ... some deliberate act of Implementation?

  You couldn't travel without lights. Most people stayed where they were, wherever they were. They bedded down where they could; for colonists it was near bedtime anyway. And they waited for the lights to come back.

  They would give no trouble, Jesus Pietro thought. If danger came tonight, it would not come from down there.

  Equally certain, the Sons of Earth would attack, though they only numbered five. Harry Kane would not leave most of his men to die. Whatever he could do, he would do it, regardless of risk.

  And Major Chin's fugitive had escaped, was loose two miles from the Hospital, wearing a police uniform. And because he had escaped, because he was alone, because no man had seen him clearly ... it had to be Matt Keller.

  Five dossiers to match five, fugitives. Harry Kane and Jayhawk Hood: These were old friends, the most dangerous of the Sons of Earth. Elaine Mattson and Lydia Hancock and Matthew Keller: These he had come to know by heart during the long hours following the break this afternoon. He could have recognized any of them a mile away or told them their life stories.

  The slimmest dossier was Matt Keller's: two and a half skimpy pages. Mining engineer ... not much of a family man ... few love affairs ... no evidence he had ever joined the Sons of Earth.

  Jesus Pietro was worried. The Sons of Earth, if they got this far, would go straight to the vivarium to free their compatriots. But if Matthew Keller was his own agent ...

  If the ghost of Alpha Plateau was not a rebel, but a thing with its own unpredictable purpose ....

  Jesus Pietro worried. His last sip of coffee suddenly tasted horrible, and he pushed the cup away. He noted with relief that the mist seemed to be clearing. On his desk were a stack of five dossiers and a sixth all alone and a mercy-bullet gun.

  In the lights of the Hospital the sky glowed pearl gray. The wall was a monstrous mass above them, a sharp black shadow cutting across the lighted sky. They heard regular footsteps overhead.

  They'd crawled here side by side, close enough to get in each other's way. They'd broad-jumped the electric-eye barriers, Matt first, then Laney making her move while Matt stared up at the wall and willed nobody to see her. So far nobody had.

  "We could get around to the gate," said Matt.

  "But if Castro's cut off the power, we can't get it open. No, there's a better way."

  "Show me."

  "We may have to risk a little excitement .... Here it is."

  "What?"

  "The fuse. I wasn't sure it'd be here."

  "Fuse?".

  "See, a lot of Implementation is pure colonist. We have to be careful who we approach, and we've lost good men who talked to the wrong person, but it paid off. I hope."

  "Someone planted a bomb for you?"

  "I hope so. There are only two Sons of Earth in Implementation, and either or both of them could be ringers." She fumbled in the big, loose pockets of her mudspattered crewish finery. "Bitch didn't carry a lighter. Matt?"

  "Lessee. Here."

  She took the lighter, then spoke deliberately. "If they see the light, we're done for." She crouched over the wire.

  Matt crouched over her, to shield the light with his body. As he did so, he looked up. Two bumps showed on the straight black shadow of the wall. They moved. Matt started to whisper, Stop! Yellow light flared under him, and it was too late.

  The heads withdrew.

  Laney shook his arm. "Run! Along the wall!" He followed the pull.

  "Now flat!" He landed beside her on his belly. There was a tremendous blast. Metal bits sang around them, raising tiny pings against the wall. Something bit a piece from Matt's ear, and he slapped at it like a wasp sting.

  He didn't have time to curse. Laney jerked him to his feet, and they ran back the way they had come. There was confused shouting on the wall, and Matt looked up to meet a hundred eyes looking down. Then suddenly the area was bright as hell.

  "Here!" Laney dropped to her, knees, slapped his hand onto her ankle, and crawled. Matt heard mercy-bullets spattering around his ankles as he went in after her.

  On the outside the hole was just big enough to crawl through on hands and knees. The bomb must have been a shaped charge. But the wall was thick, and the hole was smaller on the inside. They emerged on their bellies, with scratches. Here too was light, too bright, making Matt's eyes water. Startlingly, there were pits all in a row in the dirt along this side of the wall, and over the cordite stink was the smell of rich, moist new earth.

  "Bombs," he said wonderingly. Pressure bombs, set off by the explosion, originally intended to explode under an invader dropping from the top of the wall. Bombs, meant to kill. "I'm flattered," he whispered to himself, and lied.

  "Shut up!" Laney turned to glare, and in the lurid artificial light he saw her eyes change. Then she turned and ran. She was beyond reach before Matt had time to react.

  Feet pounded all around them, all running at top speed toward the hole in the wall. They were surrounded! Amazingly, nobody tried to stop Laney. But he saw someone jerk to a stop, then go pelting after her.

  And nobody tried to stop Matt. He was invisible enough, but he'd lost Laney. Without him, she had nothing but the gun ... and he didn't know how to reach Polly. He stood there, lost.

  Frowning, Harry Kane inspected hands which didn't match. He'd seen transplantees before, but never such a patchwork man as Millard Parlette.

  Lydia said, "It isn't artificial, is it?"

  "No. But it's not a normal transplant job either."

  "He should be coming around."

  "I am," said Millard Parlette.

  Harry started. "You can talk?",

  "Yes." Parlette had a voice like a squeaky door, altered by a would-be musical crew lilt, slurred by the effects of a sonic stunner. He spoke slowly, consciously enunciating. "May I have a glass of water?"

  "Lydia, get him some water."

  "Here." The stocky virago supported the old man's head with her arm and fed him the water in small sips.

  Harry studied the man. They'd propped him against a wall in the vestibule. He hadn't moved since then a
nd probably couldn't, but the muscles of his face, which had been slack and rubbery, now reflected a personality.

  "Thank you," he said, in a stronger voice. "You shouldn't have shot me, you know."

  "You have things to tell us, Mr. Parlette."

  "You're Harry Kane. Yes, I have things to tell you. And then I'll want to make a deal of sorts with you."

  "I'm open to deals. What kind?"

  "You'll understand when I finish. May I start with the recent ramrobot package? This will be somewhat technical — "

  "Lydia, get Jay." Lydia Hancock quietly withdrew.

  "I'll want him to hear anything technical. Jay is our genius."

  "Jayhawk Hood? Is he here too?"

  "You seem to know a good deal about us."

  "I do. I've been studying the Sons of Earth for longer than you've been alive. Jayhawk Hood has a fine mind. By all means, let us wait for him."

  "You've been studying us, have you? Why?"

  "I'll try to make that clear to you, Kane. It will take time. Has the situation on Mount Lookitthat ever struck you as artificial, fragile?"

  "Phut. If you'd been trying to change it as long as I have, you wouldn't think so."

  "Seriously, Kane. Our society depends entirely on its technology. Change the technology, and you change the society. Most especially you change the ethics."

  "That's ridiculous. Ethics are ethics."

  The old man's hand twitched. "Let me speak, Kane."

  Harry Kane was silent.

  "Consider the cotton gin," said Millard Parlette. "That invention made it economically feasible to grow cotton in quantity in the southern United States, but not in the northern states. It brought slaves in great numbers to one section of that nation while slavery died out in another. The result was a problem in racial tolerance which lasted for centuries.

  "Consider feudal armor. The ethics of chivalry were based on the fact that armor was a total defense against anything which wasn't similarly armored. The clothyard arrow, and later gunpowder, ended chivalry and made a new ethic necessary.