A Gift From Earth

by Larry Niven

  A voice. It had her complete attention.

  "Polly," it said, "you must trust me."

  She wanted to answer, to express her gratitude, to tell the voice to keep talking, to beg it to let her out. She was voiceless.

  "I would like to free you, to bring you back to the world of sense and touch and smell," said the voice. Gently, sympathetically, regretfully, it added, "I cannot do that just yet. There are people making me keep you here."

  A voice had become the voice, familiar, wholly reassuring. Suddenly she placed it.

  "Harry Kane and Jayhawk Hood. They won't let me free you"

  Castro's voice. She wanted to scream.

  " ... Because you failed in your mission. You were to find out about ramrobot number one-forty-three. You failed."

  Liar! Liar! I didn't fail! She wanted to scream out the truth, all of the truth. At the same time she knew that that was Castro's aim. But she hadn't talked in so long!

  "Are you trying to tell me something? Perhaps I can persuade Harry and Jayhawk to let me free your mouth Would you like that?"

  I'd love that, Polly thought. I'd tell all the secrets of your ancestry. Something within her was still rational. The sleep, that was what had done it. How long had she been here? Not years, not even days; she would have been thirsty. Unless they'd given her water intravenously. But however long it had been, she'd slept for some part of the time. Castro didn't know about the mercy-bullets. He'd come hours early.

  Where was the voice?

  All was silent. Faintly she could hear her pulse beating in her carotid arteries; but as she grasped for the sound, it too was gone.

  Where was Castro? Leaving her to rot?

  Speak!

  Speak to me!

  The Planck was big, but its lifesystem occupied less than a third of its volume: three rings of pressurized compartments between the cargo holds above and the water fuel tanks and fission-driven landing motors below. Much cargo had been needed to set up a self-sufficient colony. Much fuel had been needed to land the Planck: trying to land on the controlled hydrogen bomb of the fusion drive would have been like landing a blowtorch on a featherbed.

  So the lifesystem was not large. But neither was it cramped, since the compartments aft of the corridor had been designed for the comfort of just three growing families.

  That which was now Jesus Pietro's interrogation room had once been a living room, with sofas, a cardtable, a coffeetable, a reader screen connected to the ship's library, a small refrigerator. The tables and other things were gone now, cut from the outer wall with torches long ago. It had been a big room, luxuriously so for a spacecraft, where room is always at a premium. It had had to be big. Any normal apartment-dweller can step outside for a breath of air.

  Now, upended, the room was merely tall. Halfway up the walls were the doors which had led to other parts of the apartment. The door to the corridor had become a trapdoor, and the door just under it, a closet to hold spacesuits in case of emergency, could now be reached only from the ladder. In the crescent of floor space at the bottom of the room were a long, heavy box, two guards in chairs, an empty chair, and Jesus Pietro Castro, closing the padded lip of the speaking tube at one corner of the box.

  "Give her ten minutes to think it over," he said. He glanced at his watch, noted the time.

  His handphone buzzed.

  "I'm in the vivarium," Major Jansen reported. "The girl's a colonist, all right, in stolen crew clothing. We don't' know where she got it yet. I doubt we'll like the answer. We had to pump antidotes into her; she was dying from an overdose of mercy-weapons."

  "No sign that anyone came with her?"

  "I didn't say that, sir. There are two things. One, the wires were pulled on the chair she was sitting in. Her helmet was stone dead. She couldn't have done that herself. Maybe that’s why one of the prisoners woke up this afternoon."

  "And then he freed the others? I don’t believe it. We would have noticed the pulled wires afterward."

  "I agree, sir. So somebody pulled those wires after she was in the chair."

  "Maybe. What's your second point?"

  "When the gas went off in the vivarium, one of the four police wasn't wearing his nose plug. We haven't been able to find it anywhere; his locker's empty, and when I called his wife, she said he took it with him. He's awake now, but he has no idea — "

  "Is it worth bothering with? The guards aren't used to gas filters. Or gas."

  "There was a mark on the man's forehead, sir. Like the one we found this afternoon, only this one is in ballpoint ink."

  "Oh."

  "Which means that there must be a traitor in Implementation itself, sir."

  "What makes you think so, Major?"

  "The bleeding-heart symbol does not represent any known revolutionary organization. Further, only a guard could have made that mark. Nobody else has entered the vivarium tonight."

  Jesus Pietro swallowed his impatience. "You may be right, Major. Tomorrow we'll devise ways to smoke them out."

  Major Jansen made several suggestions. Jesus Pietro listened, made appropriate comments, and cut him off as soon as he could.

  A traitor in Implementation? Jesus Pietro hated to think so. It was possible, and not a thing to be ignored; but the knowledge that the Head suspected such a thing could damage Implementation morale more than any possible traitor.

  In any case, Jesus Pietro was not interested. No traitorous guard could have moved invisibly in Jesus Pietro's office. The bleeding heart was something else entirely.

  Jesus Pietro called the power room. "You aren't doing anything right now, are you? Good. Would one of you bring us some coffee."

  Three minutes more and he could resume interrogation.

  Jesus Pietro paced. He walked off balance, with one arm bound immobile against his body: one more annoyance. The numbness was wearing off in his mangled hand.

  Yes, the bleeding heart was something else again. A gruesome symbol on a vivarium floor. Fingers that broke without their owner noticing. An ink drawing appearing from nowhere on a dossier cover, like a signature. A signature.

  Intuition was tricky. Intuition had told Jesus Pietro that something would happen tonight. And something had; but what? Intuition, or something like it, had brought him here. Surely he'd had no logical reason to keep thinking about Polly Tournquist. Did she really know something? Or did his subconscious mind have other motives for bringing him here?

  Jesus Pietro paced, following the arc of the inner wall.

  Presently someone knocked on the door overhead. The guards loosened their guns and looked up. Fumbling sounds, and then the door dropped open and a man backed slowly down the ladder. He balanced a tray in one hand. He did not try to close the door after him.

  The slowboat had never been a convenient place to work. Ladders everywhere. The man with the tray had to back a long way down the full length of what had been a large, comfortable living room before he touched bottom.

  Matt poked his head through the doorway, upside down.

  There was the lab man, backing down the ladder with his coffee tray balanced on one hand. On the floor were three more men, and one was Castro. As Matt's head appeared in the doorway each pair of eyes glanced up, held Matt's stare for a moment, then dropped.

  Matt started down, looking over his shoulder, trying to hold eight eyes at once.

  "Dammit, Hood, help me up."

  "Parlette, you can't possibly expect — "

  "Help me over to the phone."

  "We'd be committing suicide," said Harry Kane. "What would your army of relatives do when they learned we were holding you prisoner in your own house?"

  "I'm here of my own free will. You know that."

  "But will they know that?"

  "My family will stand behind me." Parlette set the palms of his hands on the chair arms, and with tremendous effort, stood up. But once up, he was unable to move.

  "They won't know what's going on," said Harry Kane. "All they'll know for certa
in is that you're alone in the house with three escaped vivarium prisoners."

  "Kane, they wouldn't understand what's happening if I talked for two hours. But they'll stand behind me."

  Harry Kane opened his mouth, closed it again, and began to tremble. He had to fold his hands on the table to keep them from shaking. "Call them," he said.

  "No," said Jay Hood.

  "Help him, Jay."

  "No! If he uses that phone to turn us in, he'll go down as the greatest con man in history. And we'll be finished!"

  "Oh, phut." Lydia Hancock stood up and wrapped one of Parlette's arms around her neck. "Be sensible, Jay. Parlette is the best chance we ever had. We've got to trust him." And she walked him over to the phone.

  Almost time to resume the interrogation. Jesus Pietro waited while the lab man deposited his tray on the "coffin" and started back up.

  And he realized that his pulse was racing. There was cold perspiration dribbling wetly down his ribs. His hand throbbed like a heart. His eyes flicked here, there, all about the room, looking for something that wasn't there.

  Within seconds, and for no reason at all, the interrogation room had become a trap.

  There was a thump, and every muscle in his body jumped. Nothing there, nothing his eyes could find. But he the nerveless, elephantine Castro, was jumping at shadows. The room was a trap, a trap.

  "Back in a moment," said Jesus Pietro. He strode to the ladder, looking every inch the Man in Charge, and went up.

  A guard said, "But, sir! What about the prisoner?"

  "I'll be right back," said the Head, without slowing.

  He pulled himself through the doorway, reached down, and closed the door. And there he stuck.

  He'd had no planned destination. Something had screamed at him to get out, some intuition so powerful that he had followed it without questioning right in the middle of an interrogation.

  What was he afraid of? Was he about to learn some unpleasant truth from Polly Tournquist? Or was it guilt? Surely he no longer lusted after the colonist girl. Surely he could control it if he did.

  No Implementation man had ever seen him thus: shoulders slumped, face set in wrinkles of fatigue, standing in a hallway because he had no place to go.

  In any case, he had to go back. Polly Tournquist was waiting for the sound of his voice. She might or might not know things he needed to know.

  He pulled himself together, visibly, and turned to face the door, his eyes sliding automatically around the bright frosted pane in the wall. Men who worked in the slowboats developed such habits. As ceiling lights, the panel would have been just bright enough. As wall lights, they hurt the eyes.

  Castro's eyes slid around the pane, caught something, and came back. There was a blue scrawl on the frosted pane.

  Matt was almost down the ladder when the man in the lab coat started up.

  Matt addressed a subvocal comment to the Mist Demons, who made no obvious response. Then, because the lab man was about to bump into him, he swung around to the underside of the ladder and dropped. He landed with a thump. Every head in the room jerked around. Matt backed into a corner, stepping softly, waiting.

  He'd known it from the beginning: He couldn't count on this power of his. At some point he would have enough of being afraid; the glandular caps over his kidneys would stop producing adrenaline ...

  The guard turned their eyes back to the ceiling. The lab man disappeared through the doorway and closed the door after him. Only Castro himself continued to behave peculiarly; his eyes kept darting around the room as if searching for something that wasn't there. Matt began to breathe more easily.

  The man with the coffee had appeared at just the right time. Matt had been about to leave, to see if he could find a fusion control room before he got back to Castro. He had, in fact, discovered that the frosted glass in the hall light would take ink; and he was marking it to show which door led to Castro, when someone had rounded the corner, carrying coffee.

  Castro was still behaving oddly. During the interview in Castro's office, Matt had never ceased to be afraid of him. Yet now he seemed only a nervous man with a bandaged arm.

  Dangerous thinking, thought Matt. Be scared!

  Suddenly Castro started up the ladder.

  Matt nibbled his lower lip. Some comic chase this was becoming! Where was the Head going now? And how could Matt hold six eyes, two above and four below, while climbing a ladder? He started for the ladder anyway.

  "But, sir! What about the prisoner?"

  "I'll be right back."

  Matt backed into the corner again. Prisoner?

  Coffin. The word was nearly obsolete on Mount Lookitthat, where crew and colonist alike cremated their dead. But that box against the wall was easily big enough to hold a prisoner.

  He'd have to look inside.

  But first, the guards ...

  "It's the Head calling, Major."

  "Thank you, Miss Lauessen."

  "Jansen, is that you?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "I've found another bleeding heart."

  "In the Planck?"

  "Yes. Right above the coffin room, on a light. Now here's what I want done. I want you to close the Planck's airlocks, flood the ship with gas, then come in with a squad. Anyone you can't identify immediately, play a sonic over him to keep him quiet. Got it?"

  "Yes, sir. Suppose the traitor is someone we know?"

  "Use your own judgment there. I have good reason to assume he's not a policeman, though he may be in uniform. How long will you need?"

  "About twenty minutes. I could use cars instead of elevators, but it would take just as long."

  "Good. Use the cars. Seal off the elevators first. I want as much surprise effect as possible."

  "Yes, sir.'

  "Execute."

  The guards were no trouble at all. Matt stepped up behind one of the men, pulled the gun from his holster, and shot them both.

  He kept the gun in his hand. It felt good. He was sick of having to be afraid. It was a situation to rive a man right out of his skull. If he stopped being afraid, even for an instant, he could be killed! But now, at least for the moment, he could stop listening for footsteps, stop trying to look in all directions at once. A sonic stunner was a surer bet than a hypothetical, undependable psi power. It was real, cold and hard in his hand.

  The "coffin" was bigger than it had seemed from the doorway. He found clamps, big and easy to operate. The lid was heavy. Foam plastic covered the inside, with a sound-deadening surface of small interlocking conical indentations.

  Inside was something packed very carefully in soft, thick white cloth. Its shape was only vaguely human, and its head was not human at all. Matt felt the back hairs stir on his neck. Coffin. And the thing inside didn't move. If he had found Polly, then Polly was dead.

  He began unwrapping it anyway, starting with what passed for the figure's head. He found ear cups, and underneath, human ears. They were blood-warm to the touch. Matt began to hope.

  He unwrapped cloth from a pair of brown eyes. They looked up at him, and then they blinked.

  Hoping was over. He had found Polly, and she was alive.

  She was more cocoon than girl. Toward the end she was helping to get the wrappings and paddings and sensory wires off her legs. She wasn't much help. Her fingers wouldn't work. Muscles jerked rhythmically in her jaw, her arms, her legs. When she tried to step out of the coffin Matt had to catch the full weight of her failing body, and they went down in a heap.

  "Thanks," she said unsteadily. "Thanks for getting me out of there."

  "That's why I'm here."

  "I remember you." She got up, clinging to his arm for support. She had not yet smiled. When Matt had uncovered her mouth and removed the clamps and padding, she had looked like a child expecting to be slapped. She still did. "You're Matt something. Aren't you?"

  "Matt Keller. Can you stand by yourself now?"

  "Where are we?" She did not let go of his arm.

  "In the
middle of the Hospital. But we have a fair chance to get out, if you do just as I say."

  "How did you get in?"

  "Jay Hood tells me I have a kind of psychic invisibility. As long as I can stay scared, I can keep people from seeing me. That's what we have to count on. Hey, are you all right?"

  "Since you ask, no." She smiled for the first time, a ghost grin, a rictus that vanished in a split second. She was better off without it.

  "You don't look it. Come here, sit down." She was clinging to his upper arm with both hands, as if afraid of falling. He led her to one of the chairs. She's still in shock, he thought. "Better yet, lie down. On the floor. Easy... Now put your feet up on the chair. What the Mist Demons were they doing to you?"

  "It's a long story." Her brows puckered, leaving a sudden deep V between her eyes. "I can tell it fast, though. They were doing nothing to me. Nothing and nothing and nothing." She lay on her back with her feet in the air, the way Matt had placed her, and her eyes looked up past the ceiling, looked up at Nothing.

  Matt wanted to look away. Polly was no longer pretty. Her hair was a housecleaners' nest, and her makeup had gone every which way; but that wasn't it. Something had gone out of her, and something else had replaced it. Her pale face mirrored the ultimate horror of what she saw, looking up at Nothing.

  Presently she said, "How did you get here, Matt?"

  "Came to rescue you."

  "You're not a Son of Earth."