A Gift From Earth

by Larry Niven

  "Who are you?"

  Harry Kane stepped forward. "She's your doctor, Keller. How do you feel?"

  How did he feel? A moment ago he'd realized, too late, that his backpack wouldn't lift him. But he couldn't remember the mile-long fall. "Am I going to die?"

  "No, you'll live," said the woman doctor. "You won't even be crippled. The suit must have braced you against the fall. You broke a leg and some ribs, but they'll heal if you follow orders."

  "All right," said Matt. Nothing seemed to matter much. Was he doped? He saw that he was on his back, with one leg in the air and something bulky around his rib cage, interfering with his breathing. "Did they put transplants in me?"

  "Never mind that now, Keller. You just rest and get well."

  "How's Polly?"

  "We couldn't find her."

  "She was on the Planck. She must have reached the drive controls."

  "Oh!" Laney exclaimed. She started to say something, then changed her mind.

  Harry said, "The Planck went over the edge."

  "I see."

  "You got her loose?"

  "I got her loose once," Matt said. The faces were growing hazy. "She was a fanatic. All of you, fanatics. She had all the rescuing I could give her."

  The room drifted away, dreamlike, and he knew the Planck was taking off. From a distance a woman's authoritarian crew lilt ordered "Out, now, all of you."

  The doctor escorted them to the door, and Harry Kane put a hand on her elbow and took her with them into the corridor. There he asked, "How long before he's well?"

  "Let go, of me, Mr. Kane."

  Harry did. "How long?"

  "Don't worry, he'll be no invalid. In a week we'll put him in a walking cast. In a month we'll see."

  "How long before he's back at work?"

  "Two months, with luck. Why so eager, Mr. Kane?"

  "Top secret."

  The woman scowled. "Whatever you're planning for him, you can bear in mind that he's my patient. He won't be ready for anything else until I tell you so."

  "All right. I suggest you don't tell him about the transplants. He wouldn't like that."

  "They're in his records. I can't do anything about that. I won't tell him anything."

  When she had left them, Laney asked, "Why so eager?"

  "I have an idea about Matt. I'll tell you about it later."

  "Don't you think we've used him enough?"

  "No," said Harry Kane. "I'd like to, but no."

  Millard Parlette was near exhaustion. He'd moved into Jesus Pietro Castro's office on Sunday, night, even before the outer wall was replaced, and he’d lived there ever since. His meals were sent in, and he used Castro's cot when he slept, which was rarely. Sometimes it seemed to him, that he was at the end of his life, that he'd waited just long enough to meet this-the crisis he'd foreseen a hundred years ago.

  The Planck had done terrible damage to the Hospital, but the work of rebuilding was well in progress. Parlette had hired a construction firm himself, paying them out of his personal fortune. Eventually he would push a bill through the Council to reimburse him. Now workmen were painting the outer wall of his office, which on Sunday night had been yawning space.

  His immediate problem was that half of Implementation wanted to quit.

  The events of the previous week had bad a disastrous effect on Implementation morale. Having the Head accused of treason and deposed by force was only part of it. Elaine Mattson and Matthew Keller had done their part, castrating the Hospital with bombs and stealth. The vivarium prisoners had been freed to make slaughter in the Hospital corridors. The destruction of the Planck had affected not just Hospital personnel but all of Alpha Plateau, for the Planck was half of history.

  Now Implementation was faced with a dreadful confusion. All raids on the colony plateaus had been canceled. Known rebels moved freely through the Hospital, and no one could touch them. Their attitude toward the police was rude and contemptuous. Rumor had it that Millard Parlette was drafting new laws to further restrict police power. It didn't help that the rumors were true.

  Parlette did what he could. He spoke to every man who wanted to resign. Some he persuaded to stay. As the ranks dwindled, he found new ways to use the men he had left.

  At the same time he was dealing with the Plateau's four power blocs.

  The Council of the Crew had followed Parlette in the past. With luck and skill and work he would make them follow him again.

  The crew as a whole would normally follow the Council. But a colonist revolt, in these days of a weakened, disheartened Implementation, might send them into a full panic; and then the Council would mean nothing.

  The Sons of Earth would follow Harry Kane. But Kane was beyond Parlette's control, and he didn't trust Millard Parlette at all.

  The non-rebellious majority of colonists would remain non-rebellious if Kane left them alone. But the Sons of Earth, with their privileged knowledge of the ramrobot gifts, could stir them to killing wrath at any time. Would Harry Kane wait for the New Law?

  Four power blocs, and Implementation too. Being Head meant an endless maze of details, minor complaints, delivery of reprimands, paperwork, petty internal politics — he could get lost in such a maze and never know it until a screaming colonist army came to storm the Hospital.

  It was a wonder he ever got around to Matt Keller.

  Matt lived on his back, with his right side encased in concrete and his right leg dangling in space. He was given pills that reduced the pains to permanent, aggravating aches.

  The woman in the organ-bank smock examined him from time to time. Matt suspected she saw him as potential organ-bank material, of dubious value. On Wednesday he overheard someone calling her Dr. Bennet. He had never thought of asking her name, as she had never thought of giving it.

  In the early morning hours, when the sleeping pills were wearing off, or during afternoon naps, he was plagued by nightmares. Again his elbow smashed a nose across a man's face, and again there was the awful shock of terror and triumph. Again he asked the way to the vivarium, turned, and raised his arm to see the skin beaded with bright blood. Again he stood in the organ banks, unable to run, and he woke drenched in perspiration. Or, with a stolen sonic he dropped uniformed men until the remembered sonic backlash turned his arm to wood. He woke, and his right arm had gone to sleep under him.

  He thought of his family with nostalgia. He saw Jeannie and her husband every few months; they lived not twenty miles from Gamma's major mining area. But he hadn't seen his mother and father in years. How good it would be to see them again!

  Even the memory of mining worms filled him with nostalgia. They were unpredictable, yes, but compared to Hood or Polly or Laney... at least he could understand mining worms.

  His curiosity had been as dead as his right leg. On Wednesday evening it returned with a rush.

  Why was the Hospital treating him? If he had been captured, why hadn't he been taken apart already? How had Laney and Kane been allowed to visit him?

  He was frantic with impatience. Dr. Bennet didn't appear until noon Thursday. Somewhat to his surprise, she was not at all reluctant to talk.

  "I don't understand it myself," she told Matt. "I do know that all the live rebels have been turned loose, and we aren't getting any more organ-bank material. Old Parlette's the Head now, and a lot of his relatives are working here too. Pure crew, working in the Hospital."

  "It must be strange to you."

  "It's weird. Old Parlette is the only one who knows what's really going on — if he does. Does he?"

  Does he? Matt groped at the question. "What makes you think I know?"

  "He's given orders that you're to be treated with an excess of tender loving care. He must have some reason, Keller."

  "I suppose he must."

  When it was obvious that that was all he had to say, she said, "If you've got any more questions, you can ask your friends. They'll be here Saturday. There's another weird thing — all the colonists wandering thro
ugh the Hospital, and we've got orders not to touch them. I hear some of them are proven rebels."

  "I'm one myself."

  "I thought you might be."

  "After my leg heals, will I be turned loose?"

  "I suppose so, from the way you're being treated. It's up to Parlette." Her treatment of him had become curiously ambivalent. By turns he was her inferior, confidant, and patient. "Why don't you ask your friends on Saturday?"

  That night they hooked up a sleepmaker at the head of his bed. "Why didn't they do that before?" he asked one of the workmen. "It must be safer than pills."

  "You're looking at it wrong," the man told him. "Most of the patients here are crew. You don't think a crew would use a vivarium sleepmaker, do you?"

  "Too proud, huh?"

  "I told you. They're crew."

  There was a listening bug in, the headset.

  To Parlette, Matt was part of the paperwork. His was one of the dossiers lying on Jesus Pietro's desk. Its cover was scorched, like the others; but the Head's office, on the second floor, had escaped most of the damage from the Planck's wildfire drive.

  Parlette went through all those dossiers and many more. By now he knew that the worst threat to his "New Law" was defection by the Sons of Earth. Only they, with their presumed control over the colonists, could make it work; and only they were beyond his control.

  Matthew Keller's dossier was unusual in its skimpiness. There wasn't even a record of his joining the rebel organization. Yet he must belong. Castro's notes implied that Keller had freed the vivarium prisoners. He had been badly hurt invading the Hospital a second time. He must be partly responsible for the Planck disaster. He seemed to be connected with the mystery of the bleeding-heart symbol. A very active rebel, Matthew Keller.

  Then there was Harry Kane's disproportionate interest in him.

  Parlette's first evanescent impulse was to have him die of his injuries. He'd caused too much destruction already. Probably the Planck's library could never be replaced ..... But getting Harry Kane's trust was far more important.

  On Thursday Dr. Bennet sent him word that Keller would be receiving visitors. Installing a listening bug was an obvious precaution. Millard Parlette made a note of the coming interview — at Saturday noon — then forgot it until then.

  When Hood had finished talking, Matt smiled and said, "I told you they were little hearts and livers."

  It didn't go over. The four of them looked solemnly back at him, like a jury circling his hospital bed.

  When they'd first come in, he'd wondered if they were all slated for the organ banks. They'd been so deadly serious, and they moved with coordination, as if they'd rehearsed this.

  Hood had talked for almost half an hour, with occasional interruptions from Harry Kane and no comments at all from Laney and Mrs. Hancock. It still seemed rehearsed. You do all the talking, Jay, someone must have said. Break it to him gently. Then — But what they'd told him was all good.

  "You've still got that bad-news look," he said. "Why so solemn? All is roses. We're all going to live forever. No more Implementation raids. No more being hauled off to the organ banks without a trial. We can even build wooden houses if we're crazy enough to want them. The millenium has come at last."

  Harry Kane spoke. "And what's to keep Parlette from breaking all his rash promises?"

  Matt still couldn't see why it should involve him. "You think he might?"

  "Look at it logically, Keller. Parlette has Castro's job now. He's the Head. He runs Implementation."

  "That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

  "Yes," said Kane. "I want him to have all the power he can grab, because he's the only man who can put the New Law across — if he chooses. But let's just back off a little and look at how much power he does have.

  "He runs Implementation." Kane ticked it off on a finger. "He's trained his own clan to use hunting guns. That gives him most of the weapons on Mount Lookitthat. He can twist the Council around his little finger. Parlette is well on his way to being the world's first emperor!"

  "But you could stop him. You said yourself that you can raise the colony against him any time you like."

  Kane waved it off. "We can't do that. Sure, it's a good threat, especially after what we've already done to Implementation. But we don't want a bloodbath any more than Parlette does, or says he does. No, we need something else to hold over him."

  Four solemn faces waited for his reply. What the Mist Demons was this all about? Matt said, "All right, you thought up the problem; now think up an answer."

  "We need an invisible assassin."

  Matt raised himself on one shoulder and peered at Harry Kane around the white pillar of his traction-bound leg. No, Kane wasn't joking. The effort was exhausting, and he dropped back.

  Laney put a hand on his arm. "It's the only answer, Matt. And it's perfect. No matter how powerful Millard Parlette becomes politically, he'll never have a defense against you."

  "It's you or civil war," Kane put in.

  Matt found his voice. "I don't doubt you're serious," he said wonderingly. "What I doubt is your sanity. Do I look like an assassin? I've never killed anyone. I never intend to."

  "You did pretty well last weekend."

  "What — I used a stun gun! I hit some people with my fist! Why does that make me a pro killer?"

  "You realize," said Hood, "that we never intend to use you as such. You're a threat, Matt, nothing more. You'll be one leg in the balance of power between the Sons of Earth and Millard Parlette."

  "I'm a miner." Matt gestured with his left hand the one that didn't pull cracked ribs. "A miner. I use trained worms to dig for metal. My boss sells the metal, and buys worms and worm food, and with luck he makes enough to pay my salary. Wait a minute. Have you told Parlette about this idea?"

  "No, of course not. He'll never know about it unless you agree, and then we'll wait until you're out of the Hospital."

  "Mist Demons, I should hope so. If Parlette gets the idea I'm dangerous to him — and me on my back like this — I want to be on Delta before you tell Parlette. Hell I want to be on Earth before — "

  "Then you agree?"

  "No, Kane! No, I do not agree to anything! Don't you realize I've got a family? What if Parlette takes hostages?"

  "Two parents and a sister," Hood amplified. "Parents on Iota."

  "Don't worry," Laney said soothingly. "We'll protect them, Matt. They'll be safe."

  Kane nodded. "If anyone so much as harms a hair on your head, or threatens any member of your family. I'll declare total war. I'll have to tell Parlette that; and to make him believe it, I'll have to mean it. And I do.".

  Matt thought very seriously about shouting for Dr. Bennet. It wouldn't work. Even if she threw them out, they'd only come back later.

  And Matt Keller was a man on his back. He could move three inches to the side if he was willing to endure the pain. Four inches, no. A captive audience.

  "You've really thought it out, haven't you? Why did you wait so long to tell me?"

  Jay Hood answered. "I wanted to be here. This is my day off."

  "You're back teaching school, Jay?"

  "It seems appropriate to teach history while we're making it." In the dry voice there was a barely concealed jubilation. Hood was in his element. Strange that he'd never suspected the size of Hood's ego.

  "You got me into this," said Matt.

  "Sorry. My apologies. Believe me, Matt, I only picked you as a probable recruit." When Matt didn't answer, Hood continued, "But we do need you. Let me show you how much. You were dying, Matt — '

  "Stop, Jay.!

  "He has a right to know, Laney. Matt, those ribs you broke tore up your lung and your diaphragm. Harry had to talk Parlette into — "

  "Jay, shut up."

  "All right, Laney." He sounded hurt.

  "Matt, we weren't going to tell you. Really we weren't."

  Dead man's flesh was a part of him, forever. Living under his rib cage: a strange, partial
resurrection.

  Matt said, "All right, Laney. How do you stand on this?"

  Laney looked down, then up to meet his eyes. "It's your choice, Matt. But if we don't have you, we don't have anyone." She seemed to stop, then hurried on. "Listen, Matt, you're making a big thing out of this. We're not asking you to rush right out and murder someone. We'd be perfectly happy to see you go back to your mining worms. For all we care, you can stay there the rest of your life, with a small extra income — "

  "Thanks"

  " — for being on standby alert. Maybe Parlette's honest. Maybe he really does want to make the Plateau a paradise. Maybe all is roses. But just in case — "

  She leaned forward in the uncomfortable hospital chair, gripping his wrist with one hand, looking deep into his eyes. Her nails cut the skin. "Just in case Parlette is ambitious, then we'll need you to stop him. Nobody else will be able to do it."

  "We must let him have his power now. Somebody has to take power, or there'll be civil war. But if he needs to be stopped, and you don't stop him, you'll be a coward."

  Matt tried to pull his arm away. Torn muscles reacted; it was as if he'd been kicked in the side with a lead boot. "You're fanatics! All four of you!" And he was trapped, trapped ....

  Laney let go. Slowly she sat back, her eyes soft and dreamy, with pinpoint pupils.

  Matt relaxed. The others were looking at nothing. Jay Hood was humming under his breath. Mrs. Hancock scowled at some unpleasant thought.

  "The luck of Matt Keller" had given him a breathing space.

  "The luck of Matt Keller." A joke, a shaggy-dog story. If he hadn't used the power to "rescue" Polly, she might be alive now. If he hadn't come running to Jay Hood for explanations, he'd be back tending his mining worms. No wonder this form of "luck" had never appeared before. Perhaps it never would again.

  It was a detrimental mutation. It had kept him virgin until he was twenty-one. It had killed Polly and caused Laney to see him as a tool instead of a man. It had sent him into the Planck; he'd never have tried that without his psychological invisibility. Into the Planck to die; out, by blind luck, with a dead man's lung.