Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Fox B. Holden

  To hear what she and they had known from the beginning, and what the blurred, unmoving face was telling her now.

  “. . . tests have been evaluated according to Section 679, Sub-section B of Commandment Seventeen, Part E, as amended, and you have been found to be unquestionably sane. It is my duty therefore to interpret the law with a finding of guilty of acts of heresy, as charged in each of the counts cited, committed with the premeditated deliberation of a sound, and therefore fully responsible mind.” Dot no longer felt fear, only a terrible tiredness. It did not matter what Mannix said. Nor of course, could it matter what she might say. There was the truth, of course, but it would be doubly incriminating, and would spell disaster for Doug.

  She would never see Doug again.

  “. . . entitled, by rank, to denial . . .”

  Or know him if she did.

  “. . . may speak now as privileged, before you are sentenced.”

  Never see her Earth, her Terry or her Mike again!

  “. . . and in the absence of remonstrance as privileged . . .”

  Or know that the sun and the stars above the alien planet upon which she would walk were not those under which she had been born . . .

  “. . . hereby sentence you, Madame Lisa Blair, to loss of privilege to breed offspring through sterilization, and to the complete loss of all ego and all memory therewith connected through psychomutation, which treatment shall immediately follow the first. In the name of the Prelatinate, the Prelate General, and the party hosts, I do so pronounce sentence.” A panel had opened noiselessly behind her.

  The blurred face nodded imperceptibly, and arms suddenly were lifting her to her feet, leading her from the white, sterile room . . .

  THERE was an empty roaring in his ears as he struggled for consciousness, and he could only half-feel the tugging at his body, half-hear the frightened sound of Terry’s voice.

  Dad—dad, you’ve got to get up, dad!”

  Painfully, he made his shaking muscles take over the burden of his weight, forced himself to his feet.

  The viewscreen was black save for the receding white disk that was Venus. The acceleration needle quivered at just under two gravities.

  “—Dad, everything feels funny. So heavy. For a long time we couldn’t even move out of those bed-things.”

  His head hurt and there was drying blood on the side of his face. His body felt as though it had been flailed by a thousand of the maces, and his back wound was a long, throbbing ache, and it was sticky-wet again.

  He tried to force a grin to his face, and even that drew tiny shards of pain.

  “Wish I could’ve gotten to one of those bed-things, Mike! Believe me I never want to hear the expression ‘hit the deck’ again.”

  “Well you sure hit it. Anything feel busted?”

  “Everything sure does! But I’ll be O.K. in a minute.” He sat heavily on the edge of a hammock, fought against the tugging urge to sink back into unconsciousness. But when the acceleration needle said one gravity and the gyros took over, he had to get back on his feet.

  “Dad! Where the heck are we going?”

  “And when you get us there, will you tell us what the contraption did to get us in this place, and make us all—even you—look all different? We thought it was one of those scary dreams until you got us out in front of everybody . . . and I still ain’t so sure . . .”

  Doug still hurt, but the dizziness was going, and there was Terry’s question to answer. It was a good question.

  “Earth, that’s where we’re going! Ever hear of it?”

  “This is a. real space-ship, Dad?”

  Doug smiled down at him. “It’s pretty real,” he said.

  They watched him in silence as he began his search.

  He wasted twenty minutes at it before he was forced to the conclusion that there were no astronomical charts, no star maps. The Science Council would have its own, and the robot didn’t need any . . .

  He was glad the boys were with him. Glad, because without them, the cold panic that welled inside might have taken hold. Glad, because with them, he could muster the will it took to keep from telling himself how terribly big and empty infinity was.

  Maybe you should’ve stuck with the MIT degree after all, Carl Grayson had said. And, he had stuck himself with it! But, if the things he had learned to get it had gotten him into this, then they would damn well have to get him out!

  Doug ripped the blank plastisheets from Tayne’s unused notebook, tossed them to the flat surface of the console. There was an ink-stylus in another pocket of the dead man’s tunic.

  He pointed to a bulkhead chronometer. “Tell me when an hour’s up, boys,” he said.

  He must have his answers within the hour, for in computing them he would need a constant to represent known navigation error, and the hour would represent it, once he determined its value. And if he should exceed that time, its value would be changed—and the constant, the calculations, worthless.

  With the viewscreen, he began his search of space for the bright, blue-white planet, that would be Earth. When he found it, he would use twenty minutes of the hour to establish the plane of its ecliptic. Then, if he could remember what the books had said, remember its orbital speed, its orbital arc for the month of August and its resultant distance from the sun. And then of course the same mathematical equivalents for Venus, and subsequent establishment of the necessary relationships. And then interjected in it must be his own speed and relative direction for the space of one hour.

  And when he had his dead-reckoning solution, it would still be like shooting ducks—with Earth the biggest duck that a man ever had to bag. And with a slingshot—his stylus—not the finely-machined shotgun that would be the slide-rule and calculator which he didn’t have.

  He kept turning the screen. In six precious minutes he found it, like a bright new jewel pinned to the white silk scarf of the Milky Way.

  Earth.

  He reached for the ink-stylus, the blank plastisheets . . .

  THERE was a. searing, bright light above her and it sent stabbing tentacles of pain through her head, and they lashed at her flagging brain.

  They had lain her prone on a cold, flat surface, and their faces circled her, blurred as Mannix had been, and infinitely far above her.

  There was the murmur of voices, and the bright light was divided and divided again into myriads of white, stabbing lances as it was broken into glittering bits upon the edges of the slender instruments they held.

  Let them, let them . . .

  No, scream—scream or something, you idiot!

  In a second there would be the hypodermic or the anaesthesia and she would not be able to scream—“You’re so—so stupid . . .” she heard her voice saying, a dimly audible echo off the edges of infinity itself. “Sterilize me. Keep me from breeding. What I want, you fools! They all do, they all do, you know. And you, yourselves, give the answer to it. To our question, how much longer, how many, many more . . .”

  She could not be sure if she spoke waking or dreaming, in the delirium of exhaustion or in the unintelligibility of anaesthesia. But she was thinking the words, and she could still feel the motion of her tongue, its fuzzy touch against her teeth.

  The glittering instruments were immobile.

  “If heresy brings us this—this relief from a fear of forever being only a machine of flesh and blood to produce—to produce as any machine with no value whatever other than to produce until it falls into wreckage—then, then heresy will some day flourish, and you’ll all be wrinkled and old, and there will be no young voices.”

  She let the words bubble from her, not caring, yet somehow caring, somehow fighting with all her being. But it was not a clever ruse, for there was still not strength enough to consciously pit her wits against them. It was something else, this strange fight, something else that stemmed from deep within her.

  And now the murmur of voices above her had changed tenor, oddly interrupted by jagged bits of silence.

/>   Done something. What she had said had done something, and they were hearing her. Hearing her, so she must speak louder, must open her eyes wide and let the bright light send the stabbing flashes of pain deep into her brain, whip it stingingly into consciousness.

  It hurt, it hurt . . .

  Colored circles, drifting, but it was from the light—and she was thinking now, and in a moment she would be seeing their faces more clearly. Had to talk again . . .

  DOT lurched up on her elbows, felt the curious relaxation of a smile on her lips. “Go ahead! The rest of the women know what you’re going to do to me! And pretty soon they’ll let you do it to them! If we’re no good as an underground to stop you, we’ll let you use us to stop yourselves—think that one over before next election!”

  From somewhere very near her a voice said “Madame Blair, please. You are interfering with the operation!”

  But now the words were coming more easily. Her hands and feet were cold and wet, and her muscles shook, but now she was fighting with the last of the energy in her, she was fighting because she had found the chink in their armor, and she could widen it, could break through!

  “Oh, very well—I wouldn’t do that! Because I’ve been looking forward to this for so very long. Just to think, I’ll be comfortably dried up, and—it’ll be legal! No more fear!”

  “You must be silent, Madame Blair.”

  “Is there some new amendment to the precious Commandments that says I must be silent? The last one I heard was just before I was brought here—Yes, have you heard the latest, gentlemen? An amendment prohibiting the execution of a sentence on an official’s wife, until that official is present as a legal witness? But no, I can see you haven’t, and hope you get into all kinds of trouble! Chapter—Chapter 580, gentlemen—Book 631, Section 451, Paragraph A, Sub-paragraph 34, Sentence.”

  And abruptly she let the bitter spurt of words taper into silence, and her eyes were wide. Only one of them was at her side—the rest were suddenly grouped around the one in charge, who was nervously fingering a telecall dial.

  Like children! Doug said they were creatures of pattern, and something had suddenly smashed the pattern to smithereens, and they dared do nothing until they had a firm hold on the torn-up ends again. She had got them scared stiff!

  This is it, girl! Move!

  The last of her strength. A swift, sidewise kick, and she buried the heel of one bare foot into the groin of the man who had stayed to guard her. She had braced her other leg on the edge of the low operating table, and thus anchored, the kick carried all the merciless, impact that was needed. She did not wait to see the quick look of agony that mottled his face and she was off the table and running before he had sunk silently to his knees. The surgical robe was short and did not hamper her legs, and for the first time since she was a little girl, she ran for the sake of pure, uninhibited speed. She had reached the door marked EXIT ONLY before the rest of them realized what she had done, and then they were after her, their howling voices a mixture of disbelief and dismayed anger.

  It was a long, wide corridor. The enraged shouts of alarm behind her had already turned it into a thunderously echoing cacophony of pure and terrible noises, and she knew that within moments, around some turn ahead of her there would be more of them, and she would be trapped, and it would be all over.

  She would have let the sudden pain in her side double her when, less than a hundred feet ahead of her, more of them did appear; her flagging strength would have let her fall at their feet had she not seen it at the last moment, hardly twenty feet from her—the thing for which she’d been so desperately looking, had not been able to see through the stinging mist that still made things blur uncertainly . . . Another door. Another door marked SERVICE EXIT at the top.

  She ran through it, breath sucking painfully into her lungs, the surgical gown already wet and clinging to her with ice-cold sweat. A long steel ramp, forty feet above the ground, curving in a gentle half-spiral to the broad street below.

  She fled the curving length of it, swiftly past other service exits, her flight becoming more of a fall each split-second than a run, for her legs would not keep up. And then her momentum pitched her headlong into the street and she struggled desperately for balance.

  She heard them behind her, feet thundering on the ramp, thundering in her ears.

  A silver vehicle sped by, missed her, its undertow plucking at the sodden fabric of her garment. Another, and then suddenly the thundering grew louder and there was no more strength left.

  The speeding golden-hued vehicle bore down on her, and Dot screamed, fell headlong in its path.

  DOUG’S error was wide, but mercifully, he had led his target by too great a distance rather than by too little, and the ecliptic had been right. It would not be a chase, but a meeting. He brought Ship QT into a sharp, angling turn when he was sure, and there was silent thanksgiving at his lips as the moon of Earth rolled slowly far below him. And Earth itself became a pale blue bull’s eye, growing perceptibly larger with each minute in the viewscreen.

  He did not unlock the top button. He could be already many, many hours too late, but there was no knowing.

  Like a great torpedo, the ship hurtled toward its target as though to blast it from Space. In eight minutes it would be midway between Earth and its moon, and in nine, Doug would invert, cutting the difference between crash and controlled landing perilously thin.

  “Terry, get the dead man’s sword and belt. Mike, help me find some tools—anything that even looks like a wrench.”

  When two of the nine minutes were gone, Doug had found a tool that would serve. When a portion of the third was gone he had a section of the communications panel naked. When seven of them were gone he had its high-kempage pack loose on its bearers, and when there were but seconds left in the ninth, he had it free, and lashed with torn strips of his cloak to one of the hammocks.

  “Hold on, now,” he said then. His voice was raw and it hurt to talk. There was a dryness in his mouth that made his words fuzzy and indistinct, and his tongue felt swollen enough to choke him. “I want both of you on that hammock—get that thing between you, strap yourselves down, and then hold onto it for all your life. When we land, get the straps off quickly, and—” he clenched his teeth, had to push the words through them, “—and have your swords ready.

  I’ll take care of the rest; you just follow me. Understand, boys?” They nodded silently, strapping themselves securely to the hammock.

  Three seconds . . . two, one. Release the top button. Press the panel full around, all the way . . . there go the bow belly-jets—stern jets topside . . . Top button, all the way in, twist it—

  The Moon swam into the viewscreen, was shrinking fast, too fast. No, slowing a little . . .

  He swung the screen to full stern, and Earth was rushing up, not quite yet filling it.

  Speed in thousands per second . . . sixteen . . . fifteen point five—fifteen. The needle fell so slowly. Gravs were coming up, one point five—two full. Over two now, and speed falling a little faster.

  Earth filled the screen.

  And then he took his eyes from the dials, for he knew that whatever they read, he was at the full mercy of the ship itself. The top button was all the way in, and locked. She was giving all she had.

  When the grav indicator quivered at four, Doug slumped to the deck, unable to stand. He rolled to his back, winced, and tried to keep his eyes on the grav needle.

  THEY blurred, stung in oceans of hot tears. The shrill siren-scream of atmosphere pierced the thick, heavily insulated hull and Doug knew what was coming—heat, unbearable heat.

  His short gasps seared his mouth, and his heart was like a gigantic pile driver inside him, struggling to burst its way through his chest.

  And then as though it had all been but part of a timed experiment in some weird laboratory, the sensation of being crushed to death began to abate. He could see the grav needle again, and it had already fallen back to two. Speed was now in unit mi
les per hour, and the figures were dropping from nine hundred.

  Doug forced himself to his feet.

  “Dad . . . Dad, are we O.K.? Dad?”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  When the grav needle was steady at One, Doug reduced thrust to hold them hovering at a little more than two hundred thousand feet over the Atlantic, with the coastline of what to him was France almost directly below.

  A sickening, quick drop and the horizon-ecliptic indicator showed parallel flight, and Doug could feel the thrust of the belly engines beneath his feet. Then he pressed the bottom button, then the middle, and the Atlantic was rushing beneath them. Carefully, he depressed the next one up. All the way in, he locked it. The velocity figure in unit miles per hour was fifteen thousand.

  Eleven minutes later he cut the power again, slowed, brought the ship once more on its stern, and began his descent over Washington.

  Within moments they would spot him, would be ready.

  It would have to be fast, miles from the central space-port—a suburb, near a highway.

  He let her fall fast. Ten thousand. Eight. Four.

  He tilted, angled a little north and west, then dropped again.

  At five hundred feet he trebled the power, and it was as though a great ’chute had snapped open above them.

  Three hundred feet—the highway perhaps a quarter of a mile distant.

  No one down there, but they could be hiding, waiting.

  Fifty feet. Had to time it just so, now . . .

  The last ten feet they fell.

  CHAPTER XIX

  HE estimated that there would be five minutes at the most before the area was flooded with S-men. The rest of the gamble hinged entirely on what they succeeded in doing, or failed to do, within the space of a few hundred heart-beats.

  They made the roadside in little more than a minute after leaving the ship. Terry and Mike lay prone in the wide drainage gutter, their swords drawn, their bodies camouflaged by a few handfuls of hastily hacked scrub brush.