Part 4 (1/2)
”Oh, G.o.d, they're going ahead,” Nantli exclaimed. ”c.o.x-”
”All the way,” c.o.x said. He turned back and gripped Vivyan's head. ”They lied to you, can you understand? We were wrong. We were the butchers. The Empire, us. We're fighting it now, Vivyan.
You've got to come with us. You must. You owe it, Prince of Atlixco. We can use you in place, in their spy net-”
One of the big sealmen had come up and grabbed c.o.x's shoulder. Vivyan heard Nantli saying something and suddenly the white eyes had left him, they were all gone. Other sealmen and Terrans ran through, but no one bothered him.
He lay with his head whirling and hurting, wondering if it had been all right. His lips seemed to have spoken by themselves, as they did when he was with his friend. Was it all right? He must get out of here as soon as he could stand up.
He drowsed a little and then more sealmen were all around him, hooting, groaning, smelling of burnt flesh and blood. A body b.u.mped him. It was a Terran in a wetsuit oozing blood. The man slumped down, yelling, ”Hey Doc, you gloomy sod, we got the G.o.dd.a.m.n transmitters! You b.l.o.o.d.y pervert, Doc!”
he shouted. ”The Tlixcan s.h.i.+ps are coming in, how about that you gutless mother?”
”They'll burn the planet,” the doctor told him. ”Cut that off so you can fry clean.”
He hauled the man away. Vivyan saw that the pa.s.sage was now clear. Next minute he was out and running back the way he had come.
His memory was perfect, although he felt a little ill. All he had to do was let his feet carry him while his eyes and ears kept watch. Twice he ducked into side tunnels while sealmen went by with their wounded. Then he was at the place where many tunnels met, where they had removed his blindfold trusting to the maze.
Vivyan simply closed his eyes and let his body guide him back. Turn, rough place to the left, bend his head, cool air on his right side, the natural mechanism within him unspooled its perfect tape. He onlyhad to hide once more. These pa.s.sages seemed to be unused.
Presently he was through the inner pool and into the last dark tunnel undersea. This was easier yet, he could hear the water churning under the reef and he ran stooped in the darkness, longing to be out in the clean, away from this peaceless place. Surely they would take him away now to a new place, after he had given all these things to his friend?
He reached the cavern. No lantern now. That didn't matter, Vivyan knew exactly where to dive, how to come up under the reef. He kicked powerfully down into blackness, thinking he must be sure to remember everything. This must be a secret way to the caves, it would be a wonderful surprise.
In a moment he had surfaced and marked the horizon and the stars. There seemed to be fires on the sh.o.r.e. He began to swim eagerly, feeling marvelous now. This would be his best yet. If only the name Canc.o.xtlan didn't trouble his head... but he would forget about that, he felt sure. Peace flooded him as he saw the far light of his friend's house by the cove.
”No one noticed he had gone,” the woman told the newsman. ”The fight for the Enclave had started and Canc.o.xtlan was there. When the Terrans broke in through the reef tunnel we managed to blow the section between the hospital and the armory. They got the wounded, of course, and Doctor Vose. And Nantli. But it had no effect.” Her scarred face was impa.s.sive. ”c.o.x wouldn't surrender to save Nantli, she wouldn't have wanted that. The raid diverted one of their core units.”
They watched Vivyan's tall figure moving aimlessly along the terrace, glancing in the water. Seen from behind he looked older, stooped under the striking black hair.
”The s.p.a.cers were with us, did you know that?” The woman was suddenly animated. ”Oh yes, even the officers. When the cruiser from Atlixco showed up they all came in.” She grimaced. ”Three days before, we intercepted a s.p.a.ce Command signal about indoctrination to combat, quotes, apathy....
Empires grow old and foolish, even the revolt on Horl didn't wake them up. We'll have Horl next.”
She checked herself then. They saw Vivyan glance round quickly and turn toward the wall.
”We found him wandering, afterwards,” the woman went on quietly. ”Canc.o.xtlan's brother, after all... he never understood what he'd done. We think now he was basically r.e.t.a.r.ded, in addition to the conditioning they'd put him through. Nothing reached. You've heard of idiot savants? He's very gentle and that smile, one doesn't realize.”
The newsman remembered his own gut response to the gentle stranger and shuddered. Exquisite tool of empire. A deadly child.
Vivyan had halted before a peculiar carving in an alcove. The newsman frowned. A Terran eagle, here? The boy-man seemed to be whispering to it.
”He carved it himself. c.o.x let him keep it. What does it matter now?” The woman bowed her bleak head. ”Listen.”
By a trick in the wall structure the newsman could hear perfectly what Vivyan was whispering.
”...he says his name is Keller of Outplanet News. He didn't tell his first name. He says he came from Aldebaran Sector on the Komarov to interview the traitor Prince Canc.o.xtlan. He is about one meter eighty, medium build, gray hair and eyes. He has a scar on his right ear lobe and his timer is forty-five units ahead of planet time...”
MAMMA COME HOME.
The day Papa came home was the day my mama came home to me. That's the way I look at Earth's first alien contact. We may have changed some of our ideas about what's human, but one thing hasn't changed; the big history-tape events are still just background for the real I-Me-You drama. Not true? So, wasn't the U.S.-Sino-Soviet pact signed the week your daughter got married?Anyway, there they were, sitting on Luna. Although it's not generally known, there'd been a flap about a moving source around Pluto the year before. That's when C.I.A. decided that outer s.p.a.ce fell under the category of foreign territory in its job description-at least to the extent of not leaving the Joint Chiefs in total control of contact possible with the galaxy. So our little shop shared some of the electronic excitement. The Russians helped, they're the acknowledged champs at heaving up the tonnage, but we still have the communications lead-we try harder. The British and the Aussies try too, but we keep hiring their best men.
That first signal faded to nothing-until one fine April, evening all our communications went bust and the full moon rose with this big alien hull parked on the Lunar Alps. Sat there for three days, glowing bluishly in any six-power lens-if you could buy one. And you'll recall, we had no manned moon-station then. After peace broke out n.o.body wanted to spend cash on vacuum and rocks. The shape our s.p.a.ce program was in, we couldn't have hit them with a paper-clip in less than three months.
On A-Day plus one I spotted Tillie at the watercooler.
To do so I had to see through two doors and Mrs. Peabody, my secretary, but I'd got pretty good at this. I wandered out casually and said: ”How's George doing?”
She gave me a one-eyed scowl through her droopy wing of hair, finished her water and scowled again to make sure she wasn't smiling.
”He came back after midnight. He's had six peanut-b.u.t.ter sandwiches. I think he's getting it.”
There are people who'll tell you Tillie is an old bag of bones in a seersucker suit. For sure she had bones, and she's no girl. But if you look twice it can get a little hard to notice other people in the room.
I'd done the double take about three years back.
”Meet me at lunch and I'll show you something.”
She nodded moodily and lounged off. I watched the white knife-scar ripple elegantly on her tanned legs and went back through my office, fighting off the urge to push Mrs. Peabody's smile into her Living Bra.
Our office is a little hard to explain. Everybody knows C.I.A. is out in that big building at Langley, but the fact is that even when they built it there it fit about as well as a beagle-house fits a Great Dane.
They go most of the Dane in somehow, but we're one of the paws and tails that got left out. Strictly a support facility-James Bond would sneer at us. We operate as a small advertising agency in a refined section of D.C. which happens to be close to a heavy land cable and the Naval Observatory gadgets.
Our girls actually do some ads for other government agencies-something about Smoky Bear and Larry Litterbug is all over the first floor. We really aren't a big secret thing-not a Biretta or a cyanide ampoule in the place and you can get into our sub-bas.e.m.e.nt anytime you produce front and profile X-rays of both your grandmothers.
What's there? Oh, a few linguists and cold war leftovers like me. A computer N.S.A. spilled coffee into. And George. George is our pocket genius. It is generally believed he got his start making skin flicks for yaks in Outer Mongolia. He lives on peanut b.u.t.ter and Tillie works for him.
So when the aliens started transmitting at us, George was among the facilities. Langley called on to help decipher. And also me, in a small, pa.s.sive way-I look at interesting photography when the big shop wants a side opinion. Because of my past as a concocter of fake evidence in the bad old days. Hate that word, fake. Mine is still being used by historians.
Come lunchtime I went looking for Tillie at Rapa's, our local lifeline. Since Big Brother at Langley found that our boys and girls were going to Rapa's instead of eating G.S.A, boiled cardboard, Rapa's old cas.h.i.+er has been replaced by a virgin with straight seams and a camera in each, ah, eyeball. But the chow is still good.
Tillie was leaning back relaxed, a dreamy double-curve smile on her long mouth. She heard me andwiped it off. The relaxation was a fraud; I saw her hand go over some shredded matches.
She smiled again, like someone had offered her fifty cents for her right arm. But she was okay. I knew her, this was one of her good days. We ordered veal and pasta, friendly.
”Take a look,” I invited. ”We finally synched in with their beam for a few frames.”
The photo showed one side foggy, the rest pretty clear. Tillie goggled.
”It's-it's-”
”Yeah, it's beautiful. She's beautiful. And the dead spit of you, my girl.”
”But Max! Are you sure?” Her using my name was a good sign.
”Absolute. We saw her move. This, kid, is The Alien. We've even had every big cine collection in the world checking. It's not any sort of retransmission. See that script on her helmet and that background panel? T'ain't n.o.body's. No doubt where the send is from, either. That s.h.i.+p up there is full of people-type people. At least, women... What's George got?”
”You'll see the co-copy,” she said absently, grooving on the photo. ”He worked out about two hundred words in clear. It's weird. They want to land-and something about Mother. Like, Mother is back, or is home. George says 'Mother' is the best he can do.”