Compleat collected sff w.., p.114
COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 114
He could see that something was troubling her. He knew her face so well the slightest shadow on it was recognizable. There was a crease between her brows as she looked at Zachariah, and an expression of faint uncertainty, of puzzled anticipation flickered in her eyes.
Sam looked at his wrist. "Forty seconds," he said, and pushed back his chair. Every eye in the room followed him as he went over to the far wall, the wall where the long crack was widening, and flicked a switch in a six-foot frame. A shuttered screen, filling in the frame, began to open slowly. From behind it a faint, sweet, infinitely seductive humming swelled. Sam was reaching for the lid of a box set into the wall beside the frame when a buzz at Signa's visor interrupted him.
"For you, Sam," she said in a moment. "Hale."
He flicked the switch again, closing the screen, and went rapidly across the room. The Free Companion's brown imaging face looked up at him from the tilted visor.
"You alone, Sam?"
"No. Wait, I'll switch to earphones."
The face in the screen grimaced impatiently. Then, at Sam's signal the face vanished again and Hale's voice buzzed in his ears, unheard except by Sam.
"There's been a breakthrough," Hale said crisply.
"How bad?"
"Bad enough. Vibration did it. I told you I thought that plastic was too rigid. It's down in the lower court. They've already manned some of our own guns and swiveled them around. The upper bailey's going to start getting it in about five minutes. Sam—I think there's been a leak somewhere. They shouldn't even know how those needle guns work. But they do."
Sam was silent, his mind flickering rapidly from possibility to possibility. Hale himself was as suspect as any. It had been a long, long while since Sam had trusted the Free Companion. But he had made grimly certain of Hale's loyalty by insuring that public opinion bracketed the two men together. Hale profited by Sam's methods. Sam made sure all Venus knew it. He made sure that Hale's part in originating unpopular ideas—from the Immortality swindle on down—was fully publicized. It was fairly certain that Hale would have to back Sam up in all he did, if only to save his own hide.
"I've got Zachariah here," he said into the transmitter. "Come up, will you?" He slipped off the earphones and turned back to his prisoner. "Your minute's up," he said.
Zachariah appeared to hesitate. Then he said, "I'll talk to you, Sam on one condition. Privacy. We'll have to be alone for what I have to say."
Sam opened his desk drawer, took out a flat pistol and laid it on the vibrating desk-top, his palm over it. "You'll talk now, Zachariah Harker," he said, "or I'll shoot you. Right between the eyes." He lifted the pistol and regarded Zachariah down its barrel, seeing the serene Immortal face half blocked out by blued steel.
Silence. Then from far off, muffled by walls, the unmistakable piercing wail of a needle-gun bolt split the air of the inner fort. Impact, dull thunder, and a long sliding crash. The walls shook briefly to a new tempo and the crack widened at Sam's back.
Zachariah said, "You'd better let me talk to you, Sam. But if you'd rather shoot—shoot. I won't say it until we are alone."
Sam's hesitation was not very long. He knew now he was more shaken than he had realized until this moment, or he would never have surrendered to a bluff. But he let the pistol sink slowly, and he nodded.
Signa rose. "All right, guards," she said. They turned and went out through the still activated searcher lock. She put her finger on its switch and looked inquiringly at Sam. "Shall I go, too?"
"No," Sam said. "Not you." His voice was firm.
"Sam, I ... I'd rather go." She sounded oddly puzzled and distressed. It was Zachariah who spoke first.
"You stay, please," he said. She gave him another of her strange glances, uncertain, troubled.
Sam watched them, leaning his hands palm down on the desk and feeling the almost continuous vibrations of the bombardment. The air was pierced now and then by the screaming needle beams, and he did not like to think what was happening to his inner ring of defenses around the upper bailey.
"All right," he said. "What is it? Talk fast, Harker. I'm in a hurry."
Zachariah, hands still manacled behind him, crossed the room and stood looking out the bank of windows that framed a vista of distant sea.
"I'll show you," he said. "Come over here."
Sam came impatiently across the shaken floor. "What? What is it?" He stood beside the Immortal, but a safe distance away, for caution was second nature to him, and looked down. "I don't see a thing. What is it?"
Zachariah whistled the opening bars of Lilibulero ...
-
The room exploded with thunder.
Sam found himself reeling, choking, gasping for breath, with no clear idea of what had happened. A needle beam, he thought wildly. But then the whole room would be a shambles, and it was only himself, leaning one shoulder against the wall, shaking his head dizzily, breathing hard, who seemed affected.
He looked up. Zachariah still stood by the window, watching him with a kind of hard restrained pity. The room was untouched. And there was something the matter with Sam's shoulder.
That was where the blow had caught him. He remembered now. He put up an unsteady hand to the numb area and then looked unbelievingly at his palm, filmed with clear red. Something moved across his chest. Incredulously he bent his head and saw that it was blood. The bullet must have come out just under the clavicle.
Signa's soft, clear voice gasped, "Sam ... Sam!"
"It's all right ... it isn't bad." He was reassuring her even before he lifted his head. Then he saw her standing behind his desk, the flat pistol held in both shaking hands. She was staring at him with great, terrified eyes and her mouth was a Greek square of strained effort. Her stare shifted from Sam to Zachariah and then back, and the incredulity in it was very near sheer madness.
"I ... I had to do it, Sam," she said in a harsh, thin whisper. "I don't know why—there must have been a reason! I don't understand—"
Zachariah broke in, his voice gentle. "It wasn't enough, Signa," he said. "You'll have to try again, you know. Quickly, before he can stop you."
"I know ... I know." Her voice was a gasp. Normally she was a good shot, fast and easy, but she brought the pistol up in both hands, steadying it like a schoolgirl, squinting past the barrel. Sam saw her finger begin to draw up on the trigger.
He didn't want to do it. He would almost rather have risked the shot. But he dropped his right hand to his side, found through cloth the outlines of the tiny needle gun in his pocket, and shot from the hip without taking aim.
He did not miss.
For one long last moment, afterward, her eyes were wide and brilliantly violet, staring into his. Sam scarcely heard the thud of the dropping gun. He was meeting her blue stare and remembering another blue-eyed girl, very long ago, who had faced him like this and puffed oblivion in his face between her fingers.
He said, "Rosathe!" as if he had just remembered the name, and swung around toward Zachariah. It was the same triangle, he thought—Zachariah, Rosathe, Sam Reed—sixty years ago and now. There was no difference. But this time—
His fingers closed on the needle gun again and its bolt hissed again across the room. Zachariah, seeing it coming, made no move. But when it came within six inches of his chest it seemed to explode in midair. There was a scream of expended energy, a flare like a miniature nova, and Zachariah smiled unhurt into Sam's eyes.
What he said made no sense. He still looked at Sam, but he lifted his voice and called, "All right, Hale, it's up to you."
There was a challenge in the words. Sam had no time to puzzle it out. He set his teeth grimly and tugged the needle gun from his scorched pocket, lifted it toward Zachariah's face. There at least the Immortal could not be wearing armor.
He never pulled the trigger. From somewhere beyond him a familiar voice said wearily, "Harker—you win." And a searing light flashed blindingly into Sam's eyes.
He knew what it was. He and the Free Companion carried the little riot-breaker flashes instead of deadlier weapons for discipline. Blindness was not usually permanent after that glare had burned a man's eyes, but it did not pass quickly.
In the sudden darkness that had engulfed the room Sam heard Zachariah's voice saying, "Thank you, Hale. I was pretty sure you would—but not quite. That was close."
The Free Companion said, "I'm sorry, Sam."
And that was the last thing Sam heard in Plymouth Colony.
-
And Moses went up from the plains of Moab ... and the Lord said unto him, This is the land ... I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither ... And Moses died there in the land of Moab, but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.
—Deuteronomy
There was a swimming dark, and the roaring of winds. And then vague patterns of light that were presently a face—the head and torso of an old man, a shrewd-faced, wrinkled old man Sam recognized. Beyond him was a bare alloy wall, and a dim light came from somewhere.
Sam tried to sit up, failed, tried again. He could not move. Panic leaped in his mind. The old man smiled.
"Take it easy, son. This is the way it has to be." He was packing tobacco into his pipe as he spoke. Now he held a flame to it, sucked the fire down into the bowl, blew out smoke. His mild gaze focused on Sam.
"Had to tell you a few things, son," he said. "Just in case. You're good and healthy again, in case you're wondering. You been here a few weeks, resting up, getting cured. Nobody knows but me."
Where? Sam tried to move his head enough to see the source of the light, the shape of the room. He could not.
"I got this hideout ready quite some while ago," Crowell went on, puffing. "Figured I might need it for something like this. It's under my potato patch. I'll be hoeing spuds on this parcel of land for a good long spell yet, I figure. Maybe a hundred years, maybe five hundred. That's right, I'm an Immortal. Don't look it, do I? But I was born on Earth."
He blew out blue smoke. "Earth had a good many fine things—the old place. But I could see what was coming, even then. I could see you, Sam Reed. Oh, not your name or your face, but I knew you'd be along. A man like you always is, at the right time. I can figure out the future, Sam. It's a talent I got. Only I can't interfere or I'll change the pattern to something different—what it'll be I can't tell for a while, after I've stepped in."
Sam made a frantic effort to stir one finger. Colored flecks of light danced before his eyes. He scarcely heard as the old man rambled on.
"Easy now," Crowell said quietly. "Just try to listen for a bit. I'm the Logician, Sam. Remember the Temple of Truth? You didn't believe the oracle at first, did you? Well, I was right. I was the machine, and I don't make mistakes, at least, not that kind.
"You were in the Temple for forty years, Sam. You wouldn't remember that, either. You were dream-dusting."
Dream-dusting? Sam's attention came back sharply. Was this the answer he had sought so long, given casually now, when it no longer meant anything? Crowell, the unknown guardian? But how—why—
"Zachariah was out to kill you. I could see that. I could see he'd succeed, unless I interfered. So I interfered—which upset the apple cart considerable. After that I couldn't figure out the future quite so close, till things evened up again. That's one reason I waited forty years. It's why I let you wake up in an alley, broke and disgraced. To even the scale, son. The way things are, when I give a good present I've got to give a bad one too, or it won't come out right.
"You had your troubles to straighten out then, and when you finished, the pattern was all set again. I could see what was coming."
Sam did not care. If he could only break this paralysis. He must—he must! Always before now he had drawn upon some deep reserve of strength no other man possessed. And it must not fail him now.
But it was failing him.
"You're not Sam Reed, you know," the Logician was saying. "Remember Blaze Harker? He had a son. Blaze was starting to go crazy then, or he'd never have hated the baby enough to do what he did. You know what it was, don't you? You grew up looking like a short-termer, but your name wasn't really Reed."
Blaze Harker. Blaze Harker, his face distorted, struggling in the strait-jacket—
I let him go! I could have killed him! He was the one—I let him go—
Blaze Harker!
Harker!
Sam—Harker!
-
"I couldn't tell you before," Crowell said. "It would have changed the future, and I didn't want it changed that way. Up till now we've needed you, Sam. Once in a long while a fella like you comes along, somebody strong enough to move a world. Oh, I guess other men had qualifications—like Rob Hale. Only Hale couldn't have done it. He could have done part, but there are things he never could make himself do.
"There's nothing you wouldn't do, son—nothing at all—if it would get you want you want.
"If you hadn't been born, if Blaze hadn't done what he did, mankind would be in the Keeps yet. And in a few hundred years, or a thousand, say, the race would have died out. I could see that ahead, clear as could be. But now we've come landside. We'll finish colonizing Venus. And then we'll go out and colonize the whole universe, I expect.
"You're the one who did it, Sam. We owe you a lot. In your day you were a great man. But your day's over. You got your power by force, and you're like most dictators, son, who reach the top that way. All you could think of was repeating the things that made you a success—more fighting, more force. There wasn't any way but down for you, once you'd reached the top, because of the man you are. You had the same drive that made the first life-form leave water for land, but we can't use your land any more for a while, Sam."
Drive? It was fury. It burned with blinding white violence in him, so hot it seemed strange the fetters of his paralysis were not consumed—it seemed strange the sheer violence of his rage could not send him headlong across the room at Crowell. To get above ground—smash Hale. Smash the Harkers—
The Harkers. But he was a Harker, too.
Crowell said, "Men like you are mighty rare, Sam. When they get to the right position, at the right time, they're the salvation of the race of man. But it's got to be the right time—a time of disaster. The drive never stops, in a man like you. You've got to get on top. You've got to, or die.
"If you can't conquer an enemy, you'll conquer your friends. Up to now the enemy was Venus, and you licked it. But what have you got to fight now?"
"Man."
"There's going to be a good long time of peace, now. The Immortals have taken over. They'll rule well. You've left them a good foundation to build on. But it's time you bowed out."
Suddenly Crowell chuckled. "You thought you were telling a lie, Sam, when you promised immortality was up here landside, didn't you? It was the truth. They'll get their immortality. Ever think of that? Man was dying in the Keeps. Up here he'll live on—well, not forever, but long enough, long enough. The race has got immortality, Sam, and you gave it to 'em."
He puffed again at the pipe and looked down reflectively through smoke at Sam. "I hardly ever interfere with the running of things," he said. "Only once I had to kill a man. I had to. It changed the patterns so much I couldn't see the future for a long time after, but I'd already seen enough to know what would have happened if the man kept on living. It was bad. I couldn't think of anything worse. So I killed him.
"I've interfered again, because I know what the future would be like with you in it. This means I won't be able to guess what's coming for quite a spell. After that things will level off and I can take a look.
"This time I'm not killing. I learn more as I get older. Also, you're an Immortal. You can sleep a long, long while without losing anything. That's what you're going to do, son—sleep.
"And I hope you die in your sleep. I hope I'll never have to wake you up. Because if I do, it'll mean things have gone mighty bad again. You and I are long-termers. We'll still be around, barring accidents, for quite a stretch yet. And plenty of bad things can happen.
"I get glimpses. Nothing's set yet—too far ahead. But I see possibilities. The jungle could come back. New life-forms may mutate—Venus critters are tricky. And we won't stay on Venus forever. This is just the first colony. We'll go on out to the planets and the stars. There may be trouble there, too, sooner than you'd think. Maybe something will try to colonize our worlds, as we colonize theirs. There's peace and there's war, and it's always been that way, and I guess it always will.
"So maybe we'll need a man like you again, Sam.
"I'll wake you if we do."
The shrewd brown face regarded him from coils of smoke. The friendly, remorseless, judging eyes considered him.
"For now, though," Crowell said, "go to sleep. You've done your job. Sleep well, son—and good night."
