Compleat collected sff w.., p.150
COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 150
"We'll fight," Marta said. "Does he know we'll fight?"
Fenton shook his head. He glanced around the little crowd.
"I'd like to talk to Kristin," he said.
Marta gestured toward the slope that led down into the farmland valley.
"We'll fight," she said again, uncertainly, as the car started. Fenton heard her and lifted a hand in salute, grinning without mirth or cheerfulness. He heard the man beside her speak as the car drew away.
"Sure," the man said. "Sure. What with?"
He knew Kristin as far as he could see her. He picked her figure out of the fur-clad group dark against the snow as they stepped out of the road to let the car go by. She waved as soon as she recognized him behind the glass. He drew the car to a halt, snapped on the heating units of the insulated suit he wore, closed the mask across his face and then swung the car door open. Even inside the mask his voice sounded loud as he called across the white stillness.
"Kristin," he said. "Come over here. The rest of you, go on ahead."
They gave him curious glances, but they nodded and trudged on down the hill toward the valley. It seemed odd to watch them carrying hoes and garden baskets in the snow, but the valley was much warmer below the mist.
Kristin came toward him, very tall, moving with a swift, smooth ease that made every motion a pleasure to watch. She had warm yellow hair braided in a crown across her head. Her eyes were very blue, and her skin milk-white below the flush the cold had given it.
"Sit in here with me," Fenton said. "I'll turn off the atmosphere unit and leave the door open so you can breathe."
She stooped under the low door and got in, folding herself into the too-small seat. Fenton always felt out of proportion beside these big, friendly, quiet people. It was their world, not his. If anyone were abnormal in size here, then it was he, not the Ganymedans.
"Well, Ben?" she said, her voice coming with a faint vibration through the diaphragm in his helmet. He smiled back at her and shook his head. He did not think he was in love with Kristin. It would be preposterous. They could not speak except through metal or touch except through glass and cloth. They could not even breathe the same air. But he faced the possibility of love, and grinned ironically at it.
He told her what had happened, exactly as it took place, and his mind began to clarify a little as he talked.
"I suppose I should have waited," he said. "I can see that, now. I should have kept my mouth shut until I'd been back on Ganymede at least a month, sounding things out. I guess I lost my temper, Kristin. If I'd only known, while I was still back on Earth ... if you could only have written—"
"Through the spaceport mail?" she asked him bitterly. "Even the incoming letters are censored now."
He nodded.
"So the planets will go on thinking we asked for the changeover," she said. "Thinking we failed on Ganymede and asked to be shut up in asylums. Oh, Ben, that's what we all hate worst of all. We're doing so wonderfully well here ... or we were, until—" She broke off.
Fenton touched the button that started his motor and turned the car around so they could look out across the broad plain below. They faced away from the Unit, and except for blurs of turquoise mist here and there where other warm valleys breathed out moisture and the exhalation of growing things there was no break in the broad sweep of snowy hills—the towers marching in a long row across the planet.
"Does he knew we'd die in the asylums?" Kristin asked.
"Would you?"
"I think we would. Many of us would. And I think we'd never have any more children. Not even the idea of having great-great-grandchildren who might be able to walk on Ganymede again would keep the race alive. We wouldn't kill ourselves, of course. We wouldn't even commit race-suicide. We won't want to die—but we won't want to live, either—in asylums."
She twisted on the smooth car seat and looked anxiously at Fenton through the glass of his respirator.
"Ben, if the planets knew—if we could get word outside somehow—do you think they'd help? Would anyone care? I think some might. Not the Earth-bred, probably. They wouldn't really know. But the Thresholders would know. For their own safety, Ben, I think they might have to help us—if they knew. This could happen to any Threshold group on any world. Ben—"
A blue shadow gliding across the snow caught her eye and she turned her head to watch it.
-
Then concussion heeled the car over.
Dimly Fenton heard metal rip around him against rocks hidden under the snow they plowed through. In the echoing immobility while the vehicle hung poised, before it settled back, he tasted blood in his mouth and felt Kristin's weight heavy against his shoulder, saw the black outlines of his own hands with fingers spread, pressing the glass against the whiteness of snow.
The car smashed over the edge, jolting downward on its treads, down faster and more roughly with each jolt. The winged blue shadow wheeled back and sailed over them again.
The silhouetted hands moved fast. Fenton was aware of them turning, pulling, gripping numbly at levers they scarcely felt. The idling motor exploded into a roar and the car sprang forward, straight down the unbroken slope.
Then the second blast came.
The rear of the vehicle lifted, hurling Fenton and the girl against the cushioned panel and the thick, shatterproof windshield, which released its safeties under the impact and vanished in a whirl of brightness somewhere outside. The treads screamed as the car ground across the bare rock and snow boiled up in a whirlwind around them. The car shot forward again to the very edge of the slope and hung tottering over a hundred-foot drop beyond.
There was a timeless interval of what felt like free fall. Fenton had time to decide that his instinct had been right. The fall was the safer choice. The car's interior was braced and shock-absorbent, and they would survive a drop better than another bomb-hit.
Then they struck the ground, whirled out, struck again, in an increasing avalanche of ice and rock and snow. The shocks changed to the thunder of bombs, and then absolute darkness and silence without echo.
Neither of them could have survived alone. It took Kristin's Ganymedan strength and vitality and the resilience that had kept her from serious injury, plus Fenton's knowledge of mechanics and his fierce, devouring anger.
Buried thirty feet under a solid, freezing mass of debris, Fenton whipped the girl with words when even her hardiness began to fail. With one arm broken, he drove himself harder still, ignoring the shattered bone, working furiously against time. Enough air was trapped in the loose snow to supply Kristin, and Fenton's respirator and suit were tough enough to survive even such treatment as this.
The mercury-vapor turbine that generated the car's power had to be repaired and started anew. It took a long time. But it was done. What Fenton wanted was the tremendous thermal energy the exhaust would give them. Very slowly, very carefully, using a part of the turbine sheath as a shield, they burned their way to the open air.
Twice settling rock nearly crushed them. Once Kristin was pinned helpless by the edge of the shield, and only Fenton's rage got them through that. But they did get through. When only a crust remained, Fenton carefully opened small view-cracks in the shadow, and waited until he was sure no hovering helicopter still waited. Then they climbed free.
There were signs in the snow where a copter had landed and men had walked to the edge of the abyss, even climbed part of the way down.
"Who was it, Ben?" Kristin asked, looking down at the footprints. When he did not answer, "Ben—your arm. How bad—"
He said abruptly, not listening to her: "Kristin, I've got to get back to the Unit. Fast."
"You think it was Torren?" she asked fearfully. "But, Ben, what could you do?"
"Torren? Maybe. Maybe Byrne. I'm not sure. I've got to be sure. Help me, Kristin. Let's go."
"To the village first, then," she said firmly, setting her marble-hard forearm beneath his elbow to steady him. "You'll never make it unless we patch you up first. Would Torren really do a thing like that to you, Ben? The nearest thing to a son he'll ever have? I can't believe it."
The dry snow squeaked underfoot as they climbed the hill.
"You don't know Torren," Fenton said. He was breathing unevenly, in deep gasps, partly from pain, partly from weariness, mostly because the air in the respirator was not coming fully enough to supply his increased need. But the outer air was pure poison. After awhile he went on, the words laboring a little.
"You don't know what Torren did to me, thirteen years ago," he said. "Back on Earth. I was sixteen, and I wandered out one night in one of the old Dead Ends—the ruined cities, you know—and I got myself shanghaied. At least, that's what I thought for three years. One of the gangs who worked the ruins got me. I kept thinking Torren's men would find me and get me out. I was young and naive in those days. Well, they didn't find me. I worked with the gang. For three years I worked with them. I learned a lot. Things that came in handy afterward, on some of the jobs Torren had for me—
"When I was tough enough, I finally broke away. Killed three men and escaped. Went back to Torren. You should have heard him laugh."
Kristin looked down at him, doubtfully. "Should you be talking, Ben? You need your breath—"
"I want to talk, Kristin. Let me finish. Torren laughed. He'd engineered the whole thing. He wanted me to learn pro-survival methods right at the source. Things he couldn't teach me. So he arranged for me to learn from—experts. He felt that if I was capable I'd survive. When I knew enough, I'd escape. Then I'd be a tool he could really use. Work-hardening, he called it."
Fenton was silent, breathing hard, until he got enough breath to finish. "After that," he said, "I was Torren's right hand. His legs. His eyes. I was Torren. He'd put me into an invisible Planetarium, you see—a Centrifuge like the thing he grew up in, the thing that made him into a monster. That's why I understand him so well." He paused for a moment, swiped vainly at the face-plate as if to wipe away the sweat that ran down his forehead. "That's why I've got to get back," he said. "Fast."
-
Only Torren knew all the secrets of the Unit. But Fenton knew many. Enough for his purpose now.
When the rising floor inside the column of the round shaft ceased its pressure against his feet, he stood quiet for a moment, facing the curved wall, drawing a deep breath. He grimaced a little as the breath disturbed his arm, splinted and strapped across his chest under his shirt. With his right hand he drew the loaded pistol from its holster and, swinging it from the trigger guard, used his thumb to find the spring hidden in the curved wall.
The spring moved. Instantly he swung the pistol up, the grip smacking into his receiving palm, his finger touching the trigger. The hollow pillar in which he stood slid half apart, and Fenton looked straight at Torren in his water bed.
He stood still then, staring.
The colossus had managed to heave himself up to a sitting position. The huge hands gripped the edge of the tank and, as Fenton watched, the great fingers curved with desperate fury on the padded rim. Torren's eyes were squeezed shut, his teeth bared and set, and the room was full of the sound of his harsh, wheezing breath.
The blind, gargoyle face hung motionless for an instant. Then Torren exhaled with a gasp and let go. There was a tremendous wallowing splash as the Protector of Ganymede plunged back into the water bed.
Fenton's gaze lowered to the long strip of floor beside the bath where a row of tiles had been lifted to expose the intricate complex of wires leading into the banked controls by which Torren ruled his palace and his planet. The wires lay severed on the floor, tangled fringes of them ripped and cut and torn out. It was almost as much a mutilation as if Torren's actual nerve-fibres had been torn. He was as helpless as if they had been.
There was a table set up a little distance from the bath. The key wires in the flooring snaked across the tiles toward the table. Upon it a control box had been set up, and the audio and video devices which were Torren's ganglia.
At the table, his profile to Fenton, Bryne sat, his long, thin body humped forward intently, the pale eyes fixed upon his work. He had a privacy-mute on the microphone he held to his mouth and as he murmured his fingers played lightly with a vernier. He watched the green line ripple and convulse across the face of an oscilloscope. He nodded. His hand struck down quickly at a switch, closed it, opened another.
"Bryne!" The breathless bellow from the tank echoed among the pillars, but Bryne did not even glance up. He must have heard that cry a good many times already, since this phase of his work began.
"Bryne!"
The shouted name mounted in a roar of sound up the well to the star-reflections far above and reverberated to a diminishing whisper that blended with Torren's heavy breathing. Again the huge hands slid futilely over the rim of the tank.
"Answer me, Bryne!" he roared. "Answer me!"
Bryne did not look up. Fenton took a step forward, onto the open floor. His eyes were hard and narrow. The blood had gone out of his face until the pale scar along his jaw was almost invisible. Torren, seeing him, gasped and was silent in the midst of another shout. The small eyes sunk in fat stared and then shut tight for an instant over a leap of strange, glancing lights.
"Why don't you answer him, Bryne?" Fenton asked in an even voice.
Bryne's hands opened with a sudden, convulsive gesture, letting the microphone fall. After a long moment he turned an expressionless face to Fenton. The pale eyes regarded the gun muzzle and returned to Fenton's face. His voice was expressionless, too.
"Glad to see you, Fenton," he said. "I can use your help."
"Ben!" Torren cried, a thick gasp of sound. "Ben, he's trying ... that ... that scum is trying to take over! He—"
"I suppose you realize," Bryne said in a quiet voice, "Torren sent a helicopter to bomb you when he found you were getting away from him. I'm glad he failed, Fenton. We're going to need each other."
"Ben, I didn't!" Torren shouted. "It was Bryne—"
Bryne picked up the microphone again, smiling thinly.
"It's going to be perfectly simple, with your help, Fenton," he said, ignoring the heavy, panting gasps of the Protector in the tank. "I see now I might have taken you into my confidence even more than I did. This was what I meant when I told you Torren hadn't very much longer to rule. The chance came sooner than I expected, that's all."
"Ben!" Torren was breathing hard, but his voice was under more control now. He swallowed heavily and said: "Ben, don't listen to him. Don't trust him. He ... he wouldn't even answer when I told ... wouldn't even pay any attention ... as though I were a ... a—" He gulped and did not finish. He was not willing to put any name to himself that came to his mind.
But Fenton knew what he meant. "As though I were a ... monster. A puppet. A dead man." It was the horror of utter helplessness that had disarmed him before Bryne. For thirty years Torren had sought and claimed power by every means at his command, driven himself and others ruthlessly to combat the deepest horror he knew—the horror of helplessness. It was that which frightened him—not the fear of death.
"Don't waste your sympathy, Fenton," Bryne said, watching him. "You know Torren better than I do. You know what he planned for you. You know how he's always treated you. When he saw you escaping, he sent the 'copter to make sure you wouldn't get away. He isn't human, Fenton. He hates human beings. He hates you and me. Even now he'll play on your sympathy until he gets you to do what he wants. After that ... well, you know what to expect."
Torren shut his eyes again, not quite soon enough to hide the little glitter of confidence, perhaps of triumph, in them. In an almost calm voice he said: "Ben, you'd better shoot him now. He's a plausible devil."
"Just what are your plans, Bryne?" Fenton asked in a level voice.
"What you see." Bryne's gaunt shoulders moved in a shrug. "I'll pretend he's ill, at first. Too ill to see anyone but me. This is a Maskelyne vodor I've got here. I'm working out a duplicate of his voice. It's a coup d'état, Fenton, nothing new. I've got everything planned thoroughly. I've done nine-tenths of the management of Ganymede for years now, anyhow. Nobody's going to wonder much. With your help, I can get the rest of the empire for us, too."
"And what about me?" Torren demanded thickly.
"You?" The pale eyes flickered toward him and away. "As long as you behave, I suppose you can go on living." It was a lie. No falser statement of intent was ever spoken. You could tell it by the flat tone of his voice.
"And the Ganymedans?" Fenton asked.
"They're yours," Bryne said, still flatly. "You're the boss."
"Torren?" Fenton turned his head. "What do you say about the Ganymedans?"
"No," Torren breathed. "My way stands, Ben." His voice was an organ whisper. "My way or nothing. Make your choice."
