Collected short fiction, p.723
Collected Short Fiction, page 723
3.
Toolsmith waved a casual sunburnt hand at the cutaway planet in the stereo tank.
“Our material.” He gestured toward the opposite tank and its image of that enormous blackwinged silver wheel spinning against the field of stars. “Our product.”
“And that?” Shaken, Blacklantern glanced into the appalling pit projected beneath their feet. “Your mine?”
“The initial excavation.” Toolsmith nodded. “We’re only beginning. But we’re miners. We own mining rights here. We’re mining the planet.”
“How much of it?”
“As a matter of fact—” The engineer hesitated, blue goggles unblinking. “All of it.”
“So it’s true?” With a shiver of awe, Blacklantern looked down again into the image of that bottomless chasm. “Your big metal worms are really eating up Nggongga?”
“A naive description.” Toolsmith shrugged. “I know the story has disturbed the natives, but there’s not much they can do about it. Their own ancestors sold us legal rights to do what we’re doing. We aren’t stopping now. Not even to please the Benefactors.”
“Did Snowfire ask you to stop?”
“She implied that she might. She wanted to investigate. She was worried about the native population when we use up the planet. I told her we’ve made plans for that. We’ve been here for generations now, with a heavy investment in preliminary surveys and special equipment. We can’t afford to quit.”
“What will you do with a whole planet?”
“Because of native ignorance and superstition, we’ve never discussed that here.” The blue goggles studied him. “Your own agent found it hard to understand. Yet, as a Benefactor, you’re entitled to know. We’re swarmfolk.”
Blacklantern stared uneasily at the mad dance of changing forms and fiery symbols in the computer display, but he found no meaning there.
“You appear puzzled.” Toolsmith turned. “Come along. Manager Goldforge is out, but I can show you a model swarmworld in his office.”
The office was enormous but Nggonggan, stifling with a heavy stale sweetness of chewed saltflower seed. A purple-splashed spittoon flanked the great desk of polished dark-red hardroot. One big window overlooked the narrow harbor and the docks. Blacklantern turned from that to the opposite wall, where tall cases held trophies of the hunt.
“Manager Goldforge is three-fourths native,” the engineer commented affably. “The family has always embraced the native people and their culture.” He waved at the racks of antique manguns and shrunken trophy heads. “But here’s what I wanted you to see.”
Opposite the spittoon, a thin pedestal was topped with a small bright globe. A tight swarm of silver sparks particles surrounded it, crawling along orbital circles. Blacklantern leaned to peer, but their shapes were too small to be distinct and their moving glitter was almost hypnotic. He looked back at the engineer.
“A model of our solar system,” Toolsmith said. “It was colonized twenty thousand years ago by one of the first starships from Old Earth.”
“That cloud of sparks?—?” Blacklantern stared again. “Where are the planets?”
“Used up,” Toolsmith said. “You see, our forebears made a lucky planetfall. With a good environment for technological progress they never fell back into savagery the way your own people did. In a few thousand years they were overcrowding all the worlds of their system and exhausting all the surface resources. Their solution was the swarmworld.”
He waved at the cloudlet around the model sun.
“They discovered something that the Game clan elders are still too savage to perceive. A planet, seen as a dwelling for men, is fantastically inefficient. Most of the mass, with nearly all the useful metal, is buried out of reach. Most of the solar power is wasted, escaping past the planet into empty space.”
Blacklantern blinked into the bulging goggles.
“So we turned to space. We rebuilt the moons and then the planets into space vehicles—like the one you saw back in the tank. They spin to simulate gravity. Their vanes catch solar energy. Using them, we’ve multiplied our living space and our resources many thousand times. But, a few generations ago, we saw another crisis coming. Our last planet was nearly gone. That’s why we’re here.”
“To turn all Nggongga into space machines?”
“In time.” Toolsmith nodded blandly. “We look ahead. This planet was carefully chosen. An excellent mass composition, mostly nickel-iron. Light elements for water and air, in a cometary object. A stable and powerful sun. A tiny population, too backward to matter.”
“But it was—ours!”
“Don’t upset yourself.” Toolsmith stopped to pull an elaborate bar out of the desk. “Help yourself to the manager’s best and let me tell you how it is.”
He waved the glittering bottles away. “Just tell me.”
“We aren’t demons.” Toolsmith stopped to pour himself a drink. “Our excavators aren’t the monsters old Flintbreaker imagines. It will take them several generations to reach any important settlements. When that time comes, we’ll take care of the natives. Retrain them for survival. Subsidize migration. We’ll even build vehicles for any who choose to move into space. Fair enough?”
“I don’t like it.”
“Look at the ethics.” Toolsmith waved his glass persuasively. “The greatest good of the greatest number. Nggongga now supports two hundred million people—most of them in miserable poverty. We can use the planet to make room for a few million times as many—each enjoying a far greater wealth of mass and energy. Is that somehow wrong?”
“I’m still Nggonggan.” He backed uneasily away. “I still don’t like it.”
“Neither did Snowfire. She’s afraid of harming the native culture.” Toolsmith chuckled. “The only thing in danger during her lifetime is the ritual headhunt—which I don’t value as much as she and Goldforge do.”
“You say she wanted to look at your mine.” He tried to see through the goggles. “Did she speak of any plans?”
Toolsmith dropped his freckled hands in that negative gesture. “When I couldn’t let her use our transport system, she asked for maps and air charts. Perhaps she meant to hire a flyer.”
“The agency owned one, when I was here before.” Blacklantern frowned. “A battered old machine. Not fit for a flight to the highlands. I hope she didn’t take off in that.”
“I’m afraid Nggongga’s too wild for her.” Toolsmith turned to show him out. “Sorry I can’t help, but Goldforge makes our policy.
My own advice would be to leave Nggongga while you can.”
“I can’t,” he said. “Not without Snowfire.”
Back on the hot street, with no other lead, he decided to try the residential compound. It was off the beach beyond the docks, in the Sea clan suburbs. Approaching on a feeder strip, he found two officers on guard outside the door. He rode on to the next terminal, walked back through alleys.
The real wall was smooth concrete, topped with steel spikes. Searching for a way to scale it, he saw fresh-turned gravel at its foot and uncovered the yellow plexoid arms of a burglar’s catapult.
Some intruder was already here!
After a moment of startled thought, he bent to reset the device, stepped on the arm. It flung him skyward. He caught the spikes, guided himself over the wall, came down on a rooftop air pad. The old flyer was gone. The yard below was empty.
Listening for the burglar ahead, he heard only far street sounds. He went down an outside stair, stopped behind a fragrant clump of purple-blooming heartfruit. Under the windless heat, the yard lay hushed and empty. Across the walk a door hung open, the lock broken.
With a sense of brief elation that his boyhood skills had not been forgotten, he crept into the house. The wide hallway was as still and empty as the garden. He peered into a pantry, the kitchen, a high-raftered dining room.
A thin sour scent of paragas led him to what must have been Snowfire’s bedroom. Its lock was broken. Inside, he found a silent record of vandalism. A litter of tangled clothing, broken toiletries, scattered books and tapes, all steeped in that stale reek.
At a sound in the hallway, he ducked into a closet. The garments left there carried Snowfire’s sweetleaf scent, stronger than the fading paragas. Crouching behind them, he saw his fellow intruder at the door—and almost gasped with surprise.
Nearly naked, the man was a yellow-eyed, copper-skinned giant. One of the twins who had tried to paragas him on the float—but that couldn’t be! He had left one of them dead, the other unconscious. Yet this scowling giant resembled them exactly, which made them triplets.
The giant muttered something, spurted purple spit at the torn-up bed, shambled on.
Blacklantern followed to the air pad, watched him recover the catapult, fold it into an innocentlooking case, and stride down the alley.
Sprinting in the opposite direction, he was in time to be standing on the feeder strip when the big man swung aboard. On the main way, the man bought a sea-berry ice. He let a boy clean his boots. Back in the interworld zone, he left the strip in front of a flashy new business tower. A street sign read:
BIO-TECHNIC INSTITUTE
Dr. Killbird
A dozen steps behind, he followed into an ornate lobby. The big man stalked on through an inner door. Blacklantern found himself facing a slim young black girl at a huge pale plexoid reception desk. She wore the Sun clan tattoo on her forehead, a pale blue circle rimmed with red teeth. When she spoke, he expected her to use the Sun clan dialect, but her audible voice had an alien, singsong intonation.
“—Institute.” His translator caught it. “Do you wish to see Dr. Killbird?”
“I’m not quite sure.” Trying to discover why people saw Dr. Killbird, he looked around the waiting room. The wall was rich imported hardwood, the carpet luxurious, the air so cool he almost shivered. A long stereo tank held a dozen tall nude dolls on rotating stands.
“Did somebody send you?” The girl’s keen stare explored him. “If you’re offering yourself, you’ll have to see the business office.”
“I need more information.” He returned her searching look. “Are you native?”
“My body is.” Behind the ivory desk, she rose and turned for him like one of the dolls in the tank. “Nice, don’t you think? I’m certainly happy with it.”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“I’m a transfer.” She arched herself to display her bare breasts. “I came here an old woman. Ill and dying. Dr. Killbird’s clones found this body for me. The girl had lived in some mud village. Her people had found no husband for her, and they sold her cheap enough. Now Dr. Killbird is letting me work but the fees.”
She leaned to study him again. “If you want a white body, I’ll show you what we have.” She pointed at the stereo tank. “I’m afraid our stock is always low—”
“You buy and sell bodies?” He peered again at the rotating dolls. “How can that be?”
“A bio-technic art. The last term in human progress—everlasting youth!” Again she preened her dark beauty. “Dr. Killbird learned it on a far planet. Perhaps his fees are high—but what he sells is priceless.”
“I see.” He nodded dazedly. “If I wanted to be white—”
“You would select a white body. In the lab he would lay you beside it. With his holographic pickup he would scan the synaptic patterns of both brains. Exchange them all from one to the other. Your memory, your personality, your identity—all that is you would wake in the new body.”
She must have seen an unconscious shudder.
“There’s no pain at all,” she assured him. “You begin with light anesthesia, but the process itself is anesthetic, once the scanning starts. The whole exchange takes less than an hour. When you awake, in a strong young body, it’s being born again!”
“What becomes of the old ones?”
“Who cares?” She made a charming face. “The clones dispose of them somehow—”
She paused. An inner door had opened. An angry woman burst through, followed by a tall protesting man in white.
“No excuses, Doctor!” Her audible voice was high and harsh. “I’ve come four thousand light-years for a transfer, and I know what I want.”
“Please! Most gracious Redflower!” The doctor was thin, almost cadaverous. Bright metal gleamed about him: As he came nearer, pursuing his indignant client, Blacklantern saw that his whole body was supported by an elaborate mechanical exoskeleton as if the gravity of Nggongga was too much for him. “You must see the difficulties—”
“You can’t con me!” Her voice rose higher. “I won’t be black!”
“But the planet’s black.” The doctor spoke in hissing alien sibilants, assisted by an amplifier. “We can get fine black bodies. Now and then a splendid hybrid. But light skins are rare here—”
“I want the one your people showed me,” the woman shrilled. “That one!”
She strode toward the stereo tank, pointing at a pale nude doll. Blacklantern moved after her, staring. With its pale-gold skin and red-gold hair, the doll looked suddenly familiar. As it turned on the stand, he recognized its green-gold eyes, its haunting smile.
It was Snowfire!
The woman stood waggling her finger at it. Goser to her now, he saw the wasted flesh and wrinkled skin beneath her cosmetics. She reached as if to snatch the doll with her red-enameled talons, whirled back to face the doctor with terror and fury in her haggard eyes.
“That’s my body!” she shrieked. “The one they promised me!”
“Most gracious Redflower, please let me explain.” His amplified sibilants hissed through the waiting room. “You must understand that such a specimen is never easy to obtain, even here on Nggongga. The arrangements are troublesome, ethically and financially and legally. When this model was prepared, my people expected to have the original available, but they’ve had difficulties.”
“If you want my money, find that body!”
“We’ll make every effort, but I can promise nothing.” As the doctor swung to face him, Blacklantern could hear the tiny whine of of motors. Staring from a nearly fleshless skull, deep-sunk eyes measured him shrewdly. “Sir, what’s your problem?”
“It’s too hard for you,” Blacklantern told him. “I’ll just keep the body I have.”
Turning toward the doorway, he froze. Two black policemen were entering. Between them, they supported a reeling copper-skinned giant. One of them called to the girl at the desk:
“This man was gassed on a freightway passenger float. An otherworlder clone. He says he’s employed by Dr. Killbird—”
The giant broke from the officers, lunged suddenly at Blacklantern.
“The killer!” his alien voice squealed. “He murdered my clone brother!”
Blacklantern bent to dart for the street door, saw the officers pulling their guns. He turned to dash for the inside door, met the third clone plunging out. He spun to look for another escape, faced a thin-tubed gun in the doctor’s power-aided hand. It clicked.
He felt the string of a dart—
4.
The cage was shaped like a thin barrel, just large enough to hold him. Two dun-furred nearmen carried it, hung between them on springy lancegrass poles. To keep his balance, he had to clutch the yellow bars.
A whip-cracking warden ran behind, cursing the nearmen. They carried him out of the cell block, down a wide arcade of hunting-gear shops, past the offices of the sacred game, at last into the crowd-packed courtroom.
The nearmen dropped his cage on the floor of a gloomy pit. Steep tiers of seats rose all around, packed with the hunters and the curious. The heat was stifling. Sweating blacks chewed their saltflower seed and spat into the pit. Fanning big hats, they mixed the sharp sweetness of their spittle with the stale ammoniac reek of the nearmen stabled in the basement.
Alien voices trilled. They meant nothing, because his translator was gone. Squirming to turn in the coffin-sized cage, he found tourists shuffling past. White wisps of condensation veiled their cooler suits, and his naked skin felt a momentary chill. Their guide herded them on into a reserved bank of seats to watch this traditional bit of Nggonggan justice. The nearmen barked again. The crowd buzzed and the guide pointed. Twisting around, he found Snowfire.
Stripped, she was streaked with sweat and grime. Her pale hands gripped the lancegrass bars. Yet she stood proudly straight. Her green-gold eyes swept the gazing crowd, level and aloof, still somehow brave.
“Dzanya!” he called. “Dzanya Dzu!”
She cried out with startled joy before she found him in the cage. Her voice fell then. He could hear her dazed emotion, but the words meant nothing. Trying to answer, he watched her first elation fade into new despair.
Pity swept him. He thought she was too clean and fine and fragile, too highly cultured, to endure the primitive cruelties of Nggongga. But he couldn’t tell her anything. Her translator, like his own, had been taken away.
On a platform a bailiff banged the floor with the butt of his lancegrass spear. The pit fell silent. The lean old Elder Huntsman mounted his high official stool, and the bailiff began a droning chant.
Oppressed with his sense of Snowfire’s sick bewilderment, Blacklantern heard only occasional phrases in the archaic legal dialect.” . . . alleged trespass upon the sacred gamelands . . . accused killer of a certain otherworlder, a clone called Ooth Ansk . . .” Searching the high rows of faces for some hint of aid of hope, he found only staring curiosity, blank apathy, the brighteyed lust for blood.
“. . . prisoners.” The bailiffs spear had thumped the floor again. He twisted in the cage to find Flintbreaker’s tattooed snarl fixed upon him. “You stand accused of high crimes against the peace of Nggongga and the immemorial justice of the Game clan. Do you wish to speak to the court?”
“I do.” Gripping the bars, he peered up at the black clan elder. “We came here as agents—” Hoarse from the reeking stable dust, he tried to raise his voice. “We are lawful agents of the Benefactors. In exchange for our aid to Nggongga, we were promised safety here. I demand—” His voice broke again. “For Agent Snowfire and myself, I demand our rights under the treaty of entry.”
