Infinity One (25 page)

At another time Roban might have glowed. On this night he could ask merely, “What do we do next?”

Luizo’s dryness restored a measure of balance: “You might start by removing his knife and gun.”

Roban hastened to obey. The pistol felt oddly heavy in his grasp. Luizo peered at the colonel. “Ah,” he murmured, “he is reviving. Let us see if we can’t utilize the initial confusion.”

Duna’s lids fluttered. He uttered a snoring sound. Luizo asked him a question in Baikalan. He mumbled and tried
to sit. Luizo gave him a jet of gas and, as he sagged, snapped and other inquiry. Duna mushed an answer and lay back.

Luizo straightened. “He says he came alone, without notifying his fellows. I will assume that is true. Primitive though our narcosynthesis is, we have nothing better, do we?”

More than ever, he appeared like a hawk stooping on prey. And a tingling went along Rohan’s own veins. Here finally was a time when men must decide and act.. . not any damned machine!

“Let us get dressed,” Luizo said. “We want the maximum psychological advantage. He is a tough one.”

“What can we do, sir? I mean, he—’’

“At worst,” Luizo clipped, “we can kill him, move the corpse elsewhere, and hope the death passes for accident or suicide.”

Roban was momentarily appalled. “Sir! Is the . . . the issue ... that important?”

“More.” Luizo paused. “I trust murder won’t be necessary. The risks are high, not to speak of the moral dilemma.” He tugged his beard. “The Domination itself is surely unwilling to run certain other risks. We can try to use that fact. . . . Dress, Brother, and fetch a glass of water. He will need it.”

That walk down the hall was the longest Roban had taken. Yet he encountered no soul. The hour stood at midnight over Lake Baikal, and the corridor on this level reached as empty as if nothing remained on the Moon except the unseen, susurrating machines.

When he came back, Duna was hunched on the bunk edge, elbows on knees, face in hands. Luizo offered him the tumbler and, in addition, a tablet from his personal medikit. “Take this. A stimulant and pain killer. You will feel more like yourself.”

The colonel did. Presently the slackness left his mouth, the haziness his eyes. Though a bruise had already begun to show among the tattoos on his jaw, he sat straight. Luizo confronted him from the single chair. Roban loomed behind, gun in belt.

“Well,” Duna said across the quietness. “You gave me a hard welcome.”

“We may have overreacted,” Luizo said. “However—” He pointed to the can where it lay on the floor.

Duna grinned, winced, and doggedly repeated the grin.

“An embarrassing situation, right? On bot’ sides, I t’ink. W’en I do not soon notify my men I am safe—”

“I doubt your men will worry before momwatch, Colonel.”

Duna stayed motionless. “Ah. Yas. I remember now, from barely awake. ... You should have been an intelligence officer, Primary.”

“Thank you. I assume you are?”

“Not as a regular, or I might have worked more smoot’. Dey figured me for de best qualified man to deal wit’ you because I am in a technical corps, and speak not only Inglis but your home language, Primary, w’ich I suspect is de language of your ciphered notes."

Luizo raised brows in an otherwise impassive visage. “Then you have already spied?”

“Glimpses. You gave no chance for more. I had no specific orders, you understand. I was to act at discretion, depending on how you behaved. Wen you showed bad fait’, well, I did w’at looked better dan provoking a crisis. I went ahead by myself, for not making any later scandal.”

“Why do you accuse us of bad faith? I have explained that translation will be a long-drawn-out process, and that the Order has always been reluctant to announce conclusions until certain they are not premature.”

Duna sighed. “Don’t let’s make insults. You know my government can keep its mout’ shut. It would not have assigned me if I could not. You could have told me of your tentative ideas. You did not even tell your assistant.”

“Because you might have planted recording devices on us—which you have, in effect, just admitted doing.” Luizo stabbed a lean finger at the Baikalan. “What sort of faith does that show?”

Duna scowled. “Credit me wit’ having t’ought about w’at I observed.”

“I admit I underestimated you,” Luizo said. “Shall we call the game quits?”

“No.” Watching Duna, Roban suddenly recalled a cougar he had seen readying to pounce.

The attack, when it came, was in words.

“W’en is de Kappan ship arriving?”

“What?” Roban cried. Luizo sat frozen-faced, but hands clenched tight on the arms of his chair.

Duna leaned forward. Triumph blazed from him. “In about sixty years,” he said. “Dat is a pretty good estimate, no?”

Through a noise of exploding suns, Roban heard Luizo say—for the first time, weakly—“You must be insane. What gave you any such idea?”

“I tell you.” Duna rose. He might not yet have been able to do that under terrestrial weight. Here, though, he stood over the Primacy, with legs planted wide, and Roban wondered how the story had ever started that Orientals are expressionless. His hands darted to and fro while he spoke, machine gun fashion.

“I t’ought from your behavior, you must be reading more easy dan you pretended, and it was terrible w’at you read but glorious too. Maybe a weapon you could use for conquering de Solar System? Not likely. Men already got lots; and de Order is not structured for conquering; and anyway, it loks like de star folk don’t make war on demselves like us. It has always been men w’at took ideas from de stars and turned dem to war use, like a photon-drive battleship. Right? Well, maybe you saw a doomsday machine in de latest information—but den you should have showed plain fear.

“W’at was a better guess? Well, suppose I was in charge at Kappa Ceti. I would t’ink, here are dese creatures at Sol. Dey don’t play question and answer like anybody else; dey are slow to grasp many ideas, and interested in odd subjects like botany and zoology; yas, dey are very strange. Sometimes dey actually stop transmitting for decades or centuries. Dis last breakoff . . . maybe de final message received spoke of a hurricane coming? I t’ink likely so. De last men here before dey evacuated it and went home to die, would dey not have wanted to send a cry across de light-years, ‘Remember us’?”

Luizo’s gaze dropped. “Yes,” he whispered.

The Baikalan pressed his advantage. “Question is, was de language so well developed by den dat de cry could be even half understood? W’edder it could or not, how else to learn de inwardness of dis peculiar race, after it falls silent for w’at might be forever—how else, except go in person?”

Luizo rallied and looked back up. “On what basis do you say your hypothetical ship will arrive in six decades?"

“T’irty-two light-years between. Records show dey sent a reply to de final message from us, and tried again w’en dey got no answer, because deir own last word came in here about a hundred years ago. Well, I allow maybe ten years after de second one drew blank, for building de ship and accelerating to full speed and so on. Dat fits in wit’ de date dat last transmission was received, surely announcing dey was on deir way. At one-sixt’ light velocity, dey will get here w’en I told you.”

Luizo sat in a silence where Roban counted pulsebeats.

Until the Primary said: “The arrival date they gave is fifty-eight years hence.”

Duna leaned on the bunkframe and let out a whistling breath.

Almost of itself, the gun moved from Roban’s belt and centered on the Baikalan. “Stay where you are, Colonel,” said a voice.

Duna congealed.

“What is this, Brother?” Luizo asked, sadly more than surprisedly, and not leaving his seat.

“Can we let him go, sir?” Roban replied.

Duna showed emotion only in the squaring of his shoulders. “I t’ink you damn better,” he said.

“Dare we, sir?” Roban begged. “Whether or not we have to die for his death? If the Domination expects them, it’ll arrange to meet them alone—tell them lies—get them on its side—”

Duna spoke softly: “W’ereass, if you reach dem first, you can hope for deir help in making independent Norrestland. Or maybe a Norrestlander Empire?”

Roban’s aim never wavered. But his tones did. “No! Simple freedom—for everybody . . .” The terror that had made him draw the gun began to fade. “Though maybe it d-d-doesn’t matter what we do, we three tonight,” he said. “A civilization that old, without war, in touch with its kind across how many light-years . . . they’ve got to be wise, benign, unfoolable. They’ve got to come as teachers and liberators—don’t they?”

Now Luizo climbed to his feet. He stayed out of the line of fire, but hardened his stare upon Duna. “What
I
fear,” he said, “is a hysterical attempt—by your country, by anyone—to destroy the Kappans as they enter the Solar System. It might succeed. They might not suspect defenses are needed. At best, imagine six decades of wrangling, intriguing, probably fighting, over which band of glorified apes shall have the right to meet the Galactic Ancients with what empty pomposities! ”

Tall in his robe, he told them both, “One human institution alone is conceivably fit to be man’s representative before them. It is for this that the Order of Communicators has existed.”

Silence anew, until Roban wondered wildly at the back of his head if the buzzing he heard there was, somehow, the talk between the stars.

Iwan Duna’s eyes sought his. “You have read little history, Brudder,” he said, almost caressingly. “But you must know legends, you must have imagination. I could tell you how de barbarians overran China or Rome to help one faction against anodder, de English India in deir turn, after deir ancestors took first Britain and den Ireland, how Cortez had native allies dat hated de Aztecs, how de Jovian moon colonies lost deir freedom—oh, over and over, always strangers getting into internecine wars. You can read de books later, dough. Tonight, Roban, t’ink, only t’ink. How easier can conquest happen and
everybody
come under de yoke—dan by one side asking for alliance? Divide and conquer—and dis time de conquerors will not be your fellow men!”

Luizo flung back: “You make the paranoid assumuption that a single spaceship represents a menace.”

“She does,” Duna said, “wit
¹
de knowledge aboard, if we let her.”

“You cannot accept that the Kappans are above such infantile games as conquest?”

“ ‘Conquest’ is maybe de wrong word,” Durta replied. “Maybe dey t’ink of it as ‘help,’ like evangelists bringing a true fait’ to de pagans wit’ fire and sword, or a technologically advanced society choking a pastoral one by sheer weight of economics."

He folded his arms. “Primary,” he said, “you could argue for holding de facts from me. But do you mean to keep from Roban de true nature of de Kappans? He could live to see dem come.”

Luizo smote first in palm and said, “Brother, you are right. We have to take care of this man, at whatever cost”

“You can kill me,” Duna said, “but den you cannot hear me. Roban, does it mean not’ing to you dat dis ship is traveling at one-sixt’ light speed?”

“Be still,” Luizo said.

“He has de gun,” Duna reminded them.

“I am your superior—” Luizo began, but Duna’s voice overrode.

“Organic life cannot survive de radiation. We learned
dat. No reason to believe dere were any lies. W’at can, den? Robots. Dat ship is crewed by robots. Computer brains, machine effectors, I don’t know how dey work but I do know dey got to be machines.”

“And what of it?” Luizo trod toward Duna. The colonel caught his wrist and stopped him, while keeping attention wholly on Roban and saying, in quick merciless words:

“Maybe organic beings would do it dat way. Not impossible. We would, if we had no choice.

“T’ink furder, dough, my friend. W’y is every planet de Order has contacted or been told about—a tiny sample, but consistent—w’y is all but ours so uniform? W’y do dey not take for granted we are interested in living creatures? W’y do dey use computer and physics symbolisms always? W’y never a sign of dat irrational t’ing we call de spirit?

“Oh, yas, you got a few pictures w’at you suppose are of intelligent animals . . . finally, casually, a sop to your odd curiosity. Maybe dose animals are not extinct yet— everyw’ere. Maybe on some worlds dey survive, tame, in small numbers—but makes no difference. Dey are obsolete, dey are being phased out, not by any dramatic revolt of de robots but by de logic of de machine civilizations dey demselves had founded.

“In de end—seems like in dis part of de galaxy, at least-technological society ends inevitable wit’ replacing silly, limited organic life by efficient computers and robots. Dey t’ink, yas; dey have awareness, curiosity, a kind of creativity; but all else we care about is dead and forgotten.”

Duna swung upon. Luizo. “Primary,” he rasped, “obviously de Kappans have realized dat we arc not machines. W’en dey come, do you hope dey will give its dat same Nirvana?”

Caught in the manacling grasp,the Communicator wet his lips and got out: “He’s crazy, Roban. We must silence him. Man isn’t enslaved, is he? What danger have we ever been in . . . except from our own lunacies?”

“Maybe.dose lunacies are w’at save us,” Duna said. “De odder races dat dwell on odder planets, maybe dey are more logical and meek dan de wild hunter man. We get so far in civilization, and den we feel de walls closing in and we revolt.”

“And smash the world and start over,” Luizo retorted. “Would you keep us forever bound to that wheel?”

“I did not say so,” Duna answered, calmer now. “I do not say, eider, we should attack de ship. No, no. Let us be very careful, but let us also learn w’at we can .. . and den, maybe, fare out among de stars and prove on behalf of our poor gone kinsfolk dat once loved and hated and feared and longed like us . .. fare out and prove w’at life can do.”

Luizo disengaged himself and turned to Roban. “I do not necessarily advocate anything else,” he said. “In fact, it would be folly to try to predict in advance what the Kappan robots can bring us, for good or ill. I do say that none but the Communicators are fit to deal with them.”