05-A Gift From Earth (16 page)

Darkness covered most of Mount Lookitthat.

The crew never knew it. The lights of Alpha Plateau burned undimmed. Even in the houses along the Alpha-Beta cliff, with a view across Beta Plateau toward the distant, clustered town lights of Gamma and Iota ... tonight that view was blanked by fog; and who was to know that the clustered lights were dark?

In the colonist regions there was fear and fury, but it couldn't touch Alpha Plateau.

No real danger threatened. On Gamma and Iota there were no hospitals where patients might die in dark operating theaters. No cars would crash without street lights. Spoiling meat in butcher shop freezers would cause no famine; there were the fruit and nut forests, the crops, the herds.

But there was fear and fury. Was something wrong, up there where all power originated? Or was it a prank, a punishment, an experiment ... some deliberate act of Implementation?

You couldn't travel without lights. Most people stayed where they were, wherever they were. They bedded down where they could; for colonists it was near bedtime anyway. And they waited for the lights to come back.

They would give no trouble, Jesus Pietro thought. If danger came tonight, it would not come from down there.

Equally certain, the Sons of Earth
would
attack, though they only numbered five. Harry Kane would not leave most of his men to die. Whatever he could do, he would do it, regardless of risk.

And Major Chin's fugitive had escaped, was loose two miles from the Hospital, wearing a police uniform. And because he had escaped, because he was alone, because no man had seen him clearly ... it had to be Matt Keller.

Five dossiers to match five, fugitives. Harry Kane and Jayhawk Hood: These were old friends, the most dangerous of the Sons of Earth. Elaine Mattson and Lydia Hancock and Matthew Keller: These he had come to know by heart during the long hours following the break this afternoon. He could have recognized any of them a mile away or told them their life stories.

The slimmest dossier was Matt Keller's: two and a half skimpy pages. Mining engineer ... not much of a family man ... few love affairs ... no evidence he had ever joined the Sons of Earth.

Jesus Pietro was worried. The Sons of Earth, if they got this far, would go straight to the vivarium to free their compatriots. But if Matthew Keller was his own agent ...

If the ghost of Alpha Plateau was not a rebel, but a thing with its own unpredictable purpose ....

Jesus Pietro worried. His last sip of coffee suddenly tasted horrible, and he pushed the cup away. He noted with relief that the mist seemed to be clearing. On his desk were a stack of five dossiers and a sixth all alone and a mercy-bullet gun.

In the lights of the Hospital the sky glowed pearl gray. The wall was a monstrous mass above them, a sharp black shadow cutting across the lighted sky. They heard regular footsteps overhead.

They'd crawled here side by side, close enough to get in each other's way. They'd broad-jumped the electric-eye barriers, Matt first, then Laney making her move while Matt stared up at the wall and willed nobody to see her. So far nobody had.

"We could get around to the gate," said Matt.

"But if Castro's cut off the power, we can't get it open. No, there's a better way."

"Show me."

"We may have to risk a little excitement .... Here it is."

"What?"

"The fuse. I wasn't sure it'd be here."

"Fuse?".

"See, a lot of Implementation is pure colonist. We have to be careful who we approach, and we've lost good men who talked to the wrong person, but it paid off. I hope."

"Someone planted a bomb for you?"

"I hope so. There are only two Sons of Earth in Implementation, and either or both of them could be ringers." She fumbled in the big, loose pockets of her mudspattered crewish finery. "Bitch didn't carry a lighter. Matt?"

"Lessee. Here."

She took the lighter, then spoke deliberately. "If they see the light, we're done for." She crouched over the wire.

Matt crouched over her, to shield the light with his body. As he did so, he looked up. Two bumps showed on the straight black shadow of the wall. They moved. Matt started to whisper, Stop! Yellow light flared under him, and it was too late.

The heads withdrew.

Laney shook his arm. "Run! Along the wall!" He followed the pull.

"Now flat!" He landed beside her on his belly. There was a tremendous blast. Metal bits sang around them, raising tiny
pings
against the wall. Something bit a piece from Matt's ear, and he slapped at it like a wasp sting.

He didn't have time to curse. Laney jerked him to his feet, and they ran back the way they had come. There was confused shouting on the wall, and Matt looked up to meet a hundred eyes looking down. Then suddenly the area was bright as hell.

"Here!" Laney dropped to her, knees, slapped his hand onto her ankle, and crawled. Matt heard mercy-bullets spattering around his ankles as he went in after her.

On the outside the hole was just big enough to crawl through on hands and knees. The bomb must have been a shaped charge. But the wall was thick, and the hole was smaller on the inside. They emerged on their bellies, with scratches. Here too was light, too bright, making Matt's eyes water. Startlingly, there were pits all in a row in the dirt along this side of the wall, and over the cordite stink was the smell of rich, moist new earth.

"Bombs," he said wonderingly. Pressure bombs, set off by the explosion, originally intended to explode under an invader dropping from the top of the wall. Bombs, meant to kill. "I'm flattered," he whispered to himself, and lied.

"Shut up!" Laney turned to glare, and in the lurid artificial light he saw her eyes change. Then she turned and ran. She was beyond reach before Matt had time to react.

Feet pounded all around them, all running at top speed toward the hole in the wall. They were surrounded! Amazingly, nobody tried to stop Laney. But he saw someone jerk to a stop, then go pelting after her.

And nobody tried to stop Matt. He was invisible enough, but he'd lost Laney. Without him, she had nothing but the gun ... and he didn't know how to reach Polly. He stood there, lost.

Frowning, Harry Kane inspected hands which didn't match. He'd seen transplantees before, but never such a patchwork man as Millard Parlette.

Lydia said, "It isn't artificial, is it?"

"No. But it's not a normal transplant job either."

"He should be coming around."

"I am," said Millard Parlette.

Harry started. "You can talk?",

"Yes." Parlette had a voice like a squeaky door, altered by a would-be musical crew lilt, slurred by the effects of a sonic stunner. He spoke slowly, consciously enunciating. "May I have a glass of water?"

"Lydia, get him some water."

"Here." The stocky virago supported the old man's head with her arm and fed him the water in small sips.

Harry studied the man. They'd propped him against a wall in the vestibule. He hadn't moved since then and probably couldn't, but the muscles of his face, which had been slack and rubbery, now reflected a personality.

"Thank you," he said, in a stronger voice. "You shouldn't have shot me, you know."

"You have things to tell us, Mr. Parlette."

"You're Harry Kane. Yes, I have things to tell you. And then I'll want to make a deal of sorts with you."

"I'm open to deals. What kind?"

"You'll understand when I finish. May I start with the recent ramrobot package? This will be somewhat technical — "

"Lydia, get Jay." Lydia Hancock quietly withdrew.

"I'll want him to hear anything technical. Jay is our genius."

"Jayhawk Hood? Is he here too?"

"You seem to know a good deal about us."

"I do. I've been studying the Sons of Earth for longer than you've been alive. Jayhawk Hood has a fine mind. By all means, let us wait for him."

"You've been studying us, have you? Why?"

"I'll try to make that clear to you, Kane. It will take time. Has the situation on Mount Lookitthat ever struck you as artificial, fragile?"

"Phut. If you'd been trying to change it as long as I have, you wouldn't think so."

"Seriously, Kane. Our society depends entirely on its technology. Change the technology, and you change the society. Most especially you change the ethics."

"That's ridiculous. Ethics are ethics."

The old man's hand twitched. "Let me speak, Kane."

Harry Kane was silent.

"Consider the cotton gin," said Millard Parlette. "That invention made it economically feasible to grow cotton in quantity in the southern United States, but not in the northern states. It brought slaves in great numbers to one section of that nation while slavery died out in another. The result was a problem in racial tolerance which lasted for centuries.

"Consider feudal armor. The ethics of chivalry were based on the fact that armor was a total defense against anything which wasn't similarly armored. The clothyard arrow, and later gunpowder, ended chivalry and made a new ethic necessary.

"Consider war as a tool of diplomacy." Millard Parlette stopped to gasp for breath. After a moment he went on. 

"It was, you know. Then came poison gas, and fission bombs, and fission-fusion bombs, and a possible fissionfusion-radiocobalt bomb. Each invention made war less and less useful for imposing one's will, more and more randomly destructive, until nationalism itself became too dangerous to be tolerated, and the United Nations on Earth became more powerful than any possible minority alliance of nations.

"Consider the settling of the Belt. A solely technological development, yet it created the wealthiest population in the system in a region which absolutely required new ethics, where stupidity automatically carries its own death penalty." 

The old man stopped again, exhausted.

"I'm no historian," said Harry. "But morals are morals. What's unethical here and now is unethical anywhere, anytime."

"Kane, you're wrong. It is ethical to execute a man for theft?"

"Of course."

"Did you know that there was once a vastly detailed science of rehabilitation for criminals? It was a branch of psychology, naturally, but it was by far the largest such branch. By the middle of century twenty-one, nearly two-thirds of all criminals could eventually be released as cured."

"That's silly. Why go to all that trouble when the organ banks must have been
crying
for — Oh. I see. No organ banks."

The old man was finally smiling, showing perfect new white teeth. Sparkling teeth and keen gray eyes: The real Millard Parlette showed behind the cracked, wrinkled, loose rubber mask of his face.

Except that the teeth couldn't be his, thought Harry. Nuts to that. "Go on." he said.

"One day a long time ago I realized that the ethical situation on Mount Lookitthat was fragile. It was bound to change someday, and
suddenly
, what with Earth constantly bombarding us with new discoveries. I decided to be ready."

There were footsteps on the stairs, running. Lydia and Hood burst in.

Harry Kane introduced Hood to Millard Parlette as if they were already allies. Hood took his cue and shook hands formally, wincing inside himself because Parlette's hand still felt like something dead.

"Keep that hand," said Millard Parlette. "Examine it."

"We already did."

"Your conclusions?"

"Ask you about it."

"Apparently Earth is using biological engineering for medical purposes. There were four gifts in the ramrobot package, along with complete instructions for their care and use. One was a kind of fungus-virus symbiot. I dipped my little finger in it. Now the muck is replacing my skin."

"Replacing — ? Sorry," said Hood. It was difficult
not
to interrupt Parlette, his speech was so irritatingly slow.

"That's right. First it dissolves the epidermis, leaving. only the living cells beneath. Then it somehow stimulates the DNA memory in the derma. Probably the virus component does that. You may know that a virus does not reproduce; it compels its host to produce more virus, by inserting its own reproductive chains into the host cells."

"You may have a permanent guest," said Hood.

"No. The virus dies after a short time. Any virus does that. Then the fungus starves."

"Wonderful! The muck moves in a ring, leaving new skin behind!" Hood considered. "Earth really came through this time. But what happens when it reaches your eyes?"

"I don't know. But there were no special instructions. I offered myself as a test subject because I could use a new pelt. It's even supposed to get rid of scar tissue. It does."

"That's quite an advance," said Harry.

"But you don't see why it's important. Kane, I showed you this first because I happened to bring it along. The others will jolt you." Parlette let his head-droop to relieve the strain on his neck. "I don't know what animal gave birth to the second gift, but it now resembles a human liver. In the proper environment it will behave like a human liver."

Harry's eyes went wide and blank. Lydia made a startled hissing sound. And Millard Parlette added, "The proper environment is, of course, the environment of a human liver. They have not been tested because they are not fully grown. We can expect disadvantages due to the lack of nervous connections — "

"Keller told the truth. Little hearts and livers!" Harry exclaimed. "Parlette, was the third gift an animal to replace the human heart?"

"Yes. Nearly all muscle. It reacts to Adrenalin by speeding up, but once again the lack of nervous — "

"Yee HAH!" Harry Kane began to dance. He grabbed Lydia Hancock, spun her around and around. Hood watched, grinning foolishly. Kane abruptly released her and dropped to his knees in front of Parlette. "What's the fourth?"

"A rotifer."

"A ... rotifer?"

"It lives as a symbiot in the human bloodstream. It does things the human body will not do for itself. Kane, it has often struck me that evolution as a process leaves something to be desired. Evolution is finished with a man once he is too old to reproduce. Thus there is no genetic program to keep him alive longer than that. Only inertia. It takes enormous medical knowledge to compen — "