05-A Gift From Earth (3 page)

But an item that size could have been just what Harry Kane passed to Jay Hood along with his drink.

"It's the easiest way to conduct a raid, sir." Jesus Pietro sat deferentially forward in his chair, hands folded on his desk, the very image of the highly intelligent man dedicated solely to his work. "We know that members always leave the Kane house by twos and fours. We'll pick them up outside the house. If they stop coming out, we'll know they've caught on. Then we'll go into the house itself."

Behind his mask of deference, Jesus Pietro was annoyed. For the first time in four years he had planned a major raid on the Sons of Earth, and Millard Parlette had picked that night to visit the Hospital. Why tonight? He came only once in two months, thank the Mist Demons. A visit from a crew always upset Jesus Pietro's men.

At least Parlette had come to him. Once Parlette had summoned him to his own house, and that had been bad. Here, Jesus Pietro was in his element. His office was practically an extension of his personality. The desk had the shape of a boomerang, enclosing him in an obtuse angle for more available working space. He had three guests' chairs of varying degrees of comfort, for crew and Hospital personnel and colonist. The office was big and square, but there was a slight curve to the back wall. Where the other walls were cream colored, easy on the eye, the back wall was smoothly polished dark metal.

It was part of the outer hull of the
Planck
. Jesus Pietro's office was right up against the source of half the spiritual strength of Mount Lookitthat, and half the electrical power too: the ship that had brought men to this world. Sitting at his desk, Jesus Pietro felt the power at his back.

"Our only problem," he continued smoothly, "is that not all of Kane's guests are involved in the conspiracy. At least half will be deadheads invited for camouflage. Telling them apart will take time."

"I see that," said the old man. His voice squeaked. He wore the tall, skeletal look of a Don Quixote, but his eyes held no madness. They were sane and alert. For nearly two hundred years the Hospital had kept his body, brain, and mind functioning. Probably even he did not know how much of him had been borrowed from colonists convicted of major crimes. "Why tonight?" he asked.

"Why not, sir?" Jesus Pietro saw what he was driving at, and his mind raced. Millard Parlette was nobody's fool. The ancient was one of the few crew willing to accept any kind of responsibility. Most of the thirty thousand crew on Mount Lookitthat preferred to devise ever more complex forms of playing: sports; styles of dress that changed according to half-a-dozen complex, fluctuating sets of rules; rigid and ridiculous social forms. Parlette preferred to work — sometimes. He had chosen to rule the Hospital. He was competent and quick; though he appeared rarely, be always seemed to know what was happening; and he was difficult to lie to.

Now he said, "Yesterday the ramrobot capsule. Last night your men were scouring the area for spies. Tonight you plan a major raid for the first time in four years. Do you think someone slipped through your fingers?"

"No, sir!" But that would not satisfy Parlette. "But in this instance I can afford to cover my bet even when it's a sure thing. If a colonist had news of the ramrobot package, he'd be at Kane's place tonight though demons bar the way."

"I don't approve of gambling," said Parlette. Jesus Pietro uneasily searched his mind for a suitable answer. "And you have chosen not to gamble. Very good, Castro. Now. What has been done with the ramrobot capsule?"

"I think the organ-bank people have it unpacked, sir. And the ... contents stored. Would you like to see?"

"Yes.

Jesus Pietro Castro, Head of implementation, the only armed authority on in entire world, rose hastily to his feet to act as guide. If they hurried, he might get away in time to supervise the raid. But there was no polite way to make a crew hurry.

Hood had spoken true. Polly Tournquist was beautiful. She was also small and dark and quiet, and Matt definitely wanted to know her better. Polly had long, soft hair the color of a starless night, direct brown eyes, and a smile that came through even when she was trying to look serious. She looked like someone with a secret, Matt thought. She didn't talk; she listened.

"Parapsychological abilities are not a myth," Hood was insisting. "When the
Planck
left Earth, there were all kinds of psionics devices for amplifying them. Telepathy had gotten almost dependable. They — "

"What's 'almost dependable'?"

"Dependable enough so there were specially trained people to read dolphin minds. Enough so telepaths were called as expert witnesses in murder trials. Enough — 
"

"All right, all right," said Matt. It was the first time tonight that he had seen Hood worked up. Matt gathered from the attitudes of the others that Hood rode this hobbyhorse often. He asked, "Where are they now, these witches of yours?"

"They aren't witches! Look, Kell — Look, Matt. Every one of those psi powers was tied up a little bit with telepathy. They proved that. Now, do you know how they tested our ancestors before they sent them into space for a thirty-year one-way trip?"

Someone played straight man. "They had to orbit Earth for a while,"

"Yes. Four candidates in a ferryboat, orbiting for one month. No telepath could take that."

Polly Tournquist was following the debate like a spectator at a tennis match, swinging her shoulders to face whoever was speaking. Her grin widened; her hair swung gently, hypnotically; she was altogether a pleasure to watch. She knew Matt was watching. Occasionally her eyes would flick toward him as if inviting him to share the joke.

"Why not, if he's got company?"

"The wrong company. Anywhere on Earth a latent telepath is surrounded by tens of thousands of minds. In space he has
three
. And he can't get away from any of them for a single hour, for a full month."

"How do you know all this, Jay? Books? You damn sure don't have anyone to experiment on."

Polly's eyes sparkled as she followed the debate. The lobes of Hood's ears were turning red. Polly's raven hair swung wide, and when it uncovered her right ear for an instant, she was almost certainly wearing a tiny, almost invisible hearing aid.

So she
did
have a secret. And, finally, Matt thought he knew what it was.

Three hundred years ago the
Planck
had come to Mount Lookitthat with six crew members to guard fifty passengers in suspended animation. The story was in an the history tapes, of how the circular flying wing had dipped into the atmosphere and flown for hours above impenetrable mists which the instruments showed to be poisonous and deadly hot. And then a great mass had come over the horizon, a vertical flat-topped mountain forty miles high and hundreds of miles long. It was like a new continent rearing over the impalpable white sea. The crew had gaped, wordless, until Captain Parlette had said, "Lookitthat!"

Unwritten, but thoroughly known, was the story of the landing. The passengers had been wakened one at a time to find themselves living in an instant dictatorship. Those who fought the idea, and they were few, died. When the
Arthur Clarke
came down forty years later, the pattern was repeated. The situation had not changed but for population growth, not in the last three hundred years.

From the beginning there had been a revolutionary group. Its name had changed several times, and Matt had no idea what it was now. He had never known a revolutionary. He had no particular desire to be one. They accomplished nothing, except to fill the Hospital's organ banks. How could they, when the crew controlled every weapon and every watt of power on Mount Lookitthat?

If this was a nest of rebels, then they had worked out a good cover. Many of the merrymakers had no hearing aids, and these seemed to be the ones who didn't know anyone here. Like Matt himself. In the midst of a reasonably genuine open-house brawl, certain people listened to voices only they could hear.

Matt let his imagination play. They'd have an escape hatch somewhere — those of the inner circle — and if the police showed, they would use it during a perfectly genuine panic. Matt and his brethren of the outer circle would be expendable.

"But why should
all
of these occult powers be connected to mind-reading? Does that make sense to you, Jay?"

"Certainly. Don't you see that telepathy is a survival trait? When human beings evolved psi powers, they must have evolved telepathy first. All the others came later, because they're less likely to get you out of a bad situation....

Matt dismissed the idea of leaving. Safer? Sure. But here he had, for a time, escaped from his persnickety mining worms and their venal crewish growers and the multiple, other problems that made his life what it was. And his curiosity bump itched madly. He wanted to know how they thought, how they worked, how they protected themselves, what they had in mind. He wanted to know —

He wanted to know Polly Tournquist. Now more than ever. She was small and lovely and delicate looking, an every man who had ever looked at her must have wanted to protect her. What was such a girl doing throwing her life away? Really, that was all she was doing. Sooner or later the organ banks would run short of healthy livers or live skin or lengths of large intestine at a time when there was a dearth of crime on the Plateau. Then Implementation would throw a raid, and Polly would be stripped down to her component parts.

Matt had a sudden urge to talk her out of it, get her to leave here with him and move to another part of the Plateau. Would they be able to hide out in a region so limited?

Possibly not, but —

But she didn't even know he'd guessed. If she found out, he could die for his knowledge. He'd have to put a fail-safe on his mouth.

It spoiled things. If Matt could have played the observer, the man who watched and said nothing ... But he wasn't an observer. He was involved now. He knew Jay and liked him, he'd liked Laney Mattson and Harry Kane at sight, and he could have fallen in love with Polly Tournquist. These people were putting their lives on the line. And his too! And he could do nothing about it.

The middle-aged man with the brush cut was still at it. "Jay," he said with a poor imitation of patience, "you're trying to tell us that Earth had psi powers under good control when the founding fathers left. Well, what have they done since? They've made all kinds of progress m biological engineering. Their ships improve constantly. Now the ramrobots go home all by themselves. But what have they done about psi powers? Nothing. Just nothing. And why?"

"Because — "

"Because it's all superstition. Witchcraft. Myths."

Oh, shut up
, Matt thought. It was all cover for what was really going on, and he wasn't a part of that. He dropped back out of the circle, hoping nobody would notice him —  except Polly. Nobody did. He eased toward the bar for a refill.

Harry Kane was gone, replaced by a kid somewhat younger than Matt, one who wouldn't last another half hour if he kept sampling his own wares. When Matt tasted his drink, it was mostly vodka. And when he turned around, there was Polly, laughing at his puckered face.

The half-dozen suspects were deeply asleep along one wall of the patrol wagon. A white-garbed Implementation medic looked up as Jesus Pietro entered. "Oh, there you are, sir. I think these three must be deadheads. The others had mechanisms in their ears."

The night outside was as black as always on moonless Mount Lookitthat. Jesus Pietro had left Millard Parlette standing before the glass wall of the organ banks, contemplating ... whatever he might be contemplating. Eternal life? Not likely. Even Millard Parlette, one hundred and ninety years old, would die when his central nervous system wore out. You couldn't transplant brains without transplanting memories. What
had
Parlette been thinking? His expression had been very odd.

Jesus Pietro took a suspect's head in his hands and rolled it to look in the ears. The body rolled too, limply, passively. "I don't see anything."

"When we tried to remove the mechanism, it evaporated. So did the old woman's. This girl still has hers."

"Good." He bent to look. Far down in the left ear, too deep for fingers to reach it, was something colored dead black with a rim of fleshy pink. He said, "Get a microphone.

The man made a call. Jesus Pietro waited impatiently for someone to bring a mike. Someone eventually did. Jesus Pietro held it against the girl's head and turned the sound up high.

Rustling noises came in an amplified crackle.

"Tape it on," said Jesus Pietro. The medic stretched the girl on her side and taped the mike against her head. The thunder of rustling stopped, and the interior of the wagon was full of the deep drumbeat sound of her arteries.

"How long since anybody left the meeting?"

"That was these two, sir. About twenty minutes."

The door in back opened to admit two men and two women, unconscious, on stretchers. One man had a hearing aid.

"Obviously they don't have a signal to show they're clear," said Jesus Pietro. "Foolish." Now, if he'd been running the Sons of Earth ...

Come to think of it, he might send out decoys, expendable members. If the first few didn't come back, he'd send out more, at random intervals, while the leaders escaped.

Escaped where? His men had found no exit routes; the sonics reported no tunnels underground.

It was seconds before Jesus Pietro noticed that the mike was speaking. The sounds were that low. Quickly he put his ear to the loudspeaker.

"Stay until you feel like leaving, then leave. Remember, this is an ordinary party, open-house style. However, those of you who have nothing important to say should've gone by midnight. Those who wish to speak to me should use the usual channels. Remember not to try to remove the earpieces; they will disintegrate of themselves at six o'clock. Now enjoy yourselves!"

"What's he say?" asked the medic.

"Nothing important. I wish I could be sure that was Kane." Jesus Pietro nodded briefly at the medic and the two cops. "Keep it up," he said, and stepped out into the night.