Restoree (4 page)

“I can’t remember how I got here,” I wailed softly. “I just don’t know. I was walking in a park at night on my own planet and something big and black hovered over me. The rest is all mixed up in the most horrible, horrible nightmares.”

“Describe them,” he demanded in a cold, tight voice that scared me.

The words rolled out. The weight of the grotesque scenes and experiences, walled up in my subconscious, poured out, as if voicing them would erase the remembered horror and terror. I don’t recall what I did say and what I couldn’t bring myself to say until I realized that I was trembling violently and he was holding me close against him. At first, I thought he was trying to muffle my voice, but then I heard his voice soft with low reassurances and his hands were very gentle.

“Be quiet now. I do believe you. I do. There’s only one way you could have got here. No, no. I don’t doubt now a thing you’ve said. But that you are sane and . . . well, it’s a miracle.”

There was incredulous wonder in his tone. He looked at me again, excitedly. The only thing I cared about was that he was no longer withdrawn and cold, and that he did believe me.

“You know how I got here?”

“Let’s say,” he demurred candidly, “I know how you must have got to this solar system. But how you reached Lothar and this place, I can’t even hazard a guess. The only possible explanation . . .”

“You mean your people have interstellar travel and brought me here as a slave,” I interrupted, thinking with a sudden rush of hope that I would be able to get back to Earth. Though what Earth held for me was too mundane after this experience.

He hesitated, considering his next words. Then, settling me into a comfortable position against his shoulder, his lips above my ear, he explained.

“My people didn’t bring you here. I’m reasonably sure of that. We do have interstellar travel, but I cannot believe my race has penetrated to your section of space. Before I took so conveniently ill,” and his voice was sardonic, “no new exploration was contemplated.” He snorted with remembered exasperation. “I am reasonably sure, however, that your planet has been invaded by the curse, and paradoxically, the salvation of our Lothar. We call them the Mil. They’re a race of cellular giants which have had interstellar flight since the beginning of our recorded history, some two thousand years ago. To be precise, they
are
the beginning of our recorded history. We are, bluntly, their cattle, their fodder. That’s all right, take it easy,” he said reassuringly.

His similes forced me to admit to myself what I had desperately tried to hide; that the disassembled pieces of anatomy that twisted and turned through my nightmares were horrifyingly like the joints on hooks in a meat market.

“They have periodically raided this system for centuries. When we finally penetrated one of their depots here on Lothar, [I realized he was using the historic ‘we’] we began the long struggle to free ourselves and our planet of this terrible scourge. We turned their own weapons on them and then had to learn how to use them properly and repair them. Kind of progress in reverse. Now, we have not only been able to keep them off Lothar, but also out of this immediate sector of space. Our losses are still heavy in every encounter, as it is difficult to best an enemy with armaments similar to your own. Our big advantage is our own physical structure. However, rarely do any of our ships and patrolmen fall victims of the Mil.

“I don’t know how far they range, but I suppose we have forced them to find new sources of supply. Your planet, for one. Easy now. I forget it’s difficult for you to accept such a terrible fate for your people. We’ve lived with it all our lives.”

“But, if these . . .”

“Mil, although at one time we called them ‘God,’ ” Harlan remarked, grimly humorous.

“ . . . these Mil captured me on a raid on Earth, how did I get here? On your planet?”

Harlan frowned. “I would like to believe that our Patrol intercepted the ship you were on and captured it. But . . .” and he stopped as if he could see the fallacies in the theory and they disturbed him. “It must be way past Eclipse; or is it? If it is, I’ve been here a long time. Haven’t you got
any
idea of how long you’ve been here?”

“I can only recall the last few weeks clearly. Yet it seems as if I’ve been here forever. I guess I was in shock or something,” I ended lamely. “I certainly was surprised to find I was a nurse for someone else.”

“All the more reason to get out of here as soon as possible. My head is clear now and my reflexes feel normal. It’s been like swimming through sand. Still,” and he looked at me speculatively again, shaking his head, “I don’t understand how you managed to remain . . .” he hesitated and supplied another word, “ . . . untouched.”

“Untouched? Oh, but I don’t look the way I used to,” I assured him, my hand rubbing my nose.

“Don’t be ridiculous. You obviously aren’t a restoree,” he said sharply. I felt tension return to his body and coldness to his voice. “There isn’t a mark on you.”

“No, that’s just it. There isn’t,” I replied. “I’ve lost three scars,” and I pointed to the areas involved, “and someone took pity on my . . .” my hand touching my nose.

“Scars? Missing?” he interrupted in a hoarse whisper.

“Yes,” I prattled on. “I had a long gash on my arm where I got caught on a picket fence . . .” and my voice trailed off as I saw his face. The mixture of horror, distaste, disbelief, anger and, strangely, hatred, stunned me.

He grabbed my wrists in an angry grip and rubbed them, tracing the junction of hand and arm with fingers that hurt with their prodding. He felt around my ears, pulling my hair back roughly.

“What’s the matter?” I pleaded, my delight congealing.

He shook his head, hard, as someone whose neck muscles have contracted spasmodically.

“I don’t know, Sara. It’s just hard to believe,” he replied enigmatically. “Yet you would not have been able to think things through the way you have if . . . We’ve got to get out of here. We have got to get out!” he said passionately.

With a fluid stride, he crossed the room and yanked the pillow from the grill. He settled back in the bed, patting my arm reassuringly, as if he realized how worried I was by his reactions.

It was a long time before sleep came to either of us. I remember feeling his fingers on my wrist again just as I drifted into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER THREE

D
URING HIS SLEEPLESSNESS,
H
ARLAN HAD
made the only plan of escape our mutual limited knowledge of the asylum afforded. To pass the force screen, we must overpower the guard in the cottage by means of the drug vial we had pried from the straitjacket. Harlan would wear the uniform, I would daub myself with blood, Harlan having assured me that the blood would be donated by the guard. We would try to pass out the gate of this section of the asylum as if I had been attacked by my patient. From there on, we must improvise. If it came to sheer strength, the powerfully built Harlan would prevail. However, neither of us could foresee what preparation might have been made for escapes.

We also had no choice. Each day might bring the arrival of the technician to take Harlan’s absorption rate and we were too sure of the results of that test. I also couldn’t tell when the next intravenous injection would be administered. With it, I would have to start all over again, denying Harlan the drugged food, waiting for his return to sanity.

Whatever qualms or fears I might have normally entertained were overruled. Harlan’s anxiety and frustration intensified my own desire to be out of this mad place. And, too, not once did Harlan intimate he felt he had a better chance of escaping by himself although I was sure he did. He had included my release in his calculations and brushed aside my one half-hearted attempt at sacrifice.

Every day Harlan’s recovery had been jeopardized by the random appearances of the guard. This one day, when we were nervously primed for our escape, he was conspicuous by his absence. Harlan had to exert a tremendous control over his impatience and I was constantly forced to remind him during the exercise period to stop charging up the paths, to school his expression into the proper witlessness. He endured these corrections far better than I should have. All in all, by evening both our tempers were frayed by the unrewarded waiting.

As soon as the lights were out, Harlan, releasing some of his frustration in the action, rammed the pillow against the speaker and began to pace around the room in a frenzied way.

His pacing grew as unendurable to me as a fingernail scraped across slate.

“Last night,” I began hesitantly, not knowing what I wanted to say but knowing that any conversation was better than this taut silence, “last night, I told you who I was and how I got here. Who are you besides Harlan and how did you get in here? Who drugged you? Why?”

He paused in mid-stride, frowning as my questions brought him out of his thoughts. He gave a sort of snort, smiled and, after another moment’s silence, began to talk. He had a pleasant voice when he kept it low, but it had the burr of the military bark and a metallic quality. Gradually, as he talked, he stopped pacing and then sat down, watching me as he spoke with a disconcerting attention.

“You certainly do deserve some explanations, if only for all the meals you gave up,” he said, gripping my shoulder as a gesture of his continued gratitude.

“Before I came here, I was Regent of this planet for my eldest brother’s son, Ferrill.”

“I thought the guard had called you Regent, but it didn’t make any sense then.”

Harlan grimaced. “That guard . . . It’s the custom here on Lothar for the Commander of the Perimeter Patrol to assume the duties of Regent if the heir to the Warlordship is underage when he becomes a candidate.”

“Why couldn’t you be Warlord if you were brother to the . . .”

“No, that doesn’t follow,” Harlan replied blandly. “I should say, Fathor was my half-brother. We had the same father, but Fathor’s mother was the first wife and his progeny inherit. Besides, I’ve other plans for my time once Ferrill is of age. Like finding your planet. I like finding new planets. I like exploring.” A boyish grin lit his features. “I’ve had luck in that direction already. Found two new ones, fraternal planets around the star we call Tane, my fourth year on Patrol.”

I gathered this involved more than just searching a section of space until you found stars with satellites. I murmured proper things, only he frowned.

“They’ve been more trouble than they’re worth . . . almost,” he continued. “The inhabitants are humanoid, but the gentlest, dumbest people imaginable. They make some of our associates here look like Council members. They’ve got two of the most beautiful planets, crawling with game animals; Lothar doesn’t have too many anymore. Their oceans are full of edible fish; their lands, which the Tanes don’t even bother to cultivate, would support millions of us. They’ve got mineral resources that make the mind swim when you think how many ships, instruments and fuel it means in terms of our fight against the Mil. And those innocent creatures roam from one place to another like pleasant dreamers.”

“Haven’t the Mil bothered them?”

“Evidently not. They don’t have even an elementary sense of caution or suspicion. They would have fled from our expeditionary ships if they had encountered the Mil. Most of our fleet has been recruited from or designed after Mil ships.”

“Why are the Tanes trouble then? Can’t you just colonize or mine or . . .”

Harlan leaned forward, balancing his elbows on knees and slapping one palm into the other to emphasize a statement. Or, which was disconcerting, he would point his tipless finger at me.

“I don’t know about your world, but here on Lothar we’re crowded. So crowded that every inch of land is either cultivated or catacombed with mines, cities and factories. We run to big families, sort of law of supply and demand. But the Mil don’t harvest us anymore, so every new child crowds his family that much more. There aren’t enough jobs to go around nowadays nor is there enough food as there used to be. We don’t need so many men in active Patrol, but yet we have to train every young man against the day we’re big enough and strong enough to follow the Mil back to their own planet and wipe them off its face.”

“So,” I interrupted, “everyone who isn’t well off wants a share of one of the Tane planets and to hell with the Tanes.”

He nodded agreement. “Only it isn’t just those that aren’t well situated. It’s the big landowners, the big industrialists and the big scientists who want priority and mean to get it. And they’ve got all kinds of reasons.”

“I’ll bet,” and I refrained from giving him a brief account of the American Indian. “And I imagine no one cares what happens to the Tane.”

My perspicacity pleased him.

“Council had accepted a plan to allow colonization first for farmers, because our crying need is food. But farmers are conservative and those younger sons, willing to go, those without patrons in Council, are being intimidated or beaten up unless they belong to a certain guild. And the people who lead that guild will buy up the land once the farmers settle on it and that will be the end of individual agricultural expansion. Or, take the small mining outfits. Only a few have dared to apply for permission to work the Tanes. Why? They’ve found their homes ruined, their credit is suddenly destroyed, or their equipment is wrecked just before takeoff.”

“But surely you’re trying to find out who’s behind it?”

“It is one group,” Harlan said wearily. “I’d found that much out before this happened to me. There is one man, or a few men, who were guiding the attacks on my colonists. But what baffles me is: why? I mean, for what reason. You see, Lothar has always had just one purpose since we first shook off the yoke of superstition and managed to repel the Mil from landing on our planet. We mean to destroy the Mil completely. Our whole psychology, our whole history, has been directed toward that aim.”

“Perhaps after . . . how long did you say . . . two thousand years, this purpose is wearing a little thin,” I suggested with the Crusades in mind.

“It couldn’t,” he said without qualification. “Not when the Mil are always so close.” He frowned. “You see, actually it’s only in the last one hundred and fifty years that we’ve kept them entirely away from our planet. And we couldn’t have done that without Ertoi and Glan.”

“Who?”

“Inhabitants of another nearby star. You can see them from here,” he said blandly. He pointed out the window to a pulsating red blink that was the primary of the system.

“Ertoi and Glan take care of that entire section of space. We’ve been able to push our Perimeter Patrol four light-years beyond our own system. Since then, we have adequate protection against a concerted attack. The first time,” he said with justifiable pride, “we lost all but two ships of our entire combined fleets, but no Mil landed on our three planets.”

“Well, who do you think is the traitor?”

“My second-in-command, a fellow by the name of Gorlot.” Harlan’s eyes narrowed speculatively. “I’m not sure. It couldn’t be that . . . No. They know we’re not ready to go after the Mil yet unless that new weapon . . .” and he trailed off tantalizingly. “This Gorlot’s a throwback. Uncivilized. He lives only for battle and he’s a master strategist. Pulled off some extraordinary maneuvers three Eclipses ago. That’s why I seconded his appointment when Gartly retired. But he’s no good as a peacetime officer and the Perimeter has been very peaceful. He belongs back in the days of the first Harlan with the Seventeen Sons when it was all we could do to find caves deep enough to escape the Mil. He’d be the proper man to send out to the Mil but . . . That hothead forgets that no Lotharian has the guts,” he threw in, “besides himself, because he did it one day on a wager, to walk into a Mil ship until it’s been completely decontaminated. The smell of those things is enough to set a tough squadron leader raving. Until the Alliance with Ertoi and Glan, we had to wait until the Mil decomposed inside their ships before we could refit them. Fortunately, the Ertoi and Glan aren’t hampered by such childish terrors.

“I wonder,” and Harlan drew back into his thoughts for a long time. His conclusions did not settle his mind, for he growled with impatience and resumed his pacing, cursing Gorlot, cursing his own stupidity for falling into the trap of the asylum.

“I’ve got to get out of here and back to Lothara,” he cried in a groan, clenching and unclenching his fists behind his back as he paced.