The Caterpillar's Question by Piers Anthony and Philip José Farmer (10 page)

"Imago, I can not force you to do anything," Malva said. "But I can free your host to give your companion an honest answer. You know enough of the Gaol and their human minions to judge whether my offer will be honored if Jack agrees. You know he must make his own decision, based on the truth, so you have no motive to deceive him. Answer him: is my offer valid?"

The tear accelerated. Slowly Tappy nodded yes.

"Your answer, Jack?"

It seemed like folly, since the woman would discover the marble the moment Tappy was stripped for her incarceration. Yet two things stopped Jack from capitulating. The first was that he suspected Malva was still bluffing; she was desperate to make him tell, so was pulling out all the stops, and she wouldn't do that without good reason. So there had to be reason for him not to cooperate. Maybe there was some way to save Tappy. Or maybe it was simply that Malva was expected to handle things, and the Gaol would be annoyed with her if she left a loose end, and would demote her or replace her with a rival.

The second reason was that no matter how much objective sense it might make, he could not betray Tappy, and this would be a betrayal. Her tear told him that. "No."

"Go down the ramp and enter the small craft at the exit," Malva said. "It will convey you to the Gaol." Her voice was controlled, but Jack thought he could detect a slight stress in it: the stress of fear or of fury. Whatever else he had failed to do, he had scored against her.

But his body was already moving, as was Tappy's. That single shot from the null-volition pistol had really fixed them! Apparently the effect continued until nullified, and no other restraints were needed. Not for enough time to get them safely to the Gaol. Malva had to be sure of that, or she would have taken other precautions.

Now, of course, his doubts loomed. What had he accomplished by his defiance? He hadn't saved Tappy, but he had doomed himself. He was a painter, not a hard-nosed negotiator!

There were two seats in the little vehicle, which looked like a gull-wing door car with the doors left open. They got in, but the doors did not swing down. Instead a slight scintillation indicated the presence of a force field that sealed in the car. Then it rolled forward, accelerating like a jet plane, and took off. Those gull wings really were wings! This was an airplane. Jack would have gaped, but no one had authorized him to do so, so his mouth remained closed.

The plane flew low over the forest, evidently programmed so precisely that the close clearance was no problem. Then it lifted, and Jack saw the huge crater valley where they had entered this world, with its gigantic symbols around the rim. The symbols that moved grandly around, periodically, like the elapsed-time ring on a diver's watch, making a new setting.

Now, flying over it, he saw that the depression was far too regular to be a natural crater. It was either artificial or had been excavated and reshaped after its formation, for some alien purpose.

That reminded him of another mystery: the brief redness of the river he had seen. What could have caused that? There was so much about this planet he still didn't know!

There was a touch on his shoulder. Jack turned to face it, taking it as a command for attention, before he realized the significance of it. Tappy was the only one beside him-- and she had done it. She had volition!

Tappy's finger touched her lips in the signal for silence. You bet! A radio could be monitoring this cabin, as a routine precaution. If she had somehow thrown off the effect of the shot, he would keep her secret. But his own body remained helpless.

Tappy pointed to the panel before them. He looked, again obeying the implied directive. He could obey her as well as Malva; it didn't matter who gave the orders, or how they were given.

There was something like a steering wheel there, recessed into the panel. That must be for use by the pilot when this craft was not on programmed flight.

Tappy's hand extended until it touched the panel, then slid along it until she felt the wheel. She nodded. Then she found Jack's arm and guided his hand to the wheel. She made a gesture of pulling it toward him.

She was telling him to fly this thing? He looked at her, startled. She nodded yes, knowing his question.

But he couldn't do that! He had no idea how to operate a normal airplane, let alone this alien craft.

But the alternative was to let the two of them be flown to meet the Gaol. He had no idea what the aliens looked like, but formed a mental picture of huge sluglike monsters whose proboscises racked out the guts of human beings. Surely false, but it made the point: it was better to crash this craft than to suffer what the aliens had in store for them.

He had been given his directive. Now his arms and head were free. He took hold of the wheel and pulled it toward him. It didn't come. It was locked in place. Probably it required a special key or code to free it, to prevent exactly such an accident as this one.

Tappy, aware of his problem, turned around in her seat and reached behind it. In a moment she brought something from a compartment there. It was her leg brace-- with the radiator! The fools had dumped it in the craft, for delivery to the Gaol along with the captives. What arrogance of assurance!

She touched another orange button with her little finger, pointing it out to him. Then she handed him the brace and touched the panel, her hand coming to rest on the wheel.

Use that on the wheel? It would null it into nonexistence, together with the entire front of the craft!

But Tappy was insistent. It was a different button she had indicated, and evidently it did a different thing. If not, did it matter? They would be better off to crash and die than to fall into the hands-- tentacles?-- of the Gaol, he was sure. Jack pointed the radiator at the center of the wheel, nerved himself, and touched the large scarlet button. It glowed. Then he touched the correct orange button.

There was a click. That was all. Nothing changed. He turned off the radiator, lest he brush a functioning button and do something drastic.

Tappy found his hands and took back the radiator. Jack, frustrated, gripped the wheel again and yanked, if only to show the futility of the act. It came out of its recess and locked into place-- and the craft wobbled.

Jack stifled his astonishment, realizing that, once again, Tappy had known what she was doing. That setting of the radiator had evidently shorted out the locking mechanism, which might be magnetic, and freed the wheel. He had just overridden the programming, assuming manual control. It was that easy. Now all he had to do was fly this thing.

He turned the wheel, clockwise, just a bit. The craft veered right. He turned the wheel back, and the craft responded. He pushed down, and the craft dropped. He lifted, and it rose. He squeezed it, and the craft accelerated.

He had the hang of it already! This thing was made for an idiot to fly. That was fortunate, because he was an idiot in this respect.

Tappy touched his arm. He looked at her. She made a gesture of a circle, then pointed up.

Fly up? After circling? He didn't think he understood. Why the circle? Unless the circle represented the crater valley-- or a compass. They had been going north from the crater, and "up" on a compass could indicate north.

He leaned toward her. "North?" he whispered.

She nodded agreement.

He turned the craft until it was flying north. At the rate it was going, they would soon get there, if it was on this planet. But where was he supposed to land? He could do so only on Tappy's directive, and she was blind.

How had she thrown off the volition nullification? Suddenly the answer was there: the honker's marble! Not only had it made it impossible for the aliens to track the Imago, it had made their weapon lose its effect on Tappy. Either she had thrown off the effects of the weapon rapidly, or she had never suffered loss of volition at all. She might have faked it, knowing that Jack had no control, until there was a chance to escape.

If he had betrayed her, and told Malva about the marble, they never would have had this chance. And Tappy had been unable to tell him that. She had had to let him decide himself, and had been afraid he would succumb.

How glad he was that he had not! He had been more of a man than he had taken himself to be.

Something flashed on the panel, attracting his gaze. Two little blips were there, blinking. Oh-oh; he had a notion what they might represent.

He looked around. There, at about seven o'clock on the dial, were two flying craft similar to this one. They were closing fast.

He knew what had happened. The alarm had been given the moment he overrode the program and assumed manual control. Other ships had been sent out to bring him in again.

He leaned toward Tappy. "We're in trouble," he whispered. Then he managed one tiny act of his own volition, with great effort: he kissed her ear. Perhaps it was possible only because he knew she would like it.

Chapter 4

"Two Gaol airplanes coming fast," he told Tappy.

He thought, What do I do now?

The chances were that the planes climbing up below him were faster than his. Even if the speed of his craft matched theirs, he was very handicapped. This was his solo flight, and he had had no training. An aerial dogfight between him and two professionals would last a few seconds. If that.

"Get a grip on yourself," he muttered.

That reminded him that squeezing the wheel caused the craft to accelerate. He clamped down as hard as he could on the inflated rim. But the plane was so high up that he could not tell at once if its velocity was increasing swiftly.

He looked out of the window on his left. The pursuer seemed not to be gaining so swiftly.

However, his hands would get tired soon. Surely, there must be a control on the panel before him that locked in to whatever speed he wanted. It was a dumb idea to regulate the airspeed of this craft by squeezing on the wheel. The engineers who had designed this certainly did not think like their Earth counterparts.

However, this machine surely should have something like the cruise control of a car. When set, it would maintain the desired rate of travel to give the pilot's hands a rest.

The names on the plates below the lights and switches and buttons on the panel were in a totally unfamiliar alphabet. If it was an alphabet. Maybe the letters were ideographic or syllabic, like ancient Aztec or Chinese or whatever.

Another glance through the window showed him that, yes indeed, the chaser was eating up the space between his craft and his quarry's. Perhaps its pilot could squeeze harder, but he did not think so. The adrenaline surging through him should give his hands the strength to crush rocks.

He wished he had a brush big enough to paint the other planes out of the sky. Reality, unfortunately, was not a painting. It was hard objects, some of them moving very fast, objects driven by human beings out to kill him and Tappy.

That thought was conceived out of despair by panic. But it gave birth to relief. A limited relief, true, yet it was tinged with hope.

Whatever they would do, they would not kill Tappy. Though desperate to catch her, they must avoid doing anything that might result in her death.

Therefore, they would not shoot the plane down.

What they would do, probably, would be to try to force their quarry to land. Unless... no use attempting to imagine what was in their bag of tricks. He would find out soon enough.

The planes were slowly but steadily closing the gap between them and Jack's plane. One pigeon. Two falcons.

Below, a forest spread out, dark green like an Earth woods except here and there were irregularly shaped areas of orange-colored trees. The crater was receding fast. Ahead was more forest. In the distance were the peaks of a mountain range. Now and then the sunlight flashed on a river. Or was there more than one? A large lake appeared on the right.

A number of tiny boats with single masts and bright white and purple triangular sails scudded across the smooth green water. Jack was too high to make out the figures on the decks.

He started as something touched his neck. It was Tappy's finger, of course.

He was very jumpy. For a second, he had thought that an insect had landed on his neck.

Her wondering and anxious expression showed him that he had been silent too long.

"The plane on my left is now even with us," he said. "The other... here it comes! It's even with us now. Now they're rising. I think they plan to get above us and force us down."

Jack shouted, "Oh, no, you don't!"

Tappy gasped and jumped a little at his outburst.

Savagely, he turned the wheel to the left, pushing in on it at the same time. The craft curved to the left and dropped swiftly.

Jack, glancing at Tappy, saw that her eyes were wide open, and she had paled.

"I'm trying to shake them!" he said. "Hang on! We may be in for a rough ride!"

He was thinking, Why in hell didn't I grab the radiator and try to shoot them with it?

He was doing better than he had thought he would in such a situation. So far, he had not done badly for one who considered himself to be an artist, not a man of action, ten thousand miles from being an Indiana Jones. But that had been on the ground. He had frozen for a while when in the air, and he still was not completely thawed out.

The pilots of the Gaol machines had quick reflexes, though. They had not been caught with their mouths open. Their planes had curved and dropped, too, following his course by a split second or so. Now they were above him again, diving at the same angle and velocity. They were also jockeying so that each would be just above the end of one of the wings.

He turned the wheel and pulled it back until the plane was on an even keel. At least, he thought that it was. By now, he assumed that one of the instruments on the panel was an angle indicator. It looked like the ones he had seen in movies showing an airplane's cockpit. It was round and in its center was a horizontal line. The line swung up at one end and down at the other, or vice versa, as one wing dropped and the other rose.

At the moment, it was straight across, and the wings seemed to be level, too.