The World Swappers (8 page)

CHAPTER XV

“So far, not so bad,” said Counce contentedly. As always at Main Base on Regis, the air was wonderfully warm; he could not think of it as sweltering hot after spending so long in the frigid arctic. “We really managed a break-through to the alien. His name is pretty well unpronounceable, but we found he could articulate the word ‘friend,’ so we’re calling him that. It’ll have advantageous psychological repercussions when they start to understand our language.”

He wolfed another sandwich from the tray on Wu’s desk, and sent a vast gulp of water after it.

“But the long-term question remains,” said Katya; she sat on the far side of Wu’s desk, legs crossed, head thrown back in a characteristic pose. “We have this one alien–what are we going to do with him? Keep him in isolation on Regis? We can’t send him home, that’s for sure.”

“We shall have to appoint him a sort of ambassador,” Wu suggested. “There’s no alternative to keeping him on Regis until the time comes for further contact between the races; then, obviously, we shall have to ask him to go back to his own kind and tell them about us.”

“We’ll leave the details of that,” Counce added. “Right now, we have a respite–maybe a long one, depending on how the Others react to getting their ship back with a dead crew and a wrecked engine room. In all probability they’ll send another ship to Ymir right away. The fact that the first one went straight to the Ymiran system indicates they want to inspect that particular planet pretty badly. But the next time, we can be ready for them. There can’t be any more off-the-cuff projects–they’re very risky, even if this one worked.”

“Anty Dreean doesn’t seem to think it worked,” said Katya delicately. “So far as he’s concerned, the fact that the Others came out fighting means the idea was a complete flop.”

“Some of his present depression is certainly due to shock,” Wu interjected. “But in general it’s disappointing that he should have reacted this way. It will take a long time to make him regain his confidence, and I was certain he was going to turn out to be a valuable ideas-man.”

Counce swallowed the last sandwich on the tray and gave a parodied grin of satisfaction. “It won’t be difficult,” he said. “In fact, I already know how we’re going to set him up in his own estimation again. I propose giving him a very responsible task in the near future, as soon as he’s properly adjusted to his new body.”

He selected his intonation carefully so that his hearers would take it for granted he had not yet chosen the task he proposed to set. They did so, and Wu changed the subject.

“We can’t keep the Others away from Ymir indefinitely,” he said. “Probably it will be a weight off our minds to know that we must now physically interfere with their attempts to go there. But it will give us correspondingly increased headaches trying to accelerate the process of stripping the planet clean for them. Saïd?” He acknowledged a questioning glance from Counce.

“May I be platitudinous for a moment and simply review our intentions?” Counce requested. “I think it often helps to get rid of details and see the outline again. It sometimes changes without our noticing.

“The real menace of Ymir, as we know, is due on the one hand to its being inhabited by people who are of the whole human race the least fitted to make harmonious contact with the Others, and on the other to its situation and its climate–which make it an obvious choice for the Others to colonize. The real solution, the one we are so confident Bassett will continue to overlook, depends on the fact that it is simply
not fit
for the human race.

“We agreed originally on combining the solutions to our problems. We need, first, to reconcile the various groups of the human race to differences among our own species, so that they will be more ready to tolerate alien intelligence, and, second, to give proof of our good will to the Others. We can achieve both by abandoning Ymir to them and scattering the ten million inhabitants throughout the rest of the galaxy. Ridicule will do the rest.”

His listeners looked politely bored. “So?” said Katya bluntly.

“So be patient a moment longer. Now our own resources are too small and spread too thin for us to undertake this enormous job ourselves. Fortunately, Bassett–who can call on gigantic resources of manpower, technical ability and financial aid–was in one sense attacking the same problem. We are very near to success in making him desperate enough to enlist our help; I doubt whether it will be more than another few months before he goes to Video India and places the order for the advertisement I told him to insert.”

“That sounds good,” approved Wu. “But–”

“So,” Counce continued unperturbed, “within the next few months, in addition to everything else, we have to reconcile the governments of all the inhabited worlds to accepting about a third of a million Ymirans each. Earth, of course, will present no problem–Bassett will see to that. But how do you think K’ung-fu-tse will react, for instance, Wu?”

The director rubbed his chin. “The question is rather academic. My world has a tradition of diligent hard work and in general is of a tolerant attitude. If the government were promised a third of a million hard-working, industrious immigrants, they would doubtless agree without hesitation. Bassett could not promise people like that from Earth–you Earthborn are too conditioned to long periods of leisure and high standards of comfort.”

“Correct. That is one of Bassett’s fundamental errors, of course. The way to persuade the outworld governments to fall in with his original scheme would have been to ask them initially to accept immigrants from similar worlds to their own, and not from Earth. Bassett, though, could not have provided them, so he doubtless overlooked that point.”

“I feel heartened,” said Katya with unexpected depth of feeling. “For the first time since we’ve started, I really have a conviction that we’re going to succeed.”

“At least,” said Wu with an unaffected solemnity, “we can see answers of a sort to all our problems now.”

They were stepping across the parsecs now, those who had come to Regis in answer to a cry of desperate need. They were used to answering such cries; indeed, they had given up their lives to answer the most despairing of all.

Some of them, like Anty Dreean, were young and idealistic; some, like Verity of Boreas, who had recruited Anty, and Ram Singh of Earth, were elderly. They too were idealists.

Back to their normal tasks as scientists, administrators, doctors, experts in a hundred different human disciplines, the loneliest and yet least lonely of all men and women were returning. Counce had to wait on line at the Main Base transfax and exchanged greetings with the others whom he had not had time to see and speak to during the past hectic hours.

But it was plain that he preferred silence, and after a word or two everyone respected his unspoken wish.

He was thinking partly of what they, but mostly of what he himself, had done.

Three hundred years,
he thought.
That’s a long time to wait to know if one was right …

He knew now, though. He had seen the proof in the way the Others had come out of their ship into the polar winter of Regis, determined to sell their lives dearly to people who had no desire to buy them at any price. Had the situation been reversed, had the human beings present at this first contact not been convinced as they were of the need for tolerance and forbearance, there could have been a war, instead of a brief and bloody battle on a single planet.

In the last resort, no individual can trust any other individual, and yet without trust there can be no constructive effort, no co-operation. The Others had been unable to trust themselves to the strangers who had–seemingly without effort–dragged their ship across the star lanes; Counce himself had been unable to trust his fellow-men three hundred years before, and he had seen at the outset that he must learn to trust himself before he could call on them for help.

He remembered, as he stepped into the transfax and gave the identifying name of the receiver to which he wished to go, how he had sat by himself in that very distant past and looked up and down a certain table of mathematical symbols. They promised him–and mankind–two freedoms: one from the barrier of distance, the other from death itself.

At the time when he chanced across this particular application of hyperphotonic energy mechanics, the emigrations from Earth were just passing their peak. Earth had rid itself of its misfits, its outcasts, its social failures–and by a process of hard weeding-out, the colonies were adjusting towards stability.

The technique which was implicit in the details facing him would have turned that outburst into a true explosion, would have meant that men were free to step from world to world as easily as through a door. And there was more to it than that. Provided there was sufficient power, one could transmit anything from anywhere else to a suitable receiver; conversely, one could send anything–most importantly another transfax unit–anywhere distant. The galaxy suddenly seemed to close in on him like the walls of the room in which he was sitting.

Last, but very far from least, one could record whatever one transmitted, up to and including a living human being, and then re-create from the recording a facsimile of what had been sent.

Immortality–for the few.

Counce had sat at his table one whole night, thinking of the certainty which the laws of chance decreed: that somewhere in the dark of space there were other creatures like man, also scattering their seed from world to world. He envisaged the misfits and the outcasts hurled through the transfax to head-on collision with some alien race. Frightened even by their own kind, suspicious of cleverness even in human shape, they would panic, they would fight.

And there were other consequences, too.

But you cannot hide knowledge. Somewhere, someone else would discover the technique of the transfax. It might not be soon, for he had stumbled across the relevant mathematics only because of a suspected error in other calculations; men were thinking in terms of crossing space in ships, not abolishing space between objects.

So he had put his trust in himself, and promised himself he would be worthy of it, and he had gone out to find others whom he could learn to trust.

During the initial period he had laid down principles which had later been observed religiously, such as that no one granted a fresh term of life through the transfax should be given back the identical body he or she had formerly possessed. It would have been too dangerous if someone known to have died in unquestioned circumstances were later to be seen alive and well and recognizable. Nor was the shape of one’s new body left to the owner to decide; that was for others to choose, sympathetically, honestly, but without favor.

Then the sparks he struck began to set fires. He remembered as though it were a day of rebirth the time when he first recognized that he could trust another person with his knowledge–a person truly aware of the needs and shortcomings of mankind.

There were three thousand of them now, and more to come.

His feelings were strangely mixed, neither joy nor relief, but rather satisfaction. He had atoned in some way for his high-handedness in decreeing that such a thing should not be given to mankind at large. Doubtless thousands upon thousands had died who might have lived, and might have made their new term of life valuable to their race. But Counce felt now that, had they a chance to judge, they might forgive his arrogance in appointing himself arbiter of man’s destiny.

Well, now there was Wu, and Katya, and Ram, and Falconetta, and Verity, and all the rest–and there was notably Anty Dreean, who might even be the person Counce could trust with the ultimate responsibility: the
whole
responsibility.

He was deadly tired, completely weary of bearing the burden he had carried for three long centuries, and he longed more than anything else to find oblivion.

CHAPTER XVI

After the first two weeks or so, Enni Zatok had given up all attempts to resist, or even to think. Somewhere behind her drawn, pale face rebellion still smoldered, personality still existed. But outwardly she was like a mechanical toy, moving, occasionally speaking, no more.

There had been events she could not understand–without pain, but with infinitely worse effects: shame, desecration of the privacy of her mind. They had studied her even to the darkest levels of her subconscious, till they had extracted every grain of knowledge she could give them. In old-fashioned terms, in Ymiran terms, they had taken her soul.

And still they were not satisfied.

The room in which she had lived during this period was white-walled, stark, hardly furnished. It was rather equipped than furnished, in fact–with computers on wheeled carriages, electroencephalographs, machines that hummed and pulsed and shone rhythmical series of light-flashes into her eyes until she found herself seized with uncontrollable fits. They had forced her to remember details of her past life; now they knew more than she did about it. They had stripped her unexpectedly to analyze her reaction to violation of her modesty; they had shouted at her to see her reflex of surprise. There seemed to be nothing left.

And still they were unsatisfied!

She sat passively on the examination couch, her eyes fixed on a man called Bassett who had come more and more frequently to watch what was happening. In some way he seemed to be responsible for what they had done to her; therefore when she looked at him a faint flicker of hate showed behind her eyes. It was the only thing that betrayed the survival of her mind.

“I’ve told you again and again,” Gold was saying. “We can’t get anything more out of the girl! There’s nothing there to be got!”

“But we haven’t got what we wanted,” Bassett snapped.

“Then it isn’t there to be had,” Gold answered shortly. “I know what we’re looking for well enough. If we’d had the faintest suspicion that it was there, we’d have dug for it. You’ll simply have to face the facts, and that’s all there is to it.”

“Damnation!” Bassett began to stride up and down the room, glancing occasionally at Enni as she sat silent in her gown. “There
has
to be an answer!”

Gold passed a weary hand across his eyes. “If there is, there’s no way of finding it. The girl can’t tell us any more. If subjective experience of Ymiran society doesn’t provide even a clue, we haven’t a hope.”

Bassett drove fist into palm, angrily, and took a deep breath. “Well, then–we’ll call their bluff!”

Hating himself, hating what he was doing, he went back to his own office and sent for his secretary. “Get on to Advertising,” he ordered her. “Find out what lines they’re currently plugging. Then ring Video India and book air time for one of them on the Falconetta Show.”

If his secretary was surprised, she was too well trained to show it. She merely nodded and went out. Half an hour later she reported that the job had been done; half an hour later again, Gold rang through in a wild and agitated voice.

“She’s gone!” he exclaimed. “Out of a locked room with no windows–the Ymiran girl has gone!”

Bassett did not reply. He merely broke the connection and sat staring out of his window over the roofs of Rio. That fitted. Oh, yes, it all fitted together now. Doubtless they thought they had been very clever. But he was determined to prove they were no cleverer than he.

He went home early that evening, to his vast apartment by the sea. His personal servant informed him that there was a gentleman to see him, and it was without surprise that he found the same man waiting for him as had been sitting in a boat in mid-Pacific when he returned from Boreas.

“Good evening,” said Counce equably. “Please sit down.”

Bassett remained standing, looking down on the visitor. “You must be feeling very self-satisfied,” he ground out. “I have to admit I admire your gall in putting down that Ymiran girl as bait.”

Counce raised one eyebrow slightly. “How astute of you to realize,” he said. “Belatedly, of course. However, you won’t want to waste time on the past. It’s the future that matters.”

Breathing heavily, Bassett took a chair opposite the visitor. “All right,” he said. “Either you ingeniously duped me when you maintained the solution to the problem lay on Ymir, or my staff is incompetent. Tell me which.”

“Neither,” said Counce, and leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t go into details as to exactly why we are prepared to co-operate with you on your schemes, won’t you? I am going to say no more than that, while our ends differ, our means here coincide.

“Your failure to see the solution you hunted for so desperately depended on two things: first, you did not recognize that emigrants from Earth are lazy, to put it bluntly, by outworld standards; and second, you were not thinking far enough back from your ultimate objective.

“Obviously, the government of a world like Boreas would sense the sting in the tail of a bargain involving acceptance of Earthborn immigrants in exchange for aid. Earthborn are demanding, influential, used to a very high standard of living, and what’s worse, the colonial peoples regard them with acute jealousy. From that it’s a short step to thinking of them as a threat.

“But if you were to ask them to accept industrious men and women from Ymir …”

Bassett could not help himself; he felt a smile spread unbidden across his face. “Of course you’re right,” he said at last. “No one regards Ymirans as a menace–only as rather foolish cranks. And it would breach the dam separating the parochial-minded outworlds.”

“Please don’t think you can now welsh on your agreement,” Counce said in a stern voice, “and attempt to put this into practice by yourself. How are you intending to persuade Ymirans to leave their world? I can assure you that looking for the answer to that subordinate problem will cost you more heartache than you’ve already had.”

Bassett looked at him. “I’ll take your word on it,” he said slowly. “How do
you
propose to set about it?”

“We have agents on Ymir,” Counce answered obliquely. “All we need is the resources you can command. We will give you a fair chance to outwit us later, when our intentions again diverge; for the moment, all we ask is your assistance.”

“In what shape?”

“I’ll give you the full details later. I assure you the requirements will not amount to more than you originally intended to devote to the project. Manpower, money, technical equipment–but most of all, pure power. Do you consent?”

He could see the reservations Bassett was mentally making as clearly as though they were being written on the man’s forehead. No matter; he had won.

Instead of passing the good news by the impersonal method of sending a written message through the trans-fax, he decided to make the trip to Regis himself, because he had another job to attend to at the same time. Before leaving, he checked with Falconetta.

“How is she?” he demanded; there was no need to explain whom he meant.

“Pitiable!” said Falconetta savagely. “There doesn’t seem to be anything left of her–she’s just a husk.”

“Has Ram seen her?”

“No, unfortunately. He’s up on the Video India satellite having fits about the stuff Bassett sent us to put on the show. You know he’s always avoided buying air time with us, because we refuse to allow the use of hypnotics or subliminal suggestion. He wasn’t missing a trick, though; it looks as if he decided to make the most of his compulsory expenditure. Ram says he’s never seen such loaded stuff.”

“It’s probably a standard handout, issued by one of the department staff–not Bassett’s personal choice.”

“Did he give in?” Falconetta sounded as though she had only just remembered to ask.

“Yes, of course. I’m going to Regis now to tell Wu and start arranging things. But there’s one thing I want to ask you to do if you can spare the time …”

The news spread to everyone on Regis within moments of Counce’s arrival; everyone consequently took a few minutes off from work to crowd around and congratulate him. It was a considerable achievement to have made Bassett yield. But looking around the group, Counce noticed one person missing.

“Where’s Anty?” he demanded, and there was a sudden silence.

“He’s in pretty bad shape,” said Katya after a pause. “We just don’t seem able to get through to him. Last I saw he was outside the base sitting on a rock and looking at the desert.”

“He got tired of that and went up to the polar base to look at some ice,” Lotus Scharf contradicted with unusual cynicism.

“Excuse me, then,” said Counce, and forced his way over to the transfax.

Just as Lotus had said, Anty was looking at some ice. There was hardly anything else to be seen at this polar base except the tent where Friend, the alien, was quartered. Anty was walking moodily up and down the edge of the excavation from which they had dug the proof of the Others’ first visit, occasionally kicking a lump of frozen mud into the pit. He seemed to have adjusted perfectly to his new, slightly different body, and his movements were natural and free. But his hunched attitude oozed depression.

It was always a shock to Counce to see a friend changed, even when–as in Anty’s case–he had helped with the work of altering the record to change the bodily appearance. It was delicate work, but they had never yet made an error; and if they did, there were always other, older records to base their new design on. Counce recalled himself sternly to his immediate purpose.

“Anty!” he said. The young man did not cease his aimless pacing; barely even showed that he had heard.

Counce walked over to him and fell in alongside. “I have a job for you, Anty,” he said. “Rather an important one.”

Anty gave him a sidelong sneer. The new face he had acquired was darker than his old one; long-nosed, sharp-jawed, it was rather a good-looking face. A lock of uncontrollable black hair showed beneath his hood. “You’d better give it to someone else,” he snapped. “I couldn’t organize a short walk.”

“Are you still harping on the Others’ behavior? What makes you think you’re responsible for what they did?”

“I should have known,” Anty responded moodily. “So should you, come to that.”

“There’s only one kind of incurable fool–the man who can’t learn from experience,” Counce said sharply. “You’re busy building yourself a reputation as one. But you’re not very good at it. If you don’t trust yourself, I do. Come on, I’m taking you back to Main Base to set you to work.”

Anty halted and stared at his companion as if he had never seen him before. At length he shrugged, and gave a reluctant nod.

There was a small group of people waiting for them beside the transfax when they emerged into the brilliant equatorial sunshine again. Among them was a girl, fair-haired, blue-eyed, who stood a little apart from the rest, taking no apparent interest in her surroundings.

“That’s Enni Zatok,” said Counce softly. “You know who she is, don’t you? You know what she’s gone through. Right now, she doesn’t really think; she barely even reacts. But before Bassett got hold of her, Jaroslav said she was the best potential recruit he’d found on Ymir. I’m giving you the most responsible job you’ve ever had, Anty. I’m telling you to fetch her back out of the fog she’s in and turn her into a valuable recruit. Don’t say you can’t do it. You can. You’re going to.”

Slowly, Anty was peeling off the protective clothing he had worn at the arctic base. Not saying a word, he got down from the transfax platform and went across to Enni, who gave him a blank, distrustful look. When he put out his hand tentatively, she shied away.

But after a moment, Anty smiled, and the faintest hint of a counterpart turned up the corners of Ennis mouth.

Counce gave a contented sigh, and walked away.