Worlds Apart (17 page)

She was efficient enough to merit promotion, and didn't get it. She became twice as efficient, and did get it.

So Corey had a certain discomfort talking to Phyllis alone. A complicated situation was superimposed on the fact that Corey was a man and Phyllis an attractive woman, and yet Corey could not be father, brother, lover, or friend.

Phyllis made her suggestion.

"Nonsense," said the commodore immediately. "Are you getting soft, lieutenant?"

"Not at all, sir. I merely think my method would be more certain, more efficient, less liable to produce consequences, and even quicker in the end."

"Nonsense," said the commodore again.

"I should like my suggestion to go on record, sir," said Phyllis evenly.

That gave the commodore pause. There was a long moment of silence while he considered and calculated and reconsidered.

The Clade system looked and was totalitarian, but Commodore Corey wasn't the official dictator. No one was, just at the moment. Corey was answerable, above, to the President of the United Nations, and below, to a council of officers. In theory it was democracy. In practice it was autocracy, and the autocrat was Power.

So long as Corey was strong, hard, successful, and confident, he was Commodore Corey. Immediately he failed or showed weakness or uncertainty, he was out. He had supreme power over individuals, but freedom of choice only in attaining the goals of the society. If those goals were not being attained, his power would be gone, and so would his command.

Corey remembered that twice before, with other officers, Barton's judgment had been correct and her cold evaluation had led to promotion for her and demotion for the other. He reconsidered, but it was too late to withdraw.

"Very well," he said. He reached out, and Phyllis watched him flick the switch "Record."

"Suggestion by Lieutenant Phyllis Barton re interrogation of prisoner Toni Pertwee," said Phyllis coolly. "To Commodore Corey, August 9, Year 28. Confirmed?"

With no change in expression Corey switched the recording off again under the desk. "Confirmed," he said. The timbre of his voice could be measured so exactly that if it had been recorded it would have been useless for him to deny having confirmed Phyllis's suggestion. He wondered whether to switch on again, but decided against it.

Phyllis went on to give her opinion that the information required from Toni could be acquired much more rapidly, more certainly, more efficiently, and with less danger of possibly unfortunate consequences by herself and by others working to her orders gaining Toni's confidence than by torture.

As she made her statement in detail Corey was frowning. She was wrong, obviously she was wrong. It was too late to gain the Mundan girl's confidence /now/; earlier, perhaps. Yes, she was wrong, and he wished he hadn't tampered with the recording. That was a dangerous thing to do. But on the other hand, if she was right, and the record existed, it would be serious; not fatal, but distinctly undesirable. Since it didn't exist, he could countercharge in the event of any reference to it being made that she had attempted to make a false record. If she was wrong, it didn't matter either way. She wouldn't demand the production of a record that proved her error.

He roused himself in time to say "Confirmed" again at the close of the record. Phyllis waited. Puzzled, he stared back. At last she pointed, and, reddenlug, he closed the switch on his desk.

"That's all, lieutenant," he said.

She saluted again and went.

Corey frowned again. It wasn't like Barton to make a dud suggestion and insist on recording it. He wished she had gone to Sloan instead, when he was off duty. Then it would have been Sloan's responsibility.

3

Pertwee stated his point of view quite definitely.

"Destroy Lemon," he said. "Go somewhere else. Where we can hide. Where the Clades could have no reason to expect to find us."

Rog had again called an unofficial meeting to reach some conclusions. This one, however, was so large that they had to use the smaller Council Chamber for it. Present were Mary and Jim Bentley, John and Ruby Pertwee, Dick Smith, Fred and Alice Mitchell, Brad Hulton, Jessie Bendall, Abner Carliss and his sister Felicia, and quite a few others who might have something to say and could be trusted to keep their mouths shut if they hadn't.

Rog opened the proceedings by inviting Jessie Bendall to take the chair. She was going to refuse, since Rog was clearly the real president. But Rog said he wasn't going to preside anyway, and if Jessie refused he would merely suggest Mary or Alice or Brad or leave it to the meeting.

One or two more people who hadn't noticed it before realized that Rog Foley was a diplomat. He never used any power he might have merely for the sake of using it; he kept it in reserve until it was needed.

Jessie accepted the chairmanship, and then Rog made it clear, smoothly but decidedly, that as far as he was concerned Pertwee was accepted back without reservations. Only if and when Toni returned, only if her story disagreed with his, should any charges against Pertwee be considered, he said. Alice agreed. So did Ruby, of course; Fred nodded.

The older people looked at each other, waiting for someone to take the lead and express an opinion. But nobody did. Their only real leader was Pertwee. And Rog was restoring him, not opposing him.

Pertwee stated his attitude. Lemon couldn't stand against the Clades, from what he had seen of them, for as much as ten minutes. In that time the Mundans could be destroyed or taken prisoner, as the Clades wished.

"And the Clades are evil," he went on. "The less we have to do with them the better."

"Are any human beings really evil all through?" asked Mary Bentley quietly.

"Perhaps not. But bad enough. You all know what happened to Toni and me on the ship almost as well as I do. Let's look at the various people. The commodore is honest, sincere; he really believes that the two parties should join together and make a powerful whole. Since his is the stronger, we must fall in with their way of life -- I think he'd accept it as quite natural that we should enforce our way on them if we happened to be stronger.

"Evil? He's no worse than most of us. He'd be a useful man if he were with us. But that's the point -- he's not with us, and can't be with us. As things are he'd be cruel and inhuman and stubborn, crushing Lemon like an insect.

"Or take Phyllis Barton. I've heard the opinions of some of you on her, from what I've told you. None of you has any sympathy for her, and a few think the only thing she could understand is torture, and a little of her own medicine would break her down pretty quickly.

"I don't think you understand her at all. There's no more evil in her than in most girls her age -- it's just been developed more fully, that's all. Most of her life has been the journey on the Clades. There was no other life but the life of the ship, no other point of view, beliefs, customs. People aren't horrified at things which no one in their acquaintance has ever been horrified at. When Corey told her to torture Toni, she did it just as if she'd been told to close the door, or stand to attention. If Corey had said to stab Toni through the heart, she'd have done that too without the least -- "

"And you say there's no more evil in her than in anyone else!" burst out Fred Mitchell. "Is murder such a detail?"

"Yes," retorted Pertwee. "Among the Clades. I'm only guessing, of course -- how they acted leads me to believe that if Phyllis Barton had refused to torture Toni, say, she would have been thrown in a cell like us, right away. And if she refused before a big gathering of Clades, and some demonstration was necessary, as likely as not she'd have been shot out of hand. It's because the Clades are like that that I say let's cut ourselves off from them -- hide from them, keep out of their way -- "

"For how long?" Bentley demanded.

There was the rub, How long could it last?

Points of view emerged; little by little a structure of probabilities built itself up.

The Clades would not give up the search. They would keep scouring the surface of Mundis, knowing there was a settlement, until they found Lemon. And then, they had Toni.

Pertwee pointed out that it wasn't reasonable to expect Toni to stay silent for long on the location of Lemon. Some of those present couldn't see that. They said that with the Clades as Pertwee said they were, it was her duty to die before betraying Lemon.

It wasn't a question of dying, said Pertwee. Mundans didn't understand torture. The Clades did. They would take no risks with Tonl's life. They would make it hell, but they wouldn't end it, Toni would talk, like anyone else.

So if the Mundans did nothing, the Clades would appear over Lemon in a few hours or a few days, and the Mundans would become Clades, under Commodore Corey. Human freedom would be at an end for a generation or two, at least -- probably for a long time.

"And very likely," said Bentley, gloomily for him, "long before freedom returns there'll be yet another final atomic war -- and probably no one will get away this time."

But as Brad Hulton pointed out, the picture wasn't likely to be very much different if they abandoned Lemon and tried to build some sort of secret city.

"Traveling," he observed, "we'd be a little more conspicuous than we are here, a little easier to find. Split up? Then that's the end of our settlement anyway. Travel separately, to meet at some fixed point? The Clades are bound to pick up some party, and work on it as they're doing on Toni, so we gain nothing by the switch."

"Anyway," said Dick, speaking unwillingly, as usual, but having something he felt had to be said, "hiding isn't merely impracticable. In the long run it's impossible. We can't live decently without crops. It's all very well for you, Pertwee, to go on a journey and live off the land, but a whole settlement can't live as you did."

Rog said very little. He was ready to take the lead when there was a lead to be taken, but obviously, so far, there was none. With every word that was spoken it became clearer that Mundis, defenseless and peaceful, could not hope to stand against half a dozen armed Clades, let alone the whole huge ship and its complement, backed by a probable colony on Secundis.

What was wanted, obviously, was a miracle. It didn't seem as if anything less would do any good.

4

Phyllis handed an envelope to Captain Wyness, saluted, and went straight to the gymnasium. Toni was there, held by two men, but she pretended not to see Phyllis.

It was this gymnasium that had made it possible for children born in free fall to develop the muscles they would need for the one-and-three-quarter G pull of Secundis. Dr. Heneker, back on Earth, had worked out the schedule of exercises that strengthened young internal organs and built up tough, wiry muscles to withstand the gravity they had never experienced. And for the most part the exercises, grimly enforced, had been a brilliant success. The only children who died on the arrival at Secundis were some between three months and four years old. Younger, they were still able to adapt; older, their internal organs had been built into the pattern one-and-three-quarter G demanded.

Phyllis glanced at the bender, which she had already decided was going to be the sole instrument for this session, and wished she could tell Toni proudly that she herself had had ten hours a week in a machine like that for eleven years. Toni was going to scream and be sorry for herself. But Toni was making her first acquaintance with the bender at twenty, fully developed, well-fed and healthy, watched over by an operator who would be very careful that she wouldn't be seriously harmed. Phyllis had been put into the bender when she was three, a thin, frightened, hungry child, by someone who didn't care whether she lived or died.

"I could explain this," said' Phyllis briefly, "but it's easier to demonstrate. Oh, by the way, where's Lemon?"

Pertwee hadn't been mentioned since he escaped. The fact that he had really escaped, when he had only been meant to think he had, would have been enough to depose Commodore Corey if he hadn't been able to blame it on the second lieutenants with the three tracking parties. Eleven men had died -- it was the first indication that a Mundan, on Mundis, might in certain circumstances be dangerous.

But though Pertwee was ignored as if he had never existed, and Toni's questions about him were not even acknowledged, she must, Phyllis realized, have been able to work out that he was either dead or had escaped. That unvarying question at every session, for example, was a tacit admission that the Clades had no other possible source of information.

Toni didn't answer. Toni remained a puzzle to Phyllis. She had said and done so little since she came aboard the Clades that Phyllis couldn't begin to understand her. But there were two things she liked about the Mundan girl. One was her courage. It wasn't the stoic, silent variety of the Clades. Toni would scream and plead. But she didn't give in. By this time, Phyllis calculated, a Clade male would have. The other thing was her beauty. Phyllis couldn't talk about that to anyone. To admire beauty was soft, and almost an invitation to be grounded. Nevertheless, Phyllis liked the look of Toni, and had once even wondered, deep in the recesses of her calculating brain, how she looked to Toni.

"Lift her," said Phyllis.

The two men lifted Toni into the bender. One clamp was fastened about her shoulders and neck. The other fitted over her feet and ankles and calves. Toni was puzzled. The clamps were padded, as if the purpose were not to hurt, for a change.

Phyllis operated controls. A motor hummed. Toni, held gently but firmly by the shoulders and back, and by the feet, was slowly bent first into an L, then as if sitting in a chair and then with her knees pushed hard into her chest. To drive the lesson home she was then telescoped brutally once or twice. She couldn't help crying out.

"You see?" said Phyllis, straightening her out again. "You can resist the pressure or not, as you like. It's resistible, and if you resist it isn't so bad." She threw the switch again.

Not since she was five had the machine been able to bend Phyllis more than once each session. It was adjusted to the observed, calculated strength of the person in it. For Toni, though she didn't know it, Phyllis set the controls normally, honestly. It was no worse for Toni than for every Clade, male and female, born in space. But it had occurred to Phyllis that it was quite a reasonable persuader.