05-A Gift From Earth (24 page)

"We need an invisible assassin."

Matt raised himself on one shoulder and peered at Harry Kane around the white pillar of his traction-bound leg. No, Kane wasn't joking. The effort was exhausting, and he dropped back.

Laney put a hand on his arm. "It's the only answer, Matt. And it's perfect. No matter how powerful Millard Parlette becomes politically, he'll never have a defense against
you
."

"It's you or civil war," Kane put in.

Matt found his voice. "I don't doubt you're serious," he said wonderingly. "What I doubt is your sanity. Do I look like an assassin? I've never killed anyone. I never intend to."

"You did pretty well last weekend."

"What — I used a stun gun! I hit some people with my fist! Why does that make me a pro killer?"

"You realize," said Hood, "that we never intend to use you as such. You're a threat, Matt, nothing more. You'll be one leg in the balance of power between the Sons of Earth and Millard Parlette."

"I'm a miner." Matt gestured with his left hand the one that didn't pull cracked ribs. "A
miner
. I use trained worms to dig for metal. My boss sells the metal, and buys worms and worm food, and with luck he makes enough to pay my salary. Wait a minute. Have you told Parlette about this idea?"

"No, of course not. He'll never know about it unless you agree, and then we'll wait until you're out of the Hospital."

"Mist Demons, I should
hope
so. If Parlette gets the idea I'm dangerous to him — and me on my back like this — I want to be on Delta before you tell Parlette. Hell I want to be on
Earth
before — "

"Then you agree?"

"No, Kane! No, I do not agree to anything! Don't you realize I've got a family? What if Parlette takes hostages?"

"Two parents and a sister," Hood amplified. "Parents on Iota."

"Don't worry," Laney said soothingly. "We'll protect them, Matt. They'll be safe."

Kane nodded. "If anyone so much as harms a hair on your head, or threatens any member of your family. I'll declare total war. I'll have to tell Parlette that; and to make him believe it, I'll have to mean it. And I do.".

Matt thought very seriously about shouting for Dr. Bennet. It wouldn't work. Even if she threw them out, they'd only come back later.

And Matt Keller was a man on his back. He could move three inches to the side if he was willing to endure the pain. Four inches, no. A captive audience.

"You've really thought it out, haven't you? Why did you wait so long to tell me?"

Jay Hood answered. "I wanted to be here. This is my day off."

"You're back teaching school, Jay?"

"It seems appropriate to teach history while we're making it." In the dry voice there was a barely concealed jubilation. Hood was in his element. Strange that he'd never suspected the size of Hood's ego.

"You got me into this," said Matt.

"Sorry. My apologies. Believe me, Matt, I only picked you as a probable recruit." When Matt didn't answer, Hood continued, "But we do need you. Let me show you how much. You were dying, Matt — '

"Stop, Jay.!

"He has a right to know, Laney. Matt, those ribs you broke tore up your lung and your diaphragm. Harry had to talk Parlette into — "

"Jay,
shut up
."

"All right, Laney." He sounded hurt.

"Matt, we weren't going to tell you. Really we weren't."

Dead man's flesh was a part of him, forever. Living under his rib cage: a strange, partial resurrection.

Matt said, "All right, Laney. How do you stand on this?"

Laney looked down, then up to meet his eyes. "It's your choice, Matt. But if we don't have you, we don't have anyone." She seemed to stop, then hurried on. "Listen, Matt, you're making a big thing out of this. We're not asking you to rush right out and murder someone. We'd be perfectly happy to see you go back to your mining worms. For all we care, you can stay there the rest of your life, with a small extra income — "

"Thanks"

" — for being on standby alert. Maybe Parlette's honest. Maybe he really does want to make the Plateau a paradise. Maybe all is roses. But just in case — "

She leaned forward in the uncomfortable hospital chair, gripping his wrist with one hand, looking deep into his eyes. Her nails cut the skin. "Just in case Parlette is ambitious, then we'll need you to stop him. Nobody else will be able to do it."

"We must let him have his power now. Somebody has to take power, or there'll be civil war. But if he needs to be stopped, and you don't stop him, you'll be a coward."

Matt tried to pull his arm away. Torn muscles reacted; it was as if he'd been kicked in the side with a lead boot. "You're fanatics! All four of you!" And he was trapped, trapped ....

Laney let go. Slowly she sat back, her eyes soft and dreamy, with pinpoint pupils.

Matt relaxed. The others were looking at nothing. Jay Hood was humming under his breath. Mrs. Hancock scowled at some unpleasant thought.

"The luck of Matt Keller" had given him a breathing space.

"The luck of Matt Keller." A joke, a shaggy-dog story. If he hadn't used the power to "rescue" Polly, she might be alive now. If he hadn't come running to Jay Hood for explanations, he'd be back tending his mining worms. No wonder this form of "luck" had never appeared before. Perhaps it never would again.

It was a detrimental mutation. It had kept him virgin until he was twenty-one. It had killed Polly and caused Laney to see him as a tool instead of a man. It had sent him into the
Planck
; he'd never have tried that without his psychological invisibility. Into the
Planck
to die; out, by blind luck, with a dead man's lung.

A man should have the sense to hide his differences.

Too late. They would forget him, again and again, as often as he desired. But always they would come back.

Matt Keller, tool, captive assassin.

Not likely!

"You," he said. "Mrs. Hancock."

The others stirred, turned to face him, returned to the world in which Matt Keller was a factor to be considered.

"Mrs. Hancock. Do you have anything to say to me?"

"I don't think so," said the middle-aged rebel who should have been a shrewish housewife.

"You didn't say a word while the others were browbeating me. Why did you come?"

She shrugged. "Just to see what would happen. Keller, did you ever lose someone you loved?"

"Sure."

"To the organ banks?"

"My Uncle Matt."

"I did my damndest to stop you from getting a transplant, Keller. Dr. Bennet says you'd have lived without it, but of course you'd have been a cripple."

"I'd have been just as glad," said Matt, though he wasn't sure it was true.

"I wanted to smash the organ banks the first chance we got. Nobody else seems to feel that way. Maybe nobody else had a husband cut up for the organ banks."

"Make your point."

She shrugged again. "I don't know if you're as important as Harry says. It seems to me nobody could be that important. You got us out of the Hospital, right. Parlette would never have found us otherwise, right. We're grateful, right. But did we have to cut a man up to show how grateful we are? You didn't do
him
any good.

"Well, he's dead, and we can't break up the organ banks yet. But we're trying to change the laws so less people go into the organ banks and then only the ones that deserve it most. If you were any kind of man, you'd be wild to help us. I say it's all you can do for that dead man."

"For sweet charity."

Mrs. Hancock's mouth closed like a trap.

"I'm going to join you," said Matt. "But not for sweet charity. And now I'll give you my reasons."

"Go on," said Harry Kane. He was the only one who didn't show surprise.

"I can't go back to my mining worms. That's absolute. But I'm no hired killer, and that's for sure too. I've never committed murder. I haven't wanted to, not often. If I ever kill a man, I'll want to know just why I'm doing it.

"There's only one way I can be sure I will.

"From now on, the five of us are going to be the leaders of the Sons of Earth." That he saw, jolted even Harry Kane. "I'll want a hand in all decisions. I'll want all the information available to any of you. What do you say, Harry?"

"Keep talking."

Matt's mouth was dry. Harry Kane didn't like this, and Harry Kane was a bad enemy. "The Sons of Earth can't commit murder without my consent, and I won't give it unless I decide murder is necessary. To make that decision, I'd have to know everything, always. One more thing. If I ever decide one of you is trying to cheat me, I'll kill you because cheating me of information will be murder."

"What makes you think you can handle that much power, Keller?" Harry's voice was dispassionate, me interested.

"I have to try," Matt pointed out. "It's my power."

"Fair enough." Harry stood up. "One of us will be here tomorrow, with copies of Parlette's New Law, in full. If we decide to make changes later, we'll let you know."

"Let me know
before
you make the changes."

Kane hesitated, then nodded. They went.

Millard Parlette sighed and turned off the receiver.

Invisible assassin?

An odd phrase to come from a practical man like Harry Kane. What could he have meant?

Kane would tell him eventually, of course.

Even then it wouldn't matter. Kane could be trusted now, and that did matter. Now Kane had a hold on Millard Parlette. Be it real or imaginary, he would use that hold before he started a civil war.

And Millard Parlette could concentrate on the man waiting outside. Implementation had selected one of their number to present a set of grievances. The man must be getting angrier and angrier as he waited for the Head's attention.

Parlette used the intercom. "Send him in, Miss Lauessen."

"Good."

"Wait. What's his name again?"

"Halley Fox. Corporal."

"Thank you. Would you please send to Gamma and Delta and Iota plateaus for records on Matthew Keller."

"Done, mine ancestor."

Mist Demons! How had Castro put up with the woman? Parlette smiled. Why not? Let him take care of Implementation and the Council, and Harry Kane would take care of the rest. An invisible assassin had just lifted half the load from his back.

"It'll be one strange balance of power," said Harry Kane. "Parlette's got every weapon on the planet except for what we've built in our basements. He's got all the electrical and medical facilities, and most of the wealth. And what have we got? Matt Keller."

"And lucky to get him," said Laney.

A red-haired girl in an iridescent dress passed them, walking quickly down the corridor. A crew girl, probably visiting a relative. They stopped talking until she had passed. Harry Kane grinned after her, grinned at her startled expression and at the way she'd quickened her step to leave them behind. They'd all have to get used to this someday — to the sight of colonists in the hallowed corridors of the Hospital.

Jay Hood said, "Well, we've got him. Or has he got us?" He slapped the wall, making gunshot echoes. "Can you imagine what the historians will say? They may never figure it out."

Matt lay on his back and contemplated the ceiling.

He'd made the right decision. He was sure of it. If he had a power, then
someone
had to have a use for it.

He himself had none.

A detrimental mutation is one that prevents the organism from surviving long enough to breed. Matt's only hope of becoming a father lay in suppressing the "luck" entirely, at least in his private life. An invisible man goes nowhere in a civilized society.

Someone entered. Matt's eyes jerked hard over, caught by the iridescent blue of her dress.

"I beg your pardon," she said, and turned to leave. She was tall and slender, and young, with dark red hair curved into impossible contours. Her dress was of a type never seen on Delta Plateau, loose and clinging, and it
glowed
. A face lovely in its strangeness, with flared nostrils and pronounced cheekbones, marked her as pure crew.

"Just a minute," Matt called.

She turned in surprise, not at what he'd said, but at his colonist accent. Then her back straightened and her chin lifted and her mouth became a hard, angry line. Matt flushed.

And before her eyes could coldly leave him, he thought,
Look at me.

Her eyes didn't turn. Her chin came down and her face went soft and dreamy.

Keep your eyes on mine,
he thought at her
. I fascinate you, right? Right. Keep looking.

She took a slow step toward him.

Matt dropped the control. She took another step forward, and then she looked horrified. She turned and ran from the room, followed by Matt's pealing laughter.

Detrimental mutation?

Maybe not.

The Outsider ship was a Christmas decoration, a hall of tinsel ribbons looping over and under and around one another, never touching. It was the diameter of New York with about the same population, in beings like black cat-o'-nine-tails with thickened handles.

Miles ahead at the end of its tethering cables, the fusion drive spread dim light over the ship. The basking-ramps cast vacuum-sharp shadows across each other, and in the borderlands between light and shade lay the crew. They lay with their heads in sunlight and their branched tails in shadow, soaking up energy through thermoelectric currents. Fusion radiation sleeted through their bodies, unnoticed. It was a peaceful, lazy time.

Between stars there was little to do.

Until actinic blue flame flashed across their course, throwing high-energy particles and electromagnetic fields about with carefree abandon.

In moments the object was out of sight, even to an Outsider's sensitive eye. But not to the ship's instruments. In an hour the Outsiders had it nailed: position, velocity, mass, design, thrust. It was metal, mechanical, pushed by fusion, and fueled by interstellar hydrogen. Not a primitive device, but —

Built by potential customers.

In every, arm of the galaxy were Outsiders, using everything from photon sails to reactionless, inertialess drives to push their ships; but always they traveled through Einsteinian space. Hyperdrive was vulgar. The Outsiders never used hyperdrive.