05-A Gift From Earth (4 page)

"Why'd you leave? It was just getting interesting."

"No it wasn't, and my glass was empty, and anyway I was hoping you'd follow."

Polly laughed. "You must believe in miracles."

"True. Why'd
you
leave?"

Embedded in wall-to-wall humanity, drowned in a waterfall of human voices, Polly and Matt nevertheless had a sort of privacy. Manners and lack of interest would prevent anyone from actually listening to them. Hence nobody could hear them; for how could anyone concentrate on two conversations at once? They might have been in a room by themselves, a room with yielding walls and unyielding elbows, a room as small and private as a phone booth.

"I think Jay's bugs on psi powers," said Polly. She had not answered his question, which was fine by Matt. He'd expected to escape unnoticed from Hood's debate. He was lucky that way. But Polly coming to join him was new and different, and he enjoyed guessing at her motives.

"He talks like that all the time?"

"Yes. He thinks if we could only — " She stopped. Girl with a secret. "Forget Jay. Tell me about yourself."

So he talked of mining worms and home life and the school in sector nine, Gamma Plateau; and he mentioned Uncle Matt, who had died for being a rebel, but she ignored the bait. And Polly talked about growing up a hundred miles away, near the Colony University; and she described her job at the Delta Retransmitting Power Station, but she never mentioned her hearing aid.

"You look like a girl with a secret," Matt said. "I think it must be the smile."

She moved closer to him, which was very close, and lowered her voice. "Can you keep a secret?"

Matt smiled with one side of his mouth to show that he knew what was coming. She said it anyway. "So can I."

And that was that. But she didn't move away. They smiled at each other from a distance of a couple of inches, nose to nose, momentarily content with a silence which, to an earlier man, would have sounded like the center of an air raid. She was lovely, Polly. Her face was a lure and a danger; her figure, small and lithe and woman shaped, rippled with a dancer's grace beneath her loose green jumper. For the moment Matt looked silently into her eyes and felt very good. The moment passed, and they talked small talk.

The flow of the crowd carried them half across the room. Once they pushed back to the bar for refills, then let the crowd carry them again. In the continuous roar there was something hypnotic, something that might have explained why the crowded-room drinking bout was more than half a thousand years old; for monotonous background noise has long been used in hypnosis. Time ceased to exist. But there came a moment when Matt knew that he would ask Polly to go home with him, and she would accept.

He didn't get the chance.

Something changed in Polly's face. She seemed to be listening to something only she could hear. The hearing aid? He was ready to pretend he hadn't noticed, but he didn't get that chance either. For suddenly Polly was moving away, disappearing into the crowd, not as if she were in any hurry, but as if she remembered something she ought to do, some niggling detail she might as well take care of now. Matt tried to follow her, but the sea of humanity closed behind her.

The hearing aid
, he told himself.
It called her
. But he stayed by the bar, resisting the pressure that would have borne him away. He was getting very drunk now, and glad of it. He didn't believe it had been the hearing aid. The whole thing was too familiar. Too many girls had lost interest in him just as suddenly as Polly had. He was more than disappointed. It
hurt
. The vodka helped to kill the pain.

About ten-thirty he went around to the other side of the bar. The kid playing bartender was happily drunk and glad to give up his place. Matt was gravely drunk. He dispensed drinks with dignity, being polite but not obsequious. The crowd was thinning now. This was bedtime for most of Mount Lookitthat. By now the sidewalks in most towns would have been rolled up and put away till dawn. These revolutionists must be a late-rising group. Matt served drinks automatically, but he wasn't having any more himself.

The vodka began to run low. And there wasn't anything but vodka, vodka converted from sugar and water and air by one of Earth's educated bacteria. Let it run out, Matt thought viciously. He could watch the riot.

He served somebody a vodka grapefruit, as requested. But the hand with the drink did not vanish to make room for someone else. Slowly Matt realized that the hand belonged to Laney Mattson. "Hi," he said.

"Hi. Want a stand-in?"

"Guess so."

Somebody changed places with him — one of Laney's tall escorts — and Laney led him through the thinning ranks to a miraculously unoccupied sofa. Matt sank deep into it. The room would start to whirl if he closed his eyes.

"Do you always get this looped?"

"No. Something bugging me."

"Tell me?"

He turned to look at her. Somehow his vodka-blurred eyes saw past Laney's makeup, saw that her mouth was too wide and her green eyes were strangely large. But she wore a smile of sympathetic curiosity.

"Ever see a twenty-one-year-old virgin male?" He squinted to, try to read her reaction.

The corners of Laney's mouth twisted. strangely. "No." She was trying riot to laugh, be realized. He turned away.

She asked, "Lack of interest?"

"No! Hell, no."

"Then what?"

"She forgets me." Matt felt himself sobering with time and the effort of answering. "All of a sudden the girl I'm chasing just" — he gestured a little wildly — "forgets I'm around. I don't know why."

"Stand up."

Humph?"

He felt her hand on his arm, pulling. He stood up. The room spun and he realized that he wasn't sobering; he'd just felt steadier sitting down. He followed the pull of her arm, relieved that he didn't fall down. The next thing he knew, everything was pitch black.

"Where are we?"

No answer. He felt hands pull his shirt apart, hands with small sharp nails which caught in his chest hair. Then his pants dropped. "So this is it," he said, in a tone of vast surprise. It sounded so damn silly that he wanted to cringe.

"Don't panic," said Laney. "Mist Demons, you're nervous! Come here. Don't trip over anything."

He managed to walk out of his pants without falling. His knees bumped something. "Fall face down," Laney commanded, and he did. He was face down on an airfoam mattress, rigidly tense. Hands that were stronger than they ought to be dug into the muscles of his neck and shoulders, kneading them like dough. It felt wonderful. He lay there with his arms out like a swandiver, going utterly limp as knuckles ran down the sides of his vertebrae, as slender fingers pulled each separate tendon into a new shape.

When he was good and ready, he turned over and reached out.

To his left was a stack of photos a foot high. Before him three photos, obviously candid shots. Jesus Pietro spread them out and looked them over. He wrote a name under one of them. The others rang no bell, so he shuffled them and put them on the big stack. Then he stood up and stretched

"Match these with the suspects we've already collected," he told an aide. The man saluted, picked up the stack and left the flying office, moving toward the patrol wagons. Jesus Pietro followed him out.

Almost half of Harry Kane's guests were now in patrol wagons. The photographs had been taken as they entered the front door earlier tonight. Jesus Pietro, with his phenomenal memory, had identified a good number of them.

The night was cool and dark. A stiff breeze blew across the Plateau, carrying a smell of rain.

Rain.

Jesus Pietro looked up to see that half the sky was raggedly blotted out. He could imagine trying to conduct a raid in a pouring rainstorm. He didn't like the idea.

Back in his office, he turned the intercom to all-channel. "Now hear this," he said conversationally. "Phase two is on. Now."

"Is everyone that nervous?"

Laney chuckled softly. Now she could laugh all she wanted, if she wanted. "Not that nervous. I think everyone must be a little afraid the first time."

"You?"

"Sure. But Ben handled it right. Good man, Ben."

"Where is he now?" Matt felt a mild gratitude toward Ben.

"He's — he's gone." Her tone told him to
drop
it. Matt, guessed he'd been caught wearing a hearing aid or something.

"Mind if I turn on a light?"

"If you can find a switch," said Laney, "you can turn it on."

She didn't expect him to, not in pitch blackness in a strange room, but he did. He felt incredibly sober, and incredibly peaceful. He ran his eyes over her lying next to him, seeing the tangled ruin of her sculptured hairdo, remembering the touch of smooth warm skin, knowing he could touch her again at will. It was a power he'd never felt before. He said, "Very nice."

"Makeup smeared over forgettable face."

"Unforgettable face." It was true, now. "No makeup over unforgettable body."

A body with an infinite capacity for love, a body he'd thought almost too big to be sexy.

"I should wear a mask, no clothes."

"You'd get more attention than you'd like."

She laughed hugely, and he rested his ear over her navel to enjoy the earthquake ripple of abdominal muscles.

The rain came suddenly, beating against the thick coral walls. They stopped talking to listen. Suddenly Laney dug her fingers into his arm and whispered, "Raid."

She means Rain, Matt thought, turning to look at her. She was terrified, her eyes and nostrils and mouth all distended. She meant Raid!

"You've got a way out, don't you?"

Laney shook her head. She was listening to unheard voices through the hearing aid.

"But you must have a way out. Don't worry, I don't want to know about it. I'm in no danger." Laney looked startled, and he said, "Sure, I noticed the hearing aids. But it's none of my business."

"Yes it is, Matt. You were invited here so we could get a look at you. All of us bring outsiders occasionally. Some get invited to join."

"0h."

"I told the truth. There's no way out. Implementation has ways of finding tunnels. But there is a hiding place."

"Good."

"We can't reach it. Implementation is already in the house. They've filled it with sleepy gas. It should be seeping around the doors any minute."

"The windows?"

"They'll be waiting for us."

"We can
try
"

"Okay." She was on her feet and getting into her dress. Nothing else. Matt wasted not even that much time. He swung a great marble ashtray against a window and followed it through, thanking the Mist Demons that Mount Lookitthat couldn't make unbreakable glass.

Two pairs of hands closed on his arms before his feet cleared the window. Matt kicked out and heard somebody' say
Whuff!
In the corner of his eye Laney cleared the window and was running. Good, he'd hold their attention for her. He jerked at the grip on his arms. A meaty hand weighing a full ton smashed across his jaw. His knees buckled. A light shone in his eyes, and he shrank back.

The light passed. Matt made one last frantic attempt to jerk loose, and felt one arm come free. He swung it full around. The elbow smacked solidly into yielding meat and bone: an unmistakable, unforgettable sensation. And he was free, running.

Just once in his life he had hit someone like that. From the feel of it he must have smashed the man's nose all over his face. If Implementation caught him now .... !

Wet, slippery, treacherous grass underfoot. Once he stepped on a smooth wet rock and went skidding across the grass on cheek and shoulder. Twice a spotlight found him, and each time he hit the grass and lay where he was, looking back to see where the light went. When it pointed elsewhere, he ran again. The rain must have bluffed the lights and the eyes behind him; the rain and the luck of Matt Keller. Lightning flickered about him, but whether it helped or hurt him he couldn't say.

Even when he was sure he was free, he continued to run.

Finished
.

Millard Parlette pushed his chair back and viewed the typewriter with satisfaction. His speech lay on his desk, last page on top, back-to-front. He picked up the stack of paper with long, knobby fingers and quickly shuffled it into correct order.

Record it now?

No. Tomorrow morning. Sleep on it tonight, see if I've left anything out. I don't have to deliver it until day after tomorrow.
Plenty of time to record the speech in his own voice, then play it over and over until he'd learned it by heart.

But it had to go over. The crew had to be made to understand the issues. For too long they had lived the lives of a divinely ordained ruling class. If they couldn't adapt —

Even his own, descendants ... they didn't talk politics often, and when they did, Millard Parlette noticed that they talked in terms not of power but of rights. And the Parlettes were not typical. By now Millard Parlette could claim a veritable army of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so forth; yet he made every effort to see them all as often as possible. Those who had succumbed to the prevalent crewish tastes — eldritch styles of dress, elegantly worded slander, and all the other games the crew used to cloak their humdrum reality — had done so in spite of Millard Parlette. The average crew was utterly dependent on the fact that he was a crew.

And if the power balance should shift?

They'd be lost. For a time they'd be living in a false universe, under wrong assumptions; and in that time they would be destroyed.

What chance ... What chance that they would listen to an old man from a dead generation?

No. He was just tired. Millard Parlette dropped the speech on his desk, stood up, and left the study; At least he would force them to listen. By order of the Council, at two o'clock Sunday every pure-blooded crew on the planet would be in front of his teedee set. If he could put it across ... he must.

They had to understand the mixed blessing of Ramrobot #143.

Rain filled the coral house with an incessant drumming. Only Implementation police moved within and without. The last unconscious colonist was on his way out the door on a stretcher as Major Jansen entered.

He found Jesus Pietro lounging in an easy chair in the living room. He put the handful of photos beside him.

"What's this supposed to be?"

"These are the ones we haven't caught yet, sir."

Jesus Pietro pulled himself erect, conscious once again of his soaked uniform. "How did they get past you?"

"I can't imagine, sir. Nobody escaped after he was spotted."

"No secret tunnels. The echo sounders would have found them. Mpf." Jesus Pietro shuffled rapidly through the photos. Most had names beneath the faces, names Jesus Pietro had remembered and jotted down earlier that night. "This is the core," he said. "We'll wipe out this branch of the Sons of Earth if we can find these. Where are they?"

The aide was silent. He knew the question was rhetorical. The Head was leaning back with his eyes on the ceiling.

Where were they?

There were no tunnels out. They had not left underground.

They hadn't run away. They would have been stopped, or if not stopped, seen. Unless there were traitors in Implementation. But there weren't. Period.

Could they have reached the void edge? No, that was better guarded than the rest of the grounds. Rebels had a deplorable tendency to go off the edge when cornered.

An aircar? Colonists wouldn't have an aircar, not legally, and none had been reported stolen recently. But Jesus Pietro had always been convinced that at least one crew was involved in the Sons of Earth. He had no proof, no suspect; but his studies of history showed that a revolution always moves down from the top of a society's structure.

A crew might have supplied them with an escape car. They'd have been seen but not stopped. No Implementation officer would halt a car . . . . "Jansen, find out if any cars were sighted during the raid. If there were, let me know when, how many, and descriptions."

Major Jansen left without showing his surprise at the peculiar order.

An officer had found the housecleaner nest, a niche in the south wall, near the floor. The man reached in and. carefully removed two unconscious adult housecleaners' and four pups, put them on the floor, reached in to remove the nest and the food dish. The niche would have to be searched.

Jesus Pietro's clothes dried slowly, in wrinkles. He sat with his eyes closed and his hands folded on his belly. Presently he opened his eyes, sighed, and frowned slightly.

Jesus Pietro, this is a very strange house.

Yes. Almost garishly colonist. (Overtones of disgust.)

Jesus Pietro looked at the pink coral walls, the flat-sanded floor which curved up at the edge of the rug to join the walls. Not a bad effect if a woman were living here. But Harry Kane was a bachelor.

How much would you say a house like this cost?

Oh, about a thousand stars, not including furnishings. Furnishings would cost twice that. Rugs, ninety stars if you bought one and let it spread. Two housecleaners, mated, fifty stars.

And how much to put a basement under such a house?

Mist Demons, what an idea! Basements have to be dug by hand, by human beings! It'd cost twenty thousand stars easily. You could build a
school
for that. Who would ever think of digging a basement under an architectural coral house?

Who indeed?

Jesus Pietro stepped briskly to the door. "Major Jansen!"

The sequel was likely to be messy. Jesus Pietro retired to the flying office while a team went in with an echo sounder. Yes, there was a large open space under the house. Major Chin wanted to find the entrance, but that might take all night, and the sounds might warn the colonists. Jesus Pietro sat firmly on his curiosity and ordered explosives.

It was messy. The rebels had put together some ingenious devices from materials anyone would have considered harmless. Two men died before sleepy-gas grenades could be used.

When all was quiet, Jesus Pietro followed the demolition teams into the basement.

They found one of the unconscious rebels leaning on a dead-man switch. They traced the leads to a homemade bomb big enough to blow house and basement to bits. While they disconnected the bomb, Jesus Pietro studied the man, making a mental note to ask him if he'd chickened out. He'd found that they often did.

Behind one wall was a car, a three-year-old four-seater model with a bad scrape on the ground-effect skirt. Jesus Pietro could see no way to get it out of the basement, and neither could anyone else. The house must have been formed over it. Of course, thought Jesus Pietro; they dug the basement then grew the house over it. He had his men cut away the wall so that the car could be removed later if it was thought worthwhile. They'd practically have to remove the house.

There was a flight of steps with a trapdoor at the top. Jesus Pietro, examining the small bomb under the trapdoor, congratulated himself (pointedly, in Major Chin's hearing) on not allowing Major Chin to search for the entrance. He might have found it. Someone removed the bomb and opened the trapdoor. Above was the living room. An asymmetrical section of mutated grass rug had reluctantly tom away and come up with the door. When the door was lowered, it would grow back within twenty minutes.

After the dead and unconscious had been filed away in patrol wagons, Jesus Pietro walked among them, comparing the faces with his final stack of photos. He was elated. With the exception of one man, he had collected Harry Kane and his entire guest list. The organ banks would be supplied for years. Not only would the crew have a full supply, which they always did anyway, but there would be spare parts for exceptional servants of the regime;
i.e
., for civil servants such as Jesus Pietro and his men. Even the colonists would benefit. It was not at all unusual for the Hospital to treat a sick but deserving colonist if the medical supplies were sufficient. The Hospital treated everyone they could. It reminded the colonists that the crew ruled in their name and had their interests at heart.

And the Sons of Earth was dead. All but one man, and from his picture he wasn't old enough to be dangerous.

Nonetheless Jesus Pietro had his picture tacked to the Hospital bulletin boards and sent a copy to the newscast station with the warning that he was wanted for questioning.

It was not until dawn, when he was settling down to sleep, that he remembered who belonged to that face. Matthew Keller's nephew, six years older than when he'd pulled that cider trick.

He looked just like his uncle.

The rain stopped shortly before dawn, but Matt didn't know it. Sheltered from the rain by a cliff and by a thick clump of watershed trees, he slept on.

The cliff was the Beta-Gamma cliff. He'd fetched up against it sometime last night, dizzy and bruised and wet and winded. He could have collapsed there or tried running parallel to the cliff. He had chosen to collapse. If Implementation found him, he'd never awaken, and he had known it as he went to sleep. He had been too exhausted to care.

He woke about ten with a ferocious headache. Every separate muscle hurt from running and from sleeping on bare ground. His tongue felt like the entire Implementation police force had marched over it in sweat socks. He stayed on his back, looking up into the dark trees his ancestors had called pines, and tried to remember.

So much to begin and end in one night.

The people seemed to crowd around him. Hood, Laney, the four tall men, the kid who drank behind the bar, the laughing man who stole crew cars, Polly, Harry Kane, and a forest of anonymous elbows and shouting voices.

All gone. The man whose scar he wore. The woman who'd left him flat. The genial mastermind-bartender. And Laney! How could he have lost Laney? They were gone. Over the next few years they might reappear in the form of eyes, lengths of artery and vein, grafts of hair-bearing scalp ....

By now the police would be looking for Matt himself.

He sat up, and every muscle screamed. He was naked. Implementation must have found his clothes in Laney's room. Could they match the clothes to him? And if they couldn't, they'd still wonder how a man came to be wandering stark naked in open countryside. On the pedwalks of Earth there were licensed nudists, and on Wunderland you didn't need a license; but on the Plateau there was no substitute for clothing.

He couldn't turn himself in. By now he'd never prove he wasn't a rebel. He'd have to get clothes, somehow, and hope they weren't looking for him already.

He surged to his feet, and it hit him again. Laney. Laney in the dark, Laney looking at him in the lamplit bed. Polly, the girl with the secret. Hood, first name Jayhawk. A wave of sickness caught him, and he doubled over, retching. He stopped the spasms by sheer willpower. His skull was a throbbing drum. He straightened and walked to the edge of the watershed forest.

To right and left the watershed trees stretched along the base of the Beta-Gamma cliff. Beta Plateau above him, unreachable except by the bridge, which must be miles to the left. Before him, a wide meadow with a few grazing goats. Beyond that, houses. Houses in all directions, thickly clustered. His own was perhaps four miles away. He'd never reach it without being stopped.

How about Harry's house? Laney had said there was a hiding place. And the ones who left before the raid .... some of them might have returned. They could help him. But would they?

He'd have to try it. He might reach Harry's house, crawling through the grass. The luck of Matt Keller might hold that far. He'd never reach his own.

His luck held: the strange luck that seemed to hide Matt Keller when he didn't want to be noticed. He reached the house two hours later. His knees and belly were green and itchy from the grass.

The grounds about the house were solidly spread with wheel tracks. All of Implementation must have been in on the raid. Matt saw no guards, but he went carefully in case they were inside. Implementation guards or rebel guards, he could still be shot. Though a guard might hesitate to shoot him; he'd want to ask questions first. Like: "Where's your pants, buddy?"

Nobody was inside. A dead or sleeping family of housecleaners lay against one wall, beneath their looted nest. Dead, probably, or drugged. Housecleaners hated, light; they did their work at night. The rug showed a gaping hole that reached down through indoor grass and architectural coral to a well-furnished hole in the ground. The living-room walls were spotted with explosion marks and mercy-bullet streaks. So was the basement, when Matt climbed down to look.

The basement was empty of men and nearly empty of equipment. Scars showed where heavy machinery had stood, more scars where it had been torn loose or burned loose. There were doors, four of them, all crude looking and all burned open. One led to a kitchen; two opened on empty storerooms. One whole wall lay on its side, but the piece of equipment beyond was intact. The hole left by the fallen wall might have been big enough to remove it, but certainly the hole in the living-room floor was not.

It was a car, a flying car of the type used by all crew families. Matt had never before seen one close up. There it was beyond the broken wall, with no possible way to get it out. What in blazes had Harry Kane wanted with a car that couldn't be flown?

Perhaps this was what had brought on the raid. Cars were strictly denied to colonists. The military uses of a flying car are obvious. But why wasn't its theft noticed earlier? The car must have been here when the house was built.

Dimly Matt remembered a story he'd heard last night. Something about a stolen car set to circle the Plateau until the fuel ran out. No doubt the car had fallen in the mist, watched by furious, impotent crew. But — suppose he'd heard only the official version? Suppose the fuel had not ran out; suppose the car had dipped into the mist, circled below the Plateau, and come up where Harry Kane could bury it in a hidden basement?

Probably he'd never know.

__________

The showers were still running. Matt was shivering badly when he stepped in. The hot water thawed him instantly. He let the water pour heavily down on the back of his neck, washing the grass stains and dirt and old sweat from him as it ran in streams to his feet. Life was bearable. With all its horrors and all its failures, life was bearable where there were hot showers.