Brightsuit MacBear (17 page)

“Consider this a message, Captain-Mother, terse in content but certainly to the point, from our taflak friend Middle C. He and
his
friends, in fact his own tribe as well as the assembled warriors of several neighboring villages—whose territory you’re violating—would greatly appreciate seeing us, alive, uninjured, and uninhibited, back down on the surface immediately.”

“Or else,” Mac added.

“Quite so,” echoed Pemot. “Or else.”

No other warriors, of course, existed. This had been one of the strategies worked out with the Majestan native before leaving him for the
Intimidator
. For a while, Mac had wondered—and worried—whether Pemot would remember it.

Captain-Mother b’Tehla’s reaction was well worth waiting for. She thought of something to say, opened her mouth, closed it, thought of something else, opened her mouth, and closed it again. In the end, she seemed to find her voice.

“Snake-eye lovers! Ugh! Goldberry, take them anywhere they please but get them out of my sight!”

In ten minutes they found themselves afoot again and almost alone on the Sea of Leaves.

The
Compassionate
had turned and was speeding away at its full seven miles per hour.

Meanwhile, not five hundred yards away, a patch of moss, just beginning to turn brown with death, stirred and trembled as whatever lay beneath it raised itself upward a few inches, all the better to watch the two off-planet travelers.

Chapter XVIII: Is It Safe?

Dalmeon Geanar was disgusted.

He reached up to a small, softly-illuminated panel just above his vehicle’s broad, curving windshield, which even at this inhuman temperature was threatening to fog up, and turned the air conditioner knob the few remaining degrees to its last stop, trying to wring another drop of moisture out of the hot, soggy air. If the open atmosphere of Majesty was intolerable, here, just inches beneath the insulating surface of the leaves, it was a thousand times worse.

Something moist and pallid—the diameter of Geanar’s wrist and with altogether too many legs for his peace of mind—slithered along the side window, leaving behind a slimy track and sending chills up the man’s already sweaty spine.

The brand-new smartsuit he’d just purchased aboard the
Tom Edison Maru
didn’t seem to be doing its job at all—not that he had much familiarity with such things—another failure of technology to provide properly for mankind’s needs. It was, he imagined, rather like wearing an Eskimo parka in the Congo basin. Or perhaps what his eyes saw around him overrode what his body felt.

Odd, he reflected, how from the first he’d hated this planet, how it had almost seemed to hate him as well. Back aboard the
Tom Edison Maru
, he’d filled his apartment with plants of every kind, organisms which he’d always seemed to get along with and understand much better than he ever had human beings.

They were the only things in his life which he now regretted having left behind.

Make no mistake about that, though, he thought. He’d left them and everything else, including each of the many failures and humiliations Confederate civilization had imposed upon him, behind. When this miserable, sorry fiasco was over with at last, he was going to find himself some nice, neat, orderly, predictable, terraformed garden planetoid, spend the rest of his natural life in reasonably luxurious contemplation, perhaps even write a book or two of his own as a guide for his fellow men, setting forth the way they ought to live—and never set foot aboard one of those accursed starships ever again.

Behind him in the back seat of the hovercraft, still in its shipping crate, was that artifact of cold, inhuman, and impersonal technology, which with gratifying irony, was going to make all of this possible, make all of his dreams come true. Perhaps, in time, it would allow him to change the revolting state in which all men were forced to live, and they’d come to follow the example he’d set. It was probably immodest to believe this might come to pass within his own lifetime. It would be enough if, after he’d departed from this unreal world, his wisdom lived after him through its recognition by others.

If mankind had been meant to flit promiscuously about the universe in this life, polluting with his presence the untrammeled purity of the stars and of interstellar space, he wouldn’t have required machines to do it with, and Frater Jimmy-Earl would have been inspired to mention it in his writings. The heavens must be reserved for beings who existed on a higher plane than mere mundane reality.

Geanar reached for a box of tissues to wipe his face and discovered he’d used the last one.

He’d traveled to this place, out in the middle of nowhere on a dismal, moldy planet which, in itself, was nowhere made manifest, at the behest of an uncivil voice on his radio receiver that claimed to represent interests he wanted to do business with—individuals he’d never encountered face-to-face, who refused to meet him in the discreet comfort of Watner or even in Geislinger or Talisman as he’d desired—only to be confronted with half a dozen shocks all at once, any one of which could have spoiled his entire week all by itself.

In this damp heat, he thought, it was a wonder he hadn’t had a coronary or a stroke.

The first shock had been that long, crude, snaky, muscle-powered machine, the Securitasian crankapillar. In the beginning, when from his hiding place just below the surface of the vegetation he’d watched it approaching the appointed place at the appointed time, he’d believed, despite its primitive construction, that it had been sent by the Hooded Seven. He still couldn’t bring himself to believe its appearance was a coincidence, and wondered what it meant.

Still believing the
Intimidator
(which he didn’t know by name) represented an opportunity he’d dreamed about and wished for all his life, which he’d planned with painstaking care and worked arduously toward for years, he’d watched in open-mouthed horror as the crankapillar picked up a pair of interloping, smartsuited strangers—one human, one alien—who’d subsequently murdered the machine’s uniformed commander in a fiery blast of pistol shots and, threatening more of the same, driven off all of the underlings.

There ought to be, he thought, some way of keeping individuals from owning and carrying weapons.

The much larger
Compassionate
had come along and finished the job, its troops reducing the primitive moss machine to nothing more than ashes, smoke, and twinkling coals.

Some of Geanar’s initial shock had worn off. Obviously the smartsuited interlopers had been, like himself, agents of the Hooded Seven, settling some dispute of which he, Geanar, wasn’t a party—or simply disposing of unwelcome company.

He’d hoped it was the latter, admiring the ruthlessness of moral character which it implied. If this failed to be entirely consistent with the visceral horror he’d experienced watching the death of the Securitasian captain, Geanar didn’t notice; at the most fundamental level he agreed with whoever had claimed that a foolish regard for consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.

The screwmaran was more sophisticated in design and faster, just the sort of thing he’d have expected of his potential business partners, and he felt foolish, having mistaken a crude thing like the crankapillar for the machine he was anticipating.

Thus, with excruciating patience, he’d waited hour after hour for those aboard the
Compassionate
to contact him. He’d resisted, although it had been difficult, the urge to adjust and readjust the simple, homebuilt radio transceiver lying on the passenger seat of the hovercraft he’d rented and modified for this trip. Instead, trying to fill the time, he’d prepared a modest, strictly vegetarian meal using the contents of a small paratronic freezer and the compact microwave oven built into the passenger seat dashboard.

Afterward, he’d read once again from his well-tattered, favorite volume,
The Confession of Frater Jimmy-Earl
, the unaffected testament of a humble leguminist who, through his loving labors in the vegetable kingdom, had discovered the great truth of mankind’s proper place in the universal scheme of things. Suppressed by unenlightened forces who couldn’t make money on it, the book was rare. Geanar’s was the only copy he’d ever seen, stumbled upon by accident one lucky afternoon in his youth. Yet he’d not profane its wisdom by having it encoded for his implant. Never mind that concentration on the yellowed pages had become a trifle difficult. He knew them all by heart, in any case.

If the hours hadn’t flown by, at least they’d passed. All in all, Geanar felt he’d been patient, and expected to be rewarded for it. When contact hadn’t been immediately forthcoming, still he’d waited. This was the place, all his navigational instruments indicated so, and the word he’d gotten had been that the rendezvous might occur at any time within a twenty-three hour period which comprised day and a night on this misbegotten excuse for a planet.

The worst shock of all, however, had come when Geanar saw the smartsuited interlopers being put off the screwmaran and left behind—only to be met a short while later by one of the sickening vermin who, although they consisted of little more than tentacles and eyeballs, were nevertheless rumored to be the intelligent natives of this world. He’d gotten a clear enough look at them—adjusting the windshield for maximum light amplification and magnification—as they’d climbed down the flexible ladder at the aft end of the
Compassionate
.

Incredible!

It was bad enough that one of them—another of those disgusting clumps of soulless hair and leather being treated these days by bleeding-hearted fools as the full equals of human beings—was that pseudo-scientific meddler who’d been eavesdropping on his electromagnetic conversations with the Hooded Seven. When the Voice of the Seven had warned him about that, he’d been a fool himself to hire those simian morons in Watner, instead of doing something about it himself.

He wondered what had ever become of them.

What was truly awful, almost beyond belief, was that the other interloper, co-conspirator with the hideous lamviin and revolting taflak, had been human.

And his own grandson, Berdan!

“
Is it safe?
”

“Hunh!” Geanar was startled by a sudden whisper close beside him which seemed to come from nowhere—until he remembered the radio transceiver lying on the next seat.

“
Is it safe?
”

Geanar leaned over, wrestled with a coiled cord, and keyed the microphone. “What do you mean, ‘is it safe’? And why is your output so low? This is inverse-square stuff. Are you further away than before? Are you backing out of this meeting?”

Although it wasn’t audible, Geanar somehow sensed an ironic chuckle buried in the reply.

“
We are closer to you than ever before, closer than you would imagine. You would do well, human, to cut your own output to avoid detection. We have reason to believe the source of electromagnetic leakage which you unwisely and unsuccessfully attempted to deal with is within a short distance of your location
.”

“Marvelous,” the man replied, “and you’re risking everything by telling them the whole story now!”

The voice betrayed irritation. “
We would not have called had we detected the leakage at the present moment. We ask you to observe. See whether it is likely the source will soon be operating again
.”

“All right,” Geanar muttered, “hold on.”

He set the microphone aside and powered up his vehicle. Unlike earlier machines of its type, it had no ducted fan or any other moving parts. A light touch on the feed controls of the fusion-electric hovercraft set torrents of air in motion through its electrostatic impellers and raised the top two inches of its windshield above the general level of the leaves. On arriving at this spot, Geanar had cut and attached foliage all over the vehicle to disguise it. He adjusted the windshield for the current distance and light conditions.

Not far away, his grandson and one of the aliens seemed to be busy with camp chores. They were several yards from the alien’s sledlike contraption where Geanar presumed the creature kept its radio equipment. No sign of an antenna.

Leaving his machine computer-controlled and hovering where it was, he reclaimed the microphone.

“All right, Hooded Seven,” he told his own radio set, “you can relax. It’s safe enough, and looks like it’ll remain so for some time yet to come. I’ll keep a lookout as we talk, just to make sure. It’s only a fifteen-year-old kid and a bemmie from some dust-bowl planet, anyway. What are you so frightened of?”

Several heartbeats went by before the voice replied. “
Earthman
”—an undertone of weariness colored the words—“
we, too, have traveled far to meet you in this place. For you, the local environment, while differing in various insignificant details from that which you would regard as most comfortable, is at least somewhat familiar. For us it is extreme, harsh, alien, and dangerous. We would find it taxing to attempt coping with discomfort, disorientation, and the necessities of self-defense, all at the same time.
”

Aha, thought Geanar, the mysterious Hooded Seven reveal one more detail about themselves. He wondered how he could use the information to his advantage.

Aloud, he asked a question. “All right, granted the environmental problems, which I find quite uncomfortable enough, thank you, what do you mean self-defense? Self-defense against what?”

Again a pause of several heartbeats. “
Very well, human, since you insist upon hearing the naked truth: aside from the ever-present dangers represented by savages and the many voracious nonsapient life-forms dwelling within the Sea of Leaves, there happens to be you, yourself
.”

Geanar’s jaw dropped, but his expression of wounded innocence was lost over the radio. “Me? Of all people? Listen to me carefully, Hooded Seven, this is strictly a business proposition for me. Value for value, as the materialistic expression would have it: you’re going to pay me for something you find more useful than money; I’m going to accept in exchange for something I value a great deal less than your money. Granted, the entire affair’s crass and sordid and of no higher spiritual significance whatever, but what conceivable reason would I have to injure or betray you? How could that possibly be in my interest?”

This time the wry amusement was undisguised. “
By your own account, you have injured or attempted to injure many others in pursuit of this business proposition, human. Why should we be exempted? Precisely because you are as alien to us as the environment, we cannot know what your interests may embrace. And there is another, better proven danger
.”