Hunt the Space-Witch! (35 page)

Regretfully Harris wished he had had a chance to try that biological experiment with her, after all. Medlin though she was, his body was now Terran-oriented, and it might have been an interesting experience. Well, no chance for that now.

He ate alone, in the hotel restaurant, and kept close to his room all day. Toward evening his signal-amplifier buzzed. He activated the communicator and spoke briefly with Carver, who gave him an address and ordered him to report there immediately.

It was a shabby, old-fashioned building far to the east, at the edge of the river. He rode up eight stories in a gravshaft that vibrated so badly he expected to be hurled back down at any moment, and made his way down a poorly-lit dusty corridor to a weather-beaten door that gave off the faint yellow glow that indicated a protection-field.

Harris felt the gentle tingling in his stomach that told him he was getting a radionic scanning. Finally the door opened. Carver said to him, “Come in.”

There were four others in the room—a pudgy balding man named Reynolds, a youthful smiling man who called himself Tompkins, a short, cold-eyed man introduced as McDermott, and a lanky fellow who spoke his name drawlingly as Patterson. As each of them in turn was introduced, he gave the Darruui recognition signal.

“The other four of us are elsewhere in the eastern hemisphere of Earth,” Carver said. “But six should be enough to handle the situation.”

Harris glanced at his five comrades. “What are you planning to do?”

“Attack the Medlins, of course. We'll have to wipe them out at once.”

Harris nodded. Inwardly he felt troubled; it seemed to him now that the Medlins had been strangely sincere in releasing him, though he knew that that was preposterous. He said, “How?”

“They trust you. You're one of their agents, so far as they think.”

“Right.”

“You'll return to them and tell them you've disposed of me, as instructed. Only you'll be bearing a subsonic on your body. Once you're inside, you activate it and knock them out—you'll be shielded.”

“And I kill them when they're unconscious?”

“Exactly,” Carver said. “You can't be humane with Medlins. It's like being humane with bloodsucking bats or with snakes.”

The Darruui called McDermott said, “We'll wait outside until we get the signal that you've done the job. If you need help, just let us know.”

Harris moistened his lips and nodded. “It sounds all right.”

Carver said, “Reynolds, insert the subsonic.”

The bald man produced a small metal pellet the size of a tiny bead, from which three tantalum filaments projected. He indicated to Harris that he should roll up his trousers to the thigh.

Instead, Harris dropped them. Reynolds drew a scalpel from somewhere and lifted the flap of nerveless flesh that served as trapdoor to the network of devices underneath. With steady, unquivering fingers, he affixed the bead to the minute wires already set in Harris' leg, and closed the wound with nuplast.

Carver said, “You activate it by pressing against the left-hip neural nexus. It's selfshielding for a distance of three feet around you, so make sure none of your victims are any closer than that.”

“It radiates a pretty potent subsonic,” Reynolds said. “Guaranteed knockout for a radius of forty feet.”

“Suppose the Medlins are shielded against subsonics?” Harris asked.

Carver chuckled. “This is a variable-cycle transmitter. If they've perfected anything that can shield against a random wave, we might as well give up right now. But I'm inclined to doubt they have.”

All very simple, Harris thought as he rode across town to the Medlin headquarters. Simply walk in, smile politely, stun them all with the subsonic, and boil their brains with your disruptor.

He paused outside the building, thinking.

Around him, Earthmen hurried to their homes. Night was falling. The stars blanketed the sky, white flecks against dark cloth. Many of those stars swore allegiance to Darruu. Others, to Medlin. Which was right? Which wrong?

A block away, five fellow Darruui lurked, ready to come to his aid if he had any trouble in killing the Medlins. He doubted that he would have trouble, if the subsonic were as effective as Carver seemed to think.

For forty Darruui years he had been trained to hate the Medlins. Now, in a few minutes, he would be doing what was considered the noblest act a Servant of the Spirit could perform—ridding the universe of a pack of them. Yet he felt no sense of anticipated glory. It would simply be murder, the murder of strangers.

He entered the building.

The Medlin headquarters were at the top of the building, in a large penthouse loft. He rode up in the gravshaft and it seemed to him that he could feel the pressure of the tiny subsonic generator in his thigh. He knew that was just an illusion, but the presence of the metal bead irritated him all the same.

He stood for a moment in a scanner field. A door flicked back suddenly, out of sight, and a strange face peered at him—an Earthman face, on the surface of things at least.

The Earth man beckoned him in.

“I'm Armin Moulton,” he said in a deep voice. “You're Harris?”

“That's right.”

“Beth is waiting to see you.”

The subsonic has a range of forty feet in any direction
, Harris thought.
No one should be closer to you than three feet
.

He was shown into an inner room well furnished with drapes and hangings. Beth stood in the middle of the room, smiling at him. She wore thick, shapeless clothes, quite unlike the seductive garb she had had on when Harris first collided with her.

There were others in the room. Harris recognized the other Medlin, Coburn, and the giant named Wrynn who claimed to be a super-Earthman. There was another woman of Wrynn's size in the room, a great golden creature nearly a foot taller than Harris, and two people of normal size who were probably Medlins.

“Well?” Beth asked.

In a tight voice Harris said, “He's dead. I've just come from there.”

“How did you carry it out?”

“Disruptor,” Harris said. “It was unpleasant. For me as well as him.”

He was quivering with tension. He made no attempt to conceal it, since a man who had just killed his direct superior might be expected to show some signs of extreme tension.

“Eight to go,” Coburn said. “And four are in another hemisphere.”

“Who are these people?” Harris asked.

Beth introduced them. The two normal-sized ones were disguised Medlins; the giant girl was Wrynn's wife, a super-woman. Harris frowned thoughtfully. There were a hundred Medlin agents on Earth. Four of them were right in this room, and it was reasonable to expect that two or three more might be within the forty-foot range of the concealed subsonic.

Not a bad haul at all. Harris began to tremble.

Beth said, “I suppose you don't even know who and where the other Darruui are yourself, do you?”

Harris shook his head. “I've only been on Earth a couple of days, you know. There wasn't time to make contact with anyone but Carver. I have no idea how to do so.”

He stared levelly at her. The expression on her face was unreadable—it was impossible to tell whether she believed he had actually killed Carver.

“Things have happened fast to you, haven't they?” she said. She drew a tridim photo from a case and handed it to Harris. “This is your next victim. He goes under the name of Reynolds here. He's the second-in-command; first-in-command now, since Carver's dead.”

Harris studied the photo. It showed the face of the bald-headed man who had inserted the subsonic beneath the skin of his thigh.

Tension mounted in him. He felt the faint
rasp rasp rasp
in his stomach that was the agreed-upon code; Carver, waiting nearby, wanted to know if he were having any trouble.

Casually Harris kneaded his side, activating the transmitter. The signal he sent out told Carver that nothing had happened yet, that everything was all right.

He handed the photo back to Beth.

“I'll take care of him,” he said.

I press the neural nexus in the left hip and render them unconscious. Then I kill them with the disruptor and leave
.

Very simple
.

He looked at Beth and thought that in a few minutes she would lie dead, along with Coburn and the other two Medlins and these giants who claimed to be Earthmen. He tensed. His hand stole toward his hip.

Beth said, “It must have been a terrible nervous strain, killing him. You look very disturbed.”

“You've overturned all the values of my life,” Harris said glibly. “That can shake a man up.”

“You didn't think I'd succeed!” Beth said triumphantly to Coburn. To Harris she explained, “Coburn didn't think you could be trusted.”

“I can't,” Harris said bluntly.

He activated the concealed subsonic.

The first waves of inaudible sound rippled out, ignoring false flesh and striking through to the Medlin core beneath. Protected by his three-foot shield, Harris nevertheless felt sick to the stomach, rocked by the reverberating sound-waves that poured from the pellet embedded in his thigh.

Coburn was reaching for his weapon, but he never got to it. His arm drooped slackly; he slumped over. Beth dropped. The other two Medlins fell. Still the subsonic waves poured forth.

To his surprise Harris saw that the two giants still remained on their feet and semiconscious, if groggy.
It must be because they're so big
, he thought.
It takes longer for the subsonic to knock them out
.

Wrynn was sagging now. His wife reeled under the impact of the noiseless waves and slipped to the floor, followed a moment later by her husband.

The office was silent.

Harris pressed his side again, signalling the
all clear
to the five Darruui outside. Six unconscious forms lay awkwardly on the floor.

He found the switch that opened the door, pulled it down, and peered out into the hall. Three figures lay outside, unconscious. A fourth was running toward them from the far end of the long hall, shouting, “What happened? What's going on?”

Harris stared at him. The Medlin ran into the forty-foot zone and recoiled visibly; he staggered forward a few steps and fell, joining his comrades on the thick velvet carpet.

Ten of them, Harris thought.

He drew the disruptor.

It lay in his palm, small, deadly. The trigger was a thin strand of metal; he needed only to flip off the guard, press the trigger back, and watch the Medlins die. But his hand was shaking. He did not fire.

A silent voice said,
You could not be trusted after all. You were a traitor. But
we
had to let the test go at least this far, for the sake of our consciences
.

“Who said that?”

I did
.

“Where are you? I don't see you.”

In this room
, came the reply.
Put down the gun, Harris-Khiilom. No, don't try to signal your friends. Just let the gun fall
.

As if it had been wrenched from his hand, the gun dropped from his fingers, bounced a few inches, and lay still.

Shut off the subsonic
, came the quiet command.
I find it unpleasant
.

Obediently Harris deactivated the instrument. His mind was held in some strange stasis; he had no private volitional control.

“Who are you?”

A member of that super-race whose existence you refused to accept
.

Harris looked at Wrynn and his wife. Both were unconscious. “Wrynn?” he said. “How can your mind function if you're unconscious?”

Chapter Six

Gently Harris felt himself falling toward the floor. It was as if an intangible hand had yanked his legs out from under him and eased him down.

He lay quiescent, eyes open, neither moving nor wanting to move.

The victims of the subsonic slowly returned to consciousness as the minutes passed.

Beth woke first. She stared at the unconscious form of Wrynn's wife and said, “You went to quite an extent to prove a point!”

You were in no danger
, came the answer.

The others were awakening now, sitting up, rubbing their foreheads. Harris watched them. His head throbbed too, as if he had been stunned by the subsonic device himself.

“Suppose you had been knocked out by the subsonic too?” Beth said to the life within the giant woman. “He would have killed us.”

The subsonic could not affect me
.

Harris said, “That—embryo can think and act?” His voice was a harsh whisper.

Beth nodded. “The next generation. It reaches sentience while still in the womb. By the time it's born it's fully aware.”

“And I thought it was a hoax,” Harris said dizzily. He felt dazed. The values of his life had been shattered in a moment, and it would not be easy to repair them with similar speed.

“No. No hoax. And we knew you'd try to trick us when we let you go. At least, Wrynn said you would. He's telepathic too, though he can only receive impressions. He can't transmit telepathically to others the way his son can.”

“If you knew what I'd do, why did you release me?” Harris asked.

Beth said, “Call it a test. I hoped you might change your beliefs if we let you go. You didn't.”

“No. I came here to kill you.”

“We knew that the moment you stepped through the door. But the seed of rebellion was in you. We hoped you might be swayed. You failed us.”

Harris bowed his head. The signal in his body rasped again, but he ignored it.
Let Carver sweat out there. This thing is bigger than anything Carver ever dreamed of
.

“Tell me,” he said. “Don't you know what will happen to Medlin—and Darruu as well—once there are enough of these beings?”

“Nothing will happen. Do you think they're petty power-seekers, intent on establishing a galactic dominion?” The girl laughed derisively. “That sort of thinking belongs to the obsolete non-telepathic species. Us. The lower animals. These new people have different goals.”