Masters of Everon (29 page)

Beyond were a number of other variform animals; and men and women, some of whom he identified as having been at the dinner Armage had given for William. Among them was Yvis Suchi; and with her was the one Everon-native figure in the group.

It was her jimi, still associated with her at the end of the leash terminating in the collar about his neck. But now their situations were curiously reversed. Yvis's eyes were as unseeing as those of a sleepwalker. She held to her end of the leash as unthinkingly as if it had been glued to the palm of her hand. The jimi, on his part, grasped his own end of the leash at a body's width below its connection with his collar, and with that hold he was obviously leading Yvis about, instead of the other way around. Even as Jef watched, Yvis turned like a somnambulist to wander outwards from the group; and the jimi, without releasing his grip on the leash, moved to her side, took her arm gently and turned her back into the gathering. He held to her for a moment after he had turned her back, stroking her arm gently, and looking up into her unseeing eyes. There was no intelligence, but an obvious affection in his actions. Satisfied at last that she would stay where she was, he let her go and stepped back to continue patiently waiting with her at leash-end.

The rest of the humans there also seemed more or less dazed. So, too, did the variform Earth animals—the eland, the dog, cat, pig, chicken and duck Jef saw scattered among the humans. The variform animals seemed much more heavily affected than the humans—with one or two exceptions like Yvis Suchi. The humans showed signs of coming out of their dazes. Both Armage and Beau were now beginning to show definite signals of returning awareness. They were now staring somewhat stupidly but angrily at one another, like individuals who had just roused from sleep to find an intruder in their bedrooms.

Something was about to happen. That which the maolots had brought them all here together for was waiting to happen; and on what happened would turn...

The implications of what he had just seen of the jimi and Yvis Suchi suddenly crashed in upon Jef's conscious mind like a tidal wave.

"My God!" he said out loud. "We're on trial! That's what everything's been aimed at from the first—from the moment they first gave you Mikey, Will!"

"Trial?"

It was the heavy voice of Armage and the man himself, apparently almost back to his full senses, was turning toward them.

"That's what I said," Jef answered him, as well as Will and Jarji, who were watching him closely, now. "I should have realized it before now. They saw the difference between humans and themselves from the moment the first teams landed here. It's a difference that doesn't allow them and us to live together—here on Everon or anyplace else—"

"Anyplace else?" Will broke in.

"Yes." Jef looked at him, and from him to Jarji. "Anywhere."

"What are you talking about?" Beau broke in. "Are you saying these maolots think they can push us right off Everon?"

"Off of any world," Jef answered, still looking at Will and Jarji.

"You're insane!" burst out Armage. "I don't care what they are, they've got no technology. They couldn't stand up to what we can bring in here—"

"Who's going to bring it?" Jef was hardly conscious of the fact that he was answering the Constable and Beau. He was seeing more deeply into what confronted them every moment and the words into which he resolved what he saw were only the briefest notations of something his conscious mind was just beginning to grasp.

"Bring it in? We'll bring it in. Just a minute—" He moved toward Jef.

"Stay back, please," said Jef almost absently. He had no time to concentrate on other humans now, when vast shapes were finally taking meaningful shape in his head. "Let me think."

Armage had stopped at Jef's words, but now he moved forward again, and Beau also rolled closer.

Will moved between Jef and both of them.

"You'll stay back," he said. All the lilt of Martin's speech was back in his voice. "Indeed, you'll stay back!"

For a moment more the two big men hesitated. Then, as if they had been practicing such teamwork for years, they moved forward again, spreading out a little, one on each side of Will.

"It's all right, Will," said Jef.

He hardly recognized himself in this moment, but he was suddenly sure of what he could do. He stepped past Will and lifted his hands slightly, one toward each of the two men.

"Stop," he said.

He reached out. His fingers did not touch either of them; but the feeling that had been growing inside him all this time seemed to coil momentarily within the very center of his body, and then suddenly extend itself through his fingertips like a living act of will, invisible but solid, and both men stopped as if their muscles had refused them.

"Wait there," he said, dropping his hands. "Let me think."

He realized then that he had not meant "think." What he had meant was this process of feeling and resolving in which he was now engaged and of which thinking was only a small part. He reached inward into himself again, and went on, more for himself than the others, resolving what he felt and knew into the verbal form with which he was most familiar.

"We don't fit," he said. "That's the trouble. We refuse to fit. Worse, we destroy..." He hesitated. "In self-defense they've got to integrate with or destroy us... here on Everon and on every world where we live."

"Earth?" said Will. He was watching Jef closely.

"Earth, too," Jef said absently.

"How?" burst out Armage. The other humans, awakening, were now beginning to drift closer to the five of them. "Will you tell me? How could they do anything to us?"

"Because this world is all theirs," said Jef, "and any other world they want to touch."

"What did you mean when you started to talk about who'd bring things in to fight them?" Jarji asked.

"Ships bringing any sort of weapons from Earth would never get here," Jef said musingly. "They can reach their own, anywhere. Of course! Why didn't I realize? They had to be able to reach Mikey, all the years he was with me on Earth. If they hadn't, he'd never have been able to fit in back here again. He'd have been—insane, I suppose you'd call it. They used Mikey and me, both, to get a look at Earth and the human race there."

He turned to Will.

"Will," he said, "there's nothing we can use to fight them—but they can use everything we have against us." Beau grunted.

"A maolot can pilot a spaceship?"

"Not necessarily a maolot. Look—" Jef pointed to the jimi with Yvis Suchi. "Those paws can do anything our hands can do."

"There aren't any jimis on Earth—or anything else that's Everon," said Beau.

Jef glanced his way for a second. "I thought I heard some talk of getting permission to export jimis as pets to Earthside," he said. "But it doesn't matter. There're the strains of all the variforms from which your Earth-derived animals were bred. They can reach those, because they can reach the ones here."

"Reach the ones here? What are you talking about?" demanded Armage.

Jef nodded at the wisent almost within reach of them.

"Look at him, and the other variforms with us here. They all walked out to us on their own. No one led them. They've been touched by Everon now, and Everon controls them when it wants to, just like it controls its own native creatures. Look again—"

He pointed toward the columns, sweeping his arm along. Between the bases of the columns flanking the open space, here and there a dot of color could be seen—the blue of a clock-bird, the grey and white of a galusha, the green of a leaf-stalker—showing where those creatures also waited below the patiently waiting maolots.

"I don't believe it," muttered Armage.

"No," grunted Beau savagely. "But then you never did know anything about Everon." They were staring at each other.

"Even if that was true," said Armage, "a few laboratory experimental animals can't take over Earth. There're hardly any animals left on Earth, compared to the number of humans."

"There're rats. As many rats as people, or more, even now," said Jef. "There're insects. There're water-life and insects. Finally, there're plants. If Everon flora can change itself so that it poisons variform elands, Earth plants can turn poisonous, too. The weather can turn against us. Humans can't live on Earth if they sterilize the world we live on."

"All right," Beau rumbled, deep in his chest, "what do they want from us here, then?"

"That's right!" said Armage suddenly. "Maybe we could split this world up. Make a deal. Give them a lot of the wild area as a reservation—"

"Beau was right," said Will, looking at him. "You're a fool."

"Fool! I've worked too hard to lose everything to maolots!"

"Do you think that matters?" Jef said. But he said it without heat or emphasis, almost sadly. "It's bigger than that. We're not here to bargain. We're here to see if we can show some reason—"

He broke off.

"Reason, Jef?" Jarji prompted him. "Go on."

He heard her as if from a very long distance away. His mind was suddenly spinning, helplessly adrift like an oarless rowboat on an angry sea far from land.

"No," he said.

"No what?" he heard her ask.

"I can't! No. Mikey—" He reached out with the feeling in him, helplessly, to the maolot. "Mikey—"

He could not help, Mikey told him, also as if from a long distance away, although Mikey in the body was almost within arm's reach.

"Jef, what is it?" he heard faintly from Jarji. "It's me," he answered her dimly. "That's what it's all about. That's what they've been waiting for. The whole business of planting Mikey with me so that we could grow up with each other. They want me to be the one to justify..."

He swayed. He was conscious of Will's hands catching him, holding him up.

"Justify what?" Jarji was asking.

"Everything!" It was a cry torn from the innermost parts of him. "They want me to tell them why they should try to live with us. They want me to give the answer. They want me to tell them why they should let the human race live!"

"Then you've got to try to," said Will.

"Try?" Jef turned blindly to him. He felt as if he was being torn apart and scattered to the farthest reaches of the universe. "Me? But I'm the last one in the universe to do that. I've got no use for the rest of the human race. I've been apart, lonely, and had no use for anyone outside our family from as far back as I can remember! I think we deserve to be wiped out—wiped out and forgotten!"

There was silence in the Valley of Thrones.

It was as if all those present were holding their breath, as if the history of that place had come down all its centuries, only to pause in this moment of waiting.

"No," said the voice of Will. "I don't believe it."

The silence was shattered beyond repair. Jef turned to him.

"No," said Will, again. "You don't feel like that. I know you."

"Will," said Jef and his voice hurt his throat. "I do. It's been years since you saw me. The only part of the human race I had any use for was our father and mother. There would have been you, too, but you were gone so long, essentially you got dropped out. When they died, there was no one left."

Will did not move. He stayed, looking into Jef's face. His voice held on exactly the same level.

"Think, now," he said. "You say you really don't see any reason why the human race should live? No part of it? None of it? No one?"

"I don't..." said Jef, and hesitated.

It was not that he doubted what he felt, and had felt since his parents' death. It was that Will's steady questioning raised an unreasonable fear in him that somehow he had overlooked something, forgotten something. He looked around him and saw Jarji.

She stood, watching him with a detached thoughtfulness, as if what concerned her had nothing to do with the question awaiting an answer from him. He looked at her, remembering her from that first meeting, sitting cross-legged across the fire from him, the crossbow laid out before her on the ground.

With that memory, suddenly, something else came back. Again he remembered standing at the top of the spaceship's landing ladder at Everon City spaceport, tasting his bitterness against the colonists he had traveled with. He felt it all just as he had then; but now for the first time he realized that all the time, underneath his bitterness, had still been his early dream that the people out here on the new worlds would be his sort, as he remembered Will being, and his parents being.

Now that he faced the truth, he recognized that that particular dream had survived even seeing the guests at Armage's dinner party, his encounter with Chavel and his early disappointment in a Martin who was Will in disguise; and it had taken life again when he had first met Jarji. For all her thorniness, she had been exactly the sort of human he had looked to find on Everon.

He faced facts now, accordingly. Will had always known him better than he knew himself. He had never really buried his hope of finding people he could belong to. His belief in his self-sufficiency and his own self-isolation had been only a con game played on himself.

He reached out his hand to Jarji and she took it. The touch of her fingers sent an almost chemical heat flooding through his body.

"All right," he said to Will. "Have it your way. I guess I don't hate anyone that much, after all."

"Hate!" said Armage. "It's them—those maolots out there who hate us!"

"No," said Jef.

"No? What do you mean—no! Of course they hate us. It's the way they're built!"

"No," Jef told him. "Not the way
they're
built. Just the way we are. Look."

Jef pointed with his free hand to the jimi, now gently pressed against the side of Yvis Suchi, the side of its head resting against the woman's elbow, as if it would send the warmth of its own small body into the numb one of the human.

"Some of them even love," said Jef. "The trouble is, love isn't enough. Not for them, or for us either, in this matter."

"I'm talking about the damn maolots!" said Armage.

"Maolots!" anger boiled up in Jef. "What's the matter with all of you, here? Can't you get it through your heads it's not the maolots you've got to deal with—it's Everon? All the life here, of any kind, from the maolots down to the damn viruses in the dirt!"