Silence is Deadly (5 page)

Darzek studied that for a long time. Supreme’s thought processes were forever a mystery, but he knew that Kamm wouldn’t have been listed as a Potential Trouble Source without an apparently good reason. Somewhere in Supreme’s infinite maze of cross references was the hint of a crisis on Kamm; but obviously Supreme could not produce that particular cross reference again unless someone posed the pertinent problem or asked the right question.

After a time Darzek gave up and went to see E-Wusk. The old trader sat amid the swirling turmoil of his business office, surrounded by clerks and seemingly carrying on a dozen transactions simultaneously. What Darzek had to say was too private for any office, even with the clerks banished to adjoining rooms, so he carried the protesting E-Wusk off to the structure Rok Wllon had fashioned. Kom Rmmon accompanied them to open the conference room, and then he left them there.

Darzek told E-Wusk what he had learned from Kom Rmmon.

“I’ve never heard of a pazul,” E-Wusk protested.

“Probably they don’t turn up very often in interstellar trade,” Darzek said. “I’m not even sure what one is. I wish I knew what Supreme thinks one is, but I agree with Rok Wllon that this isn’t the most propitious moment for mentioning pazuls to Supreme. Supreme has been known to draw conclusions from the questions we ask. Do you know of any way to override a Mandate?”

“No.”

“Nor do I. Have you ever heard of a Mandate with such a severe obligatory penalty?”

“No.”

“Nor have I. Now answer this. If it should prove true that the world of Kamm has an unlikely genius who has somehow managed to produce something Supreme considers a pazul, how is Supreme going to carry out the Mandate?”

E-Wusk opened his oversized mouth and then said nothing. He sat perplexedly elongating and then contracting one of his limbs.

“Precisely,” Darzek said. “In the days when that Mandate was formulated, the Galactic Synthesis no doubt had a well-armed space navy that was subject to Supreme’s orders. But that’s ancient history. Today we have space law and order and no navy. No armed force of any kind. Weapons capable of destroying a world have been suppressed. So how is Supreme going to carry out that Mandate?”

“It couldn’t,” E-Wusk said.

“Would you guarantee that?”

E-Wusk thought for a moment. “No. We don’t know what Supreme is capable of, and there’s no way to find out except—”

“Which would be much too late. I’ve already learned never to underestimate Supreme. Next question. In my opinion, empiricism has limits that don’t include pazuls. What could a world like Kamm have to offer that would justify the risk of contact for aliens?”

E-Wusk did not hesitate. “Nothing.”

“Here’s the report on Kamm. Here are the star charts. Let’s assume that there has to be something. Tell me what it is and who might want it.”

E-Wusk took more than an hour. He studied the report diligently. He studied the star charts. Then he said again, “Nothing. Some of these woods sound interesting, but why pay shipping costs to import a substitute for metal when you already have metal? And there are plenty of interesting woods available legally and at less distance. Kamm is perched out in the center of a sector of Uncertified Worlds where it would have very little trade even if it could be traded with legally. There’d be few trade routes through this sector even if all of the worlds were Synthesis members. No, my friend. If the pazul came from an alien world, you can take it from me that it wasn’t used to buy anything.”

“That’s what I thought, but I wanted your opinion.”

“You have it.” E-Wusk heaved a sigh. “Do you suppose there really is a pazul?”

“Undoubtedly there’s something strange there, and it took the agents by surprise. And we know how the loss of nine agents would affect Rok Wllon. He’d feel personally responsible. He came to that council meeting intending to ask our advice, and we ridiculed him.”

“He should have known better than to sing a song to the council,” E-Wusk said.

“He thought we would see the same sinister meaning in those words that he did. Either that, or he hoped we’d convince him it wasn’t there.”

“But this is terrible!” E-Wusk exclaimed. “A member of the Council of Supreme! Missing on an Uncertified World! We can’t permit that!”

“It’s already happened.”

E-Wusk subsided into his tangle of limbs. “Are you going to call a special meeting of the council?”

“No. This isn’t a matter to be settled by debate, and I agree with Rok Wllon that the word
pazul
shouldn’t be mentioned where Supreme is likely to overhear it. Not unless someone can figure out for certain how Supreme would handle that Mandate.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“One of Rok Wllon’s major character defects is that he doesn’t tell anyone what he’s doing,” Darzek said. “I’m telling you. I’m going to Kamm. I’m going to try to find Rok Wllon. I’m going to try to find out what happened to those nine missing agents. I’m going to see exactly what this wood, non-electrical device is that the Department of Uncertified Worlds calls a pazul. While I’m doing all that, I’ll send back reports—for your eyes only. They aren’t to be discussed with anyone, not even the other councilors, except in this room and under a pledge of secrecy. I don’t want Supreme suddenly deciding to destroy Kamm while I’m there working to solve this thing.”

He got to his feet. “You’re First Councilor in my absence. I have this advice for you. The best way to run an efficient council—especially a Council of Supreme—is to hold meetings as infrequently as possible.”

E-Wusk said emotionally, “If nine agents are missing, and now Rok Wllon is missing—take care, Gul Darr!”

“I always do,” Darzek said, “except when it interferes with my work. Now I have to turn myself over to the Department of Uncertified Worlds, and I hate to think what it’s going to do to me.”

CHAPTER 4

The question had been debated before: Did the potential reward from illegal trade justify the risk? Both the law and economics said no. Darzek refused to believe that an entire galaxy of superior intelligences would not produce an occasional crafty individual who could glimpse an illegal fast buck invisible to others and devise a safe way to grab it.

He had arranged a simple precautionary check of his own by having automatic space monitors set throughout the galaxy. Their usefulness in tracing malfunctioning space ships more than justified the expense. Now Darzek could settle the question of illegal trade with Kamm by asking a patrol to tap the monitors in that sector, and he did so.

Then he placed himself at the mercy of the Department of Uncertified Worlds, and twenty minutes after his arrival he was furiously angry at Kom Rmmon, the department, and the world of Kamm. Not even the anesthesia that accompanied his surgery completely quieted him.

Kom Rmmon had waxed enthusiastically over the alleged similarities between Kammians and humans. Darzek received the distinct impression that he could switch species by changing his clothes.

Now he discovered that a few unsubtle differences required drastic modifications in his appearance, and that no one could perform as a Synthesis agent anywhere without extensive training. He entered surgery in an exceedingly angry mood, and he was still angry when he came out of it.

He glared at his bandaged hands and feet, and then he examined his bandaged head in a mirror. “If you don’t take good care of my ears,” he told the surgeon, “when I return, I’ll make you eat them.”

The surgeon, a multistalked Padulupe who consumed only liquids, blanched.

There were two methods by which an agent of the Galactic Synthesis was enabled to pass as a native on an Uncertified World. One involved an elaborate disguise—a synthetic epidermis made to duplicate the external characteristics of the native life form and at the same time accommodate the alien agent within it. The other method was to take an agent whose physical appearance was similar to that of the native life form and to erase or modify any conflicting features with surgery.

The Kammians were startlingly human in appearance, but they had no ears, and they did have six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. They also had genital organs entirely different in appearance, function, and position from those of humans, but Darzek insisted on his inalienable right to draw the line somewhere.

His ears were removed and placed in deep freeze to await his return. Flesh was drawn smoothly over the aural openings, but his inner ears were not tampered with. He retained enough hearing ability to have the advantage of an extra sense on a world where the natives were deaf; but not so much that he would give himself away by reacting to sounds a native would ignore.

His hands and feet were widened to accommodate an additional finger or toe, and control of these was contrived for him through a process of nerve splitting that seemed miraculous to Darzek but was considered commonplace by his surgeon.

And there were other changes. The surgeon, working from projections of Kammian natives, made numerous minor alterations the way a portrait painter might make final finishing touches: a slight elongation of the eyes, a minute widening of the nostrils, the corners of the mouth turned up, the blond, naturally curly hair darkened and straightened, the color of his irises altered from blue to brown, all mammalian traces excised from his chest. Darzek had to learn to chew with a slight sideways motion, to spit out of the side of his mouth, and to control his tongue. Since the Kammians had no speech, their tongues were much less mobile than those of humans. Sticking out one’s tongue on Kamm was more than a breach of propriety; it was a violation of the physiologically impossible.

Darzek knew that Kamm was called the Silent Planet, but he had not contemplated the implications of life on a world where no life form could hear. He was completely unprepared when Kom Rmmon showed him projections of Kammian natives fluttering their twelve fingers with unbelievable rapidity. When finally he had been convinced that the finger movements actually constituted speech, he considered calling the project off.

“Any sensible life form would have learned to read lips,” he complained.

Kom Rmmon pointed out that reading the lips of an alien life form speaking an utterly alien language was likely to be as difficult as learning to read a finger language, and Darzek sat back resignedly and watched the projection. His crash educational program was just beginning.

“But keep it to the absolute essentials,” he warned Kom Rmmon sternly. “I haven’t time for a graduate degree in Kammian culture.”

Long before his training was completed, he had a report from the space monitors that ringed the sector in which Kamm was located. These recorded a spectrum of information about every ship that passed within light-years, and this information had been compared with logs of ships known to have been in the sector. There were no unknowns. Every ship entering that sector of space was in fact a governmental ship on a governmental mission. No alien civilization had brought a pazul to Kamm.

Darzek read the report twice. “So,” he mused, “the Kammians did it themselves. The problem now is to find out what it is.”

* * * *

The Department of Uncertified Worlds maintained an underground base on the largest of Kamm’s five diminutive moons. The base provided storage and laboratory facilities for the use of Kammian agents. Jan Darzek saw it only briefly. He stepped through a transmitter frame on the Department of Uncertified Worlds supply ship and stepped out of a receiver frame in the moon base. Then he skipped aside; a moment later, supply cartons cascaded after him, and an automatic conveyor moved them away.

Darzek wandered about the base and was not surprised to find it deserted. Agents would visit it only on brief errands. Their work had to be done on the planet, and there never were enough of them to do it properly.

He decided not to wait for chance to provide him with an escort. The moon surface transmitter had a dozen destination settings, but only six were listed as bases on the island of Storoz, the center of activity for Synthesis agents. One of those had been crossed off. Darzek punched the setting for Storoz Base I, the acceptance light flashed, and he asked himself what he had to lose and stepped through to the world of Kamm.

He emerged in a musty-smelling, totally dark room. He shouted; there was no response. He took two steps, and his hands encountered a damp dirt wall. Again a shout brought no response. He turned and fumbled in the opposite direction, and there his hands found a crude stairway fashioned of board steps with dirt packed under them. He climbed them and eventually figured out the trap door at the top. It was double, consisting of a sliding lower door and an upper door that was hinged and opened upward. He stepped through into a dim stone cellar. The transmitter room, a hole dug under it, constituted a secret subbasement.

He found another flight of stairs, this time solidly built of stone. He climbed them and opened the door at the top. He was in a dark hallway, but at the end of it, through a half-open door, he saw a glimmer of light.

Kamm’s multiple moons provided just enough illumination for Darzek to glimpse a magnificent sitting room, exquisitely paneled and ornamented with a coffered ceiling. Some of the furnishings were familiar to him from projections he had studied—the mushroom-like stools, the elaborately carved chests of drawers, the half-circle sofa of which the other half was perpendicular and formed the back. He felt his way from object to object, scrutinizing them in the dim light. Some were strange, but he quickly identified one as a sort of loom and guessed that another functioned as a spinning wheel. The thick, marvelously resilient hand-woven carpet, if made available in quantity, would have ruined Earth’s oriental rug business.