The Florians (10 page)

When she shouted again, elaborating somewhat, “Get out of here, you dumb bastard!” I was ready and able to comply. The two uniformed men were still behind me and would have had me if I'd tried to run back beyond the train, but there was one way that was unguarded. There was a gap between the carriage and the edge of the platform just big enough to take a long, thin body. Before anyone could stop me, I launched myself into it, and under the train. The best thing of all was that every damn one of them was too fat to follow.

I hauled myself up onto the far platform, and looked back for Karen. She was running along the top of the train in my direction, jumping the gaps between the trucks with some difficulty but without losing her balance. She came to the end of a sequence of half a dozen roofed trucks and then leaped down into an open wagon. Here, one of Jason's men made a serious attempt to get at her and the blow she gave his fingers with the iron bar must have smashed his hand beyond repair. She came over the side of the wagon to the empty track on our side of the train and I extended a hand to help her up onto the platform.

Jason was coming over the same wagon behind her, and one of Vulgan's cops had gone back into the carriage and was now opening the door on the near side of the train. But we had five or six strides' start, and we took them at maximum speed. We raced toward the nearer end of the station—the south side, by which the train had come in. Beyond that there was a curtain of lovely darkness.

The only man who had a chance to stop us was a lone railway official who had, by an unfortunate stroke of fortune, been attending to some business down that end of the vacant platform. But as he saw us coming he made no move to cut us off, simply staring at us in blatant incomprehension. Jason yelled something at him, but even then he didn't immediately get into gear. The chance went by, and we ran out of the glare of the electric light and into the dismal night.

When a northbound railway line curves to go west you build the station at the southwest corner of town—and that, for us, was just about perfect. Beyond the station in the direction that we were going there was no town at all—merely a conglomeration of railroad sheds, and sidings containing spare trucks. There was no light to speak of and plenty of cover. There was no problem at all about shaking the pursuit. Giants may make great weight lifters but they aren't much at sprinting and no damn use at all at middle-distance running. Our big problem was keeping our feet on ground that was littered with junk just waiting to trip us up and break our ankles, but we were lucky. A couple of stumbles, but no falls. We made it through the yards and out into the open country, and once there it was all too easy to get well and truly lost.

CHAPTER EIGHT

We kept going for about an hour or so, picking our way carefully across country that was moderately open but very much up-and-down. We crossed a small stream and passed through a couple of small woods. We had only the stars to light our way and they weren't exactly trying as hard as they might have. The idea was to keep going until we hit some large region where we could hide out without fear of being cut off by any search—a forest, for preference. Where we wound up, though, was an area of steep slopes and exposed rocks where we either had to double back or go up into the hills. Here the territory was really rough—the rocks were weathered very unevenly and there were innumerable gullies and clefts hidden even from careful probing by dense vegetation. If we tried to go farther in the dark one of us would almost certainly have ended up with a serious injury, so we settled for searching out a comfortably claustrophobic crevice where we could rest.

Resting was not so easy. The adrenalin was surging in my blood, my head was ringing, and my breath was coming in ragged gulps. My whole being seemed to be vibrating with pain and effort. I slumped down with my backside on a cushion of damp mossy stuff and my back leaning against a near-vertical stone face, and tried hard to recover my breath. It took time.

Karen seemed to be the same way, but she found her voice first, even though she used it only to say, “Hi.”

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, feeling that the time for amiable greetings was past.

“What the hell are
you?”
she countered.

“I was riding in the train,” I said, implying that of all the places on the planet I might have been, that was the most appropriate.

“So was I,” she said. “Only I didn't have a ticket. I was in a truck.” She was still holding the hooked crowbar in her right hand, and I could hear its point stirring the dirt between her feet.

I didn't bother to ask why she'd been in the truck. I just waited until she got around to it.

“You'd hardly been gone an hour,” she began, “when things started happening back at the farm. A dozen riders came in and started behaving in a manner that seemed just a little high-handed. Linda was already back at the ship, but Mariel and I were looking around. We saw them before they saw us, and we listened while they were arguing with Saccone—the farmer. They seemed to be trying to move him out of his farm. A couple of them went to the ship. They weren't armed and they looked harmless enough except for being built like tanks.

“Mariel and I stayed out of sight, and we watched. Conrad came out of the lock to talk. We couldn't hear what was said, but it started out polite and slowly degenerated. I think they wanted in, and weren't too clever about providing reasons. When Conrad wouldn't let them, as per policy, they tried to jump him. They dragged him out of the lock and tried to get at the inner door. Pete must have released a whiff of gas because they both came back out in a hurry looking very tearful. Conrad took the opportunity to get back in, and though he probably got sick doing it he's maybe in the best place.

“We had no chance. They were already looking for us, and while we'd been watching the fun they'd found us. We ran...but they got Mariel.”

“You left her?” I interposed.

“Sure. I left her. I can't see that dirty look you're giving me but wipe it off anyway. I figured I might be able to get her away if I could stay loose.... Oh, damn it, no I didn't.... We were both running and they were after us both.... I just
kept
running when they got her. What was I supposed to do—stop and give up?”

“You
know
that's what you were supposed to do,” I said.

There was a moment's silence. “Yeah,” she said finally. “Well, I didn't. It seemed like a good idea at the time. This isn't like the type of situation they talked about when they briefed us on the tribulations of Kilner's crew. And it wasn't as if I were hauling out a gun and blasting. All I wanted to do was stay free, get out of the way. I didn't know who those guys were, but they didn't seem to me like representatives of the government. I mean, the villagers were friendly...I thought everyone was friendly. It just threw me, that's all.

“Anyhow, I hiked east, because that's the way you'd gone—you and Nathan. I had some idea of catching up with you, joining you if things were OK, maybe helping you if things were sticky. It did occur to me that a planet is a big place, and that I was as inconspicuous as a ladybird in a beehive, but not until later. I hit the tracks, eventually, when it was just about getting dark, and I couldn't decide whether to walk along them into town or what. While I was thinking, along came the train. And I was on this bend, where it had to go slow, so....”

“I bet you signed on for this trip looking for adventure.” I commented bitterly.

“Don't be so bloody smart,” she said. “Where are you, hey?”

And that, of course, was true. Given the stimulus, I'd run just as she had. Admittedly, I'd been in an awkward spot, where following standing orders and meekly submitting to the demands of the natives involved certain difficulties, but the fact remained that I had done what came naturally...and it had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“What about the incident at the station?” I asked.

“They were unloading my truck. The guy found me. He grabbed. What would you do if a seven-foot.... Oh, hell...sure I should have surrendered meekly. ‘It's a fair cop,' I should have said. Only it didn't seem fair, he wasn't a cop, and I didn't think his intentions were honorable. I was scared. I tried to fend him off and he got mad....”

“So you belted him in the balls with the hooked end of an iron bar,” I finished. “Defending your maidenly honor? In
this
day and age?”

“It isn't the twenty-third century here,” she muttered. “More like the eighteenth. No, I wasn't afraid of rape...just afraid, period. I hit him to get him out of the way so I could run.”

“Getting to be a habit, isn't it?” I said sourly.

“Isn't it?” she echoed. She didn't exactly sound contrite. She'd certainly sent all the sweet talking we'd done about contact and vulnerability to hell and gone. Maybe she'd cocked the whole operation. But what she'd done was only natural. Anyone might have done the same. Or why was I here? Like she said, I wasn't sitting in the right place to be so bloody smart. I hadn't stopped to think whether I was playing by standing orders, or about long-term objectives. Triggered, I'd gone off. There was no point in recrimination.

The question was: What now?

“Come on,” she said, breaking up the silence. “Let's hear your side of the story.”

“We appear to have stirred up some trouble,” I said tiredly. “To put the worst possible interpretation on things, we seem to have started a revolution. Not by any fault of our own, but simply by arriving at the wrong time. The colony is administered from the capital—Hope Landing—but really controlled by a small aristocracy of the mind who live on an island offshore from the town we just ran away from. Jason took Nathan to see the puppet masters, and one of the puppets hit me over the head. The logic seems to be that if we can be persuaded to deal with the administrators, the Planners' monopoly of Earthly knowledge won't be worth a damn—and their power will automatically be broken. Ergo, the Planners are mad keen to keep us to themselves, and the rebels are just as keen to co-opt us. The result is that all the hostility which would have stayed pretty much concealed has suddenly flared up. And here we are, with wasps flying all around. Not pleasant.

“By all the rules, it's the Planners we should be dealing with. They are the actual masters and it's not up to us to question that. The only trouble is that it occurs to me that while the rebels have a very keen and real interest in using us, the Planners might just settle for quietly removing us from the scene with cut throats. The whole situation is rather more complex than that, because both sides are worried about what recontact may mean to them in the future, but with things as uncertain as they are my natural pessimism assures me that there's a very real danger of someone opting for the simple answer...which is murder.”

“And you still think we were wrong to run?”

“I don't know,” I told her. “It's all very well for the UN to tell us that we're expendable and lay down rules according to that assumption. I don't feel very expendable, myself. So maybe we should try looking after ourselves. On the other hand, if we'd been able to keep the lid on and everything going smoothly, we might never have got into such a nasty set of circumstances. But here we are, so....”

I didn't bother to finish it, and she didn't bother to help me out. Silence fell, for a full minute or more, while we thought about the implications of that “so....”

“It's bloody cold,” she commented finally.

“We've no food,” I said. “No weapons. No friends. No plans. And on top of that, as you so aptly put it, it's bloody cold. One can't help but feel that the gods are against us.”

“The gods are always against you,” she said philosophically. “But sometimes you can cheat them.”

Which was a shrewd enough observation. Except that in order to cheat you have to have a chance to stack the deck...or to secrete a card in your sleeve. So far, it seemed, there wasn't one of us who'd had a chance to do anything remotely clever.

Perhaps it was time to start.

“It seems to me,” I said, “that we have two basic choices. Either we go back to the ship and see what can be done there, or we go to the island, and see if we can recruit Nathan to our independent operation...or, just possibly, let him recruit us back into his.”

“I don't fancy our chances of getting near that ship,” she said.

“I don't much fancy our chances of contacting Nathan. either,” I admitted. “It looks like long odds both ways. But we have to opt for one or another.”

“If you were in their place,” she mused, “which one would you expect us to try?”

“The ship,” I said confidently.

“They'll be ready for us there,” she said.

“But they might not expect us to try to get to Nathan.”

“So....”

“How are you with ships?” I asked, in a noticeably lighter tone. “The kind that float on water.”

“I can row,” she offered.

“So can I.”

We let it rest for a moment while we thought it over. The more I thought the less like a rational plan of action it seemed. Finding Nathan might be like locating the proverbial needle in a haystack. And even the simple business of getting to the island in order to start looking might be far from easy. But the alternative didn't seem to bear much thinking about either. At the ship, they'd be alert. And we already knew that they were prepared to play rough. It would be good to spring Mariel...but we had no guarantee that she'd still be there. For all we knew she might be on the island herself by now.

It had to be the devil or the deep blue sea, and I always figured that in such a situation you had a better chance with the deep blue sea....

“The island is the real heart of affairs,” I said. “That's where we want to be, if things take a new turn. You never know—the plot could get sicker yet.”

“OK,” she said. “I'm with you.”

“But let's take it easy,” I said. “We have to be careful. The long-term objective is to convince these people that we came to help them, not to pave the way for a takeover bid or to start meddling with their attempts at historical navigation. We have to persuade them to listen to us—and accept that dealing with us won't mean a new wave of colonists with their own ideas and their own know-how.”

“That's not going to be easy,” she said. “Bearing in mind that it could be exactly what recontact will mean.”

There had, of course, been no mention in the prospectus for the operation that we'd been shown of any such scheme. But it was natural enough to expect that if Earth wanted to restart the colony project, then exporting people to already established and successful colonies was safer and more justifiable than searching out new possibilities...especially if the overall success rate was low.

“The UN can't start exporting people to Floria,” I said optimistically. “It would start a war.”

“But it would be a war that the invaders would win,” she pointed out. “And they'd win easily. There are no weapons here, remember.”

The attempt to eliminate the possibility of civil war is by no means the best preparation for the repulsion of an invasion. Karen was right: if Earth wanted Floria, then Earth could take Floria, giants or no giants. And when every little thing that might help tip the balance was important in view of the poor state of Kilner's colonies, one perfect world ripe for the plucking might be a weighty factor in the argument.

“Killing us won't help,” I said. “In the long run, it wouldn't make the slightest difference.”

“Wouldn't it?” She pursued the point remorselessly. “The
Daedalus
is the only ship in space at this time. Maybe there'll be more going out in the six years we're scheduled to be away, but maybe not. The whole program hangs in the balance, and could become the victim of any political slogan war. If the Florians destroy
Daedalus
they just might get away with it. Maybe only for fifty years or a hundred...but maybe forever. Earth's resources keep stretching and stretching, and propaganda's had them on the brink of extinction for three hundred years and more. but the time is coming when there just might not be the resources for a space program unless we can somehow co-opt the resources of healthy and active colonies.”

I hesitated, and finally found myself thrown back on the weakest argument of them all—the self-defeating argument.

“The Florians don't know all that,” I stated, without confidence. It was true, of course...the Florians didn't know all that, and we'd be idiots to tell them. But the implications of that statement were that we were going to be exactly what the Florians suspected us of being: con men trying to win their friendship with false promises. That cap might fit Nathan, but I didn't like it at all. I didn't want to have to wear it.