The Loafers of Refuge (16 page)

Doreen laughed and signed. Moments later she had the tractor purring its way home at its best speed, Phazz enduring the bumps without trouble in his cushion of earth

How did you partially fail, Phazz?
she projected.

I …was… hurt …
came the unexpected answer,
on … first … trip … second … trip … satisfactory … did not … learn … cause … of … hurt …

So Phazz’s early confidence had been shattered! Still, he was alive and apparently well.

I … must … return …
continued the slow and heavy transmission.
Next … time … I … will … find … the … hurt …

Not until it’s been discussed with your elders, Junior, Doreen said firmly to herself. To him she transmitted,
Is it safe?

Yes … but … need … Council … of … Elders … to …
there was a brief period of fumbling …
isolate … analyse … hurt … take … home?

Doreen felt her face warm uncomfortably. Thank goodness trees had no vision!
I will take you home
, she projected, and fell silent. It was a long drive to the Upper Sweetwater.

The trees were obviously as slow communicating among themselves as with humans. It was over three months later, while she was tenderly removing some stray parasitic vines that had found their way to Phazz, when he projected,
I … am … ready …

Behind his young mind Doreen sensed the presence, and approval, of the massed mind of the breshwahr.

This second trip was not so easy to arrange as the first, and in the end she had to take her pen-pal into her confidence to the extent of letting her know that she was checking on the effects of transmission on young trees. Once return was assured she went to Mrs. Marble again and told her she had been requested by her friend on Earth to send another tree. That good lady, completely unaware she was consenting to sending the same tree a second time, wrote the necessary request, and in due time the authorization was granted.

Carey, who was drafted into helping with this second trip, viewed the whole procedure with a jaundiced eye, but helped her replace Phazz in his tub and transport him to the transmitter. Doreen still had not confided in him, but he had formed a strong suspicion of her ultimate ambition. And he did not like the idea.

This time Phazz was returned the next day, and when Doreen and Carey came for him he immediately projected to Doreen:
I …have … found … the … answer …

She glanced at Carey, who was apparently not receiving,
and patted the rough bark of Phazz’s growing trunk.
Later, little friend, we will talk.

This time Phazz elected to remain in his tub and stay for a time with them at the Sheldon farm. And for the next few weeks, at every possible opportunity, Doreen visited him in the front yard and took lessons on the active control of the life-force. When the first green shoots of spring appeared in the nearby woods Phazz informed her that he needed to be replaced in the soil for a time, and she returned him to the Sweetwater. Carey was busy with spring ploughing, but Sam Harper took time off to help her re-plant Phazz. His original hole had to be deepened, and troughs cut for his larger roots, some of which had grown into a double circle within the tub. When at last Phazz informed her there was no more she could do for him and she prepared to depart for home, the young tree stopped her.

Return …
with … tub … in … thirty … day-nights … he told her.
We … will … transmit … together …

Pleased and happy, she went home and told Carey of her intention of having herself transmitted to Earth.

V
ARINOV
E
NGLISH WAS
a patient man—it was a prerequisite for the office of Security Section Head on a frontier planet—but his endurance was growing thin. “Now look, Doreen,” he said firmly. “I’ve argued with you as much as I care to. The answer is no and will remain no. Furthermore, I want you to stay out of here and not bother poor Old Hamrick again. Keeping this pile of junk in operation is enough of a chore for the old fellow without having you pestering him.”

Doreen was just as determined as English. “Varrie, if Phazz says it can be done, it can be done. Now who are you to stand in the way of the greatest discovery since the invention of this monster we’re arguing about?”

Instead of answering English turned and beckoned to a pair of technicians. In response to his gesture they seized the handles of the tub. Grunting under the weight, they carried it outside the door. Doreen, hands on her slim hips, watched them with a face growing as red as her freckles. Old Hamrick, his white head bent over the control console, looked at her out of the corner of his eye as the boxes and bales on the transmitter platform in front of him blurred and were gone. What she had asked was impossible, especially for him.

“Varrie English, I—I hope you choke!” Doreen said furiously. Her hair swirled angrily as she tossed her head in defiance of the Security Head’s arbitrary action. But when English stepped closer and gestured towards the door with a courtly bow, she went without further argument.

The tractor and trailer were just outside the door, but loading Phazz was far beyond her strength. The bushy breshwahr and his tub now weighed almost two hundred pounds.

Doreen looked down the unpaved road, hunting for Carey
and Timmy, but they were nowhere in sight. She walked around the circle far enough to see down the next street and saw them walking towards her. Timmy, a bit more sensitive to her moods than Carey, felt her anger even though she was not deliberately projecting. A slow smile spread across his hairy face, and into her mind, with gentle insistence, slid emotions of
peace-contentment-soothing-ease-rest
. She angrily cut him off, and felt his soft laugher as he withdrew. Then they had reached her in body as well as mind, and Carey’s tanned face was breaking into a wide grin.

“You should have known, Sis. We’ve got to come up with some sort of proof before you can expect Hamrick and English to believe you.”

“Please don’t lecture to me, Carey,” Doreen said stiffly, as she turned and walked with them towards the tractor and trailer. “I know the facts as well as you. Your trouble is that you aren’t really sure I can do it, either, and you don’t honestly want me to try.”

Carey shrugged his broad shoulders. “You say you can, Phazz says you probably can. It’s that ‘probably’ that worries me- I’d just rather it was someone besides my only younger sister who made that first trip.”

Doreen’s face softened. “I’m the only one who
can
, Carey. Oh, anyone could learn, of course. Phazz could teach Timmy in an hour, if he was interested. And even someone as thickheaded as you
could
learn it. That’s the point. I’m not gambling my life just for fun. This could benefit all humanity.”

“Gee, Sister, thanks for the compliment,” said Carey drily. He and Timmy picked up Phazz? s bucket and set him in the rear of the trailer, handling the load with ease. Then Carey mounted the bucket seat while Timmy and Doreen climbed in and seated themselves on a wooden board inserted in the trailer’s slat-sides. Carey eased the throttle down and the tractor hissed gently and moved forward. In two minutes it had passed out of town and into the ochre-green countryside.

“Are you going to take Phazz back to the Upper Sweetwater today?” Carey asked as they rolled inside their front yard.

“Not unless he insists on going,” said Doreen, reaching out and caressing the rough bark of the short tree. There was a brief, silent exchange between them and then she said, “He can do nicely in the tub for another week, and will be happy to stay with us if we like.”

She gave the trunk a final pat and went into the house, while Carey and Timmy placed Phazz in a spot where he could absorb the sunshine for the rest of the day. Then Timmy said goodbye and left for home, and Carey went inside the barn to talk to Uncle Harvey a moment before leaving for the fields. The time was early spring and last year’s cover crops were being ploughed under, to form part of the food of the new generation of peanuts which they would shortly be planting.

Maud had the noon meal underway and Doreen helped her mother cook and clean for the rest of the morning, working out her resentment on the pans and brooms. The Sheldon family had just finished the light noon meal when they heard the purr of a tractor in the yard. Carey walked to the front in time to open the door to the first knock, and admitted Sam Harper.

Harper was carrying a tabloid, of the type transmitted daily by Earth and read over the local radio, and his face was grave. “Bad news, Carey. A rebellion has broken out in Amazonia. It’s not an organized revolt against Earth Central, something the Security Forces could put down, but a complete breakdown of government authority at all levels. The best description of it is anarchy, and it’s already spread from its starting point in the Brazilian Sector clear to the west coast.”

Carey took the proffered paper and scanned it quickly. The account was brief but pungent. There was one short additional comment. The world’s leading psychists had been called in on the problem, and had issued a statement within twenty-four hours. They blamed the breakdown of authority on a mass psychosis which had been building up for years, and of which they had repeatedly warned authorities. Earth had contracted a mass case of claustrophobia, and it was spreading swiftly across the scarred face of the old globe. The
people were revolting primarily against themselves, and what they wanted was room. The faceless man on the street cried for a face, the slugs sitting dazedly in front of the tri-D had at last turned off the magic tranquillizer. Like a great slow worm composed of billions of individual cells the people had turned on their leaders and demanded the impossible, a better life for themselves. And in demanding they had loosed the self-imposed restraints of government and control, and like the cancer it resembled the psychosis was infecting the body of mankind.

Carey pointed out the psychists’ statement to Harper, who nodded in understanding. “I know just how the people feel, though I’m surprised to find there are enough left with the guts to do something about it. The frustrations start building up the day you’re born, and they stop the day you die and your body goes into the sea to feed the next generation. They have to work a forty-eight hour week because there are almost no recreational facilities, and everyone knows that all the jobs, except a few hundred million, are make-work nonsense designed to pass the time as painlessly as possible. Yet the majority of people are so apathetic they have to be drafted before they will move to a colony.”

“We could take a million people a year here, for the next hundred years,” said Carey in a slow, thoughtful voice. “We get a few thousand. The same thing can be said for a hundred other worlds, and new habitable planets are found every week.” He turned away from Harper and called “Doreen!”

There was an urgency in his voice that brought her on the run. When her anxious face appeared he said, “I’ve just called Timmy. We’re going back to town. You’ll get your chance with the transmitter.”

When she looked a question at him Carey handed her the paper. She scanned the account swiftly. “Carey! this is just what Mrs Marble was telling us in sociology class a few months back. Everyone knew world order was in danger if a rebellion occurred.”

“I may be as crazy as you are, Sis, but if you’re willing to risk your life the least we can do is give you the
opportunity. There’s a very good chance a public announcement that the live transmission problem has been solved will stop the rioting. At least we can try.”

Carey hooked up the trailer and drove the tractor around to the front of the house while Doreen explained the purpose of her last year’s work to Harper, and outlined the results. Phazz had detected what he thought to be the power that tore apart the delicate matrix of forces which was animal life, and had told Doreen what she must do to prevent it happening to her.

“It’s a matter of withdrawing, Sam, of pulling yourself in and in until there’s not much of you outside for the shock to hit. The machine transmits every last atom of you, without fail or change, but somewhere in the taking apart and putting together again there’s a jar that kills, as surely as a big club. The first transmission hurt Phazz a little because he didn’t know what to look for, but the other trips were a breeze. He says I can do it, or any creature with intelligence. You don’t even have to be a Controller, though it helps. And if it works, just think. The whole galaxy is ours, and things like this anarchist rebellion need never happen again!”

“You’ve convinced me,” said Sam, grinning. Then his face grew serious and he added, “But how can you be
certain
it won’t kill you, as surely as it did the hundreds who tried it before the practice was outlawed? There’s a vast difference between a plant’s metabolism and an animal’s, and who really knows what a breshwahr’s mental capabilities are?”

“I do, if anyone. That’s the very point, Sam. I’m a human, not an animal, I can control myself, withdraw my perceptions in a manner no unintelligent animal can possibly duplicate.”

“Doreen, do you know that some of the fanatics who died in transmitter trips made exactly the same claim? Quite a few said that their mental powers would save them, that the mind controlled the body, and so forth. Not one made the trip alive, including the old man who was found in a packing case a few months back.”

“None of them had my training or knowledge, Sam.”

There was no time for further argument. Timmy appeared,
and he and Carey loaded Phazz; into the trailer. “Do you want me along, Carey?” asked Harper. “I can lend a good right arm if the going gets rough.”

“Thanks, Sam, but no. We’ll try to do this without hurting anyone, at least physically.”

The big farmer watched them as they piled in and headed down the dusty road, then went inside to wait with Maud until they knew the results.

Carey had brought along a tarp and, though Phazz protested mildly at having the sun cut off his leaves, Carey spread it across the top of the trailer. Doreen had created quite an interest in Phazz with her three trips to the transmitter, and by now the whole town must know she claimed to be able to transmit herself unharmed. There was no point in advertising that they were about to try again.