Worlds Apart (15 page)

The grass burned with very little smoke, but what there was was heavy, acrid and blinding. Cautiously Pertwee turned and began to work his way toward the wood.

The only chance, it had seemed to him, of escaping from the Clades on his trail had been to use some piece of knowledge of Mundis that the Clades could not be expected to have. He had thought of various things, but the best was clearly this.

A moor fire was the only thing that could cut off pursuit. The Clades, presumably, would have the sense to guard against the possibility; there would always be at least two groups tracking him, one between him and any line of escape from fire -- in this case, between him and the rocks two miles to the south. The fire hadn't spread that way yet; Pertwee thought he could see where the second party of Clades must be, waiting for him, not betraying themselves to him like the other group. They didn't really want to recapture him, of course. They would do that only if there was some risk of his complete escape. What they wanted was to remain on his trail without his knowing they were there.

But the fire was moving in that direction now, and there were flashes of lighter green as Clades in uniform moved.

The Clades, surely, would not expect him to trap himself in a forest. In their experience, a wood must be the last place they would expect him to make for.

On Mundis, it was the only safe place.

The smoke was spreading, and Pertwee was coughing, eyes streaming, as he reached the wood. It seemed most unlikely that anyone could see him now. He closed his eyes for several minutes and let the tears well out from under his eyelids. Then cautiously he opened them again.

Even when he climbed a tree he could see nothing but fire and smoke. The fire would rage for miles in every direction, probably covering thousands of square miles of territory. Unless the ship was fairly close, the trackers would die, except, possibly, those who could reach the rocks. They might find some protection there, though Pertwee doubted it.

To Mundis the fire was nothing. The grass above the ground burned, blackened and became ash. But before the fire had died out completely, green shoots would be appearing again where it had first broken out. The new plants thrived on the ashes of the old. In a week it would be difficult to be sure there had been a fire there, and in a month, impossible.

Where Mundan plants differed from Terran was that the Terran variety tended to exist and have their being principally above the surface. Many Terran plants came out of the soil, roots and all, at a light pull. There wasn't a plant on Mundis that would do that. In a sense, the part of them that was above the ground was the root, sent out to drink sunlight. The real plant was in the ground, reaching down for water. And if one tried to pull out a Mundan plant, usually the above-ground part broke off easily. That didn't matter much to the plant. It could soon grow again.

But dig out a plant of any kind complete and lay it on the ground, even moist ground, and it was dead. It couldn't shoot down roots again. It couldn't germinate on the surface -- only far down underground, in warm, moist earth.

There was a strong probability that the Clades tracking him would be in radio communication with the ship, which wouldn't be far away. Probably already it was in the air, heading for the fire. So he couldn't afford to stay where he was.

When the ship arrived it would be all too clear that woods were the only safe place in a brush fire -- the wood would stand out fresh and 'green in the middle of the black devastation.

So while the smoke still hung over the burnt moor, Pertwee cut back the way he had come. The fire, he knew, would already have burnt itself out in that direction, while it still blazed everywhere rise except round the wood. Haste was more important now than staying low. He stumbled on, blindly, forcing his painful eyes open every so often to make sure his path was comparatively straight.

He stumbled and found the body of a Clade at his feet, charred and ahnost unrecognizable. He was about to hurry on when he saw the gun at the dead man's belt, still gleaming. He picked it up and dropped it again. It seemed to be undamaged, but it was still too hot to touch. He wrapped it in a piece of charred cloth left of the Clade's uniform, and hurried on.

If he got free and reached Lemon, the gun would settle one thing at least. If any of the Mundans were disposed to regard his story, as invention, that gun would be proof that the Clades existed. It was entirely different from the guns they still preserved at Lemon, explosive guns. The Clades had guns like that too, but this looked quite another kind of weapon -- probably atomic.

He felt a surge of fear at the thought, but didn't drop the gun. There might be people at Lemon who would say he should never have brought back such a weapon; but they were the very people who would say, if he didn't, that he should have brought it back, and certainly would have done if his whole tale hadn't been a lie to explain the absence of Toni.

Presently he found himself on moor which had not been burnt. He cut back into the black patch for a half mile or so, then struck out towards Lemon, avoiding any landmarks such as rocks, forests, or bare patches. The Clades would certainly investigate possible hiding places first.

Abruptly the rain started. That would put out what was left of the fire, but it also made him much more difficult to find.

The rains of Mundis were the daily overflow of the atmosphere. There were next to no open bodies of water from which water vapor could rise, and but for the high temperature of the world there would have been no rain at all. The water rained down, drained underground, and then the rain stopped. Then the process was reversed -- the plants dried and sucked moisture back to the surface, where the warm air lifted it into the atmosphere once more.

At Lemon the Mundans took cover when it rained, but since the start of their journey Pertwee and Toni had had to stay out in it every day. That was a small hardship. The rain was never cold. It washed them and their clothes; when it came to drying afterwards, the temperature was too high for there to be any risk of chills.

The sun was visible through the rain -- just. So while it rained Pertwee was able to put a few more miles between him and the scene of his escape, plodding doggedly through the heavy, drenched ground. While it rained, he could be practically certain that the Clades couldn't detect him.

But, the rain lasted no longer than usual. It stopped abruptly, and soon after that Pertwee saw the Clades.

He had been traveling in the general direction of Lemon since he escaped, knowing the Clades were reasonably satisfied it didn't lie in that direction. If he failed to throw off his pursuers he would have led them off the track eventually; but it seemed to him that the Clades, knowing he had known he was pursued and had had a plan all along to escape them, would be most unlikely to reach the conclusion that he had been leading them straight to Lemon.

When he saw the ship he dropped and lay still. The ship's radar could probably be adjusted to detect a moving body which was not a plant, but it was hardly likely that it would be interested in a flat object which might easily be a stone. After a time the ship's systematic search took it to the north again, and he put five miles more between him and the scene of the outbreak.

He went on through the night and most of the next day. He knew that all the way to Lemon the risk of recapture would remain. The Clades had hundreds of men it could land to beat the bracken for him, and the ship itself could search the whole surface of Mundis. It would be ironic and heartbreaking if the Clades found Lemon in the course of the search for him.

But on the third day he knew that the immediate risk of recapture was over.

3

Phyllis took her suggestion to Sloan, not Corey, because he would favor it more. He would try to sell it to Corey as his own idea, which suited Phyllis.

As she expected, Sloan liked it. She saw it in his face. She saw also the regret as he realized that if he was to bring up the idea, he could hardly be the man to play the main part in it. It would hardly be safe.

"As you say, Lieutenant," he remarked formally, "the first priority at the moment is getting the location of this Lemon from the Mundan woman." He added unpleasantly: "You feel doubtful of your ability to get it from her by the present means?"

Since it was known that Pertwee had escaped and was on his way to Lemon, Phyllis had had three sessions a day with Toni. Still Corey insisted that she should not be seriously harmed. Time was less important, he said, than the ability to produce Toni whole might be.

Phyllis doubted that very much, but she had her orders and couldn't be held responsible if the interrogation of Toni took a long time.

"Not at all, sir," she said. "But I have believed all along that the present methods could hardly have quick results. The Mundan woman is weak, but obviously no coward. And you can imagine how long it would take to break a Clade by the present comparatively mild treatment."

She reflected fleetingly that it was a pity Toni couldn't hear her torture so far described as comparatively mild. If anything would make her collapse, spirit broken, that would.

Sloan nodded reluctantly. "Long enough," he admitted. "But not a woman!"

Phyllis was expressively silent. Sloan grunted. "I didn't mean someone llke you, Lieutenant," he said -- admitting that hidden somewhere within him there was a certain appreciation of the qualities of others. "If we try this idea of yours, I wonder who . . . ?"

"Why not Lieutenant Mathers, sir?" asked Phyllis casually.

Sloan started. "Mathers?" he repeated.

"I think," said Phyllis extremely carefully, "that he might relish the task."

She waited anxiously for Sloan's answer.

"Oh?" he said quietly. "Well, you should know, Lieutenant."

She breathed again. He had gone pretty far in his answer. It was an admission that practically made them allies for the moment.

Mathers was below Sloan, of course, but a rival. It could reasonably be assumed that Sloan would help her in any scheme against Mathers, since she was at the moment much less dangerous to him than Mathers was.

That evening Phyllis was a few minutes late and Toni was trying not to pretend that she wasn't coming. When she did, the disappointment would only be greater.

Toni had been told nothing, but when they stopped questioning her and almost began to treat her like a human being for a while, she knew Pertwee had escaped and that the Clades were tracking him, certain they were going to be led to Lemon. Then the interrogation began again, and she knew that the Clades had failed with Pertwee. But she didn't know whether to be glad or sorry, for while he might have escaped them completely, there was also the possibility that he had been killed.

The door rattled and Toni's heart jumped.

However, there was a difference this time. Phyllis was there, but so were Corey and Sloan and Mathers. Evidently there was going to be a special appeal.

The commodore adopted the tone which she had learned meant condescension. He had realized from the first that women among the Mundans were on a different plane, and that it was no use treating them as the Clade women were treated. It was awkward and uncomfortable, but he kept up the pretense, a sort of civility, guessing that showing Toni that the Clades would always treat all women as they treated their own would only increase her resistance and determination not to betray Lemon.

"You're a sensible girl, Toni," he said. "You must know what the outcome of this is going to be. If you were merely trying to keep something from us for a few hours, or a few days, or for that matter for any limited period, I could appreciate your conviction that it was possible. But there's no limit. We keep on patiently until you tell us. That's all."

He stopped, waiting. Toni said nothing; She eyed Phyllis and Mathers. They were the two youngest Clades she had seen, the kind of material Lemon, in any struggle, would have to deal with. She marveled; in appearance they were still nice kids, the kind everyone would be gIad to welcome to Lemon.

But Phyllis Barton was a cold and quite efficient torturer. How about Mathers?

"You evidently don't appreciate /why/ we're in no hurry," the commodore went on. "You're trying to delay us, apparently under the delusion that time will help your people. It won't. This ship is considenbly bigger and stronger than the Mundis was, and we have a bigger, more efficient, better trained fighting force. Giving your people more time to prepare will make no difference to the result -- if it comes to fighting, which we don't want, of course."

He waited again. Toni saw his point. Even if the Mundis still existed, as strong as when it left Earth, it would be no match for the Clades. Corey was confident, unhurried, though the Mundis might still exist. How much more confident would he be if he knew the ship had been dismantled and the Mundans lived out in the open, exposed, defenseless, weaponless? But she said nothing.

Corey sighed. "Very well. I believe you love Pertwee, Toni. We Clades do things differently from you, but that doesn't mean we have no imagination, when it's necessary. I think perhaps you would like to be faithful to your husband, Toni."

Internally Toni relaxed. So that was it. It was true that she would like to be faithful to Pertwee; she wanted that in a way she had never believed possible. She had discovered, when she knew that he might be dead, what it would mean to her if she were suddenly restored to Lemon, but without Pertwee. Rog was right, damn him. Pertwee had awakened in her something that no man before him had ever awakened.

She would be faithful to Pertwee if she could, but apparently these Clades didn't realize how a little thing like that mattered. They had misunderstood the ideals of Lemon completely, and her love for Pertwee. If they gave her to Sloan or Mathers, which appeared to be the intention, it would make little or no difference to her life with Pertwee in the future, if they ever had a chance to take it up again.

She decided to make even less of it than it deserved. She laughed. "You're twisted on sex, all of you," she said. "Naturally you'd think of it as a punishment. I suppose it's treason among you to suggest it's a pleasure?"