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Cage a Man
FOR ELINOR
A Cage There Was
The ceiling above him was low and gray; Barton's first thought was. What am I doing in the drunk tank? On second thought it didn't stink like a drunk tank, and Barton was far enough awake to know that he was not hung over. So he sat up and looked around. The first thing he noticed was that he was naked, along with everybody else. If this were a drunk tank, it had to be the first coeducational nude drunk tank in his limited experience.
He could make no guess as to .where he was, or why. Presumably there was some other place he'd rather be, somewhere he belonged—but when he tried to think of one he drew a blank. Briefly, he wondered why the lack didn't bother him.
He seemed to be the only person awake; at least no one else was sitting up. Looking, Barton estimated about fifty persons sprawled in the room, neither crowded nor widely separated in a space about twenty-five feet square. He
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stood, and found the ceiling claustrophobically low: not much over six feet, clearing his head by a few inches but heavy'-heavy-hanging over it. He didn't like that.
Floor and walls were gray, as well as the ceiling. Solidly. There were no openings that he could see, anywhere. There was light, a little yellowish, but no visible sources;
the light was simply there. The gray surfaces were not luminous and the air did not glow. Barton skipped that;
it wasn't important. What was important was that he had to take a leak.
No place. He stepped gingerly over and around the sleeping bodies, noting little about them except that they breathed. When he accidentally touched one, it was warm. The floor was at body temperature also, with a slight degree of "give." After exploring the room thoroughly. Barton was faced with the fact that it was not only solid but seamless. Yet the air (warm, like the floor) was fresh and clean. It seemed to move against him gently from all directions, though be could detect no gross air currents.
He still had to pee. Going to one comer of the room, he considerately rolled the nearest occupant out of splash-
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ing range and faced the corner. At first he couldn't do it;
all the times he'd stood in line (at theaters during intermission, at overcrowded facilities in tourist haunts), with impatient others waiting behind him, came up to clamp the sphincter tight. Waiting, he finally relaxed and the flow came. The interesting thing was that at the floor it simply disappeared: no splash or gurgle. The floor might as well not have been there. It looked dry, felt dry (Barton felt it) and had no telltale smell at all (Barton smelled
it).
He had a sudden wild thought that perhaps the whole room was an illusion, and gathered a few bruises trying to launch himself through the floor, a wall, and even the ceiling, before he decided that in this case liquids had certain advantages over solids. His guess might be wrong, he knew, but that didn't mean it was stupid.
Other people were beginning to wake, sit up and even move around. Barton realized that he hadn't paid enough attention to the resident population, of which he was perhaps 2 percent. So he stood quietly in bis corner and looked.
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The people ranged from ordinary to exotic, in Barton's view. Some were as usual as anyone can be among some fifty naked persons in a sealed room. Others were notable for such things as highly stylized patterns of tattooing, possible cosmetic surgery, and selective depilation. Still others,. Barton thought, must have come out of a freak show. Some of them be found hard to believe, but there they were. The frightening thing, though, was that these people were beginning to speak among themselves, and while Barton spoke French and a little German, and could recognize several other languages, he heard not one familiar word from anyone near him. Well, yes—there was one over therel
"Anybody here speak ENGLISH?" he bawled out suddenly. From the far side of the room came a "YES." Accented, but unmistakable. Barton began shouldering his way toward the sound, shouting "ENGLISH" now and then as a navigational aid.
"English" turned out to be a Doktor Siewen, a tall wiry man with a great bushy shock of white hair, and some alarming ideas. He and Barton traded names and shook hands, the ritual prelude to any constructive activity between strangers.
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"I know considerable languages, Barton," said Siewen, "and some of them I hear in this place, but not many. Also I hear people talking in languages I didn't think exist."
"I thought I knew a lot of ethnic types, myself, but some of these people don't look like anything I've ever seen, even in pictures."
'There is also that," Doktor Siewen began, but Just then he and Barton were knocked apart. A woman pushed between them; two men were chasing her. There were strangenesses about all three. One man caught her; the two sank to the floor together in tight embrace. But the second man came upon them, kicking and clawing; soon all three were battling viciously. Barton wasn't sure whose side the woman was on.
He started to say something,to Siewen, but a great feeling of heaviness came over him. ,His legs collapsed; the impact half-stunned him. He rolled over painfully, and was able to see that nearly everyone else was on the floor also. The heaviness increased.
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"This tells us where we are. Barton," Doktor Siewen said, in great strain. "Or where we are not. You know what is this? Artificial gravity, it has to be."
Barton tried to shake the moths out of his brain. "How about just straight acceleration? I mean, on a spaceship thing you could get that, couldn't you?"
"On a spaceship with a room this big," said Siewen, "who could bother to disturb the navigation, only to stop a little squabble in the zoo?" The heaviness increased into blackout..,
Barton ached all over; someone was shaking him by the shoulder. "Wake up, Barton; wake up." It had to be Doktor Siewen, unless the whole thing had been a bad dream, so Barton opened his eyes. It hadn't been a dream, or else
it still was. Standing beside Siewen was a woman, not like any Barton had ever seen. Barton stood up; she was taller than he and very slim.
"Barton, this is Limila," Siewen said. "You can see, she is not the type human we grow on our world." Limila smiled; her teeth were small, and by Barton's standards, too many. She held out a hand for him to shake; it had
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an extra finger. A glance downward showed a pair of sixtoed feet. The nails of both toes and fingers were thick and pointed, clawlike.
"Hello, Barton. Yes?" she said. "Hello, Limila. Yes." Her hair was odd. It was perfectly good shiny black hair, twisted up into a knot at the crown of her head, but forward of her ears it did not grow. The front hairline began above one ear and went straight up and over to the other; Barton recalled an old movie of Bette Davis playing Queen Elizabeth I. In compensation, at the back it grew solidly down to the base of the neck. Like she's slipped her wig. Barton thought before he got his thoughts back on track. "Where's she from, Doc?"
"We can't yet talk such technical data,*' Siewen said. "But Limila has been captured a longer time, was in another group with English-speakers, has fantastic talent of linguistics to learn as far as she has."
"Does she—" He turned to Limila. "Do you know what any of this is all about?" Her breasts were wrong. Not in shape, but set very low and wide on the ribcage.
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"We are have by the Demu, I think," she said. "No one know what happen then. No one come back." She looked away, her eyes half-closed, apparently losing interest in the discussion.
"What's a Demu?" Barton asked. She didn't answer, and in a moment walked away. "Now what's wrong with herT*
"We were talking before," Siewen said. ^You were not awake for a long time. Barton; finally I worried you were not all right. But Limila told me of the Demu. Likely she did not feel to repeat herself.
"The Tilari, Limila's people, have star travel," he continued. "They are not what you call easy to the mark. They trade with other races and have respect from all. But the Demu raid the Tilari or anyone else; they take people and there is the end of it. They come from nowhere and go back the same way."
"Hell, somebody must know something about them," Barton growled. He was getting a little tired of being told how invincible the Demu were, because he didn't want to have to believe it.
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"They are seldom seen. They have unconsciousness devices, which also derange memory function for a time, and other ways not to be noticed. They could have slept everyone here without the gravity if wanting to; that likely was for threat, to make us to behave better."
"Or maybe just plain sadism," Barton said. "I think Td like to meet one of them sometime without his magic gadget. Anybody know what they look like?"
"A small ship of them, raiding scout perhaps, crashed on Tilara very long time ago. All were killed. The Tilari just began to study the wreck and the dead ones; then must have come another ship. The wreck and dead ones gone, also all but two Tilari in the study group. The two had gone for food supplies and needed instruments."
"At least somebody lucked out," Barton said. "So what's their report?"
"I said, a long time ago. Barton. It is all vague, very vague by now; Limila has only read it in her schooling as a child.
"She says they were roughly human shape and size.
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Hard like stone to the touch. She thinks they have not the features of face and other things-real people have. But the Demu think they are the only real people."
"How can anybody know that?"
"Demu picture record, seen by the two Tilari not taken," said Siewen. "With sound-capsules, from which their name Demu is learned. By reports, showed unmistakably Demu in relation to other races as people to animals."
Barton didn't answer; the concept angered him. The phrase "hard like stone" stuck in his mind; he had the impression he'd cracked open quite a few rocks in his time, for one reason or another. His memory was vague but the picture of a fossil fern came to him, and the smell of a campfire. A field trip?
"Anything else Limila knows about them?" -^
"Legend, folklore, from other peoples made victims. They take you, they use you as domestic animal; maybe eat you."
"Seems like a long haul to the meat market," Barton
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said. "Wouldn't it be easier to breed their own stock from what they get on the first raid?"
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"As I say. Barton: folklore. But the great fear is not of being killed or even eaten. There is a story so old, .the race that first told it is extinct. By supernova, long past. This is, the goal of the Demu is to make animals into people."
"I don't get you."
"If I have it, they catch people to try to turn them into Demu."
"Oh, come off it. Doc! How could that be?" "I don't know; Limila doesn't know. But it is said on many worlds."
"So*s a lot of other horse-puckie, I imagine.** The subject had no handle he could grasp. He began stretching and bending, working the aches out of his muscles. Doktor Siewen shrugged and said nothing more.
Limila was back. She started to say something, but an
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excited babble broke out across the room and cut her off in midsentence. Barton wheeled to see what was going on.
The walls were leaking. At intervals, small jets of liquid spurted at a height of about five feet. Barton realized he was deadly thirsty. He wasn't alone; there was a rush. Barton held back for a moment but decided that if the Demu wanted to poison them, the air supply would be simpler.
The water was cool with a slight mineral taste, not unpleasant. Then it changed; the liquid became thicker and milk-colored. Just like Instant Breakfast, Barton thought, except not sweetened. He found he was hungry, too.
The stuff stopped coming before he'd had enough of it, but he could feel relief from the low blood-sugar condition he hadn't consciously noticed. Barton felt a little more as if he might have some sort of chance in this game after all. He realized it was silly to feel that way from a mere shot of nutriment at the whim of his unseen captors. But what the hell...
He turned from the wall, looking for Siewen or Limila. The other people of non-Earth origin began to register with him. They hadn't necessarily had surgery or depila-
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tion or tattooing, he saw now; they were simply different by nature. Some weren't all that different; some were hard to accept. He decided to work his attitudes out later when be had the^ime'for it. When things weren't so crowded, if ever. What be really wanted to do was sit down with
his back to a corner and feel less vulnerable, but his fellow captives shared his preference for using the corners of the room as urinals; they were all in use.
He noticed a discrepancy, and the vagrant thought crossed his mind: That's Ainny; I don^t feel constipated. Then he saw Siewen and moved across the room to join him.
Their discussion brought no new information or ideas. Barton got tired of standing or sitting; he lay down and dozed off. Having his back against the wall was better than no shelter at all.
Barton was having a good dream; it got better when he woke up. Limila was all over him. What she had in mind was obvious, and Barton found that he had no objections. But first he pulled them both up sitting, looking at each other; he wanted to see her fully as a person.
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Her hair was down and loose; there was a lot more of it than he would have expected. Her features were so lean and delicate as to be almost harsh, but her face had beauty to him, once he was used to its not stopping at the forehead. Her eyes were the color of liquid mercury, with more iris and less white than seemed reasonable. And her Ups curved sweetly as she smiled.
He must have looked for longer than he knew, because she said, "Will we now?" Barton didn't answer in words. He found some differences in the way things were angled and the way some muscles wotked, but he had no complaints.
Not much later he was startled to find that Limila was on the same friendly terms with Doktor Siewen, but Barton was realist enough not to try to impose his own ideas on a lady he didn't understand more than about 5 percent, if that. In the way he had now, he put everything out of his mind but the moment. In. fact, some hours later, he and Limila were exchanging pleasured smiles when he felt the blackness of approaching unconsciousness. There wasn't even time to kiss.
The nest time Barton woke, he was alone. The quali--
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ties of the room were the same but this one was smaller, about ten feet square. Not exactly ten feet, not exactly three meters, not exactly any measurement Barton was familiar with—and Barton knew he was capable of estimating dimensions quite closely. The gray surfaces, the low ceiling, the temperature, the light with no sources or
shadows, the floor and walls you could piss through but not escape through—these were all the same. But the feel of the place was that of a solid planet, not a spaceship. There was nothing more, just Barton, alone in his room. This, he realized, is how to go crazy.
Barton was of no mind to go crazy. He felt be might be a little bit crazy already, but he didn't intend to let it go any further than he could help. He still knew only a little of what be was up against; as a matter of survival he set out to leam more. The effort kept his mind occupied, and he figured that was all to the good.
Over an unmeasured period of time be discovered several things. His solid wastes, infrequent on his present diet, also went through the floor without trace, but not instantaneously; they sank gradually, leaving no residue. The room reserved one comer of itself for these functions;
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it told Barton so with electrical shocks.
His food and water, neither separate nor appetizing, rose through another area of the floor in the same way, the floor forming itself into a sort of cup or bowl to hold the liquid mush. The intervals between meals were irregular and unpredictable. When Barton got angry at an especially long delay and pissed in the bowl when it appeared, the room left the mess with him for several hours before removing it and providing his next feeding. He didn't foul his food again. Frustrated out of his mind, Barton was, but not of a mood to let himself be stupid.
There wasn't much that he could leam from bis limited environment, but he tried. With the constant illumination and irregular feeding schedule, there was no way to tell time. Barton first tried a makeshift count of bis own pulse, but aside from the variation with his emotions, he invariably lost track of the thousands. He tried to keep a record of his own waking periods, and had no better luck. The walls and floors would not retain marks. When he tried to lay out hairs or nail bitings on the floor or glue them to the walls with spittle, they simply vanished, usually while he was asleep, though once be saw an attempted marker absorbed into a wall. He shouted and struck at it
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at the last, which did DO good either.
Barton knew he was a little off his head when he began trying to make permanent marks on his own body to keep the one count that meant anything to him: the number of his waking periods. He tried gouging his skin with his fingernails but found his healing rate was accelerated;
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he could not produce scars. He tried biting himself and was dissuaded by a series of shocks from the floor. The room allowed him to pluck marker stripes through bis body hair, but the process was tedious and the result impermanent. He abandoned the effort and gave himself up to the sulks.
Once in a blank reverie he found himself pulling at his whiskers, and suddenly realized he had had a rough time measurement at hand all along. He pulled one hair from his sprouting beard; the length of it told him he had been caged for about four months, give or take a couple of weeks. His next period of sleep was more relaxed than any since this whole thing had started. Since Before.
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Before! Barton hadn't thought of Before, more than fleetingly, since he had wondered what he was doing in the drunk tank. How could he? There was nothing but Here, and Here was so terrible and so frustrating that he couldn't put his attention fully on anything else. And for a time, he hadn't been able to remember very much, anyway.
He woke thinking of Before, though, and wondering about it. His emerging memories were still incomplete. The condition didn't bother him because he didn't recallany better one, except vaguely.
He knew that he had been born in 1950 and was pretty sure he'd been thirty-two at his last birthday. He was an only child, perhaps a little too smart for his own good in the childhood jungle of school, he recalled. Stubborn, somewhat of a loner in his teens. Buf not much of a rebel at home, or in two years of liberal-arts studies at the local university.
Then the war in Vietnam. He'd panicked and shot a scrawny kid who didn't have a grenade after all, just a small clay jar of oa. Later he'd shot one of bis own squadmates who had begun to spray a village with submachine fire; no one could prove it on him for sure, so be didn't
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get court-martialed. Barton had never told anyone about these things; he'd just lived with them.
He hadn't tried hard drugs, just dew and hash sometimes, so when his hitch was finished he had no trouble getting home and out of the service. But he couldn^t get along with his parents anymore. They kept trying to put him back in the little-boy bag and it didnt fit. He knew they loved him but he couldn't take the way they showed it
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Barton went back to college on the G.I. Bill- He wasn't doing well with people, he felt, so he undertook the study of things; he became a physics major. He would have preferred paleontology—he enjoyed fossil-hunting—but there wasn't any money in it and he'd been broke long enough. He was good enough at his studies to graduate with honors. He had about eight to ten dates per school year but got laid once a month by a friendly-mannered professional. As a matter of fact he liked the part-time whor*, personally, better than he liked the coeds he dated. Barton felt that he knew honesty when he met it. On the dating scene he hadn't found enough to notice.
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After graduation. Barton took a Master's degree and then a job with a company that gave him time to work on his Ph.D. on the side. It seemed to be a good deal, and for the most part, it was. Except for the red tape, which started strong and kept growing.
Just before leaving school. Barton had met a girl who frankly admitted she liked getting laid, and proved it. Her name was Ada Rongen; she was nearly Barton's height, and slim. She had green eyes, long red hair and a crooked nose from having played shinny at the age of ten. Barton proposed on their third date; they were married in time to avoid a fourth one.
For the most part, over the next few years Barton liked his job and his studies and his marriage. He enjoyed his hobby, oil painting. When the package came apart on him, it did so all at once.
The red tape on Barton's job had piled up until it took nearly half of what should have been productive time. He got-clobbered in his Ph.D. Orals by a professor whose main gripe seemed to be that Barton had never taken the profs own pet course. And he found that .Ada's liking for getting laid was not exclusively in his favor.
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The day he came home from the Orals fiasco she told him she was pregnant. Then she said, "I think you should know; the child is probably not yours."
Barton didn't ask who, how or why. He moved out, From the Job, from the school and from Ada. First he told her to go ahead with a divorce; he'd give her any grounds she needed. "... and don't say anything. I've never hit a woman in my life and I don't want to spoil my record." She nodded, silenced by the look of the man who had always been gentle to her.
He moved into a walk-up room and concentrated on
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his painting. A little of his work began to sell, but mostly he lived on the refund from the company's retirement plan. He picked up, on a part-tune basis, with the young salesgirl at the gallery that handled his paintings. And once divorced, he found that without bitterness he could share Ada's eclectic enjoyment of casual sex. They became fairly good friends, in bed and out.
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A year or two had gone by like this, a comfortable vegetative time. Painting, drinking with Ada and turning on with Leonie the salesgirl, being lover to each of them in a friendly noncompetitive way. By the time his retirement money ran out he could almost but not quite make a living from the painting. He made up the difference with a part-time scut job at the gallery; Barton's tastes, when he so chose, could be relatively inexpensive. He was drifting and he knew it; what better way to spend the dregs of his youth?
And then somehow, at no specific point he could recall, Barton had been torn away from that placid halfremembered existence. To wake up in a gray, seamless cage.
Thinking back, then. Barton lay supine on the gray floor and for the first time in his new existence masturbat*d slowly and luxuriously, building his urge almost to the deathwish-point of convulsions before he gave himself release. Then, relaxed, he wondered why in bell he had taken so long to think of such an. obvious answer to his tensions. The relaxation carried through all that waking period and into sleep.
For the first time Here, Barton woke almost happy,
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. smiling in reminiscence and anticipation. He ate in no great hurry, voided, thought vaguely and with only faint regret on what he could remember of Before. Then he lay down, arranged himself comfortably and thought of pleasure.
Nothing worked. No thoughts, no touch produced the slightest response. There was no doubt in Barton's mind what had happened. The room had noticed that he had discovered a source of pleasure, and turned it off.
That was the first time Barton tried to find a way to kill himself.
He couldn't; the room wouldn't let him. When he tried to do any real damage such as biting at an artery, the room jarred him out of it with electrical shock or radical
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variations of the gravity, temperature or air pressure, until be gave up and lay cursing, or sometimes crying.
The room had taken a long time to notice that Barton needed a bath or its equivalent. He was getting pretty
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stinking; his skin was spotted with inflamed areas and mild infections. Then suddenly he began to receive treatments he really didn't appreciate too much. Barton decided the method was probably ultrasonics.
At any rate, the outer layer of his skin flaked off in patches, and so did much of his hair, quite roughly and unevenly. He didn't have a mirror, but by the feel of himself he knew he looked like bloody hell. Furthermore, his beard "calendar" was shot down.
So when Barton one "morning" woke to find one wall no longer gray but looking like a window, with people or something else looking in at Urn, he was more angry than curious. At first he paid little attention to the appearance of those outside, although they certainly didn't look especially human. But at that point he didn't give a damn whether school kept or not; he was more concerned with what these beings had done to his own looks and functions than with what they might happen to look like. What he wanted was a little action.
He did all the standard things: he shouted, made faces, waved his arms and beat on the window. The people (or something) showed no reaction, except now and then to turn to one another and exchange comments. Or appar-
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ently so: he couldn't be sure; there was no sound.
When his mainspring ran down. Barton realized that be had better pay attention. Here was a chance for knowledge; it might not last.
What he saw was a group of robed cowled figures, vaguely human-shaped and apparently human-sized. Of course, he thought, this could be closed-circuit TV and not a window at all; in that case the apparent size wouldn't mean much. But Limila had said the Demu were about the size of humans.
Besides gray robes and hoods; he saw shadowed faces and occasional glimpses of hands that didn't have enough fingers. The faces didn't show him a lot. Heavy hairless brow-ridges hid the sunken eyes. There was no nasal ridge, only close-set nostril-holes a little below the eyes. The lips were deeply serrated—like a zipper without the bandie, he thought wryly. The whole effect was rather chitinous, like the body shell of a boiled crab and with the
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same ivory-tinged-with-red color. If there were ears, the
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hoods covered them. There was no sign of hair, fur or feathers. Hell, not even scales; he wondered if a snake would seem more alien to him, or less, than these creatures. "Demu?" he thought. "They look like a bunch of overgrown lobsters to mel"
One of them stepped forward and gestured to him. Yes, the hand bad only three fingers, plus an oversized thumb set at an odd angle. No fingernails. The gestures carried no meaning to Barton; in return he thumbed his nose at the alien, who conferred with the two others before turning again to repeat the movements.
Barton knew what he wanted, now. He paid no heed to what the other did, but repeated over and over a simple gesture of throwing back a hood and dropping a robe, followed by throwing bis arms wide in exhibition. The result was another conference among part of his viewing public. Eventually one of the lobsters stepped dose to the window or screen and pushed the hood back, exposing its head.
It was about what Barton had expected. The head and neck looked crustacean; he was sure he was viewing an exoskeletal being. There were no external ears, but slightly flanged earholes not much displaced from the hu-
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man position. The mouth, when open briefly, showed no teeth and a short stumpy tongue. The skull was slightly broader than deep, Barton thought, but couldn't be sure since the creature did not turn to "full profile. The neck was thick and continued the chitinous look. Barton couldn't tell about the hands, when they reached up to replace the hood; perhaps the chitin was more flexible there.
Barton kept making doff-the-robe gestures but the upfront lobster ignored his movements and repeated a gesture of its own, with one hand in front of the middle of its robe. Suddenly Barton realized that the creature was pantomiming masturbation. He spat on the window, went to the far side of the room and curled up facing the wall. But' as he did so, he felt unmistakable signs that his sexuality was working. Then, abruptly, it turned off again. He couldn't imagine bow the lobsters could control him in that aspect. Some sort of subsonics? Induced brain waves? Hell, he didn't know. He tried to think in terms of physics, but the concepts seemed dim and jumbled in his mind. However, he did give some thought to the properties of the exoskeleton in combat.
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For one thing, assuming the creatures were approximately his own size and operating in the same gravity field, the outer shell had to be light in weight. It would have great tensile strength and good resistance to compressive loads along a limb segment But given a little leverage. Barton thought, it should bend and crumple like so much macaroni. He hoped with considerable gusto for a future chance to check his hypothesis; he was still think. ing about it when he went to sleep.
Barton was next awakened by a metallic jangling sound, like a gong made of chain mail. The wall was a window again (or TV screen, he reminded himself), with one robed lobster facing him and gesturing. It might have been the same one or it might not; Barton couldn't tell for sure. But from the one-handed gestures and a stirring in Barton's groin, the creature obviously wanted Barton to demonstrate autoeroticism.
Well, the hell with that He'd done it once and they'd turned him off for it In return. Barton made throw-offthat-robe motions. If I have to be a solo whor*, he thought, 111 get paid- for it In knowing a little more what it's all about The session ended with no sale when the window turned back into a gray wall. This time they left him turned on, but feeling stubborn, he ignored the pos-
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sibilities.
The dickering was repeated each waking period. Sometimes there would be only one robed ehitinous alien, sometimes several Occasionally there was one in the background that unlike the rest seemed nervous and twitchy, moving back and forth. Although he couldn't get a good look, it seemed to Barton that the twitchy one didn't have quite the same ehitinous sheen as the others, though the features (or lack thereof) were much the same.
Throughout this period of silent bargaining sessions, Barton took a perverse pleasure in refusing himself any sexual release except for the involuntary nocturnal type that occasionally caught up with him. He had thought to huddle up facing away from the window and do it himself, but suddenly realized that all four walls and maybe the floor and ceiling could be one-way windows. Certainly the lobsters had turned him off before he'd seen any wall as other than gray and opaque. The hell with them, Barton feit. At this point, he realized, he might cheerfully have cut off his nose to spite his face, given the proper tools for the job. He almost had to laugh.
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And yet Barton felt aggrieved when the silent arguments ended, when the wall stayed gray and no robed lobsters tried to gesture him into doing anything. During his first waking period without such an interview he was subjected to an ultrasonic "bath" of such vigor as to shake nearly every dead cell off him, leaving him not only stone-bald but also tenderly shallow of skin and with thin nails on toes and fingers, not to mention a filling or two that resonated painfully. Barton took this as a display of temper on the part of his personal number-one lobster and set in his mind the goal of someday repaying that entity in kind as best he might Thereafter the ultrasonics were mild, shaking loose only extraneous matter. Barton theorized that a different lobster had taken charge of his cage.
Going by the length of his regrowing beard. Barton figured it to be nearly a year before he had any further interaction with the outside of the room, other than exchanging food for wastes and an occasional light ultrasonic "bath." Then one "day" he was sitting in a comer staring at the intersection of two walls and the floor, hallucinating. He was hallucinating a great deal at that time; he had found the practice a considerable help to personal peace of mind.
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At the moment he was sitting on soft grass at the top of a rounded hill under warm sunBght, facing a slim girl with long red hair. Between them was a icloth laden with a picnic lunch. The girl's nose began to develop a crooked outline; absent-mindedly he thought it straight. They sipped from cold moisture-beaded cans of beer and toasted each other, smiling. A light breeze brought the scent of flowers. He had to straighten her nose again; it wouldn't stay put. He noticed movement far down the hill at the edge of a swamp. Insects, huge yellow-jacketed wasps, were buzzing around a cage. In the cage was a robed hooded lobster that flailed its arms at the wasps. He smiled and watched low-lying smog drift in across the swamp. Then—
He felt a slight "pop" in his ears, as in change of altitude. At first he thought it was part of his hallucination, but on second thought it didn't fit, so gradually he took his attention from inside himself and put it outside, slowly rising and turning from the corner to look at the room overall.
A sort of dome had appeared in the middle of the floor.
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Yeh; air displacement popped my ears, he thought, and wondered why he bothered trying to explain anything any more.
He watched the dome awhile but it didn't do anything. He was in the process of deciding to find out whether he could pick up his hallucination where he had left off or would have to start over, when the dome disappeared with another ear-pop and left the original flat floor with a woman lying on it. Not an Earth-type woman, but humanold and female.
Barton remembered Limila. He had seen her for a number of hours, a long time ago—how long? He had largely forgotten her exact differences from women of Earth. But this woman, coming awake, beginning to sit up and shake her head and look around, had to be of the same race. Yes, the extra fingers and toes. The high forehead, Elizabethan hairline straight across the top of the head above the ears. The breasts set so much lower and wider on the ribcage. Then she opened her mouth and snarled at him, and he saw the many small teeth. There had to be at least forty; Limila had about that many.
Barton prepared to make gestures of friendly welcome;
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he felt friendly and welcoming. In truth he felt friendly and welcoming and lustful. Not excessively lustful, because he had developed a method of self-service sex that involved curling up into a ball so that he figured those lobster bastards couldn't see what he was doing without x-rays. He used it sparingly, but often enough to keep some levels of his mind and his prostate gland in reasonable health. So he was not exactly intent on rape when he extended a hand to help his new roommate up off the floor.
She didn't see it that way. She took the hand, pulled on it and launched herself at him in attack. Barton wasnt ready for her; he had not been conducting any real exercise program during his term in the room. In fact he was more flabby and slothful, he suddenly discovered, than he really cared to be.
The woman clamped more than enough of her many teeth onto the ridge of Barton's jawbone below his right ear. One knee missed smashing his crotch, slipping to the outside of his thigh as he twisted. They fell to the floor, he under her. He caught one wrist and felt safe for a moment until her other hand clawed down his forehead; he felt a
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finger, its nail, digging into his right eye. He panicked
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then, and screamed; the eye didn't hurt much, but he could feel blood or something worse running down his cheek. He caught the finger, twisted it and could feel it break, but that wasn't much solace. Then the gravity field hit, heavier than he had ever felt it His ribs creaked and he blacked out. When he woke, he was alone again.
The bitch had got at his eye, all right It was mostly healed, which didnt surprise him any more, but there was a wavy line pointing from northwest to southeast in anything he saw with his right eye. A wave of despair rolled over him; he felt crippled, mutilated, as though he'd lost an arm or a leg. Barton didn't have much hope for himself, certainly, but the prospect of a permanent ditch in his vision was more embittering than anything that had happened since his sex had first been turned off.
He couldn't blame the woman too much; he had seen some marks on her that probably would not cause her to view a strange man as a guardian angel. But Barton had the distinct idea that there had to be somebody around who should pay up accounts. He almost got rid of the
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shock in his comer-sitting hallucinations, but it wouldn't quite go away. After a while he let it alone. Over a time his sight slowly returned to normal, but his feelings didn't.
The second time the dome came. Barton happened to be looking at it. There was the flat floor, and then "pop" there was the dome. About fifty pulse beats later, it disappeared, Barton was hard put to describe in his own mind the female creature on the floor, but by comparing some marks he'd seen the first time, he had to admit it was somewhat the same woman who had clawed his eye.
A few minor alterations had been made. The fingers and toes were shorter and scarred at the ends; each end joint with its claw had been lopped off. Half-healed scars ran down the sides of the head at the temples, just forward of the Queen Elizabeth hairline. Barton knew what this might be, but hoped he was wrong. He wasn't; the woman looked up and gave him a blank childlike stare. Then she smiled, and Barton cursed all the lobsters that ever were. How many teeth had Siewen said—forty? Now, none.
The smiling dull-eyed creature climbed into his lap and hugged him. It took some time before Barton could bring
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himself to let her kiss him. But she was persistent, and Barton had been alone a very long time.
What was left of the woman had very simple tastes.
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She loved to eat, off the floor with both hands, which was really the most efficient method. She was quite unhousebroken until the floor conditioned her electrically to use the proper corner most of the time; she cared nothing for cleanliness or appearance.
She was diligently but not urgently homy; after his first lapse Barton fended her off for a time in the interests of what he considered self-respect. But after he once woke to find her straddling him and too late to stop, he gave in and enjoyed it, occasionally. He did keep an eye on the window wall and was prepared to stop at any moment if he saw robed lobsters, but he put out of his mind the possibility that they could watch unseen. After a while he had sex regularly with her, just as though she had been a fully rational intelligent person. After all, she did like it, didnt she?
Sometimes it bothered him that she couldn't talk. Not
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only his language, but any language. He told himself it wasn't his doing, but the telling didn't help much.
He was so unused to paying heed to her bodily functions that he was considerably surprised to realize, eventually, that she had become not merely fat in the gut but alarmingly advanced in pregnancy. Barton simply had not considered the chance of interspecies fertility. She began to have increasing spasms of ill health; Barton's sex life ceased abruptly. He spent much time trying to make signals to the blank wall that had been a window. There were no answers.
Barton sweat up a storm. He knew he couldn't handle what was going to happen in a little while, that he would have been out of his depth delivering a normal easy birth, with full plumbing and antiseptic facilities. He had none of these and the birth was not at all normal, but very dimcult. Barton cursed and prayed and got his hands awfully bloody, and the woman-shell was not beyond pain, unfortunately. She screamed and cried as pitifully as though she had had her whole mind with her.
At the last of it, when nothing else could help her, he tried to kill her painlessly in a way the Army had taught
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him. But the lobsters still knew a trick worth two of that:
their gravity gadget. When Barton woke up, it was hard to tell which way he hurt the most. The woman was gone, finally now. and for the last of it he blamed himself.
Barton had given up caring about time passage when 20
the room gave him the second woman. This one looked like Earth ancestry, very young, just past puberty. Like Limila's fellow citizen, she was toothless, temple-scarred and one joint short of nails on fingers and toes. Barton staggered over to a corner and threw up, without regard to where the plumbing was supposed to be.
He couldn't ignore her, though, because she too was strongly sex-oriented and kept trying to get to him whether he was awake or asleep. There was no way to beat that kind of dedication. So be introduced the girl to sexual juxtapositions that could not result in pregnancy, and for quite a long time he thought he had the situation whipped. But one "morning" he woke to find that he couldn't stop the girl from following the example of her predecessor;
she had managed to bring him into a "normal" sex act
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without waking him until the onrush of climax.
Without thought, with only rage. Barton made one move too quickly to be countered. He swung the hard side of his hand and broke the girl's neck. The gravity field hit him then, and he didn't fight it. All he needed was a time to cry for his dead. But when he woke he felt no grief— only emptiness.
They left him alone for a while, until the beginning of what he recognized as language lessons. When the window began showing sets of visual symbols matched with the first sounds he had heard from outside, he knew what they had in mind. He felt, Barton did, that it was a little late for that crap. He already knew all the important things. And it might be advisable to deny the lobsters the insight into his own mind that they might gain by observing his learning processes. Each time the lessons began, he faced the opposite wall. He was pretty deeply into self-hypnosis, and thus fairly successful in ignoring the sounds.
They turned off his sex again. He learned to hallucinate it so well that he didn't really care; in fact, since his mind could experience it more often than his body could, it was in some ways an improvement. More and more he
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stayed in his own mental world, emerging for feeding and elimination but for very little else.
They worsened the flavor of his food, which took som». doing. After the shock of the first taste, he ate it and pre'tended enjoyment. When they made it completely unpalatable he substituted a hallucinatory taste for the actual one and wondered why he hadn't thought of that answer before. They put stenches in his air also, to no
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avail and for the same reason. One thing was obvious to Barton: he might have been a slow learner, but the lobsters weren't such great shakes either. He had to hand them one thing, though—at least they were getting his attention, more than he liked.
They played games with the temperature, air pressure and floor gravity. Barton played games right back at them, with his growing abilities of hallucination and selfhypnosis. The only things that really got to him, he noted grimly, were of a type that couldn't possibly gain his cooperation.
The first was dropping the oxygen content of his room;
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he couldn't fight that, but it rendered him unconscious. The second was electrical shocks from the floor; with some effort he could put them on his "Ignore" circuit but the muscle spasms left him sore. And the third, once only and probably due to a loss of temper by some lobster or other, was floating him in the air on zero gravity and suddenly slamming him to the floor. It broke his right forearm. He healed rapidly, of course, but the break was not set. It left him with a lumpy arm, and painful. Barton wondered how that would work with an exoskeleton. He took up a regular exercise program for the first time, so as not to waste a chance to find out, if he ever got one. After a time his physical condition became surprisingly good, even by his own standards. He decided that the food must have been nutritious even though its natural taste was more rancid than not
When Barton's self-propelled hallucinations began getting out of hand, he figured they were experimenting with drugs in his food. He knew with certainty that here was something that could take his high ground away from him. He had to change his tactics, so he decided to watch the lessons. The same drugs that cut into his control of his own mind should also distort his responses and thus any-
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thing the lobsters could learn from them. So when the window next began to show a language lesson, he sat and watched it. Of course he fiddled in a little hallucinatory content to keep things interesting.
He noted that the impersonal symbol-sound pairings had been replaced by one or more lobsters holding up the symbols and making the sounds, with gestures. He found that he understood a lot of it almost immediately; perhaps some of the earlier material had been getting through on a subliminal basis while he thought he had been ignoring it.
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Since he did not want to learn lobster language he forced himself to ignore as many as possible of the meanings that came intuitively into his mind at each sound-symbolgesture showing. And after several depictions of a concept that he was fairly sure meant "friendship," he stood up and deliberately pissed on the window. His act brought the lesson to an abrupt end. The lobsters conferred with each other in something resembling a state of excitement; then two converged on the twitchy one Barton had noticed when the creatures had first shown themselves. At least it looked like the same twitchy lobster; there might be more than one. If I were a lobster and had me in
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a cage. Barton thought, I might feel a little twitchy myself. Then he chalked that thought off to a natural paranoia and watched the outside action more closely.
The three lobsters were coming closer to the window, the twitchy one in the middle, the other two apparently urging it forward. Sure as hell, Barton thought, that one looked different. Not so much like a lobster; the texture was wrong. But the features were about the same, what he could see of them.
Barton had the feeling of almost recognizing the twitcby softer-looking lobster, when it spoke to him. "Barton 1 For your own good you must—" The lobster face broke into entirely unlobsterlike spasms and the voice went shrill. "No, DON'T;, Let them kill you first! I was once—" And the window turned back to gray wall.
Well. The voice had been in English. The sound quality was distorted abominably, but he'd detected only overtones of any "lobster accent" There had been a hint of familiarity to that voice, and so far as he knew. Barton had never been on speaking terms with a lobster. But he had the feeling that there was something he should be remembering.
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Then there were new scents in the air and Barton guessed that the lobsters had hit upon breathing-type drugs to bend his mind. Serve the hardshelled bastards right if they killed him first, he thought for a moment, before he passed out cold.
The problem was that any chemical agent in the food or air that broke Barton's will also dispersed his powers of concentration. After all, those were two looks at the same bag of ego, though Barton had not previously considered the matter in those terms. He had not he began to realize, considered a lot of things. For one, he hadn't given much
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thought to why he should be so important to the lobsters, out of the fifty or so people he'd seen in the first cage, maybe two or ten years earlier. It hadn't occurred to him that perhaps the lobsters had stupidly and inefficiently killed most of the rest in their clumsy experimentation, and were getting worried. It seemed a fair guess, though, now that he thought of it.
A different mind than Barton's, he recognized, might have seized upon that possibility and hoped to do some
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bargaining with it. Barton's mind was stuck on the picture of a mutilated mindless woman forced to die in horrible pain. It was not exactly revenge that held his thinking; it was more on the order of Corrective Annihilation . . . something like a Roman galley slave with a fixation on the extermination of the Caesars. The idea amused him a little, but not much. Idly he wondered what had become of the easygoing fellow he used to be, and decided that that man had died with the Tilaran woman.
Now, though, he thought he knew his one possible chance for escape. He'd figured it out; the logic was flawless. The only problem was that he had no idea whether he could really do it or not.
For a time, then, Barton played an intense and deadly game with the language lessons, a game his would-be teachers could not be equipped to recognize. He would register understanding of one symbol, no comprehension of (he next, confusion about another, in a calculated fashion. Today's knowledge was tomorrow's incomprehension, he pretended. His idea was to drive the lobsters as nuts as he suspected he was becoming.
It worked for longer than he had expected. The lob-
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sters took long pauses during the lesson sessions, conferred in their tinny little voices, and became so agitated as to reach under their robes and apparently scratch. Barton didn't see how a lobster could get much of a kick out of scratching itself.
The twitchy one didn't show up again in the window. That figured.
During the between-lessons periods Barton had been pushing himself as bard and as far as he could manage it, along the lines of heavy self-hypnosis. The drugs were out of his food and air now that he was "cooperating" with the lessons, and he worked that breathing spell for all it was worth. Because there wouldn't be more than one
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chance, and while that one might not be worth the effort, what else could he do?
When the creatures in the window got tired of his lack of progress and began jarring him again with floor shocks, Barton knew he had to try it. He gave them a little jelly for their bread with his responses to the remainder of that lesson. When the window turned back into gray wall he
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curled up in the middle of the floor, well away from the latrine and feeding areas, and began willing himself as close to death as he might possibly get back from, and perhaps a little further. Besides hallucination and selfhypnosis and faking, he threw in considerably more true death wish than he would have done if he were still capable of giving a real damn. He knew what he was doing, but it didn't frighten him. The floor would not allow passage of a living organism; therefore Barton had to be effectively dead. That was how he had figured it, what he was betting on. There was no other chance for Barton, none ataIL
The sensation of interpenetrating the floor was disturbing beyond anything he could have imagined; he hadn't expected to be able to feel anything. But bis will held; he gave no betraying heartbeat. Some ghost at the back of his mind tried to guess how many pounds of his own excrement he was finally ^following, but the estimate was impossible. He didn't know bow many years it had been, let alone his average excretion.
The sudden drop through the air and subsequent impact jarred him. He saw through slit-tight eyelids that he was on the floor of a corridor. At least he had lucked out
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and missed the plumbing. Only one robed lobster was in sight. It approached, bent over him and reached ...
In two breaths Barton was alive again. He caught a bruise and a laceration across the face before he bad the
" chance to prove his theory that with the proper leverage. the limbs of an exoskeleton shatter beautifully. When the lobster began to make its characteristic noises, Bar-
' ton kicked the back of its skull in, holding it against the floor and stomping again and again with his bare heel until the thing crumpled.
At that point, like it or not, he had to stop and take stock. His flirtation with near-death had left him weak, and his soul was equally shaken. Barton's vision was flickering, around the edges; he waited until it settled down.
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Then he stripped the robe from the lobster-creature and looked at the latter with great care. It wasn't all that impressive, he decided.
AH right. The thing was outer-shelled for the most part,
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but not boilerplate with joints. Instead, the surface went gradually from hardshell to gristle where it needed to bend. The shapes of limb segments were not unlike the endoskeletal human, but of course rigid on the outside. The soles of the feet and palms of hands were the softest and most padded parts of the body. Up the center of the abdomen ran a hand's-width pattern of dots, some concave and some convex. The crotch was devoid of anything Barton might have expected; it was like a branching tree.
Barton didn't take long, seeing what there was to see;
it took him longer to decide what to do. Not so very long, though. He searched the robe, found a small cutting Implement. He carved a great part of the shell off the front and top of the creature's head, pissed in it to wash out most of the brownish blood, and wiped the thing dry with the tail of the robe. Then he put it on his own head. The eyeholes didn't quite fit, so he took it off and gouged them a little larger. He didn't look at what still lay on the floor. Not yet
Everything inside him said to put on the robe and hood and move out of there, but Barton knew that first he
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needed something more on his side. He had no real weapon except his ability to break exoskeletal arms and legs, which did not seem quite enough. So, messy hands or not, he took bis dead lobster apart rather thoroughly. He didn't even throw up.
He learned that the creature's main nerve trunks were ventral rather than dorsal, and down its middle found the bonus of a fine sword-shaped "bone" that needed onlysome lobster foot-cartilage to serve as hilt-wrapping.
Barton decided that time was running out. There was no way to hide his gutted lobster in the narrow corridor, so he left it He chose his direction simply: the way he could step least in the juices of the corpse. He kept his "sword" and the other cutting tool under his borrowed robe, out of sight
When Barton met a pair of real live lobsters face to face in one of the corridors, he came close to losing his toilet training. He had no idea what to do. He knew that no one person can stand off an enemy population in its home
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territory. So he tried to pretend to be a lobster who didn't
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want to talk to anybody, and it worked. After that experience he merely kept moving and hoped that nobody would cross him. Nobody did; Barton decided that maybe lobsters were too mean even for other lobsters.
After a time. Barton came to the top of an up-ramp and saw the sky. Now he knew that he had been kept underground, for however long it had been. He set out walking, paying no more attention than he could help to the lapse of time since he had last had food or drink.
The sky was spectacular, but Barton couldn't be bothered. There were stars in the daytime, for instance. Barton couldn't have cared less. He needed a place to sleep. He found a clump of odd-looking brush and crawled into it, hungry and thirsty and cold,
The lobster that found Barton and poked him with a stick to wake him was a very unlucky lobster. Barton's sword was entangled in his robe, so he bashed its head in with a fist-sized rock. Then, his hunger and weakness overcoming any remaining scruples, he ate the tender flesh of its forearm, raw. It was something like crab meat, and the best-tasting food he'd had since they caught him. He decided he was beginning to develop a taste for the
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place. He also decided that he scared himself.
Barton was beginning to believe that he was invincible. When he didn't meet any more lobsters, be was sure of it. He blanked out all idea of how weak and vulnerable he really was, because his mind didn't want to work along those lines. He accepted the knowledge that his hallucinations were no longer entirely separate from his objective experiences, and hadn't been since he didn't know when. There was something about a woman . . .
While he was gnawing at the last of a lobsterish forearm, Barton stumbled onto the outskirts of a field scattered with odd-looking vehicles, dully metallic in hue. Anyone with half sense had to know that a saucerlike object in such a place would be a spaceship, so Barton sprinted for a saucer.
It was bigger than it had looked from a distance, abouf forty feet in diameter. The bottom surface curved upward; the outer edge was inches higher than he could reach and offered no handhold to jump for. He walked around it, looking for access and finding none. Dammit, there had to be a way into the thingi He stood for a mo-
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ment, baffled, then began a second and slower circuit, inspecting the surface above him inch by inch.
Ahead, out of sight around the curve of metal. Barton heard a sound of machinery in motion. Carefully he disengaged his bone sword from the robe and advanced, to see a curved ramp descending from an area about midway between edge and center of the saucer shape. He scuttled forward, to be under and behind it as it touched ground. Then he waited. Somebody certainly was in no hurry. His sword hand was sweaty; he wiped it on his robe and discarded his lobster-mask for better vision.
When Barton heard footsteps above he peeked around the edge of the ramp. One robed lobster was descending. Barton waited to see if more would come or if this one would look back and say anything to others in the vehicle. Neither happened; there was only one lobster.
As it stepped off the ramp. the mechanism began to rise, slowly. Barton took three steps forward and swung his sword to belt the lobster across the side of the head as hard as he could. It went down but didn't stay down; it came up facing Barton. Holding the sword hilt in both hands, he
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lunged to the midsection with his full weight. The thrust bounced off but the creature dropped, holding itself and breathing in ragged gulps. Out of breath himself. Barton let go the sword, turned and jumped to grab the end of the ramp.
The gap was within inches of closing; the thought flashed through his mind that he could lose some fingers. But with his weight on the ramp, it sank again. He didnt wait; as soon as there was clearance he scrambled on and clambered up as fast as he could manage.
At the top was a door. Barton turned its handle and pushed the door open, wishing he hadn't bad to leave the sword behind. But he found only an empty corridor. A glance below showed that the lobster wasn't having much luck getting up, so Barton didn't wait to see the ramp all the way closed. He found the way to secure the door from inside, and settled for that
There were a lot of doors, and presumably compartments behind them. Barton ignored these and stayed on the main corridor. A little later, in a closed windowless room that he also locked from inside, he looked at the control assembly and wondered if it made any sense.
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There had to be a way to find out, if he could think of it. For starters, there was a projecting lever that swung
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smoothly in every direction, to no effect. And another that moved only up and down, but nothing happened there either. And a neat rectangle of what seemed to be toggle switches, with one larger turquoise-handled one in the center. Starting at top left and working to the right, like reading an English-language book. Barton gingerly flipped each of the smaller toggle switches up and immediately back down, to see if by momentary activation he could get some clues without necessarily killing himself.
Nothing happened. OK, Barton said to Barton. The swivel bar has to steer this thing, and the up-and-downer has to be the go pedal. Or else I am already dead and just don't know it yet. And these other flips are auxiliary controls. So the big blue devil in the middle has to be where the action starts.
Checking to see that all the toggles were back where he'd started, and the two levers also as near to neutral as he could tell, he flipped the turquoise switch. There came
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a heavy pervasive hum all around him, then a thia screaming from somewhere else in the place. The scream wasn't steady like the hum; without thinking. Barton left the controls and went looking for it. on the run.
It was a smaller-than-average lobster, about threequarter scale. Barton caught it trying to unlock the door to outside. Every impulse shrieked at him to kill it, but even now he had a soft spot for small* presumably young creatures, so he tried to subdue it instead. Paradoxically, his weakness prevented him from doing so without injuring it—in the struggle he accidentally broke one of its arms. He dragged it back to the control area, and using its own robes, tied it down into a seat Still it screamed.
The high piercing sound didn't help Barton's concentration. His sight was flickering again, like an out-of-tune TV set with the picture jiggling to the peaks of the sound track. His ears filled the silences with a dull ringing and once a voice spoke in his head: "Give it up. Barton. You lost." When the control panel began to change into a gray wall he fought himself back from past the brink of panic and proceeded to reason with the small screaming lobster in the only way he could manage.
He persuaded it to stop screaming, and then to stop a
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kind of whimpering, by giving it a full open-hand slap across the eyes every time it made a noise. After a while it got the point. Barton was glad, because his hand was getting as sore as his sensibilities. So was his throat; he had
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accompanied every slap with a shout. He was parched thirsty.
His spaceship was still humming. Barton tried his tentative steering and throttle levers but nothing happened. Well, then; back to the rectangle of toggles.
The first few, as he flipped them quickly on and off, did nothing spectacular. The one at the right end of the top row made the whole machine push up at him gendy. He flipped it full on, then. and realized the thing had to be airborne. Flying by the seat of his pants, he worked his self-designated throttle and steering levers gingerly, and found that indeed they gave the feelings of acceleration and turning that he had expected. So he went straight up. the best way he knew to keep from hitting anything while he figured things better.
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The only trouble was, he still couldn't see out. Also the little lobster was keening again, and he couldn't spare a hand to slap it.
Suddenly Barton was standing under a great golden dome, with deep tones of organ music reverberating around him. He shook his head; this was no time to play around with hallucinations, even pleasant ones. It was hard to get back. He had spent a lot of time perfecting that mental escape from the lobsters' cage, he was beat all out of shape, and the miniature Demu's noise was disrupting his thought patterns badly. He wasn't used to noise, dammit!
But he made it, and instead of slapping his small lobster to shut it up he took a deep breath, bracing himself, and hit them both with a heavy-G vertical swerve. It did the job; he had silence. Then he went back to the methodical quick testing of the bank of switches.
He was a long time finding the one that gave him an outside view, and somewhat longer in learning that the toggle switches also twisted to give fine controls such as focus or magnification. It was then that he found he hadn't captured a spaceship after all.
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It was nothing but some kind of goddamned air car. There were quite a few more of the same, hanging with him and surrounding him. Barton didn't quite panic, but he did try to make a run for it. It didn't work; they stayed right with him. His mind had not quite decided to run away from home and leave him to manage by himself when he noticed that neither his nor the other airborne vehicles could approach each other too closely; some
30
invisible cushion kept them apart. Barton the ex-
physidst thought briefly on the possible ways of obtaining such an effect; then Barton the escaped caged animal took over, wanting only to escape what came at him, or smash it if necessary. He explained the position to his captive lobster several times, but it did not answer, having learned that noise would cause it to be hit, by Barton. It did get up the nerve to say "Whnee," quietly.'Barton took this well; he smiled and did not slap the smallish lobster. The exchange might eventually have developed into the first conversation between Barton and a Demu, if he had had the time for it. But of course he didn't.
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Barton, though, was only stretched out of shape, not out of commission. He went back to testing the switches that he'd merely flicked before to see that they wouldn't kill him; now he left each one on long enough to see what it controlled. So sooner or later he had to turn on the visual and voice intercom, through which the opposition appeared to have been trying to reach him for quite some time. It was the third switch from the right in the fourth row from the top.
The big lobster in the foreground of the viewscreen broke into excited gestures and loud shrill sounds, so Barton knew the view was two-way. The smaller lobster beside him shrilled back in answer. It was all too loud and too fast for him to follow, but finally it struck him that they were exchanging communication he didn't understand.
He could not allow them to talk over his head. That way led back to the cage. Bracing himself so as not to move the controls accidentally. Barton belted the small lobster across the eyes as hard as he could, backhand. It felt like hitting a rock; he hoped he hadn't broken his hand. The creature slumped limply; brownish fluid dripped from one nostril-hole and a comer of its mouth. Barton felt remorse, but only briefly; he didn't have time
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for it.
The big one on the screen was yammering again; Barton couldn't follow the text. He shook his head impatiently. He knew it was his own stupid fault for not going along better with the language lessons, but he didn't feel like admitting any blame. "You want to talk with ME, you lobster-shelled bastard, you talk MY language!" he shouted. "TALK ENGLISH, or go to hell!"
He repeated this with variations while with half his
31
mind he jockeyed the air car against the attempts of his escort to herd him in the direction of their choice. The other air cars surrounded him and tried to mass their pressure shields to move Barton the way they wanted him to go, but there weren't enough to hold him and push him at the same time. And he was feeling just stubborn enough to fight anything they wanted him to do: anything at all. Hallucinations nibbled at him, but now he decided they must be effects of the Demu unconsciousness weapon. leaking past the air car's shields. The hypothesis, true or not, made it surprisingly easier to fight the phantoms off,
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So with something like enjoyment he used his considerable kinesthetic skills to thwart their efforts to herd bua. The upshot was that the dozen or so air cars danced around much the same area for quite a while before the next development on the viewscreen. Which was that it spoke his name.
"Barton!" it said. "Thish ish Shiewen. You musht IJshen to me!" On the screen was what Barton had come to think of as the twitchy lobster, the one that didn't look quite like the rest. It sounded like a voice he knew, and now he remembered Doktor Siewen. But why would Siewen sound like a comic drunk act?
Barton put the odd pronunciation to the back of his mind and concentrated on the meaning. "Doctor Siewen? I don't believe it. Throw that damn hood back and let me see you." It seemed strange to be talking with anyone, anyone at alL
As the hands came up and the hood went back. Barton heard a ghost voice: Doktor Siewen's. "They catch people and turn them into Demu*"
They sure as hell did. Without the hair and ears and nose and eyebrows, with the serrated-lips over toothless
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gums and a shortened stumpy tongue, the thing on the screen didn't look much like Siewen except for the ctffn and cheekbones. But the skull and neck were humanshaped, not lobsterish. The eyelids looked a little odd;
Barton decided they'd been trimmed back to get rid of the eyelashes. And a long-forgotten memory reminded him that the sounds of s and z cannot be made without touching the tongue to teeth or gums at the front of the mouth;
otherwise the result is sh and zh. He put that answer in cold storage, too, trying to absorb the shock.
It wasn't that the creature on the screen was so horrible
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in itself; when you've seen one lobster you've seen them all. The obscenity was in knowing what it had been before the Demu had set to work. Barton had thought he hated the lobsters already; he found he hadn't even begun.
"All right; it's you, I guess," he said. "I'm listening; go ahead." Idly he noticed the hands with three fingers and no nails; the jog at the wristime showed that the little fin-
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ger had been stripped away, all along the palm. He -bet himself a few dead lobsters on the condition of Siewen's feet, then shook his head and listened.
"Barton, you musht come back." Barton's mind, back where he wasn't paying too much attention to it, was irritated by the distraction of the distorted sibilants and decided to ignore them. "The young Demu you have is the egg-child of the Director of this research station. Shut off your shield; it is two up and three over from bottom left of your switch panel. The Director offers you full Demu citizen rights."
Barton chuckled; sometimes you draw a good card. "Well now. is that right?" Not waiting for an answer because he didn't need one, he went on: "Forget what the Director wants. Forget what the Director offers. If the Director wants his gimpy-arm egg-child back in mostly one piece, the important thing is what / want. And for starters, I don't need any company around here. Get this bunch of sheepdogs off my back; I won't talk any more until you do. And get that damned sleep-gadget off my mind, too. I'll wait." By God, but it was good to be able to talk back for a change, to have a little bit of personal sayso. He waited, not too impatiently.
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Soon the surrounding air cars grouped to his right and departed. The twitchy lobster who had been Doktor Siewen came back to the screen. Barton spoke first.
"Now I want information. Lots of it. How much fuel time do I have in this kite? And look, Siewen, or whatever you are by now—tell him, don't anybody try to sh*t me about anything. Because, anybody gets tricky, nobody can stop me from using this bucket to kill myself. They know damn well I've been trying to do that for a long time. And there goes the Director's egg-child, whatever that means, right down the spout along with me. You got that straight?"
Siewen nodded, scuttled back to exchange shrill communications with the Director.
You may be the King of the Lobsters, thought Barton,
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but to me you're just one damned big overgrown crawdad!
Siewen came back to face Barton. "It is not fuel, your
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problem," he saidL "Thirst and hunger, yes. You have no food or water. Barton. You must come in; I give you directions. Yes?"
Barton looked at the small comatose lobster beside him, and snorted. After all this time, these creatures still didnt realize what they had on their hands, what they had made of him.
For one thing, they were still trying to lie. Rummaging under his seat, he had found a container of liquid: about two quarts and nearly fulL It smelled as if it could be lobster piss and maybe it was, but probably it wouldn't kill him. No point in telling everything he knew, though, Barton thought.
"Where are you, Siewen? I don't mean me location, but what kind of place?"
"It is Director's office, of the research station. Also control area for spaceship landing place just alongside. You can get here easily. Location device, bottom left switch, homes on signal beacon here. Small instrument." Siewen pointed; the thing looked like a portable radio. "Just watch on screen."
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"Sure. Are there spaceships there?"
"Yes, several. Different sizes."
Barton told himself to be very, very cautious.^'Siewen. has the Director ever been to Earth? Our Earth?"
"Oh yes," Siewen responded. "He was in charge of navigation on expedition picking ourselves up. But first time he or this group ever see humans or TUari, any of our type faumanoid. Some mistakes they made." You can say that again. Barton thought. But now he needed more facts, in a hurry.
"What's the smallest ship available that could get from here to Earth? How many does it take to handle such a ship? TELL THEM NOT TO LIE TO ME1"
'There is no cause to lie," Siewen said calmly. "A ship to carry eight is here; it could go twice to Earth and back;
one can control it But you are not to go to Earth, Barton. You are to come here and become a citizen of the Demu. Out of the mercy of the Director and his concern for his egg-child."
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Deep in his throat Barton growled, not quite audibly. "We'll see," be said. "Take that robe off, Siewen."
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"What? Why?"
"Just do it."
He had known all along. Barton thought wearily. He glanced perfunctorily at the feet, long enough to confirm that the little toes had been cut away back through the metatarsals to the heels, and that the toenails were missing. The obliteration of body hair and nipples and navel was no shock, nor was the Demu pattern of abdominal dots. And of course the crotch was like that of a tree, or a lobster.
Siewen must have noticed Barton's gaze; one hand tentatively reached for that juncture, then drew back. "You don't understand," Siewen said. "They didn't know. I said, it was first time this group had to do with humans. Only with other races, not like us. They didn't know."
"Sure not," said Barton.
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"I don't really mind so, any more," Siewen said hurriedly, "and they don't do that way now. They learned, some from observing you. Barton. Now they retain function and only minimize protrusion. There is one here* done so. I must show."
"Later!" Barton ground out. He didn't want to see any more examples of Demu surgical artistry for a while;
his will to live was shaken enough, as it was. "Just tell me one thing, will you? Why do they do these things?"
"Hard to understand, for us. But Demu are old race, very old. And for long long time they know of no others, intelligent. They have deep belief^ almost instinct, that 'Demu are the only true people. That all others are only animals."
"Well, haven't they learned better than that by now? And what does that have to do with—your facelift, and everything?"
"When they meet long ago a race, animals they think, who leam Demu language, it is great shock. Animals be-
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ing people when only Demu are people. Demu cannot accept- So they—this is only guess by me, you understand, but I think it is very good guess—so they when any animal learns-Demu language, make it Demu, best they can. As with me and others. They make mistakes; many die. I am lucky." Barton thought that was a matter of opinion. He didn't bother to say so.
He was still digesting what he had heard when Siewen's voice reminded him that this was no time for philosophizing. He had things to do, fast, before the opposition
35
caught its balance. He couldn*t afford to get off the main point.
"Barton!" Siewen began. "You must—"
"LATER1 Siewen, get your Director up front with you and translate for us. I'm in a hurry; tell him that;
don't either of you try to mess around with me. Now MOVE1"
Barton told them exactly what he wanted. They didn't
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believe him at first, and he supposed they would have laughed if a lobster knew how to laugh. But he persisted, figuring that he had an ace in the hole.
"Barton," said Siewen, "you are speaking useless. The Director will not give you a spaceship to go to Earth. No one can command the Demu."
"Does the Director want his egg-child back alive, or doesn't he?"
"Wants back, yes," Siewen acknowledged. "But at your price, no, Demu have died before and will die again." Ill drink to that, thought Barton. "Safe return of egg-child buys you life and citizenship among the Demu. No more. I do not want to tell what will be done if you are taken alive and egg-child dead. Now see reason, Barton. You have tried well. You are admired for it, even. But now it is finish. You must come here and accept Director's terms."
"Want to bet?" thought Barton. But he said, 'Tell me one more thing, Siewen. Can the Demu regrow lost limbs? Like the lobsters back home?"
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"No," said Siewen. "Why ask that?"
"Just curious." Barton paused for a moment, thinking it out "Siewen, tell the Director that I am getting very hungry." There was a muffled conference on the screen.
"The Director says come here and be-fed," Siewen announced. Barton grinned.
"I dont have to," he said softly. "Let me tell you about the last meal I had."
He told them, and the funny part was that Siewen seemed every bit as shocked as the Director. Barton let them chew on the idea a minute before he threw the bomb.
"OK, Siewen, here's how it works. Tell the Director and tell it straight. Either I get the ship to go home in, .instructions and all, and the deal gets started right away, or else I have lunch now." He thought about it. "Considering everything, I don't feel especially sad*stic. So first I'll
36
il; just eat me arm I've already broken. 111 leave the screen
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H, off, so the Director doesn't have to watch."
"„' Barton hadn't thought a Demu-lobster could get as 4., loud as the Director did then. Eventually Siewen got the ^ floor. It seemed Barton had won his point; he had a good ^ healthy ship for himself. Sure, Mike, thought Barton;
•^ just watch out for the curve balls. ;;; Well, he'd known there had to be a handle somewhere
•(? -in the mess; luckily he'd found it. It had been a one-shot \ Muff, a game of schrecklicheit—because it would have ^;, done him no good to carry it out, even if he could have
brought himself to do so. But what the Director didn't ^ know wouldn't hurt Barton.
^
His mifld was getting hazy again, ghost-hallucinations
,; flickering around the outskirts. Toothlessly, the Tilari
•";: woman was telling him that they were expecting a little ":: bundle from Heaven. He shook his head and tried to cony. centrate on the essentials.
"OK, Siewen," he said, "I don't need any coordinates
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to get to you, if I understand this location-blip thing on f- the screen." Siewen nodded. "Here's what happens," Bar^ ton continued. "You and the Director get down by the \ ship—my ship. Bring your locator gadget with you so I ;- don't have to mess around looking for you when I get k there. Everybody else stays away. Any last-minute ? tricks, I cut the shield and ram us all dead. You got that? if- Any questions?"
^
'•
There were several, but Barton simply said "NO'* to
^ most of them without paying much attention. He knew ( what he wanted. There was no point in arguing.
r Then Siewen, at the Director's prompting, insisted ^' Barton should see and talk with some other newly made :^ citizens of the Demu, before doing anything so drastic as s?;' what he was planning. "The hell with that," said Barton. ^ "Later. Just you two. Nobody else."
I It was about an hour that Barton's air car took, cruising to its destination. He saw no signs of habitation; possibly the research station was the only Demu installation on the planet. The little lobster was conscious again and whhnpered occasionally, but it looked so apologetic that Barton didn't feel like hitting it, even to maintain the precedent of silence. Anyway, the small sounds weren't
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joggling his mind as the screaming had done. He sipped on the foul-tasting water and decided it wasn't lobster piss after all, since his small lobster made begging mo-
37
tions toward it, and drank some when he relented and made the offer. Then it opened its mouth and lifted its short tongue. Barton had no idea what the gesture meant, but the creature rewarded his generosity with silence. It was a good trade.
The spaceport, when he reached it, didn't look like much. There were three really big ships, two medium and one small. Upright torpedo shapes, not saucers. The big ones would be the meat wagons, he thought. They had an air of neglect about them.
He set the car to hover a little above and to one side of the small ship, facing a delegation of robed figures at fairly close range. He cranked up magnification on the direct-view display screen, and saw that there were four of them.
f-
**What the hell you think you're doing?" Barton said.
^
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**I said nobody else."
H.
Siewen shrugged and spread his arms apologetically.
^
*'You must see other new Demu citizens," he said. "You
3{
said later, but only chance is now. You must know. With
w
me there were mistakes, yes. But these are functional _ ^ breeders and Demu citizens. As millions of Earth humans will become, and all eventually, when the Demu have arranged. But see—I You will not forget Umila;
the other is of Earth." Siewen gestured.
The two figures slipped off their hoods and robes. Barton took for granted the hairless earless noseless heads with serrated lips hiding toothless mouths with shortened tongues. (But oh! the lost lovely curve of Limila's lipsi) He didn't expect to see breasts set low on Limila's ribcage, and sure enough, there weren't any. The lobsters scrubbed clean, singlemindedly. Siewen had said that the smooth treelike look of her, where Barton was looking now, still concealed true function: even so, it was one more coal on the fire in Barton's heart and mind.
Then there was the man, an Earthman if Siewen had that part right Siewen had certainly told truth that the
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Demu had "minimized protrusion" in the genital area;
whether or not the Demu citizen on the screen "retained function" was of only academic interest to Barton. He was trying very hard not to throw up. It's like the old joke about the man who went into the barbershop, he thought. "Bob Peters here?" "No, just shave-and-a-haircuL"
"Siewen!" he shouted. "I've changed my mind."
"You come now and become Demu citizen?"
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"Like bloody hell I do!" Barton, bursting with frustration and hatred, took especial pains not to turn and kill the small lobster beside him. Hell, it probably hadn't even carved up its first human yet.
--—
"Then what is it you mean?" said Siewen.
"I mean we all go on the ship," Barton said. "The two of us here and the four of you there. All together we go in; don't move yet, any of you, or I crash the lot of us."
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There was a conference down below. "Not possible," said Siewen. "The Director does not agree."
"In that case," said Barton, "I think it's time I had some lunch. I've changed my mind; I'll leave the screen on so that the Director can observe. I always did like crab salad." And he reached for the dangling broken arm of the small quiet lobster, the Director's egg-child.
Not too much later the Demu spacecraft lifted off, carrying six assorted entities with very little rapport.
The ship's basic control system was roughly the same as the air car's, though with many more control switches. For the moment, all Barton needed was power, navigation and an outside view. He'd worry about the rest of it later, when he had to.
Siewen assured Barton that the Director had given him the correct course toward the region of Earth, and had agreed there would be no pursuit. Barton assured Siewen that the Director damn well "better had, if the Director wanted Barton to watch his diet.
A tense truce prevailed, largely because of Barton's policy that he would not put up with the company of fully
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functional Demu. He had broken one of the Director's arms the moment they were sealed inside the ship, when that worthy had tried to make use of a concealed weapon. Then after a moment's thought, he broke the other one. Subtler methods might have done the job, but Barton had found something that worked, so he stayed with it. He had trouble thinking outside the narrow boundaries of his main goal: freedom. The Director treated Barton with considerable respect, and was fed at intervals by bis egg-child, one-handedly.
Barton set and splinted the broken limbs, which was more than the Demu had bothered to do for him in like case. His own forearm still had a permanent jog to it and hurt more often than it didn't.
That wasn't all the hurt in Barton. Limiia remembered
39
him; the Demu hadn't done anything to her mind, that he could detect He realized, though, that he wasn't much of a judge of minds. Including his own.
She came to him, in the control area which he never left
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unguarded; when he slept, he sealed it off from the rest of the ship. She told him, in her sh-zh lobster accent, that she wanted love with him. She parted her maimed lips and showed the Demu-shortened tongue lifted in what he now knew to be the Demu smile. With the forty teeth gone he could see it quite clearly.
The trouble was that the Demu-Umila still had Lunila's shape of skull and chin and cheekbones. The quicksilver-colored huge-irised eyes were as deep as ever. though their shape was subtly marred by the slight cropping of the eyelids. Her arms and legs were graceful if Barton avoided seeing the hands and feet, and aside from breasts and navel and external genitals, the Demu had not altered her superb lithe torso.
Barton closed his eyes to shut out the sight of the Demu-denuded face and head, put his cheek against Limila's and tried to make love with her. It might have worked if he hadn't noticed the ear that should have been against his nose and wasn't. So instead he failed; he failed her. He was crying when he gently put her out of the control area and relocked it, and for a long time after.
Then he went into the main passenger compartment to see if he could keep from killing the Director and his
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egg-child out of hand; for the moment, he succeeded. It was a success that helped Barton's dwindling selfconfidence. He had all he could do to keep himself under control, let alone keeping the ship on course or his fellowvoyagers in hand.
For one thing he was continually bone-tired. The pseudo-death experience had taken more out of him than he'd realized at first. Followed by a period of hectic activity and nervous tension, and now the need for nearconstant alertness, it still dragged him down; recovery was so slow as to be undetectable.
His condition made him easy prey to mental lapses. He became accustomed to waking, as often as not, to find himself apparently back in his cage; each time it took minutes to fight his way back to reality. More frightening were occasional hallucinatory lapses in the presence of others: once he found himself on the verge of defending his Ph.D. Orals presentation to the professor who had
40
washed him out, before he realized that the prof couldnt possibly be there; it was the Director who sat before him.
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Every sight of Limila burned more deeply into him than the last, into a place .where gentleness had once lived. Where now grew something else—something that frightened him.
He didn't let the others see his difficulties any more than he could help, and they were too afraid of him to try to take advantage of bis lapses. They were not wrong; Barton was walking death and knew it; he had been for longer than he liked to admit He kept to himself as much as possible, consonant with the need to keep tabs on his passengers.
Once he looked info a mirror and found he didn't recognize himself. He had no idea how long it had been since he might have been able to do so. He looked at the face in the mirror and decided he didn't like it But then it wasn't really his own work, he realized when he stopped to think about it. The thought made him feel a little better, but not much.
So it was a long tired haul. The "trip out," as Barton thought of it, must have been either oa a faster ship or with a lot of induced hibernation; he had no way of knowing which, if either, was the correct guess.
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Limila came to him again, wanting his love. He tried to turn her away; she didn't want to go. "Barton," she said, clinging to him desperately, "I''am still Limila. They do all this to me, yes"—she stepped back and gestured at her head, at her body—"but inside I am still ME. I AMI" His eyes blurred with tears, losing the fine outline of skull and cheekbones, of neck and shoulders as she stood before him. Seeing, then, only the lobsterish lack of features, it was easier for him to keep shaking his head speechlessly and" back her firmly out the door, locking it after her with a vicious yank that nearly broke the lever.
The next time he saw her she was slumped in a corner looking at the floor. He didn't disturb her trance, but it disturbed him a lot
Hallucinating was a dangerous game to play, for him, now; he knew that. But he thought it might be a solution, with Limila. He invited her into the control area, looked at her and deliberately tried to substitute in his mind her natural appearance.
It worked, and for a few moments he thought it was really going to work. But his mind-picture of unmaimed-
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Limila shifted and distorted. Against all the force he could bring, it changed into the other Tilaran woman, the one with no nail-joints, the blank stare and the scars at the temples. It writhed and screamed, dying again. Barton screamed too, but he didn't hear most of it. When he fought his way back to reality, the sight of the lobsterfaced Limila seemed almost beautiful. But only almost. He could not love it, would never be able to do that.
Limila crouched against the door, terrified. "You must think I'm crazy," Barton said. "I'm sorry. I thought I could fool myself, pretend you were unchanged. It—it didn't work out quite that way. I saw something worse, instead." He knew he couldn't explain further, and said only, "I'm sorry, Limila."
She went away of her own accord, looking back fearfully.
Barton tried to pair her off with the Demu-ized Earthmale who supposedly "retained function." That one was a real enigma; he wouldn't speak to Barton, or to anyone at all except in Demu. Barton couldn't discover his name
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or anything else about him, except that apparently he had become Demu wholeheartedly in spirit as well as in guise. Barton decided that when it came down to cases he bad more respect for Doktor Siewen. Which wasnt saying much.
At any rate the pseudo-Demu wanted nothing to do with Limila, nor she with him. Barton asked Limila about the matter but wasn't sure whether he misunderstood the answer or simply didn't believe it. "He say," Limila told Barton, "it not Demu breeding season now." She gave Barton the view of uplifted-tongue, the Demu smile. "The Tilari do not wait on season, nor you, I think." But she had smiled like a Demu. Of course. Barton reflected, locking himself alone into the control area, it was the only way they had left her to smile. Well, there wasn't any answer; maybe there never had been. Or not lately.
Barton now avoided Limila almost entirely. It was the only thing he could do for either of them. The next time the functional Demu-Earthmale got in his way. Barton without warning knocked him square on his back against the opposite bulkhead and was happily beginning to kick him to death before Limila tried to push between them, shrilling, "NO, N01 WHY? WHY?" Barton had no an-
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swer, shrugged and moved away, marveling at his ability to leave the two Demu alive as long as he had.
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Actually, not noticing the change much. Barton had become rather fond of the Director's small egg-child. Without knowing its name, or being able to pronounce it, probably. Barton thought of it as female. He called it "Whnee," after the sound of its rather plaintive little cries when uncertain what was wanted of it. It tried to be helpful with the ship's few chores, and Barton came to think of it as a nice-enough kid; too bad she came from such a rotten family. Occasionally it would make the Demu liftedtongue smile at him, and oddly he found the gesture not at all repulsive, but rather appealing.
Siewen was no trouble; he was only a shell, not a person. He reflected the thought or policy of the One in Charge; once that had been the Director, now it was Barton. Any authority was good enough for that which had once been Doktor Siewen.
The Director was no problem either. Barton simply didn't bother to take the splint-harnesses off his arms, even when they bad probably healed. The other Demu-
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human tried to unstrap the Director once, but Barton caught him and so reacted that neither Whosits nor anyone else tried it again. It took another set of splints;
Barton guessed he was in a rut.
But what the bell; it worked, which was more than Barton could say for much of anything else he'd tried lately. The only late effort he liked much was his clothes. He'd hated the Demu robes, which all the others still wore. He had essayed nudity but found it too reminiscent of his captivity. Eventually he had ripped a robe into two pieces: one made a loincloth and the other a short cape that left his arms free. Barton didn't care what it looked like; it was comfortable. He could use all the comfort he could get.
Finally the ship approached Earth's solar system. Barton was going home. Not really, of course. There was nothing for him there. He knew he'd be lucky to get a hearing before being locked up as a public menace. But he had to take the risk, because it was everybody's chance, maybe the only one Earth would ever get. He wasn't looking for a return to normal life. That wasn't in the cards; he'd been playing too long with a 38-card deck. But there was
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one thing, for sure.
Barton had survived; maybe Earth could survive. He had to give it the chance to try. He was bringing home a
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fair sample of what Earth was up against: the lobsters, their ship and some of their other works.
The lobsters would be confined and studied; Barton smiled grimly at that prospect. He wondered how long it would take them to get used to the fact that on Earth it's messy to piss on the floor. He might go to see the little one sometimes if anyone would let him; they could say "Whnee" to each other and maybe now and then she'd raise her tongue in the Demu smile.
He couldn't bring himself to worry about what might become of Siewen or Whosits; he had enough worry on his own account. But he hoped someone—someone more capable than he—would take care of Limila. All Barton could do was try to take care of Earth, and maybe of Barton with luck.
The ship could help a lot. It and its weapons would be
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analyzed and copied, maybe even improved. Human science had been moving fast, the last Barton had heard;
no telling how much further it had gone.
Most important, though, was showing Earth what the well-barbered humanoid wouldn't be wearing next season if the Demu had their way; as modeled by Siewen and Limila and Whosits. Barton thought he knew how the people of Earth would react.
They wouldn't like it any better than he did. They might decide to teach the Demu what it meant, to cage a man.
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II.
Humpty Dumpty
Barton approached Earth like a boy asking a girl for his first dance. He was dubious of his welcome, both in space and on the ground. Stalling, he took a course that kept the moon between his ship and his destination, while he tried to think his way through the situation.
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The alien ship and its occupants were bound to be something of a surprise to the home folks, and it would take time for Barton to get his story across straight. He was braced for that necessity.
What' the locals would make of his companions was something else again. It would require a sharp observer, he thought, to tell them apart at first: the Demu, God rot their hypothetical souls, were remorselessly thorough in enforcing conformity of appearance. Barton was hit by a surge of belated relief: maybe he looked like the wrath of God and fresh out of thunderbolts, but at least he still carried all his normal appendages.
The moon approached and was past; Earth was ahead. The blast of a warhead, a megaton at least, caught Barton off guard. The Demu shields blocked heat and other radiation, but the buffet dumped Barton out of his seat and slammed him against a wall, bad arm first. Cursing, he clawed his way back to the controls.
Evasive action was skittering zigzag toward Earth;
Barton did it, while fiddling frantically with the communications controls. Not too much chance that Earth and
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Demu frequencies or modulation systems would match up, but worth trying.
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From outside the ship he could hear nothing but incoherent noise. He figured it was probably the same at the other end, but he kept talking anyway.
"This is a captured alien ship. For Chrissakes don't blow it up; it wasnt all that easy to get God DAMmitI"— as another warhead went off near him—"I said I captured this thing. I stole it; you need it. Lay off the stupid fireworks . . ." and so on. There was no sign that anyone was paying attention.
With artificial gravity, he didn't have to mess around with the gradual approach. Barton guessed that the shield-effect would keep him from getting fried; he hit air in a full dive. He scared himself by the narrow margin he had left when he pulled out level. But at least he was down where nobody could get a clear shot at him, and with enough speed to beat anything local that he knew about.
He was over the Pacific; that was all he could tell about
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the geography. It was either dawn or sunset; he'd lost orientation after that second blast. Barton bet on dawn because he didn't know how to fly the ship near the surface in the dark. He hoped he was right, because he didn't know how to speak Chinese, either.
Meanwhile he kept saying things like "All I want to do is land this bastard and let somebody look it over. My name is Barton and I used to live here." Somebody was hammering on the other side of the control-room door, wanting in. Somebody could go to hell, the way discipline seemed to have done around here. Out in space where he could leave the controls and move around, no one had bothered him. this way. Barton decided he'd make a lousy drill sergeant; his teachings didn't seem to stick very welL
A voice came over the comm-gear; someone on the ground (a computer, more likely) had decoded the Demu modulation pattern and matched it. Probably hitting every frequency band in reach. Barton suspected. "Calling the human on the Raider ship," the voice said. "Are you ia control of that ship?. Come in, please."
"Yeah, yeah." said Barton, "I got the ship; where do I put it?'* His relief was so great that the event hardly reg-
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istered: that this was the first contact he'd had with Earth since the Demu had taken him. How many years had it been? He had no idea.
A nervous laugh came from the other end. "You sound
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human enough, all right," the voice said. "Are you alone?"
"Hell no; I brought the Tenth Marines with me, band and all. What did you think, dummy?" Barton caught himself. "Sorry; I'm a little bent out of shape. No. I'm not alone, but I'm in charge. I have two of the Demu—the Raiders, you call them; I guess they've been back here some?—as prisoners. Take it easy on the little one; she's just a kid. Hasn't done anything, that I know of, to have taken out on her. The big one, her old man, was Director of the research station that carved up the other three on here, that used to look like us but don't any more. To him you can do any damn thing you want, except kill him:
that's my privilege; don't anybody forget it" Barton caught himself just short of fully raving.
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"OK," he said, "will somebody talk me in to land this bucket someplace, please?"
"Are you low on fuel or anything?"
"No." Low on patience, maybe, but he didn't say it.
The voice talked him in. The Demu instruments he knew how to operate, lacking Demu ground-based locator equipment, were no good to him. Local radar spotted his position and course so that he could be told how and when to turn, when to slow down, and what to look for at the designated landing site. He had guessed right on the dawn part; they brought him down somewhere in New Mexico. It was about noon there.
Barton sweat the landing, but the ship turned out to be practically foolproof; he was sure he was overcontrolling, but it touched ground gently. The Demu shield helped, he supposed. He felt the large muscles in his neck and shoulders relax almost explosively, and only then realized how tense he had been.
But maybe this was no time to relax. The outside viewer showed him a lot of tanks and artillery surround-
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ing him at close range, so he was in no hurry to chop the ship's protective field. "What the hell is all the hardware for?" he asked rather plaintively.
"Well, you must realize we can't take any chances, Barton."
Barton laughed right out loud; he couldn't help it. "Buddy, you're taking chances right now you don't even know about. You don't have any choice, come to that. I can help your odds. And get this: I'm not taking any chances at all. I don't have to; I've done that bit." He
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thought a minute, aimed a device and briefly activated it.
"That big hunk of gun off to my left," he said. It was the largest of the lot, that he could see. "Tell 'em to point that at me; just to point it. And see what happens."
Barton waited. Nothing happened, because he had used the Demu unconsciousness weapon on that gun crew. He had to make his point, and sometimes it takes a
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while. Patiently he waited until the voice channel quieted.
"All right," he said finally, "somebody has to trust somebody and I will if you will. Can we can the crap now and get to it?"
"What do you want?" The voice was tense and a little shaky.
"Nothing much. Just get the hardware off me and I'll keep mine off you. There have to be some big wheels out there someplace who want to talk. I want to talk with them, too, because I damn well have news for them. So if they'll come here to this ship I'll come out and meet 'em, and bring my zoo with me. We can talk, and it's perfectly safe for everybody unless some damn fool tries to cross me."
"I don't understand that last part. Barton."
"Be your age." He was dealing with paranoias, he told himself, so he had to fit the part. As though he didn't, already ... "I push one button and we have a three-hundredmile crater around here. I'll have the button in my hand." He heaved a sigh of exasperation. "Can we just talk now,
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. instead?"
Barton had no such button. But he knew that sometimes a man has to bluff a little.
He shut off the voice channel: best to quit while he was ahead. Systematically he checked through the control assembly of switches, across and down, deactivating all but standby power to the ship. He was struck, wistfully, by the fact that he'd never learned the function of most of those switches—had never activated them, had never dared. Well, other people could tackle that job now, if things worked out.
Barton looked around the control room of his ship. Hell, it was like leaving home. Not that there was anything he needed or wanted to take along. His snappy two-piece outfit, much smudged, was the lot. Barton turned abruptly and joined the others in the main compartment.
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There they sat, all in Demu robes. No way of knowing which had hammered on the control-room door at a crucial moment. Barton didn't ask; it made no difference.
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"We're on Earth," he said. "We go out now, to meet the people. If you have anything you want to keep with you, bring it. Siewen, Linula: interpret."
Little was said. Siewen shrilled a few lobster phrases to Whosits and the Director. Limila sat looking starkly ahead. Wbnee scuttled to her bunk and picked up a few items to tuck into her robe. Barton wondered whether the others were out of brains or merely out of ears. So he repeated himself, only louder.
It took a while, but eventually Barton herded everyone out of the Demu ship to talk to the home folks. He faced a General Parkhurst, a Presidential Assistant Tarleton of the Space Agency and a bevy of news-media types among the trailing retinue. Barton put thumbsdown on the newsies. "Get those bastards out of here," he said. "They never get anything right in their lives, the first time. This is too important to let them f*ck it up. Later, maybe, but not right now." But be was too late to stop them from taking pictures of the two Demu and the three pseudo-Demu. Not that it mattered all that much, probably, but it did bother him.
General Parkhurst was a small dapper man; his idea of
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efficiency was to do everything in a hurry. He took several reels of taped notes in the first hour. Then he departed abruptly while Barton was still trying to explain the difference between the Demu and his other companions. Barton shrugged and didn't miss him much.
The civilian, Tarleton, was a different bucket of clams, a big sloppy slow-talking bear of a roan. He asked and he listened and he observed, without trying to tell Barton what to do. Barton had all his passengers shuck thenrobes and hoods to show themselves, whether they liked it or not.
The Director was apparently quite indifferent to being paraded before an alien species. Of course his upper limbs were still strapped into splint-harnesses, so there wasn't much he could have done about it.
The smaller Demu shrank timidly until Barton patted it on th» head and said "Whnee" in a gentle, encouraging tone of voice. Then it displayed its chitmous protrusionless exoskeleton in relative confidence. Barton had un-
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splinted its healed arm some time ago, and also Whosits*;
he still didn't care to trust the Director that far.
'These are the Demu, the race we're up against," he said. The big one ran the show at our zoo, as I said before, and it's the daddy or mother or something of the little one, if you can figure out how. She's his egg-child, anyway. What that means I don't know; they haven't said."
"It might imply more than one method of reproduction," Tarleton said mildly, talking around the stem of his unlighted pipe. "Now how about these others?"
'Two of them used to be human males," Barton began, 'The skinny one with nothing between his legs is a Doktor Siewen; they amputated his spirit too, I think. Whosits there won't talk anything but Demu, so I don't know his name; supposedly he's still male, but not much of one by the looks of him."
Tarletoa looked closely at the pertinent parts of Whosits, something Barton preferred not to do. There was a sort of nubbin; it might still work, at that. Hardly seemed worth it, though.
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"There's no fertility," Tarleton said, "or won't be for long. Apparently one gonad is left, tucked neatly back into the abdominal cavity. The Demu must not have realized that this would produce sterility and eventual impotence." Whosits' serrated Ups twitched but he said nothing.
"This is Limila," Barton said then. "She's a woman of a humanoid race much like ours: the Tilari."
"A woman?" Tarleton said slowly.
"Hell yes," Barton said. "Use your eyes; they didn't cut her butt off." He toned his voice down; he hadn't meant to shout. "Dammit, she was beautiful, Tarleton. Different from us, several ways. An extra toe and finger she had, all around. Forty teeth. Breasts set down low like so"—he gestured—"forehead clear up here by the ears. But beautiful. And mostly our kind of people.
"Why for Cfarissakes, Tarleton," he said, mind jarred back to the bloody death of the other Tilari woman, whose name he'd never known, "they're even interfertile with us." His jaw locked. "Don't ask me how I know. Not just yet."
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Tarleton didn't ask. Unlike General Parkhurst, he seemed to seme that at the moment Barton was something like a time bomb coming to term, needing careful,
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patient defusing. Barton was dimly thankful for the man's presence.
Tarleton motioned the five exhibits to resume their robes, and directed the laying out of food and drink he'd ordered earlier. Apparently he did not see any of the five as human; he hadn't addressed a word to them.
"Can the Demu eat our food?" he asked.
"Damned if I know," Barton answered. "All I ever saw them eat, and all they ever fed me, was liquids and several kinds of wet lumpy glop. If they can't eat our stuff there's plenty of theirs on the ship. Siewea can fetch it"
The Demu ate Earth food all right, chewing with their hard sawtooth lips. But the other three couldn't manage anything except liquids and "glop" foods; their lips
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looked lobsterlike but chewing was out of the question. So Siewen was sent to the ship for Demu rations.
There was a hassle when the military guard, left by General Parkhurst, didn't want to admit Doktor Siewen. Barton headed for the ship; before the guard could shoot him, Tarleton intervened.
"Get that sonofabitch away from my ship!" Barton exploded. "Who the hell does Parkhurst think he is?"
"Easy now," Tarleton said mildly. "The General naturally tends to think in terms of security. The guard doesn't realize that you, of course, have free access." He motioned the guard away to one side, where he wouldn't bug Barton.
"Any more of this crap," Barton continued, "and Earth can go whistle. We'll see if maybe the Tilari, Limila's people, have a better idea of how to use a ship." Limila cringed; he had no time to wonder why.
"It'll be all right now. Barton," Tarleton said. "Come on; have something to eat. Youll feel better."
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And in truth Barton did. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed the smells, tastes and textures of his own planet's foods, all the years he'd spent in a Demu cage.
For the first time, he thought to ask how long it had been. The answer was a little less than eight years. Barton repeated the current date. "What d'ya know?" he said. "I was forty a couple of weeks ago. Could have had a birthday party if I'd known." He grimaced. "Yeah, sure. Some party!" But Tarleton was talking on a
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radiophone link to someone he addressed as "sir," and only nodded absently.
After lunch a lanky technician insisted on taking fingerprints. He didn't seem too put out that Demu fingers had no recognizable patterns, but was a little upset that no one except Barton had enough fingers to fill all the blanks on his forms. Barton tried to explain that Limila's prints couldnt possibly be on file; the man grinned, and drawled, "Orders, buddy." He was so phlegmatic about it that Barton merely shrugged. Tarleton relaxed visibly.
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Whosits' prints were taken by main force while he protested shrilly in lobster language, but the Demu made no such complaints. The Director certainly didn't; Barton had finally unstrapped his arms in honor of his first Earthly meal, and the Director was experiencing freedom of movement for the first time in a long while. Twinges and all, probably. Barton kept an eye on him at first;
then he got tired of the necessity and went into the ship. He came out with a small device necessary to the operation of the controls; even if the Director managed to sneak onto the ship, he couldn't get away with it. If the Director had had the sense to do the same thing at the far end of the ride. Barton thought, things could have been rough.
Tarleton was trying to explain what the problem was. Bureaucrats and administrators with the habit of explaining to Barton what the problem was bad helped him decide to drop physics and take up painting. But this man seemed like a sensible sort, so Barton decided he'd better listen.
"The problem is," Tarleton said, "that we need to
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study the ship, and quite near is the best facility for that purpose. Also we need to study the Demu and—er— the others, and a hospital on the East Coast is best for that. In Maryland, as it happens. But," he concluded, "the hell of it is that we need the Demu, the big one at least, on hand here for information about the ship."
"Yeh, and Siewen and Limila to interpret," Barton added.
"Precisely. Any ideas?"
"Well, just offhand, Tarleton, I'd say a medical or life-study lab is a lot easier to move than the stuff it's going to take to check out this ship. And if anything goes wrong, like maybe blowing up the whole schmeer, you
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want a lot of empty country around. You're not going to find that in Maryland."
Tarleton looked at him obliquely. "Speaking of things blowing up, how about that button in your pocket? The three-hundred-mile-crater button you mentioned earlier?"
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Barton grinned sheepishly. "No such animal," he admitted. "All it was. those fogheads had a lot of guns aimed at me and I didn't like it." He was surprised to see the shudder that shook Tarleton; he hadn't realized the man had been so tense under his slow easygoing exterior. "I'm sorry," Barton said. "I'd have said something before, but I forgot all about it."
"That's OK," the big man said. "Let's get to work figuring things out" He ran Barton through the high points of his story again; he got on the phone to D.C. several times. He even questioned Siewen briefly, though it was obvious he would have felt as much at ease interviewing a giant grasshopper.
•
Then it was time for another meal. Afterward Barton was really and truly pooped out of his mind. It was hard to tell a coherent story, leaving out the hallucinations, and Barton figured, he'd better not tell anybody about that part. Not ever.
Some improvised quarters in kit form had arrived by truck and were in process of assembly, but Barton said the hell with that. "We'll sleep on the ship. I'm used to it, and the guards can make aure nobody goes sleepwalk-
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ing."
Tarleton didn't like the idea too well, so Barton showed him the locking device he'd removed from the ship. "Here, these are the keys to the car. You hold 'em for tonight." He looked the other man in the eyes. "I guess you know what this means: I have to trust you a lot. I wouldn't want anyone else, like that Parkhurst, to get his hands on the gadget OK?" Tarleton nodded, and Barton shepherded his charges aboard for the night. After eight years or so, that was Barton's first day back on Earth.
The next few days were hectic but inconclusive. Quarters were erected for the research people who were being moved in, as well as for Barton and his entourage. There was a hassle the second day when Limila refused to be quartered anywhere at all away from Barton; they settled En a two-bedroom unit not far from Siewen and Whosits and the two Demu. The latter had a larger unit.
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built much the same. Except that there was no guard on Barton's quarters.
Portable lab buildings were brought to the site, and
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truckloads of gear with which to equip them. The ship itself. Barton at the controls, was moved to the vicinity of a complex of buildings about five kilometers away, behind a low range of bills. Fat lot of good that would do, Barton thought, but kept his reservations to himself.
And eventually General Parkhurst trundled his guns and tanks back to the nearby Army base he commanded.
Trickles of response began to come in from the outside world. Barton's fingerprints were verified, and Doktor Siewen's; Whosits* were not on file in any country lending cooperation. Barton hoped no one had wasted much effort looking for Limila's.
Barton got a post-mortem on his own former personal life. His father had died five years ago, and his mother a few months -later; he had no siblings or other close relatives. Seven, years after his disappearance Barton had been declared legally dead. His ex-wife and her new husband were living well, helped somewhat by his estate, since fais paintings had gradually become popular enough to be valuable. His ex-mistress, Leonie, had married and gained four children, plus ten or fifteen pounds of weight for each of them.
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Well, it was all pretty much as he'd expected. Par for the course. Barton could find no emotional reaction in himself; it was as though his former life were someone els&'s—a total stranger's.
Tarleton assured him that while his estate was legally out of reach, a grateful government would see to his financial well-being. Barton would believe that when he saw it, but the keys to the car were in his own pockets again and he hadn't signed anything yet, he reminded himself. He requested a small safe for his bedroom and set his own combination; the keys were secure enough for now.
Idly, once, he guessed at the value of the Demu ship in terms of ransom for the planet Earth. Then he shrugged, and moved a mental decimal point four places to the left. He'd be lucky to get a dime over living expenses and a consultant fee, but no harm in trying. Besides, he wanted to see the chintzy bastards sweat when he hit *em with the big numbers. Just for kicks; he hadn't had many of those in the past eight years.
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Doktor Siewen's middle-aged son and daughter sent their kindest personal regards. They were so glad their father was alive and safe, but Barton noticed they didn't offer to visit him or vice versa. He suspected they'd seen those first news pies, before the government had suppressed the story. Siewen didn't seem to notice, or care.
And still there was no word on Whosits. Maybe Siewen had been wrong; maybe Whosits wasn't of Earth origin after alL Well, who cared? Not Barton, for surel
Tarleton filled him in on what Earth knew of the Demu, the "Raiders."
"The ship that got you was spotted on radar, but nobody believed it. It was too big." Barton gave him an estimate of the size of the larger ships he'd seen at the Demu research station. Tarleton said the radar bad shown something a lot bigger. Barton wondered if the protective shield could have bollixed the readings. Tarleton shrugged. "We can check that out when it's time for you to fly this one for us next." That was OK. with Barton.
"We have no idea how many people that ship took,"
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Tarleton continued, "because every day, all over the world, people disappear. Some are murdered, some are accidents and suicides, some disappear deliberately. But the best estimate is that the Demu got at least several hundred."
Barton looked surprised. Tarleton raised his eyebrows. "Well, of course," he said. "you 'saw only the people— including those not of this planet—in your own, er, cage. A ship of the size you indicate could have contained many such.
"The Raiders, the Demu, have been back twice since then." That too was news to Barton, though he'd guessed something of the sort when he first heard the term "Raiders." "Once about four years ago; they must have taken over a thousand that time. And then roughly two years later." Tarleton smiled grimly. "That time we were ready, or thought we were. With the high-G rockets and warheads, like the ones thrown at you when you came in. The Pentagon still claims they got that ship, but judging from the results with yours I'd guess the Demu were merely startled and cautious, and withdrew for the time being.
"Well, with luck and a good analysis of your ship,
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Barton, we may be in a considerably better position to handle them, next time they turn up."
Barton nodded. That was what he had in mind. For starters.
Research got under way so unobtrusively that Barton hardly noticed how quickly it developed. On the ship and its weapons, on the Demu, on Siewen and Limila and Whosits. And then, as he had known it must, on Barton.
The physical exams were all right. He was organically sound, he was told, and had been living with a lower background-radiation level than Earth's. He took the offer to have his lumpy arm rebroken and set to heal straight;
he had it done with a shoulder block rather than a general anesthetic. The cast was light and didn't bother him half as much as the unset break had for so long.
His teeth needed some work. All right; dental care
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was available at Parkhurst's Army base. Novocaine though, not gas.
He was questioned repeatedly and in detail, by persons and teams of several specialties. Considering that he had to edit a number of important details out of his experiences, he told a fairly straight story. What he omitted was of a personal nature, mostly: the two mutilated women who had successively shared his cage, and some of his stronger reactions both before and after escaping. And of course, any mention of self-hypnosis or hallucination. The only mental irregularities he admitted were the temporary memory-loss effects of the Demu sleep gun.
He had devised, he thought, a fairly credible explanation of his escape: that in the absence of any better idea he'd formed the habit of lying on the food-service area of the floor after meals, and that once, finally, the thing had malfunctioned and let him through.
Everyone bought it, except the psychology boys. Dr. Roderick Skinner, acting head of the branch in the absence of a Dr. Fox, called on Barton one afternoon. Limila was elsewhere, being interviewed. Skinner carried a briefcase, from which he extracted an untidy clipboard. "Barton, 111 tell you frankly that I'm not yet sat-
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isfied with the total picture." Barton waved him to a chair.
"Yeh, well, sit down. Be with you in a minute." He went to the kitchen, opened a can of beer. He thought for a moment and decided what the hell, he might as
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well waste a beer on this clown in the interests of public relations. He didn't ask, but merely brought another one out and handed it to the psychologist. "OK, shoot. What don't you like?"
"That's the trouble. Barton; I'm not certain. Everything seems to check, but the data do not quite explain the reported events."
"Well, I've told you everything I can." That much was true. Barton thought; he carefully had not said he'd told everything he remembered. He savored the difference.
"We ran it through the computer, Barton, and we keep getting nulls in the output Any idea why?"
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"Not my line. What's your idea?"
"That there are nulls in the input—in your report. So we're going to have to check: for them."
"If you have any new questions, ask away. I've answered the old ones enough times, I think."
"It's not a matter of new questions. It's a matter of confirming your answers to the ones we've already asked."
"You want to look at the Demu research station yourself? Bon voyage. Skinner; it's a long trip."
Skinner's laugh wasn't convincing. "No, we'll do our checking right here. Barton. With you."
"OK; get on with it, then."
"I didn't mean right here, actually. The necessary drugs are best administered in the laboratory under controlled conditions."
''
"Drugs?" Controlled conditions—Barton had had enough of thosel He went rigid inside. "What the bell are you talking about?"
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"A simple hypnotic. Barton. Quite harmless. We think that some crucial memories are hiding out in your subconscious mind, and we must get them out in the open, for analysis."
"Not with hypnotics, you dont. Not on me. The Demu—"'
"I'm afraid we have to; you see—"
"You have to sh*t, too, if you eat regular! No dice, Skinner. You take your drugs and—"
"I think you forget who you're talking to!"
"And I think you forgot where you are. You're in my place. Get out."
"It won't do you any good to be hostile. Barton. I can have you brought in to the labs, you know."
That did it. "Uke this?" He grabbed Skinner, pulled
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him upright, spun him around. The man was yammering; Barton didn't listen. He aimed Skinner at the door. He didn't exactly throw him out or kick him out, either one; it was a combination of both. The door was open but the screen wasn't. Nothing fatal, but messy. "And stay out, you son of a bitch!"
Skinner wouldn't be back, but Barton knew he was in the soup, for sure.
He had stalled off all requests to take mental tests, but now he'd blown it. He went looking for Tarleton, trying to think of an excuse to get the man to take the heat off him, but he was in D.C. briefing the President or something. Barton thought again. Dr. Fox, whose minion he had thrown through the screen, was arriving the next day. Barton decided to be one of her first customers, and, next morning, was.
Dr. Arleta Fox was a compact woman in her thirties, with frizzy aubura hair and a face like that of an especially attractive Pekingese. Her smile was friendly but made Barton wonder if he were really out of range of a fast snap. She asked him what the problem was. Well, that was a nice switch.
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"Your boy wanted to poke hypnotics into me," Barton said. '*! got mad and threw him out."
"Yes, I believe he mentioned that," Dr. Fox said, with considerable understatement. "What's your twistup on hypnotics, Mr. Barton? You know we have to get all the subliminal data you may have—things you saw without noticing that you saw them."
"I had enough different kinds of dope from the lobsters to last me," said Barton. "In my food, in the air:
you name it; I had it. I dont need any more. 1 tried to tell Skinner, but he wouldn't listen."
"He had his orders, Mr. Barton." The smile. Unconsciously. Barton pulled his hand back. "Perhaps that was my mistake. But you see, we have no real psychological data on you at all, more recent than eight years ago before all this happened, so I had no way of knowing there would be a problem." Barton nodded, but said nothing.
"I'll make a bargain with you, Mr. Barton. As I said, we have no recent psychological information on you,
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whatsoever. If you'll take the standard battery of tests, over the next few days, we'll shelve the question of using hypnotics."
"For how long?** Barton asked.
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"Indefinitely. Until you give your consent Whatever you say."
"Never, then. It's a deal. Doctor. Thanks." Barton stood up.
"Here tomorrow morning at nine sharp, Mr. Barton? We'll provide pencil and paper."
Barton smiled, nodded and went out, surprised to note how heavily he was sweating. Well, he wasn't out of the woods by any means, but maybe he had a Chance. At least they couldn't open his mind and see what. was there, (hat not even Barton knew about for sure. He wasn't ready to look at that stuff himself, and he knew it Meanwhile he didn't want anyone else grabbing a sneak preview.
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He caught a ride to the ship. Nothing much doing there: they were still piddling around snipping off bits of materials for analysis. At this rate, Barton thought, the ship was going to look as though it had been gnawed by mice* before the government in its infinite wisdom actually got around to seeing what the damn thing would do.
However, he had one pleasant surprise. Kreugel, Tarleton's crew chief for ship operations, greeted him. "Hey, Mr. Barton! I think we're going to get the handle on the artificial gravity, and that's not more than a jump or two from their space drive."
Barton was flabbergasted. ^Now how in hell did you manage that?"
"When we learned how to read the circuit diagrams and equipment drawings, it turned out to be awfully close to what the Space Agency labs have been working on for the past three-four years. Close enough that I think we've nearly got it whipped."
"Hey, hold it," said Barton. "What circuit diagrams? And how did you leam to read them, anyway?" He
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felt as though he were in a play and hadn't read the script
"They're built into the viewscreen circuits." Barton felt like a damn fool; why hadn't he dug up any of this stuff, in the months he'd had?
^ou wouldn*t have found them," Kruegel went on, "because the switches that throw the schematics on the screen wont work when you're under power, without throwing a special cutover switch that doesn't give any indication until you do move the circuit-diagram controls.
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You wouldn't have hit the combination by random chance in a long time even if you'd been playing games on the board, and in your shoes I don't imagine you felt much like doing that." Barton's ego pulled its socks up a little.
"So how did you find it?"
"Well, Mr. Barton, you know we've been interrogating Hishtoo, the bigger crawdaddy, with that poor devil Siewen interpreting. Some of our other people are trying
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to learn the Demu language so we can work faster, but so far they're getting nowhere fast." So the Director's name was Hishtoo; how about that? Or something that sounded like Hishtoo. "Well, when we asked where the devil the tech manuals were for this beast here, he got cagey and wouldn't talk. So Mr. Tarleton put a hammerlock on him and leaned on it and said something about crab salad, and Hishtoo began talking and just plain wouldn't stop." Barton grinned, not a nice grin. So Tarleton had paid attention to his report—the early version —after alt Crab salad, yetl
"Well, good on Tarleton," was all he said. "Stick with it; you're doing great." He wandered around a little and decided to go back to his quarters. There was DO vehicle handy, so he walked it. Sweating in the hot sun felt good, for a change.
Back at the quarters he hesitated, hating to enter. Limila seldom spoke to him lately except in answer to a direct question; her silent withdrawal was hard to take. He supposed she responded to the interrogations of the data-gathering team, or someone would have told him what the problem was. He shrugged and went inside.
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He didn't see or hear Limila at first. The tri-V was blaring; he turned the sound low. Then he heard her, in her own bedroom. He opened the door a few inches and saw her as well. Curled into a tight ball in the middle of her bed, she was crying in great racking sobs. After a moment he shook bis head, closed the door gently and turned away. There was nothing he could do.
He poured himself the stiffest damn drink he could manage, and watched the stupidities of tri-V. The 3-D picture was new to him, but the content of the medium hadn't improved a bit in eight years, or since he could remember, in fact. If anything, it was getting worse. Or maybe it was he who was getting worse .. .
Barton opened a package of tri-V-advertised pre-
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pared food, heated it and ate it The taste, when he noticed it, was about like that of a well-composted pile of mulch.
Returning to his drink and ignoring the tri-V, Barton ran in bis own head the ultimate tri-V commercial he could imagine.
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"Buy Musbie-Tushies," it went, "the truly effort-free food! Mushie-Tushies are pre-cooked, pre-chewed, preswallowed, pre-digested and pre-excretedl Just heat them up and throw them down the toiletl" Barton finished his drink, turned off the tri-V, and went to his own bed. He caught himself short of slamming the bedroom door; Umila might be asleep. Whether she was or not, the thought of her kept Barton awake another hour, not pleasantly.
Next morning he was at Dr. Fox's office at nine sharp, as agreed. Not one second late; that was his commitment to her. Not more than five seconds early; that was his commitment to himself. Nine sharp, as nearly as he could manage.
Dr. Fox smiled continually. Barton didn't listen closely to what she said or to what he answered; it was small talk and not relevant. Bla-bla-bia, she said in polite tones. Bla-bla-indeed, he answered gravely, equally polite. Maybe it even made some sort of sense.
When she got down to cases, he paid attention. First there would be a simple IQ test. Well, not a simple test,
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but a test simply for the measurement of his intelligence. OK; he presumed he had some of that left and be didn't mind if they measured it.
The test was part verbal and part written, and all of it no sweat. Barton's memories, which had been suppressed and foggy early in his captivity, and spotty for nearly all of it. had begun coming back more rapidly since his escape. He and Tarleton had discussed the phenomenon early in their acquaintance, in light of the fact that memory suppression was a side-effect of the Demu unconsciousness weapon. The gun crew Barton had zapped when he first arrived had been pretty foggy-minded for several days afterward. And the Demu had used the gadget on Barton a number of times, while they had him.
But now his logic and memory circuits were, so far as he could tell, in reasonably good order. He breezed through the many sections of the test, not giving much of a damn how he came out on it but still giving honest an"
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swers when he could settle on any answer at all. And in most cases, he could.
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The test was a long one; it was past noon when he finished and time for lunch. He and Dr. Fox said smiling bias-bias at each other while they ate, until she mentioned that next on the agenda was a battery of personality-evaluation tests.
Barton knew what that meant. They would rate him on or off the permissible scales of Aggressive-Submissive, Masculine-Feminine, Dependent-Independent—oh yes, the whole set of categories that he could not possibly fit correctly from where he stood, after nearly eight years in a cage. What it added up to v/as'a rating of SaneInsane. Barton knew he would flunk.
"And which tests are you using. Doctor?" he asked. She named the series. It was unfamiliar to him, but a book of that title caught his eye, on a shelf not too far out of his reach. I think, thought Barton, it is time I had a bad attack of the clumsies.
"Could I have another cup of coffee?" he asked. Precreamed pre-sugared instant cr^d, but he didn't say so. Dr. Fox poured it for him and handed him the cup. He dropped it, spilling the liquid toward a stack of papers on her desk-
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His apparent effort to save the papers pushed them off the edge. He and she both dived to save them; their heads hit squarely. Barton was braced for it, so while the lady got her eyes back in focus and her Jaw back up where it belonged, he neatly'-lifted the book he wanted and tucked it down the front of his trousers. Then he helped her up, helped her pick up the papers and mop up the mess.
"Hey, I am sorry. Doctor," he said. "I guess my coordination still isn't what it should be." He paused. "You all right? Me, I think I'm getting a headache. You suppose we could put this next one off until tomorrow?"
Dr. Fox hadn't had a chance. Nine sharp? No, you'd better make that one p.m. Bla-bia, smile, see you tomorrow. Barton hoped without malice that she was too woozy to wonder how a roan could pilot and land an alien spaceship, who on solid ground couldn't keep from spilling his coffee.
He went directly home. Limila wasn't around; she was probably with the interrogation team. At the moment he felt he could use the absence of personality pressure.
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f
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Barton had to beat those goddam tests or they'd have him, for sure; he knew it. Several times since his return to Earth he'd caught himself just short of assaulting someone he found excessively annoying. With intent to commit mayhem. He knew this was not unusual in the overcrowded cultures of Earth; he also knew it was grounds for getting locked up.
Barton had been in a cage for a long time; he was not about to be locked into another one. That was what the problem was.
For starters, he took the tests honestly (he'd gambled that sample copies and grading instructions were in the book; they were). The answers he got were about what he bad expected; Barton was not safe to have at large, even to himself. Well, he'd have to chance that, the same as he*d been doing for some time. As for other people— well, he figured he'd taken his own chances long enough that it wasn't out of line for others to share them now. He knew no one else would see it that way, though it should be obvious that anyone who did away with the Iri-V announcer, for instance, deserved a bonus ... Oh
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well.
Looking at the summaries of "preferred" (sane) answers, Barton knew he couldn't possibly memorize enough of the responses to give a reasonable picture of a man with his head on straight; it couldn't be done. But there had to be a way.
The series of tests ran to a total of over 1,300 multiplechoice questions: five choices per question. The odds against him were incalculable. But what about a random approach? Barton looked about the room.
A pair of ornamental dice sat on a low table. Barton took one die in his hand. Six choices: #1 through #5, the answers to any question on the test. #6, leave it blank.
Barton threw the die and marked the result for each of the 107 questions on the first test. Then he turned again to the Evaluations section. Hopeless.
"These results indicate either a fragmented incoherent mind or a highly irresponsible attitude. In either case there is urgent need of custody and therapy." OK, OK, he thought; I've already bagged that idea.
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Barton's situation didn't need a drink, but he did. Ha mixed it about half as heavy as he really wanted it. He sat down in front of the tri-V set, thought about turning it on, then got up and carefully turned the bulky heavy
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thing around to face directly into the wall. At that point, Limila came in.
As usual she did not speak. Barton had long since quit offering unanswered greetings, though he knew he needed to talk with her and maybe vice versa. In fact she was the only person he knew that he could talk to, about a lot of things. But that problem would have to wait.
She got herself some food and took it into her bedroom, softly closing the door behind her. Barton ached, thinking of how she must feel at what had been done to her. But he shrugged it off; he had to, just then. He ranged around the place, looking for something to spark his mind toward a way to beat those damned tests and stay out of a cage. Because he wouldn't go. Not again, he wouldn't.
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His eye was caught by the supply of canvases and paints in the far dimmest corner of the room. He'd asked for the materials several days ago but hadn't used them yet. Maybe it was time he did; it struck him that sometimes the hands can tell the mind what it really means.
Barton arranged the easel, the canvas, the palette and brushes, the lights. He hadn't painted for eight years;
he had no idea what he was going to do. But he needed to do it; he knew that much. Barton blurred his mind and began. Working, he lost track of time.
A sound behind him brought him out of it. A harsh accusing sound. Barton turned and saw Limila, sawtooth lips squared in an almost-human grimace of horror, blank Demu lack of features throwing the horror back to him. She shook her head, the baid earless skull shining in the" overhead light. "No more. Barton," she panted. "No MORE!" She wheeled and disappeared through her bedroom door, slamming it and throwing the bolt against him. As though there were any need for that, he thought sadly.
But what had caused her reaction? Barton looked at his canvas and gasped in shock. What he had painted,
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what he had doodled while his mind looked the other way, was Limila. Limila the undented, as he had first seen her. Several views. Two full-faced, one with closed curved-lip smile and one showing the tiny perfect teeth. A profile highlighting the delicate lean nose and overthe-ears front hairline. A pair of complementing threequarter studies. Two full-length figures. And each sketch,
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though lacking in fine detail, was lovingly exact in contour. No wonder Limila could not bear to see them.
Barton turned his ears on. It was about time he did that; the noises from Limila's room were not nicer He took a run at her/door, jumped and landed with both heels alongside the door knob. The lock broke; Barton sprawled inside, to see Limila turning and twisting as she hung with her neck in an impromptu noose.
He never knew how he clawed her down from her adlib gibbet, though several shredded fingernails took long enough to heaL He gave mouth-to-mouth breathing to the sawtooth lips he had not been able to bring himself to kiss since the Demu had cut their sweet curves into
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harsh notches. He said her name over and over. And when he saw that she was conscious and could hear him, he said to her, "Don't ever do that again. I need you; do you understand me?" She nodded, weakly.
"Limila," he said, "I don't know yet what we can do about how things are. But 111 work on it. You hear me?"
"You can do nothing. I am as I am." Her eyes were closed. Barton shook her, gently, until she opened them.
**And the Demu had me in a cage for eight years," he said. "I thought my way out of that one, or we wouldn't be here, would we?" She looked at him blankly. "Give me a little time, wont you? To try to find a way out of the cage we are in."
The mangled lips twisted m what might have been a smile. Barton blotted it from sight by kissing her smooth forehead. He held her for a moment longer and then said, "Forgive me. For hiding from you, for not paying attention because it hurt to see you. I won't do that any more. You understand?" Her head nodded against his lips. He got up slowly, turned away, stopped at the shattered door. "I'll do something."
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Barton slept without pills; his dreams were not of horror. And he woke knowing what he had to do next, to stay out of a cage.
At one o'clock he met Dr. Arleta Fox. All of ten
seconds early, in fact; under the circ*mstances Barton felt he could afford to give a little. He put the pilfered book back in place under cover of clumsily dropping his jacket when he hung it up; Barton knew he had to clown it a little and he figured he could get away with that much. Dr. Fox was tolerant.
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"Don't be nervous, Mr. Barton," she said. "You needn't be. Your intelligence tests show no significant changes from the earlier data in your file- A slight drop of no importance. These tests are so sensitive that what you had for lunch could shift the results by five points, and that's approximately the degree of change we have here." Dr. Fox smiled. By now, Barton's subconscious knew she wasat really going to bite him; he didn't flinch. "So now," she said brightly, "are we ready for the personalityevaluation series?"
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I don't know about you, lady, thought Barton, but / sure*s bell am. Because now he knew how to beat their system, for a while, at least. All be needed was a little cooperation.
"Sure, I'm ready," he said. "One thing, though. I'm a little nervous today. Could I have a closed room and no interruptions until I'm finished?" He tried to smile disarmingly. It didn't feel much like it, from the inside.
Dr. Fox bought it, at least. "Oh, certainly," she said, and escorted him to a small, comfortable room. With ashtrays and everything.
Ever since Barton had willed himself dead enough to fall through the floor of the Demu cage—all the way home on the ship and ever since—he had, with one exception, stayed clear of self-hypnosis and the hallucinations that had saved him from Demu domination and mutilation. Because be wasn't a captive mind any longer, and a free one can't afford to goof off if it wants to stay free. So Barton had tried to stick with the real world all the way.
But policy must change with circ*mstances. When Bar-
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ton sat down to fill out the 1,300-plus questions of the personality-evaluation tests, he shoved his mind into full-hallucinating gear. What he tried to bring into being was the thirty-two-year-old Barton and aH his attitudes, before he had been zapped and abducted by the Demu. He knew it was a pretty thin trick but it was the best he had. And it began to work. So be it.
Barton had no idea how long it was taking him to answer all the questions on Dr. Fox's fancy test; he stayed with it until he was finished. Then he snapped out of his earlier-Barton hallucination and paid very close attention to reality. He punched the buzzer; when Dr. Fox answered he told her he had 'finished and was ready to
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leave. The time turned out to be late evening; he'd skipped dinner and hadn't even noticed.
"Why don't we have a drink and a bite to eat in the lounge before you go, Mr. Barton?" she asked. Why don't we break open my skull and get it over with, Dr. Fox? But the hell with it; he had to go along, a little.
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The lounge wasn't bad; the lighting and music were within his tolerance and Dr. Fox wasn't pushing him about anything. Barton ordered the strongest drink he figured he could get away with under psychological observation. He got a bonus; food service was so slow he had time for a second one. Partway into it he realized he couldn't afford to get smashed, either. But physically and mentally he was floating free, ready to move.
He wasn't surprised when one of the lumpier and more muscular of the young lab techs brought a sheaf of papers to Dr. Fox, whispering in her ear somewhat more than was really courteous. She began to leaf through the stack, skimming.
Barton figured they had him cold, but he wasnt going to make it easy. There was a pot of coffee on the table over a heater; he poured some for Dr. Fox.
Foe, one thing, if he needed to throw the rest of it at Muscles' face it would be quicker if he already bad the thing in his hand. So he held onto it for a moment, waiting to see what Dr. Fox would say.
She said it "Mr. Barton, 1. can hardly believe these
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results." Barton wasn't too surprised but there wasn't much he could say- The technician left them. Barton returned the coffee pot to its place.
"Your test results," Dr. Fox continued, "are almost precisely the same as the way you tested eight years ago." She smiled, frowned, scowled and looked blank. It was like a major earthquake on a small scale, thought Barton.
"Our computer read-out," Dr. Fox went on, "allows only one conclusion. It indicates that your capture and imprisonment have inflicted a so-called 'freeze trauma' upon you. You appear to be frozen into your earlier emotional attitudes, without much reference to any happenings since the trauma began."
Well, if you'll believe that, Barton thought, you'll believe anything. But what he said was, "It doesn't feel that way to me, but I guess I can't argue with you ex-
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perts, and the computer and all." Oddly, he found that he enjoyed skating on thin ice.
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"The tests were really very tiring. Dr. Fox," he said. *The food is good but my appetite isn't up to it. I hate to be a poor guest, but if I don't go home and get some sleep about now, I'll probably cork off right here and have to be carted home." Dr. Fox was understanding and obliging; soon Barton was delivered to his quarters. Liniila was still awake. Just sitting, looking at the walls.
"I was soon going to bed," she said. "I will now."
"All right," said Barton, "but not in there. In here."
At first Limila expected more than Barton was able to give. He could not make love to her mutilated self, nor did he try. But he could hold her and cherish her; they could give each other warmth. After a while, Limila appeared to understand how it was with them, how it had to be. She cried, but it did not hurt Barton as much as he expected. After a little longer it didn't hurt at all, because it was a different kind of crying. Whatever it was, he succumbed to sleep before he figured it out.
He woke up alone. Well, Limila would be over at the ship, helping with the translating. Tarletoa and Kreugel
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had become wary of having only one translator. Frail and shaky as Siewen was becoming, no one knew how far he could be trusted.
Barton fixed himself breakfast. More real food was coming in lately, to replace the TV-dinner junk that had first been shipped to the site. He broke three eggs into the frying pan, thought a moment and added another. The bread was standard glop-type but not too bad when toasted. There was real coffee.
Idly, Barton wondered what to do next. Dr. Fox was off his back for a tune; probably she knew something was fishy, but it would take her a while to get her nerve up to doubt the computer results. He wasn't needed at the ship immediately; someone would have told him. He'd like to get the cast off his arm, lightweight or not, but the doctors had told him not to pester them again for at least another week. It wasn't limiting his activities; it itched, was all.
When in doubt, he decided, take a walk. Wd never been much for gratuitous exercise Before, but now he found he liked to walk when he had the time for it. So he clothed himself and stepped outside. The day was
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hot and sunny, which was nothing new around here, but he liked it anyway.
His way took him past the quarters of the Demu and the Demu-ized. As he approached them, he wondered how and what little Whnee had been doing lately. At first he had looked in on her occasionally; she'd been pleased to see him, as near as he could tell. Then a couple of times she hadn't been at home; she was being studied by a research team. A little perturbed, he'd checked with Tarleton and been assured that the small Demu would not be harmed. Then Barton had got busy with his own concerns and had had no time for much of anything else.
As he passed the guarded house he saw Whnee looking out a window. He was across the street, but he paused and walked over. The guard said, "Yes, sir?"
"I'm Barton. I see the little Demu is at home today."
"Yes, sir. It and the Freak; he's here all the time, though. The teams gave up on him." That would be
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Whosits. Well, Barton had given up on Wbosits a long time ago.
"How about the young one? They give up on her too?"
"Oh no, sir," the guard answered, "they're pretty happy about that one, the way I hear it. It's just their ;
day off today. Sunday, you know." Barton hadn't known. His work and Tarleton's paid no heed to the weekly calendar, so neither had he.
"I think I'll stop in and see the kid a minute," Barton said. A thought came to him. "Hey, OK. if we go out for a little walk?"
"Just a moment, sir. I'll ask it." The guard turned and entered the house, leaving Barton a little puzzled. Ask it?
A few minutes later, the guard escorted Whnee outdoors. No robe and hood now: Whnee was wearing a small sunhat, a light loose garment that covered the torso but left the limbs bare, and sandals. The lobster
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face looked incongruous, but on the whole Barton liked the effect. The standard Demu garb held bad connotations for him, naturally enough.
"Hello, Whnee," he said.
"Hello, Barton. But my name is not Whnee. It is Eeshta,"
"You talk English!"
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Whnee*s—Eehta's—tongue lifted in the Demu smile. "Yes, Barton. They have taught me- I wanted to leam. 1 wanted to talk with you. Now we can talk."
Barton looked at the small lobsteriike Demu in its absurd but pleasant Earth-type garb. Remembering. How its egg-parent had kept Barton as a caged animal for years. How be had broken this one's arm, slapped it into silence and later, unconsciousness. How he bad kidnapped both and brought them to Earth as prisoners. He had treated this small one with kindness or at least with tolerance during the voyage, yes. But still be wondered what he and Whnee, or Eeshta, had in common to dis-
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cuss. It might be interesting to find out.
"OK," he said. "Want to come for a little walk?" The guard nodded; as the oddly assorted pair turned away, Barton saw the man looking after them.
"I like your outfit," Barton said. "Kind of a change from the old one."
"Yes. That is out of place here, so I changed to this. Dr. Ling chose it." Dr. Ling? Oh, yes; Barton remembered. Female doctor, Chinese ancestry, in charge of the team studying Demu biology.
"Well, it looks fine, Whnee—I mean, Eeshta."
The smile again. "Call me Wbnee if you like. Or Eeshta. Either is all right."
"Eeshta. I'll try to remember. Anyway, what-all else have you been learning?"
"Very much. Most important, that you are Demu."
"What?"
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"That you are people. Demu is our only word for people. We are taught to believe that all others are animals."
"Yeh, I found that out the hard way. Not as hard as some others we know, of course."
"Barton, I am ashamed. For us, who call ourselves Demu. For what we do to others, treating them as animals. Because they do not speak our words. And when they do, we make them like Siewen and Limila and the Freak. I am glad you did not let us do that to you, Barton."
"You call him the Freak?"
"He is. He is one of you but pretends to be one of us. He wears the old clothing. He will not speak his own language. It is our fault, of course. We have broken him."
"Hell; you didn't do it."
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"But if I had been older, I would have. I believed it
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was right, also."
"Well, we all do what we have to," Barton said. "I wasn't exactly gentle with you there at first, either. I can't see that I had much choice, but still I'm sorry you had to be hurt."
"So am I," Eeshta said. Barton looked at her sharply, but apparently it was a purely matter-of-fact comment "Barton, I was so frightened then! Attacked by a vicious animal, I thought. Injured and tied and beaten. Almost I died of fright"
Barton started to say something but thought better of it.
"I first had hope, Barton, when you let me drink. You could have not done that." Eeshta made a grimace Barton hadn't seen before on a Demu. "I am glad I did not know your language then. If I had known you were saying you would eat me alive, I am sure I would have died of hearing it"
"Who—who told you about that?" Barton didn't, bother to deny it or say it had been a bluff. It had
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been, but this was no time to expect her to believe it.
"Siewen," she said, "or Limila. I don't remember now. It is not important." She looked at him. "What is important is that we made you do that. I am ashamed." Barton had no answer. Hell, the kid was right, wasn't she? It? Nobody had told him the findings, if any, on the Demu, and he'd been too busy to think to ask. Well, it might make a good change of subject; the present one bothered him.
"Eeshta," he said, "what does it mean that you're Hishtoo's egg-child? I mean, is there some other kind of child, with you people?" She paused for a moment, stopped walking. Barton thought it might be time to turn back; they'd come quite a way.
"It seems strange to us. Barton, that you people are male or female. Only one or the other, I mean. We are both, all of us. But not so strongly, to see. That is why we didn't understand, and spoiled Siewen and the Freak." And Limila?
"I will show you," she said, and pulled up her garment, baring the torso. Barton didn't see anything especially noteworthy, only the flexible chitinous body shell, with
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the little bumps and dimples up the front.
"Look closer. Barton," Eeshta said. "See the small
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raised portions, and the indented places? How they make a pattern up the middle of me there, thus-wide?"
He nodded, thinking: "So that's what the non-skid tread is all about. .."
"It is the same on all of us," she said, "so that if any two come together, they fit, each feature." True: the pattern was symmetrical. With two Demu face to face, every bump would meet a dimple. There were about a dozen of each. Barton was too embarrassed to count carefully, it had been a long time since he'd played "... and I'll show you mine."
"In breeding season," Eeshta continued, "two adults come facing together and hold. From the concave parts which have the eggs, a substance flows that hardens and maintains the two tightly together but does not block the passages. From the convex parts then come cells to fertil-
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ize the eggs. The two Demu are not entirely awake but are in bliss. A day later comes the hard work of breaking loose from each other. Then the eggs are laid, each adult's into his own breeding tank. The hatching and growth .cycles are complex, too long to explain now. Only a very few of many survive. Dr. Ling is writing a paper on it, I think."
"I'll try to get around to reading it."
"So for me," Eeshta concluded, "Hishtoo provided the egg, not the other cell."
Yeah, I think I've got it now, Barton thought. Hishtoo's her mommy; at the same time Hishtoo was being some other little Demu's daddy. Or several. And Whnee, or Eeshta, wasn't a "she" at all; the concept didn't apply. Nonetheless Barton continued to think of the young Demu as female.
"Well, thanks for telling me," he said finally. "I think we'd better be heading back now, don't you?" Eeshta was agreeable; they began the return walk. They had gotten well away from the building complex and were in open country; Eeshta seemed to enjoy looking around, observing the terrain. The walk back was mostly silent.
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Something was nagging at Barton's mind, something about Eeshta. It wouldn't come clear. Maybe more conversation would jog it Loose.
"What are you going to be doing next, Eeshta?"
"I want to learn more. Much more. There is a great deal to leam, I think."
"Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. But then what?" He
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really shouldn't push the kid this way. Barton thought. How can a prisoner make plans? But at least Eeshta was only a captive, not a zoo creature and experimental animal as Barton and the others had been.
"If you ever take me back to my people," Eeshta said, "I will be a—a missionary, you call it. I will tell how you are also people and not to be treated as animals or made like Siewen or the Freak."
'That's a worthy cause," Barton said absently. Then it hit him. "Like who?"
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"Like Siewen or the Freak," she said in puzzlement. Siewen. Not "Shiewen."
Barton had become so used to the sh-zh iopped-tongue accent of Siewen and Limila that he no longer heard it consciously. So he hadn't noticed until now what had been nagging at him—that Eeshta's pronunciation was perfect.
"Say after me, Eeshta," he said. "Siewen. Shiewen."
"Siewen. Shiewen. Why, Barton?" Then Eeshta gave the Demu smile. "Ob, I see. It's the ttfmg they made for me. Look."
She opened her mouth wide and pointed to its roof. There was a piece of acrylic plastic there, like part of a dental plate. And it made a ridge that Eesbta's short tongue could touch squarely to make the sounds of s and z.
"Every morning I must spread a paste on it so it stays in place," she said. "The man who made it showed how to do this. A dentist, he is called."
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A dentist. Dental plates. Barton, you are the most stupid man in the world.
"We'd better get on back, Eeshta. There are some things I have to do."
They walked faster then, not talking. Barton was in a hurry when he left Eeshta off at her guarded home. He took time, though, to thank the guard for letting her come walking, to gravely thank Eeshta herself for the pleasure of her company and to assure her he'd see her again soon. Eeshta gave him the Demu smile and went indoors.
Barton hotfooted it to his own quarters. As he tried to get Tarleton on the phone, he was thankful that Limila wasn't there. He didn't dare let her know what he had in mind, until he knew more. Tarleton wasn't in bis office, and Barton couldn't get through to the ship; those
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lines were hot most of the time. He flipped a mental coin and decided to stick his neck out; he punched the number of Dr. Arieta Fox, and got her on the third ring. He wasted no time in idle chatter.
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"This is Barton. About the medical group here on the project—how are we fixed for plastia surgeons?"
It took a little time. Dr. Fox raached the ship via a priority line. Tarleton checked back to see exactly what Barton had in mind. When Barton totd him, be didn't argue.
"I feel stupid as hell," Barton said, "for not thinking of this sooner. The only saving grace is that none of the rest of you bastards did, either." He could say that to Tarleton, because bis real respect was no secret to either of them.
"I suppose the reason we didn't—and believe me, Barton, I feel every bit as badly about it as you do—is that we have only seen your companions as they are now."
"Yeah, I guess that's so. But hell, I don't have even tha^excuse."
"You had your own worries, Barton. Nice that you're working out of them."
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Two days later Barton was talking with a plastic surgeon named Raymond Parr, a tall languid-seeming man, in an office not far from Dr. Fox's. They were looking at Barton's paintings of the Limila-that-had-been, alongside some unflattering closeups of Limila as she was now. "What do you think you can do. Doctor?"
Parr was in no hurry. He looked at the pictures and at the paintings. Finally he spoke. "It depends on how far you and the prospective patient are willing to go. I assume from my limited knowledge of this entire project that expense is no object. A great deal more can be done in the way of repairs, these days, than most people think. But there are limits; in some cases these depend on whether it is appearance or function that you have in mind." Dr. Parr raised his eyebrows at Barton as if he'd asked a "question; Barton shrugged the ball right back to him.
"All right; let's go down the list systematically. I could add a toe to each foot with a cartilage graft, but it wouldn't bend naturally; same thing with me fingers. I'd advise you to leave all that alone, but it's your choice; it might be worth it on the feet, at that, for better balance.
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The nails are gone; if you like, I can recess niches for cosmetic glue-on nails. For social purposes a few wellshaped daubs of nail polish would do nearly as well, and be less difficult and expensive." Barton shook his head with impatience, but he was making notes.
"Well, whatever you choose," the doctor continued. "The navel is no problem; any of my assistants as a routine chore can remodel one or delete it or punch out a new one in a better cosmetic location. As to the simulation of external genitals, it's a simple matter to stretch folds of skin and bond them into place, if you wish. And I assume you'll want the minor abdominal scarification removed."
Too bad that's not all it would take for Siewen or the Freak, Barton thought wryly.
"Plastic insert breasts are common these days," Parr went on, "but a padded bra would do the job nearly as well, unless one of you is a fetishist." Parr never knew how close he was, then, to sudden violence; Barton didn't let his face show what he felt.
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Parr paused; it was a habit he had. "I realize the head and face are your major concern, Mr. Barton." Well, about tinsel "I assume you realize a wig will be needed. along with false eyelashes and stick-on eyebrows." Barton nodded; would this sonofabitch ever get to the point? "And dentures, of course." Of course. *The tongue is beyond my skills; amputation''of muscular tissue cannot be reversed at this time."
But the face, you fool, you goddam fool; the face.
"Our remaining problems," said Parr, "and they are the most important ones, of course, are the nose, the ears and the lips." Barton braced himself.
"I can make her a good nose by use of cartilage grafts, with perhaps a bit of plastic implanting if need be; the skin will stretch and bond to it. I will not guarantee to match your paintings exactly because these things don't work that predictably, but I can promise you a presentable and even a handsome nose."
He hesitated. "Mr. Barton, I couldn't guarantee you a thing about trying to restore the ears. Skin, even grafted skin, won't stretch and bond dependably, around
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the extensive concave angles that make up much of normal ear structure." Parr sighed. "I suggest you settle for cosmetic prostheses, soft-plastic ear-cups."
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Well, if it had to be ... the wig would cover them, anyway.
The lips, now.
"The mouth presents a real problem." Yeh, let me tell you what the problem is. Well, he would in a minute, Barton thought.
"Tissue has been cut away in sawtoothed notches at about a 45-degree angle, nearly a quarter of an inch into both upper and lower lips. The question is whether to cut back to a smooth line or try to divert some of the tissue from the tips of the serrations into the deepest part of the gaps. The one alternative would shorten facial length. nearly half an inch; the other might leave wrinkles in the lips, even though we'd use stitchless bonding at the surface layers. In either case we must semi-detach and stretch some mucous membrane of the mouth's inner lining to constitute the outer visible lip tissue when the
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operation is complete, and this is always chancy. It might not hold, or it might contract and puH the lips inward. The least risky alternative is to cut back all the way and make do with the shortened facial structure." No, Doctor; safer than that is to hang yourself.
There was more discussion; Barton hadn't got it all straight on the first reading, and he needed to have it very straight indeed. He thanked Parr and told him he'd be in touch in a day or two. As an afterthought he asked the doctor to remove the cast from his arm; it came off like peeling a banana. Then Barton left and talked to the dentist, whose name he could never remember for more than five minutes, and to Tarleton, who gave him the full authorization he needed.
Barton was becoming accustomed to having to get authorization for things; it had taken him a while to realize that other people had to have some say-so. But with Tarleton it wasn't so bad.
Then he went home. Limila had dinner hot on the range for him; she herself was eating some kind of damn mush, as usuaL Barton could have kicked himself.
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"Hi, Limila," he said; she was answering him these days. "We've got some things to talk about."
"Hello, Barton. All right. You eat first, though." Her ragged mouth bent, and Barton realized she was trying to smile. She hadn't given him the Demu lifted-tongue smile since the first night they'd slept together. But only slept . ..
Barton ate, he had developed a good appetite, mostly
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for high-protein foods. He wasn't putting on any weight;
thank Heaven for small favors.
..
Then he had to talk. "Limila . . ." he said, and began to tell her slowly and haltingly, starting from where he himself had started with Eeshta's pronunciation aid, all of what he and Dr. Parr had discussed.
He got only a short way into it when Limila started crying and couldn't stop. Barton said a little more, but it didn't help. He caught and held her to him; that didn't help, either. Then he got mad.
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"Don't you want to get back more to yourself?" he shouted, holding and shaking her by the shoulders. Her soft fingertips with no nails moved on bis face; instinctively, she was trying to claw him. His anger vanished;
he realized she was fighting the revival of hope, that she couldn't stand to have it and lose it again. Barton could understand; he'd been through it.
He gentled her, gradually. And finally ventured speech again.
"Limila," he whispered, where her ear should have been, ''won't you at least listen to what can be done and decide how much of U you want to try?" She nodded against his face.
"But not now. Barton, not tonight. It's too much to accept. I can't." They held each other tightly. But that's as far as it went, even later in bgd together.
The next day they could and did talk it out. Barton worked from his notes, in order; it was the only way he could think to do it. Parr had said that even a stiff cartilage toe would help in walking balance, so Limila
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reluctantly agreed to have both feet chopped open again, if it might help. Not the hands, though; who needs a stiff finger? She did want Barton to find out whether a graft could minimize the unsightly jog at the wrist, where the Demu had stripped away the two fingers. Barton made a note; it was something he hadn't thought to ask.
Emphatically, Limila wanted her belly free of the simulated Demu sex-organ pattern. She didn't care about a navel one way or the other, but Barton thought she should have one so she agreed. Somehow, though, he couldn't bring himself to argue in the matter of external genitalia; it was a little too personal, or something. "Many Tilaran women," she told him, "are circumcised much this same way. It was a beauty fad of some years ago." Barton suddenly realized there was a hell of a lot
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he didn't know about the Tilari culture. Well, he'd never asked.
Breasts? "I don't know. Barton," she said. "Dead plastic lumps under my skin? But yet they might make my body feel better-balanced again." She cupped her hands, one at each side of the lower edge of her ribcage.
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Barton laughed, and gently moved her hands higher. "No, more like this, Limila. You're on Earth now. Haven't you noticed?"
Angrily she pushed his hands away. "I am a Tilari woman. Barton. I will have Tilari breasts or none at all.'*
"But—" he began. She shook her bead, would not listen to him. "Oh well; skip it for now. You and the doc do whatever you decide between the two of you. But—" He wasn't getting anyplace, so finally be did skip it.
She nodded absently at his mention of wigs and so forth. Barton asked if she'd like to have one right away, and maybe the dentures. She shook her head.
"With this face? No, thank you. Barton. I prefer the hood and veiL" Limila had added a half veil to the Demu garb, for working with humans, hiding everything but her eyes. Only at home with Barton would she show her face.
She was disappointed that nothing could be done about her tongue, but moderately cheered by Barton's
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reminder of the prosthesis that had corrected Eeshta's pronunciation. And she was unhappy that Dr. Parr felt he could not rebuild her ears.
"I suppose you had better have him provide the plastic ones," she said. "1 do not know if you would have noticed, but my directional hearing is almost absent. The cups of the ears serve that function." Barton kicked himself again for having taken so long to think of doing anything about Limila's difficulties. Oh sure; he'd had his own problems, as Tarleton had pointed out. But was that excuse really good enough?
Her first real enthusiasm was for Parr's confidence in his ability to recreate her nose. "Oh, Barton! That will be so wonderful. I hate this face, and that is a thing I hate most about it. But what about . . . ?" She touched her lips.
In a quiet voice he told her the two choices Parr had given.»
She had to think about them. "If he tries to spread tissue to fill these in," she said, touching a finger to one
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of the harsh notches, "the result may be lumpy?" Barton nodded. "Or be must cut back, so they will be shorter."
"Yes."
"Second choice is preferable, I think," she said. "But I can talk about it more with Dr. Parr, what he thinks chances are in each case."
They left it at that Limila was already late at the ship, engrossed in their discussion, neither had noticed the time. "Come on; I'll walk you over to the motor pool," he said. Limila put on her robe, hood, veil and sandals, found her notecase. They set out
Jeeps were available, but no driver. Barton hadn't driven a car in eight years; it seemed like a good time to practice. He didn't have a driver's license, but he hadn't had one for the Demu spaceship, either.
The controls were different from the ones he'd known, but he figured them out without much difficulty. He and Limila arrived at the ship safely, without even a close call. They found Tarleton fuming quietly and pretending
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not to.
"We've hit some snags here," he said, giving them only a bare nod as greeting. "Siewen can't make head or tail of the astrogationai data. Limila, your people have interstellar travel; maybe you can do better with it"
"I picked up a little of it on the trip back," said Barton. "Want me to sit in?" ^
"Later, maybe. Glad you came.out, though; I have an item or two. for you. Why don't you go on into the ship and let Kreugel fill you in? I'll be along as soon as we get this other on the road." He and Limila walked to the nearby prefab as Barton climbed into the ship.
Kreugel had blueprints and circuit drawings spread over most of the control room. "Hi, Barton." he said* "Good to see you." They shook hands.
"How's it-coming?"
"Not bad, not bad at all. The theory boys are handing us some pretty weird answers, though. For instance, how long are the Demu supposed to have had space travel?"
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"Oh, since about the time our ancestors left the forests and started using antelope bones for clubs, I'd guess. Why?"
"That's about what I thought," said Kreugel. "Then tell me how come. Barton—tell me how come in all that time they never improved their space drive?"
"How do you know they didn't?"
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"Well, we dont, really. But we think so. The thing is that the drive the Agency was working on—given a couple of clues from this ship—turned out to be a better, more efficient drive than the one the Demu have."
"Couldn't that be coincidence, or luck? If true?"
"Maybe. But now again, once the Agency got their drive working—"
"They have it working?"
"Yes, as of last Friday," Kreugel said, grinning. "Any-
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way, from nothing but static test runs, the boys came up with about sixteen different ideas for further improvements. Now what does that tell you. Barton?"
"It doesn't tell me the Demu are stupid, if that's what you mean. They are in some ways, such as their cultural inertia, but that little Eeshta is nobody's dummy."
"Not stupid. Barton. Just not inventive. You see it now?"
"I'm not sure, Kreugel. You tell me."
"The guess is that the Demu didn't invent this drive in the first place. They got it from somebody else, somehow, and just plain copied it. The same with the other stuff:
the leaky no-splash floors, the sleep gun, the protective shield and all the rest of it. All it would take, Barton, would be the capture of one ship, plus a reasonable level of technology and a lot of patience- I'm told we could have done it ourselves as early as—well, whenever semiconductor application was first being developed."
"Late 1940s," Barton recalled. "Well, it's an interesting idea, but what's so important about it?"
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"It means that we can build ships that outclass the Demu—and that maybe they can't improve theirs without a model to copy."
"Hmm, maybe so," said Barton. "I wouldn't bet too big a bundle on it, though."
Tarleton came in. "Hi. How far along are you?"
"Just that somebody thinks the Demu are copycats, not inventors, and stole their antigravity and everything," said Barton. "I'm not totally sold, but it could be. What else is there?"
"Not too much. But before you leave I'd like you to check Limila's interpretation of the astrogational data. She's pretty sure she's right, but you're the one who worked with it." Barton nodded, waiting for Tarleton to continue. Kreugel waved them off and went back to his
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blueprints. The two men moved out into the other compartment.
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"Kreugel tell you the Agency has its own drive working?"
"Yeah, and improved six ways from Sunday over this one, he says. No kidding?"
"Fact," said Tarleton. "The lab people are going out of their minds with the possibilities. Apparently they were only a couple of Jumps from the whole antigravity thing already. They have to admit that those jumps weren't in the direction they were trying to go; they'd been on a wrong track. But they claim it would have been a matter of only a few months. They could be right; those lads don't spend too much time in blind alleys."
"So what's next?" Barton was getting bored with the Agency's ego trip.
"Well, they've cobbled together this one ship, a sort of breadboard model, to experiment with. Washington is in a hurry to settle on an adequate design and get into production: the old argument between 'Get it on the road now' and 'Give us a little more time so we can make it betteri' You know."
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"Afraid-1 can't help you much on that," Barton grinned. "I learned a long time ago to keep my neck out of policy arguments."
"Maybe so, but I want your advice on the auxiliary hardware. Just how far do you think we should go in duplicating what the Demu carry?"
Barton shook his head impatiently. "I don't know all that much about it, Tarleton. We don't need their fancy floors; plumbing's simpler. Or the no-source lighting; it's nice to have no shadows on your control console but not necessary. I imagine those two items would be a'big part of the cost problem, so skip 'em.
"When it comes to weapons, maybe I brought you the wrong ship. The bigger ones may have stuff we don't even know about, and you can bet that Hishtoo won't be telling us anything he doesn't have to. This crate has the unconsciousness weapon—the sleep gun, you call it—and the shield. Personally, I don't even know what the shield will handle and what it won't. But if there's more ofiense or defense on here, I never found it."
"Yes, I thought that would be about the size of it. No-
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body else found anything more in the way of weapons, either. But we still haven't elimuiated the possibility of
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another of those tricky 'Enable' switches like the one for the circuit diagrams. It's a slow cautious process, checking out alt the combos on that control board.
"Anyway, they're testing the shield, all right. Took a pilot model out into space on a rocket shuttle, with all sorts of test objects and instruments and telemetering equipment inside. Now they're throwing everything at it but the kitchen sink."
"Any useful results?"
"So far. the sumbidge will take anything we know how to throw, except for coherent radiation. That goes through it like a knife through cheese."
Barton laughed. "So we just take a big-daddy laser . .."
"So big it takes up the whole central axis of one of our new ships ..."
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"And ZAP1 Well, I hope it works."
"That makes a crowd of us. But we still have a problem."
"Let me tell you what the problem is," thought Barton. But the other man didn't say it.
"How effective is the shield against the sleep gun or vice versa?" he asked. "That's not a simple question. It's a matter of the power to the gun and the power to the shield, the distance, and the time of exposure."
"So what the hell? Test it."
"On whom. Barton? We've already used it to knock Hishtoo out once, to make sure it would work on the Demu as it does on humans. We don't dare take a chance oa scrambling his memories much; we need the hardshelled bastard, for what information we can worm out of him."
Well, by God, there was a problem. It would take a lot of testing to get the necessary answers, and the sleep gun played hell with memory. Who was going to volunteer
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for a case of amnesia? Not Barton, for sure; he'd had that bit, and still he wasn't sure all his mental nuts and bolts were back in the right bins.
"Yeh, you've got a point. Lemme think a minute . . ."
There had to be answers; Barton thought of one. Some men and women were trapped in cages, permanently.
"The hopelessly insane, Tarleton. It's their memories that have them tied up in knots. The sleep gun might even cure a few. If it doesn't, they haven't lost a hell of a lot. have they?"
Tarleton looked dubious. "Pragmatically it makes
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sense, but we'll play hell trying to get authorization. A lot of people would holler bloody murder, you know."
"Federal booby hatch," said Barton. "That big one near D.C. The Agency can slap Security on the whole bucket."
"You give harsh answers, don't you? Well, it can't hurt to try, I guess. Thanks." Barton was beginning to
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make motions preliminary to leaving. "Oh, don't forget to check Limila on the astrogation; OK? And in a few days we'll want you to take some student pilots up in this ship. Also in the new Agency model, to show them how it goes and give us an operational comparison."
"Hell, any of your trainees could fly this thing right now."
"Yes, but they haven't done it. You have." Barton shrugged an OK, and left. Outside, he realized he hadn't said goodbye to Kreugel. Ob well; the man probably wouldn't want to be interrupted again anyway.
Over at the prefab he checked Limila's interpretation ' of the data necessary to travel from Star A to Star B. As he had expected, she had it right. He noticed that Hishtoo seemed distinctly wary of him; that reaction didn't hurt Barton's feelings. Siewen didn't say much, but seeing him gave Barton an idea: maybe, before working on Limila, Dr. Parr could use a trial run.
Limila wasn't needed for the rest of the day, so Barton took her with him in the jeep. He enjoyed testing its per- ' formance and handling over the bumpy dirt road, now
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that he had the hang of it. First he stopped by Dr. Parr's office to make sure the doctor could see LimHa that afternoon. Then he and she went home for lunch and a shower; the day was hot. There was a note in the mailbox; Dr. Fox wanted to see Barton.
Dr. Parr had priority; they went to his office immediately after lunch. Although he had seen the pictures, the doctor was visibly shocked when Limila doffed the veil and hood. He hid it well but fooled no one. Quickly, though, he put his professional manner together and carefully examined Limila's head and face, hands and feet. He didn't ask her to disrobe; Barton remembered that Parr considered the problems of the torso to be minor.
"Your description and pictures were accurate, Barton," he said. "I see no reason to change the prognoses I gave , you earlier. Does she wish to proceed?"
"Hell, Doctor; ask her. She's right here in front of you, brains and all." Parr colored.
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*Tm sony, madam," he said; Barton didnt bother to correct him about Limila's marital status. "It is only
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that..."
"I know," said Limila. "I cannot ever get used to it, either. That is why I hope you can help me." Her eyes filled with tears. Parr was obviously shaken,
Barton cut in to display Limila's wrists and ask if anything could be done about the jog where the fingers had been cut back.
"Either plastic sponge or cartilage could be used to fill out a smoother line," Parr said. "Cartilage would be best but we will be using quite a lot of that elsewhere; the supply is not unlimited."
"Well, however it works out," said Barton. "Look, I think I'll leave you two to work out the details. The lady shrink wants me again. See you at home, later, Limila. See you too. Doctor, and thanks." Handshake, pat her shoulder, and out.
Dr. Arleta Fox welcomed him smilingly. He noticed that her dark-red hair had been shortened a little and tamed a lot; it was nowhere near as frizzy as before. She wasn't a bad-looking little woman. Barton thought, if you
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liked strong jaws and didn't mind the implication of tenacity.
"We'd like to do some nonverbal tests today, Mr. Barton." You mean "you," lady; "we" don't want to do anything of the sort. But he smiled and nodded; the two of them exchanged polite bla-bla-blas on the way to the testing room.
The ceiling was low and gray, and Barton's guard went up. This woman had been reading the reports on him, realty reading them.
But the tests weren't too bad. First there were a number of color-filled sheets of paper bearing abstract patterns. He was supposed to choose which he liked best, and least, out of a dozen or so groups of five each. Inevitably he was drawn to the gaudiest, most violent combinations and bored by the pastels; naturally he announced the opposite choices. Dr. Fox looked dubious, but didn't say anything.
Then came the good old Rorsctiach ink blots: 'Tell me what you see in these, and tell me a story about each one, if you can, please."
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Barton saw a mutilated woman dying in mindless pain.
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"This is a little boy in a Hallowe'en mask. He is going out trick-or-treating."
He saw two grotesque entities ready to lock in mortal combat "A boy and a girl are having a picnic, out in the country." The room was air-conditioned, but he was sweating worse than he'd done outdoors in the heat. Dr. Fox paid no apparent heed.
Barton saw a group of pseudo-lobsters who had once been human beings. "I get the impression of a family of baby rabbits. I guess my imagination is throwing in the ears; they sure aren't in the picture, are they?" He hoped it looked like a smile, what his face was doing on the outside. Because that had been too close.
Finally it was over and he could leave, smiling and blablaing with Arleta Fox. In another job, he felt, he could have liked her.
When he got home, Limila was fixing dinner. She ap-
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peared happier than he'd ever seen her, though with an undertone of anxiety.
But "Later, Barton; eat first," she said when he asked. For a girl who had never seen Earthly foodstuffs until recently, he thought (not for the first time) that she was developing into one helluva good country-style cook.
Idly he noticed a row of scratches down her right arm. Not so idly, he saw that some were red and swollen. "What's all that?"
Testing for allergy reactions to antibiotics, it turned out. Dr. Parr had no wish to resort to full-asepsis surgery if he could help it; bacteria abound, and mutate. And he wanted to begin operations the next afternoon, if possible. Starting with Siewen.
Barton nearly had to laugh when Limila told him of the Great Breast Controversy. Parr hadn't quite understood Limila's differences from Earth-human; he'd been flabbergasted when she told him where she wanted her surrogate breasts implanted. "Then he refused," she toid Barton. "He said he cannot rebuild an anatomy he doesn't know. So we decided none at all, for this time. He thinks I will change my mind ..."
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But there was more. Barton could tell. And for once, he did want to hear what the problem was. He was a long time getting it out of her. Finally in bed, in the dark, holding each other like two small children afraid of the bogeyman, she said it.
"The pain. Barton. The pain again. I am afraid."
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"WeH, sure," be said, "these things hurt some, as they heal up. But it's not all that bad. I mean, it's sure as hell worth it, isn't it?"
"No, I mean the cutting, the stretching, the binding together, all of that It was very bad before. Barton, with the Demu. Why should it be easier now?"
He sat upright, dislodging her from his embrace. "For Chrissakesi Didn't the Demu put you to sleep for all that butchering? Or even give you a shot or pill to kill the pain?**
They hadn't The sleep gun? *They never use it again
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on one they have decided to make Demu. With much use, effects on memory become permanent" Barton cringed, thinking what she must have endured.
"But you don't think we do surgery that way? You have surgeons on Tilara; what do they use to control pain?"
'There is a drug; pain becomes ecstasy. I think you do not have it here."
"If we have, it's probably illegal. We use anesthetics;
you go to sleep, and wake up when it's all over. Didn't Parr say anything?"
"No."
"Did you ask him?"
"About pain,' I ask. No trouble, he said; we do it with a general. I say no. Such a foolish ideal**
"Huh? I don't get you. Run that one through again."
"A general? Like the man Parkhurst? What could he
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do?"
Barton broke up; he couldn't help it. Grabbing Limila and hugging her fiercely, he laughed so hard that tears came. He hadn't laughed like that in over eight years. Then he explained, gently, the difference between a general officer and a general anesthetic. When she understood, Limila managed a small laugh of her own. It was tentative, tremulous, but in the right direction. "It'll be all right," he said. "Really, it will."
He held her close until she was asleep. For a time he had little luck getting himself to sleep. He was thinking how much respect, even more than he had accorded her, Limila deserved for what she had gone through. Or Siewen, for that matter. Or even Whosits.
Next morning Barton was to take Dr. Parr to the ship, as well as Limila. At the motor pool, no one hassled him for permission about anything; they assumed he had it.
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From Parr's office he called the dentist; might as well have impressions made for plates as soon as possible.
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The height factor could be measured as soon as lip surgery was complete, but Parr had said the mouth would then be too tender for impression work.
At the ship, Tarleton was in a hurried mood. Compared to the stow beariike man Barton had first met, he was practically a streak of lightning. "Barton," he said at once, "the new ship, up at Seattle, is ready for comparison testing; Boeiog really pushed it to meet the contract Tomorrow we take this one up there. All right?'*
Barton shook his head, not in negation but to get his bearings. Yes; all right. "OK, Tarleton; I'm ready if you are. But I want you to meet Dr. Parr, the surgeon who is going to do the job on Limila and the rest. I hope it doesn't bust your program any, but he needs Siewen and Limila for a while, starting this afternoon."
Tarleton started to swell and possibly burst like the* frog in the fable, but he too shook his head and considered his priorities. "How long?" he asked. "Will I have access to them for questions if I need them?" Barton turned to Dr. Parr for the answers.
"Not for the first three days, Mr. Tarleton. Even with the newer drugs, it takes that long to reduce the swelling;
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it used to take weeks." He paused. "Will that be satisfactory?"
Tarleton started to speafc. Then he looked at Limila, her mangled face hidden by the hood and veil. He looked at Siewen, too. "Hell, I guess I can spare three days. Considering everything. After all, I'll be busy up north that long, before I can leave Barton on his own."
It was settled. Tarleton wanted to run Hishtoo through one last intensive grilling session before he turned Siewea and Limila over to Parr. To pass the time, waiting. Barton took the latter into the ship for a guided tour and some chat with Kreugel. There wasn't much that was news to Barton, but be liked Kreuge! and didn't mind hearing again what obviously interested Parr. The only new facts were the initial results of testing the sleep gun versus the shield: as expected, given the maximum of power to both, you were safe behind the shield unless you were loo close to the gun for too long. The parameters were still being evaluated, but the limits had been determined. Barton didn't ask about the effects on the test subjects. He I didn't really want to know.
\
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Toward lunchtime, he and Parr bade goodbye to Kreugel and went to the prefab, to pick up Limila and Siewen. No one had asked Siewen whether he wanted to be remodeled or not; Barton because it never entered his mind, and no one else because this was Barton's personal project. Siewen had heard the proposal discussed and hadn't said anything one way or the other, but then he never did, except to answer questions. Not any more.
In the prefab were Tarieton. Limila, Hishtoo, Siewen and two people Barton knew by sight but not by name. Assistants of some kind. He nodded to alL
"You have it about wrapped up for now, Tarieton?" he asked. The place was tense: Tarieton was obviously displeased, Limila stood in an apologetic stance. Siewen looked as if he weren't there'at all, and Hishtoo looked defiant
-What's' the problem?*' said Barton, and mentally kicked himself for saying it that way.
"Oh, Hishtoo's up on his high horse.** Tarieton sounded weary. "He's just realized we're going to take this game
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back onto his own home grounds, and he doesn't like the idea." .
Hishtoo suddenly shrilled a rapid burst of lobsterese. "He says," Limila interpreted, "that we animals had best not dare disturb the homes of the Demu."
**Wen now, is that right?" said Barton. He knew he looked nasty; he knew he sounded nasty. Above an, he knew that he couldn't afford to show it, not before Tarieton, of all people. But he couldn't help himself. He walked up to Hishtoo, face to face. "To you I'm an animal?'* he said softly. *To me, you're crab saladi"
Hishtoo cringed and turned away. "I'll be damned,'* Tarieton said in a bushed voice. 'That hardshell understands more English than he lets on." He turned to Barton. **When I said that to him I was twisting his arm and shouting. But you said it just like 'Pass the bread' and it got to him."
"Not quite," said Barton, knowing he shouldn't. "More like 'Pass the crab salad."" Tarieton looked at him, but said nothing more except the usual so-longs. Barton herded Parr and Siewen out to the jeep, Limila following.
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He agreed to meet Tarieton in the morning, and drove off.
Lunch at the Barton-Limua residence was on the awkward side. Doktor Siewen was being as nonexistent as pos-
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sible. Limila's reluctance to show her face to anyone except Barton was eased somewhat because Parr had already examined it, but her discomfort was apparent, Parr's appetite was scanty for a man of his size; the reasons were obvious. Barton ate like a horse and complimented Limila on her cooking; it was one of his days to be contrary (though the food was good).
Next stop, he announced, was the dentist. No, come to think of it, first they would drop by and pick up Whosits;
Barton hadn't seen him for weeks and hadn't missed him, but the Freak would also benefit by a set of dentures, so that he wouldn't have to subsist on mushy gloop all his life. So what the hell . . .
The guards at the door of the unit housing Siewen, Whosits and the two Demu accepted Barton's authoriza-
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tion readily enough. Eeshta was pleased to see Barton; he expressed his own pleasure at seeing her. Wfaosits was something else again. He didn't want to go anywhere. ,, Barton and Parr took him out the hard way but not very;
Whosits was so flabby as to be wholly ineffectual.
The dentist was noticeably jolted by the looks of his patients, but he took Limila's and Siewen's dental-plate impressions with reasonable aplomb. Whosits made a problem of himself; he refused to open his mouth. Dr. Parr explained the purpose of the project, but Whosits paid no heed. Barton took over then, not gently. Whosits not only opened his mouth but then also kept it closed— on the second try—for the proper length of time to produce a usable impression. Meanwhile Parr was explaining how he was going to help Whosits look presentable once more in human society. He was working with a tough audience.
As soon as the hardened impression was removed, Whosits reared back and spoke words. Actual human words, the first Barton had ever heard from him.
"Nein; neini Ich bin Demul DEMU; Horen Sie?"
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Barton shook out his rusty knowledge of German and tried to talk with the creature, but that was all Whosits would say. "Oh, the hell with it," Barton said finally. "If this nut wants to stay a lobster, why argue with him?" Parr said nothing. He did not object when Barton dumped the Freak back at his own guarded quarters, before the rest of the group went on to Parr's office and improvised operating room.
(Later, through hush-hush channels, Whosits' finger-
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prints turned out to be those of one Emst Heimbach, missing from East Berlin for about five years. Barton suggested, "Why dont we dump him back where be belongs?" but Tarieton said. "Hell, if we did, they'd blame his condition on us." The old Cold War had softened into almostfree trade, considerable real cooperation and very little risk of hot war. Barton learned, but somehow the propaganda part continued as idiotic and irritating as ever.) . parr summoned a couple of nurses to take charge of Limila and Siewen for the preliminaries; Barton was about to become superfluous. He took Limila in his arms, pushed her hood back enough to kiss her forehead. "I'll
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-"see you m a few days," he said, **when I get back from Seattle." She nodded but said nothing. "Look now. I'd be around with you if I could; you know that. But Tarieton wants those test runs in a hurry and I'm tagged for it You'll be all right; Parr is good. And I'll see you, soon as I can."
"All right. Barton," she said, finally. "I hope then you can like what you see." She turned abruptly and followed a nurse out of the office, not looking back. Siewen and the other nurse trailed after.
Barton looked at Parr. "I know you'll do what you can.*'
"I'll try to do better than that. Barton. You know? The hardest thing to realize in 'this case—please don't take offense—is that I should be seeing her as a woman to restore. Forgive me, but I've been seeing a something to be turned into a woman."
Barton sighed, not angry. "Yes, Doctor; I know how it must be for you." They shook hands. "However it works out, be kind to her."
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Barton went home to be alone with himself and his memories. It wasn't fun. He skipped dinner and got drunk. Not too drunk; he went to bed at a reasonable hour. Alone, and missing Limila more than he would have thought possible.
Knowing that Tarieton, next morning, would be like a cat on a hot stove. Barton got up early. He breakfasted quickly and with his packed suitcase was at the ship a few minutes ahead of the other man. Three of the four student-pilots were there before him; the fourth arrived almost on Tarleton's heels.
Tarieton cut into the exchange of greetings. "All right,
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we're here. Let's get on board and stash our luggage." They did so quickly, and followed Barton into the control area.
The room normally seated two. Tarieton had had four more seats installed for training purposes. Even though these were small, bucket-type shells, the seating was cramped. But they all wedged in; no one complained. Well, they'd better not have, with Tarieton on edge as he
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was.
Barton explained the major controls. "I wont bother running you through the whole switch panel because ours are different, they tell me; our people left out a lot of things on here that we won't really be needing, so as to get into production sooner.
"The principles will be the same. Start out with all the small toggles off and your guidance lever here and gopedal here, both in neutral; then you apply power with this blue jobbie in the middle." He knew they'd heard the instructions before but it didn't hurt to tell them again, and at the same time reinforce his own knowledge. "All right, here's your outside viewscreen and here's your 'Drive on' switch," pointing them out, throwing them and remembering how in the Demu aircar he'd discovered them in reverse order. What a panic that had been. "Artificial gravity, indoors here, set to hold at one-G. Now we're hot to trot; here goes nothing." And he took the ship up.
He took it straight up at maximum lift, because he wanted them to realize immediately the kind of power they'd be handling. At an altitude of about one thousand
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kilometers he made the tightest right-angle turn the ship would manage, pointing out the rather incredible G-forces that, because'of the artificial gravity field, they were not feeling. Then he slowed to roughly orbital-drift speed, put the major controls to neutral, and clambered out of the pilot's seat.
"OK, I want each of you to play around with this can for a while, out here where it's safe. You first, Kranz." Kranz climbed gingerly into Barton's pilot chair; Barton squeezed into the empty one. "For now," Barton continued, "we work only with the two drive-control levers;
leave all the little toggles alone unless I tell you different. And don't use more than half power. Just play loose in this general volume of space. OK?"
Each man had about a half-hour of practice, mostly
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experimenting on his own with only an occasional suggestion from Barton. Kranz started cautiously and gradually built up his confidence. Slobodna, the next man, did the opposite, applying all his allowed half power immediately in violent maneuvers, losing orientation and
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scaring himself. But then, after a few minutes of more cautiously feeling out the controls, he too achieved a degree of mastery over them. The other two, Jones and Dupree, began with medium-power settings and modest acrobatics; each progressed to as proficient a handling of the craft as could be expected in so short a time. Barton was satisfied with the lot of them,
"OK, Dupree; that's fine," he said. "I might as well get back in the saddle now, and take us down. My gut says it must be nearly time for lunch."
"Just a minute." It was Tarleton.
"What's the problem? Aren't you hungry yet?"
"Damn it, Barton! Don't you think I want a turn at driving this kiddie car?"
Barton laughed; hell, he should have thought of that. "OK, Tarleton, she's all yours."
Tarleton was a model of caution and precision. He never applied the maximum-agreed power nor made violent rolls or turns. He returned the ship quite closely to
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his starting point and to drift speed before turning it over to Barton.
"Thanks, Barton. I just wanted to fly a spaceship once in my life. You realize that once the program is under way, an unqualified guy like me won't have a chance."
"Hell, you can fly any ship / have any say-so about, any time you want." Tarieton was silent; finally Barton realized why. He, Barton, probably wasn't going to have any say-so about these things much longer, is what it meant. Well, maybe. People had had that kind of attitude about Barton before. Like the Demu, for instance. Barton filed the whole bit for future reference. After all, it wasn't as though he'd failed to provide for the contingency.
"OK, gang," he said. "I'm going to haul her down like a real bat, so you can see how she hits air. Then 111 ease her back, just above SST traffic levels, and go in quiet from there." He chuckled. "It's going to be fun trying our own ship; from what I hear, it has considerably more legs on it than this baby has."
He took her down like a real bat indeed; his passen-
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gers, including Tarleton, were noticeably shaken. Barton chuckled to himself, thinking how they might have reacted to his first atmospheric entrance, when he'd guessed wrong and nearly joined the Submarine Service before he pulled out of his dive. He decided not to mention that occasion.
He flipped a jury-rigged switch for the special channel to Boeing Field; Control gave him the OK to drop in on a straight vertical. He made a good landing because the Demu shield allowed no other kind. He wondered if, later, everyone shouldn't learn to land without the shield, just in case.
Barton had heard that it always rained in Seattle, but the six of them stepped out to face a sunny day. Claebum, the Space Agency's liaison roan, apologized for the unusual heat wave—all of 80 degrees. After New Mexico it felt like a cool pleasant early-morning. In fact, the time was a little after noon; they had lunch at a nearby restaurant. Claeburn suggested the company cafeteria but Tarleton wanted a drink with his lunch, and insisted. Barton was damn glad; he wanted one too. He was appalled
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at the size of the luncheon check picked up by Claeburn. Inflation hadn't slowed down.
After a briefing so lengthy that the drinks had had plenty of time to wear off. Barton put the prototype. Earth's first starship, through its paces. It carried about 50 percent greater acceleration than''the Demu version, nearly as much advantage on tight turns', and an interlock that would not allow bard maneuvering to overload and blow the ship's internal gravity field. Barton hadn't known, and was surprised enough to say so, that such a danger existed on the Demu ship; apparently he had been wildly lucky not to exceed the limit. Especially, he thought, on his first reentry to Earth. He felt uncomfortable, having his ignorance exposed. He felt it put more chinks in his image . than he really needed.
The revised controls were no problem. There were about two-thirds as many toggles as in the Demu ship— larger, more widely spaced, and each clearly labeled. Claebum had run them through the list of functions, anyway; it couldn't hurt. Barton could see that pilot training was going to be a real snap, especially after the four trainees, Tarleton and even Claebum had given the new ship a workout. The procedure was like that of the morning tryouts, but faster and smoother. And more comfort-
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able: the seats weren't so crowded. Barton felt that they were definitely making progressOver dinner, just the two of them, Tarleton explained the Agency's plans. "Tomorrow and the next day, you take those four men up and wring them out on navigation, test procedures and trouble-shooting; stuff like that. Pilot practice is incidental at this stage, but they'll be getting it, anyway. Mainly, though, you're training the next generation of instructors."
"Jeez," Barton protested, "I don't know any more about testing and trouble-shooting than they do."
"But they think you do," Tarleton answered. "Here are the books; you and I can go over them tonight I've skimmed them; they're well put together, easy to follow. All you have to do is keep two jumps ahead of those four guys for the next few days. Then you come on back south in the Demu ship and they're on their own."
"But why me?" Barton was sincerely puzzled. "Why not the guys who wrote the books?"
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"Because you are the one man on Earth who has actually piloted an interstellar trip. I know and you know how much luck you needed, but you have no idea how much the simple fact means to the Agency. They think you're Superman. It's simpler to let them keep thinking so, because then when you pass your students as trained they'll figure some of it rubbed off. You see?"
Barton saw. He saw, moreover, how maybe it gave him a handle on something he wanted, something he was utterly damn well going to have.
"Tarleton," he said, "if • I'm all that important, how about letting me in on the Top-Hush? I mean, we're building ships and training pilots. What are we going to do with them?"
Tarletoo was quiet for a time. "All right, Barton,** he said finally. "I guess you deserve to know. Most of it, anyway.
"We're having forty ships built, all about the same as the one we flew today, but more advanced. You noticed ours is somewhat bigger than the Demu ship, to carry the more powerful drive. The hulls and loose hard-
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ware have been in production since the second week after you got home. I've put in the OK. to go ahead and standardize on the drive units as-is, based on our tests today;
the theory boys can incorporate later improvements into
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our second fleet, and so on. And what we're going to do should be obvious. We're going after the Demu." "We?" said Barton, very quietly.
"Well, not you or I personally, of course. After all—" "The hell you say!" Barton hadn't meant to put it like that, but there it was. "Me personally! Very definitely, me personally. Who the hell's fight do they think this is,
anyway?"
"Well, I know how you must feel, of course, but you can't really expect the Agency and the military to let an outsider into the act, can you?"
"I can," said Barton. "I can and I do. You think I can't?" Slowly, deliberately, he pushed the stack of train-
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ing books off the table; they landed on the floor in disarray. He looked Tarleton in the eyes, both of them suddenly quiet.
"You want me to pick those books up, Tarleton?"
After a while, Tarleton nodded slowly. Barton picked up the books, dusted them off, stacked them neatly. "All right. Barton, you've made your point. I'll do the best I
can for you."
"You'll get me one of those ships. In charge of it."
"I'll try."
"You'll do it." He leaned forward across the table. "Listen, Tarleton, I can do a lot more for you, than be some sort of lousy figurehead. You say we're going after the Demu. Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"That's stupid. You know how big they are? I don't either, for sure, but I do know a little, from what Limila learned. I told it, but maybe nobody paid attention.
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"They inhabit—that's inhabit—about a dozen planets. To our one. On top of that they have 'farm planets' with a few Demu supervising populations of ready-made Demu like Limila and Whosits—but of many races» not only humanoid. They have those poor bastards brainwashed into altering their own children to the Demu style of looks. Then they have research stations like the one I was at, the one that had never seen humanoids before. There were six ships at that station alone, until I stole one. Three of them hadn't been used for a while, by the looks of them, but they were there. And you're going after the Demu with a lousy forty ships?"
"What else can we do?"
"Unite and conquer, for Chrissakesi Limila's people,
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the Tilari, have star travel. All they don't have is the shield against the sleep gun, or any idea how to find the Demu. We can give them both."
"Well, yes," said Tarleton. "I'll put through a memo
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upstairs in the Agency, on that idea. You give me the location of the Tilari planets and—"
"Limila will give you that stuff when the expedition is in space, no sooner. Christ on a crutch, you think I trust a bunch of Agency wheels to keep the faith for you? No sale. I'll go ahead with this training jazz, on your word to go to bat for me. But the Agency gets the scoop on the Tilari—and how to find the other races they know who'll want to get into the act and could help a lot—you get all that when we're on our way, not before." He wasnt bluffing. He'd talked the matter over with Limila; she was in full agreement with him.
"It might work. Barton." Tarleton spoke slowly. "But how do you know the Agency couldn't get the information directly from Hishtoo?"
"If Limila doesn't feel like interpreting for you? How much do you trust Siewen's abilities any more? Even if Hishtoo just happened to be feeling cooperative, which I doubt. Think about it."
Tarleton, from the looks of him, did think about it "I think you've got us boxed. Barton. And you know something? I'm glad of it. Because as you say, it is your
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fight." Barton looked at him and felt he could trust the big man. He purely hoped so.
The training went about as planned. On Barton's fourth day at Seattle, after seeing Tarleton off to New Mexico by SST, he was riding supercargo observing one of his first four students instructing a new batch of trainees. Three days later he decided the program had become selfsustaining as scheduled, and packed his suitcase. He had lunch with Claeburn and the four original trainees, enjoying this goodbye scene a lot more than he had expected. About an hour later he lifted the Demu ship off for New Mexico.
Just for the hell of it he got clearance to go by way of Luna. He cruised slowly back and forth above the surface at eyeball range, seeing the manmade installations and the undisturbed areas that had thrilled him on TV in his younger days, when the first landings had been made. With a sigh for that younger self. Barton turned back to Earth.
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It took him a little time to locate New Mexico and get
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talked in, but eventually he found the proper spot and set the ship down. Tarleton had left the site for the day. Barton got a ride to his quarters. He called Parr and got no answer, so he had a shower before preparing a prepackaged dinner and eating it. The package was nationally advertised over tri-V and tasted like it, but Barton hardly noticed. He was too busy being lonesome.
He called Parr again; for a wonder be got him on the first try. He could. Parr told him, see Limila the next day. In fact, the timing was good; the bandages were to be removed tomorrow. Maybe she could use Barton's presence in support. Barton tried to ask detailed questions but was brushed off. "Come see for yourself," was bow Parr put it. Barton growled his thanks and hung up.
He was still restless; tomorrow was a long time away. There had been a day-old note in the mailbox: Arleta Fox was in urgent need of his company. Barton was in no hurry for that interview. He supposed he'd have to give the lady one more session of brainpicking at least, before he got the hell off Earth again. But the later the better. He was too close to making it, to take any more chances than he could help.
Now in the early evening, he decided to walk off his
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tensions, out in the clear air. He thought to look in on Eeshta, realizing that he hadn't had a real visit with her since the time she'd given him^he clue to Limila's plight. Limilal It was going to be a long night.
The guard was unfamiliar but recognized Barton's name. "Do you want to go in, sir?" he asked.
"See if she'd like to come out for a little walk," Barton said. "We'll be back before dark. It's OK with Tarleton." The guard nodded and went inside.
Sooner than Barton expected, the guard came back with Eeshta. She was wearing a small cap and a short sleeveless robe, and sandals. Looking more acclimated all the time. Barton thought. He was surprised at the glow of real pleasure be felt at seeing her. "Hello, Eeshta," he said. "How's it going with you?"
She Demu-smiled at him. "I am happier now. Barton." she said. They strolled westward into the after-sunset light. **I learn much about your people. They are so different. Not only from ours, but from each other. It is very new and very challenging, to try to understand. I try to tell Hishtoo, my egg-parent, but he does not want to hear. He
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says I am becoming an animal." She hissed—the equivalent, Barton knew, of a sigh. "Perhaps one day he will be wilting to team." Barton decided he wouldn't bet much of a bundle on that possibility.
"How's the Freak doing, these days?" he said.
"Heimbach? I do not know. They took him away several days ago. I have not seen him since." Barton was faintly surprised that Eeshta knew Whosits' real name.
"Who took him?" Not that Barton cared, particularly, but it was something to say, to keep her talking.
"Tie man Tarleton and others I do not know." Tarleton hadn't said anything . . . Well, what did it matter?
"What else are you learning, Eeshta? Anything you especially enjoy?"
"Oh. yes. Barton! Your music. It is so different from ours. Some of it, I am told, is out of my range of hearing. But it seems I hear parts you do not. I think if I stay
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here, music will be my study and work. I like it so very much."
Barton was no music buff himself, but he asked Eeshta about her favorite composers and performers. He didn't give a damn what they discussed; he simply wanted the young Demu to feel comfortable with him. He realized be might still be feeling guilt for having roughed her up so much at first acquaintance. But the way it fett to Barton, he liked the lad, was all.
As the conversation hit a lull, it struck him that Eeshta might not know what she and her little speechprosthesis had done, inadvertently, for Limila. So, as best he could, he tried to explain what had happened, what was being done.
"They make her as she was? It seems not to be possible. But so good, if true."
"Well, not exactly the way she was," Barton admitted, "but a lot closer. Some things, like the teeth, will be artificial. But for the most part we hope she'U look pretty much like the original model, or at least a close relative.
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"The doctor is doing some work on Siewen, too," he added. "What he can."
"Poor Siewen," Eeshta said. "Some things are not possible for him, too late. And Heimbach?"
"The Freak wouldn't have any part of it, not even teeth. I guess he likes eating mush all the time."
"I feel badly. Barton. For Heimbach, for Siewen and Umila, for all the dead ones where we made worse mis-
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takes. But now for Limila, and some for Siewen, I can feel better. For helping, even not knowing I helped."
"Well, you know now. Eeshta. And we're grateful to you, believe me."
"Of that, I can be glad."
The short twilight was ending. Barton took Eeshta's hand; they jogged back toward her quarters, laughing as they ran out of breath from the unaccustomed exercise. At least Barton was laughing; Eeshta's mouth was doing
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something he couldn't make out in the dim light, but he felt she shared his mood. Then they were home.
Her home, at least, such as it was. He started to say goodnight but Eeshta spoke first. "Barton," she said, "soon you go seeking the Demu, my people? I have heard it. It is supposed to be secret from me. But many do not bplieve I understand your speech. They speak where I hear, though they should not."
Barton nodded. "Yes, we have to visit the Demu at home. You can see that." "I must go with you."
"You want to go home? Yes; sure you would. But this trip won't be too safe, you know. You'd better wait
awhile.'*
"No, now. Barton," said Eeshta. "I know; you will fight. With the ships. You must. Demu will not talk with what they think animals. You will force them. But I must be there, when first there is talk."
Barton didn't argue; she was right. But would Tarleton
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agree?
"I'll see what I can do, Eeshta." His arms acted without his volition. It was only after Eeshta had entered her quarters, and he was walking away toward his own, that Barton thought, "Well, I'll be go to hell if I didn't hug that hard-shelled little crittur!" Somehow it didn't bother him any.
Barton barged into his own quarters, shucked his shirt and shoes, and poured himself a hefty slug of bourbon. He looked, and carefully poured half of it back into the bottle. He sat, and sipped, and thought a lot. He went to^ bed early, and slept much better than be had expected.^
Dr. Parr the next morning, tall, languid and about to get a flat nose if he didn't take Barton off the book pretty soon, was in no hurry. "The patients will be with us
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shortly," he said. "Meanwhile let me explain some of the problems." Yeh, let me tell you what the problem is.
The trouble was that Pan- told it in medicalese, which
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might as well have been Greek. Finally Barton had had it. "Goddammit, Doc! Did it work, or not?*'
"See for yourself." Parr pushed a button on his desk;
shortly, three wheelcbair patients were brought in. Three?
AU were wearing loose hospital-type bathrobes. Two were bald; the third had a towel around its head, bandages covering its face, and five toes on each foot. That one had to"be Limila, but Barton knew Parr was going to run the show his own way. So he took a deep breath, and
hoped for more patience than he could reasonably expect to have on tap.
The first chair carried a tall skinny guy who didn't look
especially familiar. A little, maybe, but not much. "Say
hello to Mr. Barton," said Parr.
"Hello, Barton. I am Siewen; remember?" It wasn't, really, but there were lips and a nose, and
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dentures that beat the Demu accent The ears. Barton
supposed, were plastic. But what the hell.
"Hello, Doktor Siewen," Barton said. "How do you feel?" Feeling very unrealistic, himself. How long could he keep up this charade? How long could Limila?
"Much better, thank you," said Siewen. "It is good to be able to chew food again. And to pronounce correctly." Well, good on you. Buster, Barton thought, turning to the second wheelchair. The man was no one Barton remembered.
"Who's this?" he asked Parr.
"Heimbach, of course."
"I thought be wouldn't play ball"
"Mr. Tarieton requisitioned him for tests of the Demu shield versus the sleep gun. After the third test, Herr Heimbach rediscovered the desire to be human rather than Demu." Dr. Parr grinned. "As it happens, I was able to improve things somewhat, that are not visible through the bathrobe." Barton thought he should probably feel
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glad for Heimbach, but he couldn't seem to find time for it.
He shook his bead, hard. The formal touch, he supposed, was required.
'
"That's fine. Doctor," he said. "It has been interesting seeing your success with Doktor Siewen and Herr Heimbach. May we excuse them now, please?"
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Parr nodded. The two were wheeled out. Barton was left alone with Dr. Parr and Limila. He walked over to her, and for the first time she looked up at him. Then she stood, and was in Barton's arms. For a moment they only held each other. Then, unsatisfactorily through the gap in the bandages, he kissed her, very gently.
The rest of it still took a while. Dr. Parr fussed about the unprofessional aspects of the reunion until Barton told him, not politely, to get on with it. Then the bandages came off, along with the towel. Not the robe, though.
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The nose and lips were not quite the originals; Barton had known better than to expect perfection, though the nose was very close to it. But below the bare scalp and the fake brows and lashes was a human face. Barton found it comely and knew he could find it lovely, given the chance. The few hairline scars had already begun to fade; they would not be noticeable. He looked at Limila's new lips and was thankful for the existence of Dr. Parr, for they were close to what he had remembered. Only a little shorter.
Limila wasn't happy with the dentures; they were comfortable enough, and effective, but she wanted her full forty teeth, not merely the human twenty-eight. But she was glad to have the little ridge, so that she no longer talked like a comic drunk; Barton figured she'd settle for the rest of it eventually. He noticed that she hadn't yet bothered with simulated naits on toes or fingers, though recesses had been made for them."
The soft plastic ear-cups, part plug-in an/I part glue-on, were so realistic that Barton first thought they were reaL Then he noticed they were cooler to the touch than real ears. Well, he could live with them if she could.
He wasn't going to ask about anything under the bath-
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robe, but she told him anyway. No breasts; from a quick study of dress styles she was resigned to wearing Earthtype falsies in company, but bedammt if she'd have them implanted permanently on her Tilari body. All right . . .
She confessed that she had allowed Parr to restore the appearance of external genitals, as well as the navel. "When I found it really didn't hurt," she said, "it might as well be as much the way you would like, as could be done." •
Barton hugged and kissed her a lot longer than Pair appreciated, before he allowed the doctor to throw him out. He went home with more of a load off bis mind than
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he had expected, and hardly noticed what his prepackaged lunch didn't taste like.
In the afternoon he took a jeep and went shopping in the nearest medium-sized town, about eighty kilometers to the southwest. He had dinner there, and drove back in the evening. That night he slept without chemical aids of any kind.
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The next morning, up early, it took Barton so long to reach Dr. Parr's office, by phone, that he could have walked there and saved time. He was told that he could not see Limila again immediately; Parr was running final postoperative checks on her. But, if be would come over around three in the afternoon, Parr finally got across through Barton's protests, he could probably bring Limila home. If the tests turned out all right Barton thanked him sheepishly and hung up.
He decided to visit the ship; he had nothing else he wanted to do. As be started out the door, the phone rang. It was Dr. Fox.
"I'd like to see you this morning, Mr. Barton.**
"Well, I was just going out to the ship."
"I spoke to Mr. Tarleton, there, and he tells me he wont be needing you today. So why don't you come here instead? Nine o'clock?" He had to agree, he guessed, so he did.
Seated across the desk from Arleta Pox, Barton wondered at the tenacity with which this small woman dug
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for the worms in the undersoil of his mind. She was smiling but he didn't trust it.
After the usual perfunctory chatter, she said, "I understand that Dr. Parr's corrective surgery on your companions has been remarkably successful."
Barton nodded.
**Do you suppose the woman—Limila?—might consent to taking a few evaluative tests now?" Limila had refused anything of the sort, earlier, and the Agency (meaning Tarleton) didn't see that it had any right or authority to try to coerce her.
"I dont know; I'll ask her, if you like. But what do you expect to learn that she hasn't already toy the biological and cultural teams?"
^CQ£?ll4D
"Why, a million things! She's the first persfiET-we've met of a whole new race. If we're going to have contact with them, and I assume we are, we need to know some-
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thing of what they are like psychologically, as individuals."
"Do you think she'll be typical, after what she's been through?" Then he could have kicked himself. Why remind the doctor that Barton had been through a few atypical experiences himself?
"Given a little time to stabilize, now that her appearance has been restored, I think she can give us a valid picture of what the Tilari are like. I wish she had been willing to cooperate before; the comparison would be very informative. Well, at least I can extrapolate after retesting Siewen and Heimbach."
"You've tested them?" He shook his head incredulously. "What did you find out?" Yes, lady, let's talk about somebody else, everybody else. Anybody but Barton.
"Doktor Siewen, as you probably know, seems to be devoid of normal motivations. It remains to be seen whether his change in appearance will reactivate him to any significant extent. I had little time to work with Heimbach between his reversion to human speech and the beginning of the surgery by Dr. Parr; he is a very con-
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fused man. I realize that he was semi-amnesiac for a time from the results of the so-called, sleep gun, but my feeling is that Heimbach has a very weak ego." She paused. "Quite different from yourself, for instance, Mr. Barton.
Quite, quite different."
"Oh, hey. Doctor," Barton stammered. "Am I all that much of an egomaniac, in your book?" Watch it. Barton;
watch it!
"A strong ego is not the same thing as egotism, Mr. Barton. I mean that unlike Heimbach you have a strong, even a fierce sense of your own individuality; it is of central importance to you. And you have a very powerful .will to survive."
"That's what the tests say?" So he hadn't fooled her much, after all.
"I didn't need the tests to tell me that; your report of the eight years with the Demu was enough. The tests, in fact, have been unsatisfactory because they dc not show me the man who could do what you obviously did."
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Barton felt that he was in over his head. "Well, we all know a person can-do more than he thinks he can, when he has to. Maybe it's just that I was under a lot of stress
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there, and back home here I can let down and relax." Like hell he could!
"Possibly. Another thought is that due to repeated exposure to the Demu sleep gun you still may have been partly amnesiac when you first took the personality tests."
"But I took the IQ tests at the same time; just before, actually. And you said they read about the same as what was already on file for me."
"Well, as 1 say, I'm not sure yet. So that is why I'd like you to retake the personality test series now, Mr. Barton, if you would."
When in doubt, stall! "I really wouldn't have time for all that today. Doctor. Early this afternoon I'm supposed
to pick Limila up at Dr. Parr's; he thinks she can come
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borne now."
"I didn't mean the entire series, Mr. Barton," she said. "A few key sections; a couple of hours at most. And it's only nine-thirty ..."
He was hooked. He knew he couldn't get away with hallucinating bis younger self again to answer all the questions; for one thing it would look fishy if he asked for full privacy a second time. Well, maybe he could hallucinate a little of it now and then, without her noticing. Throw a modicum of confusion into the works. Unless she were more devious than he suspected—and he suspected one hell of a lot, where Arleta Pox was concerned —by now he had her fooled into thinking he was sane, safe to be at large. Ail he needed to do, probably, was soft-pedal himself on the parts he couldn't hallucinate.
She brought out the test forms—Form B, so his answers from last time would have done him no good even if he could have remembered them—and he sat down. He wasn't directly under her eagle eye, but she could look him over any time she wished, while he couldn't look to
see if she were looking without being conspicuous about
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it
He did the first few questions straight, then tried to dredge the younger Barton up to answer the next few. He couldn't do it. Whether it was her presence or whether he'd simply lost the knack, he didn't know. He hadn't practiced self-hypnosis since his escape, maybe that was the answer. But one way or another, he was stuck with
his present self and its attitudes, to cope with a lot of tricky questions.
All right; the hell with it. Tarleton needed the help of 10^
the Tilari and other races. He couldnt get it without Limila's cooperation; in effect, that meant Barton's. Even if this lady does catch me out, he thought, she still works for Tarleton. He kept telling himself that, trying to believe it
Finally he was done. Sweat from his armpits ran down his sides. He took the finished sheets to Arleta Fox, who did not look, up until he laid the papers before her.
"All completed, Mr. Barton?"
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"Best I can do. Doctor."
She pressed a button: a girl came in to take the test sheets. Presumably for scoring; no reason the doc should do al! that routine stuff. The girl had gone before Barton realized he hadn't noticed what she looked like—whether she was pretty or not. That wasn't like him.
"Would you like a cup of coffee before you go, Mr. Barton? 1 would have offered you some before, but I didn't want to interrupt your concentration."
"Yeh, sure; thanks." He -sat across from her. He didn't want coffee; he wanted a drink, and to get out of here. But best to play along, just now.
The girl returned, bringing coffee- This time Barton noticed that she was slim and pretty, with blond hair cut considerably shorter than be would have preferred. Well, at least she could grow it if she wanted to, he thought with a pang, thinking how nice it would be if Limila had the same option.
"Do you have any idea when the expedition is leav-
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ing, Mr. Barton?"
Barton looked at her. Not the old security-leak ploy, for Cbrissakes!
"Oh, we all know about it. But you don't have to tell me anything Mr. Tarleton told you not to. I merely wanted to get some idea of when I should cut off research and turn in my reports. They always tell me, officially, about twenty-four hours ahead of deadline. Then I don't get any sleep for a while until the reports are completed."
"Always?"
"I do research for a lot of things, Mr. Barton. This does happen to be the first interstellar expedition I've preppcd for; yes." It was a wry smile, the one she gave him then.
"I don't really know. Doctor," he said. "I was up at Seattle for a week, got back yesterday afternoon. No;
day before, it was. Anyway, I haven't seen Tarleton since
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he left Seattle, and the last I beard there was no firm date set. Or if there was, he didn't tell me."
"You dont need to sound so defensive, Mr. Barton;
I believe you. More coffee?"
"No, thanks; I'd better be going. Thanks, though." He got up, they said goodbyes and he left. He wished that either he didnt feel so much like liking Arleta Fox or that he had less cause to be wary of her. His feeling for her was not sexual. Oh, he considered her attractive enough;
Barton had no prejudice against small sturdy women. But what grabbed him about her was the compact tidy bulldog mind that the fierce little jaw so strongly implied. Too bad it made her such a danger to him.
Barton didn't feel like heating another frozen lunch, to eat alone. He got a jeep from the motor pool and drove out to the ship area. He caught Tarietoo and Kreugel on their way to the new cafeteria. It had been established in a big hurry when Tarleton got tired of bringing his own lunch in a paper bag.
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"Wait up for another hungry man, will you?" Barton called, and they did.
Inside, they went through the line and soon were sitting with laden trays. Barton didn't talk much. He was thinking of how to ask for what he wanted. Tarleton was telling Kreugel that the first ship of the Earth-built fleet would be here for testing tomorrow or the next day.
Kreugel would be installing the central-axis laser weaponry.
Then Tarleton noticed Barton's silence. "What are you chewing on, over there?"
"Beef Stroganoff, it says on the menu. And a couple of questions.'*
"I thought the Strogaooff was pretty good, myself. Shoot the questions."
"OK," said Barton. "First, do you have any kind of proposed takeoff date yet?"
"For the fleet? Sure."
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"Do I qualify to know it?"
"You're specifically authorized, I'm happy to say. Just four weeks from now, Saturday the 12th, with a possible week's slippage. OK?"
"That's pretty fast, isn't it?"
"Things get done fast on crash-priority," Tarleton said. "I haven't been just standing around here cracking whips," Barton. As soon as any item, any part of the ships is
106
cleared for production, I start it through the line. For instance, a lot of the drive components were firm several weeks ago. I goofed on a couple and had to have them done over again when new improvements were suggested, but the waste was minor for a job of. this magnitude. Before I left Seattle I put the go-ahead on the last remaining components. Production and testing is seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day: overtime and bonuses for the working troops all the way down the line. My guess is, two-to-one we don't need that extra week.
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OK?"
"Damn good, Tarleton. You really know how to run a railroad." He hesitated. "Now I want to ask a favor."
"Ask ahead," said Tarleton. "You have a couple coming, assuming they're reasonable."
"OK. I expect you want Limila to check over whatever your amateur translators have been getting from Hishtoo lately. And maybe you'd like me to sit in at first while? your boys check out our first production-line ship. Right?"
"Yes," Tarleton agreed, "I did have those things in mind. So what's the favor?"
"Limila comes home this afternoon, I think," Barton said. "She and I can work with you tomorrow and the next day, no sweat—one or two more if you need it. But then—Tarleton, I want to take her on vacation. Show her the country; be a couple of tourists. Get lost from here —see the sights and meer' the people. She needs it, you know, if she's going to be able" to give her people any idea of what we're really like. I mean, a project site doesn't give much of a true picture, does it?**
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Tarleton was silent for a moment. Barton could sense the wheels going around, in that brain he had learned to respect more than a little. "Dammit, Barton," he said finally, *'you're right. I should have thought of that. I guess I'm too wound up in production schedules. Fair enough; you and Limila bit here bright and early tomorrow, and I won't keep you a day longer'than I have to. You'd better see the Finance Office today if you can, and put in for expense money for your tour. Those people cant put a stamp on a letter in less than forty-eight hours." Barton grinned; he knew about that.
Kreugel hadn't said much but he shook hands and said "Good luck" when Barton stood up to go. "Remind me to show you how our zap-gun works when you get back."
"Yeh, I want to aee that. OK, be seeing y'alL"
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Barton did stop at the Finance Office on his way home;
he had plenty of time. A Mr. Will Groundley was querulous and resentful that Barton should want anything outside the routine. Barton's patience lasted quick, as the
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saying goes.
"Look," be said, "call Tarleton. He'll tell you yes or no, and tfaen you do it or you don't. But don't quote me any more goddam regulations, Groundley. We both know you can find something in your books to let you do anything you want, or keep you from doing anything you don't want. So get off the pot. Either you have the money here for me tomorrow, or Tarleton will find me somebody who wilL"
He didn't wait for an answer; one more word might have exceeded the limits of his control. He walked out and went home. For a change there were no notes in his mailbox. That was nice.
Before heading for Dr. Parr's, Barton unwrapped the results of his yesterday's shopping trip. Jeez, he hoped Linula would like them. He ran his fingers through the one he liked best...
Parr was not as infuriatingly languid as usual He seemed embarrassed, instead. "Good afternoon, Mr. Barton," he said, "I'm happy to tell you that Limila checked out iOO percent; I can discharge -her unconditionally. She'll be with us in a few minutes." Parr
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smiled; it took him a while to do it. "Would you like some coffee while we wait?" Might as well; Barton did fais nod. A young orderly brought coffee; they sipped it, bla-bla-ing politely. I was a bla-bia for the Space Agency, Barton thought
Then Limila came in, carrying a small suitcase. She wore a sort of turban with earrings pendant from her plastic lobes, a loose-fitting short chemise with contours that indicated Earth-positioned falsies, and half-calf suede boots. It wasn't the greatest ensemble Barton had ever seen in his life. but she moved well in it and hxs heart sang.
"I. can come home now, Barton," she said, "but first I must thank Dr. Parr for what he has done." She turned to Parr. "Doctor," she began, but choked on it. She tried once more. "Doctor. You have made me a person who wants to live, again."
Parr wasn't used to raw emotion; Barton saw him 108
trying not to react to it. Barton took him off the hook; he pulled out one of the wigs from his shopping trip.
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"Here, Limila,'* he said, "take that thing off your head for a minute, and try this on."
The hair was long, black and glossy; there was a lot of it. The forehead was in the high range for Earth, but of course nowhere near the over-the-ears Tilaran hairline.
And Limila didn't like it at all. "Bartoni This is not me. This is one of your women. I do not have hair growing so far forward. You must remember that?"
"It's the highest-foreheaded wig I could find. And it looks good on you."
"Nol I am Tilari!" She tore it away, threw it against
the wall.
Barton had had enough. He caught her by the shoulders, taking great care not to grip her as hard as his impulse demanded,
"Now look!" be said. "You are on Earth, not on Tilara. You're wearing plastic Earth tit*, aren't you?" She looked at him, blankly.
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•tit*?"
"Breasts, dammiti" Barton relaxed his grip. Limila
nodded slowly.
"All right," he continued. "So while you're here you wear the local-style scalp fixtures, too. So that you can mix with people without them staring at you all the time. When we get to Tilara you can do it your way. In fact I'll get a special wig made for you; as soon as I can.
"But meanwhile, Limila," Barton said in a harsher tone than he intended, "you pick that wig up and dust it off and put it on your head, and we will go home."
Nobody said anything. Limila followed Barton's instructions. The wig looked a little mussed, but not badly. Dr. Parr wore a pained expression, as if he desperately needed to visit the toilet but was too polite to say so,
He looked even more as though he'd. never make it when Limila went to him and kissed him strongly, before letting Barton lead her away.
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In the Jeep, Barton couldn't think of anything to say;
he was too taken with Limila's new appearance as seen in his peripheral vision. He was embarrassed to look at her directly too much or too often. In fact, he was just plain embarrassed, a feeling that was strange to him. He was glad when they reached their quarters and the ride was over.
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He parked the jeep and walked with Limila into the house. Then he asked her.
"The doc's a pretty good guy, huh? Naturally you're grateful to him."
"Oh, of course," she said. "And I had not made love • for so long, either."
Before or after the bandages came off? Barton didn't ask; any question would be the wrong one. Tilara was not Earth, he told himself. But now he saw why Dr. Parr had been so uncharacteristically embarrassed.
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Umila was happy, bubbling. She found things Barton hadn't known were in the freezer, and prepared the best dinner he'd had in a long while. She showed him, from the suitcase, two more dresses. Dr. Parr's nurse had helped her order them. She drank with him, bathed with him, and eventually went to bed with him.
First, though, she asked, "Barton, do you want me to wear the wig to bed?" She had it in her hand.
"Suit yourself," he said. "Whatever you want."
"Without it I do not repel you?"
"Hell no!" said Barton. "Look, Limila: one time I was going with a girl who did fashion modeling work. She was quite a doll—long blond hair and a face like an angel with a body to match. One night I went to pick her up for a date, and damned if she wasn't shaved as bald as you are right now. This nut of a fashion designer bad her do it, to get some publicity for one of his shows.
''Well, it startled the hell out of me. She wore a wig on our date, of course, but she took it off for bed because she didn't want it mussed up. At first it was odd as hell
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seeing her with no hair, but after a while I took it for granted; Jt was still her, wasn't it?" He chuckled. "In fact it looked better on her than the crew-cut stage when she grew it out again."
"But I thought that' was part of why you couldn't . . ."
Barton shook his head. "No, Limila; that wasn't it. It was what they had done to your face. I'm sorry I could never see past that, but I couldn't."
"Do you like my face now?" she asked. "It is not as before, really."
"I like it," he said. "It's not exactly as I remember you;
no. But it's close enough that it could be, almost It is you, Limila.
"Limila!" he whispered against her cheek, and that
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was enough talk. Barton didn't get as much sleep that night as he was used to, but he didn't miss it.
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Before he went to sleep, it struck him that this was the first" sex of any kind that he'd had since leaving the Demu research station. He had not been able to bring himself to love the Demu-ized Limila, and yet her presence, her acousing presence, had inhibited him from seeking other women. Well, how about thati Until freed from it, he'd had no idea how heavy upon him had been the burden of Limila's disfigurement. He sighed, yawned, and drowsed off into relaxed slumber.
Limila was nervous, next morning. "At the ship. Barton, what will they think? I am all new. Almost I want to
hide, to wear the veil."
Barton laughed, then sobered. "Don't worry about a
thing. They'll stare, sure. Why not? You're worth looking
at, you know."
"And before, I was not."
Barton went to her. "I'm sorry. It's just that now you're you again." Then she smiled, and it was all right,
'
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She took as much time choosing between three dresses as if they had been thirty, but finally chose a white smock. Carefully she donned and brushed the wig, applied tinted polish to the glue-on fingernails she was wearing for the first time. Barton could see that they were not going to be "bright and early*' as Tarleton had
specified, but he controlled his impatience.
Eventually they were ready to leave. Barton drove faster than usual and made up some of the time; they were about ten minutes late. Tarleton was waiting, pacing back and forth alongside his car.
"Well, there you are!" he said. "I've been—" Then he saw Limila, and stopped. "Great day in the morningi" He reddened. "I mean, uh—how do you feel, Limila?"
"Like a person, like myself again. It is not exact, no. And much you see is artificial. But I see me in a mirror and want to be alive, not dead. For that I thank you who authorized that it could happen, as well as Barton and Dr. Parr." She went to him; before he knew what was happening she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him soundly. "You see? I do thank you."
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"You're—you're certainly welcome." He was redder than ever. "Look, are we going to stand around out here all day? We've got work to do."
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Inside were only Hishtoo and a guard. Doktor Siewen was still under Parr's care; old flesh heals slowly. The guard was new; to him, Limila was a pretty woman, not a phenomenon. Hishtoo's response was something else; he came forward, stared at her closely and burst into outraged-sounding babble.
Limila laughed. Tarleton looked at her in wonder. Obviously, Barton thought, he'd never heard her laugh before. It did make a nice change of pace.
"He is furious with me," she said. "He says he found me worthy to be Demu, had me made Demu with great effort. Now I waste it and choose to be animal again. He scrapes his hands clean of me."
"He's breaking my heart," said Barton- "I weep big tears."
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'Tell him," said Tarleton, "to can the clatter. There's work to do. And that goes for us, too." So they got down to the laborious business of asking questions, of crosschecking the answers they could not trust, against previous results. Hishtoo lied about half the time but his memory was not perfect; he could be caught in inconsistencies. These weren't thrown back at him; that wasn't the idea. But by careful checking, the facts slowly emerged. It was a tedious process, but it was the only game in town. Eeshta, unfortunately, had no technical training.
Barton spent only a short time with them; his main business was with Kreugel, and the ship.
Barton and Limila worked hard for Tarleton that day, the next and part of a third, before his requirements were met. At lunch that day he told them they were cleared to go touring, vacationing.
"Fine business," said Barton. "Is the 12th still on for takedffT*
"Looks like it," Tarleton said. "Why don't you figure on getting back here by the 10th? In time to check with me
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and maybe confer a little, that day?"
"Fine by me. Look, would you run through the money thing again?"
The government had reimbursed Barton, by act of Congress, for the value of his lost estate. In fairness he should have received the amount as of the time he had been declared legally dead. But some deskbound nitpicker, by dint of an obscure regulation, had managed to fob him off with the lesser sum that had existed at the
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time of his disappearance, before the vogue for his paintings. When he heard, Barton said a few four-letter words and shrugged it off. He'd long since forgotten his earlier idea of soaking the government a real bundle for
the Demu ship.
He was on an adequate though not lavish salary, and
there was provision for expenses when he was off the project site and out into the world; that part had been
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explained to him earlier, but he'd been preoccupied with other matters and hadn't paid much attention. On the Seattle trip. accommodations had been provided; Barton bad spent nothing but a little pocket money. So Tarleton
patiently went over it again.
"Your expense-account setup is a modification of the old per-diem system. You draw a flat $200 a day ordinarily, Any week your expenses run over $1,400 you . either swallow the loss or turn in complete receipts if you want to pick up the difference. Up to you. If you're planning to hit any really plush resorts I advise you to collect the receipts. I've put in a special voucher for Limila to get $100 a day. Previously she's been on the books as a . temporary ward of the government. You can draw the full advance at the Finance Office this afternoon."
He grinned. "I heard about Groundley trying to give you the runaround yesterday. That was one too many;
he's been a nuisance before, and I'd been looking for an excuse to fix his wagon. He's been reassigned to the filing section, so if they can't find your file you'll know why."
Barton and Limila thanked Tarleton, shook hands
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with him and Kreugel and went home, with a noproblems stopover at the Finance Office. Barton sincerely appreciated Groundley's absence ...
They made love, packed luggage. Barton exchanged , the motor-pool jeep for the rental car he bad arranged to have delivered, and they were off and away. Limila was wearing the shortest of the three wigs Barton had bought. It was a short-cut, smooth-cap effect. All were black; Barton couldn't imagine her any other way. It remained to be seen whether she would have a different
• idea, : She didn't seem to have, when they reached the town
and shop where Barton had made his earlier purchases. Mrs. Aranson, the owner, was startled when Barton removed LimUa's wig. He borrowed a piece of chalk and drew the Tilaran hairline on her scalp, correcting it
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•i'
to her eventual satisfaction. Mrs, Aranson made sketches,
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took careful measurements and jotted them on the paper.
::;
"Black and long, like the longest of the three I bought the other day," Barton specified, "And send it here." He gave the lady their address at the project. "How soon do you suppose we could have it? I'll pay extra for speed, because after the 10th of next month is too late."
"There will be no difficulty meeting that date, and no need for extra payment. But with these contours—rather unusual, you must admit—I'll have to design the piece to be held by adhesive at front and back. Will that ':
method be satisfactory?" Limila 'nodded; she seemed "' totally unruffled. Mrs. Aranson obviously wanted to ask .•& more questions, but could find no way to do so without ^ breaching her calm professional courtesy,
•a'
Barton took her off the hook. "The role in question," ^. he said, not lying, really, "is that of a lady of an alien ^ race, from another planet." Mrs. Aranson smiled. These 1| actors and actresses; they'd do anything!
Back outside, Limila was in a sunny mood. "Thank '". you. Barton. Now when we come to Tilara I will have ^ other teeth made, also, with the full forty." She looked at
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him, put her hand on his arm. "But if you like me better as an Earthwoman, then when we are alone I can wear Earth teeth and Earth hair. And Earth tils'" Barton broke up laughing.
"Honey, you wear just any little ol' thing you damn :
please! Or not..."
-,;'
His comment reminded Limila that her wardrobe left something to be desired in the matter of quantity. She ^ shopped rapidly, but it was an hour later when Barton ^ paid the clerk and they were ready to drive on.
They had gone about fifty kilometers further across the high desert plateau when Barton realized he'd forgotten to say goodbye to Eeshta, or to put it to Tarleton that she should accompany the expedition. He made a mental note.
They stopped for the night fairly early. Barton spotted an attractive motel, shortly after they left their narrow two-lane road for an Interstate freeway. After quick showers, they beaded for the motet's restaurant.
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"We have twenty-two days free and clear," Barton told Limila over dinner, "not counting today or the day we're supposed to get back. Suppose I pick up some maps at the service station. I can tell you what kinds of
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country we have around here in various directions, and you decide what you'd most like to see."
"That would be nice. Barton," she said, "Can we be among some of your forests, and mountains? And see the ocean?"
./
"I wouldn't be surprised. Would you like a liqueur with your coffee?" She would. Then they returned to their room, passing the motel pooL In the room, Limila sighed.
"Anything wrong?" Barton asked.
"I would so much like to swim," she said- "I have not swum since Tilara." He started to say go right ahead, and then saw what the problem was. Limila's padded bra wasn't made to fool anyone, under the current styles of swimsuits. Not that many of the swimmers had been
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wearing suits.
"Excuse me a minute," he said, and went to the manager's office. He noted on the way that the poolside sign quoted a ten-o'clock closing time, and that no one could see into the pool area if the gates were closed. He estimated that by ten it would be getting chilly; they were still in plateau country.
For money in hand the manager was quite willing to close the pool two hours early and turn the gate key over to Barton for the rest of the evening. The expression on Limila's face when he told her (he didn't mention the cost) made it well worth wnile.
Waiting, Barton put his mental note about Eeshta into written form and mailed it off to Tarleton. Then he and Limila swam nude together until the chill chased them indoors, though they'd tried a little mutual warmth in the water. It was fun, but more under the heading of pleasurable gymnastics than true passion.
Three weeks together. Forests and mountains and the ocean; yes. Motels and hotels and ethnic restaurants and miniature $5 hamburgers at drive-ins. New Mexico,
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Arizona, California, a brief journey into Mexico. All the way up the California coast and further to Oregon and Washington. A quick visit to Canada. East into thf Rockies, and then south again, back toward the project Love in the morning, in the afternoon before dinner, and again late at night; nearly every day was like that. Barton knew he was forty but he felt more like twenty. The;
spent their three weeks' expense money in the first twc and forgot to keep receipts; what the hell. Barton's
115
checkbook had his "estate" and accumulated salary to draw on. And once he got off Earth again, he had no idea whether he could or would ever come back. Meanwhile he was having the best three weeks he could remember, eves.
Limila wasn't complaining, either. She liked what she saw of Earth, its people and its scenery. Some things must have been greatly different from Tilaran ways; they seemed to puzzle her mightily. Barton tried to explain;
she appeared satisfied, usually, with his attempts. Occasionally he asked her about equivalent TUaran cus-
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toms, but she shook her head. "You must see; I could not tell you so that you would know." OK; he'd settle for that.
Barton was surprised that no one seemed to notice that Umila's hands were each short a finger by Earth standards. He watched her a lot, the second and third day, and finally saw what she was doing. She had a way of using the fewest fingers possible when eating, say;
she'd tuck one or two under, out of sight. Barton didn't ask whether the action was deliberate or unconscious; it worked, didn't it? Barton was all for anything that worked; he always had been. He decided that Parr's cartilage graft, to eliminate the jog at the wrist, also helped conceal the difference.
The first week their free time had stretched endlessly ahead; the second week he put the deadline out of his mind; during the third it rushed upon him like a juggernaut. He ignored it as much as he could. But the night they stopped at a little town in southern Colorado, he was right on schedule. They would reach the project site on the afternoon of Thursday, the 10th, as Tarleton had requested. Part of Barton's mind was damned good
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at keeping schedules, he decided, even when he didn't want to.
After dinner Barton took the car down the street, to replenish its fuel cells. When he got back, Limila had maps spread across her bed. She looked up at him. "I have been looking to see all the places we have been. May I keep these maps, please?"
"Sure; of course. Whatever you want. Why?"
"You have a lovely world. Barton. I would like these to remember it."
"Oh belli" he said. "I should have been taking color pies; we could have, easily enough. I didn't think of it.
116
Hey, look: I can order up a bunch of tourist slides for you."
"For roe, no need. Barton. TUarans have full visual recall; we use photographs only to transmit information to one who has not seen personally. Some pictures to
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show other Tilarans would be nice, yes. I use the maps merely to focus memory on a given sight," Barton made a note to get the pies, anyway.
"Barton?"
"Yes?"
"I have liked Earth; it has been good to me. I wonder if you will like Tilara. It is beautiful, too, but differently. And our ways are very different, you know." Barton didn't know much of anything, be felt, but he'd long since done a lot of guessing.
It was their last night of freedom, of total privacy. Nostalgia for what they had had together made it sweet. Just before sleep they held each other gently. Limila' cried and Barton wanted to, and both knew why. For
now it was over.
/
It was a long drive next day but Barton pushed the car, driving faster than he usually did. They arrived at
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the project early m the afternoon. The mailbox had its quota of messages: Dr. Fox wanted to see Barton; Dr. Parr wanted to see Limila for final routine checkups;
Tarleton wanted to see both of them. Somebody was obviously going to have to take'seconds.-
There was also a box from the wig shop. Limila set it
aside, for the time being.
They were unpacking. "Fox can wait," said Barton. "In fact I'd like to dodge her completely, if I could get away with it Tell you what; let's run over to see Parr. I'll wait; it shouldn't take long. Then we can go and chin
with Tarleton."
"No," Limila said, "you drop me at Dr. Parr's and go meet with Tarleton." Barton started to ask a question, but didn't. A special goodbye for lucky Dr. Parr. Well» dammit, the man had earned anything she wanted to give him. And Limila was not of Earth, If that's what she wanted, so be it.
,"OK," he said, "I understand."
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"Barton," she said, and kissed him. They didn't gel away just then, after alL
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So he caught Tarletoo at the midaftemoon coffee break. "Nice trip?"
"Great, Tarleton. Thanks for the vacation; I needed it. Now how do we stand?"
"I hope you're not superstitious. Barton, We've had to allow one day of slippage; Up-Day is Sunday the 13th. It was two days for a while but we caught up one of them."
"Will all the ships come here first? I see only six out there now."
"Four more come here; there'll be four groups of ten each. I couldn't tell you before—it was Top Clam—but the groups are leaving from different bases: here, Seattle, Houston and someplace in Russia they won't tell us for sure."
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"Russia? You're kidding me, Tarleton." But Tarleton wasn't Early in the game the Agency had realized that forty ships were more than the U-S.-Canadian complex could produce within any reasonable time limit. So under top secrecy,. Tarleton's superiors had gotten permission to deal quietly, behind the scenes, first with their country's out-of-hemisphere allies, then with the "neutrals" and finally with their nominal antagonists. The result, Barton was surprised to learn, was that the First Demu Expedition would consist of seventeen U.S. ships, seven from the USSR, three each from Britain and Western Germany, and two each from Japan, France, Australia, China and the Greater Central African Republic. Several other countries had pledged at least one ship to the second fleet, given the data and the additional time.
"How in hell did everybody manage that, Tarleton?"
"How in hell did you manage to get your ship from the Demu?"
Barton grinned and shook his head. "OK, I get the message.
"Now then. How about me? Personally. Do I get a
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ship or don't I?"
"You do, in a way."
"What is that supposed to mean? I told you—"
"Easy, Barton. You get a ship. But there's been an unexpected development. Of all people, / ended up in command .of the whole damn fleet!" He grinned. "Some of the military sh*t green when they heard about that, I shouldn't wonder."
"But what about my ship? Is it or isn't it?'*
118
"It is. Except that you'll have your boss—that's mending with you. And maybe looking over your shoulder
sometimes.
"Hell's bells. Given the choice, do you think I want to ride with anyone else?" Well, it was a compliment of sorts. Barton poured them both some more coffee. The other man looked ready to go back to work, and Barton
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had more on his mind.
"Who else rides with us?" he asked. "Limila has to, or no deal. How about Eeshta? Did you get my note about
that? And who else?"
"One at a time, Barton; OK?" Barton shrugged. "The ships are built to carry twelve but we're crewing them with ten, all but ours; it rides full. The idea is that if we lose a ship but not all the people, we'll have someplace to
put the survivors. You see?
"Standard crew is four qualified pilots, two communications techs and four weaponry artists. Everybody doubles in brass for the other chores. Sound reasonable?"
"OK so far. Now come on with it. What does the
Easter bunny have for me?"
"All right. You get Limila and Eeshta and you have to put up with me and with Hishtoo. Don't argue; we're
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going to need Hishtoo, somewhere along the line. You know it, if you stop to think for a minute instead of. looking stubborn.
k
"That leaves seven slots. Ydu and three of them will be pilots. I and one other will be communicators. You'll be one. short on weapons people. And all of us a little overstretched, guarding Hishtoo during part of our offwatch time."
Barton thought a minute. "Let me tell you what the problem isn't. Limila is your other communicator, or maybe Eeshta is and Limila is a gunner; we can figure that part out later; it's a long haul. And I see no reason
to guard Hishtoo."
Tarleton looked skeptical, so Barton told him. "Nobody guarded him on the trip back here, did they?"
"But he had casts on both arms, or splints, or something."
"Any reason he can't have them on again?" Barton
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asked. Tarleton looked shocked. "I wouldn't even have to break his arms this time, though I don't mind a bit if you're dead set on realism. Well?" Tarleton still looked
119
shocked; Barton laughed. "I'm kidding, man. Hell, all we need to do is keep him locked up."
"I see your point. The Agency figures to give Hishtoo free run of the ship, using some of our manpower to watch him. We may as well not bother their heads about our improved version."
"OK, Tarleton; it's a deal"
Tarleton looked embarrassed. "There's one more thing. Fm sorry, but Dr. Fox went over my head. Her professional standing is such that I can't overrule her in her own specialty."
Barton's guts went cold. "What's to overrule, specifically?"
"She has a red tab on your card and she won't lift it until you take one more test run with her. I hadn't
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thought we had any problem there, but she seems to have a real bee in her bonnet. Believe me, I'd have squashed this if I could. I need you and Limila both;
you've convinced me. And I wouldn't really expect Limila to want to come along if you were grounded."
"No," said Barton. "If that happens, I'll tell you what else will."
Tarleton waited.
"You and the fleet will go looking for the Demu, all by yourselves. You could take Eesbta along by force, I suppose, aad Hishtoo of course. But if you took Limila that way she'd never help you find her people. Or the Demu. Don't try it.*'
"I have no such intention. In fact"—Tarleton looked a little sheepish—"I'm going to give you the keys to the car, if that'll make you feel any better. Do you remember that first day, when you handed them over to me?"
Barton remembered. Well, he had picked the right man. "Thanks, Tarleton," he said. "I'll take the keys
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now, if you don't mind." He got them,
Tarleton wanted to talk some more, trying to give reassurance, but finally recognized Barton's preoccupation and let him go. Still driving the rental car. Barton went home. There was another note from Dr. Fox, this one marked "Urgent." Limila was steaming in a hot bathtub. Dinner was simmering on the stove; it smelled good. Barton fixed a drink for himself and thought about
a small woman with a bulldog mind, and about ships, and cages.
Limila came into the room, wearing a short robe and 120
the Tilari wig. She stood before him, waiting for his reaction. Her look was anxious.
A line came tS Barton, out of a comic strip from his childhood. "Funny," he said, smiling, "how a pretty girl looks good in anything she happens to throw on." Then she was in his lap, and the problem, if there had been one, was over.
During and after dinner he brought her up to date.
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"But why do you fear this Dr. Fox?" she asked. "What can she do?"
"She can put me back in a cage, Limila. She has the authority. She can look in my mind and decide that I belong in one, and I'm afraid she will."
"But that is foolish. Barton." He shook his head. He knew that in the back of his mind was something that shouldn't be allowed to run loose. But it would, anyway, as long as he was alive. Determinedly he changed the subject and made it stick.
That night when they made love it was with an air of desperation, and sadness.
The next morning they were cheerful enough, at breakfast and when Barton drove Limila to the ship for briefing. On the way. Barton turned the rental car in to the motor pool and took a jeep in exchange. He and Limila talked, but of nothing in particular. They had a habit of doing that sometimes, he kept telling himself. Tarleton must have been watching for them; he met them just outside the prefab where Limila usually
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worked.
"Hi, Barton," he said. "Limila, we have a problem here. Either Hishtoo or Siewen, or both of them, may be getting cutesie with us. And the question is too important to take chances. Come on and we'll run them through it again."
"Maybe I could—" Barton began.
"You go see Fox; she's kicking up a storm," Tarleton said. Then, over his shoulder, "See you later," as he escorted Limila into the building.
"Yen," Barton said to nobody, "ol' Indispensable Barton. They Just couldn't get along without me." The funny thing was that the incident truly depressed him;
he hadn't thought he was quite so touchy.
Well, he might as well go see Fox. It was starting out to be a lousy day; why spoil it? Moodily he drove off in
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the jeep, kicking up great bursts of dust by gunning it
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through the more powdery parts of the bumpy road.
Home again, he decided he needed a shower to cool off. He changed into fresh clothes to replace those he'd dusted up so thoroughly, horsing around with the jeep on the way in. He tried to call Dr. Fox and let her know he was on his way. He couldn't get through; the local phone exchange was having one of its own bad days, which were frequent lately. So he set out, unannounced and unenthusiastic.
Barton found himself driving jerkily, and knew the tension was getting to him. He was so close to his goal—so close. He felt as though the raw ends of his nerves had grown out through bis skin. Normal sensations became almpsL-pain. Everything jarred. He forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply, trying to relax, as he parked the jeep and walked to Dr. Fox's office.
Arieta Fox greeted him pleasantly enough. "Do stt down, Mr. Barton. This is Dr. Schermerhom, our new intern.** She gestured toward a bullet-headed young man with a short, scraggly beard. He and Barton shook hands, mumbled greetings, sat
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"111 be with you in a moment; let me refresh my memory first This is the latest computer read-out on your overall test series. A quick skim, only, if you don't mind." And what. Barton wondered, if he did mind? He recognized the thought as pointless.
Covertly, he appraised Schermerhorn. Intern? He looked more like muscle to Barton; he had the size and weight Well, we'll see, thought Barton. He hoped he was wrong.
Sooner than he would have preferred, Dr. Fox got around to him. "Mr. Barton," she began, "I'd like to ask your cooperation in a few more experiments. Brief ones, I assure you." Barton saw her seeing his face freeze, but she smiled and waved a hand as if to mitigate something. "You must understand," she said, "that our basic purpose is to gain some comprehension of the Demu mind, so as to know what our race faces in the future."
"How does my head help you with that? You have two for-real Demu, and three people who were bent pretty far in that direction. Plus the ship."
"The study of the ship is in good hands. It is not my province; I deal with living minds. In this case I have
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very few to deal with, and some are of little use.
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"You know as well as I that Siewen is reduced to something of a pushbutton mechanism. His data and logic are intact, but^in a sense there is no one home to operate them. He answers questions literal-mindedly, ignoring connotations.
"Heimbach is so disoriented as to be useless not only to me but to himself. Having no access to his earlier records, I cannot tell whether his condition is a result of his treatment at the hands of the Demu, or whether he has always been an incapable personality."
Well, she had those two pegged right. Barton thought. And himself?
"I have bad no opportunity to study the woman Umila. I do not like to begrudge you your vacation tour, but I'm afraid I do. Because it eliminated my only opportunity to learn about the mind of the Tilari race. There is no point in trying to perform such a study in only a day or two, I'm sure you'll agree.
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"Of the two Demu, we can get only the grossest of behavioral data from the adult. The younger one, on the other hand, is so eager to learn that she is rapidly becoming more like one of us than one of her own race, which we need so desperately to understand."
"Yeah, the kid has come a long way in a hurry," Barton said. "I noticed that."
"So that leaves you. Barton." Well, at long last, she had dropped that goddam phony "Mister." "You see why you're so important to us? You're the only one who went through the entire ordeal and came out fully human." (Want to bet?) "They didn't cut you up physically or break your spirit. You are the one who escaped and brought us back the whole package. And I think perhaps you may be the most important part of that package.'*
"I think you're reading too much into the fact that once in a while somebody does luck out. You already have my head on your computer tapes, along with the story and all my knee-jerk reflexes. What more can you get from me that you don't already have? In my honest opinion, I think you're looking for something that isn't there." He wished with all his heart that he could afford
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to have an honest opinion.
She looked at him, long and hard. "Damn you, Bartoni I've analyzed the tapes from that simpleminded computer, and I don't believe the *freeze trauma' theory any more than you do. I wish you would allow question-
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ing under hypnotics. Oh, you needn't worry; I promised not to use them without your consent, and I won't. But you're keeping things back. Not on purpose, probably. But you have valuable data that you won't give me. You can't, because you won't look at it yourself!"
Entirely too close for comfort, lady. Oddly, as Arleta Fox became a greater and greater threat to him, his reluctant liking for her increased. Of course, it was not as though he could let his feelings make any difference to anything.
"I don't know about all that," he stalled. "You could be right; how would I know?" With an effort, he smiled at her. "All right; you must have something you want to try, to get at whatever you think I know that you don't.
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Or you wouldn't be bothering now, would you? So what's the pitch, Doc?"
"Nothing to worry about, Mr. Barton.'* OA-oh! Back to the phony deal; watch out. "A few further nonverbal experiments. That is, not written tests; I may ask some questions, of course. May we have your cooperation, Mr. Barton?"
Well, what could he say? He nodded. "Dr. Schermerhom," she said, "would you show Mr. Barton to Lab B? I'll be along in a minute, as soon as I abstract the notes I'll need, from the file here."
Schermerhom, doctor or muscle, whichever, politely showed Barton through a maze of corridors to a door marked "Laboratory B." He rumbled a key ring out of his pocket and found the key that fit. Out of the corner of his eye. Barton noticed Arleta Pox briskly rounding a hall comer to join them.
Schermerhom opened the door, and gestured for Barton to precede him. Barton moved, still watching Dr. Fox over his shoulder. Then he looked at the room he was entering,
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The ceiling was low and gray. The room was empty, barren, about ten feet square with no other visible openings. The opposite wall lighted; he saw the outline of a robed, hooded figure.
Eight years hit Barton like a maul. Adrenalin shock staggered him; he lurched, recovered. Almost in one motion he turned and grabbed the doorframe, kicked at the door Schermerhom was closing. The door swung back.
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Barton was on his way out. On his way out of the Demu research station and stopping for nothing.
Scbermerhorn was too big, .too strong to mess around with; Barton braced a foot against the edge of the doorframe and launched himself. His head caught Schermerhom square in the face. Barton landed in the middle of the corridor, on all fours; Schermerhom sprawled on his back against the opposite wall, blood spurting between the fingers held to his face. Instant nose job, thought Barton, getting up. Well, things were tough all over. And the ceiling back there was low and gray.
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Schermerborn tried to sit up. Barton kicked him under the ear; he fell back again. Behind him. Barton heard a noise. He looked around, and suddenly was back oa Earth. It wasn't much of an improvement.
Incredibly, Arleta Fox was still coming toward him. "Wait, Bartoni" He shook his bead impatiently; there was no time to waste, talking with a dead woman. He moved toward her, flexing the hand on which he'd landed much too bard.
Finally she had the sense to back away. "No, Bartoni It's all rightl That was the testi" Yes. I know. Doctor, and now here come the results. Sorry. But you could be worse off. You could be in a gray cage.
She had stopped backing now. but was still talking. Never shut off a source of information while it might still be of use. There wasn't that much hurry.
"Barton, let me explain, pleasel" Oh hell; why not? Barton stopped, but not before he was within reach of her.
"What's to explain?" he said, dead-voiced. "You caught me out, didn't you? Just the way you wanted."
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The trouble was that he didn't want to kill her. She was small like Whnee—no, Eeshta—and female, as he had come to think of Eeshta. And she hadn't harmed him. herself; she had the potential, was all. Suddenly Barton knew that he would not, could not hurt this woman. But he mustn't let her know. The hostage principle had got him loose from the Demu; maybe it would keep him out of a cage here, too. If he worked it right...
She was still talking; he tried to tune in. ". . . what we needed to know. Barton. Don't you see?" "Sorry; I missed that. Say again?"
"We knew you were obsessed with something that was blocking communication. We had to find out what it was.
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It was obvious that you had flummoxed the other tests, but I don't know how and I don't care." She paused. "Well, I do, really, but that can wait. Anyway, we set up this room, as you had described it, and brought you here. That was it. You see?"
"Yeh, I see. You found out what I couldn't let you
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find out. That Barton isn't safe to be running around loose. But here's how it is. Barton is going to run around loose anyway. As long as he is alive, that is." The trouble now was that whatever she might say, he couldn't afford to trust it.
"So right here is where you quit talking and start listening."
He hadn't misjudged her tenacity. She was still trying to talk after he stuffed her mouth full of his handkerchief and tied her gauzy scarf around her face to hold it. She tried to claw the scarf away; he used her belt to tie her hands behind her back. She kicked at him with her high heels; he faced her away from him and gave her a solid knee square in her compact rump, hard enough that her eyes were running tears when he turned her around again.
"Now lookit, Dr. Fox," he said—gently, considering the panic that racked him—"you just behave yourself for a couple of hours until I get me loose out of here, and you can sleep in your own comfy bed tonight and forget all about it."
He looked over to Scherroerhora, who had managed,
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barely, to sit up. "You, therel If you want to kill this lady, all you nave to do is to get on the phone or ring the alarms. If you want to see her alive some more, just rinse your nose and don't do any one more damn thing until she tells you so in person. You got that?" The man nodded, but Barton didn't trust him. There was an easy answer; the door to Laboratory B opened only from the outside. Schermerhom, with a little help, went inside. Then Barton began steering Arleta Fox down the corridor, hoping he remembered his way out of the place.
He did even better, by luck. He came upon a side exit that opened directly onto the parking lot. In the jeep he fastened the woman's seatbelt and drove away, planning as he went. There had to be a chance or two left.
First he stopped by his and Limila's quarters, locking Dr. Fox in a closet for safekeeping. He packed a couple
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of suitcases and a grocery bag. He called Limila at the project site.
"Don't say anything, Limila; just listen," he said. "I'll
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be out there in less than half an hour. Watch for me; I'll be in the jeep. Ill go directly aboard the Demu ship, with alT we'll need for a head start. Get loose from whatever is happening and join me fast, because then I have to take off in a hurry. You got it?"
"Yes, Barton. But why?'*
"They caught me out, Limila. I have no choice. Are you with me?"
"Yes, Barton. Of course."
*4Then watch for me, Limila. And be ready to move fast" He retrieved Arleta Fox, led her to the jeep and buckled her in. He set out for the Demu ship. It had served him once ...
Approaching the ship area. Barton was on the lookout for a possible reception committee. There was none; no one was close enough to notice anything unusual as be hurried Dr. Fox aboard the ship. Relieved to find it unattended, he took her to the control room. It was the best place to keep her, he figured, until Limila arrived.
Almost at once, Limila joined them. He hugged her
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briefly, then turned to the doctor. "OK, lady, you can go now." He removed her gag, turned and knelt to fumble with her wrist bonds.
>.
"I won't go!" She spun to face Aim, looking down at him for once.
"Now, look! You're free, you're loose, you're safe. Get your ass out." He reached for her; she backed away.
*'I won't."
The hell with it. Barton stood, grabbed her, retrieved the handkerchief and scarf* and replaced the gag. She scored one good bite on his thumb.
"All right, if you want the Grand Tour you can have it Here, Limila; hold her, will you?*'
It was time, past time, to seal the ship. He did so, returned to the control console and sat down. He inserted the "car keys" assembly.
It didn't work. It just plain didn't work.
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Well, they had him. Nothing he could do, and no point in taking it out on Arleta Fox, though it had to be her doing. He would have to run on Earth, not in space, was an. But he'd give them one hell of a run. Barton would.
The viewscreen lit: Tarleton's face appeared. Barton
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hadnt noticed that the ship's switch was on. It didn*t matter. What mattered was that his talk with Limila had been bugged. That figured.
"You sonofabitchi You said you were giving me this way out if I needed iti"
"Barton, I was overruled. I gave you the keys to the car. Somebody went over my head and had your drive disabled some other way. I'm sorry; I wouldn't have okayed that."
"Yeh, sorry. I guess you wouldn't OK, the Agency keeps/the ship. I can't carry it off in my pocket"
"Or anything else. A lot of guards showed up here a minute ago, and I'm afraid they have you surrounded. So
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come on out, why don't you, and talk it over? We can figure out something.**
yBarton looked at the sleep-gun controls. No, they couldn't have been dumb enough to leave those operational. Of course it wouldn't hurt to try the thing if they went to rush him.
What else did he have on his side? Nothing but a woman he didn't want to hurt, and in fact couldn't The bluff didn't seem worth pulling.
"How about a head start in the jeep, Tarleton? A lousy half-hour, for services rendered?"
"It's out of my bands, Barton. You'd better come out**
The hell you say. Barton said goodbye to himself. He pulled Limila to him and kissed her. Not long; there'd never be long enough. Then he let her go.
"Well, so long, Tarieton,'* he said. "You were a good guy; luck with the Demu." You have an easier touch than I do, maybe, he thought. Seeing a bare, gray room.
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"What the hell do you think'you're going to do?" said Tarleton.
"Bartoni" Limila cried. **Do not go. You cannot!"
"No," said Barton, "I guess I can't, from here. No place. So I might as well listen to Dr. Fox now, for I don't intend ever to listen to her from inside a cage." He cut the viewscreen and activated the Demu shield. He stood, and removed the gag and bonds from Dr. Arleta Fox.
"So speak up. Doc."
Wearily, he waited for her to tell him what the problem was. His mind blurred.
". . . very ironic, really," she was saying. ". . . in a cage, yes, all those years. Naturally you would do any-
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;thing—nearly anything—to avoid such a trap again.
"The terrible irony. Barton, has been that your mind Is sound" as a rock but you wouldn't believe it. Your one
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great phobia, of course, was being caged. That was the only aspect out of normal range, and understandably.
"So you cheated on the early tests"—she sighed— -and I suppose I'll never know how you did it. At that point you probably were not safe to run loose, as you put it. But at the same time you were too valuable to - lock up."
Barton's head, he thought, was not only running loose;
it was baying at the full moon. He wished to hell somebody would say something that made sense. "It ever occur to anybody to level with me?'* "How could we? We didn't know, because you hid your real self so well." He had to admit she had a point there. Not that it mattered much, now.
"Besides, you wouldn't have listened. It had been too long since you had been able to trust anyone, since you had had anyone you could trust." And was there anyone now? Yes—Limila. But what could she do?
"Barton, you came home broken, like Humpty Dumpty. And gradually you have put yourself together
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again. No one else could have done it for you."
All the king's horses. That didat make sense, either. Humpty Dumpty was an egg,. If Barton was an egg, he was a very bad one.
. "I don't know what you're talking about Maybe you do, but I don't."
"You do. Barton. Think about it: In spite of your ! hatred, your quite natural hatred for the Demu, you took ; pity on Eeshta and then befriended her. You stood by :,. Limila when you literally couldn't stand the sight of her :\\ —Tm sorry, Limila, but I have to make him see—and it was largely your doing that she is as she is now. You—"
Barton shook his head. She'd made it sound good for '. a minute, but he couldn't buy it. "I threw Skinner through the screen door. Closed."
"That was early on, and he was a nincompoop, besides. But yes. Barton; at that time, before I'd met you, ; you were one small hesitation away from custodial care. My hesitation.
;, "But—I Aside from guarding your mental privacy,
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;you were cooperative. You worked with Tarieton and Kreugel; you worked hard. You trained pilots and in-
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structors. You proposed a plan to bring other races together to help us against the Demu menace. You insisted against all odds upon going back to face that menace again, personally. And when you thought I was the worst possible threat to you—"
Well, she'd had to get to it sooner or later. Now, at last, she was making sense. "Yen; I busted your muscle boy's face, and kidnapped you."
"He's not a muscle boy; he really is an intern. It was his own fault. I warned him to be careful. But either he didn't take you seriously, or you were simply too fast for him."
"What difference does it make?" Barton was tired, very tired. "I blew it, the whole bit. Let's get it over with. I'm not going back in any cage, is all. Not alive."
For a small woman. Dr. Fox heaved a very large ex-
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asperated sigh. "Barton, it is time you stopped being so singleminded. As I said . . . when you thought me the worst possible threat to you, you. still would not hurt mel Is that the reaction of a man who isn't safe to run loose?"
"I kicked your ass pretty hard, there." Why were they talking so reasonably?
"Oh, thati I've fallen harder, at the skating rinki" Her gaze dropped. "Well, almost . . ." Abruptly, she turned to Limila. "Is there any way, do you think, to change the mind of this stubborn man of yours?"
"I do not know. Dr. Fox, but / believe you."
She had turned against him! Now they had him almost in a cage, and Limila was on their side.
There was nothing left. He had to get out. Where to go? No matter; there had to be a place. Smash Arleta Fox and go!
But she—she was small, and female. He didn't know ... The walls, it seemed to him, were turning gray.
"Limilal" the woman said. "Help me. Quickly!"
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-^ One at each side, holding him, they kept Barton from falling as his knees began to buckle. He shook his head, tried to speak but could not It was Dr. Fox who spoke.
"Barton, cant you believe that I mean you no harm?"
He beard her as from a great distance, but he felt her pressed as closely to him on one side as Limila was on the other. And now his legs supported him again. His arms came to life; be held both women, fiercely. He looked at the walls, and they were not gray. Not gray at alL
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'^ "sh*t!" he said. "Barton, you always were the dumbest -• man in the world!"
Neither woman contradicted him*
Two days later, right on schedule, the First Expedition lifted for Tilara. Barton had had Limila give Tarleton the necessary coordinates over the viewscreen before they left the Demu ship, as soon as Arleta Fox had announced all-clear and sent the guards home.
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Barton found himself regretting that Dr. Fox couldn't have come along with the fleet. It was a damned shame, he thought, that he'd wasted his opportunity to get better acquainted with that tough little bulldog mind of hers.
She was a winner, that one. And Barton always liked a winner.
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The Learning of Eeshta
Author's note: the astute reader will notice that in this short story I have taken certain liberties with the order of some events that occur in "Cage a Man" and "The Proud Enemy."
—F.M.B.
- The young person is surrounded by the animals. In this '^ room on their planet Earth—a strange room, all plane -- surfaces and right angles—Eeshta is their captive. One
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of them has taken its robe and hood; under the odd discrete lighting sources, the smooth exoskeleton shines ivory tinged with red. Eeshta is one of the Demu and eggbom; the symmetry of its head is broken only by the eyes and their brow ridges, the nostril openings and serrated chewing-Ups below, and the slightly flanged ' earholes.
The heads of the animals are marred by fleshy and / fibrous growths. Although their general shape is accept.^ able—head and body, arms and legs—they do not have ^ correct appearance. None but eggborn Demu have corf.y rect appearance without aid. When captured animals .•; learn to speak as Demu and thus earn citizenship, they ,.', are given whatever aid is needed.
^ But now it is Demu who are captive—the young ^ Eeshta, its egg-parent Hishtoo, and three not eggbom. \- Taken by an escaped animal named Barton, they are Y; brought in Hishtoo's ship from the Demu planet Ashura ^ to Earth. Although its arm was broken in the struggle of ^ capture, Eeshta no longer fears Barton, for Barton en-
- cased the arm for healing and offered no further injury
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- wiry Scalsa, who was shaping up into a grade-A pilot, didn't say much. Liese, a small, rounded, birdlike girl from Indonesia, couldn't hide her curiosity. Oddly, she didn't look as if she could swat a fly, let alone handle Weapons. But she was good at her job.
"I hear you had to crumb Terike, Barton," she began. "Wow! Teeth all over the deckl What was it, anyway? Girl trouble?" Barton nodded; he didn't want to talk, but no point in denying the facts.
"He's certainly been the rounds," said Liese. "First Alene, then Myra, then me, then Helaise—and now he's after Myra again. I can't figure him out—did he go
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'•
i.
i
through the list on a trial basis and then make up his mind, or is he just a butterfly at heart, ever flitting from flower to flower?"
"It doesn't matter," said Barton. "He's taken his last flit."
"How do you know?" the girl asked.
"Because everybody else is satisfied where they are. It took a while, yes. But look at you two, for instance. You're practically spot-welded."
Liese broke into laughter. Barton stood; the change of pace gave him a good opening to leave the group.
"Just a minute," said Tarleton. "Look—I don't want you to think I was criticizing. I wasn't. It was my job and you did it for me, so how you did it was up to you.
"But now I'm worried. Ap Fenn is a proud man, even
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a vain one. What if he tries to get back at you?"
Barton shrugged. "I'll think of something."
"Well, whatever it takes, you have my backing. He's good at his job, but on this expedition you're worth ten of him. So even if you have to ... I mean, Limila's good on weapons, too."
"Oh, hell, Tarleton! I'll go talk to the guy, when he's out of shock. He gives me any trouble a little bluff can't cure, and he'll get a change of roommates, all right." Barton grinned, not nicely. "Ill move him into the icebox—Cabin Six—with Hishtoo."
Finally, he got away from the uncomfortable conversation. At least, Limila hadn't asked any questions.
Cheng had the pilot watch. Barton put him through some training exercises, although these had now become ritual rather than necessity. The man was embarrassed and grateful about the ap Fenn incident, and kept trying to thank Barton, but Barton wouldn't let the discussion leave the mechanics of the control panel. As he left, he clapped Cbeng on the shoulder. "Just let it lie; I'll take it
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as read." Cheng smiled in obvious relief.
In Number Three he found a tense, frightened Helaise ministering to ap Fenn, who growled in surly mumbles through swollen lips. Barton's presence obviously increased her discomfort, but she said nothing beyond a noncommittal greeting.
"Helaise," he said. Then, "Well,- ap Fenn, where do we stand?"
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Ap Fenn scowled but refused to speak.
Helaise turned on Barton. "How could you do that to him?"
"It wasn't easy. Ap Fennl I asked a question. Speak up."
"Maybe nest time you won't be so lucky." The words were muttered.
Explosively, Barton released an exasperated sigh. "Next time? Man, this expedition is no schoolyard—it's
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a life-or-death matter, for the human race. I can't—and I won't—be bothered, worrying about some muscle boy with a childish grudge. Yes, that means you! Now hear me, ap Perm—and hear me well.
"If there is anything like a 'next time' with you, you know what happens? I'll tell you—you will damn well get out and walk."
Ap Fenn snorted, then winced at what the pressure did to his damaged nose. "I imagine Tarletoo will have something to say about that."
"Hell yes, he will. Hell wave to you and say *Bon voyage!*, is what. You think I'm stupid enough to try to bypass Tarleton's authority? Well, I'm not"
Ap Fenn still didn't answer; Barton decided to rub it in a little. "As a matter of fact," he said, slowly and with relish, "when I came here earlier today, I had full authority to use my own judgment about you. No limits. Because by circ*mstance—I won't say merit—I'm more valuable to this expedition than you are. I suggest you keep that in mind."
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Time to throw the man a bone, deserved or not? "On the other hand, you're right—I was lucky. I'd hate to tackle you even-steven. If I'd figured you to get so hostile, I'd have brought a sidearm to equalize things." Pure soothing soap. that; big as ap Fenn was, and quick at weapons control, be had little skill at personal combat.
"Now why don't we drop it? You're good at your job and we can use you. But forget about swapping roomies any more, because everyone else is settled and satisfied. If you aren't"—enough carrot, time again for the stick—"you can swap bunks with Eeshta, and move in with Hishtoo." That should do it.
"Come on. Helaise; the Shield is due for a balance check. You haven't been through those procedures lately." Until ap Fenn had time to cool off, he wanted her out of that room....
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At the door they met Limila, carrying a tray of dishes steaming hot from the galley. "I will stay with him awhile," she said.
Barton and Helaise went to the rear of the ship and
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check-marked their way through the Shield-maintenance routine. It went slowly, because she wanted to talk. Well, Barton figured, she might as well get it off her chest.
Terike is not a bad man," she said.
"So how come a good man wants to throw you out?"
"He's greedy, like a little boy—he's been repressed. Now he is breaking loose, and can't stop grabbing for the next goodie on the Christmas tree."
Barton had to chuckle. "Before this came up, did he treat you okay?"
She nodded. "Yes, mostly. He's not very sensitive to anyone else's feelings, but he does try. Even now, it's not (hat he means to hurt me—but suddenly he has this big urge for Myra, and simply can't see anything else. Or anyone..."
"Childish, is what How the hell did such an unstable character ever get past the screening tests?"
"He has an uncle, high up in the Agency." Silently,
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Barton used some high-up obscenities with regard to all politicians.
When (he tests and adjustments were finished, he commended Helaise on her work and they went forward to their separate cabins. Barton found that Limila bad not yet returned to Number Two; he washed up and lay back for a relaxing doze. When he heard a knock, he thought he'd forgotten and locked the door, and got up to admit Limila. But it was Helaise who stood in the doorway.
"Anything wrong?"
She seemed flustered. "I—she—I mean—Barton, I have nowhere else to go."
"Ap Fenn throw you out? Well, we'll see about that!"
"No, Barton. She—Limila—is with Terike. She told me to come here. Didn't you know?"
"I will stay with him awhile," Limila had said. Barton had thought, sure, stay long enough to feed him—but apparently she had meant considerably more. He felt empty. He couldn't be angry—not at Limila—but sud-
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denly he wanted to take Helaise like a bull, a tiger, a force of total destruction.
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He didn't, of course. He took her, and she him, because each needed the other. But very gently.
When Uroila came in, they awoke. She looked as though she had been beaten in such a way as to leave no marks.
"Please go to Terike, Helaise," she said—and would say no more until the girl had gone. Then she looked at Barton. "I thought I was doing a right thing."
Barton was stumped. Finally, "Maybe you'd better tell me about it"
Umila sat facing him. "On Tilara, there is a way a woman may stop a killing matter between her man and another. It is not law, only custom. But if she goes to the other man with a gift of food and herself, for that time, and is accepted, that man has agreed to end the matter."
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"How about her own man?" Barton's growl was deeper than he intended it
"He must accept the truce or the woman kills herself. Thus die custom is not lightly followed, nor broken."
Well, I should think not, thought Barton. His anger— no, resentment—at Umila was replaced with a kind of awe.
"So what happened?" His voice was quiet, and he knew he must not touch her—not yet
"At first—1 should have realized—Terike could not understand. He did not believe I meant it. Then he became excited, eager. But when I removed my clothing, be—he could not do anything, after all.
"And then be laughed, a laugh to hurt me. And he said I am to tell you that you are quite welcome to your plastic bitch."
For a moment. Barton was like a statue. "I see," he said. Without hurry, he got up and dressed.
"Barton—what are you going to do?"
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"Nothing much," he said. "Just kill Terike ap Fenn a little bit"
"No! You cannoti"
"The hell I can't. I have Tarleton's express permission."
"But that was for the good of the ship—not for only a personal matter."
"He said I could use my own judgment Well, I've used it"
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"Barton, you must not. Or if you kill him, I must kill me."
He turned on her. "This isn't Tilara; the custom doesn't apply! And besides, the sonofabitch didn't accept you."
"He tried to do so; it is not his fault that I do not
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have breasts."
He was beaten and he knew it, but still be tried. "Why do you want him alive?"
"Except that Helaise needs him, I do not care if be lives or dies. It is you, Barton, who must not do this killing, for this reason."
Barton slumped as if she had let me air out of him. "All right, Limila—you win. Ap Fenn lives unless he actually attacks me—and I won't goad him into it. But I am going now, to tell him something."
"I may go with you. Barton?"
"No."
At Number Three, Helaise answered his knock. Barton pushed in, patted her cheek, and spoke directly to ap Fenn. "I got your message." The man said nothing, only glared.
"Maybe I didn't get it quite straight; maybe you'd like to repeat it." Still no answer. "Let me ask you—did you understand the terms of Limila's offer?"
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"I think so, yes."
**Then you know why you're still alive." Ap Fenn tried a smirk; it was not convincing. "AH right—by Tilaran custom, this matter between us is at an end. I so agree." Ap Fenn did smirk.
"But," said Barton, "any further move by you—even one word—and it's a brand new ball game. In fairness, I have to tell you that" And he left
Limila asked for, and got, a verbatim report. Big-eyed, she nodded. "You have beaten him—you have freed me from the consequences of my act. Barton ... I I am very glad that you will never be my enemy."
For a few days Barton was edgy about the incident, but nothing more happened. He and ap Fenn spoke only in line of duty, but that was nothing new—they'd never had much in common. Barton had enough work to
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keep him busy, so eventually he relaxed and—mostly
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—forgot about it.
Except that he didn't trust Terike ap Fenn behind his back, and never would.
The next time he found Eeshta on comm-watch, he proposed the matter that had been on his mind since their last meeting.
"You wish to speak Demu, Barton?"
"Yes, Eeshta—for when we meet your people. Will you come to my quarters when you're off watch? After you've eaten and rested, of course." Eeshta was agreeable.
Limila spoke Demu, but Barton wanted to work both with her, the linguist, and with Eeshta, the nativetongued. He progressed more rapidly than he had expected, and decided he must have absorbed more than he'd realized of what the Demu had tried to teach him in captivity. Then, he had refused to learn out of sheer stubbornness and resentment—and because he wanted to keep his own mind a mystery to his captors.
Only later had he learned that the refusal was all that
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had kept bis anatomy safe from the drastic surgery the Demu practiced on "animals" who learned their jailers' speech.
Barton couldn't match the high-pitched Demu intonations, but he mastered the hissing sibilants well, to Umila's and even Eeshta's satisfaction. And as the fleet neared the end of the first leg of its journey, he decided to give his new accomplishment the acid test. Eeshta accompanied him to Compartment Six; they entered. Sitting, the older Demu looked at them in silence-
"I greet you, Hishtoo," said Barton. "It is that we now may speak."
Hishtoo stood, then turned away. "I greet you, Hishtoo," Barton said again. "Is it that we shall speak together?"
Still facing away, Hishtoo spoke; the hood muffled the Demu's voice. "It is that you are not Demu, but animal. It is that Hishtoo does not speak with animals."
Nothing that Barton—or Eeshta—could say, made any apparent dent in Hishtoo's obstinacy. Eventually,
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Barton shrugged and gave it up. He had bis answer, any-
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way—his speech had been understood, all right. It would do....
The fleet, slowing and tightening its formation, approached Tilara without challenge, more closely than anyone had expected. But finally the hail came. Tarleton had comm-watch; since his fluency in Tilaran was minimal, he put out the squawk for Barton and Limila to come take the call.
Limila had briefed Tarleton, from her layman's understanding, on Tilaran communications frequencies and modulation systems. She had done well; the controls required very little adjustment to bring a clear picture and voice over the viewscreen.
Barton gestured for Limila to take over—if need be, he could supply answers to questions concerning Earth. Automatically he transposed her Tilaran idioms into their English equivalents.
*'To the Tilaran ships, greetings," she said. 'To you
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speaks a woman of Tilara—once taken by the Demu, now returned here by people of Earth. It is their ships you see—they who seek your aid and offer theirs to you.
"In especial is this man beside me. He is Barton, who took me from the Demu of his own force and without help. He is become to me my most needful person and is to be granted that respect by- all, though he is not Tilaran." Barton began to feel embarrassed.
"I ensure," said Limila, "that we of these ships, that number three twelves and four, are of friendship, of help—of hope to end the Demu terror. Our weapons are for use only against your enemies, who are also ours. In your kindness, give us the neednesses to come to rest on Tilara, where all may share knowledge and grow to share effort—that the Demu take us no more.
"Did I say it right, Barton?" she whispered.
"Hell, I couldn't have done it better myself." And that, he thought, was pure truthi
The Tilaran speaker proceeded to give landing instructions. Limila translated for Scalsa, the pilot, and
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Myra Hake relayed the information to the fleet. "Looks like everything's under control," said Barton. "Let's go have us a drink, Tarleton." The other nodded, and the two men repaired to the galley where Barton opened a cold beer. Tarleton poured coffee for himself.
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**What, in particular, do you want me to do while we're here?" Barton asked.
The big man paused, then said, "Just about what "you would anyway, I guess. Hang with me in conferences, to bolster my lousy grasp of the language. Back Limila up, where she may be a little shaky on facts about Earth. We have to impress on these people that we need help, that it's a hurry-up operation, and that we're all-out to help them, too. And get all the social data you can—so our troops don't go around dropping bricks."
Barton nodded. "Fine—that's about what I thought Now, how much local exposure do you want Hishtoo and Eeshta to get?"
"How much do you think is wise?"
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"For the general public," Barton said, "let's keep it purely on the viewscreen. I'd hate to see some bunch go hysterical and mob them—especially Eeshta. I couldn't chance her with an unselected audience, if you see what I mean."
"I do see." Tarleton hesitated. "Uh—another point How are you and ap Fenn getting along?"
"He's alive, isn't he?" Barton's voice was flat. "What more do you want?"
"I've . . . never quite understood that situation. Barton —while we're down on Tilara, would you prefer that we trade him off to some other ship?"
Barton needed no time to consider the proposal—he had a mental picture of ap Fenn, safely out of Barton's reach, indulging childish spite by discussing Limila. But he answered mildly. "No—I'd rather have him where I can keep an eye on him. I mean, guess what could happen if he tried his tricks on a crew that wasn't braced for him.'* Tarleton looked doubtful, but did not press the point
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Guidance to Tilara, and the subsequent landing, proceeded smoothly, Back in the control room for the landing approach. Barton was first impressed by Tilaran architecture—except as a last resort, it seldom used straight lines or solid colors. Conic sections were favorites, especially the ellipse and parabola, and colors blended smoothly from one shade to another. Tilarans were not slaves to symmetry—one side of a building might be convex paraboloid and the other concave elliptical. The effect. Barton noted with approval, always seemed to
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come out right Belatedly he noticed the plentiful growth of treelike foliage, but had no time to pick out details before Ship One touched down.
A few minutes later, four hundred humans—including one Tilaran and two Demu—had landed on Tilara.
"There'll be a short delay," said Tarleton, "before the reception committee shows up. Time for a quick briefing." For the first time since liftoff, he was unmistakably taking charge. Back in his own element, thought Barton—well, good enough.
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The big man signed to Barton and Limila. "For this first meeting," he said, "I think six of us is about right You two, of course, and the other three squadron commanders." Limila whispered something to Barton that he didn't quite catch, and left them. Tarleton turned to Myra Hake at the comm-board. "Hook up the squadron honchos for me, would you?" Then. to Barton, "You give them the drill, right?" Barton nodded.
Myra nipped toggles and made low-voiced requests. Soon the picture split into four quarters: Barton saw himself, Slobodna, Tamirov, and Cummings.
"Hi, Slowboat—Tammy—Estelle. We're all elected to go out with the boss and meet the new neighbors, so gussy-up and come on over. I don't have the full landing layout, but Ship One is spine place in the middle— shouldn't be too hard to find. Any questions?" The two men shook their beads and cut screens. Slobodna had been one of Barton's first pilot trainees on Earth, and the Russian was Slowboat's own prize pupil—they wouldn't have questions, Barton reflected.
Estelle Cummings was still on. "Uniform of the day?" she asked.
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Barton studied her image on the screen—the strong features framed by her long, blonde hair. He had never met the tall, big-boned woman, didn't know quite what to make of her. She pushed the fall of hair back from one side of her face. Beside her stood her husband, Max, a surgeon. He was shorter than his wife, but from what Barton- had heard, they made a good team—no pecking order. He brought his mind back to business.
"Uniform, Estelle? Whatever you like. I don't think our hosts are the type to be picky." She nodded and switched off, as Limila returned, having changed to a short, loose robe.
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"I've had my fingers crossed for that ship," said Tarieton.
"Cummings'? How so?"
"That's the one I mentioned, with the seven-to-three ratio—seven men to three women. With one of the women married—and the ship's captain and squadron commander, at that—things could have gotten messy.'*
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"What arrangement did they come up with, do you know?"
"I haven't asked," said Tarieton. "As long as it works for them, it's really none of my business." And that, Barton reflected, was one of the things that made Tarieton a good man to work for.
Myra Hake turned from the viewscreen, which now showed the area near the ship's lowered access ramp. •It's time for you to go out, I think. Company's coming."
The three disembarked. Breathing deeply of the air of her home planet, Limila pointed ahead, where the Tilaran delegation approached. The long, straight wig was brushed back to hang free behind her. The loose robe, in shades of pale blue-green, disguised the shape of her body, but a gust of breeze showed Barton that she'd altered the harness of her padded bra. The false breasts now sat lower and wider, approximating the natural Tilaran location. He hid a grin.
The other three squadron commanders converged to meet them; all six walked toward the nine Tilarans
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who waited a few yards distant. Barton noticed that Tilarans did not come in blond; hair was black like Limila's or dark brown with reddish tinges.
Of the nine, there could be no doubt which was in charge. He was not the tallest, nor more richly dressed, nor did he carry himself with arrogance. But while he looked squarely at the visiting group, the other Tilaran men and two women looked mostly to him.
He stepped forward. So did Tarieton, bringing Limila witfi him.
"I am Vertan," the Tilaran said, "There exists a number to distinguish me, if need be, from other Vertans. You are as if invited here; feel yourselves home-born of Tilara. Now I have said too long, before giving a new friend turn to say."
*T am Tarieton," said the big man, slowly. His accent, Barton realized, was really bad. "I do not say your
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speech well. So if it may be, Limila, our first Tilaran friend, says for me." He reached to shake Vertan's hand,
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appeared to realize that the gesture meant nothing to the Tilaran, and started to retract the movement. But after a moment's pause, Vertan reached out and clasped Tarieton's hand with his own.
"This is how you meet?'* Vertan motioned to his retinue, and a handshaking free-for-all ensued. Before it was over. Barton was sure he'd shaken hands with one of the women at least three times.
When order returned, Tarieton—speaking through Uroila—outlined the Earth fleet's background and purpose. Limila translated both ways directly, omitting such frills as "he says." Barton observed that Vertan's occasional questions were very much to the point.
After a time the TUaran raised a hand and began to recapitulate what he had been told. "You wish us of Tilara," Limila relayed, "and such others as are of like interest, to join you in forcing issue to the Demu." Tarieton nodded.
"You have and will share the Demu sleeping-weapon, their Shield against that weapon and others, and your own uniform-radiation device that penetrates the Shield."
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Another nod,
"Have you other weapons?"
"Not on this fleet Everything else we tried, the Shield stops."
"Some of our own weapons might be of help. Do you want?'*
"Sure, of course. Anything that can crack the Shield."
"But we cannot know until we meet the Demu."
"How's that?"
"The sleeping-weapon- On our ships that survive Demu contact and are not taken, no one can remember the happening of battle—that our weapons were used or had effect."
Sure, Barton recalled—the memory-blanking. With heavy exposure, the damage could be extensive, even permanent. Nice trick....
"Can't hurt to take them along," Tarieton said. "Just
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in case."
For the first time. Barton cut in. "You're missing the point"
"So?" Tarieton didn't sound disturbed. "Like back home. We float up a Shielded hulk, loaded
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with instruments, and cut loose at it with everything these folks have. Then we know."
Limila looked at Tarleton. He nodded, and she repeated Barton's proposal in Tilaran. Vertan smiled, and half-bowed toward Barton.
"We can proceed so." He looked at Barton more closely. "You are he who took the Demu ship?" Umila did not translate.
"Yes, with much fortune."
*Then you of all be home-bom among us." Barton couldn't think of an answer, so he tried the half-bow in
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return. Judging by Vertan's smile. Barton had made adequate response.
"Next of importance." Limila was relaying again.
;
"Two other peoples, of friendship to Tilara, are also of possibility to join against the Demu. These are the ^ Larka-Te and the Filjar. You meet them' in an early J time—some here on Tilara. Their weapons are as ours, a for we share.
r
"Others of acquaintance to us would aid but have not
^
the way." Tarleton asked for a repeat, and learned that several other races had the willingness to help, but not -i the resources.
^
"I think we're agreed, then," said Tarleton. "Can we * set up a schedule of conferences and arrange a place for them?"
^
•I
"At soonest. I will inform direct to your ship."
^
Barton decided that the party was about to break up, i* but first Limila stepped forward to speak quietly with H" Vertan. After a moment, he embraced her. In low tones H they spoke further, then separated, both smiling. But ^
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when- Limila returned to Barton's side, he saw tears in her eyes.
Barton had bet on a final orgy of handshaking, and he won. Then after brief "so long"s to Slobodna, Tamirov, and Cummmgs, the walk back to the ship was silent. Far off, among buildings edging the spaceport. Barton had his first clear look at Tilaran trees. The foliage appeared feathery, with more yellow to its green than most Earthly vegetation. The breeze brought a light flowerlike fragrance, though he saw no recognizable blooms.
Inside the ship, Tarleton said, "See you at dinner? About an hour?" and left the other two. In Compartment Two. Barton and Limila doffed clothing. He had been
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right—she had lengthened the bra straps so that the pads now sat low and wide on her rib cage. She looked at him, but he made no comment.
He made drinks and gave her one; they sat relaxing. Finally, he said, "You know Vertan before?"
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"I knew of him; we had not met. He is one of great respect."
"I noticed, and I agree—he's a man, in anybody's league."
Limila smiled. "You want to know of what we spoke, that you did not hear?'*
"Sure, if it's any of my business." Well, she'd saved him from asking. . . .
"We spoke of teeth. Barton—of teeth and of tit*. Soon I shall smile to you with forty teeth, again. And perhaps, though it is not yet certain, I no longer will need to wear dead padding. Vertan is to set a meeting of me with Tilaran surgical experts, and in a day or two I will know."
A couple of hours' talking in Tilaran, Barton thought, certainly brought back her native turn of phrase in a hurry. Not that he minded, so long as he knew what she meant. . ..
"That's fine with me, honey—whatever you want."
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And at dinner, they and Tarleton were agreed that the fleet's first day on Tilara showed considerable promise.
Conferences—planning sessions—began the next day. A Tilaran ground car delivered Barton and Tarleton to a building at the edge of the spaceport, indented into a grove of the feathery trees. Its shape was a simple parabolic ellipsoid. Inside, the surface blended smoothly from copper-colored at floor level to shining silver at the top.
The first order of business—exchange of technical information—went slowly at first, as the two groups became accustomed to each other's modes of thought Top priority was the project for testing the weapons of the Tilari—and their allies—against the Demu Shield. But the longer they talked about it, the more complicated it became.
Barton found himself becoming impatient. He felt his boss was too easygoing, too willing to allow the discussions to get onto side tangents. While the squadron lead-
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era and other specialists continued to talk, he drew Tarleton aside.
"Look—we're wasting time. They're talking projectile systems; we already know the Shield will stop those. Hell, it stood up against our fusion warheads, didn't it?"
"True," said Tarleton. "But we can't really tell our new allies, can we, that most of their arsenal is effectively a pile of junk?"
"We don't have to. But can't we zero-in first on the possibles, and let 'em test the other stuff later? You've listened to the pitch, same as I have—they have just three things that might work. I want to set it up to test those first, so we'll know what the hell—if anything— we have going for us."
"Three? Did I miss one?"
"Okay." Barton held up his index finger. "One. The TUari twin-ion beam, that converges when it hits solid matter, and induces kiloamps of high-freq current in the target. And they have that in a handgun model, believe it or not. I think that gizmo should be number one on our list."
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"AH right, I agree. What else?"
Barton now had two fingers extended. "The plasmagun. Whose is that? I didn't get all the spiel. . . ."
"A Filjar development—and that's the one I missed;
I didn't understand the explanation."
"Me either, in detail," said Barton. "But what I did get is, it throws a sort of souped-up ball lightning—a plasma that's stable until it touches something. Then it unstables in one hell of a hurry, focused toward the point of contact. Only drawback is that comparatively, it's a little slow."
"But will it penetrate the Shield?"
"Jesus Christ! That's what we want to find out!"
Tarleton shook his head. "Sorry. Trying to think in Tilaran, all day, has me a little confused."
"Yeh—me, too. Don't worry; we'll get used to it."
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"I hope so. All right, then. Your third candidate?"
Barton had forgotten his finger-counting routine. "The Larka-Te high-drive torpedoes."
"I thought so, from the way you looked when they were being described. But that's a projectile system, isn't it?"
"Not quite," Barton said. "It starts that way, all drive 164
and warhead, so it goes like a bat. In fact, the drive is the warhead, if I have that right.
"But why it might work is that when it hits and the drive begins to blow, it blows in a coherent wave front. And while the front end is blowing, there's a matter of picoseconds when the back end is still pushing. So I think it's worth a try."
"All right. Barton. We'll arrange to put those three at the head of the line, for testing, and not worry about how long it takes to check out the rest."
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"Good enough. One other thing, though. So far, we haven't talked about when we land and have to get out of the ships, in Demu territory. It's a safe bet the Demu have the sleep-gun in portable size—and maybe individual, one-man Shields. We don't, and we should. Hell, we haven't even worked up hand lasers."
"I know, Barton. Look—this was discussed on Earth. The decision, was, that rather than delay the fleet, we wait to develop personal hardware until we saw what our allies might have to offer."
"All right—so here we are and here they are. When do we get to it? Just in case the Tilaran ion beam doesn't fill the bill?"
"Well, I suppose now is as good a time as any."
Barton was satisfied; the two men rejoined the group. Tactfully, as always, Tarleton arranged the agenda so as to test the three "possibles" jirst, and initiated a project to work on development of personal Shields and weapons.
By the end of the second day, a firm schedule had
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been set. Slobodna would have a Shielded instrument package—complete with telemetry—in orbit the following day, with three more in reserve in case of toovigorous success against the first one.
On that cheerful note, Vertan issued an invitation. "Our work is well. Now, also at leisure should we meet." In other words. Barton translated, come to the party. He was right. Two evenings hence—come prepared to relax.
One thing bothered him. The Earth group had met no members of other races present on Tilara—nor were any such to be present at this first social occasion. The next time he and Limila were alone together, he asked her, "How come the apartheid?"
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"It is difficult," she said, "for persons of any race to accustom to other races, at first, even without facing several differing kinds immediately. You will meet the others later.
"But now—here is what you must tell your people, of the customs of Tilara."
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Barton listened, then shook his head. "They'll never believe it," he said. "You tell 'em." And he stuck to that
The problem was the casual, friendly Tilaran attitude toward sex, considered as a social grace. He should not, Barton realized, be surprised—from their first meeting, Limila had made it clear that the ideal of sexual monogamy did not dominate Tilaran culture, even superficially. But now he found that be had not understood the extent of the difference ....
On social occasions, Tilarans wore loose robes—for the specific purpose of facilitating intimate advances. One might. Barton learned, be intimately fondled at first meeting, if the other person were attracted. Consent was not mandatory—Tilarans took "no" for an answer, with good grace.
But there was a form—a protocol—to it, that be found hard to understand, and despaired that most of fleet personnel would ever understand.
The first thing he did was to make sure that Terike ap Fenn wasn't oo the list to go to the party. The second
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was, he insisted that Limila repeat her briefing lecture at least twice. And still he had his doubts.
A few more. than fifty Earthfolk attended the function —one from each ship, plus a few extra. At first. Barton was nervous as hell—too nervous to pay due heed to the lush decor of the place. He sipped a tart, greenish wine and hardly tasted it, preoccupied with wondering how he should react if groped under his Tilaran robe. After a while, when nothing happened, he began to feel aggrieved—how could he protect bis virtue if no one propositioned him?
He turned to whisper to Limila, to make a joke of his unease, and saw her leaving the room—accompanied. Beside him was another Tilaran woman, obviously young, whose long, reddish brown hair was coiled into a single curl falling forward over a bare shoulder.
She spoke. "Limila meets the one who long ago, be-
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fore the Demu took her, was her most needful person. Is it not happy for them?"
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Barton couldn't have said "yes" if someone had offered him a drink. Sure, it was all right by Tilaran custom, but . . . Then, showing her small Tilaran teeth in a smile, she reached under his robe.
"I am livajj. Might you be with me now. Barton? Limila has said you may not wish to, but that it is fitting to ask."
When in Rome, thought Barton, and allowed her to take his hand and lead him away. And when they were alone, livajj met him not casually but as though she had loved him all her lifetime. Barton was shaken; he felt unworthy, but did his best—hoping that best would be good enough—to be to livajj as she was to him.
She seemed to have no complaints or reservations. And later, her good-byes to him were warm and happy.
He decided to ask Limila no questions. He didn't have to—next day, back at the ship, she told him the answers anyway.
"Barton, it was so good to be again with Tevann. I am glad you did not mind and that you were with the
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little livajj. So young, she is, but of good thought." Well, yes. Barton mused—that, at the very least.
"Limila," he said. "That js how it is, with all your people?"
"Yes, of course. You know that. Barton—you pretend you don't, but you do, and have for long. With conscious control of ovulation, and lack of sexual diseases you have on Earth, why should it be otherwise?"
"But—I would have expected things to be sort of —oh, casual, I guess. Just for fun. And there was certainly nothing casual about livajj."
"Nor about you with her. Barton, I would think. Freedom is not a thing to be taken lightly. But now—is there more you wish to ask, that you also know already?"
Barton thought. "No, I guess not. Except Just one thing—am I still your most needfur person?"
"Always, Barton. Always. You gave me back my life, and before that, you helped me through the time when I was not alive. That was then—and now it is as we say, simply that you are my most needful person." She drew a
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shuddering breath. "Am I yours?"
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"Do you have to ask that?" It turned out she didn't, really.
Apparently no one from the fleet had blown any gaffs, for Tarleton was now invited—solo—to meet representatives of other races who were on visiting terms. Over dinner, be gave Barton and Limila his impressions.
"You'll have to see the* Larka-Te, to believe them. They're impressive—not especially tall, but slim and elegant They make you feel they're something special
—and it's not anything they do on purpose. It's just the way they are.
"The Filjar remind me, a little, of myself in a fur coat. Big and lumbering. But Vertan says they're not easy to push around." Well, thought Barton—neither was Tarleton, for that matter.
"The big question mark is the Ormthu. They're new
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to the Tilarans—made contact only a few months ago. There is one Ormthan oa this planet—I repeat, one— unsupported by any troops or weaponry, and treated with utmost respect. I don't know when I'll get to meet him; Vertan wasn't sure. But if I didn't misunderstand
—and I may have—the Ormthu long since came to peaceable terms with the Demu, on the grounds that if you're tough enough, you get left alone. So apparently they're neutral, where the Demu are concerned. We'll have to find out more about that—if and when we ever meet the Ormthan."
"Tevann has seen it once, briefly," Limila said. "In rest, like a large pink egg, but with ability to shape itself as it wishes. A head, eyes, mouth, arms—all form at need, and retract when need is gone."
"Like an intelligent amoeba?" Tarleton asked. "I think, yes. But warm to touch, it is told, and not wetBarton shook his head. "I guess it takes all kinds. But look, Limila—you must have seen Larka-Te, and Filjar, too. Can you tell us more about them?"
"On Tilara, before, I was seldom where they go—I
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saw them only a few times, and at distance. But with the Demu were several of each, taken as we. Along with other peoples not known to me."
"Did I see them? I don't remember any." "No. Barton. These were taken earlier, by another
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ship. And I did not see them whole, but only after the Demu had changed them. Quite different."
"I'll bet." The thought of Demu surgery gave Barton's voice a harsh edge.
"In some ways not so terrible as for Earth people or Tilarans," she said. "The Larka-Te produce not live birth, but eggs—like your birds. No breasts or outside sex—so not as damaged as your people or ours, except face and hands and feet—and hair, of course." A strand of her wig twisted between thumb and finger.
"Yeh," said Barton. "And how about the Filjar?"
"You would have to see. Size, bulk of Filjar is of large
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part fur and loose folds of skin. Slow movement is not of bulk, but slower racial characteristic of nervous system. But Filjar minds are fast and keen.
"Filjar with fur removed, loose skin cut away and made tight, are strange to see. The ones I saw did not adjust—they set their minds and, of purpose, died. And they had not lost sex, even—when not of use, it retracts, so Demu did not notice and remove."
"Bully for them." The comment was a conversation stopper and Barton knew it—but what else was there to say? "Well, I guess we all have things to do—right?" Barton didn't, but he left the table and set out to look for something.
In the control room he (pund Vertan, the Tilaran, in discussion with Vito Scalsa. Both were having difficulty with the language barrier; Barton volunteered to interpret.
"What we're working on," said Scalsa, "is coordination and timing. Flight plans—all that."
Barton knew what the problem was. The Tilaran space drive was similar to that of the Demu, but less ef-
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ficient—it could match the Earth ships in top velocity but not in acceleration, either line-of-flight or turning. The difficulty was in planning departure times and routings so that all would arrive at rendezvous in Demu territory near-simultaneously.
"When we think we know agreement," Vertan said, "we find we have, one or other, failed to make all numbers of same kind." Tilaran duodecimal numbering had confused matters before—Barton was surprised that no one had come up with an overall solution. He thought about it—why, hell, it was simple!
"Scalsa, you're good on the computer. Why don't you
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program the tin beast to run all calculations parallel— decimal and duodecimal, both? Tag your input 'data whichever it is, and run comparison-conversion checks on your double readouts to catch any glitches. Won't that do it?" Switching to Tilaran, he repeated the proposal to Vertan.
Scalsa grinned. "Sure, it'll do it. / should have thought
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of that." He frowned. "You know why I didn't?" Barton waited. "Because I had the idea I was here to take orders, same as back on Earth, working for the Agency."
"Well, from now on you're here to think, too, Scalsa." Barton saw he had been too abrupt, and added, "No blame—I know how it is." He spoke briefly to Vertan— putting him and Scalsa on their own again—and left them.
He found Limila, in their compartment, packing a suitcase. What the hell? She looked up from the dress she had folded neatly, and smiled. "Hello, Barton."
"Yen, hello. What's going on? You moving out or something?"
"For a time, yes." She stood, came to him and embraced. "I told you—I am to have TUari teeth again. Perhaps even breasts, of a sort. And for that—to find out—I must go to a surgical place, what you call a hospital. Only a few days—and then we know. Barton, how I am to appear in life for all our time. You do not object?"
Barton's anxieties collapsed—goddamn my paranoid
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instincts, he thought. He held her close. "Sure not. Can I come to see you?"
"I would think so. I will ask. Barton .. . ?"
"Yes."
"Good. I will have to change clothes, anyway."
Next day the prospect of meeting Larka-Te and Filjar helped take Barton's mind off Limila's absence. Over breakfast, Tarleton gave him additonal briefing.
"Don't smile at the Larka-Te, any more than you can help—it confuses them." Barton felt himself looking puzzled. "Among themselves," Tarleton continued, "they converse with facial expressions nearly as much as with words—and mostly with variations, or modes, as they call them, of the smile."
"How do they manage talking over a voice circuit?"
"They don't. The Larka-Te never bothered to invent
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voice-only communications. Until they had a workable picture-phone, they made do with writing—including a sort of hieroglyphics for the accompanying smile modes. Used as punctuation, no less."
Barton thought he saw the problem, now. "So if we smile, they think we mean something we don't?"
"Precisely. A Larka-Te may say 'welcome,' and be smiling in anything from the 'my dwelling is yours' mode to the 'I have waited long for vengeance' mode. Reduced to nothing but words in a foreign language, they have a hard time of it. The ones here on Tilara have had a lot of practice—but still, try to hold it down on the grins."
"I'll keep it in mind," Barton said. "By the way, are they all men? No Larka-Te women?"
"I have no idea—they haven't said. They all dress alike, and the names don't tell me a thing—any more than the Filjar names do."
"Yen—how about our furry friends? Anything in particular to watch out for, there?"
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"Nothing special, except don't try to be in a hurry. You won't have to worry about facial expressions— with all that fur, they don't really have any. And again, I have no idea which ones might be male or female. All that loose skin and bulky fur doesn't tell you much."
"They don't wear clothes?"
"Just a sort of utility harness, with pockets and such. Several different kinds—according to rank, maybe, or job function—I don't know."
"They don't sound too interesting, somehow."
"Don't sell them short, Barton. They wouldn't be on the same team with the Tilari if they didn't have something on the ball."
"Yeh, I guess so. You ready to go?"
A few preparations later, they left the ship. As usual, a Tilaran driver waited in a silent, oddly shaped ground car, to take them the kilometer or so to the conference building. At the end of the ride, Barton thanked her. She
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smiled in reply.
Inside, with about half a dozen each of Larka-Te and Filjar added to the usual group, the building seemed crowded—but Barton found that the feeling didn't last long. During the introductions he was somewhat bemused, wondering how the Larka-Te managed to be so impressive.
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They were not tall—the tallest matched Barton's own
^
height, which was average for Earth. But there was a
;'.
lean, proud look to them—hawklike, almost, yet not predatory. Barton caught the name of the first one— Corval—and missed the rest. It was par for the course;
he'd never been good at names.
/
There were no discernible sex differences. All the Larka-Te wore snug, bulgeless tunics, brightly colored,
f
reaching to midthigh. Each had short, light-reddish hair;
^
in the front it fell to cover perhaps half the forehead,
f
Like a crew cut growing out, thought Barton—or maybe
s
it was like fur and grew no longer. Or then again, pos- • % sibly the Larka-Te were conformists. Nonetheless, Bar-
|
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ton could not ignore the impact of their lean, intense faces.
^
I-
Tarleton was saying the right words; Barton had only
f
to nod. Then he saw Corval smiling at him, and realized he had let his own face slip. Quickly, he pulled it back to solemnity.
> "You have heard, then." Corval spoke in Tilaran. Barton signed assent. "Be not of care. Barton—we know you do not share that means of communion, that your face does not mean what it says." Somehow, Corval's nonsmile was most expressive. "Do you know what your face said?"
"I'm afraid not. Nothing of discourtesy, I hope."
Corval curved his lips in a way that could mean nothing but delight. "It said, 'May I help to produce your next egg?' Not that such is possible. . . ."
Oh, Christ! What to say? "You're not—you don't produce eggs, yourself?"
"No. But even if so, one -of your race could not assist
^
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—no more than the Filjar or Tilari. Our seed does not mix and act But I say this—even without your knowing, your face said a thing of kindness. Be us friends now, Barton."
"Yes." Either humanoids took naturally to handshaking or Corval had run into the custom before—Barton reached out instinctively, and there was no delay. These egg-laying characters, he decided, were impressive—he could like them.
Now the Filjar came forward—taller than Barton but not so tall as the Tilari, they loomed huge in sheer breadth. He reminded himself that the appearance of bulk was illusory. And from the colored harnesses—
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leather?—no two alike, depended pouches and implements.
The Filjar, too, shook hands. Firmly but not painfully, heavy, blunt claws pressed Barton's skin. The last of the delegation—Kimchuk, if Barton had the name right— stayed by him.
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"Pleased to be with you, to find Demu at last." The Filjar spoke in a slow. tenor monotone. Tarieton had been right; no expression showed through the sleek, darkbrown fur. Except for the eyes—Tarieton hadn't mentioned those. They were large and deep—not bearlike at all. Barton thought—more like deer.
"And we are pleased to have you," he said. "Tilari tell us, Filjar are worthy friends."
Momentarily, Kimchuk inclined its head to one side. "Tilari tell the same of Earthani." Earthani? As good a name as any, thought Barton. Kimchuk spoke again. "You are Barton? Taker of ship from Demu?" Barton nodded. "Our songs will tell of you, of that taking."
"I had much fortune, Kimchuk." Barton was embarrassed; he could never be comfortable in a hero suit. "Tell of that, too."
Kimchuk made a high-pitched snort and clapped a hand to Barton's shoulder. Startled, Barton decided the sound had to be laughter.
"Fortune that prevails against Demu is fortune made
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of purpose. But our songs w&l be of Barton who is, not of some storied god who treads stars."
"Then one day I hope to hear your songs." He had struck the right note; Kimchuk clasped his shoulder again.
The assembly was preparing to settle down to business;
the two moved to join it. First was SIobodna's report— the verdict was in, on the three major weapons systems. Barton listened with interest. Slobodna spoke in English, pausing for Tamirov to translate into the common language, Tilaran.
"First, the Tilaran twin-ion beam—it punches through the Shield and is effective after penetration. Traverse, to follow a moving target, is rapid enough for our needs, and—at close range—so is propagation speed. Against the Shield, effective range is roughly three hundred kilometers. Beyond that distance, the Shield produces instability in the beam and shorts it out. On unshielded objects the range is three to four times as great"
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There was a pause while Tamirov ran conversions of number systems and units of measurement.
"Range varies," Slobodna continued, "as the square root of applied power. We can get some advantage by beefing up the power source, but not much—well run into space and weight limitations."
Tarleton stood. "Okay, let's take a breather while the specialists make a horseback guess—keeping time limits in mind—of the optimum power increase we should go for. AU right?"
"Just a minute," said Barton. "Slowboat, what's the range of the handgun model?"
Slobodna conferred with Vertan, then said, "It hasn't been tested in space, or against the Shield. In atmosphere it breaks down at about a hundred meters."
^
"Then we need the hand lasers, and we need them bad." Tarleton nodded, and the two men sought refreshments.
Coffee and its alien equivalents were served; the racial
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groups tasted each others' beverages with differing reactions. Earthmen and Tilarans had previously traded samples—largely with appreciation—of coffee and the tart, bubbling Tilaran klieta. Now Barton tried a cup, given to him by Corval, of a pale, lukewarm liquid that seemed to have no taste while he sipped it, but afterward produced in his mouth a warm, tangy glow. Corval's reaction to coffee seemed noncommittal; he did not ask for seconds.
Kimchuk started to offer Barton a shallow dish filled with a thick gray substance that looked like mud soup, but seeing the Larka-Te beverage in his hand, said, "No, wait another time. The two are not well together." Barton took a rain check—it was time to get back to the agenda, anyway.
As they sat down, he said to Tarleton, "I just thought of something. Remind me to bring it up when Slowboat's finished,"
"Next," said Slobodna, as cups were cleared away, "we tried the Filjar plasma-ball projector. Within its limits, it can't be stopped—it not only penetrates the Shield; it destroys it and keeps going. But it's slow— much slower than ship speeds. And once launched,
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there's no way to alter its course.
"So we recommend that the plasma-gun be installed on all ships, but reserved for use at close quarters."
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"How about a land-going, portable model?" asked Barton.
"It won't work in atmosphere. The instant the plasma emerged, it would blow."
Slobodna's conference with the FUjar was brief, dealing only with the mechanics of installing the weapon on Earth ships.
"The Larka-Te high-drive torpedo," he next began, "cracks the Shield ooly within a certain range of relative velocities. Too fast or too slow, and it blows harmlessly. But within a considerable range"—he read off the numbers and waited while Tamirov converted them—"the torps penetrate, and smash whatever is inside. To get those results, we used up all four of our clay pigeons and two more that we haywired from spare
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parts. But by tomorrow we'll have a couple more ready, to check out the other systems.
"We're not entirely sure why the velocity hangup, but we think it's the way the torp itself blows, from front to back. So at some speeds the reaction front stays in cootact longer, with the Shield interface, and breaks it down.
"But we know how to make best use of this weapon. Add limiting circuits to the spotter and firing equipment, • so that the torp won't go if the relative speeds aren't right. It won't be difficult; Scalsa was running computer simulations on it, this morning." Then, to Tarleton, "Anything else I should cover?"
"You hit all the bases just fine. But Barton has something he wants to bring up."
Slobodna stepped down and Barton took the floor, signing for Tamirov to interpret. "One thing I'm not sure is clear to everybody. It just struck me a few minutes ago. That is, you've all lost ships to the Demu, so we can expect they have all these weapons also. Which means we have to plan offensive and defensive tactics based on the properties of the ion beam, the plasma-gun, and the torps. Our one edge is the laser—and that's only
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true until the Demu capture one and have time to copy it." The nods that answered Barton were thoughtful and sober.
Lunch-break came. Slobodna's team conferred with the Larka-Te; elsewhere Barton heard discussion of his own latest point.
Barton found Tilaran food sufficiently different from Earth's to be intriguing, yet similar enough to make his digestion feel at home. Four sat together. Tarleton and
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Corval spoke slowly, making heavy weather of Tarleton's accented Tilaran- Barton and Kimchuk ate in silence, which was fine with Barton; he felt pooped.
Kimchuk excused himself for a few moments and returned with two dishes; he offered one to Barton. Unfortunately, the stuff not only looked like mud soup—it also tasted like it. But under the attentive gaze of large Filjar eyes. Barton dutifully ate the thick mess. What the hell—it wouldn't kill him!
And then he felt a slow relaxation, a welling of re-
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serve energies. The knots in his mind untied themselves —he was at peace, yet alert. In his thought patterns, nagging discrepancies fitted themselves together, in harmony.
It wasn't, he thought, like the hit from a drink or a joint His bead hadn't speeded up, slowed down, nor lost itself in contemplation. Except for the removal of a lot of niggling, extraneous pressures, he was exactly the same Barton he had been five minutes earlier. He-turned to face Kimchuk directly.
"Whatever that may be, it is of good."
"We find it so," the Filj'ar replied. "On a day of effort, the release given by the dreif adds to what may be done well." For a moment, Kimchuk was silent. "For that day, once is ail—for help or harm, more would do nothing. You feel so?"
"Yes." Barton felt—knew—that sleep would be necessary to reset the mind's mechanisms, before the substance could act again. He found it strange to know such a thing by intuition or instinct, but he did not doubt it. Nor was he surprised to see a similar dish at Tarieton's place, and at Slobodna's.
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Combined-fleet logistics occupied the afternoon session. Tarieton, proposing a tentative plan, put Scalsa's double-track computer readouts to good use. Again Tamirov interpreted.
The point was that taking the whole Earth-Tilaran fleet to Larka and then to Filj, to pick up the contingents from those planets, was the slow way and the hard way. Tarieton had a better idea.
"Once we're ready," he said, "it makes sense to disperse—and assemble later, down-Arm, in striking distance of the major Demu planets. First we iron out the weapons problems, and the organizational stuff. Then,
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with the planning done and only the hard work left to do, we can start setting schedules.
"At that point, one of our squadrons—I had yours in mind, Slowboat—can accompany Larka-Te ships to Larka, and help there in any way that is needed. Such as design modifications of Larkan ships to carry the laser,
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and so forth.
"At the same time, yo^ squadron, Tamirov, can be doing the same drill with the Filjar. Cummings, your group stays here and comes to rendezvous with the Tilari ships. AU, right so far?" There were no complaints.
"Meanwhile, as soon as Squadron One is rigged with as many new—to us—weapons systems as it can use, it takes a high-grav trip to Larka and to Filj. Mostly just to say hello and confirm schedules. By then, some will already be heading for rendezvous. On that, we're still working out the timing."
Vertan rose. "And have all heard and understood choice of meeting point?"
Barton caught a nudge in the ribs. "This is your baby," Tarieton muttered. "You explain it."
Barton stood. "Flash the map, will you, Tarn?" On the wall, distorted only slightly by the curvature, appeared a section of the galactic Arm. Tilari, Larka-Te, Filjar, and Demu areas glowed in different colors. Barton walked closer to the wall, and pointed to a blinking spot of light, near a patch ot deep black.
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"Here's rendezvous," he said. "Just short of Demu territory, and hidden from their guard planets by this dust cloud." He spoke through Tamirov; his reasonably fluent Tilaran was not, he felt, up to precise technical description. "We hope to synchronize well enough to meet and barge out all together before they spot us— and close enough that, from then on, acceleration differences won't be much of a problem.
"We want to converge on their major world, Demmon, before they have any chance to gather and meet us. If we can take that planet as hostage, we figure they won't dare force a fight—they'll have to talk instead, and that's what we're after." Well, the hostage principle had got him free from the Demu. There were worse means —especially if the bluff worked.
"At least, that's the plan, unless someone comes up with something better." He paused. "Questions?" There were several, but none he couldn't answer.
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Slobodna took charge again; the discussion concerned
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ways of installing Earth's "big-daddy laser" in ships not designed to leave the central axis vacant for it. The problem was not simple. Slobodna suggested paralleltube construction outside the main hull. A TUaran expert countered with the proposal of a folded-path generator to be mounted at front-center of each ship. People brought out calculating machines, textbooks, and charts—and the argument was on. Barton decided they were doing fine without him, and relaxed.
Corval approached and sat beside him. "You Earthani decide, what is to be done."
Barton remembered not to smile. "Not of our need, Corval. We say what may be done. Perhaps someone— you, Vertan—says a better thing. We speak together— it is the better thing, all agreed, that we do."
"I am not of complaint," said the Larka-Te. "It is good that one says, this we will do. It is good that another says, it can be better, and is heard. When I say that you decide, I say it as a needed thing you do, that is of good."
Not a gripe, then, but a compliment—Barton kept his sigh of relief sotto voce. "It is of good that Larka-Te
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and Earthani have minds together." As Corval rose and moved away, his nonsmile gave Barton a warm feeling.
But, Piljar supennud or no. Barton was pooped. He sat suently, half-listening, until Tarieton approached him. "I think we're about wound up. Ready to go?"
"You never spoke a truer word."
Hands shaken to completion, the two escaped. Outside in the ground car, the young Tilaran woman waited. Barton hoped she hadn't waited all day, then decided that Limila's people would not so waste an individual. Maybe, he thought, he'd spent too much time in the Army. Or in the Demu cage.-. . .
As they approached the ship, Tarieton spoke. "What do you think?"
Barton wasn't sure what he thought, because he wasn't sure what Tarieton meant. He turned to look at the bigger man, and saw in his face only expectancy.
Then he knew. "I think," he said, "I like the new neighbors."
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It was close to dinner time, but Barton didn't go into the ship. He let Tarieton off there and asked to be
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taken to Limila, at the TUaran "surgical place." Despite his sketchy description the woman nodded, and drove toward the far end of the spaceport. Soon they were off the bare field, moving among trees and buildings.
There was little traffic—only a few other cars—and Barton realized he knew practically nothing about the Tilaran economy or way of life. This was the rush hour?
There were no streets. Buildings were placed seemingly at random, interspersed with trees and shrubbery. In the open spaces the ground cover looked a little like moss and a little less like grass; its greenness was quite Earthlike. The car's soft, bulky tires left no marks.
The building, when they reached it, didn't look, to Barton, much like a hospital. It was not large—about the size of a two-story, ten-room house—and was irregularly convex with, here and there, dished concave sections, Some of the latter were tinted windows; others were
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opaque. The Tilaran flair for shading colors was evident. A broken corner near the entrance showed Barton that the color—at that point a pale blue-green—was not any kind of paint; it went solidly through the material. His artist's curiosity was roused—he decided to ask later about the techniques. Meanwhile, his interest lay inside.
He arranged for the driver to leave him and return later, after she had eaten. The time period, if Barton's grasp of Tilaran chronometry were at all accurate, was about an hour. '
He left the car and entered the building. He found no registration desk or information counter—in what appeared to be a combined bedroom and living room, a male Tilaran sat, reading. As Barton entered, the man looked up but said nothing.
"I would meet with the woman Limila," said Barton. "She is here?"
The Tilaran nodded, stood, and led the way along a curved, narrow corridor. They passed three doors. At the fourth he stopped, nodded again, turned, and went back the way they had come.
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Barton knocked on the door. The material was somewhat elastic; his knock made hardly any sound. He lifted the handle and opened the door. The room was much like the first one he'd seen. And Limila, sitting in profile to him, was also reading.
For a moment, making no n^/e to draw her attention, he looked. The long wig, tumbled loose over the
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shoulders of a turquoise robe, hid part of her face—bu( the lines of brow and nose, of cheekbone and mouth, caught at him. "Limila. . . ."
"Barton!" Tossing the hair back with a quick move of her head, she rose. He moved to embrace her, but she put a palm against his chest. "Hold me, yes—but greatly gentle." All right—he could do that, and did.
When they had kissed long enough, he asked, "What's the matter?"
"I show.'* She opened the robe. Low on her ribcage,
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where once her wide-set breasts had been, were two palm-sized bandages. Barton's eyebrows asked his wordless question.
"It is cut to explore—to see what is there yet, of use to restore what the Demu took. As well as may be done."
She smiled. "Not a bad hurt, this, except when touched, pressed."
"That's good." Barton recalled that the Tilari had not developed anesthesia. "But there is a drug," Limila had told him—"pain turns to ecstasy." When the drug wore off, though, he supposed the situation would be a little rough.
"What—uh, what was found?"
"I am not yet told. Tomorrow I will learn. But, Barton ..." Her expression became intense.
"Yes? What is it?"
"Teeth, Barton. Is it important to you, that sometimes I have Earth teeth?"
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"I don't get it. What—?"
"There is a way now, a new way, that teeth might again grow of me." As she described what she bad been told. Barton recognized it. ". . . From another, a dead child, perhaps—that part from which grows a tooth, implanted. . . ." Dentists on Earth had transplanted toothbuds before Barton was born. He didn't know why the practice had never become widely spread—whether there were bugs in the process or if it was merely too expensive.
"And so I would have Tilaran teeth, in size and number. Would that disturb you?"
He almost laughed—then he realized she was serious. "Good Lord, no! Hell, get sixty, if you want" She hesitated, then smiled-
"For a time, while they grow, I will be with none.**
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True; dentures over sprouting tooth-buds would be not only painful but unusable. She shrugged. "But, so it was
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before."
Barton thought of another problem. Demu cosmetic surgery included shortening tongues to Demu standards
—in speech, the sounds "s" and "z" became "sh" and "zh." Limiia's denture bad a transverse ridge the shortened tongue could reach, for better pronunciation. But when he asked, she had the answer.
"I thought to inquire. It is all right; surgery can provide."
Careful to avoid the bandaged areas. Barton hugged her. "Anything—anything that helps you feel more like yourself—well, don't worry about me. Just go ahead. Okay?" He wished she would not go to such lengths to defer to him, but he knew why she did it. He had taken her from the Demu, and on Earth—when it was alien to her, and she to other eyes only a mutilated monstrosity
—he had been her one anchor of stability. But Barton didn't want to be her lord-and-master. "Most needful person" suited him a lot better. . . .
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They talked further; he brought her up to date on the latest conference results. Then they kissed again, and he left As he passed, the male Tilaran looked up and nodded.
Outside, car and driver waited as agreed. The end of twilight was near; the clea'r air bore pleasant, unfamiliar fragrances. Barton enjoyed t&e ride, and at the ship, bade the woman a cheerful good night.
It had been a long day. Although he knew there was much he and Tarleton could discuss profitably, he had a quick snack, retired to Compartment Two, and went to bed early, for a change.
For the next two days he did not see Limila—he was told that she was not to be disturbed, and that was that. Knowing his own tendency to stubbornness. Barton surprised himself by accepting the restriction without protest.
Work kept him busy. The Job of fitting new weapons into the nose sections of the Earth ships turned into a real jigsaw puzzle. Many drawings and scale mockups were tried and discarded before the first sample nstallation began. It worked, largely because Corwi, the
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Larka-Te, had a genius for spatial configurations and an
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unorthodox way of tackling them. Barton's admiration grew; he could appreciate the results but could not follow the process by which Corval reached them.
As soon as the prototype was complete, Tarleton put it to use in training his weapons personnel on their new equipment.
Fitting the alien ships with lasers was more difficult The Tilaran folded-path model could not handle the power required; effective range would be less than half that of the Earth version. Slobodna's outside-tube idea, though unwieldy, was adopted—except by Corval. On his own ship, the Larka-Te removed everything forward of the drive unit, along the central axis, relocating the uprooted items helter-skelter. To Barton, the result looked like Riot Night in the gasworks—but it worked.
The next time Barton saw Slobodna, he asked him about the hand weapons. ". . . And any luck on the personal Shields?"
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"The hand lasers and sleep-guns look good; Vertan's ready to start production. The Shields—well, they work fine, but the generator is too heavy to carry in combat. We're trying a new approach, and, at the least, we can rig the present model on motorized carts, to cover men in small groups."
Barton frowned, then nodded. "Yeh, that's an idea. Well, stay with it, huh, Slowboat?"
"Right. Hey, you know that one each Larka-Te and Filjar ship headed home this morning, to start things moving from that end?"
Barton had heard; he nodded. Moving on to his next job, he found himself wondering at everyone's calm assurance that Larka-Te and Filjar fleets could and would be organized on such short notice. But then, he reflected, Earth had reacted in a hurry when he alone brought a Demu ship and news of the threat. And these races had known the Demu longer than Earth had ....
Inside the conference building, Barton poured himself a mug of klieta and leafed through the latest planning sheets. Integration was setting in, he saw—Corval would
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leave his own redesigned ship to ride with Slobodoa when Squadron Two lifted for Larka; Kimchuk would accompany Tamirov to FUj.
Logically, he supposed, Vertan would have joined Tarleton on Ship One—but the presence of the two Demu left no vacant quarters, and Barton himself would have
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complained to high Heaven at the prospect of losing a trained crew member. So, instead, Vertan would join Estelle Cummings in the lead ship of Squadron Four. Well, Barton told himself, nothing ever fits all the pigeonholes.
He noted that there would be further interchange of personnel for liaison purposes. The details were still being run through the conference mill. And he had read enough, for that day.
On Ship One, sitting at dinner with Tarleton, he realized that it had been two days since he had seen Limila. All the days were long days now; Barton felt his age as he hadn't since he was eighteen and discovered the fine art
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of staying up all night. He said so.
"Well," said Tarleton, "tonight you'd better rest up a little extra. Another party tomorrow night—it's the weekend."
Barton had never figured out the Tilaran "week"— for one thing, it was not of fixed length. The weekend concept was simple enough, though—party time.
"Yeh, wow," he said. "Okay—I'll get braced for it."
"Get braced for more than that."
"Oh? What else?"
"Tomorrow I am allowed to meet the Ormthan."
"The joker in the deck? The strange cat who walks by himself?"
"Yes, all of that. And I've insisted that you meet him with me."
"Thanks—I think. Anything special we're supposed to know?"
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"Only that the Ormthu are worthy of respect."
"Yeh. You run into anybody around here, so far, who isn't?"
"No—but I get the distinct impression that this one is something special,"
"Okay." Barton grinned. "I'll wipe my feet on the mat and try to remember not to spit on the floor."
"If I didn't know you better, I'd worry. I mean, worry more."
^
"Why worry? The critters are neutral, aren't they?" w
"That's what I'm afraid of." Gulping the last of his coffee, the big man rose. "See you tomorrow."
"Sure thing—if they don't call it off." Tired, Barton sat awhile, brooding, before he too called it quits for the day.
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He was lonesome in Compartment Two, but eventually he managed to get to sleep.
Next morning, as he and Tarleton were finishing breakfast, Vertan entered. Liese Anajek, escorting him, said, "Another customer. Or did the cook quit?"
Vertan smiled. "I am of thanks, but have eaien."
i
"Have some coffee, then," said Tarleton, and poured
f
it. "An unexpected pleasure, Vertan. A little last-minute briefing?"
"Of pertinence to the Ormthan, yes. To say again the limits of our knowledge." Tarleton signed for the Tilaran to proceed.
j
3
"Half a year ago, as has been said, we first knew such a race to exist. The Ormthan ship appeared—our warning devices did not tell its coming—its landing was of complete surprise. Immediately the one creature, and no other, left the ship. It brought with it several cased belongings, but had no clothing or arms. So we knew not to fear, for it showed trust and thus asked our own."
"It knew your language, right?" said Barton. "So it
r
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knew something about you already."
"Yes, It said it had come to make our peoples of ac-
?
quaintance. Our person of command at that time, a woman of the name Jilaar, gave it welcome. Groundcars were brought to carry it and its cases. When the cars were of a distance from the ship, it lifted and was gone. Again our instruments gave no sign—but by eye its path was
^ |
|
seen to be of care to avoid harm to our own craft, in air -| and above."
||
"Dumped the baby on your doorstep and vamoosed," ^ said Barton. "And what have you learned from the ^ Ormthan, to now?"
"For the most, that it is of friendship—and, when it
,
knows us of sufficiency, would commerce with us. That it ^ is long agreed that Ormthans and Demu do not meet, for help or harm. That its name—or perhaps title—is Ormthol. That it seeks always to know, and thus asks many questions. But the larger part is what we do not know."
"What kind of things?" Barton said. "Remember—I have heard very little of what you say now."
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"Of Ormthan numbers or power, we know nothing. Of the place of its home worlds, Ormthol says only that we will know when the knowing is of need. It speaks not of
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its customs or interests, only of our own. Yet we cannot be of doubt that it is of good intent."
Barton could. He was, he knew, no longer the paranoid who had first escaped the Demu, but doubting the unproven was still one of his strong points. He said nothing, but made a few mental notes.
Finally, realizing that Vertan had no more to say unasked, he said, "Is there anything special, in meeting with the Ormthan, that we should say or do?—or not say or do?"
"No more than among ourselves. It acts and speaks in courtesy. One matter of difference, perhaps—be not of offense if you ask and are not given answer."
"And what if we choose not to answer some of its questions?"
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Vertan looked startled, as if he hadn't thought of that possibility. Barton wondered if Tilara had any pastime that resembled the game of poker.
"We had not considered of doing so," the Tilaran said. He smiled. "The result might be of interest." Tarleton raised an eyebrow; Barton shrugged.
Before leaving the ship, they showed Vertan the progress of weapons installations. He showed keen interest, and said, "Tilara has thanks that such ships as this are of our friends, not of our enemies."
"The friendship of Tilara honors us," said Barton in Tilaran, "as does that of the Larka-Te and Filjar."
"What we do," said Tarleton, "we do together—all of us." Barton noticed that his accent had improved—but still had a long way to go. And as for going, it was now time . . .
The Tilaran woman drove them to a building that surprised Barton—it was the first he had seen on Tilara that utilized straight hues and plane surfaces. A five-sided pyramid, perhaps twenty meters in diameter and ten in
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height, truncated at a shallow angle, it was all of one color —an iridescent golden brown.
"The structure," said Vertan, "was made by us to the Ormthan's asking. We find it of a strange seeming."
Barton nodded. It wasn't that the building was ugly, he thought—but surrounded by the subtle curves and shadings of Tilaran architecture, it had a decided impact on the neighborhood.
The three left the car, and Vertan led the way through
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rows of feathery bushes. At the door, a trapezoidal inset, the Tilaran placed his palm flatly against it. After a moment it slid to one side, and they entered.
The ceiling was low and gray—for seconds, Barton fought his instincts back from the edge of violence as the Demu cage, nearly eight years of it, screamed in his skull. He caught himself—he grabbed his mind by the back of the neck, shook it hard, and made it function.
Afl right: one, it could be coincidence. And two, may-
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be this Ormthan was one tricky son-of-a-bitch—so watch out Barton took his head out of combat gear—but kept one mental foot on the clutch ...
He estimated the room—oddly shaped, with area out of proportion to its height—to cover more than half the ground floor of the building. The lighting came from weblike configurations of luminous spots, dotting all surfaces. Except for a few large cushions grouped loosely at its center, the room was bare. Barton walked to the nearest cushion and sat. The others followed him but remained standing.
A little to his right, a rounded pink object formed from its upper surface a head-shaped protrusion—and opened two blue eyes, then a mouth. "Earthani, and Vertan, be welcome."
The hell of it was the thing spoke in English. Accordingly, Barton raised his mental sights.
He waited, but neither Tarleton nor Vertan made answer. All right, then—Barton felt the excitement of challenge—he would play it by ear, his own way.
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"Our thanks," he said. "I am Barton, of Earth. You are Onnthol?" The head resembled an impressionistic sculpture—aside from eyes and mouth, only hints, vague contours of other features existed. The effect, Barton decided, was not unpleasant
"I am Ormthol, here to learn and speak for the Ormthu as you speak and seek to learn for the Earthani. Shall we inquire together. Barton of Earth? What would you know? I shall ask much, for to learning there is no end."
Barton thought—hell, either the blob knew its English or it didn't "Is Ormthol your personal name or your job description?"
"The question surprises. I had not considered the concept—with us there is a joining, not a difference between the two thoughts. And which thought does Barton serve?"
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No doubt about it; the alien was quick. "Barton applies to me, not to what I do. I've done a lot of different things. Right now I work for Mister Tarleton here. He's in command of our ships and I run the show when he's
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busy." It struck him that he had never before called Tarleton "Mister". . . .
"Earth has not previously traveled ships to visit others. What does Earth seek?"
There was only one answer. "The Demu."
"And with the Demu, what does Earth wish?"
"We wish"—oh, the hell with diplomacy!—"an end to raiding, an end to carving people into imitation lobsters. Live and let live."
"Your view is admirable. Likely, the Demu will not share it."
"Ormthol, what do you know of the Demu?" Tarleton was motioning for caution, but Barton shook his bead— it was time to sh*t or get off the pot.
"Much," said the Ormthan, "that would aid you, but that it is long promised we do not say to any. Ask, though —ask and ask, for it may be that you find questions I am permitted to answer."
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"I take it you're not really great buddies with the Demu?"
"Long ago our races met, competed, and reached limited accord. A major factor of our agreement is that we do not have contact." The >blue eyes closed; the mouth disappeared. The pseudohead -became a vague, blind sculpture. The Demu hadn't lost a lot, thought Barton, by agreeing to leave this race alone—they'd play hell trying to carve a pink egg into lobster form.
The Ormthan wasn't helping much, but Barton couldn't afford to let the talk end. If Tarleton had handed him the ball. he'd better run with it- "What does your agreement allow? What can you tell us?"
Eyes and mouth reappeared. "Not what you need to know. That matter is sealed—you roust learn it, if indeed you do, as did the Ormthu."
"The hard way, you mean."
"You state things aptly. But your askings are less apt."
Rack your stupid brains. Barton—it's your move, noA
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body else's. Rummaging through his pockets he pulled out a print of a star map, showing the segment of spiral Arm between Earth and the planet-bare space below the Demu. He pointed to the Demu sector.
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"Is that accurate? Is that where we must come to terms with the Demu?"
The Ormthan gazed, and extruded a thin tendril; its tip moved on the star map. "I may say as much as this. The major Demu planet is here, as you show it. But here"— the tendril moved—"on this planet, was accord reached between Ormthu and Demu. Not elsewhere."
"And you think that's important?" No answer. "All right, you do." He looked more closely at the map. "The planet is in that dust cloud? Hey, Tarieton—that's the cloud we plan to rendezvous at, out of sight of the Demu guard planets t" The big man nodded, but said nothing.
"Not in dust cloud—the planet and its sun sit indented in a clear pocket of space, seen only from one view—so." A little toward the inside of the Arm, from Tilara, Barton
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noticed—and directly opposite to the side of the cloud that faced the rest of Demu territory.
"You say that's where we should go, then? Can you say why?"
"Only that something there is to the Demu of great importance. What it is, I do not know entirely and could not say in any case. But one who sees, it is said, cannot fail to know its importance. And you will go as you choose, not as I direct you—for I do not."
"Right. We'll think about it." That dust cloud—the pocket—would be one bad place for the fleet to get caught in a trap. Barton thought. Especially if the Demu saw them coming ....
But it was a lead, a start. Another thought: "Do you know what weapons the Demu have, besides their Shield and sleep-gun—and weapons copied from the Tilari and others?"
"On such matters, I am not informed."
Well, so much for that. Barton hitched up his guts— here came the big one. "The blank space—the belt with-
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out habitable planets—on the other side of the Demu . . . they say they made it, in war. Did they?"
Without shoulders, the Ormthan managed to shrug. "We do not know. The Demu, know you, were here before us, in this reach of the galaxy. And so also was the dead space.
"It has been thought that if the Demu could do so, we the Ormthu would have suffered it. Yet we live, and thrill of life and learning."
Barton started to answer, but with a pseudoarm the 208
Ormthan waved him to silence. "The Demu are a puzzle we long ago agreed, reluctantly, to leave unsolved. You wish a solution—the Ormthu, who by nature speak as with one mind, share your wish. But whether you reach truce with the Demu, overcome them with your weapons, or cease to exist and your worlds also, I cannot see. What my next-day holds is clear from what my this-day produces. But what your next-days hold. I do not see. Go with the joy of learning."
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No booze, no coffee, tea, or dancing-girls—time to split, thought Barton. No way to shake hands without a pseudopod showing, and be-damned if he'd reach first. As he'd thought earlier—the hell with diplomacy. Not that the creature had been unhelpful ....
One thing he had to ask. "About the ceiling . . . . "
"You admire it?"
"It is neither high nor colorful. Is there a reason?"
"You came to ask of the Demu. Within bounds, the surroundings were made appropriate." Barton couldn't be sure whether he saw the hint of a smile on the disappearing mouth, but he was sure of one thing—the Ormthan had a sense of humor—and his mind relaxed.
On their way out, he thought of another question, but waited until they were back in the groundcar. Then, "Tarieton—Vertan—all the time we were in there— how come neither of you said one goddamned word?"
Vertan looked blank. Tarieton frowned, then said, "I'm not sure. Every time I felt like speaking up, suddenly I didn't. Does that make sense?"
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"Maybe," said Barton. "You know—I think that Ormthol is really one strange cat." No one answered him.
They arrived at the conference building m time for lunch. Barton greeted Slobodna. "How's it going. Slowboat?"
"Fine as frog fur. The prototype of the lightweightmodel personal Shield has a few bugs in it, but we're working on them. For a fact, planning and implementation are getting to be almost routine—I wouldn't have believed it"
A
"That's because we're dealing with some truly hign" grade people," said Tarieton.
"Yeah, I'd noticed. Hey—you and Barton try some of this sticky soup here. It looks like an unhatched rubber boot, but wait 'til you taste it."
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Barton had found the mixture of Tilari, Larka-Te, FilJar, and "Earthani" cuisine to be quite an adventure.
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He had been faced with a few items he couldn't stomach, even under the amused gaze of the person whose favorite dish it waa. But for the most part he'd enjoyed the new tastes and textures. And the- "sticky soup"—"It, tastes as good as it looks bad. I'm having seconds." The taste seemed familiar—but he couldn't place it.
"You enjoy?" It was Kimchuk, the Filjar.
"Truly. It is of FilJ?"
"Of Treka, another Filjar world. A ship came this day from Treka. We requested of it the ouilan for you and all here to share. We are pleased it is to Earthani taste."
"Very much so, Kimchuk. Our thanks." The Filjar tipped its head to one side in its characteristic gesture, touched Barton's shoulder, and moved away.
Tarleton, who had been talking with Corval, the Larka-Te, approached. "Barton, the whole thing is running on tracks, for now. Why don't you and I skip the afternoon session and go back to the ship? Vertan and Corval agree we're not needed. And we have a couple of things to talk about."
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"Okay with me," said Barton. They made their goodbyes.
The Tilaran woman brought the car; the ride to the ship was silent. Walking up the ramp, Tarleton said, "My quarters; okay?"
Alene Grover, who shared those quarters, was present when they entered. Because they had been on different watch' schedules for most of the trip. Barton was not well acquainted with the sturdy, bushy-haired woman. Now, he paid heed to her.
"Hi, Alene."
She smiled, a slow smile that showed only the tips of large, white teeth. "Hello, Barton." She pushed back the heavy, black hair that had fallen forward across one cheek. "Must be a strategy meet, to get you two back here this time of day. Should I leave?"
Barton grinned. "Not on my account. Ask the boss." He waited while the two embraced, kissed, and disengaged.
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"No—it's nothing Top Hush," said Tarleton. "Let's sit down. Anybody want a drink?" Barton sat. "You think I'll need one?" he said. "Well,
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that white-green Tilaran wine makes nice sipping, if you have some chilled. But what's the discussion?"
Tarleton brought out a cold bottle and frosted glasses. "It's not a big thing—merely the party tonight"
"What about it?"
"We're all invited."
"Well, what's wrong with . . . ? Oh, yeh; I see. Who's watching the store, right?"
"Too right. I'm certain we could safely leave the ships unguarded, but still . . . ."
"Yeh." Barton thought. "It's not our way, that's all. Instinct, or custom—but we 'Earthani' leave somebody in charge. At all times—no exceptions."
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He swallowed wine. "Well, hell—can't we just tell 'em that? The Tilari don't strike me as fanatics; I expect they'll put up with our little foibles. If they even, notice— you think they'll take a head count or something?"
"Not really," said Tarleton, "but I wanted your opinion. All right—how far do we follow our custom? Every ship?"
Barton shook his head. "Not necessarily. Hell, they lock from inside, and the locks can be put on remote to the squadron command ships. For real security. ;f you like, add a ten-way viewscreen hookup."
"Sounds good. You set it up, will you?"
"Sure. But I'll leave it up to each squadron—Slowboat and Tammy and Cummings—to decide between one-man watch or one per ship. Okay?"
"Yes, that's probably best. We don't want to discourage initiative."
Barton scowled. "Well—in one area we do. This ship."
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"I..." Tarleton paused. "Spell it out. will you?"
"Well, there's Hishtoo, of course. We can't just leave him locked up, because the hard-shelled morphodite needs a little regular exercise, as well as meals. So somebody has to be here, big enough to handle him if he gets any bright ideas.
"Eeshta certainly doesn't qualify—and even if she did, it would be unfair to strain her loyalties that way, between us and her egg-daddy. So we need one more, here on this ship."
"Any suggestions?" Tarleton topped-up glasses all around; the wine was moving slowly, but obviously with appreciation.
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"One guess." Barton's voice came out flat and harsh. "You think I'm turning ap Fenn loose aground?"
"Aren't you being a little hard on that one? He's been behaving himself."
"You're damned right he has. He knows what hap-
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pens if he doesn't" Barton grimaced; it still hurt, what the man had said to Limila—and hadn't paid for. He made a gesture, pushing with his hand. "All right, I do have a personal thing there. But that's not why I want him kept aboard. I don't trust the sonofabitch out in company, is all."
"That's good enough," said Tarleton. "Tell him he has the duty tonight."
"No—you tell him. From me, he'd be sure it was personal—from you, maybe he'll take it as just part of the fob."
"As you say. But you set up the rest of it, won't you?"
"Sure—might's well do it right now. See you .. . . "
Tarleton's smile and gesture were vague, as though his thoughts were elsewhere. Alene Grover sat straight, and said, "Barton—we'll see you at the festive brawl tonight?"
"Sure thing." He left—next stop, the control area. His own thoughts, now, were of Eeshta. It was hard on
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the kid, being cooped up on the ship so much, getting out only for short, accompanied walks. But there was no help for it....
As it happened, when he entered the control room, Eeshta had 'the comm-watch. "Hi," he said. "Everything okay?"
"It is well. Barton, though today there is little to do."
"We can fix that. How about a squadron-command hookup?" When Eeshta had arranged the connections, he passed along the agreed security instructions and had them read back to him for confirmation. With that task completed and the screen cleared, he had begun to coach Eeshta on putting a call through to Limila—not an easy job through the Earth-Tilaran communications interface—when he was interrupted.
"You really are a grudge-holding bastard, aren't you?" It was Terike ap Fenn. Barton turned and looked at him •—yes, the man was riding an adrenaline high, for sure.
Barton paused before answering, then spoke softly. ^es, maybe I am. But what does that have to do with anything?"
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"Everybody else gets off this damned ship, and I don't! Are you trying to tell me that's not deliberate?"
"I'm not trying to tell you anything—I don't have to. You take orders, mister!"
Ap Fenn's face reddened. "The great god Barton! You know something? I've half a mind to break you in two, right here!"
Thinking it wouldn't be right to give this dumb clown what he was asking for. Barton restrained both his rage and his smile. "Stay with the other half, ap Fenn. It's better for your health. And now I think—"
"Don't tell me what you think! I may have to take orders from you, but I don't have to listen to what you think. If my uncle were here—"
And that did it. "Shut up!" Barton shifted his voice down a few gears. "Get out of here. You've been told what to do. Not by me—by Tarleton. Go do it." He was down
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to a gravelly monotone. "Now. You hear me? Now."
Full of breath, ap Fenn exhaled explosively, wheeled, and made his exit.
So much for that, thought Barton. One more such scene and by God he would put ap Fenn in with Hishtoo. If pushed, Tarleton would buy it...
Myra Hake and Cheng Ai, the rest of the duty watch, had listened without comment. Now, in a subdued tone, Myra said, "Sometimes he's a little hard to take, isn't he?"
"No," said Barton. "Not bard to take. Hard to leave alone."
He gave up the idea of calling Limila. In his present mood it would do no good for either of them. Instead, he went to his quarters. Compartment Two. It was lonely there,
Leaving the ship for the gala occasion. Barton decided that he still wasn't in one of his better moods. Only one groundcar was at hand. He and Tarleton, Alene Grover, Myra and Cheng boarded it—the rest would have to wait
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until a second car arrived. The Tilaran driver assured them that one would soon be there.
A
The ride was short; the destination was new to Barton —a building considerably larger than the site of the earlier party. It would have to be, he thought, to accommodate nearly four hundred from Earth and probably several times as many Tilarans—and others.
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Inside, under a high-domed ceiling, artificial clouds of vapor, lit by constantly moving beams of colored light, drifted above the crowd.
"Pretty spectacular," said Alene. Tarleton murmured agreement. Absently, Barton nodded. As they moved through the assemblage, his gaze scanned everyone -he passed.
"Looking for someone?" said Tarleton. Barton gave a start, then grinned. Of course he was, though he hadn't realized it—livajj. ".So young she is, but of good thought." Oh, knock it off, Barton told himself—you old tomcat....
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They came upon a wine-laden table—one of many— surrounded by a group of TUarans, with a sprinkling of Larka-Te. It was time for refreshment and discussion. Barton tried to follow the conversation, making polite noises and hoping they were the right ones. His gaze wandered.
He saw a Tilaran woman move close to Cheng Ai. He could not see what happened but he could guess, for Cheng first looked startled, then smiled, and shook his head. Smiling also, she patted his cheek and moved away. Cheng and Myra whispered to each other—her expression was questioning, his was smiling disclaimer. He'd give a pretty. Barton decided, to have heard that exchange. When in Rome....
He found himself in a conversational vacuum of his own making, and drifted away from the group—solitary among the hundreds. His glass was full—his attention was diffused and free-floating. When he recognized someone he exchanged greetings, then moved on.
A Tilaran greeted him by name. The man's face seemed familiar, but Barton couldn't place it. "I am of regret," he said, "not to recall your name."
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"We are only now of direct acquaintance. I am Tevann —Limila may have said of me."
Tevann—he who had once been Limila's most needful person. No wonder Barton hadn't recognized him;
he had seen him only once, a brief glimpse. "Yes, of course," he said, "and that it was good to be with you again. It is of pleasure to know you." On the males. Barton had decided, the Tilaran hairline resembled a beardless Shakespeare rather than Elizabeth I. Like all TUarans, Tevann was tall and lean. Barton found his air of vitality attractive; he liked the man.
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is. ~~ **I would speak of Limila," said Tevann. "You Earth-
"fcpi are of different ways between men and women—our Ways may be of disturbance to you?"
Barton shook his head and smiled. "For a time, perhaps. Now I am of understanding for Limila's joy and
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your sharing of it. She has said you once were her most needful person—for that, I am of respect for you."
In silence, they sipped wine together. Barton had learned that the Tilari did not drink toasts, as such—in\ stead, after an appreciated statement, the listener drank ' lightly, without comment. The pause was brief.
"Persons may change," said Tevann. "The one most ^ needful may become of less need—and another, in her "' place, of more. Always, such changes, of agreement bet tween all. But had Limila not been taken by Demu, I am of the thought that Tevann aod Limila would not have changed."
Barton braced himself. "Your want is of Limila—to ^ return to you?"
| Tevann clasped Barton's wrist gendy, then released F it. "No, Barton—that is not a thought of what may be. [ What I say is this—that Limila was of such need to me, and I to her, that it is of good, that you and she are now each so needful of each other."
"I am not yet of understanding—only of willingness to hear."
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"She and I were of such closeness that our life was of one house together—a thing of rareness among us. She had a son of me. Then our friend Renade implored that his first child be of Limila, and we were of agreement. Then followed, a daughter, of me. I am of great fondness for the young of Limiia, of Renade and me. Even now that they are of full growth and finding persons needful of themselves."
"You speak, though, of Limila." Barton was absorbing the news that Limila was the mother of three—and had never mentioned it. But he was still waiting for the kicker....
"Yes—I would say of Limila. When I knew she was taken, I was of despair. For long and long, I was of no interest for any other, in her place—and when one came to my acquaintance, I was of blankness and could not see." "Yes," said Barton, "I can understand.*'
Tevann smiled. "Then, as it will. a time happened that I saw, and knew Uelein, who is not of your acquaintance.
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And now for long we have been most needful, each to the other."
"I am of joy for you—for you and Uelein. I would be, if I may, of her acquaintance. But—what more of Limila?"
"That. when you came here—when Limila came here
—again I was of despair. For I had promised Limifa of all time, and now I had promised Uelein also. And though
—as you are of knowledge—a Tilaran can be many things to another, only one can be most needful."
"Many peoples are of that feeling." Still, Barton waited for the other shoe to drop.
"When, on viewscreen, I saw and heard Limila, I was of shock."
"Yeh—the Enoch Arden bit." Tevann looked a question; Barton shook his head and signed for the other to continue.
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"Then when she spoke of you—that you are her most needful person—Barton, my mind was of peace. Then I could be with her—we could be of ioy!"
The pause, Barton felt, deserved a little silent winesipping—so he did, greatly relieved to know what the problem was. "That you have told me these things, Tevann, is of good. I am of thanks to you."
The Tilaran smiled, touched Barton's hand, and turned away. Barton stood a moment, wondering if he had lost anything in the translation. No—it made sense— and he was pleased to find that Limila's former mostneedful person was someone he liked thoroughly.
Again" drifting through the crowd, Barton felt detached. He was not drunk; his mind was clear. Limila was right, he thought—no one could handle the impact of too many alien concepts all at once—there was a disorienting effect. Okay, he told himself—simmer down, now....
His .glass was empty and he was thirsty. Ahead, in a dim comer, he saw a group gathered around a table. Approaching, he nodded to persons half-seen in the dimness
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and filled his glass. The wine was cool and tart; he rolled the first sip on his tongue before swallowing.
Turning away, he was met; someone pressed against him. "I ask of pardon," he said, and sought to move.
The person was shorter than he, so not Tilaran surely. 'Try English, Barton." He bent to look more closely;
thick, springy hair brushed his cheek.
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"Alene?" he said. "You get lost, or something?"
"No, Barton." And under his robe, he felt her hand move.
"Hey, now ..."
"Tilara grows on one, don't you find?" Her voice was soft.
"Yeh—sure. But you and Tarleton . . . ?"
"On the ship, yes. But at a Tilaran party? The customs
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of the country, Barton—I have carte blanche. Do you?"
"I guess so ... yes—sure. But why me?"
"I want to know you. Barton- When we were first on the ship, before Tarleton and I were together, I told him I wanted to know the man who started all this—and he knew what I meant. He thought about it a minute, as though I'd asked a question, and then said yes, it was all right."
Barton laughed. "You mean, be gave you permission?"
"Not exactly. He was worried it might hurt one of us, and then decided it wouldn't. He was concerned. Barton."
"Good of him. But then, he's a good man."
"Yes. You see that little door, over there? Is that a place where we could—?
They went, and they did. And for all her brash exterior, Barton found great sweetness to Alene Grover.
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From outside the quieth little room came unquiet sounds. Barton raised his head; for a moment he listened. He kissed Alene fiercely, in lieu of taking longer about it, and got them both robed before opening the door. Outside, the sounds were clearer. No doubt about it, he thought—it's a hassle somewhere. What the hell could be going on? He pointed his senses toward trying to find out, gripping one of Alene's hands to keep her with him.
He pushed through milling groups that seemed, themselves, to have no purpose of action. Ahead, the crowd parted momentarily; he saw Tarleton moving through a large doorway to the left
"Come on, Alene," he said, and tried to move faster.^ Then he saw she was hobbling, her feet only half into her shoes. He bent, pulied the shoes off, and banded them to her. "Now come on!"
Several Tilarans, doing nothing in particular but blocking Barton's way, were bunched against the door.
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He needed both hands, and released Alene'S. "Follow as close as you can."
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"Yes, Barton, I'll be all right. This doesn't look dangerous."
"Of pardon, of passage, of need to progress! Gangwayl Party through! Lady with a baby!" One language was as good as another, as Barton bulled his way through the clutter and reached the door. Inside, he paused to get his bearings.
At the near side of a milling group, Tarieton was arguing with Vertan; he gripped the Tilaran by the shoulders and pushed him away. Turning, he saw Barton, and said, "If he won't help, the hell with him!"
"What's needed?"
"A doctor. It's bad. He—"
"Squawkbox over there, isn't it? Alene! Holler for Max Cummings, will you? And now, Tarieton—what's the goddamn problem?"
"Ap Fenn."
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"But he's on the ship!"
"He was. He isn't. He's over there bleeding to death."
"Oh, sh*t!" Barton took a deep breath. "All right— what did that silly sonofabitch do now? And what's he doing here?"
Tarieton gestured toward a comer; a Tilaran woman huddled there, crying. Her heavy, pointed fingernails were smeared with blood.
"She did it?" Tarieton nodded, and Barton moved toward her.
"Aren't you going to have a look at ap Fenn?"
Barton turned. "If you think first aid has priority, you do it. Two races are more important than any one man." He went to the woman and crouched to speak with her. After a time, she answered. "It was not of purpose," she said, **not of purpose. . . ."
It took a while to get it straight; Barton tried to be patient, and eventually she became more coherent.
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"As you know, we touch, of question to be with the other. When the Earthani touched me, the touch was not of my liking, and I answered that I was not of that wish. You must know—"
"Yes," said Barton. "Choice is of both. But then?"
"He was of force to me—of pain. I could not understand—we are not of that way; it is not known to us. And when I knew his intent—"
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"You clawed the living hell out of him." He rephrased the remark in Tilaran. "You were of need that he stop. You were of hurt to him, but the hurt was not of your purpose."
"You are of understanding. So it was,"
Since no one else volunteered, Barton said the things necessary to take the woman off the hook of the situation. As he rose to rejoin Tarieton, Max Cummings entered, and Barton forgot the woman entirely. He followed the surgeon across the large room and had his first look at
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what had befallen Terik-e ap Fenn.
He didn't like it, and didn't look twice. He waited long minutes until Cummings completed his work before he asked any questions.
Cummings looked mild and wispy; he didn't talk that way. "Well, I saved his balls—he may end up sterile, but they'll keep, I think. Anyway, no one deserves to perpetuate his genes if he's stupid enough to try to force a Tilaran woman."
"Or any woman," said Barton.
"There is that. Next—he retains his damaged left eye, but it may not be much use to him. And there are possible internal injuries—a bad bruise under the sternum, perhaps from a kick—without laboratory facilities, I can't be certain." Cumoungs shrugged. "Unfortunately, that's the best I can do."
"Under the circ*mstances you're doing just fine. And thanks. Now, if you'll pardon me"—be turned to Tarieton—"What I'm sweating is how the bastard got here in the first place."
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Tarieton shook his head. "I don't know."
"You don't know? Why the hell not?"
"We can't contact the ship."
**And we're still pooping around, here?" In reflex he reached a hand out toward Tarieton, then pulled it back. "I don't believe this—it has to be a bad joke." The hand clenched into a fist. "Let's move."
"I've asked for a car. Wait a minute—here comes Vertan."
H
The Tilaran approached. "I have called. A vehicfe wilt be of your service, shortly."
"Yen, thanks," said Barton.. "And while we're waiting —Vertan, what's this about your refusing to help? Remember, • Tarieton?—you said that, when I got here. What happened?"
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"When the shouting started," said Tarleton, "Vertan
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•and I went to see what was up. When we saw, I asked him to get help. He refused—that's alt."
"The hell you say." Then, "Vertan, why is it you would not be of help to an Earthani in need of that help? Is this how you are of friendship?"
"Barton—were you not told of his act?"
"Yeh—he got rough. I mean, he was of force to the woman. If he lives, there will be punishment. Of - your jail, or ours?"
^
"I do not know of jail. But why must he live?"
Barton considered what he had heard. "Vertan— what is the Tilaran way, with those who violate your laws?"
"We are of reason, of persuasion, that all be of good actions. If a person will not, and al! cannot be of safety from that person, the matter is of death. But first there is talk and agreement."
"Your custom is of greater harshness than ours. But of this man's act, where was talk and agreement?"
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"The woman said he was of force; she showed the marks- No more was needed—all were of agreement."
"I don't exactly remember being asked for my vote."
"You were not of presence." Vertan turned aside as another Tilaran spoke to him, then said, "Your car is now of readiness."
"All right," said Tarleton. "Thank you. Later, Vertan, we will speak of this matter."
The Tilaran inclined his head as the two men left. Tarleton beckoned to Slobodna. "You heard most of that, Slowboat?"
"Enough, I think. I've alerted the ships, as you said. And appointed some folks to pass the word that we leave the party early—and all together. When do you want me to pull the chain?"
"Hmm—stay near a squawkbox, or have someone on it who can find you in a hurry. Barton or I will give you the office, either over the box or by messenger."
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"You think we're in a jam?"
"I don't know. Not in danger, I think, but maybe on our own, from here out."
"I hope not," said Slobodna. "I've come to like these folks."
"Me too," said Barton. "But have we come to know them?"
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"That's the question, all right," Tarleton said. "Well, there's the car—let's go. See you, Slowboat. And stay oa top of it. Right?"
"Will do." Slobodna turned back to the group inside, as the other two entered the car.
To Barton, the ride to the ship was interminable. Neither man spoke—what was there to say?
The ship was supposed to be buttoned up. It wasn't— it was wide open, the main ramp down and the airlock
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door ajar. Barton won the sprint to the ramp. Peripherally, he saw the other man turn aside, into shadows. No matter—he charged into the ship, nerves keyed high in readiness for the unknown.
Empty—all compartments, the lounges, and galley. No need to explore the drive room—its seal was intact. The control room was locked from inside, and his pounding on the door brought no response. He heard a sound of thin crying—but it came from the airlock. On the double, he went there.
Just inside, he met Tarleton, half-supporting, halfcarrying Helaise Renzel—it was she who cried, standing crouched, blonde hair plastered wetly across one side of her face. Her mouth gaped squarely, in agony.
Barton spoke first. "Hishtoo has the ship! How the hell can we break into the controtroom?"
Tarleton shook his head. "Hishtoo has a ship, but not this one. Helaise saw. She's hurt—get Slowboat on the box and have Cummings out here five minutes ago. Tell him who's injured, and how."
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Then Barton saw her arm, bent horribly between elbow and wrist, with a sharp end of bone showing through the torn skin.
Above the break, deep, saw-toothed lacerations oozed blood. Hishtoo—he's paying me back, all right!
Barton activated the compartment's screen; sooner than he expected, he reached Slobodna's man at the party. Some party! He relayed Tarleton's orders and signed off.
^
On Tarleton's bed Helaise huddled, moaning; beads of sweat rolled down her cheeks and forehead. Like a mother elephant, the big man fussed over her, not daring to touch. But all his concern wasn't helping anything.
All right; Barton knew how to reduce a fracture. He'd learned the trick in the Army, the hard way, and Renzel's
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frail arm should be easier than an infantryman's muscular leg. The jagged end of bone would carry bacteria into the wound, but that's what antibiotics were for— and he needed this woman in shape to tell her story.
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Some pain-killer would have helped, but he didn't, know where Myra kept the stuff.
So he talked Tarleton into position for helping, and applied traction to the crumpled arm. It straightened;
Helaise screamed once. then bit her lip; blood ran.' When he thought he had it right, he said to Tarleton, "Can you bold it right there?" At the man's nod. Barton got up and poured a jolt of his boss's best bourbon. Helaise wasn't in shock, near as he could tell, so the stuff should help. And when she sipped it, her color began to come back. As. an afterthought he gave Tarleton a taste also, then took one himself before giving Helaise the last of it.
"Now we're bourbon-brothers," he said, "so you can tell us what happened. Like how come you stayed here, and not ap Fenn."
The tale was short but ugly. After his defeat at Barton's hands—or, rather, feet—ap Fenn kept Helaise afraid of him and more afraid to complain. When he saw that everyone who knew he was assigned to ship duty had left in the first car, he made Helaise back his story, to the rest, that she had the duty and he could leave with them. At the
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party he figured to avoid Barton and anyone else who knew him for AWOL. "... and if you did see him, what could you do about it, in public?"
Fear, not loyalty to ap Fenn, had kept Helaise from calling to warn Tarleton and the rest. "And I still fear Terike. What will happen to me when he comes back?"
"Nothing," said Barton. "Because hell be locked in Compartment Six. Which brings up a point—Hishtoo. What happened there?"
She had taken food to the Demu, and he'd knocked the tray aside and grabbed her. Barton nodded. "Must have known you were the only one of us aboard; that hardshell always knew more English than he let on. Then what?"
"Eeshta tried to help me; he knocked her down. Her mouth ran blood but she got up and ran, crying out, *I will not let him take the ship to Sisshain!' Hishtoo dropped roe and went after her, but she slammed the control room door in his face. He shouted something after her—in Demu, I think."
"So that's who's in there," Tarleton said,
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"Who else?" said Barton. "Once you said Hishtoo didn't have this ship—and that's the next job I mentioned, how to get to her. She's hurt, or in shock; that's why she didn't answer your calls."
Barton shook his head. "All right, Helaise. The rest of it?" She'd tried to run but she was half-stunned. Hishtoo caught her, and slammed her forearm against his knee until the bones gave.
"Then he bit me—horribly—and I heard him speak in English."
"Crab salad," Barton muttered.
"How did you know that?" She tried to sit up, and failed.
"Hishtoo has a long memory. I said that to him a couple of times, when the break was on the other arm. His. But, anyway. Then what, Helaise? Did Hishtoo have a weapon?"
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He hadn't. He'd dragged Renzel out of the ship, across the spaceport- A car passed; to avoid its lights, Hishtoo pushed the woman one way as he fell the other. She could still run, and found hiding in shadows under another ship. "He couldn't find me. I lay there a long time." And eventually she saw the Demu climb the ramp into a Tilaran ship; a few minutes later, that ship lifted. Then she walked, and sometimes crawled, trying to seek her way back. But when Tarleton found her, she didn't recognize where she was.
Barton nodded. "That covers it. And that blows it. Hishtoo's off to tell all good Demu that now is the time to put down the upstart animals." He felt his lips stretch over his teeth and knew he wasn't smiling. "Tarleton, we can forget the surprise party. The birthday boy is going to be damned well braced for it"
"We can't sit on this," Barton said. Again he punched for a circuit to the party building, and this time asked for Vertan. Soon, on the screen the Tilaran appeared.
Barton spoke first. "Hishtoo has escaped, taking a ship of the Tilari. He goes, we think, to a place of the name Sisshain. Is its location of your knowledge?"
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"No, Barton. Of Demu planets, we know only from the maps you show us. Except for Demmon, their major world, we know not of names. But now—what is to do? And of what mischance did the Demu escape?"
Irritated, Barton shook his head. Post-mortems
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wouldn't put Hishtoo back in Compartment Six. But maybe he'd better soothe the Tilaran. "It was ap Feno— the man who was of force to the woman. He put his duty here on a woman, who was not of strength to contain Hishtoo. She is injured and of great pain. As for now, Vertan—can you send a ship after Hishtoo? Your pilots must be of greater skill than he, in your own ships."
"Of what hour was his departure?"
,-
Barton thought "The time is not of certainty—only that it preceded discovery of ap Fenn with the woman."
"Then effectively he is beyond detection range, since we know not of his direction. And it was your part to keep the Demu of no harm to us."
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The entry-request light blinked—Cummings, probably. Barton let his resentment flare. "If you are only of futility and recrimination, Vertan, the matter is not of immediacy. We will speak of it later." He cut the screen.
"A little rough, weren't you?" Tarleton's voice was edged. "Are you trying to cancel the alliance?".
"Oh, bullsh*ti I'm tired of people hitching from the cheap seats. First, Vertan wouldn't help with ap Fenn— now all he can say is that Hishtoo was our problem. Where the hell was his own security, that let Hishtoo get away with his ship?" He shook his head, "Skip it—I think Cummings wants in."
"One thing, first. You're the one. Barton, who said that two races are more important than any one man. Have you changed your mind?"
In midstride, Barton paused. "No—no, I haven't It's just that I'm beginning to wonder if one of those races is going to pull its weight after all." Tarleton did not answer.
Barton half-walked, half-ran to the main airlock.
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Cummings was there, all right, and the doctor wasted no words. "The man is dead. Where's the woman?"
"Follow me. Ap Fenn died, huh? Not much loss, maybe, but it still bugs me that the Tilari wouldn't help."
"They couldn't have saved him. After all—without hospital facilities—and there wasn't time to move him— I didn't quite manage that myself. The things you saw looked bad, but the real damage was internal. Ruptured spleen—internal hemorrhage. The Tilarans don't know our anatomy well enough to have handled that in the emergency situation." Well, maybe not—but Barton
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was still angry. It was the principle of the thing, he grumbled to nobody.
In Compartment One, Tarleton showed signs of strain. Holding constant tension for any length of time. Barton realized, was a fast way to get tired. "Want me to take over for a while," he asked, "until Dr. Cummings has it under wraps?"
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"No. A little longer won't kill me."
"Okay—then I'll get on the control-room problem."
"Try the screen from the galley. Barton. It's usually left on 'Open' from the control end."
"Okay. Hey, fill Slowboat in, will you, when you get a. hand free? I got sore there, and forgot. Besides being-in a hurry to answer the door."
"Right." With a motion of the head, Tarleton waved him off. As Cummings began inspection of Helaise's arm, Barton left. He decided he could do without the next few minutes in Compartment One, anyway.
In the galley he first poured a cup of coffee. It was old, strong, and rank—it tasted like Barton felt. He flipped the switch that put the control room on the screen. Tarleton's hunch paid off; the screen lit.
Eesbta was there, all right—he could see her, slumped in the copilot's seat—hat off, head down, hands over her earholes—unmoving. But sitting up like that, she couldn't be dead, or unconscious. In shock, he thought— but why, and how?
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"Eeshta," he said. "Eeshta—this is Barton. Eeshta, it's Barton. Are you all right?" Dumb question—obviously she wasn't all right. "What's wrong, Eesbta? It's Barton—let me in. Get up and open the door, Eeshta. Whatever's wrong, open the door—let me in to help you. It's all right, Eeshta—nobody blames you for anything. It's all right—let me help you."
Over and over, repeating and varying, Barton pleaded with the young Demu. But except for an occasional flinching movement, Eeshta made no response. Barton kept trying, but he felt he was running out of steam. Finally he paused, silent—and saw Eeshta begin to tremble, a tremor that built until it shook the small form.
"Whnee?" Without thought he said if the first sound Eeshta had ever uttered to him in communication. Shrill and plaintive, he made it. And suddenly the small Demu was on its feet, facing him.
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"He cursed my eggs," Eeshta said, one slow syllable after another. "Hishtoo cursed my eggsl"
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Not immediately, but soon, Eeshta unlocked the door. Disregarding the question of whether his action suited the exoskeletal Demu instincts. Barton gave way to his own and cuddled the small, unhappy creature. Sounds of Demu distress mingled with his "there, there" .and "It's all right" and "Okay now—nothing to worry about." Barton began to feel a little foolish, but gradually the kid was calming down.
When Eeshta was quiet, he asked, "Can you tell me about it?"
"Barton—Hishtoo cursed my eggs. My own eggparent!"
"Well, how did it happen? Mind you—I don't think it really counts."
"It does! I defied him—and all of Demu pride. So he cursed me . . ."
"First, he broke loose—right? And grabbed Helaise?"
"Yes, Barton. He said we take this ship, and Helaise
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as prisoner, to Sisshain. There we copy your new weapon that we do not have—and wipe you from our sight."
"I see. And then, Eeshta?"
"I find that although I am Demu, I must not let him do what he says. I try to turn" Helaise free; Hishtoo with terrible force throws me to a wall. But I am not dead—bleed^S, yes, but living. I win to here and lock him away from me. But his curse follows—as the door closes, I hear it.
"Barton, that curse can kill. Why am I not dead? Hearing it, I want to be dead—I belong dead. So why do I still live?"
The idea required careful handling—witch doctors, Barton knew, could kill by the victim's faith in their powers.
"Eeshta," he said, "do you believe all the things that Hishtoo believes?"
"Barton, you know I do not—did I so, there would be no disagreement . . . and no curse. I would be whole, not filled with the death that is soon to come."
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"You're missing the point, youngster. Curses—and believe me, I'm an expert on curses—only work between people who believe the same things."
"Can such a thing be true?"
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"It's a fact. Really—it's been proven, on Earth. Now, you no longer believe as Hishtoo does—right?"
"That is right. Barton—yes."
"So Hishtoo, any more, can't put a curse on you and make it work." Barton had a touch of inspiration. "And of course you can't put a curse on Hishtoo, either. You see?—it wouldn't work at all."
After a long silence, Eeshta nodded. "I see, now. Thank you for explaining—I could have died of my own ignorance, could I not?" Her tongue lifted in the Demu smile. "Barton, you are good to me."
"Then, is everything okay now?"
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"Almost, I think—though it will take time for me to know fully, what you say. But there is still one thing."
"What is that?"
"I am very hungry."
"Hell, so am I. Let's go!"
In the galley, after washing Eeshta's face. Barton decided to try a little culinary bluffing. Ordinarily he limited his "cooking" to the heating of Frozen Freddies, but he felt like taking a flyer. As a boy, on camping trips, he'd scrambled a few eggs without disaster—the Tilaran softshelled variety couldn't be too different . . .
He did not say "eggs" out loud—not to Eeshta—he merely scrambled them, threw in bits of green pepper and a dollop of Worcestershire sauce, and hoped for the best. As they ate, he thought: Barton, actually you are one hell of a good cook. On your better days . ..
"Still hungry, Eeshta?"
"No, Barton. I am satisfied."
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"Good. Me, too. A little coffee?—I made a fresh pot."
"I would like that." Barton poured for two. No sidearms—they both drank it black. And now he set out the star map he had brought from the control room.
"Eeshta—can you find Sisshain on this map?"
"What is it, that you would do?"
"I don't know yet. Nothing, maybe. Or if the place is important, try to get there before Hishtoo."
Eeshta shook its head. "How could you? He is so far ahead."
"This ship is faster than the one Hishtoo took. We could do it."
"And kill, then, my egg-parent?"
"I wouldn't think so—no reason to, that I can see. Get
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there before him if we can, yes. But killing isn't what we want. As you know. We want to meet your people before they're prepared to fight, and not have to fight them. But Hishtoo, if he gets there first, could warn them—and then there would be war, and killing.
"So—on this map, can you locate Sisshain?"
Eeshta puzzled over the map, drew a finger across it. "I think here. Barton. Far from my early home or-Aom where you were, or from the centers of Demu power. But somehow, in our heritage, important. It may be the world of our beginning."
Eeshta's finger jerked back, away from the map. "I should not tell you—or all Demu may curse my eggs!"
Barton sighed. "Eeshta—you have agreed with our purpose—that Demu should not capture other peoples and mutilate them—that such things should be stopped. But they won't be stopped, unless you help me. Eeshta, where is Sisshain?"
Tentatively, then firmly, Eeshta's finger touched the map. Barton felt relief—he'd thought he had it right the
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first time, but it never hurt to make sure! "Good. Thank you, Eeshta."
And it was the hole card—the planet the Ormthan had mentioned. For its sun sat in a pocket of a dust cloud, approachable from only one direction.
"More coffee, Eeshta?" Barton was thinking that he hoped the small Demu wouldn't be hurt by whatever happened. Remembering Eeshta's chant, he added a few hopes for Earth's welfare.
"Barton. What do you do now?"
"I don't know yet. We had our plans—I suppose you've heard them; they were no secret. We hoped we could just turn up and show our muscle and say 'let's talk.' But now that Hishtoo has escaped, I'm afraid that won't work. Probably our best bet is to get to Sisshain ahead of him, if we can,
"There are other problems—ap Fenn is dead, for one thing. And the TUari . . . well, we'll figure that out later." He stood. "Shall we see how it's going with Helaise?"
In Compartment One the scene looked cozy enough.
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A slim, plastic dressing covered the broken arm, but Helaise held her drink—by eye, much milder than the one Barton had given her earlier—in her other hand. Her ^hair was brushed back into relative neatness.
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From his big easychair, Tarleton asked, "Is Eeshta all right?"
"She'll do," said Barton. "Here, sit down. Eeshta." He remained standing. "Did you get hold of Slowboat?"
"Yes. He called back."
"What's the scoop there?"
"Everybody's cooled down—apologies and condolences all around. I told him to use his own judgment— no need to break up the party until some of the other contingents begin to leave—but for all our people to be careful with the polites."
"Good enough."
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"Yes. Now, how about you. Barton? You have anything new?"
"We know where Sisshain is—where Hishtoo's going. It's the world the Ormthan told of."
Tarleton frowned. " B ut why would he go there? That's not where the Demu keep most of their muscles. I'd expect him to hit for Demmon or for one of the guard planets, at least."
"I purely don't know, Tarleton. Any ideas, Eeshta?"
"It may be that Sisshain is the place where decisions are made."
Barton nodded. "That figures. Tarleton!—we have to get there first." Over the big man's protest, he said, "Not the whole fleet, but a strike force."
Tarleton's expression changed. "Of course. How many ships?"
"That's your decision. You're strategy; I'm tactics. I'd settle for one Earth ship, as long as I'm on it." He reached to the mini-bar and poured himself a slug of his
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host's bourbon. "Cheers, Tarleton."
He turned to the woman, resting now but still pale. "You feeling better, Helaise?"
"Lots. Thanks to Max's little needle. And he's leaving me some ampoules, for when it starts hurting again." She sounded a little punchy. Barton thought, but not bad. Now she frowned. "One thing: What about Terike's body? Do they have cemeteries here? Or cremation, or what? I mean—he wasn't the best man I ever knew, but still he should have some of the good things said over him."
"I'm afraid that won't be possible," said Cummings. "Tilara has different customs. The body was taken to be used in agriculture."
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"Oh, no!" Her voice broke in a sob. "How could they?" Tarieton tried to comfort her, but she cried all the harder.
"Helaise!" said Barton. "Let the body help grow turnips, or whatever. You want good things said, we'll say
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them. Over your memories of the good side of Terrke ap Fenn. That's what's important."
"How can you say that? You hated him!"
"A little, yes. And for cause. Not to want him "oead, though; I don't like that any better than you do. And I stilt have a bone to pick with the Tilari, that they were willing to let him die without trying to help. That's how I feel, Helaise."
Slowly, she nodded. "All right; I guess you mean it."
Barton rose and moved toward the door. "Just a minute," said Tarieton. "We're not through here."
"Oh? Okay, shoot."
"You're still working for me, I think. While that's true. I don't want you picking any bones with the Tilari. Comments?"
Barton thought it over. "Yeh, comments. You sif back so much, sometimes I forget who's running the show. And that's no complaint; I like having a free hand. But if you don't want me taking over too much, it's about time you
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spoke up."
"I'm doing it. Mostly I have no complaints, either; you run a good fleet. But policy's my bag. You stay out of it."
For a moment, surprise at the challenge kept Barton s3ent. Then, "Right; we each have our own job. All right —outside of regular operations I won't say Word One to Vertan, without your okay."
"Good enough. And when it comes to fleet operations I'm not putting any wraps on you. You understand that, don't you?"
"I'm not with the fleet any more; remember? I'm on the hit force, to Sisshain." Tarleton's brows raised, but he said nothing.
Helaise was dozing; her outburst had drained her energies. "She might as well be in bed," said Max Cummings. Tarieton shrugged, lifted her gently and carried her to Compartment Three.
"I would be with her," said Eeshta. "If she wakes, needing something, I could bring it." The young Demu
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brought a few things from Six and settled in as night nurse,
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showing no signs of planning to sleep immediately. Cummings said good night and left the ship.
"All right," said Tarieton then. "Let's talk strike force. When do you want to leave?"
No arguments? Good enough. "About three hours ago. No—a couple of days, to get the hardware together. And I need to see Limila first. . . ."
"Sure. The hardware, I'll expedite. You think about the makeup of your strike team; we can settle it tomorrow. Right now, I want a look at that map." They took the map into the control room, where Barton spread it across the operations desk.
He pointed out Tilara, the major Demu worlds and their guard planets, and the dust cloud, with the pocket facing away from Demu space. Deep in the pocket, one star held lone sway. Tarieton put a finger to it. "That's the one the Ormthan mentioned?"
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"Good memory. As I recall, it was a single mention."
"When that one talked, I listened." Then Tarieton proposed that instead of going straight for the cloud, Barton should first get that obstacle between him and the Demu guard worlds. Less risk of detection that way, he said. Of course the detour would add to Hishtoo's lead, but as Barton said, Hishtoo was limited to light-speed communications just like everybody else, and would have no chance to alert any other Demu worlds. While it would be best to catch Mishtoo in space, the real need was to prevent any ship leaving to take word from Sisshain. "Assuming he does go there," Tarieton added. "And if he gets there first, what's your plan?"
"Depends on what we find. Maybe sit down and look around—or hang loose upstairs and hold the line until the fleet arrives."
"Sounds reasonable." Tarieton yawned. "Barton, I've about had it for tonight. Excuse me?"
"Sure. See you." But before Barton could leave, the entrance alarm blinked and sounded.
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"Must be the troops coming in," said Barton. "I'll get it."
Tarieton sighed. "I'd better stay and hear if there's any news. In the galley?"
"Right." Barton walked to the main airlock. Awaiting entrance was no crew member, but Vertan. Barton spoke his name, nothing more.
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-Barton. I may enter?" Barton waved him in, and ?ed tile way to the galley. "I am of regret," the Tilaran said, "for the hurt to our friendship. Of the man ap Fenn, that you and we were of ignorance to the ways of the other. Cummings has told me that our help would not have been of use. But had I known how you feel of such matters, I would have been of willingness.
"Of the Demu's escape—I was, in speaking, of, shock and surprise, and am now of apology. Part of the fault is of ourselves, that the Demu could take our ship. Shall we both be of forgiveness, Barton?"
Hell—his promise to Tarleton surely didn't cover the
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acceptance of olive branches! "Be it so, Vertan. And again of friendship." Pausing at the galley's open door, they shook hands.
"Be of welcome, Vertan," said Tarleton. Then in English, "I gather we're all buddies again?" Barton nodded. "Coffee, perhaps?"
"It is of pleasure," said Vertan. "Is not 'buddies* of friendship? I am now, from study, of some skill in your language. Shall we speak in it?"
"If you like." Tarleton did so. "I'm still not too good in yours, I admit. And what is your thought here, tonight?"
"First was to repair friendship. I think—I hope—that is done. Then, to exchange facts and discuss the plans— the changes of plan—we must put before the group tomorrow. You have thought on this already, perhaps?"
"Yes," said Tarleton. "We know where Hishtoo is going. Barton will take a small force and try to get there first. The fleet will follow as soon as possible. Barton?"
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The latter had stood. "Go ahead with the fill-in," he said. "I'll get the map. And I have a few questions myself."
A few minutes later the three were tracing routes and estimating time-distance factors. "It is not a certainty," said Vertan, "that you can overtake Hishtoo. With two or three days' lead, a very good pilot and navigator could negate your advantage in acceleration, between here and Sisshain. Do you know whether Hishtoo is so skilled?"
"He's traveled plenty," said Barton, "and in Charge of a ship, at that—it was his raider that picked me up on Earth, But whether he was the brains or just the brass. I don't know." He paused. "I just thought of something.
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Your ships' controls work a lot different from ours, or from the Demu's—and that could hamper Hishtoo."
"But the Demu have captured Tilari ships, in the past," said Tarleton. "I wonder what the chances are, that he might be familiar with your control systems ...."
"We had best," the Tilaran said, "assume the most dan-
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gerous possibility."
"Right," said Barton. "And there's where I have questions."
He didn't like the answers. Hishtoo's ship carried a laser, installation complete except for the power leads— and a full set of instruction manuals. Barton had seen those manuals; they were good, very graphic. Hishtoo wouldn't have any language problem.
"Well, gentlemen," he said, "that puts knobs on it. Hishtoo has to be stopped on Sisshain—if not sooner."
He asked further. Vertan could supply the stolen ship's drive-wake patterns, for detection and identification in space, but not until the next day; that particular computer file was not attended at night. All right; Barton asked about Hishtoo's fuel supply, and other weapons the Demu might have, both ship's and personal- None from Ship One, he knew; in port, handguns stayed locked up. "And I assume your ship was empty."
Briefly, before he answered, the Tilaran's face twisted;
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Barton wondered at the look. of it, for the news wasn't all that bad. Hishtoo had enough .fuel to reach Sisshain or another Demu world—Demmon, say—but not to go first to one and then another. He .probably had two ion-beam handguns, but in space, what good were they?
The ship's nose carried one large ion-beam projector, a plasma gun that had been intermittently malfunctioning, so maybe it was working and maybe not, and only one of the two high-drive torpedoes it would normally carry; the other had been used in testing and not yet replaced.
"We did get a few breaks, then," said Barton. "Anything else?"
"Yes," said Vertan. "The part I do not like to say— or think about. The ship Hishtoo took—it was not empty."
"You mean he killed some of your people?"
"Or worse, that he did not." Face contorted, Vertan shook bis head. "Two were on board. In charge, a man named Gerain. And visiting him, his most needful person. Her name is livajj—a person well loved by those who know her."
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livajjt "So young she is, but of good thought" "I know her," Barton said. "Damn it all! Hishtoo does
learn."
"What do you mean?" Tarieton spoke. "What's wrong? I mean, 1 know it's bad, but what—?"
Barton felt old. 'The hostage principle, is what. Same as when -I used Eeshta against Hishtoo, to bluff my way onto the Demu ship I took to Earth. If I catch up to Hishtoo, he breaks livajj's arm, gets on the screen -to me and says *crab salad.' The only difference is, Hishtoo won't be bluffing. You saw what he did to Helaise." 'Then he has achieved immunity?" Vertao. *'You mean we're stymied?" Tarieton. ^Hell, no." Barton shook his head. "But it's bard. And 111 be breaking my promise to Eeshta, too."
"You lost me. Barton. Maybe you can spell it out?" "What Hishtoo doesn't realize, the big hard-shelled copycat, is that the stakes are too big now. With roe it was Eeshta's life against letting me board the Demu
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ship. I was stretched all out of shape and Hishtoo had a gun; not a bad bet, in his view. And even if I got on the ship, what could I do with it? Where be missed was, you cage a man like an animal long enough, what comes out u an animal. When he pulled the gun, be learned that." "I follow you," said Tarieton. "But what about now?" "Like I said; he's made the stakes too big, especially now that he's got a laser. No two people's lives-—" Barton's teeth gritted. "He won't eat anybody alive—but I'll have to gun the ship. If I can." He shuddered. "That's where Eeshta comes in. When she fingered Sisshain for me, the idea was that I had no intention of killiag Hisbtoo."
"Will you tell her?"
"I have tol If we ever make talk-contact with the Demu, Eeshta's the key to all- of it. With somebody in that spot, you don't fake. Besides, on straight merit, the kid deserves the truth." "And if she turns against us?" said Vertan. "If we have to do things without her, the hard way, better we know it now."
"What you must do. Barton, is very hard," Vertan said. "Bad enough, for me, will be the telling that Gerain and
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livajj are as dead. At least, can you do so, dead swiftly and without pain."
The Tilaran stood, saying he must leave and declining
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the offer of a spare compartment for sleeping. "My most needful person waits, and I would not disappoint her." So the two men escorted the Tilaran offship to his groufldcar, shook hands, and watched him drive away.
"How'd you make it up so quick?" Tarieton asked. "He said he was sorry and I believed him. Instant peace pipe."
"Yes? Well, good. For a while there, I was worried." Barton saw lights approaching. "Two cars, there. The crew?"
"I'm afraid so." Tarleton shrugged. "Not looking forward to reciting the whole situation again, for them."
"Hell, I'll do it, if you want." But Tarieton shooed him away, saying that one of them had to be able to think in
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the morning, and sloshed full of coffee, the big man couldn't sleep, anyway. So Barton went aboard, and was asleep before any returning footsteps may have sounded outside his door.
He woke refreshed; the load on his mind had settled, some. He dressed and headed for the galley passing the control room he saw Cheng asleep. Well, any of the alarms would wake him, fast.
No one else was up; Barton was stuck with his own cooking. Well, what was wrong with scrambled eggs again, and some toast? Figuring that he wouldn't be alone very long, he made a large pot of coffee and cooked for several.
Heavy-eyed, but looking cheerful, Alene Grover was his first customer. She leaned to hug him; her hair brushed his cheek. "Tarleton's still with the dead. I didn't try to wake him."
"Good job you didn't. He can use the sleep."
"Yes. Any of those eggs have my name on them?"
"Help yourself."
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She did, and sat across from him. "Hell about Terike, isn't it? I can't say I liked him—I was his first roommate here, you know, and it wasn't the greatest relationship I've ever had—but he had his good points.
"I guess he was pretty badly out of line with the local girl last night. But I can't see that he deserved to die for it."
"By these people's lights, he did. But in case you hadn't heard, they didn't kill him, even by inaction—it was an internal injury that Cummings couldn't spot until too late. And on the woman's part, it was self-defense. As to ap
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Fenn, I agree with you. I won't miss him personally, but I didn't want him dead. Tarletoa fill you in on all the rest of it?"
"Quite a lot, yes. Oh, those poor Tilaransi" He wasn't up to this. "Is it all right with you, Alene, if we don't discuss them just now?"
"Yes, Barton." For a time, they ate in silence. "Bar-
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ton?" "Yes?"
"Last night, being with you—I liked it. I'm glad we did."
"So am I, Alene."
"Barton, do you suppose ... ? Can we, sometimes?" "Not on the ship. Not unless the rules—our customs— change a lot."
Her eyes widened, "And if they did?" "// they did, agreed by all—hell, yesi Did you need to ask, Alene?"
"Maybe not—but I liked hearing the answer." "You smile nice, but you have egg on your face. Literally, I mean."
She laughed and used her napkin. "When it comes to romance. Barton, you're in a class by yourself." But as she patted his cheek and left, she was still smiling.
Barton had begun to think he had run out of customers, when Eeshta came in to the galley. Her chitinous face
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could show no sign of fatigue or refreshment, but she moved well. "Good morning. Barton."
"Morning, Eeshta. You get enough sleep? Breakfast there in the cooker, still hot." He set up more toast.
"Thank you—I am rested, as is Helaise. Is there enough food for us both?"
There was. Eeshta dished up two plates and put them on a tray. Barton distributed the toast when it appeared, and added two cups of coffee. "Can I deliver this, or would Helaise rather be left alone?"
"She would see you, I think. She asked my help in composing her appearance." So he poured one more cup of coffee and they set out. Barton moving carefully to avoid spilling anything.
In Three, Helaise Renzel lay gracefully arranged, propped by pillows, hair shining-smooth, smile relaxed. A slight puffiness around the eyes gave the only sign of inner disquiet Barton greeted her. She seemed to want to apol-
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ogize for something, but he said, "Eat first; talk later." With her left hand, she managed the fork well enough. When the food was done, and Eeshta had gone for more coffee. Barton said, "All right. What's on your mind?"
The gist of it was that Helaise had done everything wrong, that the whole mess was her fault and no one else's. Listening, Barton shook his head, and waited his chance to repiy. When it came, he pointed out that it took everybody in a situation, to make it happen, "You. me, Terike, the woman he tried to rape, the two Tilarans who weren't paying enough attention to ship's security— Hishtoo, even Eeshta. You realize that back in 1982 if I'd been someplace else instead of where the Demu grabbed me from, most likely none of us would be here!" He shook his head. "Assigning blame, Helaise, is the world's most futile pastime. So drop it."
Mouth working, fingers twisting in her hair, she nodded. "Yes—it's like bragging, isn't it? 7 did it.' All right; I won't, again."
Eeshta returned with the coffee, explaining that she'd had to wait while a new batch was made. "Fresh is better, anyway," Barton said. "Thanks." But he'd had enough,
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really, and drank only about half the cup before be rose to leave.
As he stood, Helaise said, "Did you mean it, that all of us who knew Terike will say the good things about him, together?" He nodded, and she said, "I'm glad; he should have that. There was a great deal wrong about him, but not everything."
Barton shook his head. "There's a great deal wrong about most of us. Some have better luck coping with it, is all." He turned to Eeshta. "Could you come with me a little while?" He wasn't looking forward to his talk with the small Demu, but might as well get it over with.
Your place or mine, he thought, then led Eeshta to Cabin Two. As they entered, Limila*s absence hit him afresh. He motioned Eeshta to sit, and sat also.
"Eeshta, I have to tell you something—something bad."
The small person sat straight, primly. "Hishtoo is dead?"
"No—no—but I told you, remember, that I don't want
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to kill him. That is stili true. But I said I had no reason to do so—and that is no longer true."
"What has changed. Barton?"
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He told her of the Tilaran prisoners, and how he thought Hishtoo would use them, and why. And what he, Barton, would have to do about it. Eeshta made no protests, indulged no hysterics; her questions were simple and logical. There was something, Barton thought, to be said for the Demu mind—it had definite possibilities.
'The trouble is," he concluded, "that I can't give'him what he wants. You know that."
"Yes, Barton." Eeshta paused. "I have thought of when we met, and you used me to take the ship. Now that I know more of you, I think you won, over Hishtoo, with a lie. For I do not think you would have killed me—even then, and desperate as you were."
Barton's breath left him with a great shudder. "Yes, Eeshta. You're right."
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"But why did you not tell me this before?"
"I didn't think you'd believe me. I thought it would sound like a cop-out."
"I see. Barton, you have the pride of a Demu. That is both good and bad."
"Yeh. Thanks ... I think. But the problem is, Hishtoo won't be bluffing. So no matter what I said before, Eeshta, right now I don't see any way out of killing the lot of them."
"Barton, why do you tell me this?"
"Because if we're going to work together, when we meet your people, we have to be honest with each other. I don't think you ever lie to me, and I mustn't lie to you. Understand?"
"Yes. 1 believe I do. And it is true, I do not lie. Barton, I hope you need not kill my egg-parent—and I believe ^our saying, that you have no wish to kill. But as things are, if you must, then you must. And I have no choice but to accept that need."
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Barton gave a relieved sigh. "You're all right, you know that?"
"Yes, I am in good health, and not overly troubled. Shall I now see to Helaise?"
"Yes. Good idea." Eeshta left him shaking his head. Would he ever stop underestimating that young, alien mind?
In the control room, where Myra Hake had the duty, again Barton had to talk through all that had happened, and what to expect next. He was getting tired of the re-
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C-
plays, but could find no way to skip them. Eventually he got the answer he was after, which was that Myra and Cheng would be willing to go with the strike force.
The rehash stirred his own resentments, though, and he aired them: not only had ap Fenn endangered the alliance with the Tilari, he had also enabled Hishtoo's escape,
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with a laser, and blowing any possible advantage of surprise. "If he were here alive, right now, I'd be hard put to keep from breaking his stupid neck for him!"
Myra nodded. "I can see that. But was it all his fault?"
A sudden realization obscured her words—the gutlevel knowledge that ap Fenn's insult to Limila had been avenged, forever. Somehow, the thought made Barton feel petty; he shook his head, and said, "That goddamned politician, Terike's uncle. Using Agency pressure to pass an unstable man through the screening test. He—"
It still didn't work. "Assigning blame," he'd told Helaise, "is the world's most futile pastime." And what was he doing, now?
^
"Skip it, Myra- We all do what we think we have to, and sometimes we don't know our ass from third base."
Before she could answer, the screen lit. and Tarleton said, "Barton. Join me in the galley and help wake up my brains?"
"Sure." The screen blanked. "See you, Myra."
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Tarleton had the map spread, its corners held down by dishes. Down-Arm from Tilara'appeared a new dark nebula—a coffee stain. Barton grinned. "Watch it with the stellar geography."
"Oh? Yes—it doesn't wipe off very well. Here. sit down." Facing the map upside down, Barton sat. Watching his boss pick at the remains of his breakfast. Barton decided it must have started out as a good-sized meal. Tarleton looked up, and said, "Have you thought about what you'll need for the Sisshain mission?"
"Depends. What do we expect to run into. there? How many alternatives can we plan for?" The two men talked it out. If the Demu at Sisshain beat off the strike force, or if Hishtoo changed his mind and went somewhere else. instead—either way, a ship would have to retreat. And report to the combined fleets in transit. "But that means." Barton said, leaning forward, "the strike force can't leave until you set the fleet's schedule. Or else no ship coming from Sisshaiu could possibly make rendezvous."
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Not so, Tarleton claimed. He was updating fleet liftoff,
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and since pinpoint rendezvous was out of the question, Scalsa was programming for "... a space-time corridor, whatever that is. Does it sound workable?"
Bartoa shifted his mind back, to his studies toward a doctorate in physics. "Sure. Flexible, prearranged parameters. Parallel input to the tin brains on all ships;
shouldn't diverge too much, in the length of time we'll jie out of contact. Just so you keep schedule."
"We will." Any ships not ready, Tarleton said, would be left behind to form a second contingent, with its own, later rendezvous "corridor." He sipped dregs from his coffee cup. "Now—how many ships do you want?"
Barton had thought about that. Now he said, "Three, I make it. One to land, if possible." Tarleton's eyebrows rose. "Well, how else do we find the thing the Ormthan mentioned, the thing of importance?" The big man nodded. "One ship to stand off, the way you said, and stoolie back to the fleet, maybe. And a third. Just in case, for the hell of it. Okay?"
Tarleton kept trying to get liquid from his cup; no luck.
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"All right; which ships, and what personnel?"
Barton grabbed the cup. "If you want to pickle your kidneys some more, let me get you a refill." That done, he sat again. "The other two ships, and their people, just pick me good ones. For myself, I'd like this ship; I know its quirks by now, and that could be handy in the clinches. Personnel, though ..." He wanted people he knew, but obviously he couldn't swipe all of Tarleton's top hands. Scalsa, for instance—the fleet needed him worse than Barton did. And Liese Anajek stayed with Scalsa, of course.
Bartoa started with the obvious. "Eeshta has to come;
in a way, this is first contact. I want Cbeng and Myra, and they're willing, so there's one pilot and one communicator. I can double in weapons if I have to, and Limila's trained herself in all three jobs. But I suppose we should have one full-time weapons man with no other job on his mind."
"Or hers. How about Helaise? Her arm won't be a problem long." While Barton tried to decide why he didn't like the idea, Tarleton said, "Aren't you running awfully shorthanded?"
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"No. It's my ship that lands, if any do, and on the ground, numbers won't count. Not the difference between six, and ten or twelve." About Renzel, he made up his
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mind. "I'll talk to Helaise; if she's willing, find me one more good hand to equalize the watch loads, and we're in."
Tarleton's cup was empty again; he looked at it as though he had caught it cheating at cards. "A pilot who can shoot, that would be?"
"Right. Now, then—two things 1 want, if there's time for them." First was a "side gun"; Corval had suggested putting a gyromagnetic valve between the exciter and the laser's delivery system, and running an auxiliary system ". . . to exit between the main airlock and the viewscreen above it. .Side-shot capability, with traverse. On my ship, anyway. Can you do it in time?"
"Shouldn't be a problem; we have plenty of spares. But your tube has to go right through the middle of Compartment Three."
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"With a short crew, who cares? Now I've got one for Vertan. Originally, if we landed on Sisshain it would be for an official confab, after convincing the Demu that it was best to talk. Now it's a whole new ball game— maybe a sneaky one."
"Barton, you drive someone crazy! What's your point?"
"Remember how I got out of the Demu research station?"
"Masquerading as a Demu, you mean?"
Barton nodded. "That's the ticket. And it might come in handy on Sisshain—but I don't especially want to carve up a Demu to get the mask. So' maybe the Tilaran plastics industry could whomp us up a few, and some fourdigit gloves." He held up one hand, little finger and ring finger together. "And footgear. Eeshta can model for them. We'll need robes and hoods, too—and this has to be one fast job of work."
"I'll call Vertan before I head for the conference building. As soon as we're done here."
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"Far as I'm concerned," said Barton, "that's right now."
"Good enough. What are you going to do next?"
"Go see Limila."
It wasn't that simple. Myra put his call through, but Limila was elsewhere, undergoing treatment; late in the afternoon, Barton could see her. Barton had no luck getting further information from the Tilaran woman at the other end. She might, he felt, have been trained in any Earth hospital he knew.
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Well, should he hit the conference scene with Tarieton? No—first, talk with Helaise. In Three, he found Eeshta starting to take the invalid's lunch tray back to the galley. The young Demu paused, and said to him, "I have thought more on what you said of Hishtoo and his curse. Peace grows in my mind."
"Good for you. Any time you want to talk some more, so do I." Eeshta left; he turned to Helaise. "If you feel as good as you look, I may have a job for you, I'm takiAg
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three ships after Hishtoo, hotfoot. You want to be my chief gun girl?" He saw her hesitating. "On my ship the roster is Cheng, Myra, Limila, Eeshta, you if you agree, me, and some fella Tarieton picks out of the records."
She counted fingers, "Rather a short crew, isn't it?" He repeated what he'd told Tarieton, and she said, "Then why the new man? Oh, I see!" She laughed. "Company for poor little Helaise." Barton spluttered, and she said, "Well, whoever he is, he won't have a very hard act to follow. And I can't say I was looking forward to being a fifth wheel around here." Eeshta returned; she opened a beer for Barton and put a- few in the cool-box. Helaise sighed. "I'd thought of transferring to a ship with imbalance between men and women, with sharing rather than pairing."
"Is that what you want, then?"
Before she could answer, Eeshta spoke. "I do not understand. So much concern as to who is with whom—and ail the time- With the Demu it is not thus. There is a season, and beforehand it is agreed which twos shall be formed. The time comes, and it is done and over, until the cycle returns and the eggs again ripen."
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"Different peoples, different ways," said Barton. And I'll bet, he thought, that there's no such thing as a Demu soap operal "It's no wonder you don't understand us, Eeshta. To tell the truth, sometimes we don't understand ourselves all that well." He turned back to Reuzel. "You still have a job offer, Helaise."
"Can I think it over? See whether Max thinks 111 be fit enough in time, and then let you know?"
"By tomorrow?" She nodded. "Sure; -fine. Welt, I'd better get moving. No rest for the wicked. See you, Helaise—•Eeshta."
He went looking for Tarieton, didn't find him in the control room or galley, so went to Compartment One. Alene Grover answered his knock and question. "He's
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gone to the conference. Said for you to come along if you got bored, but no need. Care to come in and sit a spell, Barton?"
We're on the ship, he told himself—we shouldn't. But
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he went in, anyway, and sat and talked for a while, making no advances at all. He wasn't sure whether he was relieved or disappointed when Grover made none, either, but after a time he excused himself and went to Cabin Two. He was lying down, half dozing, when Tarieton paged him from the galley.
The boss was drinking coffee again, this time with Liese Anajek. "That Stuff'11 kill you," Barton growled, and opened a beer before joining them. "So what's the scoop from today's big confab?"
"About what you'd expect," said Tarieton, "or maybe a little better. The hand weapons—you'll have them. The personal Shields—well, it's hoped they'll be ready— enough for strike-force personnel, anyway—day after tomorrow when you lift. If not—do you wait, or go without them?"
"It's up to me?" Tarieton nodded. "We go without them."
"Yes. I couldn't make that an order—but I didn't figure I'd have to."
"What else?" Barton felt his guts grinding into action
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gear. By God, finally it begins!
"Your Demu disguises—no problem. Vertan says they have a lightweight variable-stiffness plastic that's perfect for the job. Eeshta models for them this afternoon; •she'll only be needed for an hour or less. You'll have the stuff in time."
"Good. I'll tell Eeshta."
"I already have." Barton blinked. "We've updated the fleet schedule," Tarieton continued. "Scalsa's already feeding route-and-timing data to the Tilarans and our own squadron commanders."
"I won't even see Vito until the strike force leaves," Liese said, mock-pouting, "unless I disguise myself as a computer tape." Considering her rounded little form, Barton suppressed the obvious comment,
Instead he asked, "When's the new liftoff?" "It's a staggered operation. One of Slowboat's ships left today for Larka, and one of Tammy's for Filj, to set it up. Our contingent here leaves ten days after you do."
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Barton shook his head. "How the hell do you figure on making rendezvous if Scalsa's still working out the
timing?"
"He's got enough of it. We moved the meeting spot up closer. Where's the map?—oh well, it's just up-Arm from the coffee stain.
"The ships that left today have that data—the place, timing, and approach velocities. On rendezvous—which will be a little strung out, I grant you—we can distribute the rest of the trip schedule that he's working on now."
"Yeh," Barton said, "it could work. What's your estimated attendance?"
"You mean, how many make the deadline? Better than eighty percent, we think."
"Murphy's Law says different."
"I allowed for that. The initial estimates were more optimistic, by quite a lot. I took a fudge factor, then dou-
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bled it."
Barton grinned. "In that case, I buy it. Your guesstimates were generally good when we were putting our own fleet together. It's just our friends-and-neighbors that had me worried."
Tarleton looked at him, hard. "Are you still carrying a chip—about ap Fenn, or anything?"
Barton shook his head. "No—I don't think' so. It's just that—that incident showed me, we don't know as much about these people as we might think."
"I think we know enough. If you don't agree, maybe we'd better ask some questions fast. Any ideas? Or just general misgivings?"
Barton thought about it. "One idea, maybe. Have we ever clarified with everybody what happens after we win? // we win?"
"But that's obvious, isn't it?" said Liese Anajek. "The Demu stop raiding."
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"Right—as far as it goes," said Barton. "But after ap Fenn, it struck me—maybe our friends have some .further ideas. Like revenge. Hell—before I got to know Eeshta, I used to think that way myself. And these people have been victimized for centuries, not just a few years. It might be they won't be satisfied to let it go at a cease-fire."
Tarieton's face showed concern. "I hadn't thought of that—but I will. Barton, tomorrow morning I'll put Vertan on the griddle—in a subtle way, of course—and
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find out what his thinking is, and that of the Filjar and Larka-Te, about what happens afterward."
Barton laughed.
"What's so tunny?" said Liese Anajek.
"You have to see it from where I sit. Here we are, about to tackle the invincible Demu—and worrying about their welfare!"
Leaving the galley for the control room, Barton tried again to reach Limila. He encountered, via screen, the
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same taciturn Tilaran woman. Limila was there, yes. No, she was not available to come to the screen. No, nothing was wrong. Yes, Barton could visit her. Yes, it would be permitted that they dine together. Yes. Limila would be informed.
Barton thanked the woman, thanked Myra for setting up the call, asked her to promote a groundcar for him, and !eft for'Compartment Two to bathe and change. On his way, he stuck his head into the galley.
"Dining out tonight, Tarleton," hth.said. "Back sometime this evening."
"Oh? Anyone I know?"
"Yeh. Limila."
"Oh—fine—give her our best, won't you?"
"Sure thing." And he was off. Barton was—to get all duded up to go see his best girl. Four days can be a long time.
He drew the same driver; she understood quickly where
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he wanted to go. At destination, unsure of reaching her duty station via the Tilaran communication system, he asfced that she return in approximately two hours.
He entered the building and found the first room empty, so he followed the corridor to its fourth door and knocked. Limila's voice answered, "Be of welcome." He opened the door.
"Barton! It has been so long." Sitting in bed, propped up with pillows, she held out her arms. He didn't keep her waiting.
But, "Careful," she said, as he started to tighten his embrace. "Under the robe, I am connected to things. With tubes, pipes." She smiled then, and held the smile until he noticed that her teeth were now smaller, and more numerous.
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"Pete's sakes! They've grown Tilaran teeth for you already?"
"Oh, no—these, too, are manufactured. But the part against the gum is made soft, so that I may wear them
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even while the new teeth grow. Except for a short time, perhaps, I shall not have to eat glop food again."
"And what else—?"
She waved him to silence, and to a chair beside the bed. "No, Barton—tell me first of your progress. When does the fleet depart? Do all the problems find solutions?
"And you. Barton—in my absence, have you moped, or sensibly taken consolation with the little livaji?"
Stunned, Barton said, "Has no one told you anything?"
"Told me what. Barton?" The smile was gone. "No, nothing. Tell me now."
"I don't know where to start—it's bad, most of it. Oh, the work on the fleet itself is going well, but—" He began with the party—ap Fenn's French leave, the attempted rape, and the man's death from it.
"Against her wisi^?" Limila shook her head. "He is as well dead. But there is more—?"
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He told of Hishtoo's escape, and the parts Helaise and Eeshta had played. ". . . And that ship has a laser; we can't let the Demu have it, to copy. But that's not the worst." And haltingly, he explained the plight of the Tilaran hostages.
"Oh. no. Barton—not livajj! And poor Gerain, too. But what can you do?" So he told her of the strike force and its limited hopes.
"Day after tomorrow, we leave. We had to wait until the new weapons are installed—plus a few other things we need—I'll explain later. With our greater acceleration factor, we still have a good chance to catch Hishtoo before he reaches Sisshain."
"Sisshain?"
"That's where he told Eeshta he was going—and it's the jackpot planet, the one in the dust cloud, that the Ormthan mentioned. But when—if—we do" catch him. . . .
"It's bad, Limila—very bad. He won't surrender— not to animals. He'll try to use livajj and Gerain for leverage—'crab salad'—remember? And I can't let that hap-
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pen, or give in, either. I'll have to kill—kill the ship, and all of them. Kill livajj!"
She took his hand and squeezed it, gently. "Barton.
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Don't you think livajj—and Gerain—would prefer that? Even if Hishtoo were not to rend their flesh. They have seen the pictures—what was done to me, to Siewen and the Freak. livajj is young; to suffer that would break her mind. No, Barton. I know you would save them it you could. But if not, the death is better."
He found he was gripping her hand brutally, and loosed his grasp. "Yes—you're right; 1 know that. But still. . . . "
"You will do what you can. As always. Barton." Gently, he kissed her.
"Okay," he said. "For now, enough about my worries. But"—he gestured toward her robe, where it bulged strangely—"what's all this? About you being hooked up to plumbing. Is something wrong?"
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"No—nothing. Oh, I must tell you—all that has happened—I almost forgot. It is the tit*. Barton. They are real!"
Barton looked askance at the bulges. "That big?"
She laughed. "No, that is the machinery. So that my body accepts them." Biochemical jargon wasn't Limila's strong point in English, nor Barton's in any language, so the explanation took a time. But he did gather, immediately, that the new breasts were transplants.
"She was climbing, and fell from a height and did not live. She was young, Barton—very young, so they are quite small. I have asked will they grow to the size of my age; none can say. But I do ribt care. It matters only that they will be real upon me." Then her face showed sadness. "But even so. Barton, I would not have them if I couid choose her to be alive instead."
"I know." Briefly, before asking further, he hugged her.
Barton knew about transplants—how the body's own immune reactions rejected foreign tissue. Unfamiliar enzymes were treated as hostile invaders and repelled. On Earth, the suppression of immune reactions worked
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as a stopgap method, but seldom permanently.
The Tilarans, if he had it right, removed the offending enzymes from the blood as it returned from the new tissue, so that the defensive mechanism was not alerted. At the same time, Limila's blood was gradually shifting the enzyme balance of the transplants until it would be compatible with her own.
"And soon," she said, "I can be free of the tubes and machines."
"How soon?"
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"Five days, they say—maybe six. Why?—Oh—**
"Yes. How much of a Job is it to disconnect the plumbing? Because the strike force lifts—has to lift—in two days." The muscles of his face twisted his expression into harsh lines. "Will I have to leave you behind?"
She frowned slightly, thinking. "No. I was told, when I asked of what marks would be left on me. At the start,
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you know, it was thought to put dead matter into m^, for appearance only. I said no. Then was proposed the pulling of fat layer and skin. tying it from inside so as to protrude convincingly, but lacking the sensations that once were there. I was ready to agree. But when the girl fell and died^ I was offered these of her. And so I asked what it would mean."
"And?" Why, Barton wondered, did he have to love a woman who took so long to get to the goddamn point?
"Oh—the tubing, yes. It is not difficult. It is to be pulled, when the time comes, gently and slowly. I am told the pain will not be great. As it leaves me, there will be some blood, but not of danger. The bandaging will be as of small cuts. No, Barton—I am not to have to stay behind."
His sigh of relief was more evident than he would have wished. "That's good. I wouldn't have liked to do that"
"Nor I, Barton. As it is, I have been from you too long."
He looked at her. "Yen. Well—after you're unhooked from those tubes—"
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A sound at the door interrupted them—something between a knock and a scratch. "Be of welcome," Limila said.
A woman entered—the one Barton had met on the screen, who granted information like pulling teeth. He smiled at her; after all, what the hell. . . ?
"It is of time for feeding," she said. "Are both of pleasure to eat here?"
"It -is of best convenience," said Limila. The woman brought a wheeled cart, laden with covered dishes, and left with Limila's thanks. Barton realized he'd been hungry for some time.
They seldom talked during meals, and did not now. As he finished. Barton looked at his watch. Unadopted to the longer Tilaran day, it was of little use to him off the ship— except to measure specific intervals, as now. But he noticed that his Tilaran driver was due to return roon,
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"Barton—was it a good meal?" He realized he had hardly noticed.
"Good, yes. But I was thinking too much of other things to appreciate it as it deserved."
"Yes—I saw. You do that too much. More than you should."
"I know," he said. "Maybe later, when there's not so damned much to worry about—oh well. Look—when can you come back to the ship?"
"I will ask. Tomorrow, if it may be, would be best."
"It would." He looked at her- "Limila—I wish you were free of all that hardware. Well, it won't be too long .... I guess I'd better go outside now. The driver should be back with the car pretty soon."
He bent to kiss her. When he would stop, she held him.
"Barton? As we ate, I, too, thought of other things. And I think that if I were to move so as to lie this way, and you were to—no, more here to the right of me. Shall we see, now . . . ?
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"Barton, see the opening in this cover, over where it grows to me? Reach, touch the tip of your finger inside. They say the nerves are to heal together, but I do not— Barton! I feel your touch! Barton, it will be as it was!"
"Barton?" she said, when again it was time for talk. His hand cupped the back of her head; she reached and pulled it in an involuntary caress over her scalp, free of the Tilaran-styled wig that lay to one side. "I could have had that girl's hair, too—or the skin that would grow it. Should I have?"
"Huh?" The caress ceased to be involuntary.
"It was offered. It is in preservation, should we return here and I choose. But I wished to know your feelings, and could not reach you, so I said no, for this time. Was I wrong?"
"Hell, I don't know. But you shouldn't have waited on me, Limila. Do what you want to do."
"Perhaps I did." Starting at the bridge of the nose she ran her own fingertips up her forehead and, without
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pause, over the smoothness of her head. "I would choose your wish. Barton, because I am of two minds. Sometimes, in this matter, I have felt bereft—more so, even, than of breasts. But at other times it is of much enjoyment that I may clean my hair but not have it wet on me for so long, so inconvenient."
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Barton laughed. "Well—as long as you're satisfied, for now! We'll be back here, you know." He suppressed the thought that the Demu might have something to say about that. "You can make up your mind then—okay?"
"Yes, Barton. And now I see you look again at your wrist; you must go. Once more kiss?" They did. "If I am not to the ship tomorrow, then my message, saying the reason, will be."
^
"All right. Good night, Limila."
He went outside; the car was waiting. Somehow, a great load was off his mind—and he hadn't even managed to tell Liroila about Alene and himself. Well, he knew she wouldn't get fashed . ..
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Riding back to the ship he was more relaxed—mind and body—than he had been for a long time.
She is good for me, he thought—very good for me.
Back at the ship, he found Tarleton in the galley. Had the man ever left it in the past few hours? Barton decided not to ask.
With the big man was a bigger one, a stranger, who rose and introduced himself before Tarleton could do so.
"Mister Barton, I think? I am Abdul Muhammed, perhaps to join your ship. I am trained as a pilot, and in weaponry." The man stood more than two meters tall;
Barton estimated that he grossed perhaps 120 kilograms. His handclasp, obviously restrained, was still stronger than most.
"Glad to know you. Barton's all you need, though."
"How is that?" A half-smile showed white teeth against his blue-black skin.
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"I mean, you can skip the 'Mister,' "
"Ah. yes—I understand. You do not need titles. I will remember."
"Abdul is the top weapons man in Squadron Three," said Tarleton. "When I asked for him, Tamirov practically sang the 'Volga Boatman' with string accompaniment."
Abdul laughed. "If you are not Joking, please let me continue to believe that you are. Tamirov is a fine commander—but I have heard him sing."
I like this guy already, thought Barton. "Hey, sit down, everybody," he said. "I need a beer. Anybody else?" Abdul held up a finger; Tarleton pointed to his perpetual coffee cup. Barton did the honors, and sat with them.
"How's Limila?" Tarleton asked.
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"Fine." Barton grinned. "Some new developments— tell you later—but she's okay to go with the strike force."
Abdul spoke. "Limila—she is the Tilaran woman, the
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former Demu prisoner?"
"Yes," said Barton, "and now my most needful person." Deliberately, he used the Tilaran phrase.
"I see." For a moment the black man was silent. "The Greater Central African Republic saw fit to put only men into space. My own most needful person, as you put it, tends our two children in a pleasant house amid a grove of fruit trees. I hope to meet her there again. But even more, Barton, I hope she is spared what came to your woman. That is why I am here."
Barton made up his mind, "Glad to have you, Abdul— you just signed on." The handshake wasn't so bad, he found, once he was braced for it.
As the three exchanged information, and Barton and his boss confirmed plans, the shank of the evening went fast. Everything was on the money except the personal Shields; their readiness was still up for grabs.
Barton excused himself and went to bed early- Limila's absence did not haunt him now; instead be felt her past and future presence.
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Next morning he found Tarleton in the galley ahead of him. "You live here?" Barton asked. "Or do you go home to sleep?"
,.
"Both, maybe. Barton, I've made up my mind—this is your ship, for the strike force. There are only four of us left on here, who aren't going, and the other ships are carrying ten each with two spare bunks. So I'm taking over Ship Two—it's one of several that carry commandtype comm-gear—by bumping' a couple of its people to other ships. We'll be riding full, in Two."
"Okay—fine. How's my side gun coming?"
"It'll be ready—on all three ships."
"Even better. You picked the other two, then?"
"Yes. One of Slowboat's and one of Estelle's. The commanders will be at the conference today."
"Sounds good." Barton moved to where Eeshta was running a miniature food-production line. "Morning, , Eeshta. Got a couple batches of scrambled? I'm hungry. And maybe a little toast and some sausages."
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"Of course. Barton. The sausage is not quite prepared, but soon."
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"Fine," he said. "How's Helaise doing?"
"Her arm heals and its fever lowers. But now her mind fevers, I think—and she will not say what disturbs it Though I have asked." She filled a plate to his order and handed it to him.
"Okay, thanks—I'll check on it." Back at the table/he relayed the conversation to Tarieton. "Should I follow
this up?"
'f-
"No; I'll do it. Today is strike-force day at the conference building—it's more your potato than mine. I'll give you my notes from yesterday. Try to remember to write down any important developments—all right?"
"Sure." Barton ate silently. Then, dabbing up the last morsel, he said, "You picked me a good one, in Abdul
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Muhammed. I'd trust that man to back me up, no matter
what."
"My opinion exactly. With his intelligence, I don't un- derstand why he's not commanding a ship, at least."
Barton shrugged. "Politics, probably—it usually is. Look at ap Fenn."
Tarieton said nothing.
"All right," said Barton. "Scrub that—sorry I brought it up. Now, about today's agenda—fill me in a little, will you?"
Tarieton did so, and Barton left for the conference with more in his head and notebook than he expected he could keep straight. But he would try ....
Entering the conference building, he was met by Slobodna, accompanied by a short, sandy-haired man. Barton felt he should recognize the latter, but couldn't place him. "Hi, Slowboat."
"Morning, Barton. You remember Kranz?"
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"Oh, sure I do, now." Other than Barton, Kranz had been the first man—and Slobodna the second—to fly the captured Demu ship. But that had been months earlier;
Barton hadn't seen the man since. "How are you?" They shook hands.
"Just fine. Barton. My ship got the nod to go with you on the strike force. I hope you're not superstitious—it's Ship Thirteen."
Barton laughed. "The only unlucky numbers I know are the ones that lose at roulette—and I don't play roulette."
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"Me neither." Kranz looked toward the entrance. "Hey, I think we're about to meet our other sidekicks."
Estelle Cummings approached; a dark, thin man escorted her. "Gentlemen," she said, "I should like to introduce to you. Captain Lombard of Ship Thirty-four. He joins you with my highest recommendation."
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They exchanged names and handshakes all around. "Let's stick together pretty much," Barton said, "so we all get the same info and don't have to pass it around later. Okay? I know we won't get too much chance to confab on our own plans, but Tarleton's asked for a skull session this evening on Ship One, if that's agreeable."
It was. Referring to Tarleton's notebook, Barton checked on each ship's current state of preparation. Progress was good; he decided that these people knew how to work fast under pressure. He was almost through the list when the conference was called to order. "Okay—we'll get the rest of it at the first break."
Vertan spoke; he gave a brief status summary and assigned troubleshooters to a few problem areas. Slobodna reported on weapons, including Barton's side gun. "The weapons group can discuss this at the break, and decide how many ships it is feasible to convert." He did not mention the individual Shields; Barton made a note to ask him later.
Scalsa described, as simply as possible, the complex arrangements for rendezvous tetween the various groups. "Don't bother to write this down," he said. "We're feeding
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it to each ship's computers; you can get a readout on your own boards." He related the contingency plans—for a later rendezvous of ships that couldn't meet the accelerated deadline, and for the possible meeting with part or all of the strike force returning from Sisshain. The concept of a time-space corridor for rendezvous confused several. Not Corval, though—when Scalsa ran into difficulties explaining it, the Larka-Te took over for him.
Then it was break-time. Vertan joined Barton's group and was introduced all around. "It is good to have you back. Barton." He spoke in English. "Is all well now, with you and your ship?"
"As well as circ*mstances allow—yes, progress marches. The strike force—I guess that's next on the agenda, but we leave on schedule, late tomorrow. Far as I know, we'll have everything we need—everything we've thought of,
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that is—except maybe the personal Shields. Oh, yeh—
how about our Instant Demu kits?"
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"Those are to be delivered to your ship this morning."
"Good. That was a fast job, Vertan—thanks."
"They are well executed- The young Demu cooperated
well- I ... I spoke with it, Barton. And behind that bony
mask I found a young person that I could easily befriend..
I had not expected such a thing."
Barton hid a grin. "Yeh—the kid grows on you, doesn't
she?"
"She? But I thought—"
"Oh, sure—they're bisexual—but our language doesn't allow for that very well. And Eeshta being small, I—and most of us, I guess—tend to think of her as her."
Vertan nodded. "I can understand. And—it does give hope, the young one's attitude. . . ."
"Yes—but It's the adults we have to worry about. We
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never made any kind of dent in Hishtoo's hard shell—his mental one, I mean."
"No. But some of our own people, and allies, are as rigid. Many resist Tarleton's saying that the Demu are to be stopped only, and not punished. They consent because they must, but deep in their beings they do not agree."
'Trouble, you think?"
»
"None, I would hope—but the balance may be fragile."
"I'll tell the boss." A nagging worry surfaced in his mind. "How come we haven't seen Corval or Kimchuk today—or any of their people—to talk with? Are -they bugged with us? Offended, I mean?"
Vertan shook his head. "No, Barton. It is that you have had trouble. As is their custom, they leave you to recover from it, and signify your recovery by approaching them."
"Oh? Interesting—and useful to know. But if you see them first, tell them our trouble is past and their company is welcome. All right?"
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"I will do so. And now I see my assistant beckoning. Will you permit my departure?" Smiling, Barton nodded.
He turned to Slobodna. "I notice you didn't mention the one-man Shields in your weapons roundup. Will we have them?"
The other man frowned. "I wish I could tell you. The team's working like crazy, but there's an instability in one of the phasing circuits. It didn't show up until we applied heavy stress, testing, and they haven't 'ocated it
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yet because the damned thing is intermittent. You know how that is."
"Yeh, I know. So—what do we do?"
"Pray, maybe. Meanwhile we've delivered two of the earlier model, on the self-propelled carts. They're stable, and good for protecting a group in the open. Some of the lightweights haven't shown the flaw yet, but it seems to be unpredictable. If we don't get a solid solution, do you want to take a chance on the ones that haven't failed, or
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just skip it?"
Barton didn't have to think twice. "Take the chance. One thing—you're testing under maximum sustained attack. If we get into that kind of bind, we're already in big trouble."
"Okay. But we'll keep plugging, right up to the last minute, before we give up and hand you that option."
"Good enough, Slowboat. Oops—looks like I'm being paged."
It was, indeed. Barton's turn at the podium. First, he thanked all for their concern with the Earthani's troubles, and reassured them that he was once again accessible to his friends. Then, unsure of how much Tarleton had told of the strike-force plans, he gave a fast roundup, including contingencies. "And I guess that covers it," he said. "Questions?"
Tamirov interpreted for a Filjar. "Why go we to Sisshain, and not to Demrribn where Demu power is massed?"
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"Because Hishtoo goes to Sisshain. And because on that planet is something of importance to the Demu— more so than the ships and weapons of the Demmon sector."
And what is this thing? I do not know. How do you know its importance? I was told. By whom? I may not say. Are we, then, to go in ignorance? Yes—as we ourselves go; there is no choice, if we are to go at all.
The emphasis on Barton's final remark ended that line of questioning.
Next, a Tilaran asked why the Demu, if beaten, were not to be punished. Barton inhaled deeply.
"We know of one race, only, that achieved agreement that the Demu do not molest it. That agreement has worked. It did not include punishment. We follow a successful precedent. If we were to try to punish, the result might be not peace, but endless war."
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The questioner persisted, but Barton shook his head and would not answer. Finally, be said, "Come with us,
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or do not. In either case it will be as I have said." As be left the podium, he thought: not exactly my day for tact.
Lunchtime. Barton chose a bowl of ouilan, the Trekan "sticky soup," and was surprised that the limited supply of such a delicacy had not been exhausted. With it he took a cup of Tilaran klieta; the two flavors blender
well.
As before, his group sat alone. But as Barton sipped the last of the klieta, Kimchuck approached, a shallow bowl in each furry hand.
"Dreif, Barton?" Barton nodded, and smiled his thanks. "Effort of talk shows effect on you. The dreif will restore." This time the mud-soup look and taste didn't bother Barton; he took it gladly, and soon felt the characteristic relaxed alertness.
'Thanks, Kimchuk. Say—I don't suppose we could get a little of that to take along? With the strike force., I mean?"
The Filjar tipped its head to one side, and back again.
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"Would be glad, Barton. But cannot."
"oh?"
"Dreif must be new. In a day it changes and is of harm, not to be eaten. Making dreif is secret skill; 1,-do not know. Among Filjar here, only one does."
"I see. Well, thanks anyway, Kimcbuk." Too bad, he thought—that's a great little booster shot you've got there. The FilJar clasped Barton's shoulder and left to rejoin its own group.
The conference reconvened, analyzing in detail the morning's results. Barton followed the talk until it began to repeat Tarleton's notes from the previous day, so closely as to make little difference.
It wasn't exactly repetition, he decided. It was dissection of problems down to the level of individual tasks—a level that Tarleton had to leave to others. Barton listened with half an ear and let most of his mind wander. Some of its wanderings were less pleasant than others—livay and Gerain, for instance....
At the next break, Corval came to offer Barton a cup
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of the Larka-Te beverage that was first tasteless, then all aftertaste. He started to accept, then remembered. "Thanks, Corval, but I'd better not. I had some dreif from
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Kimchuk, at lunch—and he says the two do not go well together."
"He is right," said Corval. "Very well—it will not be of waste." The Larka-Te was smiling in one mode that Barton bad learned to recognize without mistake.
"I see your smile and am of gladness," he said. "Tell me, Corval—of what are we in agreement?"
"Of the Demu, of punishment." The smile changed to one Barton could not interpret. After a moment, Corval put it into words. "Do we punish an animal of predation, even though it kill our young? No. We prevent—if we cannot otherwise, we kill it. Punishment is not of relevance.
"We go to prevent the Demu. It may be some must be killed that the rest agree of prevention. But once agreed,
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what point of putting hurt to Demu for hurt given by Demu?"
Slowly Barton nodded. "I'm glad you agree, Corval. But do you speak for all Larka-Te?"
"For most. And those who are not of agreement will be of obedience."
"That's good to know. I am of thanks, Corval, that you have told me."
The break was over. As the final session began, a Tilaran came to Barton. "Your ship would be of speech to you." Barton followed the man to a viewscreen. It was Tarleton calling.
"If they're down to the small stuff," he said, "why don't you come on back to the ship? Pass the notebook to Slowboat, and remind the strike group that we meet here tonight for a recap. Okay?" Barton nodded; the screen went blank.
He briefed SIobodna and took his leave. Outside, the car waited; obviously, Tarleton had known he'd be ready to return. He greeted the woman driver, got into the car,
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and sat back to watch the scenery.
The feathery trees were less yellow now; the green of foliage showed, in some cases, a purplish tinge. It came to him that he had no idea of Tilara's seasons—except that be was pretty sure the current one was not winter.
He'd have to remember and ask Limila ....
Entering the ship, he saw and heard no one. By habit, he went first to look in the galley.
He froze. "Hishiool" The robe and hood, the lobster
257
face—figure too large to be Eeshta. But—Hishtoo? The surging adrenaline, buffered by Kimchuk's dreif, began to
subside.
"AU right—what the hell is this?"
The creature's laugh was soft. "Realistic, isn't it. Barton? I thought you'd be pleased." The voice was a
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woman's.
For no reason, Barton was disgusted with himself. He took a beer from the cool-box and sat across the tabfe from the disguised prankster.
"You're right—it's a damned good job. But Halloween's over now; take off your head and let's see who's inside."
The hood was thrown back; the gloves came off. The mask wasn't so easy—"Help me. Barton"—it was like pulling off a rubber boot. Then, there was Helaise Renzel, grinning through the tangled blonde hair that fell to veil her face.
"Well. Nice to see you out and around, Helaise, That first look, though—it just about had me back in diapers. Whose idea?"
"Oh, mine. I modeled it for the others, and then decided to stay in costume and give you a personal preview." Her hands were busy, disentangling her hair, smoothing back the strands as they came loose from the mass. "Where is everybody?"
r
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"Various places. Everyone seemed to have something to do, or maybe think about—I don't know. So I just stayed here and waited for you."
"Anything wrong?" The cast wasn't hampering her movements, he noticed, and thought: That's good.
"No—no, nothing's wrong." She wasn't looking at him. "Oood." He swallowed the last of his beer, rose, and got another. "Well. Have you decided—has Max Cumnungs said—whether you're coming with the strike force?"
Head down, fingers working through the last tangles of her hair, she said, "Max cleared me, all right. But I'm not going; I'm staying. Alene will join you instead." With her hair now m fair order, she dropped her hands to her lap and looked up at him.
**Alcne? I don't think I get it. Explain?" The hair was still good for a spectacular toss of the head. "It's simple. I've moved in with Tarleton." "You've what?" "Moved in with Tarleton- In Compartment One, on
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Ship One, with man. Number One. Do you mind. Barton?"
Jesus Christ!—was there no end to the supply of kooks? Sure as hell, he thought, she saw her move as a power play. Well, maybe it was contagious—she'd been with ap Fenn quite a while . . .
"No," he said. "I don't mind—I don't mind at all. It's none of my business, except that I stilt need a weapons man for the strike force. But one thing I'm curious about."
"Yes?" Her air of disinterest struck Barton as overdone.
'Tve worked for Tarleton a long time—a lot longer than you have. He has a lot of good qualities. And I'm wondering—which of these attracted you the most?"
Eyes bright, mouth stretched past smile into grimace, she answered. "He's big. Barton! Not just tall—he's Number One! I had to live with Terike—a large man who was small inside. You beat the living hell out of him—and I couldn't have you, except once. And then I couldn't even have poor goddamned Terike, because he died."
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"Are these the good things you wanted said over his memory?"
"Damn you. Barton!" She almost screamed it. "All right—it was a corny idea, wasn't it?" She shook her bead, hair swinging. "No, not that, I guess—it's more that whatever good there was to say, I've already said it, when the hurt of his death was fresh and I felt guilty for it. Does that make sense?" ^
"I guess so. All right—consider the ceremony cancelled. And now what?"
"And now I have Tarleton—Number One. And I'm going to keep him."
How had she managed it? No matter—she had. "Well. My best wishes, Helaise. And keep one thing in mind, will you?"
"What's that?"
"Tarleton is Number One. Don't forget it. Treat him that way."
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She looked away. "Yes, Barton—I know." Then she met his eyes. "If you want to speak with- Alene—about going on the strike force, or anything—she's in my old compartment It's torn up a lot, installing your spare laser —but she's there."
"Yes. I see. Thanks. Perhaps I'll look in on her a little later." He thought briefly. "Tell Tarleton I'll see him after dinner." If LJmila wasn't back yet. Barton was of a mood
259
to eat alone, in Two. He'd had enough company for a
while.
In Two, no Limila—Barton bathed and changed,
found himself hungry. Back at the galley he found Helaise gone; Cheng Ai was loading a tray with two thawand-heat dinners to carry out.
Cheng smiled at him. "It's not very good, but it's quick."
"Yeh, I know. I'm probably having the same." tie wanted to say something to Cheng—but what? "Hey.
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You and Myra ready to plunge with the strike force tomorrow?"
The man nodded. "Oh, yes. We would come in any case, since you asked for us. But we talked it over, Myra and I, and decided we are glad to be asked—to be relied on in such an important matter."
"You both earned it—I just hope you never regret it."
"We'll take our chances, the same as you will. Barton."
"Your dinners are getting cold, Cheng. See you. '. . ."
Barton was tired of the frozen stuff but too lazy to try anything more ambitious. He brought out a package, thought a moment. On the intercom circuit, he punched for Cabin Three.
"Yes?" It was Alene, all right.
"Barton. Speaking from the galley, and hungry.' How about you?"
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"Oh . ..." A few moments of silence. "Thanks—but I don't feel like joining a group just now. Later, maybe."
"I was thinking of heating a couple of Frozen Freddies. If you can't use company, I could hand yours in to you, and leave. Okay?"
"Well.. . yes. And thanks. Barton."
"My pleasure. And signing out—I go to heat the meat."
The process was rapid. Soon, with a tray in each hand, he used a knee to knock at Alene's door.
He had expected more of a mess from the laser installation. There was only a hole in the bullside paneling, and a line of bracket mountings hanging from the ceiling.
"I'd like to join you for dinner," he said, "but I'll leave, if you'd rather,"
Pause- Then, "Oh, come on in—I don't mean to be a surly hermit. And thanks again, for stirring me up to
eat."
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Alene was another silent eater, this time at least. With
260
i side glances he appraised her appearance, trying to guess 1.
her state of mind—it could be important-
A
If she had been crying, it didn't show. The black,
t' crinkly hair told him nothing—it was bushed out no 1
more thaa usual, and no less. Funny, he thought, how it
felt so much softer than it looked.
He eked out his last bites of food so that they finished the meal in a dead heat. Then they looked at each other. "Coffee or anything?" he said. "I'll get it." "If you'll settle for beer, it's in the box. I could use one."
Barton did the honors and sat again. "Welcome to the strike force, Alene. If you really mean it, that you want to go. For my part, I couldn't ask for anyone better." She shook her head and did not speak. "You don't want to, after all?"
"Oh, that—sure I do. I wanted to, before, but I couldn't—because of. Tarleton having to be with the
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-i-- main fleet. And now—well, now I can. It's just that. . . ." ,1
"Alene—what in hell happened? I think you have to
"' tell it, and if you're riding with me, I have to know your t mind."
f
"Yes, Barton—all right. The plain fact is that Helaise
\. needs him more than I do. I love him—have loved him ^ —but I can control my needs. Helaise can't—in some I ways she was a fitting match for Terike. |
"Tarleton went this mormng, to see what was troubling
^ her. When he came back. Barton, he looked—-old. And he said he would have to take her to him, instead of me. That he would have to."
Barton growled in his throat. "The trouble with Tarleton is, he's never learned that sometimes somebody Just needs a good swift kick in the ass."
She laughed. "I like you. Barton—I really like you. You expressed my own thought, exactly. But as you say, Tarleton couldn't do the kicking."
"It does take a certain amount of training." "Yes. But you know what really hurts?" He shook his head. "It's that I could have shared, and so could Tarleton. But she wouldn't—so we all have to do what
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the little cripple wants, so as not to hurt her little feelings. Barton, I could kill heri"
"So be my guest." Alene, he thought, was getting healthier by the minute.
"Oh, stop iti I couldn't, really—I don't want her dead.
261
I just want to stomp her silly little pointed blonde head into the dirt." She drew a deep breath. "Figuratively, of course—or maybe a little more than that. Barton, I'm talking gibberish—stop me."
"You're doing fine, for now. What else, about Helaise?"
"She's so aggressively a one-man woman." Seeing Barton's raised eyebrows, she tried again. "Correction, She insists on having a one-woman man. Better?" ^
"Not that, either." Remembering what Helaise had said the previous day, he shook his head. "Since— Hishtoo—her attitudes have been swinging like a pendulum gone crazy. But in this case, I think, it's not the
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man she can't share—it's the status. And maybe more than that, really. Her pride has taken a lot of lumps on this ship, you know.
"But let's forget the sociology—how do you feel? Are you prepared for the strike-force situation, just three ships all on our own—and you, all on your own? Are you, Alene?"
Long, she looked at him. "I was that bad, with^ou? I hadn't thought so. Well, then—damn you to hell, Barton! Alene Grover can make it on her own—any time, any place, and in any companyl Satisfied?"
"Very much so." He reached for her hand; she pulled it away. "One thing, though—I wasn't rejecting you—I value you very much. My point is that when the ship— or you—needs to act decisively, I might not be around. I could get clobbered, you know, just like anybody. So, what's important is, can you cut it on your own?" Silence. "Well, can you?"
And now her tears flowed. Through them, blinking, she tried to look Barton eye-to-eye. "I can! You know something? You're as hard-shelled as Hishtool** She wiped at her eyes. "Now will you get your ass out of
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here, so a lady can do a little genteel crying?"
Barton left. Sometimes, he thought, a guy can make a guess and come up lucky.
In the galley he found Tarleton with Myra Hake. "Barton," the man said, "Helaise said she's told you about.. . the changes. I—"
"She told me. And I spoke with Alene. I don't need to talk about it any more, unless you do. I think Alene will do fine on the strike team. Glad to have her."
"Yes. Well, that's good." Tarleton frowned. "You're
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right—no point in talking. Maybe I just wanted you to tell me I'm doing the right thing."
"Maybe."
"I see. All right—our strike meeting is due in a couple of hours. Here, I guess—more room for everybody.
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"Oh—Limila's back. Came aboard a few minutes ago. I didn't know where you were. She said to tell you she'd be in Two—and hungry."
"Thanks." Barton punched the intercom for Two. Lirnila, it turned out, would settle for thaw-and-heat food. He set about preparing it. Tarleton rose and left the galley.
"You can be pretty hard on people, can't you?" said Myra.
Barton turned to her. "What the hell was I supposed to say—that I think he's done ginger-peachy fine? I don't. And Tarleton's a big boy now—he has a right to his own mistakes. But I don't have to pat him on the back tor them." He looked closely at her. "Did you?"
"A little, I guess. I couldn't exactly put my heart in it."
"Then why bother? You think he can't tell the difference?"
"I don't know. Probably. Your food's ready, Barton."
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"Thanks." Leaving with it, he said, "Cheer up, Myra. Tarleton'll be okay. Especially after tomorrow, when we're gone from here."
She only nodded.
In Two, Barton set Limila's dinner down and embraced her, careful of the two ungainly lumps that bulged her robe.
"Welcome home, lady!" They sat, chairs facing across the small pull-down table.
"You are not hungry. Barton?"
"I've eaten."
"Something more is wrong? It seemed so, when I spoke to Tarleton, but no one would say, so I did not ask."
As she ate, he told her, keeping it brief. "It's a mess, but nothing fatal."
Limila shook her head. "Poor Helaise—trying to he,
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through another."
"Poor Helaise, hell! How about poor Alene? She's the one that got the dirty end of the stick."
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Limila chewed and swallowed a final mouthful. "No. Helaise forces herself upon a man who takes her because of pity. If she had been willing to share—but no. Tarleton will try to be good to her—through the hate that will grow as he misses Alene, he will try. But—"
"You're underestimating the boss-man." He poured coffee. "Helaise caught him on his soft side, yes. But 'five gets you ten that if he sees it won't work, he'll have her off his ship before the fleet lifts. And save her face when he does it, too."
"It may be you are right—I hope you are. But—you say of Alene?"
"She'll make it all right. We talked—she's hurt, but she's tough."
Limila smiled. "Certainly she has a rare chance. The
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new man, Abdul—I met him—is he not beautiful? And of a good mind—even the few words I had of him showed me that. He will be welcome among us."
"That's for sure. He impresses the hell out of me, and I don't mean just his size,"
"But if—I wanted to say. Barton—if Alene should need of you, I would gladly have it so."
He smiled and took her hand. "I know you would. Maybe you will." Hell's bells—he still hadn't told. her! "Uh—in fact, you already have—at the party, when ap Fenn was getting himself killed."
Knowing full well that he couldn't possibly be in the doghouse, still Barton felt relief at the way Limila smiled, then.
The intercom sounded; Barton answered it.
"Cheng here. Company's coming. Meeting starts inabout ten minutes."
"Thanks. See you then," said Barton. He and Limila
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dressed and went to the galley. The group assembled rapidly: Tarleton and Helaise, Cheng and Myra, Vito and Liese, Abdul, Alene, and Eeshta.
Kranz was the first off-ship arrival; with him were a heavy-set woman and a boy who looked about seventeen: Inge Larssen and Clancy Ferns, respectively.
"If you want any hot-pilot work," said Kranz, "Inge's your girl. dance's reflexes are equally good, but he slicks to weapons." At first glance, the two hadn't impressed Barton much; he looked at them with new appreciation.
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Captain Lombard, Estelle Cummings* nominee, arrived during the introductory chatter. The girl who accompanied him was small and dark, slim in her bright sari. In any other context. Barton would have guessed her to be no more than twelve years old. Her forehead bore a red caste mark, and when momentarily she faced away. Barton saw that her black braid of hair reached to the bend of her knee.
"Miss Chindra," said Lombard. "Absolutely top-drawer
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in communications—and Chin also makes computers jump through hoops." Yes—Barton remembered now. Limila had mentioned this one. It did look as though the strike force would be carrying some top talent.
Tarleton spread the star map on a table and started the show. It was old stuff to Barton—he followed it with the top of his head, made comments as indicated, and at the same time pursued more personal lines of thought. Should he have patted Tarieton's ego a little? After all, the man had charge of the combined fleets—his stability was essential. Barton thought about it, and found no answers-
Helaise, he thought, acted the queen bee to perfection. She said little, but somehow Barton was reminded of some newly favored king's mistress—fresh from slopping hogs and -determined not to show it. But what had evoked this -side of her, that had not shown itself during all the preceding months?
\
He saw her mouth twist slightly, in reaction to something Tarleton said. What was it?—something about Hishtoo. And then, to Barton, the whole problem, all the pieces, fell neatly into place. Of course ....
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Hishtoo—the strike team was going after Hishtoo. And after what had happened to her, getting anywhere near that big lobster—or any other—was the last thing Helaise warned. So—how to wiggle off the strike team with her pride intact? Simple enough—she had tied herself to the one man who had to stay with the fleet.
It was too bad, he thought—it was a lot more than her arm that Hishtoo had broken. He hoped she wasn't counting on the command ship as a guarded baven of safety in case of battle—^or if she was, she didn't know her new man very well.
But he revised his earlier opinion—it wasn't a good hard kick she needed. Helaise was in need of repairs—
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and. Barton thought, unlikely to get them. Helaise Renzel, casualty ....
No point, he decided, in saying anything to Tarleton— either the man would figure it out for himself or he wouldn't. And a dollop of fear wasn't such a bad thing, objectively, in someone holding down the weapons job.
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The discussion wound toward a weary close.' Equipment, supplies, timing, goals, tactics, methods, aontingencies—all were belabored at length. Finally, Tarleton said, "I think we've covered it. Any further suggestions?"
"I move the meeting adjourn," said Barton. He stood, knowing that if he had timed it right, others would follow suit. As usual with him, it worked. Taking Limila's hand, he said a few good nights and gave a general handwave to the rest. "Good show, Tarleton. See you in the morning." He took Tarleton's nod as permission to leave.
Back in Cabin Two, he asked Limila, "What do you think? Is it solid?"
"Don't you know, Barton?"
"I have my opinion. I want yours, too."
"Yes. So I thought. It is, I think, of enough good."
"I think so, too—but thanks for the double-check."
To Barton, the next day moved too fast for him to
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follow, and yet endured forever. He talked with Tarleton, with Scalsa, with Alene—and it seemed as though he had never known them, had perhaps newly met them. The talk was wooden—as was his own mind, r
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But the thing that puzzled both men was why Ferenc and Racelle named the child Dahil.
Then Limila was the only woman left carrying child, Barton had lost track of the timing; he didn't know when she was due, for sure. Mark Gyril told Barton not to worry, just yet. So Barton didn't. Except that one night he got home from a stint of scouting for ores in the foothills to the north, and came into his and Limila's hut, and stormed out again and found Mark Gyril and grabbed him by the front of his jacket. "Where the hell were you?"
"Where—I don't know what you mean!"
"Then come and see, goddamn you!"
But when Barton dragged Gyril into the hut by the scruff of the neck and threw him halfway across, Limila said, "Barton—there is no need to be rude to Mark. I did not call for him. Why did you not, when you came and saw me, give me time to explain?"
Barton looked. Well, Limila wasn't really dying, after all, he guessed, even though it still looked like one hell of a lot of blood splashed around. And her Child was suckling peacefully enough. Barton shook bis head and
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helped Gyril up. "Sorry, Mark. Limila—you mind telling me what's been going on?"
**No, I do not mind. If you will prepare some herb tea for all of us, then sit to listen." Feeling as ponfused as he j,had for some time. Barton followed instructions. Then, sitting, he waited while Limila sipped tea before she said, "It was because I am not Earthani, Barton. Earthani women, to be delivered of Children, must all be opened by Mark's knife. I did not wish my body cut; I did not feel it needful to do so." Limila shrugged. "But had I said as much, there would have been argument. So I thought to speed development slightly, and do this thing in my own ' way." Wide and silver-irised, her eyes sought bis gaze. • "Do you understand?"
For moments. Barton couldn't talk at all. This woman! Then he said, "You're all right?" and she nodded. But:
"You mind if Mark checks you over, though, just in case?" Headshake. "Then I think I'll go unload my ore samples. Be back in a little."
•
He did the routine work without thinking about it, his mind chewing on what Limila had said. Deliberately
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speeded .up growth of the fetus? From the beginning, Barton^^d realized there was a lot he didn't know about
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his Tilaran love. Now he wondered if he'd ever catch up to all of it. But at least she was past the birth.
Gyril, when Barton returned, didn't seem offenued at the way Barton had horsed him around, earlier. "I can't blame you. Seeing the mess, I suppose it would have scared me silly, too. Anyway, she's in absolutely fine shape, and I certainly wish I knew how she did it, so that I could use the knowledge to help other women in the same situation." Gyril sighted down a forefinger, at Limila. "If Earthwomen could manage as easily with their own kind of babies as you did with this hybrid birth, they'd have a much tidier time of it." He shook his head. "I can't do any more good here. And if nobody minds, I'd like to get home and put some notes on paper before I forget the details."
"Sure." Barton was giad the Medic-chief would still shake hands with him. When Gyril had left. Barton sat
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down beside Limila. He stroked the head of the Child who lay against Liroila's breast. One rear-corner eye opened, blinked once, then slowly closed. In the iris. Barton had seen silver specks.
Not sure what to say. Barton began with, "You lelting this one go to the Others' nursery, or do we keep it ourselves, or what?" Another thought came. "You got any ideas what we should name it?"
"Each question in turn," Limila said. "I keep this Child, but we spend some time each day with Tiriis and the other Children, also. For there are needs, I think, that you and I cannot fulfill." She shook forward-falling hair away from her eyes.
"But here we have no 'it,* Barton; my offspring is fully of both sexes, as you know. Use which gender label you prefer, or either, at whim. But not the neuter, please."
"Sure; I see it. The language doesn't work right, but I'll try. How about the naming part, though?"
The way Limila smiled, then, puzzled Barton. "The name," she said, "is not ours to give. It is Conjuldephane,
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and it was during birth that Conjuldephane told me. Gently, in my mind."
To that. Barton didn't have much to say. So he hugged them.
In a way. Barton thought, the next year (a little shorter than Earth's, but not much) went by like back home on
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the farm, and howdy, neighbor. All that; no real turmoil in the settlement.
When Conjy, the Child that Limila had borne to Dahil's tiring, was weaned from Limila's still-petite breasts, Liroila wanted to begin another baby. "All of you and me, ^Barton. To replace the one we lost on Tilara."
Barton could sympathize, but too much else kept
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bothering him. So he asked her if she'd mind holding off for a while yet, and she agreed. "But not of indefinite extent. Barton." And he agreed. But to keep his various worries separate in time, would take luck.
Being no farmer, having the exact opposite of a "green thumb," Barton stayed out of agriculture and did other work. For one thing, he took his aux boat to have a look at adjacent land masses. On the third one he scouted, he saw evidence of intelligent life.
Such as villages. And when he got back, the villagers were there ahead of him.
They looked mostly like the Others, but not quite. Distribution of fur was different, and so were general bodily proportions. But it was a cinch that the Endatheliners were related to the Others in much the same way that Tilari related to Earthani. And the natives here picked up language as well as the Others had done.
Barton went to Ferenc Szabo^and said what he thought. t Almost.
The way it worked was that the first-bom of the
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Children had hung around Barton quite a bit, and Barton liked the kid and felt that maybe here was the way Barton might find out how to play this hand he'd never asked to ,^ be dealt
•"' ^ He addressed the Child by name. "Chiyonou," Barton Raid, "I think we got a problem, here. Any good ideas, how we cope?"
Barton couldn't interpret the movements of multiple "..eyes and extra shoulders. But Chiyonou made a whis^tling tweetle-sound, and then said, "You know. Barton. Time that all were told."
,. So that evening a full gathering was called. Tiriis told f^art of the story, confirming Barton's hunch that the pthers carried a certain ability for racial memory, and 'Chiyoni.&did the rest.
As BaASo listened, he couldn't be sure who said which
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parts. None of it surprised him totally, though; he'd figured some pieces out a long time ago. So Barton sat, and he listened. And wondered if things had any chance of working out the way they must have been planned to work, so long ago that he found difficulty in trying to imagine the time gap.
A very long time ago, there was the Great Race. From •wherever it came, it grew to inhabit nearly a third of this galaxy. It could have expanded farther, but other races were there, and the Great Race respected other people's rights. Instead, it sent its excess to seed other galaxies.
The Great Race fought no wars. It didn't have to; its powers were that mighty. Some of its achievements are literally beyond our power to comprehend, let alone duplicate. Combining logic, intuition, and mental forces, the Great Race not only controlled most physical aspects of ifs universe, but also strongly influenced the structure of probability, and time-flow itself to some extent.
If there were no gods, the Great Race made a fair substitute.
That's why the next part was so hard to understand or
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believe. TO such beings, what could possibly be a serious menace? But some threat came, so dreadful that even the Great Race could only seek to hide. To hide so thoroughly, so completely, that it could never be found. And being the Great Race, it found a way.
How do you find what does not exist? It was that simple.
The Great Race vanished. Where it had been, lesser races appeared. Up-Arm, humans and Tilarans and the like. Down-Arm, the Others and those like them. All sprinkled among star systems holding existent species that are superficially similar but not at all related—Blame's Mistakes, the Larka-Te, the Filjari.
And between the two groups of seeded species, the dead belt.
It was a master stroke. The knowledge and skills are lost, but what they did can be roughly understood. By microsurgery they divided their germinal cells into viable complementary halves, such that similars, when mated, produced simplified organisms. And complementary species were separated by the dead belt.
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A simple splitting wasn't enough; some parts were vital
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and must be duplicated In both halves. So that each, essentially, had to be more than half.
Deliberately, the results were made varied; the Great Race may have used misdirection to confuse whatever terrible search they -worked so desperately to evade. So besides Earthani there were Tilari and the like; besides the Others there were their analogues here, and no doubt more variations elsewhere.
But with the aid of a catalyst, such as Dahirs cup, any humanoid became interferfile with any Otheroid. And always the resultant Children would be the same, the sum of the parts rejoined.
Long ago, there was the Great Race. And now it was come again.
Barton had thought he'd accepted the idea long since, but now the full impact bit him. Makes a man feel lost, he thought, to realize in his gut that his species has no destiny
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of its own, and never had. That humans had never been anything at all in their own right, but only the carriers and conservators of half the heredity of a race he couldn't even begin to understand. He found it hard, at gut level,'to believe something that made him feel so utterly goddamn insignificant.
He had to believe it, though. When the gathering broke up, a group of them talked it out—Barton and Limila, Ferenc and Racelle, Ren and Lisa, Mark and Elys. What it boiled down to was that once you looked at it, there was simply too much evidence.
On Earth the advent of Cro-Magnon man had never been satisfactorily explained. And too many myths pointed to a time when a few of the Great Race shared Earth with man and with some Other-type beings; after they were gone, they survived in legend.
The Greek fauns and satyrs, for instance, have Otherlike aspects. The Great Race became the centaur, such whimsies as many-armed Kali, and the two-backed beast riven into man and woman eternally striving to reunite.
Oh, there was no doubt, if you looked at it right. They were there. Stories got mixed up a little, over the millen"
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rflia, but not too badly to recognize, once you saw the real thing.
How long ago? Not even the Others had a guess, on that. The dead belt was a safety factor, to make sure the danger would be past before a comparatively half-smart
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species could develop star travel enough to meet one of its complements.
Another fail-safe device, it bad to be, was concentrating the intuitive and mental-force powers, and the touch of race memory, into the Others and those like them. So that they, at least, would have the instinctive drive for recombination, would have ready the cup and what it must contain, and would know how to use it. No, the Great Race hadn't missed a trick, that Barton could see.
"So now we know," said Ferenc Szabo, "We and the Others and the rest—all through our long separate histories we've been nothing more than self-perpetuating strains of sperm and ova, waiting no one knows how long, to combine and re-create the Great Race." Barton saw the
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man's arm tighten around Racelle; her long, tawny eyes, slanted a bit, widened and then relaxed.
"What bothers me," said Lisa Teragni, "is what were they hiding from? And how do we know the danger's really gone?" When nobody answered right away, she said, "Oh, I'm just as shaken up as everybody else, at finding out we're nothing but sperm banks. 1 refuse to think about that, just now. But this other—"
Mark GyrU cleared his throat. "It's not my field," he said, "so I may not explain it too well. But I have a guess at what it was, that the Great Race couldn't withstand."
When the man paused, Barton said, "Give it a try; all right?"
"Radiation," said Gyril. "There's some evidence of a wave of stellar explosions, time not too well pinned down, that occurred in the galaxy-proper and would have flooded this Arm with more quanta than would have been healthy to most organisms."
**But we're still here," said Elys Rounds.
"The more complex the organism," Gyril said, "the more
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vulnerable it is to radiation damage. Genetically, I mean, as well as with individuals. The Great Race, you know, carries roughly double our chromosome count. At least, the Children do—and of course that's what the colchicinesurrogate is for, in Dahil's cup. To allow full addition of our chromosomes with those of the Others."
Barton frowned, not angry, only thinking. "You mean, the Great Race split itself into simpler organisms that could weather the radiation?** He nodded. "Yen, I guess I got it the first time. Seems like the hard way, is all."
Limila touched his arm. "Perhaps. But we cannot
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understand their motivations." And Barton had to agree with that conclusion.
Everybody was tired; the discussion had ground down to repetition, "Let's let it rest until" morning," Barton said. "I have some ideas, but they can wait that long."
In the morning, though, they were up against the matter of the suicides. Nearly twenty percent of the
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human adults, during that night.
"Damn it!" Barton said. "We should have thought Some people just weren't going to be able to take it."
"What could we have done?'* said Renton Bearpaw. "Hold a pep talk? We were too busy, getting our own selves sorted out."
"Yeh," Barton shook his head. "Couldn't do everything all at once. Well, let's round up some muscle and get
to work."
The work was burying the dead, and the mindlessness of digging gave Barton time to think. Part of his thought had no bearing on the immediate problem. If the Great Race was so almighty, how come it couldn't handle the radiation problem? Assuming Gyril had the right of it, there. Then Barton shrugged. Maybe they overreached themselves; maybe one of their own projects got out of hand. No way, for sure, that he'd ever find out, one way
or the other.
^
Right now, though, he had to start putting some feelers
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out, and the first place to start was with Chiyonou.
He found the Child off to one side of the settlement, engaged in some sort of game with other Children. They were—Barton blinked, and then knew what he'd .seen, briefly, before the Children noticed his presence. They were teleporting, vanishing and appearing, but now they stopped doing that. With no word or gesture on Barton's part, Chiyonou came to greet him.
Barton steadied his thinking, and held it, and said, "You see what has to be done? Can you do it?"
The Child nodded. "We knew it yesterday; we have begun. The ones coming and going, as you saw—they help begin our work, at some distance from here. What , we need to know, we read from many minds." The kid couldn't frown, exactly; the equipment wasn't there for it. But Barton thought Chiyonou looked puzzled, as the next words came. "I see only so far. Barton, along the line of
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action. Do you see farther? The difficulty, I think, is that we are so very young."
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"Don't knock it," said Barton. "It's all too curable." He set an image in the front of his thoughts, and said, "Read me now; it's quicker than talk." And after a silent pause:
"What you think?"
"For your people," Chiyonou said, "perhaps it is the best solution."
Barton had been squatting beside the Child. Now, feeling a little like a cat petting its master, he ruffled the fur on Chiyonou's head, and then stood. "All right," he said. "But let's keep this just between us for a while. I still have to sell it to Ferenc Szabo."
Ferenc, after the evening meal, was in philosophic mode. Maybe, thought Barton, the wine helped. As Ferenc said, "Even from the human standpoint, I think it's worth it. The way the Children are, I mean, even as relative infants. They deserve the universe a lot more than we ever did. They'll enrich it."
He shook his head. "I have to feel sorry for the human race, though. Not for any tangible harm the Children will do it; they don't hurt people. But the shock—the shock
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I'm only now getting over. A lot won't be able to take it. Like today's dead."
"Close to twenty percent, was it?" Barton said. Ferenc nodded. "With the Demu, it's more like ninety, when they find out. Of course, maybe having been pets is worse" than being gametes."
He'd said it to jolt Ferenc loose from introspection, and the ploy worked. Now Barton leaned forward. "Who says the human race has to know? The rest of it, I mean?"
Bearpaw hadn't said much; now he spoke. "This isolation won't last; you can't believe it will. Either human ships will come close enough to be drawn here by mental influence, or the Children will find a way to take over the ship and make it work." He looked harassed. "Can you deny those possibilities, Barton?"
Barton grinned. "Sure not. The only thing is, why wait for them to happen?" And before anybody could take the wrong reading from what he'd said. Barton added, "Why don't we give them the ship now?"
For a while there, the party got a little noisy. Then
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Ferenc got the floor, and said, "You're talking as if such a thing were possible. But there is no fueL No air in the
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ship, so no way anyone could'work in it if we had fuel. You saw to that yourself. Barton." For a moment, Ferenc looked almost reproachful.
That's when Barton told them about the Children's fuel-refining project across the hills, and about the spacesuits he'd smuggled downside. "It won't take all that long," he said.
"But I don't understand," said Bearpaw. "Turning the Children loose, sooner than necessary—what good will that do?"
Barton savored his punchline. "Who said we're turning them loose in this galaxy?"
It was a good thing. Barton thought, that the fuel wasn't ready any sooner. Because until little Conjy was old enough to leave her and be with the Child's own kind, Limila wasn't about to let her offspring go. And of course there was no question of one of the Children, isolated,
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staying with humans of any sort. But the timing worked out, well enough.
Most people, now, tended to avoid the Children, but Barton didn't. He knew they outclassed him, and that as adults they'd be totally outside his comprehension, like as not, but he didn't let it bother him. Some people were bigger or stronger or faster or smarter—that was the way things were—but Barton was Barton and he was satisfied being himself. Ferenc, he noticed, was another who spent time with the Children, and Racelle often joined him io that pastime. Limila, of course, took Conjy for playtimes and teachings, and seemed to feel no unease.
She hadn't said any more about starting a norma humanoid pregnancy, so Barton didn't push it, either Actually, he didn't feel he needed any new complication! just yet. For one thing, he was thinking over a converse tion they'd had recently, and wondering how he felt abou' it. She'd been trimming bis hair for him, and said, "Thf parts at each side, that were gray, now are not. Barton I think the TUaran treatments are having effect on you.
Well, hell. Barton thought. If she had it right, if all the misery he'd suffered on Tilara would really make him
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live young for a long time, well and good. He didn't really believe it, though.
Quite a lot of the colony, including Bearpaw and Lis and Gyril and Elys, opted to stay on Endatheline; fo
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sure, sooner or later there'd be more people coming from
Earth to .join them there.
Barton had a few jitters about passing so near the glorious spectacle of Opal, but Dahil and Tiriis kept their promises. No matter what the Others below might have felt, they made no mental moves against the ship, and Dahil and Tiriis did their teleport trick at the ship's closest approach to OpaL First, though, the number of Children aboard the ship was approximately doubled;
Barton took the Others' word that alt the Children from Opal had transferred up. He hoped so, because that was the way his plan was supposed to work. But from Opal on, passing Blaine's Mistake and crossing the dead belt, the ship held only Earthani and Limila and Children.
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There was no point. Barton and Ferenc agreed, in calling Earth Base; people there might not agree with what the two men intended, and they were going to do it, anyway. It worried Barton that the F.T.L. transmitter got no response from Sisshain, but when they came within range for light-speed talk, things cleared up a little. Tarieton got the obelisk in shape," Barton said to Ferenc, "before he left. Now all we have to do is get
hold of it."
Sholur, Keeper of the Heritage for the Dema, was
another matter. "It is," Barton said to that gold-robed worthy, "that even those Derou who have become—even yourself—may not have become sufficiently to withstand what will be seen when we arrive. It is, perhaps, that all should leave the place of becoming."
But Sholur stayed, and withstood. Even when the great ship, Mecca for the Demu race since its beginnings, lifted to take the Children away beyond return. Pulled the lower third of its two-kilometer length out of the mountain, and lifted and was gone. "It is." said Sholur, "that
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they are well removed from us."
Maybe, Barton thought. But for himself, he wasn't
entirely sure.
From her own ship. Thirty-one, Estelle Cummings was running the Earthani embassy. She and her husband Max, the surgeon, filled Barton in on the news. Tarieton was back on Tilara, and a recent ship had brought word that after some hot F.T.L. talks with Earth Base, he was in charge of both the first and second fleets. Arieta Fox and
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p* Bonus Rayward had gone to Tilara with Tarieton. Too I-, bad. Barton thought; he'd have liked to see them again. |'Well, last reports had them still together, anyway; that
was nice.
Barton's own status, Cummings said, was still a gray [
area. So when he and Limila went back to Ferenc's ship, Barton got help to put an F.T.L. call through to Tilara. But Tarieton wasn't available; he was TO-planet and not
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due back for a few days. Barton shrugged and thanked
his helper. "I'll try again, then."
The next contact he tried to make. Barton had better luck, and about an hour later he welcomed two guests aboard the ship. Eeshta bad grown; the young Demu wasn't quite full-sized yet, but coming close. And while Barton was fairly certain that the exoskeletal Demu weren't given to hugging among themselves, Eeshta must have picked the habit up from Barton, because now she came to him and did so. "Barton^. It is good to see you." "And to see you, Eeshta. You're well?" The young one signed assent, and now Barton looked past her, to the adult Demu. "Hishtoo?" No hugging here, nor did Barton think Hishtoo would have picked up the custom of shaking hands. "It is that I greet you, Hisbtoo. That I wish you good health." And thinking, things do change—because, unmistakably, Hishtoo lifted his stumpy tongue in the
Demu smile.
"It is. Barton," said Hishtoo, "that I would have died
before changing as I have changed. That in part I can
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never forgive what you forced on me. But that I am more now, than before that change." The chitinous, serrated mouth flexed; a sound came that Barton had not heard before. Then Hishtoo said, "It is. Barton, that although you have not correct appearance, you are Demu. Not animal." And while Barton was trying to find an answer, Hishtoo turned abruptly and left the compartment.
Barton looked at Eeshta. "What in the—will he be 'all
right?"
"He will, Barton. I did not know if he could say to you
what he has said, but be did. Now he needs, for a time, to
be alone."
Barton relaxed. "Okay, I guess. Hey, you want somi
coffee? And I'll tell you what's been happening lately.' So they sat, and be did. Eeshta was disappointed, fbougl
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that she hadat had the chance to see the Great Race
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personally.
Picnic on the mountainside, below the vast pit the great ship had left. Barton and Limila and Ferenc and Racelle. "Which do you think we were," Ferenc said, "and which were the Others? In terms of sperm and ova, I mean."
The question took Barton a moment to figure; then he knew. The humans had been like sperm, traveling blindly in search of their own extinction as a species—an extinction they didn't foresee and bitterly resisted. The Others waited like ova, knowing, and drew humans into a unity the Others intuited and welcomed. Now, though, with a little caution the gamete species wouid survive on their own.
He must be a little drunk. Barton thought, to be speculating on this kind of stuff. He said, "What does it matter, actually, which was which?"
But he could see how it might matter to Ferenc Szabo.
The fourth day. Barton got through to Tarleton to Phasewave. The picture was better than he expected, but Tarleton looked pooped. First he talked about fleet
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doings, and to Barton it sounded as if he had things pretty well in hand. Then he said, "Have you heard what Helaise did?" Barton shook his head. "Locked herself in her room and kept zapping herself with a sleep-gun until she couldn't remember how to use it." Barton wondered if he looked as shocked as he felt. The other man said, "Mentally she's about fourteen, I think, and a rather cheerful youngster. Ap Fenn's taking care of her, and he's quite patient about waiting for her to develop grown-up attitudes. I don't think it's going to take too long."
A lot of things Barton wanted to ask, then, but he couldn't think how. Finally he said, "Where do / stand, Tarleton? I mean, last I knew on TUara, I was in tough. I asked Cummings but she didn't know."
Tarleton frowned. "Well, there's a little problem. We have your tape, explaining what happened, and the testimony of Doctor Arleta Fox. But Hennessy, when he was in charge here, set up a Board of Inquiry, and that Board still wants to do some inquiring."
Barton grinned. "They may have quite a wait. Unlessi
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they want to convene on the other side of the dead belt, that is."
He saw Tarleton lean forward. "You mean you're not coming back here?"
"Not hardly. I'd like to hoist drinks with you, but Ferenc's heading down-Arm again, and—"
Tarleton cut in. "What happened there, anyway? I've heard rumors, and now I'm told the great ship's lifted off from Sisshain and gone God only knows where. I think somebody owes me some answers."
Barton considered, decided Tarelton was right, and told it—the bare bones, anyway. At the end, the big man nodded. "You and Szabo did right; that bombshell must not get out in public. Matter of fact, I don't expect to sleep too well myself, tonight. Oh, there'll be leaks, but without any solid proof . . ." He shrugged, then frowned. "But if down-Arm's a trap for humans, what can you do there?"
"Plenty." Barton explained some of it. First-off, take auxiliary fuel pods and a prize crew out to the drifting
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derelict supply ship, so as to return it to Tilara for refitting. "Group B wants to look good in the budget,
"And two more of these big ships, full of colonists, we're escorting to Endatheline. Plus a contact team for Blaine's Mistake, to negotiate -colonization rights on the uninhabited continent."
"The down-Arm mapping project's dead, though, isn't it? I mean, we can't risk having this whole thing happen again."
"We won't." Barton grinned. "The job needs a crew trained in group resistance to mental force. Just happens, that's exactly what Ferenc has, aboard here."
"And you feel you have to go along?"
"Right, boss. Vice-Admiral Barton, on detached service.**
"Yes. Well, Alene and I would like to see you and Uroila, and I did have the funny idea you were working for me—but I guess I can't argue." A pause. "Barton. it's been good."
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"That it has. And, Tarleton—we'll be back s^ He cut the circuit.
Lying with Barton, Limila again discussion: should she ovutate D' '
had done before? Barton wasn't sure. "This place wasn't
so lucky for us, the last time."
"But now it may be. Barton, why do we not try?" The thing was, they got so involved that they didtft
notice when the ship lifted. So whether conception took
place on Sisshain or in space, they'd never know.
