Federation World

Chapter 23

THAT two-faced, long-nosed, hypocritical son of a…” Beth began in an angry undertone, when Martin pulled her close to him with one arm and used his free hand to cover her mouth.

“I feel stupid,” Martin said loudly, turning his face toward the door. “When I saw that all of the doors in the corridor had viewing grills I should have realized that it was a detention area. His granddaughter may not even be in this building.”

He was reminding her that they were not supposed to know anything about the layout of the building and that then- chances of escaping would be increased if the First remained in ignorance of the earlier sensor scan. He felt her nod once to signify that she understood, then she bit his finger to show her disapproval of the manhandling.

“Are you hurt?” Martin asked loudly. They could hear the quiet movements of the Keidi on the other side of the door. They were probably listening to the captured translators, and Martin wanted them to hear what he had to say.

“Only my dignity,” Beth said. The voice was steady but her whole body had begun to shake. “What about you? I didn’t like the sound your skull made against the floor.”

“I think my head is damaged,” he replied, and made a loud noise which he knew would not translate. “There is a large swelling, it is bleeding, and my thinking is confused. The medical pouch was removed with the suits. I must speak to the First. Will he be able to hear me on the translator from inside the cell?”

“Yes,” she replied, catching the ball neatly. “He can hear everything we say.”

Martin winced as he felt exploring fingers on the back of his head, then she stood on tip-toe to put her lips against his ear.

“The translator pickup isn’t all that sensitive,” she said in a barely audible whisper, “and according to the Keidi physiological data, neither is their hearing. You have a whopping bump growing back there, and you’ve lost some skin. Do you really have a concussion?”

“No,” Martin breathed into her ear, “but act as if I need the doctor, badly.”

“You’re bleeding” she said loudly. “The skin is broken and the way is open for infection by other-species bacteria, and there may be underlying damage to the bone structure. You…” She broke off, turned her head toward the door and yelled, “My life-mate needs medical attention! Please ask the doctor to come at once.”

“Nice,” Martin whispered approvingly. “You’re scaring even me.”

From the other side of the door they could hear soft hissing sounds-the Keidi seemed incapable of breathing quietly-but no other reaction. Martin guessed that the First had left a couple of guards and a translator outside with orders to listen and not speak. No doubt their words would be reported later, but in the meantime the apparent distress of one of the hated Galactics was of complete indifference to them.

Or was it?

“We’ve been left naked, cold, and hi darkness, without external contact or means of measuring elapsed time,” he whispered excitedly. ‘This is classic brainwashing technique designed to reduce our resistance to later…”

“Knowing what is being done to us,” Beth said angrily, “isn’t any great consolation right now. Dammit, my goose bumps have goose bumps.”

“Not so loud,” Martin said warningly. He gave another loud, theatrical groan and went on, “It means that the First wants something from us badly enough to go to all this trouble. He has already hinted as much, so we’re in no immediate danger. There’s a bed just behind you, sit on it so that your feet will be off the cold floor. There was a cabinet against the right wall which might hold blankets.”

He gave her a reassuring squeeze and moved in the remembered direction of the cabinet. His eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness, but the light from the door grill was still too dim for him to see anything clearly. An outstretched hand touched the cold, rough brickwork of the wall, and then the smooth, metal side of the cabinet.

It had a simple lever handle, and the door opened with a metallic screech of long unused hinges. He felt a thin, vertical cylinder which moved toward him as he touched it. He identified it as a brush handle when the stiff bristles scraped across his face. There was a sudden, metallic clatter and immediately the light came on and a Keidi eye appeared at the grill.

Beth slid off the bed and strode angrily toward the door, where she raised her forearm and placed it across the grill opening. There was the sound of a heavy bolt being drawn and she jumped back quickly as the door slammed open and two Keidi burst in.

One remained in the doorway on guard while the other ran to the cabinet, knocked Martin aside, and began examining the interior. The lower two-thirds contained the bucket, brushes, and cleaning materials Martin had disturbed, and the upper section two blankets and pillows. Then the Keidi moved to a low, boxlike cabinet on the other side of the room, lifted its lid and looked inside before crouching to check under both beds before returning to the door.

One of the translators was suspended from his neck by a thick, woven cord threaded through the unbreakable bracelet. There was no way of retrieving it short of tearing the Keidi’s head off. His speaking horn turned to point at Beth.

Harshly, he said, “You will not obscure the viewing grill again.”

Beth placed clenched fists on her hips and glared at him. She said coldly, “Then you will not look through the viewing grill at me. In common with many other civilized races; my species has a nudity taboo. It is offensive degrading, and intensely embarrassing to have another person, regardless of sex or species, who is not my life-mate looking at my unclothed body. Do you hear and understand that?”

The Keidi continued to regard her for a moment, then he turned to follow the other guard into the corridor. The door was barred again but the lights remained on, and they heard one of them saying, “Females!”

The pillows and blankets raised a cloud of dust when he tossed them onto the bed, making both of them sneeze loudly. A Keidi eye appeared briefly at the grill, no doubt drawn by the strange, new, untranslatable noises, then went away again.

Martin gripped the center of a blanket in both hands and began rubbing the coarse material against the sharp, lower corner of the cabinet’s metal door, covering the occasional squeak of hinges with a loud groan. Within a few minutes he had abraded a hole large enough to take his fingers. The material tore easily, and when the tear was large enough he lifted the blanket and pushed his head through the slit.

The humble poncho of Earth had returned to fashion, Martin thought dryly and began making one for Beth, adding slits for their arms. When the lights went out again they were sitting side by side on the edge of a bed with pillows between their feet and the cold floor.

“I never realized that you felt so strongly about nudity,” he whispered. “Do you feel more comfortable now?”

“I don’t, and I do,” she replied. “But when I saw those blankets I thought that if I made a fuss about needing body coverings, and made them believe that it was a sociocultural imperative rather than a need to stay warm, we might stand a better chance of being allowed to keep them when the First comes back.”

“I wouldn’t have thought of that,” Martin said approvingly. “But you’re still trembling. One bed is big enough for both of us. We can pool our body heat. I’m worried about Keidi bugs.”

“So am I,” she whispered. “The mattress is filthy.”

“I meant bugging devices,” Martin went on. “But the dust in this place was undisturbed and there probably wasn’t enough time to install them, so I’m pretty sure a whispered conversation will not be overheard.

“We need to do a lot of talking,” he went on, “and we might as well be comfortable doing it. And to be on the safe side we can sandwich our heads between the two pillows and further deaden the sound. The Keidi will think that we always sleep that way. For extra warmth I was thinking that we could share one of our ponchos and…”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Beth whispered. “But for that I really do insist on privacy and freedom from other-species Peeping Toms. No. Besides, you have a headache.”

You aren’t joking, Martin thought as they lay on their sides with his body pressed tightly against her back, his free arm around her and their legs drawn up inside the blankets. Gradually they began to feel warm, although Beth still broke into sudden fits of shivering which she said were caused by cold feet.

Martin was not feeling particularly brave himself right then.

Half a mile away, their lander stood, impervious to all external force and unapproachable by anyone but themselves. It represented the simplest means of escape or of summoning assistance, but plainly the First was not going to allow them anywhere near it. And high above Keida, the hypership, which was capable of unleashing forces that their captors could not even dream of in their worst nightmares, orbited in complete ignorance.

“You said that there is a coded message that will bring down big brother,” Martin whispered, “and the guards have one of our watches. They will be suspicious if any attempt is made to shout a message through the grill. But I’ve had a knock on the head, and if I acted delirious and screamed a lot of nonsense words at them, they might not notice when I moved to the grill to shout the real message.”

“Sorry,” Beth whispered over her shoulder. “You’re forgetting that it’s set to translate and record. You would have to get your hands on it, undisturbed for about two seconds, to make the change to communication mode.”

“Don’t worry,” Martin said, “we’ll think of something.”

Even through the double thickness of blanket, Beth’s body felt warm and relaxed, and the pain in his head was abating. He made a loud, untranslatable noise that another Earth-human would have recognized as a yawn.

It had been a long day.

They were awakened by the sound of loud hammering on the door. The lights came on and an eye appeared at the grill and remained long enough to see that they were fully conscious, then they were left in darkness and silence again.

“Sleep deprivation,” Martin whispered, “is an important part of brainwashing technique.”

“Do they also deprive prisoners of sanitary arrangements,” Beth asked, “or are we expected to use the bucket you knocked over?”

“Often,” Martin replied. “But not this time. That low box with the hinged lid is it. I looked inside while the guard was searching the place. Be careful, I’ve no idea how it works.”

Three times they were roused by the switching on of lights and banging on the door without any clear idea of the time that had elapsed between awakenings. The fourth time that the lights came on the only sound from the door was of the bolt being drawn, and suddenly the First and the guard wearing the translator were standing at the bedside staring down at them.

“I shall consider the damage to the blankets a small, additional obligation,” he said, “and not a matter for physical chastisement.”

They wriggled to the edge of the bed and sat side by side with their legs dangling before Martin said, “Thank you.”

“It is customary to stand in my presence,” the First said.

“Is it a gesture of respect,” Martin asked quietly, “or obedience to authority?”

“Like the torn blankets,” the Keidi replied after a long pause, “It is unimportant.”

Being allowed to keep the blankets had been a small concession, Martin thought, and this had been another one. Whatever the Keidi leader wanted from them, he wanted it badly enough to ignore this act of insubordination by a prisoner. But now it was time to soft-pedal and not push the First too far.

As if reading his mind, Beth said suddenly, “Are your granddaughter and the newborn well?”

“They are well,” the First said. “But henceforth I shall ask the questions and you will answer them.”

The Keidi leader wanted to know the exact capabilities of their two ships with a view to possible use in offensive, defensive, and various civilian support roles. Aware of the danger of being caught in a lie, they tried to make their answers truthful but incomplete. The First seemed to believe them, but was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with Martin’s answers. When the head injury was mentioned several times as an excuse for a certain confusion of mind, he began to direct more and more of his questions at Beth.

“You tell me that your lander is a low-level observation vehicle,” he said, his speaking horn an intimidating few inches from her face, “and that it is the mother ship which holds the power. Under your direction it has the ability to travel between the stars, to fabricate devices, vehicles, and power generation equipment, and to constantly replenish the energies used by absorbing the radiation of any nearby sun. But it seems to me that these capabilities are insufficiently used. I want to know how these vast energies can be utilized and directed toward objectives on the surface of Keida, other than by burying us in a pile of unwanted gadgets?”

Beth did not move or look away from the speaking horn as she said, “You are correct in assuming that the mother ship is not being put to its fullest use on this assignment. That is because it is designed for first contact operations with new intelligent species on strange planets. Keida and its people are not strange to us, your language is already held in our translation computer, and your political and social structures prior to the Exodus are known to us. We were sent here to update that material and help you…”

“For now,” the First broke in, “I want to know about your mother ship, and how it can be used to help us.”

“There are many ways it could be used to help you,” Beth replied, “but it was not designed for offensive operations.”

“But surely,” the Keidi said impatiently, “its power could be so used?”

“Its power,” Beth said, speaking part of the truth in a firm voice, “is used primarily in support of first-contact operations. For that reason it is exercised on the non-material level, as a means of disseminating information concerning the Federation World to those whose knowledge of it is incomplete or nonexistent. The methods used to provide this knowledge, which include local demonstrations of weather control, the clearing or drainage of forested or flooded areas, and the projection of three-dimensional instructional pictures on a small or large scale, are both highly sophisticated and extremely power-hungry.

“I will repeat,” she went on, “the mother ship has immense power but no offensive weapons. However, we both realize that many innocent objects can be used for criminal purposes. Even something as harmless as water becomes a weapon if it is forced into the breathing passages of an air-breather.”

The First looked across at Martin, who remained holding the back of his head in silence, but kept his speaking horn trained on Beth as he said, “So your ship is not intended to inflict physical destruction. But it might be useful to me, and beneficial to you in your present situation, as a propaganda weapon. Can these demonstrations, and the three-dimensional pictures it projects, be used to warn and perhaps frighten as well as to inform?”

Beth paused to give Martin a chance to answer that one, but he thought she was doing just fine and kept silent.

“Yes,” Beth said.

It was obvious that the First had been waiting on that answer, because he gestured to the guard by the door and waited while two large, screw-topped jars of water were brought in and placed on the floor. These were followed by the foodpack and analyzer, four extra blankets, and the most welcome sight of all, their boots!

“I must consider this matter,” the First said, moving its horn slowly from one to the other. “It may be that you will be useful to me, and that you will be able to obey your instructions to help the Keida population while at the same time deepening my obligation to you. While you are considering ways in which this can best be achieved, your rest will not be interrupted and your accommodations will be lighted. If you require darkness during periods of rest, or light after a period of darkness, strike the door firmly, twice.

“I leave you,” he ended, and turned to go.

“Please wait,” Beth said quickly. “My life-mate has a head injury, and the diagnostic equipment is in the ship. Is the doctor…”

The door slammed shut, cutting her off in mid-sentence.

It was not until an indeterminate time later, after the water in the jars had been tested and the food concentrates added to make a bulky as well as a sustaining meal, that they were able to justify signaling for the tights to be switched off so they could go back to bed to discuss the situation.

“You did very well…” Martin began.

“For a ship handler,” Beth whispered angrily. “When I asked for the doctor he ignored me and walked out. You might have been badly injured. Or is he smart enough to know that you’re pretending?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Martin said. “Next time we won’t ask for the medical attention.”

“But we need the Doctor!” she broke in fiercely. “He’s probably our only chance of getting a message out of here.”

Martin tried to laugh reassuringly, and discovered that it was impossible to laugh in a whisper. He said, “The way I see it, the First Father has rewarded us with water, extra blankets, our boots, and a measure of privacy because we have been good, cooperative little children. He has implied that more goodies will be forthcoming if we continue to behave. The only thing he has left to offer is the doctor. So I would say that next time we see him he will begin to tell us exactly what he wants from us, and medical attention is the one thing he can offer which doesn’t involve a risk to himself.

“The next meeting will be crucial.”