Federation World

Chapter 25

THEY had reached the perimeter and the lander lay, enclosed by the semicircular halo of its repulsion field, less than a quarter of a mile away. One of the First’s ground vehicles, filled with guards, was already positioning itself between them. Nearby there was a cylindrical mass of rust which might once have been a fuel tank. Martin sat down heavily on it, feeling as if he had just run a mile.

The doctor remained standing as he replied, “I don’t know what the labor camp is like. Nobody has ever returned to talk about it, and I would rather not find out. You look distressed, and plainly you are in no condition for an escape attempt. We may need a litter to get you back to your cell.”

“No, wait,” Martin said urgently. “Have you ever treated a patient suffering from radiation sickness?”

“What sort of question is that?” the doctor asked impatiently. “Are you feeling confused again?”

“No,” Martin said. “Have you?”

“Never,” the doctor replied. “I was an obstetrician, off-worlder, and did not deal with such cases. And after the Exodus all fissionable materials, civil, military, or medical, were taken from us. Thankfully, that particular scourge no longer exists on Keida.”

“You are wrong,” Martin said.

“And you,” the doctor said quietly, “are mentally confused.”

“Not about this,” Martin said fiercely. “As soon as we put our sensors on the First we knew that he had been exposed to radiation, although the dosage was small. The mother ship was able to detect the original source.”

The doctor looked away from him and did not speak.

“You are the only Keidi that I feel I can trust,” Martin went on. “From the beginning you did not behave toward us like an…”

“Careful,” the doctor said.

“All right,” Martin said impatiently, “I will not risk insulting you by using that word. But surely you are not, well, not at all like the First.”

The doctor made another untranslatable sound and said, “That is a compliment.”

“There must be many others on Keida like yourself,” Martin went on. “People who could have gone to the Federation World, but chose to remain because of self-imposed responsibilities, for parents, life-mates or loved ones, or in your case patients. In the city your people were, worried, not about losing you to the Estate, but of you leaving them for the Federation World with us. I’m sure that many of the Keidi could qualify for citizenship now and leave, if the First did not guard the induction centers and send them to his labor camp for trying…”

Without giving the other time to react, Martin broke off and quickly described how the sealed underground missile arsenal had been opened by volcanic activity and the First’s rebuilding a surface launching facility, adding a rough estimate of the number of grave markers outside the camp stockade.

“… Earlier the First told us that he could proceed with his plans without our help,” Martin went on. “I’m afraid that he intends making a show of force, probably the air detonation of a nuclear device over an uninhabited area, timed so that the fallout would be carried out to sea by the wind. This would demonstrate his power to the independents and force them into his Estate. But winds can change direction suddenly, the contamination lingers and could affect the genetic structure of generations of Keidi to come.

“My guess,” Martin continued quickly, “is that the missile project personnel comprises three distinct types. The majority are the slave laborers, who have no control over the situation and are waiting to share the fate of their friends who have died of radiation sickness. There are the guards who are fanatically loyal to the First and, like all fanatics, have minds impervious to the logical argument. Then there are a few, a very few, aging technicians who may not be as expert at reassembling the old and perhaps damaged equipment as they would have the First believe.

‘There is a strong probability of a catastrophic accident.

“A lot of this is supposition,” he went on, “but only in the unimportant details. You must agree that the project has to be stopped, the surviving laborers evacuated and given treatment that only Federation medical science can provide, and the launching facility demolished and re-sealed. To do this I must escape.”

The doctor looked toward the lander for a moment, then said, “If what you say is true, then a great many people on Keida will be obligated to you. But I am not convinced. I suspect an inspired and imaginative piece of verbal misdirection. Your arguments are both cogent, suggesting that there is little mental confusion in your mind, and so fantastic as to be the product of hallucination. Are you using me, applying die nonmaterial pressures which can affect only a doctor, as the First intends using you.”

“Yes,” Martin said, “to escape.”

“But you’re not fit enough to escape,” the doctor said impatiently. “The guards would stop you before you had staggered ten paces toward your vessel. I cannot go to it for you because that screen pushed back everyone and everything else that tries to penetrate it, myself included. I tried out of curiosity, while taking my morning walk. Off-worlder, you cannot escape.”

Martin shook his head, and gasped at the explosion of pain. When he could speak again, he said, “You could go to the screen and speak a certain phrase to the ship. Even if there are others nearby and you have to speak quietly, the sound sensors will hear and translate it. The words are ‘I think, therefore I am in trouble. Can you memorize that?”

“I think you should return to the cell,” the Keidi said. “Your injury appears to be troubling you.”

“No, wait,” Martin said desperately, but the could think of nothing else to say, nor did he rise.

“There have been rumors that the First was guarding induction centers,” the doctor said, “to prevent loss of population. I can understand that even though I disagree with it. But using dissidents to excavate a nuclear weapons arsenal and rebuilding the launching towers… No, that is deliberate misdirection. There is no proof that the arsenal exists, or even, with the instruments available to me, that the First was exposed to radioactivity or…”

“But there is indirect proof,” Martin broke in. “The First is deeply concerned for his granddaughter and the newborn, and would normally stay as close as possible to them before the birth. Why, then, did he remain far down the ward if he was not afraid that he carried something which might.damage the genes of the newborn?…”

He broke off, wishing that instead of speaking he had bitten oft his tongue. The doctor had swung around and was glaring down at him.

“You know all that happened in the birthing ward,” the Keidi said angrily, “yet you concealed the knowledge even from me?”

“Not everything that happened,” Martin said, desperately trying to retrieve the situation. “Our instruments were able to show the approximate location of the ward. That was why, when we realized that we were not being taken to see the First’s granddaughter, we tried to escape. The people in the ward showed as formless blurs except for the First, whose radioactive contamination made his trace unmistakable. My intention was not to deceive you but to avoid further complicating the situation.

“Please help me,” Martin went on, searching vainly for eloquence. “I wish only what is best for Keida.”

The doctor grasped Martin’s arm and drew him to his feet. “The First makes exactly the same claim,” he said. “I will return you to your cell.”

On the latitude of Frontier Camp Eleven, darkness fell quickly, and that may have been the reason why Martin fell several times on the way back. Dizziness and nausea were still making it impossible to think, but not to feel sorry for himself. When the Keidi put an arm around his back to support him by both elbows, his reaction was angry and despairing.

“You don’t believe me,” he said bitterly, “and now you don’t believe that I’m unwell. Why are you bothering to help me?”

The Keidi made an untranslatable sound. “If I assisted only the patients who told me the truth, I would have very little work to do.”

The doctor took him to the cell, then left to check on the condition of his other patient. Martin fell onto his bed, refusing to allow Beth to remove the warm boots or to give him any of the cold, unappetizing porridge she had made from water and food concentrates. Shortly afterward she spread the extra blankets they had been given over him, positioned the two muffling pillows, and crawled in beside him.

“I’m cold,” he said unnecessarily through chattering teeth, “I want to sleep.”

“With a bad head injury,” she whispered, “is it wise to let yourself sleep? What does the doctor say?”

“Nothing, damn him,” Martin replied. “I told him what to do, and everything we know or suspect about the First, but I don’t think he believed a word of it.”

Her body stiffened in disappointment and her arms tightened around him. She did not speak.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll think of another way. But later.”

He was woken by Beth shaking his shoulder violently. The cell was in darkness but the light outside the grill was brightening and fading erratically, the guards were talking at the tops of their voices, and even louder were the muffled detonations of what sounded like a major thunderstorm.

“Dammit, I think you would sleep through the Crack of Doom!” Beth said fiercely. “Just listen to that! It could be natural, a freak storm, even though it seems to be scaring the hell out of the guards. Or then again, our darling main computer likes to show off, and maybe it thinks we might need a diversion as well as a rescue. We haven’t checked it for some time now; it may be planning something.”

“We’ll soon find out,” Martin said excitedly. He swung his feet to the floor, and wondered if his head was going to explode or just fall off. “Start shouting for the doctor. Try to find out if he’s come back from his morning walk.”

“Right,” Beth said, and took a deep breath. The lights came on at her first shout and the doctor who had evidently been on the way to see them, arrived before the guards could send for him. He stood in the open doorway, breathing heavily, his focusing muscles twitching silently and with pale areas of discoloration showing on the dark, Keidi features.

Beth went over to him and gently took his arm, then led him to the bedside where she sat him down between Martin and herself. The caged translator he was gripping in the other hand carried her words, but the guards were too busy trying to reassure each other to listen.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “It is only very bright lights and noise, a projection, and nobody will be harmed. But in case the First holds you responsible for it and wants to chastise you…”

There was a silent flare of blue light, and their rusting bed was standing incongruously on the polished metal deck of the hypership’s matter transmitter module.

“…We thought it better to bring you along,” she went on, sliding off the bed and walking quickly to the module’s computer terminal.

“First, I have to arrange for medical attention for our patient,” she said, while her fingers moved over the input keys, “and cancel all the melodramatic meteorological effects down there. Then later I’ll bring up the lander on automatic. It’s needed to return you to the city, or back to Camp Eleven if you prefer it. Unfortunately, we can’t send you back the way we brought you, because there is the risk that you might materialize inside a wall or something. Then, when my life-mate’s brain is functioning normally again, we’ll have to decide what to do about the First.”

“I understand,” the doctor said. “If I can assist you with local information or advice, I shall be pleased to do so. As for my other patient, she and her newborn will live, which I would not if I were to return to the First just now. I am content to wait here.”

The blotches had disappeared from his face and he was staring raptly through the direct vision port at the whole of his scarred but still beautiful world.

“Indefinitely,” he added.

Beth laughed quietly. “Surely you are in no serious danger from the First? He told us himself that the Keidi do not kill.”

It was plain that the doctor was taking his obligation to provide information very seriously as he said, “In spite of the blood-family and nation-family wars fought throughout our history, it is true that no Keidi will directly take the life of another, and will try very hard to avoid direct injury. That is why our war casualties have always been relatively light. But quite subtle methods have been devised for blaming an enemy’s death on his own stupidity. For not removing himself from an area of risk where weapons are being discharged, for example, or for not surrendering or evacuating his cities when they are under threat of bombing or, in short, for not doing exactly what his opponent wants him to do.

“And there is the self-defense strategem,” the Keidi went on, “by which the opponent defends himself before he is attacked. The First has been particularly unsubtle about defending his Estate from smaller and weaker attackers, and makes a hollow pretense of obeying the Prime Rule. Would you like me to give specific examples?”

“Thank you, not now,” Beth said, looking at Martin. “We believed that our lives, at least, were safe on Keida. But the diagnostic computer is waiting. Will the patient live long enough to make it to the treatment room?”

“Certainly,” Martin said, not feeling certain at all.

When he returned from the treatment room nearly four hours later he felt fit, clear-headed, and ready for anything. The problem was that his mind seemed also to have been cleared of ideas. The doctor’s attention remained fixed on the direct vision panel.

“I’m bringing up the lander now,” Beth said. “The First’s people have been trying to undermine the meteor shield with chemical explosives, and sooner or later someone will get himself killed. Is there anything else you want me to do right now?”

“No,” Martin said. “Not until we’ve had a long, careful think about this situation and…”

He broke off as the heavy, near opaque filters clicked on across the direct vision panel and the high-pitched, warbling sound of the nuclear weapon launch warning roared from the speaker. Before they could react, the viewport blazed with light so dazzling that they had to cover their eyes in spite of the niters. They counted three flashes with less than a minute between them, followed by five more in rapid succession. Then the warning signal ceased and the filters shut off to reveal a wide area of Keida’s smooth, white cloud blanket that was growing eight enormous, dirty gray blisters.

“I don’t believe this!” Beth said, her face gray with shock. She swung around to the computer terminal. “Voice input-output mode, long-range sensors, report!”

The main computer’s speaking voice was precise and unemotional as it replied, “One minute and forty-eight seconds after the unmanned lander took off, a long-range ballistic missile with multiple nuclear warheads was launched against it. All eight of the devices exploded prematurely in the upper atmosphere, in widely scattered locations distributed evenly throughout the land mass, at altitudes between fifty-three and sixty-seven miles. None of the detonations were close enough for the lander to sustain structural damage or radioactive contamination, and it is due to dock in seven minutes and thirty-one seconds.”

Martin stared incredulously at the unnatural cloud-scape framed by the viewport. In a tortured voice he said, “I think we are partly responsible for this. When the lander took off, the First naturally assumed we were on board, that we had gone there after disappearing from our cell. He had to stop us getting back to the mother ship so he radioed the launching site to fire on us. But there must have been a misunderstanding or accident, and the wrong type of missile was launched. That, or the First is so afraid of what we might do that he would risk the contamination to be sure of killing us, while at the same time demonstrating his ultimate power to the uncommitted Keidi.”

The doctor’s focusing muscles twitched but he did not speak. Beth looked as sick as Martin had felt a short time ago. To the computer she said, “Give me a fall out report. And detail possible methods of radiation neutralization or reduction by weather control.”

“The data is too complex for the voice channel,” it replied. “Mathematical and graphics displays are necessary if full information is to be relayed.”

That would mean cutting off the doctor from the information. ‘Then summarize,” she snapped.

The summary, by its very simplicity, painted a more horrifying picture of the situation than any projection of figures and charts could have done. Dependent on local meterological factors, the computer told them, surface contamination under the air burst would occur within periods varying from a few hours to five days. The effects on unprotected organic material in these areas would result in termination of life within the half-year. In fringe areas the contamination effects would take longer, but the bursts had been so evenly distributed over the populated land mass that there were few areas which were not at short-term risk. The long-term effects would not become apparent until the next generation, when the larger life forms would have only a eight point nine percent probability of reproducing viable offspring. By that time all of the smaller and shorter-lived wild or domesticated animals would have been mutated to extinction, and there would be progressive difficulties encountered in the cultivation of edible vegetation.

Weather control could be used on five of the eight volumes of contaminated atmosphere, but the force of the artificially generated weather system necessary to remove them completely before the fallout reached the surface would require minimum wind velocities of one hundred and eighty miles per hour. Wide spread destruction of unprotected surface life forms, dwellings, the larger forms of vegetation and standing crops would result. But the contamination would not be neutralized, it would be deposited on other and more sparsely inhabited areas with identical effects.

“And,” Beth said furiously, “the First’s mess would be dumped on the Keidi who had no pan in creating it, people who wouldn’t join him. But what do we do? Clear most of the Estate of contaminated air while leveling it to the ground with a super hurricane, or leave the First’s people to stew in their own radioactive juice to buy the others a little more time?…”

She broke off as the nuclear launch warning noisily returned to life, but this time the glare niters remained in place.

“Not another one,” she whispered.