The Long Way Home

9

Weather control had decreed rain for this area today, and Lora stood under a low gray sky with her highest towers piercing its mists. Looking out of the window which made one wall of his living room, Brannoch saw only a wet metal gleam, fading into the downward rush of rain. Now and then lightning flickered, and when he told the window to open there was a cool damp breeze on his face.

He felt caged. As he paced the room, up and down and around, there was rage in his heart, and he snapped his report as if every word had to be bitten off and spat out

“Nothing,” he said. “Not one damned sterile thing. They didn’t know. They had no idea where the creature might be. Their memories were probed down to the cellular level, and nothing turned up we could use.”

“Has Chanthavar any clue?” asked the flat mechanical voice.

“No. My Mesko agent’s last report said that a warehouse was broken into the night that flier was stolen, and several cases of space rations removed. So all the being had to do was hide these in whatever den he’s got, release the flier on automatic, and settle down to wait. Which he’s apparently been doing ever since.”

“It would be strange if human food would sustain him indefinitely,” said Thrymka. “The probabilities all favor his dietary requirements being at least slightly different from yours—there will be some small cumulative deficiency or poisoning. Eventually he will sicken and die.”

“That may take weeks,” snarled Brannoch, “and meanwhile he may find some way of getting what he needs—it may only be some trace element, titanium or—anything. Or he may make a deal with one of the parties looking for him. I tell you, there’s no time to lose!”

“We are well aware of that,” answered Thrymka. “Have you punished your agents for their failure to get Langley too?”

“No. They tried, but luck was against them. They almost had him, down in the Old City, but then armed members of the Society took him away. Could he have been bribed by Valti? It might be a good idea to knock that fat slug off.”

“No.”

“But—”

“No. Council policy forbids murder of a Society member.”

Brannoch shrugged bitterly. For fear they’ll stop trading with Centauri? We should be building our own merchant ships. We should be independent of everybody. There’ll come a day when the Council will see—”

“After you have founded a new dynasty to rule over a Centaurian interstellar hegemony? Perhaps!” There was the faintest lilt of sardonicism in the artificial voice. “But continue your report; you know we prefer verbal communication. Did not Blaustein and Matsumoto have any useful information at all?”

“Well... yes. They said that if anyone could predict where Saris is and what he’ll do, it’s Langley. Just our luck that he was the one man we did not succeed in grabbing. Now Chanthavar has mounted such a guard over him that it’d be impossible.” Brannoch ran a hand through his yellow mane. “I’ve put an equal number of my men to watching him, of course. They’d at least make it difficult for Chanthavar to spirit him away. For the time being, it’s a deadlock.”

“What disposition has been made of the two prisoners?”

“Why... they’re still in the Old City hideout. Anesthetized. I thought I’d have memory of the incident wiped from them, and let them go. They’re not important.”

“They may be,” said the monster—or the monsters. “If returned to Chanthavar, they will be two hostages by which he may be able to compel Langley’s cooperation: which is something we cannot do without showing our hands too much, probably getting ourselves deported. But it is dangerous and troublesome for us to keep them. Have them killed and the bodies disintegrated.”

Brannoch stopped dead. After a long time, during which the beat of rain against the window seemed very loud, he shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Assassination in the line of business is one thing. But we don’t kill helpless prisoners on Thor.”

“Your reason is logically insufficient. Give the orders.”

Brannoch stood quiet. The concealing wall pattern swirled slowly before his eyes; opposite it, rain was liquid silver running down the single big pane.

It struck him suddenly that he had never seen a Thryman. There were stereographs, but under the monstrous weight of their atmosphere, dragged down by a planet of fifty thousand miles diameter and three Earth gravities, no man could live. Theirs was a world in which ice was like rock to form mountains, where rivers and seas of liquid ammonia raged through storms which could swallow Earth whole, where life based its chemistry on hydrogen and ammonia instead of oxygen and water, where explosions of gas burned red through darkness, where the population of the dominant species was estimated at fifty billions and a million years of recorded history had united them in one inhuman civilization—it was not a world for men, and he wished sometimes that men had never sent robots down to contact the Thrymans, never traded instruction in the modern science which alone was able to maintain vacuum tubes against that pressure, for their chemicals.

He considered what was going on inside that tank. Four thick disks, six feet in diameter, slaty blue, each stood on six short legs with wide, clawed feet; between each pair of legs was an arm ending in a three-fingered hand of fantastic strength. A bulge in the center of the disk was the head, rigidly fixed, with four eyes arranged around a trunklike feeler on top and tympana for ears; underneath was the mouth and another trunk which was nose and feeder. You could not tell one from another, not by appearance or acts. It made no difference whether Thrymka-1 or Thrymka-2 spoke.

“You are debating whether or not to refuse,” said the microphonic voice. “You are not especially fond of us.”

That was the damnable part of it. At short range, a Thryman could read your mind, you could have no thought and make no plan which he didn’t know. It was one reason why they were valuable advisors. The other reason was tied in with the first: by joining feelers, they could discard spoken language, communicate directly by thought—nerve to nerve, a linkage in which individuality was lost and several intelligent, highly specialized entities became one brain of unimaginable power. The advice of such multi-brains had done much to give the League of Alpha Centauri its present strength.

But they weren’t human. They weren’t remotely human, they had almost nothing in common with man. They traded within the League, a swapping of mutually unavailable materials; they sat on the Council, held high executive positions—but the hookup ability made their minds quasi-immortal and altogether alien. Nothing was known of their culture, their art, their ambitions; whatever emotions they had were so foreign that the only possible communication with humankind was on the level of cold logic.

And, curse it all, a man was more than a logic machine.

“Your thinking is muddy,” said Thrymka. “You may clarify it by formulating your objections verbally.”

“I won’t have those men murdered,” said Brannoch flatly. “It’s an ethical question. I’d never forget what I had done.”

“Your society has conditioned you along arbitrary lines,” said Thrymka. “Like most of your relationship-concepts, it is senseless, contra-survival. Within a unified civilization, which man does not possess, such an ethic could be justified, but not in the face of existing conditions. You are ordered to have those men killed.”

“Suppose I don’t?” asked Brannoch softly.

“When the Council hears of your insubordination, you will be removed and all your chances for attaining your own ambitions vanish.”

“The Council needn’t hear. I could crack that tank of yours. You’d explode like deep-sea fish. A very sad accident.”

“You will not do that. You cannot dispense with us. Also, the fact of your guilt would be known to all Thrymans on the Council as soon as you appeared before it.”

Brannoch’s shoulders slumped. They had him, and they knew it. According to his own orders from home, they had the final say—always.

He poured himself a stiff drink and gulped it down. Then he thumbed a special communicator. “Yantri speaking. Get rid of those two motors. Dismantle the parts. Immediately. That’s all.”

The rain poured in an endless heavy stream. Brannoch stared emptily out into it. Well—that was that. I tried.

The glow of alcohol warmed him. It had gone against the grain, but he had killed many men before, no few of them with his own hand. Did the manner of their death make such a difference? There were larger issues at stake. There was his own nation, a proud folk, should they become the tributaries of this walking corpse which was Solar civilization? Two lives against a whole culture?

And there was the land. Always there was the land, space and fertility, a place to strike roots, a place to build homes and raise sons. There was something unreal about a city. Money was a fever-dream, a will-o’—the-wisp which had exhausted many lives. Only in soil was there strength.

And Earth had fair broad acres.

He shook himself, driving out the last cold which lay in his blood. Much to do yet. “I suppose,” he said, “that you know Langley is coming here today.”

“We have read that much in your brain. We are not sure why Chanthavar permits it.”

“To get a lead on me, of course, an idea of my procedures. Also, he would have to set himself against higher authorities, some of whom are in my pay, who have decreed that Langley shall have maximum freedom for the time being. There’s a good deal of sentimentality about this man from the past and- Well, Chanthavar would defy them if he thought there was something to gain; but right now he wants to use Langley as bait for me. Give me enough voltage to electrocute myself.”

Brannoch grinned, suddenly feeling almost cheerful. “And I’ll play along. I’ve no objections at all to his knowing my game at present, because there isn’t much he can do about it. I’ve invited Langley to drop over for a talk. If he knows where Saris is, you can read it in his mind: I’ll direct the conversation that way. If he doesn’t, then I have a scheme for finding out exactly when he’s figured out the problem and what the answer is.”

“The balance is very delicate,” said Thrymka. “The moment Chanthavar suspects we have a lead, he will take measures.”

“I know. But I’m going to activate the whole organization—spying, sabotage, sedition, all over the Solar System. That will keep him busy, make him postpone his arrest and interrogation of Langley till he’s sure the fellow knows. Meanwhile, we can—” A bell chimed. “That must be him now, downshaft. Here we go!”

Langley entered with a slow step, hesitating in the doorway. He looked very tired. His conventional clothes were no disguise for him—even if he had not been of fairly unmixed race, you would have known him for an outsider by his gait, his gestures, a thousand subtle hints. Brannoch thought in a mood of sympathy how lonesome the man must be. Then, with a secret laughter: We’ll fix that!

Stepping forward, his flame-red cloak swirling from his shoulders, the Centaurian smiled. “Good day, captain. It’s very kind of you to come. I’ve been looking forward to a talk with you.”

“I can’t stay long,” said Langley.

Brannoch flashed a glance at the window. A fighting ship hovered just outside, rain sluicing off its flanks. There would be men posted everywhere, spy-beams, weapons in readiness. No use to try kidnapping this time. “Well, please sit down. Have a drink.” Flopping his own huge form into a chair: “You’re probably bored with silly questions about your period and how you like it here, I won’t bother you that way. But I did want to ask you something about the planets you stopped at.”

Langley’s gaunt face tightened. “Look here,” he said slowly, “the only reason I came was to try and get my friends away from you.”

Brannoch shrugged. “I’m very sorry about that.” His tone was gentle. “But you see, I haven’t got them. I’ll admit I wanted to, but somebody else got there first.”

“If that isn’t a lie, it’ll do till one comes along,” said the spaceman coldly.

Brannoch sipped his drink. “Look here, I can’t prove it to you. I don’t blame you for being suspicious. But why fasten the guilt on me particularly? There are others who were just as anxious. The Commercial Society, for instance.”

“They—” Langley hesitated.

“I know. They picked you up a couple nights ago. News gets around. They must have sweet-talked you. How do you know they were telling the truth? Goltam Valti likes the devious approach. He likes to think of himself as a web-weaver, and he’s not bad at it either.”

Langley fixed him with tormented eyes. “Did you or did you not take those men?” he asked harshly.

“On my honor, I did not.” Brannoch had no scruples when it came to diplomacy. “I had nothing to do with what happened that night.”

“There were two groups involved. One was the Society. What was the other?”

“Possibly Valti’s agents, too. It’d be helpful if you thought of him as a rescuer. Or... here’s a possibility. Chanthavar himself staged that kidnaping. He wanted to try interrogation but keep you in reserve. When you escaped him, Valti’s gang may have seized the chance. Or Valti himself may be in Chanthavar’s pay—or even, fantastic as it sounds, Chanthavar in Valti’s. The permutations of bribery—” Brannoch smiled. “I imagine you got a good scolding when you returned to friend Channy.”

“Yeah. I told him what to do with it, too. I’ve been pushed around long enough.” Langley took a deep gulp of his drink.

“I’m looking into the affair,” said Brannoch. “I have to know myself. So far, I’ve not been able to discover anything. It is not that there are no clues—but too many.”

Langley’s fingers twisted together. “Think I’ll ever see those boys again?” he asked.

“It’s hard to say. But don’t set your hopes up, and don’t accept any offers to trade their lives for your information.”

“I won’t... or wouldn’t have... I think. There’s too much at stake.”

“No,” murmured Brannoch. “I don’t think you would.”

He relaxed still further and drawled out the key question: “Do you know where Saris Hronna is?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Haven’t you any ideas? Isn’t there some probable place?”

“I don’t know.”

“You may be stalling, of course,” said Brannoch. “I won’t badger you about it. Just remember, I’m prepared to offer a very generous payment, protection, and transportation to the world of your choice, in return for that information. The world may well be Earth herself... in a few years.”

“So you do plan to attack her?”

Damn the fellow! Mind like a bulldog. Brannoch smiled easily. “You’ve heard about us from our enemies,” he said. “I’ll admit we aren’t a sweet-tempered people. We’re farmers, fishermen, miners, mechanics, the noble isn’t very much different from the smallholder except in owning more land. Why don’t you get a book about us from the library, strain out the propaganda, and see for yourself?

“Ever since we got our independence, Sol has been trying to retake us. The Technon’s idea is that only a unified civilization—under itself—should exist; everything else is too risky. Our notion is that all the cultures which have grown up have a right to their own ways of life, and to blazes with the risks. You can’t unify man without destroying the variety and color which makes him worth having around—at least, you can’t unify him under anything as deadening as a machine which does all his thinking for him.

“Sol is a menace to our self-respect. She’s welcome to sit back and let her own arteries harden, but we don’t want any part of it. When she tries to force it on us, we have to resist. Eventually, it probably will be necessary to destroy the Technon and occupy this system. Frankly, I don’t think much will be lost. We could make those sheep down in low-level back into human beings. We don’t want to fight-Father knows there’s enough to do in our own system—but it looks as if we’ll have to.”

“I’ve heard all the arguments before,” said Langley. “They were current back around my own time. Too bad they haven’t been settled yet, despite all the centuries.”

“They never will be. Man is just naturally a rebel, a diversifier, there’ll always be nonconformists and those who’d force conformity. You must admit, captain, that some of these eternal arguments are better than others.”

“I... suppose so.” Langley glanced up. “I can’t help you anyway. Saris” hangout isn’t known to me either.”

“Well, I promised I wouldn’t pester you. Relax, captain. You look like outworn applesauce. Have another drink.”

The talk strayed for an hour, wandering over stars and planets. Brannoch exerted himself to charm, and thought he was succeeding.

“I’ve got to go,” said Langley at last. “My nursemaids must be getting fretful.”

“As you say. Come in again any time.” Brannoch saw him to the door. “Oh, by the way. There’ll be a present for you when you get back. I think you’ll like it.”

“Huh?” Langley stared at him.

“Not a bribe. No obligation. If you don’t keep it, I won’t be offended. But it occurred to me that all the people trying to use you as a tool -never stopped to think that you are a man.” Brannoch clapped his shoulder. “So long. Good luck.”

When he was gone, the Thorian whirled back toward his listeners. There was a flame in him. “Did you get it?” he snapped. “Did you catch any thoughts?”

There was a pause. Chanthavar didn’t know, thought Brannoch half drunkenly, or he would never have let Langley come here. Even the Thorians hadn’t realized for a long time that a Thryman was telepathic, and since discovering it they had been careful to keep the fact secret. Maybe.., maybe—

“No,” said the voice. “We could not read his mind at all.”

What?”

“It was gibberish. There was nothing recognizable. Now we must depend on your scheme.”

Brannoch slumped into a chair. Briefly, he felt dismayed. Why? Had a slow accumulation of mutations altered the human brain that much? He didn’t know; the Thrymans had never told anyone how their telepathy worked.

But- Well, Langley was still a man. There was still a chance. A very good chance, if I know men. Brannoch sighed gustily and tried to ease the tautness within himself.