A Gift From Earth Page 4

  The man made a call. Jesus Pietro waited impatiently for someone to bring a mike. Someone eventually did. Jesus Pietro held it against the girl's head and turned the sound up high.

  Rustling noises came in an amplified crackle.

  "Tape it on," said Jesus Pietro. The medic stretched the girl on her side and taped the mike against her head. The thunder of rustling stopped, and the interior of the wagon was full of the deep drumbeat sound of her arteries.

  "How long since anybody left the meeting?"

  "That was these two, sir. About twenty minutes."

  The door in back opened to admit two men and two women, unconscious, on stretchers. One man had a hearing aid.

  "Obviously they don't have a signal to show they're clear," said Jesus Pietro. "Foolish." Now, if he'd been running the Sons of Earth ...

  Come to think of it, he might send out decoys, expendable members. If the first few didn't come back, he'd send out more, at random intervals, while the leaders escaped.

  Escaped where? His men had found no exit routes; the sonics reported no tunnels underground.

  It was seconds before Jesus Pietro noticed that the mike was speaking. The sounds were that low. Quickly he put his ear to the loudspeaker.

  "Stay until you feel like leaving, then leave. Remember, this is an ordinary party, open-house style. However, those of you who have nothing important to say should've gone by midnight. Those who wish to speak to me should use the usual channels. Remember not to try to remove the earpieces; they will disintegrate of themselves at six o'clock. Now enjoy yourselves!"

  "What's he say?" asked the medic.

  "Nothing important. I wish I could be sure that was Kane." Jesus Pietro nodded briefly at the medic and the two cops. "Keep it up," he said, and stepped out into the night.

  "Why'd you leave? It was just getting interesting."

  "No it wasn't, and my glass was empty, and anyway I was hoping you'd follow."

  Polly laughed. "You must believe in miracles."

  "True. Why'd you leave?"

  Embedded in wall-to-wall humanity, drowned in a waterfall of human voices, Polly and Matt nevertheless had a sort of privacy. Manners and lack of interest would prevent anyone from actually listening to them. Hence nobody could hear them; for how could anyone concentrate on two conversations at once? They might have been in a room by themselves, a room with yielding walls and unyielding elbows, a room as small and private as a phone booth.

  "I think Jay's bugs on psi powers," said Polly. She had not answered his question, which was fine by Matt. He'd expected to escape unnoticed from Hood's debate. He was lucky that way. But Polly coming to join him was new and different, and he enjoyed guessing at her motives.

  "He talks like that all the time?"

  "Yes. He thinks if we could only — " She stopped. Girl with a secret. "Forget Jay. Tell me about yourself."

  So he talked of mining worms and home life and the school in sector nine, Gamma Plateau; and he mentioned Uncle Matt, who had died for being a rebel, but she ignored the bait. And Polly talked about growing up a hundred miles away, near the Colony University; and she described her job at the Delta Retransmitting Power Station, but she never mentioned her hearing aid.

  "You look like a girl with a secret," Matt said. "I think it must be the smile."

  She moved closer to him, which was very close, and lowered her voice. "Can you keep a secret?"

  Matt smiled with one side of his mouth to show that he knew what was coming. She said it anyway. "So can I."

  And that was that. But she didn't move away. They smiled at each other from a distance of a couple of inches, nose to nose, momentarily content with a silence which, to an earlier man, would have sounded like the center of an air raid. She was lovely, Polly. Her face was a lure and a danger; her figure, small and lithe and woman shaped, rippled with a dancer's grace beneath her loose green jumper. For the moment Matt looked silently into her eyes and felt very good. The moment passed, and they talked small talk.

  The flow of the crowd carried them half across the room. Once they pushed back to the bar for refills, then let the crowd carry them again. In the continuous roar there was something hypnotic, something that might have explained why the crowded-room drinking bout was more than half a thousand years old; for monotonous background noise has long been used in hypnosis. Time ceased to exist. But there came a moment when Matt knew that he would ask Polly to go home with him, and she would accept.

  He didn't get the chance.

  Something changed in Polly's face. She seemed to be listening to something only she could hear. The hearing aid? He was ready to pretend he hadn't noticed, but he didn't get that chance either. For suddenly Polly was moving away, disappearing into the crowd, not as if she were in any hurry, but as if she remembered something she ought to do, some niggling detail she might as well take care of now. Matt tried to follow her, but the sea of humanity closed behind her.

  The hearing aid, he told himself. It called her. But he stayed by the bar, resisting the pressure that would have borne him away. He was getting very drunk now, and glad of it. He didn't believe it had been the hearing aid. The whole thing was too familiar. Too many girls had lost interest in him just as suddenly as Polly had. He was more than disappointed. It hurt. The vodka helped to kill the pain.

  About ten-thirty he went around to the other side of the bar. The kid playing bartender was happily drunk and glad to give up his place. Matt was gravely drunk. He dispensed drinks with dignity, being polite but not obsequious. The crowd was thinning now. This was bedtime for most of Mount Lookitthat. By now the sidewalks in most towns would have been rolled up and put away till dawn. These revolutionists must be a late-rising group. Matt served drinks automatically, but he wasn't having any more himself.

  The vodka began to run low. And there wasn't anything but vodka, vodka converted from sugar and water and air by one of Earth's educated bacteria. Let it run out, Matt thought viciously. He could watch the riot.

  He served somebody a vodka grapefruit, as requested. But the hand with the drink did not vanish to make room for someone else. Slowly Matt realized that the hand belonged to Laney Mattson. "Hi," he said.

  "Hi. Want a stand-in?"

  "Guess so."

  Somebody changed places with him — one of Laney's tall escorts — and Laney led him through the thinning ranks to a miraculously unoccupied sofa. Matt sank deep into it. The room would start to whirl if he closed his eyes.

  "Do you always get this looped?"

  "No. Something bugging me."

  "Tell me?"

  He turned to look at her. Somehow his vodka-blurred eyes saw past Laney's makeup, saw that her mouth was too wide and her green eyes were strangely large. But she wore a smile of sympathetic curiosity.

  "Ever see a twenty-one-year-old virgin male?" He squinted to, try to read her reaction.

  The corners of Laney's mouth twisted. strangely. "No." She was trying riot to laugh, be realized. He turned away.

  She asked, "Lack of interest?"

  "No! Hell, no."

  "Then what?"

  "She forgets me." Matt felt himself sobering with time and the effort of answering. "All of a sudden the girl I'm chasing just" — he gestured a little wildly — "forgets I'm around. I don't know why."

  "Stand up."

  Humph?"

  He felt her hand on his arm, pulling. He stood up. The room spun and he realized that he wasn't sobering; he'd just felt steadier sitting down. He followed the pull of her arm, relieved that he didn't fall down. The next thing he knew, everything was pitch black.

  "Where are we?"

  No answer. He felt hands pull his shirt apart, hands with small sharp nails which caught in his chest hair. Then his pants dropped. "So this is it," he said, in a tone of vast surprise. It sounded so damn silly that he wanted to cringe.

  "Don't panic," said Laney. "Mist Demons, you're nervous! Come here. Don't trip over anything."

  He managed to walk out
of his pants without falling. His knees bumped something. "Fall face down," Laney commanded, and he did. He was face down on an airfoam mattress, rigidly tense. Hands that were stronger than they ought to be dug into the muscles of his neck and shoulders, kneading them like dough. It felt wonderful. He lay there with his arms out like a swandiver, going utterly limp as knuckles ran down the sides of his vertebrae, as slender fingers pulled each separate tendon into a new shape.

  When he was good and ready, he turned over and reached out.

  To his left was a stack of photos a foot high. Before him three photos, obviously candid shots. Jesus Pietro spread them out and looked them over. He wrote a name under one of them. The others rang no bell, so he shuffled them and put them on the big stack. Then he stood up and stretched

  "Match these with the suspects we've already collected," he told an aide. The man saluted, picked up the stack and left the flying office, moving toward the patrol wagons. Jesus Pietro followed him out.

  Almost half of Harry Kane's guests were now in patrol wagons. The photographs had been taken as they entered the front door earlier tonight. Jesus Pietro, with his phenomenal memory, had identified a good number of them.

  The night was cool and dark. A stiff breeze blew across the Plateau, carrying a smell of rain.

  Rain.

  Jesus Pietro looked up to see that half the sky was raggedly blotted out. He could imagine trying to conduct a raid in a pouring rainstorm. He didn't like the idea.

  Back in his office, he turned the intercom to all-channel. "Now hear this," he said conversationally. "Phase two is on. Now."

  "Is everyone that nervous?"

  Laney chuckled softly. Now she could laugh all she wanted, if she wanted. "Not that nervous. I think everyone must be a little afraid the first time."

  "You?"

  "Sure. But Ben handled it right. Good man, Ben."

  "Where is he now?" Matt felt a mild gratitude toward Ben.

  "He's — he's gone." Her tone told him to drop it. Matt, guessed he'd been caught wearing a hearing aid or something.

  "Mind if I turn on a light?"

  "If you can find a switch," said Laney, "you can turn it on."

  She didn't expect him to, not in pitch blackness in a strange room, but he did. He felt incredibly sober, and incredibly peaceful. He ran his eyes over her lying next to him, seeing the tangled ruin of her sculptured hairdo, remembering the touch of smooth warm skin, knowing he could touch her again at will. It was a power he'd never felt before. He said, "Very nice."

  "Makeup smeared over forgettable face."

  "Unforgettable face." It was true, now. "No makeup over unforgettable body."

  A body with an infinite capacity for love, a body he'd thought almost too big to be sexy.

  "I should wear a mask, no clothes."

  "You'd get more attention than you'd like."

  She laughed hugely, and he rested his ear over her navel to enjoy the earthquake ripple of abdominal muscles.

  The rain came suddenly, beating against the thick coral walls. They stopped talking to listen. Suddenly Laney dug her fingers into his arm and whispered, "Raid."

  She means Rain, Matt thought, turning to look at her. She was terrified, her eyes and nostrils and mouth all distended. She meant Raid!

  "You've got a way out, don't you?"

  Laney shook her head. She was listening to unheard voices through the hearing aid.

  "But you must have a way out. Don't worry, I don't want to know about it. I'm in no danger." Laney looked startled, and he said, "Sure, I noticed the hearing aids. But it's none of my business."

  "Yes it is, Matt. You were invited here so we could get a look at you. All of us bring outsiders occasionally. Some get invited to join."

  "0h."

  "I told the truth. There's no way out. Implementation has ways of finding tunnels. But there is a hiding place."

  "Good."

  "We can't reach it. Implementation is already in the house. They've filled it with sleepy gas. It should be seeping around the doors any minute."

  "The windows?"

  "They'll be waiting for us."

  "We can try"

  "Okay." She was on her feet and getting into her dress. Nothing else. Matt wasted not even that much time. He swung a great marble ashtray against a window and followed it through, thanking the Mist Demons that Mount Lookitthat couldn't make unbreakable glass.

  Two pairs of hands closed on his arms before his feet cleared the window. Matt kicked out and heard somebody' say Whuff! In the corner of his eye Laney cleared the window and was running. Good, he'd hold their attention for her. He jerked at the grip on his arms. A meaty hand weighing a full ton smashed across his jaw. His knees buckled. A light shone in his eyes, and he shrank back.

  The light passed. Matt made one last frantic attempt to jerk loose, and felt one arm come free. He swung it full around. The elbow smacked solidly into yielding meat and bone: an unmistakable, unforgettable sensation. And he was free, running.

  Just once in his life he had hit someone like that. From the feel of it he must have smashed the man's nose all over his face. If Implementation caught him now .... !

  Wet, slippery, treacherous grass underfoot. Once he stepped on a smooth wet rock and went skidding across the grass on cheek and shoulder. Twice a spotlight found him, and each time he hit the grass and lay where he was, looking back to see where the light went. When it pointed elsewhere, he ran again. The rain must have bluffed the lights and the eyes behind him; the rain and the luck of Matt Keller. Lightning flickered about him, but whether it helped or hurt him he couldn't say.

  Even when he was sure he was free, he continued to run.

  3: The Car

  Finished.

  Millard Parlette pushed his chair back and viewed the typewriter with satisfaction. His speech lay on his desk, last page on top, back-to-front. He picked up the stack of paper with long, knobby fingers and quickly shuffled it into correct order.

  Record it now?

  No. Tomorrow morning. Sleep on it tonight, see if I've left anything out. I don't have to deliver it until day after tomorrow. Plenty of time to record the speech in his own voice, then play it over and over until he'd learned it by heart.

  But it had to go over. The crew had to be made to understand the issues. For too long they had lived the lives of a divinely ordained ruling class. If they couldn't adapt —

  Even his own, descendants ... they didn't talk politics often, and when they did, Millard Parlette noticed that they talked in terms not of power but of rights. And the Parlettes were not typical. By now Millard Parlette could claim a veritable army of children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and so forth; yet he made every effort to see them all as often as possible. Those who had succumbed to the prevalent crewish tastes — eldritch styles of dress, elegantly worded slander, and all the other games the crew used to cloak their humdrum reality — had done so in spite of Millard Parlette. The average crew was utterly dependent on the fact that he was a crew.

  And if the power balance should shift?

  They'd be lost. For a time they'd be living in a false universe, under wrong assumptions; and in that time they would be destroyed.

  What chance ... What chance that they would listen to an old man from a dead generation?

  No. He was just tired. Millard Parlette dropped the speech on his desk, stood up, and left the study; At least he would force them to listen. By order of the Council, at two o'clock Sunday every pure-blooded crew on the planet would be in front of his teedee set. If he could put it across ... he must.

  They had to understand the mixed blessing of Ramrobot #143.

  Rain filled the coral house with an incessant drumming. Only Implementation police moved within and without. The last unconscious colonist was on his way out the door on a stretcher as Major Jansen entered.

  He found Jesus Pietro lounging in an easy chair in the living room. He put the handful of photos beside him.

  "What
's this supposed to be?"

  "These are the ones we haven't caught yet, sir."

  Jesus Pietro pulled himself erect, conscious once again of his soaked uniform. "How did they get past you?"

  "I can't imagine, sir. Nobody escaped after he was spotted."

  "No secret tunnels. The echo sounders would have found them. Mpf." Jesus Pietro shuffled rapidly through the photos. Most had names beneath the faces, names Jesus Pietro had remembered and jotted down earlier that night. "This is the core," he said. "We'll wipe out this branch of the Sons of Earth if we can find these. Where are they?"

  The aide was silent. He knew the question was rhetorical. The Head was leaning back with his eyes on the ceiling.

  Where were they?

  There were no tunnels out. They had not left underground.

  They hadn't run away. They would have been stopped, or if not stopped, seen. Unless there were traitors in Implementation. But there weren't. Period.

  Could they have reached the void edge? No, that was better guarded than the rest of the grounds. Rebels had a deplorable tendency to go off the edge when cornered.

  An aircar? Colonists wouldn't have an aircar, not legally, and none had been reported stolen recently. But Jesus Pietro had always been convinced that at least one crew was involved in the Sons of Earth. He had no proof, no suspect; but his studies of history showed that a revolution always moves down from the top of a society's structure.

  A crew might have supplied them with an escape car. They'd have been seen but not stopped. No Implementation officer would halt a car . . . . "Jansen, find out if any cars were sighted during the raid. If there were, let me know when, how many, and descriptions."

  Major Jansen left without showing his surprise at the peculiar order.

  An officer had found the housecleaner nest, a niche in the south wall, near the floor. The man reached in and. carefully removed two unconscious adult housecleaners' and four pups, put them on the floor, reached in to remove the nest and the food dish. The niche would have to be searched.