The World of Ptavvs Read online

  They were all in one ward. Miday, Sandier, Buzin, Katz—there were twenty-eight of them, the men who had been closest to Kzanol when he threw his tantrum. Seven were buried in plastic cocoons. The alien had forgotten to order them to cover, and they had been in the way of the blast when the Golden Circle took off. The others were under sleep-inducers. Their faces twisted sometimes with the violence of their dreams.

  “I’m Jim Skarwold,” said a blond, chubby man in an intern’s uniform. “I’ve heard of you, Mr. Garner. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “There better be.” Garner sent his glance down the line of treatment tanks. “Can any of these men stand a dose of scopolamine? They may have information I need.”

  “Scop? I don’t think so. Mr. Garner, what happened to them? I took some psychiatry in college, but I never heard of anything like this. It isn’t withdrawal from reality, it isn’t straight or crooked fear…They’re in despair, but not like other people.

  “I was told they got this way from contact with an ET. If you could tell me more about it, I’d have a better chance of treating them.”

  “Right. Here’s what I know,” said Garner. He told the doctor everything that had happened since the statue was retrieved from the ocean. The doctor listened in silence.

  “Then it isn’t just a telepath,” he said when Garner finished. “It can control minds. But what could, it have ordered them to do that would produce this?” He gestured at the row of sleeping patients.

  “Nothing. I don’t think he was giving orders at the time. He just got a helluva shock and started feeling out loud.” Luke dropped a huge hand on the doctor’s shoulder, and Skarwold twitched his surprise at the weight. “Now, if I were planning to treat them, I’d find out first who they think they are. Themselves? Or the alien? The ET may have superimposed his own emotional pattern on theirs, or even his memory pattern.

  “Being me, and an Arm, I want to know why both Greenberg and the ET separately stole spaceships and went rocketing off. They must know they’ve got interplanetary ships, not interstellar colony craft. Is there an alien base somewhere in the solar system? What are they after?

  “Perhaps we can scratch both problems at the same time, Dr. Skarwold.”

  “Yes,” said Skarwold slowly. “Perhaps you’re right. Give me an hour to find the man with the strongest heart.”

  That was why Luke always carried paperbacks in the glove compartment of his chair. His career involved a lot of waiting.

  Arthur T. Katz, qualified ramjet-rocket booster pilot (types C, D, and H-1), thrashed violently. His arms flailed without purpose. He began to make noises.

  “It’ll be a few minutes,” said Skarwold. “He’s out of the sleep-inducer, but he has to wake up naturally.”

  Garner nodded. He was studying the man intently, with his eyes narrowed and his lips tightened slightly. He might have been watching a strange dog, wondering whether it wanted to lick his face or tear his throat out.

  Katz opened his eyes. They became very round, then closed desperately tight. Cautiously Katz opened them again. He screamed and waved his arms meaninglessly in the air. Then he started to choke. It was horrible to watch. Whenever he somehow managed to catch his breath he would gasp for air for a few seconds, open his mouth, and begin to choke again. He was terrified, and, thought Garner, not merely because he might suffocate.

  Skarwold pushed a switch and Katz’s autodoc sprayed sedative into his lungs. Katz flopped back and began to breathe deeply. Skarwold turned on Katz’s sleep-inducer.

  Abruptly Garner asked, “Are any of these people the least bit psychic?”

  Arnold Diller, fusion drive inspector (all conventional types), took a deep breath and began turning his head back and forth. Not gently. It seemed he was trying to break his own neck.

  “I wish we could have found someone with a high telepathic aptitude,” said Garner. Between the palms of his hands he rolled the sawdust fragments of a cigarette. “He would have stood a better chance. Look at the poor guy!”

  Skarwold said, “I think he’s got a good chance.”

  Garner shook his head. “He’s only a poor man’s prescient. If he were any good at that he’d have been running instead of hiding when the ET blew up. How could it protect him against telepathy anyway? He—” Skarwold joggled his arm for silence.

  “Diller!” said Skarwold, with authority. Diller stopped tossing his head and looked up. “Can you understand me, Diller?”

  Diller opened his mouth and started to strangle. He closed it again, and nodded, breathing through his nose.

  “My name is Skarwold, and I’m your doctor.” He paused as if in doubt. “You are Arnold Diller, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” The voice was rusty, hesitant, as if from long disuse. Something inside Garner relaxed, and he noticed his handful of sawdust and dropped it.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Terrible. I keep wanting to breathe wrong, talk wrong. Could I have a cigarette?” Garner handed him a lighted one. Diller’s voice began to sound better, more proficient. “That was strange. I tried to make you give me a cigarette. When you just sat there I wanted to get mad.” He frowned. “Say, how do I rate a human doctor, anyway?”

  “What happened to you isn’t programmed into the ’docs,” Skarwold said lightly. “It’s a good thing you had the sense to hide when you did. The others were closer. They’re in much worse shape. Is your prescient sense working?”

  “It’s not telling me anything. I can never count on it anyway. Why?”

  “Well, that’s why I picked you. I thought if you missed it you could get over the notion that you were a certain alien.”

  “A certain—” Diller started strangling. He stopped breathing entirely for a moment, then resumed slowly, through distended nostrils. “I remember,” he said. “I saw this thing coming across the field, with a bunch of people trailing after it, and I wondered what it was. Then something went wrong in my head. I didn’t wait any more. I just ran like hell and got behind a building. Something going on in my head kept bugging me, and I wanted to get closer to it but I knew that was wrong, and I wondered if I was going crazy, and then, aarrrghgh—” Diller stopped and swallowed; his eyes were mad with fear until he could breathe again.

  “All right, Diller, it’s all right,” Skarwold kept repeating. Diller’s breathing went back to normal, but he didn’t talk. Skarwold said, “I’d like to introduce Mr. Garner of the United Nations Technological Police.”

  Diller gave a polite nod. His curiosity was plain. Garner said, “We’d like to catch this alien before he does any more damage. If you don’t mind, I think you may have some information that we don’t.”

  Diller nodded.

  “About five minutes after that telepathic blast hit you, the alien took off for outer space. An hour later he was followed by a man who has reason to believe that he is the alien. He has false memories. They’re both headed in the same general direction. They’re after something. Can you tell me what it is?”

  “No,” said Diller.

  “You may have gotten something in that mental blast. Please try to remember, Diller.”

  “I don’t remember anything, Garner.”

  “But—”

  “You old fool! Do you think I want to choke to death? Every time I start to think about what happened I start strangling! I start thinking funny too; everything looks strange. I feel surrounded by enemies. But worst of all, I get so depressed! No. I don’t remember anything. Get out.”

  Garner sighed and ostentatiously put his hands on the chair controls. “If you change your mind—”

  “I won’t. So there’s no need to come back.”

  “I won’t be able to. I’m going after them.”

  “In a spaceship? You?”

  “I’ve got to,” said Garner. Nevertheless he glanced involuntarily at his crossed legs—crossed this morning, by hand. “I’ve got to,” he repeated. “There’s no telling what they want, but it must be something worthw
hile. They’re going to too much trouble to get it. It could be a weapon, or a signal device to call their planet.”

  The travel chair whirred.

  “Half a minute,” said Diller.

  Garner turned off the motor and waited. Diller leaned back and looked up at the ceiling. His face began to change. It was no longer an expression he wore, a mirror of his personality, but a random dispersal of muscle tension. His breathing was ragged.

  Finally he looked up. He started to speak and failed. He cleared his throat and tried again. “An amplifier. The—the bastard has an amplifier buried on the eighth planet.”

  “Fine! What does it amplify?”

  Diller started to choke.

  “Never mind,” said Garner. “I think I know.” His chair left the room, going much too fast.

  “They’re both runnin’ scared,” said Luke. “Headed for Neptune at one gee, with your husband an hour and a half behind.”

  “But aren’t you sending someone after him?” Judy begged. “He isn’t responsible, he doesn’t know what he’s doing!”

  “Sure. We’re sending me. He’s got my partner, you know.” Seeing Mrs. Greenberg’s reaction, he quickly added, “They’re in one ship. We can’t protect Lloyd without protecting your husband.”

  They sat in Judy’s hotel room sipping Tom Collinses. It was eleven hundred of a blazing August morning.

  “Do you know how he got away?” Judy asked.

  “Yah. The ET knocked everybody crosseyed when he threw that tantrum at the port. Everybody but Greenberg. Your husband simply picked out a ship that was on standby and had Lloyd take it up. Lloyd knows how to fly a Navy ship, worse luck.”

  “Why would Mr. Masney be taking Larry’s orders?”

  “Because Larry hypnotized him. I remember the whole performance.”

  Judy looked down at her lap. The corners of her mouth began to twitch. She began to giggle, and then to laugh. Just as the laughter threatened to become sobs, she clenched her teeth hard, held the pose for a moment, then sagged back in her chair.

  “I’m all right now,” she said. Her face held no laughter, only exhaustion.

  “What was that all about?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Why would they be going to Neptune?”

  “I don’t know. We’re not even sure that’s where they’re going. Don’t you have some sort of telepathic link with your husband?”

  “Not any more. Since he went into Dr. Jansky’s time field I can’t feel anything any more.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t feel like him anyway. Do you remember how you felt at twenty hours night before last?”

  “At twenty? Let me see.” She closed her eyes. “Wasn’t I asleep…? Oh. Something woke me up and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I had the feeling that something was terribly wrong. Monsters in the shadows. I was right, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes. Especially if it was Larry’s mind you felt.” He gave that a moment to sink in. “And since then?”

  “Nothing.” Her small hand tapped rhythmically on the chair arm. “Nothing! Except that I want to find him. Find him! That’s all I’ve wanted since he took the ship! Find him before he…”

  Find it! But there was no question of finding it, he told himself for the hundredth time. He had to find it first! He had to find it before Kzanol, the real Kzanol, did. And for the hundredth time he wondered if he could.

  The Earth had been invisible for hours. Kzanol/Greenberg and Masney sat speechless in the control bubble, speechless and motionless. The control bubble was three quarters of the ship’s living space. One could stand upright only in the airlock.

  There weren’t many distractions for Kzanol/Greenberg.

  True, he had to keep an eye on Masney. He had to do more than that. He had to know when Masney was uncomfortable, and he had to know it before Masney knew it. If Masney ever came out of hypnosis it might be difficult to get him back. So Kzanol/Greenberg had to send Masney to the lavatory; had to give him water before he was thirsty; had to exercise him before his muscles could cramp from sitting. Masney was not like the usual slave, who could take care of himself when not needed.

  Other than that, the self-styled ptavv was dead weight.

  He spent hours at a time just sitting and thinking. Not planning, for there was nothing to plan. He either reached the eighth planet first, or he didn’t. Either he put on the amplifier helmet, or the real Kzanol did, and then there would be no more planning, ever. No mind shield could face an amplifier helmet. On the other hand, the helmet would make him Kzanol’s master. Using an amplifier on a thrint was illegal, but he was hardly in danger of thrintun law.

  (Would an amplifier boost the Power of a slave brain? He pushed the thought aside—again.)

  The far future was bleak at best. He was the last thrint; he couldn’t even breed the real Kzanol to get more. Yes, he would be master of an asteroid belt and a heavily populated slave world; yes, he would be richer than even Grandfather Racarliw. But Grandfather had had hundreds of wives, a thousand children!

  Kzanol/Greenberg’s hundreds of wives would be human slaves, as would his thousand children. Lower-than-ptavvs, every one.

  Would he find “women” beautiful? Could he mate with them? Probably. He would have to try it; but his glands were emphatically not Kzanol’s glands. In any case he would choose his women by Larry Greenberg’s standards of beauty—yes, Greenberg’s, regardless of how he felt, for much of the glory in being rich is showing it off, and he would have nobody to impress but slaves.

  A dismal prospect.

  He would have liked to lose himself in memories, but something held him back. One barrier was that he knew he would nevermore see Thrintun the homeworld, nor Kzathit where he was born, nor Racarliwun, the world he had found and named. He would never look at the world through his own eye; he would see himself only from outside, if ever. This was his own body, his fleshly tomb, now and forever.

  There was another barrier, a seemingly trivial matter. Several times Kzanol/Greenberg had closed his eyes and deliberately tried to visualize the happy past; and always what came to mind were whitefoods.

  He believed Garner, believed him implicitly. Those films could not have been faked. Copying an ancient tnuctip inscription would not have been enough to perpetrate such a fraud. Garner would have had to compose in tnuctip!

  Then the bandersnatchi were intelligent; and the bandersnatchi were undeniably whitefoods. Whitefoods were intelligent, and always had been.

  It was as if some basic belief had been shattered. The whitefoods were in all his memories. Whitefoods drifting like sixty-ton white clouds over the estates of Kzathit Stage Logs, and over the green-and-silver fields of other estates when little Kzanol was taken visiting. Whitefood meat in a dozen different forms, on the family table and in every restaurant waiter’s memorized menu. A whitefood skeleton over every landowner’s guest gate, a great archway of clean polished white bone. Why, the thrint hadn’t been born who didn’t dream of his own whitefood herd! The whitefood gate meant “landowner” as surely as the sunflower border.

  Kzanol/Greenberg cocked his head; his lips pursed slightly, and the skin puckered between his eyebrows. Judy would have recognized the gesture. He had suddenly realized what made the intelligent whitefood so terrible.

  A thrint was master over every intelligent beast. This was the Powergiver’s primal decree, made before he made the stars. So said all of the twelve thrintun religions, though they fought insanely over other matters. But if the whitefood was intelligent, then it was immune to the Power. The tnuctipun had done what the Powergiver had forbade!

  If the tnuctipun were stronger than the Powergiver, and the thrintun were stronger than the tnuctipun, and the Powergiver were stronger than the thrintun—

  Then all priests were charlatans, and the Powergiver was a folk myth.

  A sentient whitefood was blasphemy.

  It was also very damned peculiar.

  Why would the tnuctipun have made an intelligent food animal? The phr
ase had an innocuous sound, like “overkill” or “euthanasia,” but if you thought about it—

  Thrintun were not a squeamish race. Power, no! But—

  An intelligent food animal! Hitler would have fled, retching.

  The tnuctipun had never been squeamish, either. The lovely simplicity of their mutated racing viprin was typical of the way they worked. Already the natural animal had been the fastest alive; there was little the tnuctipun could do in the way of redesigning. They had narrowed the animal’s head and brought the nose to a point, leaving the nostril like a single jet nacelle, and they had made the skin almost microscopically smooth against wind resistance, but this had not satisfied them. So they had removed several pounds of excess weight and replaced it with extra muscle and extra lung tissue. The weight removed had been all of the digestive organs. A mutated racing viprin had a streamlined sucker of a mouth which opened directly into the bloodstream to admit predigested pap.

  The tnuctipun were always efficient, but never cruel.

  Why make the whitefood intelligent? To increase the size of the brain, as ordered? But why make it immune to the Power?

  And he had eaten whitefood meat.

  Kzanol/Greenberg shook his head hard. Masney needed attention, and he had planning to do. Didn’t he? Planning, or mere worrying?

  Would the amplifier work on a human brain?

  Could he find the suit in time?

  “‘Find him,’” Garner quoted. “That could fit. He’s looking for something he believes he needs badly.”

  “But you already knew that. It doesn’t help.”

  “Mrs. Greenberg, what I really came for is to find out everything you can tell me about your husband.”

  “Then you’d better talk to Dale Snyder. He got here this morning. Want his number?”

  “Thanks, I’ve got it. He called me too. You know him well?”

  “Very.”

  “I’ll also want a chance to talk to Charley, the dolphin anthropologist. But let’s start with you.”

  Judy looked unhappy. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Okay. He’s got three testicles.”