OCTOBER 35 CENTS
WORLDS OF
SCIENCE FICTION
IN THIS ISSUE! A thrilling short novel about a deadly secret weapon from a strange world
SILENCE IS DEADLY
By Lloyd Biggie, Jr.
One of the year’*s top science fiction treats!
THE FIRST
WORLD of it
TWENTY outstanding short stories se- lected from the first five years of IF Mag- azine— covering a greater variety of science fiction themes than you have ever before encountered in one volume. You will find something excitingly different in every story — a thrilling change of mood, idea, theme and pace . . . Don’t miss it — if you like good science fiction! Send only 50 cents to IF Magazine, Kingston, New York, and a copy will be mailed to you at once!
I GREAT SHORT STORIES |
I By ROBERT ABERNATHY I
I ISAAC ASIMOV I
I CHARLES BEAUMONT I
I JEROME BIXBY |
I JAMES BUSH I
I RICHARD BOLTON I
I ED. M. CLINTON, JR. |
I MIRIAM ALLEN DE FORD |
I PHILIP K. DICK I
I KIRK AND GAREN DRUSSAI |
I DAVE DRYFOOS 1
I CHARLES L. FONTENAY 1
I HORACE B. FYFE i
I DICK HETSCHEL I
I MILTON LESSER I
I EDWARD W. LUDWIG |
I FRANK RILEY I
I ROBERT SHECKLEY I
1 GEORGE H. SMITH I
I ROBERT F. YOUNG |
WORLDS of SCIENCE FICTION
OCTOBER 1957
All Stories New and Complete
Editor: JAMES L. QUINN
Assist. Editor: EVE WULFF
Art Director: MEL HUNTER
NOVELETTES |
SILENCE IS DEADLY by Lloyd Biggie, Jr. 4 |
DARK WINDOWS by Bryce Walton «2 |
SHORT STORIES I GAME PRESERVE by Rog Phillips I RX by Alan E. Nourse I THE POORS by Harry Lorayne
I PUPPET GOVERNMENT by George Revelle
1 FEATURES
I EDITOR'S REPORT I WHAT'S YOUR SCIENCE I.Q.?
I SCIENCE BRIEFS
I HUE AND CRY
I COVER:
I A Game of Marbles by Mel Hunter |
^iiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiii<iiiii>iiiiiiiiimiiiimiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimii!i7
IF is published bi-monthly by Quinn Publishing Company, Inc. Volume 7, No. 6. Copyright, 1957 by Qmnn Publisning Co., Inc. Office of ^blicatlon, 8 Lord Street, Bunalo, New York. JSntered as Second Class Matter at Post Office, Buffalo, New York. Subsciiption $3.50 for 12 issues in U.S. and Possessions; Canada $4 for 12 Issues; elsewhere $4.50. Allow four weeks for change of address. All stories appear- ing in this magazine arc fiction; any similarity to actual persons is coincidental. Not responsible for unsolicited artwork or manuscripts. 35c a copy. Printed in U.S. A.
EDITORIAL AND BUSINESS OFFICES, KINGSTON, NEW YORK
Next (December) issue on sale October 12th
2 I 47 I 113 I
116 I
48 I 84 I 95 I 104 I
To paraphrase Alice in Wonder- land: “The science fiction writing business gets curiouser and curi- ouser.” We’ve often been entranced by the professions which writers pursue for their livelihood. Beside professional writers of television and movie scripts, we have doctors, engineers, university professors who teach everything from biophysics to ancients languages, anthropologists, insurance investigators, advertising men, lawyers, chemists and news- papermen. However, two writers who are new to IP’s pages are unique even in such distinguished company. Lloyd Biggie, Jr. (who wrote Silence is Deadly for this is- sue; and is also responsible for The Tunesmiths and On The Dotted Line) is the only writer we know of who has a PhD in music. He claims the longest epic he ever wrote was a 450 page thesis on Antonius Brumel the 15th century composer. However, he doesn’t feel that this is exactly a direct ap- proach to becoming a science fic- tion writer! Harry Lorayne, who
wrote what we think is a nice sa- tiric little comment on our TV- ridden lives (The Poors), was un- til a few years ago considered one of the top card manipulating ma- gicians in the country. Now mem- ory is his business. He spends most of his time traveling around the country doing lecture demonstra- tions on what can be done with a trained memory. This, incidentally, includes remembering the names and faces of his entire audience after meeting them only once; memorizing the order of an entire deck of cards which has been shuf- fled by a volunteer; memorizing the entire issue of any chosen cur- rent magazine, etc. He’s so good at it that he’s been featured in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not column!
Collecting such oddities about our authors brings another thought to mind, one which most editors won- der about — What about our read- ers? What do they do? Why do they read science fiction? What makes you, the reader, pluck IF from the newsstands? We’d really like to compile a list of statistics concerning you. Too many people still suffer from “shame” about needing to defend science fiction as their favorite reading matter; and we’d like to print some rebut- tals to help both science fiction and them. Drop us a note, tell us what you do, what hobbies you pursue, what you like in science fiction and what makes you buy IF. Is it writ- ers whose yarns you know you’ll like? Is it covers? (That, of course, brings up the point about just what sort of illustrations you do like on
2
your covers.) How would you feel about no illustrations at all? How about featured articles like the re- cent Face of Mars by Dr. Richard- son or the one about Why Guided Missiles Can Not Be Controlled? We’ll print statistics as they come in — bet you’ll be suqDrised to find what distinguished company you keep when you read IF. As an added incentive to make you take pen, pencil, crayon or quill in hand, we’ll send a first edition of IF to the first one hundred letter writers.
We\e had so many favorable com- ments on our FIRST WORLD OF IF anthology (reader comments, newspaper and magazine reviews) that we’re planning another one real soon — a “second world.” This time, we plan to reprint novelettes from our first six years. Some of our readers have already sent in suggestions about which ones they’d like to see.
Frank Riley, who’s been absent from IF’s pages for far too long (busy as a beaver with TV and movie assignments) has sent us an unusual story for the December is- sue. A Computer Named Eddie is the title, and Eddie and his inventor are something really unique in de- tective teams. A missing X-15 guided missile and plenty of red tape and security problems all promise something exciting and new in the realm of science fiction. So don’t miss A Computer Named Eddie!
Bob Silverberg (the man with the
13 by-lines and more than 170 stories to his credit) is also pound- ing away on a new short novel for IF. Incidentally, Bob, who writes full time himself, has as a spouse one of the few female electronics engineers extant in the United States.
If you're planning to be in New York City at all within the next month or two, make it a sp>ecial p>oint to see A Visit to a Small Planet at the Booth Theater. You may have seen it on TV, but for a science fiction fan the expanded version is a must. It’s a smash hit even on hard-bitten Broadway. Take Aunt Matilda too, because even the most determined anti sci- ence-fictioneer will be delighted with Cyril Ritchard and Eddie Mayehoff. After the black eye science fiction got with Night of the Auk a recent Broadway flop, this play with its delightful whimsy and humor may take the curse off for a good many years to come. Let’s hope that Hollywood picks this one up (including Ritchard and Mayehoff) and gives everyone a chance to see what good enter- tainment science fiction can be.
Our June cover has started what seems to be an interesting little controversy in several quarters. The picture was titled “Kodachrome from the Files of the First Mars Expedition,” and showed theoreti- cal ships about to make a landing on the red planet. So far we’ve had several letters in which people want to know why the government has (Continued on page 83)
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What was the secret weapon of this primitive planet where people lived in mute terror? No earthman had ever seen it, and there was but one way to find out . . .
DEADLY
BY LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
IT WAS AN inter-galactic crisis, with border clashes between the Federation and the menacing Haarvian Empire strewing space with searing debris and threatening to erupt into total war. The War Department of the Federation pin- pointed the critical area, pinpointed the critical planet, and requested permission to act. The politicians
refused. And while the admirals chaffed angrily and the politicians fussed helplessly, Space Intelligence went to work with its usual quiet efficiency.
Space Intelligence sent in agents, one at a time, and in twos and threes — specialists and non-special- ists, bold youngsters and wily vet- erans, professionals and uniquely-
5
qualified amateurs. And one at a time, and by twos and threes they disappeared without a trace. Space Intelligence lost seventeen men in two months, and then it called in Bran Hilford.
“You’ll have to go native,” he was told. “It’ll require some sur- gery.”
Hilford grinned happily. In his forty years with Space Intelligence, he’d had his body reshaped in more ways than he cared to remember. He’d had ears, nose and mouth altered and re-altered. His head had been egg-shaped, balloon- shaped, and square. The irises of his eyes had been tinted a dozen different colors. As a veteran of missions on two hundred worlds, he knew that anything was com- monplace under at least one sun. “Go ahead,” he said, “and butcher me up.”
And they did.
During the curious convales- cence that followed, Hilford became increasingly puzzled about his new assignment. He asked for details, and got nothing. “No one here is qualified to indoctrinate you,” he was told. “We have an expert coming, and you’ll go back with him. He’ll give you as much as he can in space. It won’t be enough, and you’ll probably get killed, but there’s a crisis . . .”
Hilford shrugged patiently. He lounged about with hands and head swathed in bandages. He could hear only with a communica- tor clapped tightly against his head, the volume turned up to what should have been an ear-shattering level. He could not account for the
6
peculiar feeling in his hands. Be- cause there was nothing else for him to do, he waited and said nothing, and eventually the day came when his bandages could be removed.
Hilford sat stiffly on the edge of his bed, hands extended in front of him. A pretty young nurse deft- ly peeled the bandages from his hands. A second nurse, not so
pretty, shot curious glances at him as she unrolled yards of bandage from his head. The doctor hovered nearby, his round face puckered anxiously. Hilford saw his lips
move, and heard nothing.
He had confidently assumed that his hearing would improve as the bandages came off. It did not.
Silence enveloped and stifled him. A pair of surgical scissors slipped from nervous fingers, and fell with noiseless impact. The doctor, danc- ing about apprehensively, over- turned a chair, and Hilford’s eyes followed it as it crashed soundlessly. He coughed, and let the word, “Damn!” explode from his lips.
He heard neither.
The last of the bandages dropped away, and the nurses stepped back. The doctor bounded forward, gripped Hilford’s head firmly, and studied it critically. Hilford waited submissively, felt the doctor’s skill- ful fingers prodding his head, felt his own hands caught up for a rapid examination.
Suddenly the doctor backed away, grinning. The nurses grinned. The three of them stood together, lips moving excitedly, hands gestur- ing. Hilford moved his hands, as though to push aside the void of
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
silence that surrounded him.
His hands. Left hand, thumb and five fingers. Right hand, thumb and five fingers. He examined the extra fingers with studious bewilderment, tried to move them, and gaped at the stiff response.
A nurse thrust a mirror in front of him. The reflection stared back at him — his face, but not his face. “Damn!” he bellowed, and the word dropped into nothingness. His face stretched smooth and un- broken from the point of his chin to the taut dome of his bald head. His ears were gone.
Hilford lurched to his feet and advanced angrily. The doctor dropped his arms and stood help- lessly before him, pink face wrinkled with merriment. The nurses clutched their sides as laughter shook their trim bodies. Hilford watched them, strained against the noiseless impact of their laugh- ter, and finally slumped dejectedly back onto his bed.
Ernst Wilkes, the Sector Chief of Intelligence, moved his bulky figure into the room, stood for a moment regarding Hilford, and dismissed the doctor and nurses with a gesture. He tossed Hilford a communicator, and tested a chair apprehensively before he settled his weight upon it.
“Where are my ears?” Hilford demanded.
Wilkes’ wheezy voice floated faintly, far away. “Deep freeze. You can have them back when you finish this assignment. If you finish it. If you want them back, that is. You’ll be two pounds lighter without those atmosphere flaps,
SILENCE IS DEADLY
and you might find — I just got in. Sorry I had to be away when you reported here. Know anything about Kamm?”
Hilford started. “The silent planet. So that’s why I lost my ears!”
“Right. Sense of hearing is atrophied in all life forms. They’ve even lost the external vestiges of any hearing apparatus.”
Hilford searched his memory. “Kamm — never been in that sector. The natives have some kind of odd religious cult, haven’t they? Rep- tiles?”
“Birds. Wish I could tell you about it, but I can’t. There aren’t many experts on Kamm, and we’ve just lost some of our best men. You’ll get as much as there is time for on the ship. Zorrel just got in, and he’s to go back with you. He’s waiting now. Ready to leave?” “Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Wilkes grunted, and struggled to his feet. “I’m giving you six months leave when you finish this. But you’ll probably get killed.”
At the space port, Wilkes intro- duced Hilford to Mark Zorrel, who was young, six-fingered, and earless. “He’s in charge of you until you reach Kamm. The main problem will be language, and he’ll see that you get that, and as much else as there’s time for. Once you land, you’re in full charge. Zorrel will act as your assistant.” Hilford shook the communicator gently, and returned it to his head. “Give me that again. Who’s in charge of what?”
“Oh, hell,” Wilkes said. “We
7
have a base on a Kamm moon. You’ll get your orders there. Get aboard, now, and — luck.” He waddled away.
“Take good care of my ears,” Hilford called after him. He turned to Zorrel. “Let’s get on with it.”
Zorrel shook his head, and grinned. He spread his hands in front of Hilford, and the twelve fingers flashed bewilderingly. Final- ly he spoke, in the harsh, expression- less tones of an unused voice.
“The language of Kamm. Gom- mimicators are much too uncer- tain, and too inconvenient, if those, doctors did any job at all on your ears. I’ll tell you as much as I can when you’ve learned how to talk.”
Hilford followed Zorrel up the ramp, stiffly and doubtfully ex- ercising his two newly-acquired fingers.
They landed on Kamm at night, in a rolling meadow near the sea, and dawn found them toiling along a rough, winding coastal road. They plodded beside a clumsy wooden peddler’s cart, drawn by a shaggy, stupid, ox-like animal that Hilford’s mind called an ox because he knew no verbal equivalent for the Kammian sign language. They wore baggy trou- sers and short capes, so startlingly colored that Hilford’s hands had been too paralyzed to comment on them when he first saw them. They wore the squat, scarlet hats ^at were the Kammian badge of their profession.
They were itinerant peddlers,
one of the two Kammian classes — outside of the nobility and the wealthiest merchants — that could travel about freely. Seamen made up the other class, but an intelli- gence agent disguised as a seaman worked under a decided handicap. He was bound to attract attention if he got very far inland.
As soon as it was light enough to see each other’s hands, they began to tdk. “Damned barbarous civilization,” Hilford signaled, “when you can’t talk in the dark.”
He found this sign language the worst thing he’d encountered in all of his intelligence service. It had grammar, even an uncomfortably rigid syntax. Some words — names, places, important artifacts — had a single sign or gesture. Others were literally spelled out. Hilford floun- dered at every turn because he had to keep thinking of verbal equiva- lents for what he was talking about.
And what should he call this Province? The Flat Province, from the Kammian gesture; but it was rolling country, and even moun- tainous farther inland. And what should he call its ruler? The sign for ruler he interpreted as “Duke”, and the erect second and sixth fingers on the right hand made the ruler of the Flat Province the Duke Two Fingers. It was screwy, but it was the only way he could keep things straight.
Zorrel’s young face, good-look- ing despite its lack of ears, was frowning critically. His hands moved slowly, with a sarcastic flourish. “You’re still talking with one hell of a foreign accent. Don’t bend your sixth finger like that.
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
8
It puts the whole thing in a kind of familiar tense, and that’s a rank insult when you talk with a stranger.”
Hilford straightened the offend- ing finger. “I was wondering if this stuff could be derived from a spoken language.”
^rrel’s hands spoke peevishly. “Scholars have been arguing about that for years. Me, I let them argue.”
Hilford exercised his fingers thoughtfully. The idea that he could be tripped up on such a minor matter as a bent finger — that any Kammian peasant might spot him instantly as an alien — was highly disturbing. He would have to let Zorrel run things for a few days, until he became wiser in the ways of Kamn. He would have to stay in the background — and keep his hands shut.
“Let’s get back to geography,” Zorrel’s fingers signaled. “Show me the capital cities of the twelve provinces. And watch that accent.” They talked busily, reviewing names and places.
At mid-morning they topped a steep hill and looked down on the great and prosperous city of 00. It was market day, and half of the ten thousand population seemed to be thronging the market place that sprawled along the harbor. Zorrel’s remarks changed abruptly to the brisk chatter of peddlers as they met their first passers-by, and they moved on into the market place.
They backed their cart into place at the end of a long row of peddlers’ carts, and Zorrel, with a wink and a shrug, began to display his mer-
SILENCE IS DEADLY
chandise to the people who had al- ready gathered to see what the new cart had brought. Hilford stood nearby, pushed his scarlet peddler’s hat farther back on his b^d head, and struggled heroically to keep from gaping at the scene spread out before him.
He was surrounded by a riot of color. Bold, iridescent patterns or- namented each woman’s billowing skirt and contrasted with the rich, dark tones of the loose-fitting bodices. The men’s clothing, from the baggy, full-length trousers to the short capes, was a startling maze of lurid, irregular stripes and jagged, multicolored lines. Children followed along sedately, amusing miniatures of their parents.
Each man wore the brightly- colored, distinctive headdress of his trade. The woman of 00 wore no hat, but her long, flowing hair was a bewildering rainbow stirring gently in the tangy sea air. Hilford reminded himself for the hundredth time not to stare, and stared again, wondering if the women dyed each hair individually.
The peddlers’ carts, the stalls, the stubby, rectangular sails that were barely visible above the low- lying, barge-like ships in the har- bor beyond the market place, the houses and shops of 00 that could be seen in the distance, even the cobblestones underfoot — all were a tumult of color, some loud and gaudy, some exquisitely patterned masterpieces of sensitive shading and contrast.
The faces of the people were solemn, almost sullen, among the gay surroundings. Hilford watched
9
for a long time before he grasped an answer, and then he saw the explanation in every gesture, in every hesitant purchase, in every pale face. These people were frightened. Even the children were frightened.
Most awesome of all was the silence. Hilford found himself straining to hear the hum of the crowd, the shouts, the piercing cries of the hawkers, the murmuring conversation — and he heard noth- ing. Wooden shoes clapped noise- lessly on the cobblestones. Women and peddlers haggled with sound- less gestures. Itinerant musicians, such a prominent feature of market places on many worlds, were not to be found. Instead, there were shabby performers shaping whirl- ing discs of color into exotic pat- terns for small groups of towns- people who watched intently, but did not applaud.
Kamm, the silent planet. Silence hung heavily about Hilford. So fantastic did it seem as he watched the slow-moving crowds, watched the triangular-shaped metal coins fall noiselessly onto the hawkers’ trays, watched a battered hand cart being wheeled past without a single creak or rattle, watched insects buzzing in furious silence over a soggy pile of sea mollusks, that he felt compelled to cry out himself.
But he knew the sound would drop from his lips unheard.
The sight of a black cape startled Hilford into alertness. Soldier, policeman — they were one and the same on Kamm, and their black clothing and black, fur-
10
trimmed hats made them stand out sharply among the brightly-ap- pareled populace. This Black-Cape walked slowly past, whirled sud- denly to stare curiously, and then stopped a short distance away with his eyes fixed intently upon Hilford.
“Well, now,” HilJFord told him- self. “A peddler on market day who stands around gaping and does not peddle is not behaving normal- ly, and Blackie spotted that with one glance. It may be a primitive planet, but the police aren’t stupid!”
He glanced at Zorrel, who was working with enthusiasm but not much success to sell hand-carved figurines of the hideous Kanunian Holy Bird to the passers-by. Hilford caught Zorrel’s eye, winked, and sauntered out to lose himself in the crowd. He carried with him Zorrel’s warning frown.
“It wouldn’t do for me to try to peddle,” he mused, “but there’s nothing wrong with my looking over the wares of my competitors. All the peddlers are doing that.”
He moved with the crowd, mak- ing an enormous circle of the market place, and began to work in towards the center. The sun was high overhead, and his pangs of hunger prodded him into action. He stopped to buy some pastry, and after due hesitation also had a mess of seaweed measured out for him. It was one of the penalties of his profession. To masquerade as a native, he had to eat — and ap- parently enjoy — native food. Tuck- ing his purchases under his arm, he walked on towards the center of the market place, where the fab-
LLOYD biggie; JR.
nlous Karamian Holy Bird floated life-like at the top of a thirty-foot pillar.
Metal or stone, it was — Hilford could not decide, because it was painted in dazzling colors. It was the most vicious bird of prey Hil- ford had seen on any of his two hundred worlds. Its wings spanned a good ten feet from tip to tip, its eyes gleamed wickedly, its knife- like talons were poised to clutch and tear, and the huge, tapering beak was drawn back to strike.
Hilford stared at it, and shud- dered. According to legend, he knew, such birds were once the rulers of Kamm. According to leg- end, they still existed somewhere on Kamm’s single continent. But Space Intelligence agents had never seen one, nor found a citizen of Kamm who had seen one. The bird’s heavy shadow seemed sym- bolic, in that market place of the Flat Province, where the citizens lived in mute, brightly-colored ter- ror.
Glancing back, Hilford saw the Black-Gape again, this time moving towards him purposefully. Hilford uneasily threaded his way through the crowd, and tried to move fast- er. “It’s this peddler’s hat,” he told himself. “They could spot a ped- dler a mile away.” But there was compensation. He could also spot a Black-Gape from a good distance. He pushed his way forward, and when he looked back again the Black-Gap>e had given up the chase and was standing respectfully at attention. At the same time the crowd began to draw back in alarm.
A luxurious, gaudy carriage
SILENCE IS DEADLY
moved slowly across the market place, pulled by two of the ox-like creatures. Behind it staggered a man of Kamm, his nude body painted gruesomely, and behind him marched ranks of the black- caped police, solemnly swinging their sabers.
Hilford had to give way with the crowd and humbly avert his eyes, but he had time to survey the scene before him and mentally photograph the occupants of the carriage.
One was the notorious Duke Two Fingers, who lounged in re- splendent black robes and kept his bloated, evil face staring disdain- fully straight ahead. The appear- ance of the other occupant brought Hilford up short in amazement and forced him to risk another glance at the carriage. He was a huge, rough-looking man in native dress, but he had one physical attribute which stamped him unmistakably as alien to the planet of Kamm. He had ears.
The police strapped their victim to the pillar, and their ranks filed past him in orderly manner, each man swinging his saber. The vic- tim writhed in soundless agony as blood dripped from a multitude of slashing cuts in his back. The Duke Two Fingers and his companion watched impassively, but the citi- zens began to edge cautiously away. The market place thinned out, and Hilford could see crowds of peo- ple moving up the narrow streets of 00, towards home.
Hilford moved on, and another glance over his shoulder showed him that Black-Gape was following
n
him again. His hands seemed to be si^aling somethin?. Was Hilford being ordered to halt? Other Black- Gapes were closing in on the mar- ket place, questioning the citizens, questioning the peddlers, scowling suspiciously at everyone. Hilford made his way towards the far side of the market place, along the har- bor, where the Black-Capes seemed fewer.
A Kammian directly ahead of him staggered suddenly, spun around, and clutched his arm, pain mingling with astonishment in his face. A dull red began to obliter- ate the gay colors of his shirt sleeve, and a brightly plumed dart pro- truded from his arm.
With reflexes long trained to alertness, Hilford was running be- fore his mind had completely grasped what was happening. A man’s purple hat fell to the ground in front of him, a dart embedded in it. Hilford ran at a crouch to make himself a smaller target, and his mind thundered angrily, “The dogs! Shoot in a crowded market place with women and children about!”
Darts were whizzing past from several directions when he reached the last line of peddlers’ carts. The peddlers gaped, and frantically dove for cover. A dart caught m Hilford’s cape as he slipped be- tween two carts. He hurdled a low stone wall, and found himself on the narrow quay, barren except for an occasional, weather-worn stor- age shack. It was a dead end, a natural trap. There was no hiding place.
Hilford did not hesitate. He
ducked into the sheltering shadow of a storage shack, crossed the quay in three leaping strides, dove to the deck of a ship, and crept quickly behind the stubby cabin.
He plucked the dart from his sleeve and tossed it overboard. From the lining of his cape he pro- duced a green seaman’s hat. The peddler’s hat was quickly concealed in the cape. He had lost the sea- weed somewhere along the way, but he still clutched the pastry. He set- tled himself on a bench in the stem of the ship, a piece of pastry in each hand, and munched calmly as he watched the choppy waves come rippling across the bay towards him.
The ship was evidently a fishing boat, and its stench was overpow- ering. The silence was nerve- wracking. When they came — ^and he was certain they would come — there would be no warning foot- step, no shouted inquiry. Should he face the shore, and answer ques- tions from a distance? He gambled on boldness — ^boldness, and confi- dent innocence, and indignation.
He was leaning back with one foot on the low wooden railing, completely relaxed, when rough hands seized him and jerked him erect. Hilford reacted instantane- ously, with a rage what w^ not feigned. He whirled and charged into Black-Cape, shoving him back. Then, apparently recognizing the costume for the first time, he halted and stood his ground, glowering.
“Where is the peddler?”
Hilford leered insultingly, and spoke as well as he could with the pastry clutched in his hands. “A sea-going peddler?”
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
12
Black-Cape controlled his anger with difficulty. “Have you seen a peddler?”
“Over there,” Hilford said, ges- turing towards the market place, “I saw a thousand. Here there arc none.”
Black-Gape spun around and strode towards the tiny cabin. He was out again an instant later, hurrying away without another glance at Hilford. Hilford returned to his bench, leaned back restfully, and munched on the pastry. He was hungry.
For two hours Black-Capes prowled the quay. Hilford stole un- easy glances at them. What had gone wrong? He looked like a Kam- mian, as far as he knew he acted like a Kammian, and yet — one glance, and the Black-Cape had been after him. It boded no good for his mission.
He muttered a fervent prayer of thanks for Zorrel. The extra hat had been Zorrel’s idea. The figurine of the Kammian Holy Bird that Hilford wore around his neck was also Zorrel’s idea. Concealed in its gaping beak was a miniature stun- gun. Clearly Zorrel was a bright young agent who could take care of himself. And he knew Kamm.
Black-Gapes were still standing watchfully at intervals along the quay when Hilford left the ship. He did not want to risk explain- ing his presence to a returning sea- man, and he wanted to reassure Zorrel of his safety. If the young agent thought Hilford had been t^en, he might proceed according to some plan of his own, and they
SILENCE IS DEADLY
would become separated.
Hilford avoided the Black-Capes, exchanged the traditional crossed- thumb greeting with a passing sea- man, and turned into the market place through a break in the stone wall. He moved through the first row of peddlers’ carts, glanced about quickly, and whirled to in- terest himself in an innocuous pile of ornamental wooden daggers.
There were more Black-Capes than civilians in the market place, and thirty feet from Hilford they swarmed about Zorrers cart, while Zorrel himself was being led pro- testingly away. Stealing sidewise glances, Hilford saw the Black- Gapes kick the ox into position, and get the cart started after Zorrel. With them, concealed in the cart, went the transmitter that was Hil- ford’s only means of communica- tion with the Space Intelligence Base on Kamm’s largest moon.
He turned his back on the plead- ing peddler, and walked towards the quay. Ten hours after his ar- rival he was alone and helpless on this most weird of all weird worlds. Staying alive was a secondary mat- ter. He had a mission, and he scarcely knew how to begin. He sat down on the edge of the quay, not twenty feet from a stony-faced Black-Cape, dangled his feet over the water, and searched his mind for a plan of action.
The FEDERATION’S prob- lem on Kanun was a simple one — it was trapped in its own ethics. No world had ever been co- erced into joining the Federation,
13
or even into trading with it. When the first Federation ships landed on Kamm, they were greeted coldly and invited to leave. They left promptly.
The Federation continued to send periodic missions, and even- tually established tenuous trade re- lationships. After a hundred and seventy-five years, the relationships were still tenuous. The Federation landed one trading ship each month, with a small assortment of simple luxury goods for the wealthy and the noble. The Federation re- ceived in return an assortment of hand-manufactured claptrap that was promptly jettisoned in space. The gesture of friendship was con- sidered worth the expense.
In the meantime, the Federation pushed well beyond Kamm, and eventually ran headlong into the expanding Haarvian Empire. Sud- denly it found itself facing a pow- erful enemy, and menaced from within its boundaries by a strategi- cally located hostile and independ- ent world. If the Haarvian Empire formed an alliance with Kamm, the results could be acutely embar- rassing— perhaps even disastrous.
Kamm was a primitive world, militarily weak, and the obvious so- lution was a fast, ruthless conquest. But the very structure of the Fed- eration rested upon an abhorrence of force. Time might have resolved the dilemma, but now the Federa- tion had no time.
Six months before Kamm had committed an act of deliberate, brutal violence. A Federation trad- ing commission, making a routine courtesy call upon the most power-
ful Kammian nobleman, had failed to return to its ship. The following morning the members of the com- mission were found in the streets of 00 — gruesomely murdered.
“Unfortunate,” the Duke Two Fingers had said. “The^ bandits will ...”
But the Federation disregarded the bandits. The murdered men were not robbed, and their deaths could only have been caused by an advanced type of weapon complete- ly unknown to the Federation. The five members of the commission had died simultaneously, and from the same cause — a severe cranial hemorrhage, with profuse bleeding from the nose, mouth and ears. There was no sign of external in- jury. A painstaking pathological examination ruled out poison or bacteria. And the use of an un- known weapon pointed directly at the Haarvian Empire.
The Federation established a base on the largest Kammian moon, for Space Intelligence and the 654th Fleet. A detector screen was set up around the planet, and the fleet began to make an alarming catch of Haarvian reconnaissance ships. Space Intelligence had al- ways kept a few agents on Kamm, for training and study purposes. These were ordered into the Flat Province, and they promptly disap- peared. Space Intelligence sent in more agents, and lost them.
Kamm’s single continent was di- vided into twelve provinces, and in theory the twelve rulers were equals. In fact, one duke complete- ly dominated the others through his control of a planet-wide police
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
14
force. His power evidently derived from the religion of Kamm, since he held the title, Keeper of the Bird, and the pwlice — or soldiers — of the Bird swore fealty not to the man, but to the title.
The Keeper of the Bird was chosen, Space Intelligence believed, in some kind of lottery. He held that honor for a period roughly five years long, determined by the com- plicated interaction of Kamm’s three moons, and at the end of that time, at a place and time shrouded in secrecy, the dukes met to choose a new Keeper of the Bird.
The constant shifting of the focal p>oint of p>ower had kept peace on Kamm for centuries, and preserved the independence of the twelve provinces. In all of Kamm’s re- corded history no duke had ever served two consecutive terms as Keeper of the Bird — until the Duke Two Fingers had received his first fifteen years before. He was now finishing his third consecutive term, and the opinion advanced by Space Intelligence was a mere phrasing of the obvious. If the Keeper of the Bird was actually chosen by lot, the Duke Two Fingers had a system.
Of the twelve dukes, only the Duke Two Fingers was openly hos- tile to the Federation. It was he who was suspected of dealing with the Haarvian Empire. It was in his Flat Province that the trade com- missioners had been murdered and the best agents Space Intelligence could supply were inexplicably dis- appearing. And as Keeper of the Bird he could dominate the other dukes, and force them to oppose the Federation.
This was the basis for the orders that Space Intelligence handed to Bran Hilford. Find out when and where the dukes meet to choose their next Keeper of the Bird. Find out how the choice is made. If pos- sible, see that the choice does not fall to the Duke Two Fingers for a fourth consecutive time. Above all else, track down the secret weapon that the Haarvian Empire has given to Kamm.
“It’s the weapon that bothers us,” scholarly-looking Admiral Lantz had told Hilford. There were deep furrows of worry in his face. “Kamm couldn’t trouble us with its own resources. We could seal it off, and let the diplomats work things out. But we don’t dare wait. Haarn may have given that weap>on to Kamm just to see if we have a defence against it. If we don’t come up with a solution — quickly — ^we’ll have to attack Kamm.”
“That could be disastrous,” Hil- ford said.
“The government would prob- ably fall,” the admiral admitted. “And it would label the Federation as a militant aggressor, which is something we’ve avoided for cen- turies. But we have no choice. That weapon must work on an electronic wave principle, and its range might be measured in light years. It could wipe out the entire population of a planet. It could kill every man in an entire fleet before our ships could get within striking distance. We simply do not dare let the Haarvians see that we fear that weapon. We know the next Keeper of the Bird will be chosen soon. I’m giving you just thirty days. If you
SILENCE IS DEADLY
15
can’t supply us with the answers we want in that time, we’ll have to risk an attack, and hope that sur- prise will outweigh the advantage of that weapon.”
“I’ll do my best,” Hilford said.
“You know about the way our agents have been disappearing?”
“Yes,” Hilford said. “I know about that.”
The admiral nodded, and said solenmly, in a tone of voice that clearly implied that he never ex- pected to see Hilford again, “Good luck.”
Hilford sat watching the waves ripple across the harbor, and won- dered what had gone wrong. In the market place, the Black-Gape had taken one glance at him and recognized him as an alien. He was certain of that. But then — on the fishing boat he had been taken for a Kammian seaman. Certainly changing his hat hadn’t made the difference.
And Zorrel — Zorrel had had two years of experience in the rural areas of Kamm, and he was a bright young agent. And he had been snapped up like a novice on his first day in 00.
Looking up suddenly, Hilford saw a ship approaching, clumsily tacking across the broad bay to- wards the quay. He watched it idly, thinking to pick up a few seafaring points, and then lost interest. When he looked again the ship was hover- ing fifteen feet from the quay, and its captain stood atop the low cabin gesturing at him wildly.
“Look away, you sniveling dirt digger! On your lazy feet, you de-
16
praved son of a sway-backed ox! Look away!”
Startled, Hilford struggled to his feet. A deck hand swung deftly, and a thick rope shot at Hilford. He ducked out of the way, stum- bled, and fell on his back on the muddy cobblestones. Momentarily stunned, he lay there with the heavy rope across his chest. Two passing seamen seized the rope and hauled lustily. They were joined by others, and the ship was slowly drawn towards the quay.
Hilford got to his feet, shook his head confusedly, and started un- certainly to walk away. The ship’s captain whirled about, took a long leap from the top of the cabin to the quay, seized Hilford’s shoulders, and spun him around. He towered over Hilford, a huge, brawny, red- faced man, and his hands shook with anger as he flashed them un- der Hilford’s nose.
“Dirt digger! Sniveling dirt dig- ger! When does a seaman refuse to look away? Don’t think I won’t re- port this. I’ll have you back digging before your ship sails.” He gave Hil- ford a long, hard look. “I’ve never seen you before. You’re too old to be an apprentice. Who are you, anyway? Let’s see your credentials.”
Hilford tried to be indignant, and managed it badly. “Who do you think you are?”
“Who do I think I am? Why, you sniveling dirt digger. I’ll show you . . .”
His hands clamped vice-like on Hilford’s throat. Seamen were gathering around them, and Hil- ford’s bleary eyes saw a multitude of Black-Capes coming on the run.
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
The hands relaxed suddenly. The captain backed away and stood with his hands silent, looking al- most respectful. A hand gripped Hilford’s arm firmly, turned him around, and led him along the quay. He glanced at the man be- side him, expecting to see the omi- nous black cape, and saw instead a flash of color and the high- peaked, green hat of a sea captain. Ahead of them, two Black-Capes halted, and respectfully kept their distance.
Hilford meekly allowed himself to be led to the far end of the quay, aboard a large ship, and into the cabin. The captain barred the door, pointed at a chair, and seated him- self across the table. He poured a sparkling liquid into two glasses, and shoved one at Hilford.
His hands spoke bluntly. “I am Captain Fist. Your name?”
He was a slim, almost fragile- looking man, small for a Kammian, but Hilford sensed the hardness his slight frame concealed, and re- spected him. His bronze face was calm and confident, his dark eyes alert and penetrating. It W2is, Hil- ford thought, an honest face. This captain was intelligent, rather than cunning. He would outmaneuver a man, but he would not deceive him. He was obviously someone of im- portance, and he had saved Hil- ford, there on the quay — but why? Hilford raised his glass, to stall for time.
The captain’s fingers moved slowly. ‘T understand that your real name would have no meaning on Kamm. But surely the Federation gave you a Kammian name. You
SILENCE IS DEADLY
are from the Federation, aren’t you?”
Hilford choked, sputtered into his glass, and dropp^ it. It shat- tered, and the liquor collected in a shimmering puddle on the table top. Captain Fist nonchalantly pro- duced a rag, cleaned up the mess, and sat back to look inquiringly at Hilford.
Hilford made his comment a weak question. “Federation?”
The captain smiled. “My last trip to 00. That will be sixty days ago — sixty-five. The Mother Moon was full.” He paused to fill another glass for Hilford. “One night I found a man on the beach. He wore a peddler’s hat, and there were five darts in his body. He was dead.”
“Describe him,” Hilford said.
“He was a small man, middle- aged. His hair was reddish, like that of many people of the Round Province. He looked like a native of Kamm. His hands had six fin- gers. But when we examined his body, seeking to identify him, we found his feet had only five toes.”
Hilford nodded thoughtfully. Six fingers, six toes. Naturally. Space Intelligence had been careless there, which wasn’t normal. But then — the Black-Gapes didn’t have X-ray vision. It wasn’t his toes that had given him away.
“Was the man your friend?” the captain asked.
Hilford made a quick decision that was no decision at all. He had to trust this man. “No,” he an- swered. “But I knew of him.”
The captain gestured his under- standing. “The following night, the
17
Black-Capes were chasing another man, outside of 00, along the shore. They trapped him on the beach, and he was wounded, but he ran into the water and swam out to sea. I went with two of my men in a small boat, and we found him — alive. I took 1dm to the home of the wife I have in 00, and I found that he, too, had six fingers on each hand, but only five toes on each foot. He trusted me, and from him I learned of the Federation.”
“The Federation,” Hilford said, “has been in contact with Kamm for nearly two hundred years. There has been a trading ship each month . . .”
“I learned of the Federation from the peddler I plucked from the sea. The great dukes do not honor the people of Kamm with dangerous knowledge. The League has long attempted to learn about the ships from the sky — without success, until I found the peddler.”
“What happened to the ped- dler?”
“I left him in 00 with my wife. He ignored my advice and went to the market place. He never re- turned.”
“The Federation has sent many such men to the Flat Province in the last six months. All have disap- peared.”
“Of course,” the captain said.
Hilford did not understand his matter-of-fact attitude. “They have been good men — ^men as accus- tomed to live on strange worlds as you are accustomed to travel the sea. They have been carefully trained in the language and ways of Kamm. And still they disap-
18
peared. Why?”
“I guessed who you were,” the captain said, “because you wore the seaman’s hat and did not know the ways of seamen. Once you were inside this cabin I was certain. If you were to walk over to the mar- ket place, the first Black-Cape you passed would arrest you.”
“Why?”
The captain poured another drink for himself, and downed it quickly. He looked at Hilford in amusement, but his hands moved almost apologetically. “By your smell,” he said.
Hilford sank back, and struggled to control his amazement. Kamm, the silent planet. Kamm, where the natives had lost their hearing, and gained in its place super-sensitive senses of sight and smell. Some of the manifestations were obvious — the astonishing use of color, this captain thinking nothing of put- ting to sea in the dark to look for a solitary swimmer, even — if he hadn’t been such a dunce as to overlook it — the incredible number of peddlers in the market place who dealt in perfumes.
Suddenly he understood the mir- acle of his escape. Not even the Kammian nose could cope with the odors that blended along the quay — fresh and decaying fish, a variety of imported foodstuffs, pun- gent stacks of drying seaweed. On the fishing boat, the Black-Cape’s sense of smell had been completely frustrated, and he was reduced to simply looking for a peddler.
And the sudden disappearance of the other Intelligence Agents — once
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
they invaded the market place of 00, it would only be a matter of time before the Black-Gapes no- ticed the distinctive odor of the alien. Perhaps it was already fa- miliar to them, from the men of the trading missions. And once they understood, they needed only to stroll about, sniffing deeply. The agents, with their clumsy olfactory equipment, could have no inkling of how they were betraying them- selves. No wonder Space Intelli- gence had been losing agents!
‘T know,” the captain signaled, “that the Federation wants nothing that would not be good for the peo- ple of Kamm. I pledge you the full support of the League.”
“The League?”
“The Seamen’s League, of which I am also captain.”
“I’ll need your assistance,” Hil- ford said.
The clasped hands, right to left and left to right, bending their wrists until their forearms touched.
“Now,” the captain said, “I’ll take you home. You’ll carry a bas- ket of overripe fish, just in case. You must not be careless, like the peddler I plucked from the sea.”
HE CAPTAIN did not live in 00 proper, but in a small sea- men’s village a short distance to the east of the metropolis, along the shore. Hilford carried a basket of fish, which were fully as overripe as the captain had promised. The captain’s hands spoke busily as they walked, and Hilford had to strain to follow them in the gather- ing darkness.
SILENCE IS DEADLY
“The League,” the captain said, “is independent of any duke. The Duke Two Fingers likes us no bet- ter than we like him. Years ago, when he was first chosen Keeper of the Bird, he tried to rule the League. The League defied him, and he arrested all the seamen who were in 00.” He grinned, his white teeth flashing disdainfully. “It lasted for sixty days. No more ships came to the Flat Province. The duke placed his Black-Gapes on ships of the League, and told them to be seamen. Most of them were lost in the first storm. In the end, the duke paid the League for the ships and for the affront to the seamen. Since then he has not mo- lested the League, and though we do not bow down to him, we avoid giving him cause for anger.”
Hilford nodded.
“You must not move your head,” the captain said, looking at him sharply. “You move your hand — so.
Hilford repeated the gesture, and the captain grinned approvingly. “We will make a good Kammian of you. The Duke Two Fingers himself will not be able to tell you from a native of the Flat Province — as long as you carry the fish!”
Hilford did not find it amusing. He knew there were times when a basket of fish could be a definite handicap to a Space Intelligence Agent.
In the captain’s modest but brightly-painted house Hilford joined the captain and his wife for their evening meal. Kammian eti- quette wisely prohibited conversa- tion when the hands had better
19
things to do, and they ate without exchanging a word. As soon as they had finished, the wife cleared the table and discreetly vanished. The captain sat staring at the table, ab- sently chewing on a piece of sea- weed. Hilford was suddenly seized by weariness. He had been under constant activity and nervous strain for eighteen hours. He shook his head resolutely, and straightened up. He’d had a blazing piece of good fortune, but he had actually accomplished nothing.
The captain looked up quickly, and echo^ his thought. “There is much to be done. Some officers of the League are coming — those that are in port. They will be here soon.”
“Their help will be welcome,” Hilford said.
The captain busied himself with the arrangements. He brought in chairs until the small room was crowded. On the arm of each chair he hung an oil lamp and lit it. The light was focused through a slot to fall across the hands of the person occupying the chair — a Kammian device to aid night conversation.
Hilford’s mind began to shape plans. The cart was the most im- portant thing. He must find the cart, and repossess the transmitter. He could then let Base know he was still operating, and ask for a post- ponement of the deadline. With the help of the League, he should even- tually be successful — if only he could have time . . .
He awakened suddenly, catching himself as his body pitched for- ward. The room was full of men, all sitting calmly at attention, all waiting patiently for him to awake.
He experienced a momentary con- sternation at having fallen asleep. He turned apologetically to his host, and the captain began his introduction as if nothing had hap- pened.
“Our guest is of the men who send the ships from the sky. They call themselves the Federation. We discussed this at our last meeting. This man is here to help the peo- ple of Kamm. The League will give him every assistance within its power, and all of us will guard his presence here with our lives.”
All eyes were on Hilford. “There was a peddler,” he said slowly, “who was taken in the market place today by the Black-Capes. He was my assistant. I must know what has been done with him. I must know what has been done with his cart.”
“We will learn what we can,” the captain replied.
“The cart is important. I must have the cart.”
The captain glanced about the room, and his hands formed a Kammian name. A young man at the rear stood up and extinguished his lamp. “I understand,” he sig- naled, and turned and went out.
“I saw a man in the duke’s car- riage today,” Hilford said. “He was not of this planet.”
“The man with the holes in his head,” the captain said. “Evil meets with evil in the duke’s carriage.”
“Do you know where he comes from?”
The circle of hands remained motionless. “Two such men have been seen with the duke,” the cap- tain said finally. “We know no more than that.”
20
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
“Six months ago,” Hilford said, “men of the Federation called on the Duke Two Fingers. Their call was a gesture of friendship, which is made each year. The next morn- ing the men were found in the streets of 00, murdered.”
“It is the duke’s way of doing things,” the captain said simply.
“Anything I could learn of this crime would be of value.”
He followed the captain’s gaze as it swept quickly about the room. No hand moved. The captain’s fingers shaped another name, and a sea- man extinguished his lamp and went out. Attention returned to Hilford.
“There are matters which I must attend to in person,” Hilford said. “What can be done to make me smell like a Kammian? I cannot carry fish everywhere I go.” There was no reply. “Would it be fitting for me to use a perfume that would hide the odor?”
Smiles flickered on the seamen’s faces. “A male does not use per- fume,” the captain said bluntly. “And yet — there is a perfume mak- er in 00. He is a good man. He might make you a perfume that would cancel your odor, and no more. Perhaps tomorrow . .
“Why not tonight?”
“It would be dangerous for the perfume maker. We seamen can frequent the drinking places at night and wander about undis- turbed. That is expected of seamen. But the citizens of 00 must be in their homes two hours after sun- down. It can mean death if the Black-Gapes find them on the streets.”
“Then let your perfume maker be a seaman,” Hilford said.
Puzzled faces stared at Hilford, and there was the confused move- ment of shifting feet and fingered protests. “I do not understand,” the captain said. “He is a perfume maker . . .”
Hilford fumbled in the lining of his cape, and donned his scarlet peddler’s hat. “Look — I’m a ped- dler.”
The captain’s face wore a star- tled expression. “Of course!” He dispatched a young seaman, with an extra seaman’s hat concealed under his cape.
“When is the next Keeper of the Bird to be chosen?” Hilford asked.
“Only the dukes know.”
“Where is the choice made?”
“Somewhere in the mountains, it is said. Only the dukes know. And perhaps the most trusted Black- Capes.”
“Do all the dukes attend?”
“Yes. The southern dukes jour- ney by sea to 00, and the northern dukes journey by sea to the Tri- angular Province. Where they meet, only the dukes know.”
Hilford did a quick review of his geography. The mountain range ran along the center of Kamm’s long, narrow continent. So the dukes would travel the northern or southern seas to the center of the continent and journey inland, to meet in the mountains. It would not be difficult for them to keep their meeting place a secret. Kam- mian commerce moved by sea. Roads were few in the interior, and probably few people ever ventured to cross the mountains.
SILENCE IS DEADLY
21
Hilford felt encouraged. This was more than Space Intelligence had learned in the previous two centuries. “Here is our objective,” he said. “The liberation of the peo- ple of Kamm must proceed slowly. We wish to avoid violence. The first step must be to secure the appoint- ment of another duke as Keeper of the
The captain gestured sadly. “That is impossible.”
“We of the Federation often find ourselves called upon to do the impossible.”
“That is impossible,” the captain said again. “The duke’s younger brother is High Priest of the Bird.” Hilford’s response was unneces- sarily and futilely vocal. “Ah!” he exclaimed. So that was the basis for the duke’s system in the lottery.
One seaman leaned forward. It was the brawny, red-faced captain who had nearly throttled Hilford that afternoon. “I sail tomorrow for the Round Province,” he said. “When I return, I bring the Duke One Thumb to 00.”
“He comes to take part in the choice of a new Keeper of the Birdr
“The Duke One Thumb does not visit the Flat Province out of love for its duke.”
“Is the Duke One Thumb a friend of the League?”
“Not openly. But seamen feel welcome in the Round Province.” “Would it be possible for me to talk with the Duke One Thumb?” “It might be arranged.”
The door swung open, and the perfume maker entered — a tall, gangling man who looked ludicrous
in a seaman’s hat much too large for him. He carried a heavy box, and the situation had evidently been explained to him. He looked about the room, sniffed, made his way directly to Hilford, sniffed again, and grimaced distastefully. His long face had an almost com- ically mournful expression.
He set down the box, and his delicate fingers moved concisely, gracefully. He would have, Hil- ford thought, a beautiful Kammian accent. “It may be difficult,” he said, “but I shall work at it.” “Work in the next room,” the captain said.
The door swung open and a seaman charged in, fingers moving frantically. “Black-Capes coming!” The captain pushed Hilford’s chair aside, knelt with a knife in his hand, and pried up a small square of flooring. He signaled to Hilford. “Quickly!”
Hilford lowered himself down. The space under the floor was shallow, and he stood with his head and shoulders above the floor of the room. “The perfume maker?” he asked.
“Quickly!”
He ducked under, and the trap closed over him. The darkness was absolute — not so much as a crack of light entered around the trap. He edged forward until his fingers touched damp earth. He found himself in a scoop>ed-out area per- haps three strides square. In one corner there was a box, and he sat down. The waiting began.
On a normal planet he would have heard the police making a noisy entry, heard their bullying
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
22
questions, and had some idea of how things were going. On Kamm he heard nothing — and when the trap opened, he would not know if it meant safety or capture.
But he was a veteran intelligence agent, and he did not waste energy in worrying about a situation that he could not control. He relaxed in the darkness, leaned back against the damp wall of his hiding place, and dozed off.
Light was falling dimly through the opened trap when he awoke, and the captain was shaking him. They climbed out, closed the trap, and took their seats. The seamen faced him calmly, as if nothing had happened.
“All that trouble for nothing?” Hilford asked.
Captain Fist looked gloomy. “I do not like this. Not for years have there been so many Black-Gapes in our village. They inquired after the seaman I brought home with me.” “That means . . .”
“It means a seaman, or a mem- ber of his family, is in the pay of the Black-Capes. We must proceed cautiously. By tomorrow they will have compared reports with the Black-Capes that were on the quay today. They will want to know what I did with the seaman who behaved so awkwardly.”
“What did you tell them about the seaman you brought home?” “I brought no seaman home,” the captain said. “I brought the perfume maker. Of course in the dusk some fool may have mistaken the color of his hat.” He smiled slyly. “The perfume maker is con- ferring with the League about some
SILENCE IS DEADLY
perfume which he wishes to ex- port. He will be my guest until morning. And early tomorrow the awkward seaman will ship on a boat bound for the Round Province. He will be seen going aboard by a Black-Gape who will recognize him — ^we shall see to that. And I have already sent out a small boat to meet him down the coast and bring him back after dark tomorrow. We should hear no more of the mat- ter.”
“It is well arranged,” Hilford said.
The perfume maker came in from the next room, and dabbed Hilford in unlikely places with a pungent, colorless liquid. The as- sembled seamen sniffed carefully, and Captain Fist delivered the verdict.
“No,” he said. “You have blended one evil scent with another. It hides nothing.” He turned quick- ly to Hilford. “Apologies, but . . .”
“Quite all right,” Hilford said.
The perfume maker turned away sadly. “It is difficult,” his graceful fingers signaled. “But I shall work at it.”
Hilford briefed the seamen care- fully on the Federation point-of- view, and found them vaguely dis- appointed. They had expected, per- haps, armed assistance against the Duke Two Fingers, and they had to resign themselves to a more subtle kind of revolution. Four times the perfume maker tiptoed in to test a new concoction, and registered four more failures. The meeting lasted until dawn, and Hilford was given a hearty breakfast and sent on his way.
23
He walked to the quay closely surrounded by a dozen seamen. Several carried baskets that were awesomely tainted with the odor of the previous day’s fish. The brawny captain left Hilford stand- ing on board his ship in full view of the passers-by, and walked away. He returned a few minutes later, in jocular conversation with a Black- Cape. The Black-Cape went his way, laughing heartily.
‘T asked him,” the captain told Hilford, “if he remembered the spectacle you made of yourself yes- terday. He did. I told him that you men from the north are all igno- ramuses, but by the time I got you back from the Round Province you’d either be dead, or a seaman. It won’t surprise me if you jump ship before the return trip.” He landed a hearty slap on Hilford’s back and nearly sent him over the railing.
Well down the coast and out of sight of land, Hilford transferred to a small fishing boat. The boat re- turned after dark, and landed him near the seamen’s village. Captain Fist met him on the beach, and led him to a nearby shack.
“The Black-Capes have been to the village twice today,” he said. “I don’t like it. I’m afraid this place is not safe for you. I’ve arranged for you to stay in 00.”
“I place full trust in your judg- ment,” Hilford said.
“The second time they came they discovered the trap in the floor. Nothing there, of course, but it definitely means that I have a traitor in the League. I went pCT- sonally to complain to the Captain
of the Black-Capes. He gave me profound apologies. These are un- settled times, he said, and the police take no action that is not neces- sary. I told him that if the seamen are molested further I’ll move League Headquarters to another province and keep the seamen out of 00 until the times are less unset- tled. They’re suspicious about some- thing, and they don’t know quite what it is.”
“Did you learn anything about my friend, the peddler?”
“Nothing. We continue to try. But I’m afraid you will not see him again. He has probably been taken away.”
“Away? Where?”
“To the mountains. No prisoners return from the mountains.”
“What happens to them?”
“The Duke Two Fingers is reviv- ing the old ways. No one knows for certain, but we guess. In the past, a bloodthirsty duke used animals. The Duke Two Fingers uses men.” Hilford was staggered. Human sacrifice?
Captain Fist’s eyes blazed. “I have revered the Holy Bird all my life, as a man of Kamm should. But holiness that demands the life of a man is not holiness. It is evil. Now — ^we go to 00.”
Hilford was installed in an inn, next door to his friend the perfume maker. His quarters were a secret room on the third — and top — floor. Its dimensions were seven feet by five feet, and he re- measured it a dozen times the first day. He entered, a panel closed be-
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
24
hind him, and he was both hidden and trapped.
Captain Fist dutifully visited him once each day, and twice he brought news. A witness had seen the duke’s Black-Capes dumping the bodies of the murdered trade commissioners from carts in the dingy alley where they were found the next morning. A group of pris- oners had been seen leaving for the mountains. Zorrel was probably among them — if he was not already dead.
The days passed. Once the Black-Capes raided the inn. They found nothing, but Hilford’s un- easiness was heightened, and the captain did not disguise his worry about the traitor in his organiza- tion.
“It is not one of my officers,” he said. “He suspects that I meet you here at the inn, but he does not know of the secret room. When I find him I shall feed him to the fish.”
The perfume maker regularly sent over new mixtures for Hilford to try. And each time a seaman would take one studious sniff and inform Hilford that he still smelled obnoxious.
The days passed, and on the fifth day in the inn Hilford decided that he could wait no longer. He brought up the subject of Zorrel’s cart. The captain had discovered nothing. There was no indication that the duke’s agents had disposed of it, so it was assumed that the duke had converted it to his own use.
“I must find that cart,” Hilford said. “It will take me two minutes to remove the hidden equipment,
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and I must have it.”
That evening there was a crowd- ed meeting in Hilford’s secret chamber, and an expedition was organized. The duke’s carts and wagons were parked in a meadow near his walled estate. There were two sentries who circled the area, keeping its perimeter constantly in view. The sentries were more a matter of form than necessity. No resident of 00 would steal from the Duke Two Fingers.
“I will deal wiffi the sentries,” Hilford said. “I need only to get within fifteen paces of them.”
“No Black-Cape sentry would allow a seaman to get that close,” the captain said. “You’d have three darts in you before you got within twenty paces.”
“I won’t be a seaman,” Hilford said, a bit jauntily. “I’ll be another Black-Gape.”
The seamen gazed at him in open-mouthed admiration. Clearly, these men from the Federation were brilliant fellows.
Hilford felt that the captain’s plans were overly elaborate, but his protests were silenced. The ex- pedition set out the following night, as soon as it was dark, wearing black capes and hats borrowed from the duke’s official tailor. Other seamen were stationed at intervals from the wood near the duke’s estate to the market place on the other side of 00. And in the market place sea- men were ready to start a roaring fire if a diversion was necessary. A fire in 00 was a serious matter, and would take priority over any cart theft.
25
Hilford moved out of the shadows of the wood and strode towards the sentry, giving him the stiff-armed Black-Cape salute. At ten paces he triggered a focused beam from his stun-gun, and the sentry folded up into a paralyzed heap. He was dragged into the shadows, and a black-caped seaman took his place. The other sentry was quickly dealt with. Black-caped sea- men stationed themselves at inter- vals among the carts, and one accompanied Hilford — not to assist him, but to keep watch and let him know if trouble came. There were no shouts of warning on Kamm.
Hilford turned his attention to the carts, and was startled by the number of them — dozens, lined up in precise rows. Did the Duke Two Fingers have some passion for col- lecting ox carts? But no — these would be intended as military trans- port. The duke was planning the conquest of Kamm!
He moved quickly from cart to cart. Some he could dismiss with a glance, but many were the same type as Zorrel’s cart, and he had to probe the interior for the concealed panel that hid the transmitter.
He moved as quickly as possible, and his escort lurked behind him and signaled, “Haste!” every time Hilford looked at him. They reached the end of the first long row and started on the second, and suddenly the escort gripped Hil- ford’s arm. They ran together, dodging among the carts, and in the soft light of Kamm’s three moons Hilford saw waves of Black- Capes racing down on them from
26
all directions. As he ran, he cursed himself for allowing such elaborate preparations. Too many seamen had known of the raid, and the League’s traitor had struck again.
Hilford wielded his stun-gun at medium power, and bowled over ranks of Black-Capes. They darted through the break in the encircling lines, and raced for the woods. In the dim light Hilford could not tell friend from foe, but evidently the seaman could. He directed Hil- ford’s attention to shadows leaping towards them, and turned him away from others. Hilford sprayed at long range with his stun-gun. He could do no more than momentari- ly daze the pursuers, but seconds were what they needed.
The black-caped seamen passed them, running for the woods, and Hilford held his ground to fight a delaying action. “Two missing,” his escort signaled. “Can’t wait.” Darts were flashing past them. Hil- ford pointed the stun-gun as he ran, and sprayed again at long range. A dart stabbed into his arm, and he scarcely felt it. In the direc- tion of 00 flames were leaping high into the air, and the pursuing Black-Capes seemed not to notice them. Hilford wondered if the diversion was coming too late.
They had just reached the edge of the trees when a dart struck Hilford squarely in the back. He stumbled, crashed headlong into a tree, and lost consciousness.
He came to, and opened his eyes to see a Black-Cape bending over him. He closed his eyes quickly, and weakly raised his hand to his
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
throat. They had not taken the Holy Bird. He still had his stun-gun, which meant he had a chance to escape. But he felt horribly weak. He would need strength.
He opened his eyes again, and saw the Black-Gape grinning at him. It was his seaman escort. He lay on the narrow cot in his cramped secret room.
“We carried you,” the seaman signaled. “The Black-Capes left us for the fire.”
Hilford’s fingers moved feebly. “Your captain is a wise man.”
“The captain has been arrested,” the seaman said. “So have the other officers — all the Black-Gapes could find. You’ve been unconscious for six hours.”
“What happens now?”
“We have given the duke one day to release the seamen. If he does not, we will leave 00, and no more ships will come to the Flat Province.”
“The duke will not care, now,” Hilford said. “He has traitors among the seamen, and they will train men to sail the duke’s ships. The duke will need his own ships to conquer Kamm, because he knows the men of the League would not help him.”
“Men do not lesu'n in a day to sail the seas of Kamm.”
“The duke has plenty of time. Or he thinks he has, if he is chosen again to be the Keeper of the Bird/’
The seaman looked worried. Hil- ford was frantic with worry. It would be morning, now, and he had just twenty- two days before the Federation would strike. He did not
dare tell that to the seamen. If a traitor took word of the attack to the duke, the Haarns would know, and what was planned as a quick conquest would turn into bloody, all-out war.
He gave way to his weakness, and slept.
When he awoke Captain Fist was there, with a doctor. There was grim sympathy in the captain’s face. “It grieved me to hear of your wounds,” he said. “It was noble of you to sacrifice yourself for my seamen, but you are the important one. You should have saved yourself.”
“It grieved me to hear of your imprisonment,” Hilford said. “Es- pecially so since I was responsible.”
“You were not responsible. The duke has never loved the League, and he is quick to blame us for any of his troubles.”
“Have you found your traitor?”
The captain’s fingers formed words that were strange to Hilford — rousing, seaman profanity. “I shall find him. And he will be lost at sea on his next voyage.”
“Perhaps there is more than one,” Hilford suggested.
“It is possible. The Duke Two Fingers has a large purse. But the duke is not yet ready to fight the League. Later, perhaps, but not now.”
“We risked much for no gain,” Hilford said. “I heard that two men were lost.”
“They were captured. They were wearing black capes, so there was nothing to identify them as sea- men. But they were also released. That I do not understand.”
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27
“The duke is crafty. He would like to know what we were seeking among his carts. He hopes to find out, so he turned everyone loose, expecting us to try again. But we won’t try again. It would be use- less.”
“You are not strong, now,” the captain said. “You have lost blood, and you need rest. When you have recovered, we will make new plans.”
“Yes,” Hilford said. “When I have recovered.” He saw his dead- line marching relentlessly towards him, one day at each stride. Now there were twenty-one.
Hilford spent three days in the grip of a blazing fever, while the worried Kammian doctor minis- tered to him clumsily. The captain made his daily visits. The perfume maker came with new mixtures, and Hilford indifferently sub- mitted to his dabbings. More fail- ures. He slept and woke, and some- times someone was there — the captain, or the perfume maker, or the doctor, or another seaman. Sometimes he was alone. It did not seem to matter.
On the fourth day he awoke and found a stranger in the room — a short, rotund man whose flaming red hair was offset by the black of his flowing robes. He was watch- ing Hilford curiously. “I am the Duke One Thumb,” he said. Hil- ford stirred weakly, and struggled to sit up. “No,” the duke’s chubby fingers told him. “You need rest. I have a great admiration for a man who braves the imjjossible.”
“Nothing is impossible,” Hilford said.
28
The duke bowed respectfully. “The captain has informed me of your wish to see me. How may I serve you?”
“I would like to make you the next Keeper of the Bird,” Hilford said, and knew immediately that it sounded ridiculous, coming from a sick man, from a helpless fugitive.
The duke answered matter-of- factly, “Impossible.”
“Do not all dukes have an equal chance?”
The duke hesitated. “Yes. All dukes have an equal chance. The Duke Two Fingers and his brother, who is the High Priest of the Bird, have made certain changes in the way the choice is made, but the changes are not new. The same procedures were in use at the time of my grandfather’s grandfather. So all dukes should have an equal chance, but the Duke Two Fingers will be chosen.”
“How is the choice made?”
“I cannot tell you. Only the dukes and the Priests of the Bird are privileged to know.”
“Do you approve of the giving of lives of men to the Bird?”
The duke paled. “You know that? But . . .” He was thought- ful. “I know there have been rumors. No, I do not approve. It is a terrible thing. A sickening thing. But I cannot change it.”
“You would do things differently if you were Keeper of the Bird?” “There are many things I would do differently.”
“You won’t tell me how the choice is made? For Kamm?”
“I have sworn my oath. I cannot tell.”
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
“Did you know that the Duke Two Fingers plans to rule all of Kamm?”
“I have guessed.”
“But you still cannot tell me how the choice is made?”
The duke said nothing, but he met Hilford’s gaze firmly. He was not, Hilford thought, the irresolute weakling he had expected. He would be a good man. Firm, but honest. The Federation could deal with such a man.
“You know that I am of the Federation?” he asked.
“Yes. The Federation has al- ways been just in its dealings with Kamm.”
“You know that the Duke Two Fingers has guests from the sky who are not of the Federation?” He grimaced, and answered dis- gustedly, “Yes. They are evil men. Fit companions for the Duke Two Fingers.”
“Have they given the duke weapons?”
“No. They have refused to give the duke weapons.” He smiled at Hilford’s surprise. “I have my own sources of information,” he said.
“Did you know that the men of the Federation’s trade commission were murdered by some strange and powerful weapon?”
“I heard of the deaths, I do not understand them, but I do not think the Duke Two Fingers has such a weapon.”
“Perhaps his evil guests used it.” “That is possible. Yes, it must have happened that way.”
Hilford felt that he had reached an impasse. The duke was the one man he was likely to meet who
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could tell him everything he needed to know. And the duke had sworn an oath, and he was a man who would honor his oath.
“The chosen duke is called Keeper of the Bird” Hilford said suddenly. “Why?”
The duke looked at him curious- ly. “Because he is the Keeper of the Bird,”
“A real Bird? A live Bird?” “Of course.”
‘T did not know such Birds actually existed.”
“Many of them exist. One is chosen at the same time that the duke is chosen, and entrusted to his care for the term of his office.” “Entrusted to his care,” Hilford mused. “He is responsible for it, then. Supposing the duke is negli- gent?”
The Duke One Thumb smiled. “He will not be negligent. It is always a young and healthy Bird, and the Keeper of the Bird lavishes tender care upon it. He would guard it with his life. If it were to die, he would lose his office im- mediately, and he could never hold the office again.”
“I understand. And the Keeper of the Bird rules all the Black- Gapes on Kamm.”
“Yes. But he can send them into another province only when a duke requests them. And the other dukes can have no armed men outside of their personal guard, unless they request them of the Keeper of the Bird, My personal guard is large, and there are few Black-Gapes in the Round Province.”
A neat arrangement for an am- bitious Keeper of the Bird, Hilford
29
thought. By controlling the Black- Capes, he alone, of all the dukes, could raise a standing army. When his army was large enough, he could take over all of Kamm.
But he would have to have a powerful army, because the other eleven dukes would unite against him if he attacked one. With Kamm’s scanty resources it would take time to plan a full-scale con- quest. It would take more than a five-year term as Keeper of the Bird.
A lottery which shifted the power from duke to duke at regular in- tervals had been a sound system. But once a duke rigged the lottery and got himself chosen for several consecutive terms, the entire bal- ance of power on the planet was up- set. The Duke Two Fingers was finishing his third term. A fourth would enable him to conquer Kamm.
“When is the next Keeper of the Bird to be chosen?” Hilford asked.
“I cannot tell you that.”
“It must be soon, or you would not be here.”
“That much you know. I cannot tell you more.”
Hilford struggled weakly, and pushed himself into a sitting posi- tion. “I will be present when the choice is made. I will make you the next Keeper of the Bird.^^
The duke clasped Hilford’s hands, and bent forward until their forearms touched. “You are a brave man. Unfortunately, it is impossible. It would mean your death, and it would be a terrible death.” He slid open the panel,
30
and turned again before he stepped through. “Your life would be given to the Birds.”
HE PERFUME maker had been respectfully waiting for the duke to leave. He stepped through the panel, solemn as usual, and l^ded Hilford a small bottle. “Mixture number thirty-one,” he said sadly.
“Fm afraid your task is even more impossible than mine,” Hil- ford said.
“I shall succeed. I have had worse tasks. The Duke Two Fingers himself once gave me a worse task, and I accomplished it.”
“What need did the duke have for perfume?”
“He wanted a scent that the Birds would not like.”
“The Holy Birds?” Hilford straightened up attentively.
“Yes. They are most repulsive creatures. I worked for weeks. I would drench a rodent with scent and put him in their cage, and they would eat him. My two hundred and sixty-third mixture was a success. The rodent was per- fectly safe with them — ^until the scent wore off. Then they tore him to pieces. It was not pleasant, seeing those Birds every day. I did not sleep well for weeks after- wards.”
“You saw them at the duke’s palace?”
“Yes.”
“I thought the Keeper of the Bird kept only one bird.”
“These were brought by the duke’s brother, who is a Priest of
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
the Bird. I think the priests wanted something to protect themselves from the Birds, and I do not blame them. Anyway, that was years ago — long before the Duke Two Fingers became Keeper of the Bird. Perhaps he uses it himself, now, with a Bird in his palace. I mixed him a new batch only a month ago.”
“You are the first person I’ve met, outside of the Duke One Thumb, who has ever seen a live Bird.”
“The Duke Two Fingers pledged me to secrecy. You are the first I have ever told.”
“I shall respect your confidence,” Hilford said. “And I shall give your mixture thirty-one the usual critical test.”
The perfume maker smiled wist- fully. “I shall commence mixture thii^-two, just in case.”
Captain Fist came in the eve- ning, and sat for a long time with his fingers silent, looking weary and troubled. “I must leave you,” he said finally. “I have rarely stayed in 00 for so long, and the Black-Capes are suspicious. Now they follow me everywhere. So I must make a short voyage. I’ll be back in ten days, and less if the winds favor me. You will be well looked after — I promise that.”
“Thank you,” Hilford said. He had never felt more helpless. He was too weak to leave his hiding place, and if he did the first Black- Cape that happened along would arrest him. And he could no longer fully trust the League.
“I will see you as soon as I return,” the captain said. He arose
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to go, stepped towards the panel, and suddenly whirled about and stared incredulously. Twice he raised his hands to speak, and dropped them.
“What’s the matter?” Hilford asked anxiously.
“I just noticed. I no longer smell you!”
“Mixture thirty-one,” Hilford said gleefully. “Tell the perfume maker to send up a large bottle.”
After the captain had gone, he made his plans. He would have to get out of 00. Whatever else he might learn in the capital city of the Duke Two Fingers, he could not finish his assignment there. And if he stayed longer, the League’s traitor might learn of his hiding place.
He left only a note of thanks for the seamen, and carrying the large bottle of scent that the jubilant per- fume maker had delivered, he slipped out of the inn into the dark streets of 00.
He wore his seaman’s hat until he was clear of the town. Once a Black-Cape stopped him, and as Hilford gripped his stun-gun the policeman noticed his hat and passed him by with a nod. Outside of 00 Hilford changed to the peddler’s hat, and struck out along the grassy ruts of the cart path that led northwards towards the moun- tains.
He tired quickly, but he dogged- ly kept a firm pace and pushed himself onwards. The sun rose, and slowly added its brisk warmth to his feverish discomfort. Soon each staggering stride became a
31
matter of forced concentration.
He pushed his weakened body forward until mid-moming, and he collapsed in a scant patch of shade on a hilltop, with the build- ings of 00 still visible on the south- ern horizon. He could go no farther.
To the north, he saw a small village of scattered, colorful houses, a peddler with ox and cart plodding up the hill towards him — and, in the hazy distance, the beckoning, snow-covered mountains. He strug- gled to his feet, and stopped the peddler. In five minutes of oblique negotiations he purchased ox, cart and merchandise at a price that roughly equaled their sound value times ten. In the village he dis- posed of half the merchandise to a wily old shopkeeper at a ruinous loss, and stocked up on food. Once clear of the village, he climbed into the half-empty cart and fash- ioned a cramped resting place for himself.
A swat across its hindquarters started the ox. It lurched dumbly forward along the path it had followed less than an hour before, having no apparent interest either in where it was going or where it had been. Hilford watched anxious- ly to see if it would follow the path 'without supervision. When it did, he lay down and fought the agony that stabbed his wounds as the cart rocked and bumped over the ruts. Finally his exhaustion triumphed, and he slept.
It was dark when he awoke. The northward track lay ahead of him in the dim moonlight, and the ox was plodding along indifferently.
He got out and staggered beside it for a time, attempting to exercise his cramped muscles, but the effort proved too much for him. He led the ox off the main track and into the shelter of some trees to rest.
He did not know when the dukes would leave 00, or how fast they could travel. His only hope lay in reaching the mountains ahead of them. If he could do that, he might have a chance.
And the attack would come in sixteen days.
The following day he suffered a relapse. He lay in his cart, burning with fever, while the ox moved patiently onwards. Day blurred in- to night and became day again, and he lost track of time. Perhaps the ox rested when it grew tired, or perhaps not. Perhaps his cart met travelers along the way, or perhaps not. He did not know.
He was able, finally, to get out of the cart and walk beside the ox. He knew that five days had passed, and perhaps it was six or seven. He walked, and rested, and his strength began to return to him. The next morning, from the side of a mountain slope, he looked down on the scraggly forested, roll- ing plain, and saw a long, bright- ly colored caravan creeping towards him — animals, carts, attendants and the royal personages of the six southern dukes. He moved on, and his ox panted and strained as it hauled the cart up a steep moun- tain pass.
Kamm’s belt of conical moun- tains appeared to be of volcanic origin, and the peaks on the south- ern fringe were arranged confusedly
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
32
— now humped closely upon one another, now widely spaced. The rough cart path went its winding way among the lofty trees, passing between two mountains with scarce- ly a ripple in elevation, then point- ing its way steeply upwards a thousand feet for the next pass.
Hilford pushed forward, dis- daining food and sleep, until ex- haustion had overcome him again, and the skin of the toiling, perspir- ing ox hung in flabby folds. On the morning of his third day in the mountains he came upon a broad, wooded valley. He lashed the ox furiously, forcing it into a stumbling run. He must cross the valley before the dukes’ party came out of the pass. He must not be seen.
By noon he had crossed the valley and gained the refuge of the tree-covered slope on the opposite side. He rested, and the ox collapsed in its harness. He could safely go no farther, he thought. Now he must wait until the dukes had passed him, and follow them.
The long caravan descended into the valley in mid-afternoon, crossed it, and set up camp on the north side. As darkness came on, Hilford looked down on the bright fires with satisfaction. Everything had gone according to plan. In the morning, he would let them pass him, and then follow. But he must not oversleep.
He awoke with the first light of dawn in his face, and hurried to look down on the sprawling camp. There was little sign of activity. He returned to his cart, ate, and relaxed while the ox grazed con-
SILENCE IS DEADLY
tentedly on the forest bushes. At noon, cooking fires dotted the camp. The attendants finished their meal, and retired to their tents. Oxen were tethered out to pasture. Carts were parked neatly around the perimeter of the camp. The dukes were evidently in no hurry.
Puzzled, Hilford turned away and walked to the top of the pass. He looked down into the valley to the north, and to his amazement he saw another camp site — the oxen, the carts, the colorful tents.
Understanding came suddenly, and crushed him. This was the camp of the northern dukes. Only the dukes could enter the Temple of the Bird, and they had left their retinues and gone on alone, and he had lost them. His exhaust- ing journey had been wasted.
But he still had a few days— five, perhaps — and the dukes would not undertake a long journey by them- selves. The Temple of the Bird should be within a day’s walk of the camps. There should be some kind of path or road leading to it. The Temple would need supplies.
A movement through the trees to his left startled him. He leaped to his feet, gripping his stun-gun, and saw that his ox had pulled loose and was wandering about seeking choice leaves to munch. With a grin, he turned and hurried away through the trees. He was a peddler, seeking his strayed ox.
He found the path just as dark- ness was falling, a meandering foot path that led up out of the valley. He quickly lost it in the darkness, but he knew its general
33
direction, which was up, and he kept moving. An hour later he saw a flash of light on the mountain slope, far above him.
But he found nothing — no im- posing Temple with brightly- painted facade, no buildings, no signs that humans had passed that way. He wandered on in the dark- ness, feeling the deep chill of the mountain air, feeling the weakness that he had been unable to shake off in his relentless struggle to reach the mountains.
A cloud choked ofT the last feeble glimmer of the smallest Kammian moon. He slowed his pace, and peered uncertainly ahead of him. Suddenly his foot found emptiness, and he struggled for balance, lost it, and tumbled downwards.
He landed on a metal framework ten feet below the surface, and found himself in a caged airshaft, about six feet in diameter. Before he could collect his confused senses pain stabbed at his arm, and he jerked away and stood in the center of the cage while the giant, hideous- ly colored Holy Birds of Kamm fluttered greedily about him. One swooped up from below and slashed at his ankle. The bars formed a perfect ladder, and he made a rush to climb out and was forced back by tearing talons and ripping beaks. He experienced a wave of dizziness, with a throb- bing, pounding sensation in his head. While he stood there in be- wilderment, he saw in the dim light far below a black-hooded Priest of the Bird staring up at him. The priest whirled suddenly, and ran.
IT WAS A small, barren room hewn out of rock. Three black- hooded priests filed in, paused to sniff Hilford carefully, and took their seats. He sniffed them in turn, and caught a powerful, pungent odor that seemed at the same time agreeable and repulsive. He found an element of humor in the situa- tion. He might have said, “We have something in common, gentle- men. We patronize the same per- fume maker.” But the grim-looking priests would not have appreciated the joke.
He stood before them, tottering weakly, blood flowing from his arm and ankle, and told his story. The elder priest leaned forward as he finished, and Hilford found the haughty nose and cruel features vaguely familiar. This would be the younger brother of the Duke Two Fingers.
He moved his fingers languidly, bored to have such a trifle brought to his attention. “A stray ox was found this evening,” he said. “Your story may be true. If so, that is unfortunate. You have had the high honor of seeing the Holy Birds of Kamm. You have entered the forbidden Temple. Your life is forfeited to the Birds.”
The two younger priests led Hil- ford away. They passed through a labyrinth of corridors, straight, curving, ascending, descending, branching off. They passed through a barred door, and another, and Hilford was shoved forward into a long room that was nothing more than a wide, barren corridor. Bars closed silently behind him.
At the far end were more bars.
34
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
and half a hundred men of Kamm stood about, or squatted, or stretched out on the damp rock floor. Sobs shook one man’s huge frame— the only evidence of his silent weeping. Hilford’s searching gaze photographed the faces, and suddenly found one that was fa- miliar. Zorrel!
The young agent walked towards him, grinning happily. They stood close together, so their fingers could have some privacy. “Now there are five of us,” Zorrel said.
“Three other agents here?”
“Such as they are. Their morale isn’t exactly good. They’ve been treated badly, and they’ve had the misfortune to see what happened to some other agents.” He stopped suddenly, and fingered Hilford’s blood-soaked sleeve.
“My introduction to the Birds,” Hilford told him.
“Then I don’t need to explain.”
“About the birds, no. About this layout, yes.”
“Gome,” Zorrel said. He led Hil- ford to the far end of the room, and they stood looking out through the bars upon an enormous, domed, circular arena. At intervals around the sides there were pairs of barred openings about the size of a large door — one at floor level, and one directly above it. In the center of the arena was a cage — just big enough, Hilford thought grimly, to hold a man.
“This is the lottery where the Keeper of the Bird is chosen, and other important matters are de- cided,” Zorrel said. “Each duke has his own royal box — the upper openings. There are twelve of them.
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When the great moment comes, the arena is filled with birds, and the victim is placed in the cage. The lower doors are opened, and the cage is hoisted up to the dome. All the victim has to do is get from the center of the arena over to one of the lower doors before the birds tear him to pieces. The first few don’t get very far, but eventually the birds have their hunger satis- fied, and they lose interest. The victims get farther and farther, and finally one makes it. And what- ever door he escapes through, that duke is the next Keeper of the Bird. Pleasant little game, isn’t it?”
Hilford shuddered. He’d had his share of experience with barbarism and violence and human sacrifice, but only with the most primitive civilizations. It had seemed natural, there. Here it was only gruesome.
“Generations ago, they stopped using humans and changed to ani- mals,” Zorrel went on. “But the Duke Two Fingers is reviving the old customs. It’s a nice thing for the victim that finally makes it. He receives high honors, and he might even marry a daughter of a duke, if one is available. For the ones that don’t make it, it isn’t so nice.”
“When is the lottery to take place?”
Zorrel laughed sardonically. “Any minute, now. We — ” his gesture swept the bare room “ — are the victims. Wonder if the Birds think old men are tougher eating than young men. You might stand a better chance than a young, tender morsel like me.”
Hilford stood looking thought- fully out at the arena.
35
“There’s no escape that way,” Zorrel said. “And you know what’s at the other end — two barred doors, and a couple of squads of priestly guards. Once the festivities start, they’re going to be more in- terested in watching the arena than us.” He patted his stun-gun. “That would be a good time to take over this place.”
“I’ve picked up a fair amount of information myself,” Hilford said. “I think I have most of the picture, now. The question is, what do we do with it?”
“The question is, how do we get out of here?”
“We’re intelligence agents,” Hil- ford said. “We have an assign- ment.”
“All right — I’m with you. Better not count too much on the others. And I’ll tell you one thing.” He patted the stun-gun again. “If they put me in that arena, the Birds are going to regret it. A full charge would kill a Bird.”
“That wouldn’t solve anything. It wouldn’t even get you out alive. The priests would tear you apart if the Birds didn’t. Your gun’s charge won’t last forever, and mine is pretty well gone now.”
“So what do we do?”
“I want to snoop around, and talk to our fellow victims.”
He moved back up the room, passed by one man who was gripj>ed in a coma of trembling fear, and stopped beside a small, wizened oldster who grinned at him cheer- fully.
“Don’t get discouraged,” he said to Hilford. “Maybe you’ll be lucky, like me.”
“Lucky in what way?”
“My number doesn’t come up. Been here four years, and — ^here I am. They don’t call my number. Food is good, quarters aren’t bad, and they don’t give you much work to do. It isn’t a bad life if you don’t mind being herded down here on Holy Days and the like.” Hilford jerked a thumb at the arena. “You enjoy what goes on there?”
“I don’t let it^bother me. Sure — I tell myself it might be me, in there. But it isn’t, and I’ll die of old age before they get to me.” “You’ve been here four years,” Hilford said. “How many lives have you seen given to the Birds?” “Don’t know. Couple of hundred, maybe. Of course, on Holy Days it’s only one. I never saw a Choice. They say they use a lot of us for a Choice.”
Hilford walked on. He found the three intelligence agents, talked with them briefly, and left them. They had been badly mistreated. Marks on their hands suggested torture. They had been starved, and they were almost too weak to walk. He’d have to get them out, of course, if he could. But he couldn’t count on them for assist- ance.
Suddenly a familiar odor caught his attention, bitter and pungent, vaguely irritating, vaguely pleasant. He turned towards it and saw a lean, bronze young man of unmis- takable physical hardness. He studied his face carefully. He had seen him somewhere — in a crowd, perhaps, where the face had been only one of many.
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
36
But only one group of Kammians achieved that physical condition. He was a seaman. And he was generously anointed with the scent of the Priests of the Bird.
“That’s a potent perfume you wear,” Hilford said.
The seaman glanced at him sullenly, and said nothing.
“The League will be pleased to know who their traitor is.”
The seaman started. He smiled slowly. “They were bound to get you, sooner or later. And the League will never learn from you.” “Give my regards to the Duke Two Fingers,” Hilford said.
He turned, and walked back to Zorrel. Odd, he thought, how sud- denly the inexplicable is unraveled. He knew who the League’s traitor was — or one of the traitors. And he knew how the Duke Two Fingers rigged the lottery.
He explained to Zorrel, who scoffed, at first, and then displayed a refined mastery of Kammian pro- fanity. “Then the whole thing is a farce,” he said. “They call some numbers to put on a good show for the other dukes, and then they send this fellow in. And the birds won’t touch him. And he walks through the Duke Two Fingers* door, and the show is over.”
“For another five years.”
“We can arrange an accident for this seaman. At least the lottery would be genuine.”
“Too many witnesses,” Hilford said. “And it wouldn’t help the situation. All the priests would have to do is douse another prisoner with scent, and show him where the Duke Two Fingers’ door is.”
SILENCE IS DEADLY
“So what do we do about it?”
“Nothing. I checked that door, and it can only be opened from the other side. There’s no way out of here. We’ll have to wait until they take us somewhere else.”
“What if they try to feed us to the Birds?”
“Let me know if you figure out something.”
They sat down along the wall, and waited. Hilford glanced again at the arena. There were caged air vents in the ceiling, but the one that had trapped him opened into a smaller room. Enormous natural caves, he decided, altered by gen- erations of priests to suit their purposes. The religion of Kamm would provide fascinating study material for some young Federation ethnologist — if he were lucky enough to survive to collect it.
A door opened, and the black- robed, black-hooded priests marched in. The prisoners were summarily lined up against the wall, and a young priest moved down the line painting red num- bers on their foreheads.
“The paint rubs off easily,” he said. “Any man found with a bare forehead will be given to the Birds immediately.”
Perspiration trickled down many foreheads, but Hilford noticed that no one brushed it away.
There was movement in the arena. A Bird dove hungrily at their barred door, and swooped up- wards. Momentary panic followed, as pale prisoners milled back away from the arena and the priests angrily sought to restore order. Four priests entered the
37
arena, and calmly walked towards the cage in the center. The air was suddenly filled with enormous, flapping wings as the birds de- scended voraciously, and then veered away. The priests pushed the cage towards the door where the victims were waiting. The Choice was about to be made.
The High Priest himself strode the length of the room with a ret- inue of priests trailing behind him. He stood for a moment looking out at the arena. Apparently satis- fied that all was in order, he turned, and a metal jar was passed to him. He shook it sideways, then upright, until a disc dropped out of a slot in the bottom. He looked down, signaled indifferently, “Thirty- seven,” and kicked it away. A young priest retrieved it, and number thirty-seven, a giant of a man, brushed Hilford’s arm as he top- pled to the floor in a dead faint.
Priests stripped off his clothing, the door swung back, and he was shoved into the cage. The priests slowly pushed it to the center of the arena, and left it. A signal, and the cage jerked upwards.
Those in the room watched with a compulsion born of horror. Grouching, number thirty-seven bolted for the side of the arena as soon as the cage was clear of him. The first Bird plummeted down- wards, raked his back, and sent him sprawling. He rolled onto his back, lashing out with arms and legs. Somehow he clutched a Bird by the wing, and there was a momentary stir of alarm among the priests.
But another Bird found his eyes, 38
and another his throat. Then the struggle was over and the feast began. The cage was lowered, and the priests, ignored by the Birds who fought over thirty-seven’s re- mains, returned the cage to the doorway.
The High Priest shook the jar again. “Number forty-two.”
The priests dragged him for- ward, and four years of luck ran out on the wizened little man who thought to die of old age. Fear paralyzed his legs, and the priests load to support his body while they stripped off his clothes. They rudely stuffed him into the cage.
When the cage went up, he slumped to a kneeling position, covering his face with his hands. For a terrible moment the Birds took no notice of him. Then one circled slowly, and landed on his back. Pain goaded him into a furious struggle, but he had waited too long. He never did regain his feet.
The High Priest raised his jar, and the bloody game continued. The fifth victim called was the bronze young seaman. He strode forward manfully, but once in the arena he acted the part of a terrified victim. He ducked and dodged, stumbled and fell, struggled to his feet lashing out at the Birds. But he remained untouched, and he worked his way to one side of the arena, and suddenly darted through an open door.
The door swung shut. All the lights in the royal boxes save one were extinguish^. The Duke Two Fingers was chosen Keeper of the Bird for another five years.
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
“The end of a mission,” Zorrel said.
Hilford shrugged. “Or the begin- ning of a mission.”
Tension in the room relaxed im- mediately. The High Priest strutted out, the prisoners wiped the num- bers from their foreheads, and the priests organized the group into a double column and marched it away. Hilford and Zorrel held back, and were last in line.
“Prisoners are kept ten in a room,” Zorrel said. “The rooms are a long way from the exit — at least from where I came in. These corridors wind all over the place. I’m not sure I could find my way out.”
Hilford glanced around. “We’ll have to be careful. Those darts they shoot can be painful.”
The procession moved on through the network of corridors. They took a last turn, and came to a row of barred doors. A priest counted off ten prisoners, slammed the door on them, and barred it.
“Look up ahead,” Hilford said. “The corridor branches off. Where does it go?”
“I don’t know.”
Hilford moved to conceal his fingers from the priests. “When our turn comes, we’ll make a dash for it. If we can get around the cor- ner, we’ll be safe from the darts, and we can knock them off a couple at a time as they come after us. We might be lucky.”
“I’ll be right beside you.”
The fourth group of ten was counted off, and there were six men left. A priest jerked the next door open, and stood blocking the
SILENCE IS DEADLY
corridor. When Hilford’s turn came, he leaped and struck once, and shoved the priest’s crumpled body aside as he raced for the fork in the corridor. He sensed Zorrel’s presence close behind him. They reached the fork and made the turn before the first darts flashed past. The startled priests had been slow to react.
They were in a short passageway that branched off in three direc- tions. An oil lamp overhead cast eerie reflections. They whirled and stood with stun-guns ready.
“Full power,” Hilford signaled. It wouldn’t do to have the men come to in a few minutes and de- scribe what had happened.
The first priests came charging around the turn. In a matter of seconds a dozen bodies lay on the corridor floor. They stripped two of the men, dragged their bodies into an empty room, and donned their black robes and hoods. They strolled calmly back the way they had come. No one questioned them, but it took them all of half an hour to find the exit.
They moved down the mountain path in the cold air of early dawn, ignoring the priests on sentry duty. As soon as they reached the protec- tion of the trees, Hilford stopped.
“Head straight west until you find the cart track that leads north through the mountains,” he said. “Follow the track to the top of the pass. My cart is hidden in the trees maybe fifty feet to the west. In the cart you’ll find a large bottle of perfume that smells like nothing you’ve ever smelled before. Take a quick bath in it, and it’ll make you
39
smell like a man of Kamm.” Zorrel started. “So that’s it!” “That is it. Once you are smell- ing properly, get down into the camp in the south valley, and snoop around among the carts to see if the Duke Two Fingers acci- dentally used ours for his trip north. I don’t think anyone will question what a priest does. If you find the transmitter, tell Headquarters to call the whole thing off. We’ll fill them in later.”
“What are you going to do?” “Finish our assignment. And you’d better trade stun-guns with me. Mine is low.”
Zorrel slipped the cord over his head, and handed the hand-carved Holy Bird to Hilford. “If you’re going back in there, you’ll ne^ it.” He took Hilford’s gun, and disap- peared into the trees.
Hilford chose his position care- fully. He had to be invisible, and yet have a clear field of vision himself. He searched along the path, and finally settled down in a cluster of bushes ten feet from the trail. He did not know how long he would have to wait. He was thirsty and hungry, and weary from lack of sleep. He hoped he could hold out.
An hour went by, and two hours. He fought to keep awake in the dreary silence. Suddenly he saw a flash of movement. A file of black- robed priests came into view. The Duke Two Fingers walked haughti- ly across his field of vision. Hilford knelt and trained his stun-gun on the path. The procession was mov- ing rapidly, and he would only have
a fraction of a second.
More priests passed, and sudden- ly Hilford saw the thing he was waiting for. A cage, towering gro- tesquely on the mountain path. It was all of eight feet tall, and black cloth was draped inside the bars, with a foot of air sp>ace left at top and bottom. Two black-robed priests strained under its weight at each comer.
As Hilford took in these details his finger closed instinctively on the trigger. A focused beam at full power, from a distance of ten feet, would kill or permanently disable a man. It would certainly kill a bird.
And as the cage passed from his view there was a convulsive flutter, and a Holy Bird of Kamm tum- bled to the floor of the cage.
Consternation followed. The priests set down the cage, opened it, and tenderly lifted out the Bird. Terror and uncertainty gripped their faces. The Duke Two Fingers came charging back up the trail. Other black-robed dukes came for- ward, pushing their way through the excited crowd of priests. Hil- ford sensed that a furious argument was under way, but the fluttering fingers were concealed from him. The High Priest strode anxiously down the trail, and disappeared into the crowd.
Hilford held his position, and waited. The procession finally turned, assumed a semblance of order, and marched back up the mountain towards the Temple of the Bird.
Hilford followed at a safe dis- tance, and accosted one of the sen-
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
40
tries at the entrance to the Temple. “What was all the excitement about?”
The sentry wore a dazed expres- sion. “The Bird is dead! The Keeper of the Bird is deposed!”
Hilford confidently reentered the Temple, and moved through the corridors at as fast a pace as was consistent with the dignity of his black robes. He found the corridor where the prisoners were confined, and opened the fifth door.
There were only four men in the room, since Hilford and Zorrel had escaped. They sprang to their feet and stood humbly at attention.
“Which one of you would like to escape?” Hilford demanded.
They stared at him dumbly.
He picked the youngest one, pulled the bright cape from his shoulders, and clothed him in the stolen black garments. “Bar the door as you go out,” he said. “If you wander around long enough, you should find the exit. Good luck!”
The amazed man darted out, and they saw him shove the bar into place.
One of the other prisoners sud- denly recognized Hilford. “You killed the priests!” he said, his fin- gers trembling with excitement.
Hilford dropped onto a straw- padded bunk. “Aren’t you grate- ful?” he asked. He was thoroughly exhausted. He twisted uncomfort- ably, and drifted off to sleep.
He was awakened abruptly, and herded into the corridor with the other prisoners. The two
SILENCE IS DEADLY
lines were formed, and they marched back along the winding passageways, to the room that opened into the arena. The scene was much the same as it had been before, but with a significant differ- ence. The royal box of the Duke Two Fingers was dark. The door under his box remained closed. He had allowed a Holy Bii'd to die, and he was disqualified.
The bewildered prisoners were backed against the wall for num- bering. The High Priest entered stormily, and seized the metal jar. At that moment a prisoner from Hilford’s room stepped forward, and pointed at Hilford.
“Him — he’s the one that killed the Holy Priests!”
The High Priest whirled on Hil- ford, stepped close, sniffed doubt- fully.
“No,” he signaled.
The prisoner gestured excitedly. “He escaped, and then he came back wearing a black robe.”
The High Priest stared, coldly at Hilford. “Take off his shoes,” he said finally. The High Priest studied his five-toed feet incredulously. “Take him first,” he said. The in- formant grinned broadly, and froze in terror a moment later when the High Priest gave him his reward by adding, “And take him second.” Hilford was quickly stripped. Hands clutched at his carving of the Holy Bird, and he clasp>ed it to him protectingly. The High Priest stepped forward, saw what it was, and sneered. “Let him have it!” Hilford was shoved into the cage, and priests began pushing it into the arena.
41
Birds flapped excitedly far above, and several dove on the priests and veered off. Hilford waited calmly in the center of the arena while the priests hurried away. He set his stun-gun at low intensity, with the broadest beam the small gun could supply. It might be fatal to kill a Bird, he knew; and it would cer- tainly be fatal if he did not keep them away. If his first setting was not the right one, he might not have a chance to adjust it.
The cage jerked upwards.
He stood in the center of the arena, pivoting slowly, with both hands extended above his head. One hand grasped the stun-gun. His posture was that of one invok- ing the gods. His audience was about to witness a miracle, and it would be best for Hilford if some- how it got the idea that it was a Holy Miracle.
The first Bird plummeted down- wards, struck the gun’s beam, and fluttered comically away. Another came close enough to receive a vague shock, and circled warily. Then there was a sudden rush, and the air above him was filled with beating wings.
He continued to pivot, and a sud- den wave of dizziness came over him. His head throbbed painfully. He staggered, nearly fell, and be- gan to edge towards the side of the arena. A Bird came at him from the rear at arm level, underneath the beam. Hilford’s blurring vision caught it just in time. He tilted the gun, and the Bird dropped to the floor of the arena, shuddered, and waddled away with its wings trail- ing helplessly. Hilford resumed his
wavering pivot, and saw it flap into the air again.
He was twenty feet from the wall of the arena, close enough to see the face of a duke who looked down on him hopefully. But it was not the duke he wanted. Another bird came at him at arm level, but circled back before he could aim the gun. The Birds were becoming cautious, and their rushes broke off farther and farther above him. But his head was a pounding, tear- ing agony, and he sensed that he was losing consciousness. He stag- gered on, arms still extended over his head, passing one duke’s box after another searching for a fa- miliar face.
Suddenly he saw a flash of red hair. He summoned his last, failing strength, dashed for the open door, and collapsed as a priest swung it shut behind him.
He was pulled to his feet, draped in black robes, and led up a flight of stone steps. The Duke C5ne Thumb stepped forward to greet him, stared at his face in open- mouthed astonishment.
“I have kept my promise,” Hil- ford told him, and collapsed again.
The duke helped him onto a cushioned dais, and knelt beside him. His hands trembled with ex- citement. “It is a miracle!”
Hilford sank back weakly. “We must be cautious,” he said. “I do not trust the Duke Two Fingers.”
“There’s nothing he can do now, I must reward you. All my daugh- ters are married, but perhaps . .
“Later,” Hilford said. “The Duke Two Fingers . . .”
Suddenly solemn, the Duke One
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
42
Thumb got to his feet. “We will go to the High Priest. He must give me my credentials and my Bird.”
Priests made up a respectful es- cort. They entered the sumptuous quarters of the High Priest, where the walls were draped with black cloth and the furniture was plushly upholstered in black. The High Priest was there, with a dozen lesser priests. The Duke Two Fingers faced him arguing fiercely.
“The Bird was sickly.”
“The Bird was young, and in good health.”
“Surely I cannot be guilty of neg- ligence if it dies before it reaches 00 — before it is even out of the mountains!”
Hilford understood the turmoil taking place behind the frosty countenance of the High Priest. He might circumvent custom by sub- terfuge, by drenching a prisoner with a repellent scent, but he could not do it openly without tearing asunder the entire religious struc- ture and undermining his own po- sition. The priests knew the High Priest was the brother of the Duke Two Fingers, and they were watch- ing alertly. Would he dare to dis- regard the venerable tradition they were all sworn to uphold?
“The Bird was given into your position,” he said. “The law speaks plainly.”
The Duke Two Fingers suddenly noticed the Duke One Thumb and his party, and he whirled angrily. “Yom' choice was not in order. It was made by an alien. Aliens are not permitted in the Temple.” He turned on the High Priest. “The
SILENCE IS DEADLY
law speaks plainly on that. You have brought aliens into the Tem- ple.”
“I have offered their lives to the Birds, as is proper. The Birds alone have decided the outcome.”
Hilford’s glance swept over the black-hooded men standing by the Duke Two Fingers, and he praised space for his photographic mem- ory. One face he had seen, his first day on Kamm, in the duke’s car- riage. And that face had had ears.
He turned to the Duke One Thumb. “The Duke Two Fingers has brought aliens into the Tem- ple,” he said. “The priest on his right — remove his hood and you will see the signs.”
The little duke moved decisively. He strode forward, jerked the hood from the man’s head, and stood staring. Ears!
No one moved. The High Priest’s face was icily calm. “All present will remove their hoods,” he said.
Glittering weapons flashed sud- denly, but a wave of priests over- whelmed the men. Hoods were ripped from the heads of the Duke Two Fingers’ escort. Two more pairs of ears were revealed to the startled priests.
The High Priest turned slowly, and faced his brother. The long struggle for power between the two men blazed hatefully in the looks they exchanged. Each man had at- tempted to use the other, and each had failed. And Hilford guessed that when the Duke Two Fingers had commenced his dealings with the men of Haarn, he had not taken his brother into his confidence.
Now the brother had his revenge.
43
He stepped back, and his fingers slowly spelled out his verdict. “The law speaks plainly. The life of an outsider in the Temple belongs to the Birds. And be he duke or com- moner, the life of one who willfully brings an outsider into the Tem- ple . .
The little Duke One Thumb raised both hands. “Only the dukes pass judgment on the life of a duke.”
The High Priest lost his calm- ness. He rushed at the Duke One Thmnb, his fingers screaming his rage. “In the Temple of the Bird I am the master!”
“The law of Kamm does not stop at the door of the Temple,” the lit- tle duke said.
Hilford watched tensely. The High Priest poured out threats and invective. The Duke One Thumb tossed his red head scornfully, and kept his cahn gaze on the High Priest until he turned away un- easily. “When will the dukes sit in judgment?” he asked.
“Immediately,” the little duke said.
The High Priest gestured at the Duke Two Fingers. “Take him away.”
TTxe duke sprang back, and ap- pealed to the priests. “I am the Keeper of the Bird, Your oath is sworn to me. I command you . . .”
The priests swarmed over him, and led him away. The High Priest pointed scornfully at the men of Haam. “Give them to the Birds.”
Somehow Hilford felt no desire to see the Duke Two Fingers come to judgment. He was not certain that he would be admitted, so he
followed along after the men of Haarn. They were thrust into the arena without ceremony. They were not even stripped. For a few min- utes they milled about confusedly, looking vainly at the closed doors that ringed the arena. As the first Birds descended upon them one slipped out of his robes and whipped them through the air. The action startled the Birds, and they circled warily.
They quickly regained their con- fidence, and as they circled closer strange things happened to the men of Haarn. They collapsed and groveled on the bare rock floor. Their hands tore futilely at the smooth surface. Blood spurted from their ears, and their arms and 1^ flailed weakly and were still. Hfl- ford wearily turned away from the sickening ripping of talons. His as- signment was completed. He had identified the KLammian secret weapon.
At the Federation Base on L Kanun’s largest moon, Hil- ford was finishing his report. “Fol- lowing the execution of the Duke Two Fingers, his nephew was in- stalled as ruler of the Flat Prov- ince. He is an intelligent and con- scientious young man, and he should make an excellent duke. No more agents of Haam have been discovered, and we doubt that there are more. Men with ears would find it difficult to hide on Kamm. The new Keeper of the Bird is an honest and courageous man with an instinct for leadership. He has the complete support of the Sea-
44
LLOYD BIGGLE, JR.
men’s League, and he will welcome advisors from the Federation. The next five years should see a dra- matic change of direction in the history of Kamm.”
Hilford seated himself, and in- dulged in a fit of coughing. The unaccustomed vocal exercise had sadly irritated his throat. He leaned back and studied the faces before him — the military brass, the diplo- matic brass, the intelligence brass.
The diplomatic brass spoke first, and Hilford fumbled for a com- municator, turned up the volume, and listened.
“I move that we commend Spe- cial Agent Hilford for an excellent piece of work.”
An agitated Admiral Lantz leaped to his feet, his scholarly face flushed with excitement. “The se- cret weapon! You didn’t mention the secret weapon!”
“That calls for a special report,” Hilford said. “Zorrel?”
The young agent hurried out, and returned with some scientific apparatus which the distinguished audience eyed suspiciously.
“I’ve recorded some bird talk from the Kammian Holy Bird,” Hilford said. “Would you like to hear it?”
The muttered assent did not reach him through the communi- cator. He asked again, and Admiral Lantz bellowed, “Yes!”
“I’ll let you hear it for exactly five seconds. And please note — this is an oscillograph. It gives us a pic- ture of sound waves. You can listen to this sound and watch it at the same time.”
He stood with a stop watch in SILENCE IS DEADLY
his hand, and Zorrel turned off the machine when he signaled.
“I didn’t hear a thing,” the ad- miral called. “And that line never moved. There’s nothing there but silence.”
“Ah! Remember — Kamm is the silent planet. This is silent bird talk.”
The admiral got to his feet with the air of one about to stomp out, and was hauled back into place by another admiral. Ernst Wilkes called to Hilford, “Go on, please.” The Sector Chief of Intelligence looked amused.
“I promise you, gentlemen,” Hil- ford said politely, “that this is the deadliest silence in the universe. We’ll wait five minutes, and then I’ll give you step two.”
While they waited, Zorrel ad- justed the oscillograph. He darted to the door and led in a giant griff hound, conveniently borrowed from a sentry.
“In the first test,” Hilford said, “the oscillograph was set to register sounds within the normal range of human hearing — roughly up to 25,000 cycles. Now I’ll move the upper limit as far as it will go. Watch again, for five seconds.”
The line on the oscillograph sud- denly twisted convulsively. At the same time Hilford was flung to the floor as the dog dashed against him in a frantic effort to escape. iZorrel leaped to switch off the machine, and the dog crept under a table and howled mournfully.
“You see, gentlemen,” Hilford said, “how deadly that silence is. The dog can hear it — or part of it. You can’t hear a thing, but all the
45
same you are being bombarded with a peculiarly oscillating sound wave of a murderous intensity. With that machine at normal vol- ume, every person in this room would be dead within a minute — except Zorrel and I, because we have no ears at the moment. And we’d be acutely uncomfortable.
“The Holy Bird is a legendary monster on Kamm, for good rea- son. Folklore claims that the birds once ruled the planet, and it may be right. Somewhere back in the dim mists of antiquity those birds began to develop a peculiar method of catching their prey, and as their power developed it had a tremen- dous impact on the entire course of evolution on Kamm. Their prey had to evolve also, or become ex- tinct. That was the course of Kam- mian evolution. The birds devel- oped more power, their prey de- veloped more immunity. Finally the birds became all-powerful, and their prey became completely im- mune. Man adapted to the birds by losing his hearing, and eventually, his ears. And when his hearing was gone and he became the ruling species on the planet, he continued to fear the birds. He captured them, and worshipped them.” There was a long silence, inter- rupted by Wilkes. “What happened to the trade commissioners?”
“We can only guess. By accident or on purpose, the Ehike Two Fingers exposed them to his private
bird. He was probably shocked him- self, at what happened, and be- cause he feared the Federation he had the bodies dumped into the street. And now, if no one wants to hear it again, 2^rrel will erase the bird talk. We don’t want an inno- cent technician committing suicide by accident. When does my leave start?”
“Immediately,” Wilkes said. “Two months.”
“You promised me six months.” “I can’t spare you for six months. Where do you want to go? Some nice quiet resort?”
“I want my ears back,” Hilford said. “And then I’m going to spend ail six months in the aft cabin of a space tug, listening to the engines.” A diplomat waved his arm anx- iously. “What about the future of Kanm?”
Hilford was suddenly serious. “The Kammians don’t realize it, but normal men could never in- vade Kamm. One Holy Bird, turned loose in an enemy camp at night, could wipe out an army. Even if an invader attempted to kill all the birds, he could never be certain that there wasn’t one left, and one would be enough. Aliens will live on Kamm only with the gracious permission of the natives. The future of Kamm is definitely for Kammians. Or, to put it an- other way — he grinned broadly “ — that planet is for the birds!”
END
The scientific humanist doesn’t pretend that every experience of life can be forced into a test tube or that every interest can be weighed on scales. He knows that something in everything always escapes the technique of measurement. — Max Otto
46
what Is Your Science I. Q.?
THIS QUIZ is guaranteed to test your knowledge of daily
science as well as facts you often read about in science fiction.
Count 5 for each correct answer. You should score 65. Over 85
makes you a whiz. Answers on page 119.
1. What have viruses and ricksettias in common?
2. A perfect number is one which is the sum of all the numbers which divide it except itself. Name the first two.
3. What part of a plant acts as a “photobattery”?
4. Which of the body’s waste products is reused by the body?
5. What everyday substance can be used to replace quartz as a light polarizing part of a microscope?
6. What have tsunamis and seiching in common?
7. What three kinds of nuclear reactions are now known?
8. What element is produced by the decaying of potassium 40?
9. How many first magnitude stars can be seen from the north- ern hemisphere?
10. In walking at ordinary speed, how fast does the moving foot pass the stationary one?
1 1 . Name six of the eight trace elements which play a vital role in the health of the human body.
12. What current in the South Atlantic is similar to the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic?
13. Energy for photosynthesis in plants is obtained chiefly from which jjortions of the visible spectrum?
14. Kinetin is the name of the chemical in the human body that
causes .
15. If you reduced the volume of a sound by adding more sound, what phenomenon of sound would you be using?
16. What are the four kinds of stresses?
17. According to biology, which chromosomes produce males in a fertilized egg?
18. What have the temperatures -273.1 G and -459.6 F in com- mon?
19. How many times could a ray of light circle the equator in one second?
20. In reference to the theory of prime numbers, what is the peculiarity of the number two?
47
T he hunters were necessary y of
course — but there was the
other side of the picture too.
The first of the morons, as they were popularly called, though they were totally lacking in intelligence, were horn in 1971, eleven years after the Mutual Retaliation phase of the big war-that-no-one-started, the majority of them near the big, bombed-out cities. By 1973, with the aid of the electron microscope, the scientists had learned all about it. Parents and offspring were steri-
GAME
Illustrated by Ed Emsh
lized and the offspring placed in state institutions. By 1983 there were too many of them. A new solution to the impossible situation was tried, large isolated areas in the south where the climate was mild were made into preserves for them. In the wilds the morons handed into small herds that showed no in- clination to roam. By 1985 no more of the morons were being horn.
thanks to the sterilization of all parents carrying the contaminated gene. It was thought the problem was permanently solved, through perfect cooperation between sci- ence, the government, and the pub- lic. If the contamination had not been weeded out of the race one fourth of every generation for all the future would have been with- out any intelligence whatever.
PRESERVE
But here and there had been natural births, unattended by a doc- tor; and parental love coupled with fear of being sterilized and thus denied further parenthood had brought into existence a few thou- sand unsterilized morons, hidden away in attic rooms or in base- ments. And to these parents the Preserves offered the logical solu- tion too — drive into the nearest Preserve and turn the child loose with its kind. Thus, a new genera- tion came into being in the scat- tered herds, and by 2010 A.D, a new problem had come into being. Thanks to impurities in the moron strain or to wandering renegades — or both — a few normally intelligent offspring were appearing in the herds. There was danger of these recontaminating the race, if they left the herds, learned to speak, wear clothes . . ,
In 2010 the government at- tempted a mass sterilization of the herds but the herds were too wild by now, and the males too danger- ous, so the sterilization program was abandoned and a new plan substituted. The government Hunt- ers came into being, small patrol groups whose job was to pick off the renegades and any members of the herds that were intelligent.
66TJI.HI.HI!” Big One shouted,
JLl and heaved erect with the front end of It.
“Hi-hi-hi,” Fat One and the dozen others echoed more mildly, lifting wherever they could get a hold on It.
It was lifted and borne forward 50
in a half crouching trot.
“Hi-hi hi-hi-hihihi,” Elf chanted, running and skipping alongside tljie panting men and their massive burden.
It was carried forward through the lush grass for perhaps fifty feet.
“Ah-ah-ah,” Big One sighed loudly, slowly letting the front end of It down until it dug into the soft black soil.
“Ahhh,” Fat One and the others sighed, letting go and standing up, stretching aching back muscles, rubbing cramped hands.
“Ah-ah-ah-^-ah-ah,” Elf sang, running around and in between the resting men. He came too close to Big One and was sent sprawling by a quick, good humored push.
Everyone laughed. Big One laughing the loudest. Then Big One lifted Elf to his feet and patted him on the back affectionately, a broad grin forming a toothy gap at the top of his bushy black beard.
Elf answered the grin with one of his own, and at that moment his ever present yearning to grow up to be the biggest and the strongest like Big One flowed through him with new strength.
Abruptly Big One leaped to the front end of It, shouting “Hi-hi- HI!”
“Hi-hi-hi,” the others echoed, scrambling to their places. Once again It was borne forward for fifty feet — and again and again, across the broad meadowland.
A vast matting of blackberry brambles came into view off to one side. Big One veered his course to- ward it. The going was uphill now, so the forward surges shortened to
ROG PHILLIPS
forty feet, then thirty. By the time they reached the blackberries they were wet and glossy with sweat.
It was a healthy patch, loaded with large ripe berries. The men ate hungrily at first, then more leisurely, pointing to one another’s stained beards and laughing. As they denuded one area they leaped to It, carried it another ten feet, and started stripping another sec- tion, never getting more than a few feet from It.
Elf picked his blackberries with first one then another of the men. When his hunger was satisfied he became mischievous, picking a handful of berries and squashing them against the back or the chest of the nearest man and running away, laughing. It was dangerous sport, he knew, because if one of them caught him he would be tossed into the brambles.
Eventually they all had their fill, and thanks to Elf looked as though they were oozing blackberry juice from every pore. The sun was in its mid-aftemoon position. In the distance a line of white-barked trees could be seen — evidence of a stream.
“Hi-hi-hi!” Big One shouted.
The journey toward the trees be- gan. It was mostly downhill, so the forward spurts were often as much as a hundred feet.
Before they could hear the water they could smell it. They grunted their delight at the smell, a rich fish odor betokening plenty of food. Intermingled with this odor was the spicy scent of eucalyptus.
They pushed forward with re- newed zeal so that the sweat ran
down their skins, dissolving the berry juices and making rivulets that looked like purple blood.
When less than a hundred yards from the stream, which was still hidden beyond the tall grasses and the trees lining its bank, they heard the sound of voices, high pitched — women’s voices. They became un- easy and nervous. Their surges for- ward shortened to ten feet, their rest periods became longer, they searched worriedly for signs of mo- tion through the trees.
They changed their course to arrive a hundred yards down- stream from the source of the wom- en’s voices. Soon they reached the edge of the tree belt. It was more difficult to carry It through the scatterings of bushes. Too, they would get part way through the trees and run into trees too close together to get It past them, and have to back out and try another place. It took almost two hours to work through the trees to the bank of the stream.
Only Elf recognized the place they finally broke through as the place they had left more than two days before. In that respect he knew he was different, not only from Big One and other grownups, but also all other Elfs except one, a girl Elf. He had known it as long as he could remember. He had learned it from many little things. For example, he had rec- ognized the place when they reached it. Big One and the others never remembered anything for long. In getting It through the trees they blundered as they al- ways had, and got through by trial
GAME PRESERVE
51
and error with no memory of past blunderings.
Elf was different in another way, too. He could make more sounds than the others. Sometimes he would keep a little It with him un- til it gave him a feeling of security almost as strong as the big It, then wander off alone with It and play with making sounds. “Bz-bz. Walla- walla-walla-rue-rue-la-lo-hi. Da !” and all kinds of sounds. It excited him to be able to make different sounds and put them together so that they pleased his hearing, but such sounds made the others avoid him and look at him from a safe distance, with worried expressions, so he had learned not to make different sounds within earshot of the others.
The women and Elfs were up- stream a hundred yards, where they always remained. From the way they were milling around and acting alarmed it was evident to Elf they could no more remember the men having been here a few days before than the men could remember it themselves. It would be two or three days before they slowly lost their fear of one an- other; It would be the women and their Elfs who would cautiously ap- proach, holding their portable Its clutched for security, until, finally losing all fear, they would join into one big group for a while.
Big One and the others carried It right to the water’s edge so they could get into the water without ever being far from It. They shiv- ered and shouted excitedly as they bathed. Fat One screamed with de-
52
light as he held a squirming fish up for the others to see. He bit into it with strong white teeth, wa- ter dripping from his heavy brown beard. Renewed hunger possessed him. He gobbled the fish and be- gan searching for another. He al- ways caught two fish for any other man’s one, which was why he was fat.
Elf himself caught a fish. After eating it he lay on the grassy bank looking up at the white billowing clouds in the blue sky. The sun was now near the horizon, half hid- den behind a cloud, sending diver- gent ramps of light downward. The clouds on the western horizon were slowly taking on color until red, orange, and green separated into definite areas. The soft murmur of the stream formed a lazy back- ground to the excited voices of the men. From upstream, faintly, drift- ed the woman and Elf sounds.
Here, close to the ground, the rich earthy smell was stronger than that of the stream. After a time a slight breeze sprang up, bringing with it other odors, that of distant pines, the pungent eucalyptus, a musky animal scent.
Big One and the others were out of the water, finally. Half asleep. Elf watched them move It up to dry ground. As though that were what the sun had been waiting for, it sank rapidly below the horizon.
The clouds where the sun had been seemed now to blaze for a time with a smoldering redness that cooled to black. The stars came out, one by one.
A multitude of snorings erupted into the night. Elf crept among the
ROG PHILLIPS
sleeping forms until he found Big One, and settled down for the night, his head against Big One’s chest, his right hand resting against the cool smooth metal of It.
Elf awoke with the bright morning sun directly in his eyes. Big One was gone, already wading in the stream after fish. Some of the others were with him. A few were still sleeping.
Elf leaped to his feet, paused to stretch elaborately, then splashed into the stream. As soon as he caught a fish he climbed out onto the bank and ate it. Then he turned to his search for a little It. There were many lying around, all exactly alike. He studied several, not touch- ing some, touching and even nudg- ing others. Since they all looked alike it was more a matter of feel than any real difference that he looked for. One and only one seemed to be the It. Elf returned his attention to it several times.
Finally he picked it up and car- ried it over to the big It, and hid it underneath. Big One, with shouts of sheer exuberance, climbed up onto the bank dripping water. He grinned at Elf.
Elf looked in the direction of the women and other Elfs. Some of them were wandering in his direc- tion, each carrying an It of some sort, many of them similar to the one he had chosen.
In sudden alaim at the thought that someone might steal his new It, Elf rescued it from its hiding place. He tiied to hide it behind him when any of the men looked
GAME PRESERVE
his way. They scorned an individu- al It and, as men, preferred an It too heavy for one person.
As the day advanced, women and Elfs approached nearer, pre- tending to be unaware at times that the men were here, at other times openly fleeing back, overcome by p^nic.
The men never went farther than twenty feet from the big It. But as the women came closer the men grew surly toward one another. By noon two of them were trying to pick a fight with anyone who would stand up to them.
Elf clutched his little It closely and moved cautiously downstream until he was twenty feet from the big It. Tentatively he went another few feet — farther than any of the men dared go from the big It. At first he felt secure, then panic overcame him and he ran back, dropping the little It. He touched the big It until the panic was gone. After a while he went to the little It and picked it up. He walked around, carrying it, until he felt secure with it again. Finally he went downstream again, twenty feet, twenty-five feet, thirty . . . He felt panic finally, but not over- whelmingly. When it became al- most unendurable he calmly turned around and walked back.
Confidence came to him. An hour later he went downstream until he was out of sight of the big It and the men. Security seemed to flow warmly from the little It.
Excitement possessed Elf. He ran here and there, clutching It closely so as not to drop it and lose it. He felt free.
53
“BdlboOj” he said aloud, experi- mentally. He liked the sounds. “Bdlboo-bdlboo-bdlboo.” He saw a berry bush ahead and ran to it to munch on the delicious fruit. “Rid- dle piddle biddle,” he said. It sounded nice.
He ran on, and after a time he found a soft grassy spot and stretched out on his back, holding It carelessly in one hand. He looked up and up, at a layer of clouds go- ing in one direction and another layer above it going in another di- rection.
Suddenly he heard voices.
At first he thought the wind must have changed so that it was carry- ing the voices of the men to him. He lay there listening. Slowly he realized these voices were different. They were putting sounds together like those he made himself.
A sense of wonder possessed him. How could there be anyone besides himself who could do that?
Unafraid, yet filled with caution, he clutched It closely to his chest and stole in the direction of the sounds.
After going a hundred yards he saw signs of movement through the trees. He dropped to the ground and lay still for a moment, then gained courage to rise cautiously, ready to run. Stooping low, he stole forward until he could see several moving figures. Darting from tree to tree he moved closer to them, listening with greater excitement than he had ever known to the smoothly flowing variety of beauti- ful sounds they were making.
This was something new, a sort of game they must be playing. One
54
voice would make a string of sounds then stop, another would make a string of different sounds and stop, a third would take it up. They were good at it, too.
But the closer he got to them the more puzzled he became. They were shaped somewhat like people, they carried Its, they had hands and faces like people. That’s as far as the similarity went. Their feet were solid, their arms, legs, and body were not skin at all but strangely colored and unliving in appear- ance. Their faces were smooth like women’s, their hair short like babies’, their voices deep like men’s.
And the Its they carried were unlike any Elf had ever seen. Not only that, each of them carried more than one.
T hat was an idea! Elf became so excited he almost forgot to keep hidden. If you had more than one It, then if something happened to one you would still feel secure!
He resisted the urge to return to the stream and search for another little It to give him extra security. If he did that he might never again find these creatures that were so like men and yet so different. So instead, he filed the idea away to use at the earliest opportunity and followed the strange creatures, keeping well hidden from them.
Soon Elf could hear the shouts of the men in the distance. From the behavior of the creatures ahead, they had heard those shouts too. They changed their direction so as to reach the stream a hundred yards or more downstream at about the spot where Elf had left. They
ROG PHILLIPS
made no voice sounds now that Elf could hear. They clutched their strangely shaped long Its before them tensely as though feeling greater security that way, their heads turning this way and that as they searched for any movement ahead.
They moved purposefully. An overwhelming sense of kinship brought tears to Elfs eyes. These creatures were his kind. Their dif- ferences from him were physical and therefore superficial, and even if those differences were greater it wouldn’t have mattered.
He wanted, suddenly, to run to them. But the thought of it sent fear through him. Also they might run in panic from him if he sud- denly revealed himself.
It would have to be a mutual aproach, he felt. He was used to seeing them now. In due time he would reveal himself for a brief moment to them. Later he would stay in the open and watch them, making no move to approach until they got used to him being around. It might take days, but eventually, he felt sure, he could join them without causing them to panic.
After all, there had been the time when he absented himself from the men for three whole days and when he returned they had forgotten him, and his sudden ap- pearance in their midst had sent even Big One into spasms of fear. Unable to flee from the security of the big It, and unable to bear his presence among them without be- ing used to him, they had all fallen on the ground in a fit. He had had to retreat and wait until they re-
GAME PRESERVE
covered. Then, slowly, he had let them get used to his being in sight before approaching again. It had taken two full days to get to the point where they would accept him once more.
That experience. Elf felt, would be valuable to remember now. He wouldn’t want to plunge these creatures into fits or see them scat- ter and run away.
Also, he was too afraid right now to reveal himself even though every atom of his being called for their companionship.
Suddenly he made another im- jxDrtant discovery. Some of the Its these creatures carried had some- thing like pliable vines attached to them so they could be hung about the neck! The thought was so stag- gering that Elf stopped and exam- ined his It to see if that could be done to it. It was twice as long as his hand and round one way, taper- ing to a small end that opened to the hollow inside. It was too smooth to hold with a pliable vine unless — He visualized pliable vines woven together to hold It. He wasn’t sure how it could be done, but maybe it could.
He set the idea aside for the fu- ture and caught up with the crea- tures again, looking at them with a new emotion, awe. The ideas he got just from watching them were so staggering he was getting dizzy!
Anoffier new thought hit him. He rejected it at once as being too fantastic. It returned. Leaves are thin and pliable and can be wrapped around small objects like pebbles. Gould it be that these creatures were really men of some
55
sort, with bodies like men, covered with something thin like leaves are thin? It was a new and dizzy height in portable securities, and hardly likely. No. He rejected the idea with finality and turned his mind to other things.
He knew now where they could reach the stream. He decided to circle them and get ahead of them. For the next few minutes this oc- cupied his full attention, leaving no room for crazy thoughts.
He reached the stream and hid behind some bushes where he would have a quick line of re- treat if necessary. He clutched It tightly and waited. In a few mo- ments he saw the first of the creatures emerge a hundred feet away. The others soon joined the first. Elf stole forward from con- cealment to concealment until he was only fifteen feet from them. His heart was pounding with a mixture of fear and excitement. His knuckles were white from clutching It.
The creatures were still carry- ing on their game of making sounds, but now in an amazing new way that made them barely audible. Elf listened to the incredibly varied sounds, enraptured.
“This colony seems to have re- mained pure.”
“You never can tell.”
“No, you never can tell. Get out the binoculars and look, Joe.” “Not just yet, Harold. I’m look- ing to see if I can spot one whose behavior shows intelligence.”
Elf ached to imitate some of the beautiful combinations of sounds. He wanted to experiment and see
56
if he could make the softly muted voices. He had an idea how it might be done, not make a noise in your throat but breathe out and form the sounds with your mouth just like you were uttering them aloud.
One of the creatures fumbled at an It hanging around his neck. The top of it hinged back. He reached in and brought out a gleaming It and held it so that it covered his eyes. He was facing toward the men upstream and stood up slowly.
“See something, Joe?”
Suddenly Elf was afraid. Was this some kind of magic? He had often puzzled over the problem of whether things were there when he didn’t look at them. He had ex- perimented, closing his eyes then opening them suddenly to see if things were still there, and they always were; but maybe this was magic to make the men not be there. Elf waited, watching up- stream, but Big One and the others did not vanish.
The one called Joe chuckled. “The toy the adult males have would be a museum piece if it were intact. A 1960 Ford, I think. Only one wheel on it, right front.”
Elf’s attention jerked back. One of the creatures was reaching over his shoulder, lifting on the large It fastened there. The top of the It pulled back. He reached inside, bringing out something that made Elf almost exclaim aloud. It was shaped exactly like the little It Elf was carrying, but it glistened in the sunlight and its interior was filled with a richly brown fluid.
ROG PHILLIPS
“Anyone else want a coke?”
“This used to be a picnic area,” the one called Joe said, not taking his eyes from the binoculars. “I can see a lot of pop bottles lying around in the general area of that wreck of a Ford.”
While Elf watched, breathless, the creature reached inside the skin of his hip and brought out a very small It and did something to the small end of the hollow It. Putting the very small It back under the skin of his hip, he put the hol- low It to his lips and tilted it. Elf watched the brown liquid drain out. Here was magic. Such an It — the very one he carried — could be filled with water from the stream and carried around to drink any time!
When the It held no more liquid the creature dropped it to the ground. Elf could not take his eyes from it. He wanted it more than he had ever wanted anything. They might forget it. Sometimes the women dropped their Its and forgot them, picking up another one instead, and these creatures had beardless faces like women. Be- sides, each of them carried so many Its that they would feel just as secure without this one.
So many Its! One of the crea- tures held a flat white It in one hand and a very slim It shaped like a straight section of a bush stem, pointed at one end, with which he scratched on the white It at times, leaving black designs.
“There’ re fourteen males,” the one called Joe whispered. The other wrote it down.
The way these creatures did GAME PRESERVE
things. Elf decided, was very similar to the way Big One and the other men went at moving the big It. They were very much like men in their actions, these creatures.
“Eighty-five or six females.”
“See any signs of intelligent action yet?”
“No. A couple of the males are fighting. Probably going to be a mating free-for-all tomorrow or next day. There’s one! Just a minute, 1 want to make sure. It’s a little girl, maybe eight or nine years old. Good forehead. Her eyes definitely lack that large marble-like quality of the sub- moron parent species. She’s in- telligent all right. She’s drawing something in the sand with a stick. Give me your rifle, Bill, it’s got a better telescope sight on it than mine, and I don’t want her to suffer.”
That little It, abandoned on the ground. Elf wanted it. One of the creatures would be sure to pick it up. Elf worried. He would never get it then. If only the creatures would go, or not notice him. If only —
The creature with the thing over his eyes put it back where he had gotten it out of the thing hang- ing from his shoulder. He had taken one of the long slim things from another of the creatures and placed the thick end against his shoulder, the small end pointed up- stream. The others were standing, their backs to Elf, all of them look- ing upstream. If they would re- main that way, maybe he could dart out and get the little It. In another moment they might lose
57
interest in whatever they were watching.
Elf darted out from his conceal- ment and grabbed the It off the ground, and in the same instant an ear shattering sound erupted from the long slim thing against the creature’s shoulder.
“Got her!” the creature said.
Paralyzed with fright, Elf stood motionless. One of the creatures started to turn his way. At the last instant Elf darted back to his place of concealment. His heart was pounding so loudly he felt sure they would hear it.
“You sure, Joe?”
“Right through the head. She never knew what happened.”
Elf held the new It close to him, ready to run if he were discovered. He didn’t dare look at it yet. It wouldn’t notice if he just held it and felt it without looking at it. It was cold at first, colder than the water in the stream. Slowly it warmed. He dared to steal a quick glance it it. It gleamed at him as though possessed of inner life. A new feeling of security grew with- in him, greater than he had ever known. The other It, the one half filled with dried mud, and deeply scratched from the violent rush of water over it when the stream went over its banks, lay forgotten at his feet.
“Well, that finishes the survey trip for this time.”
Elf paid little attention to the voice whispers now, too wrapped up in his new feelings.
“Yes, and quite a haul. Twenty- two colonies — three more than ten
58
years ago. Fourteen of them uncon- taminated, seven with only one or two intelligent offspring to kill, only one colony so contaminated we had to wipe it out altogether. And one renegade.”
“The renegades are growing scarcer every time. Another ten or twenty years and they’ll be extinct.”
“Then there won’t be any more intelligent offspring in these colo- nies.”
“Let’s get going. It’ll be dark in another hour or so.”
The creatures were hiding some of their Its under their skin, in their carrying cases. There was a feeling about them of departure. Elf waited until they were on the move, back the way they had come, then he followed at a safe distance.
He debated whether to show him- self now or wait. The sun was going down in the sky now. It wouldn’t be long until it went down for the night. Should he wait until in the morning to let them get their first glimpse of him?
He smiled to himself. He had plenty of time. Tomorrow and to- morrow. He would never return to Big One and the other men. Men or creatures, he would join with these new and wonderful creatures. They were his kind.
He thought of the girl Elf. They were her kind, too. If he could only get her to come with him.
On sudden impulse he decided to try. These creatures were going back the same way they had come. If he ran, and if she came right with him, they could catch up with the creatures before they went so far they would lose them.
ROG PHILLIPS
He turned back, going carefully until he could no longer see the creatures, then he ran. He headed directly toward the place where the women and Elfs stayed. They would not be so easily alarmed as the men because there were so many of them they couldn’t re- member one another, and one more or less of the Elfs went unnoticed.
When he reached the clearing he slowed to a walk, looking for her. Ordinarily he didn’t have to look much. She would see him and come to him, smiling in recognition of the fact that he was the only one like her.
He became a little angry. Was she hiding? Then he saw her. He went to her. She was on her stomach, motionless as though asleep, but something was dif- ferent. There was a hole in one side of her head, and on the op- posite side it was tom open, r^ and grayish white, with — He knelt down and touched her. She had the same inert feel to her that others had had who never again moved.
He studied her head curiously. He had never seen anything like this. He shook her. She remained limp. He sighed. He knew what would happen now. It was already happening. The odor was very faint yet, but she would not move again, and day after day the odor would get stronger. No one liked it.
He would have to hurry or he would lose the creatures. He turned and ran, never looking back. Once he started to cry, then stopped in
GAME PRESERVE
surprise. Why had he seen crying, he wondered. He hadn’t hurt him- self.
He caught up with the crea- tures. They were hurrying now, their long slender Its balanced on one shoulder, the big end resting in the palm of the hand. They no longer moved cautiously. Shortly it was new country. Elf had never been this far from the stream. Big One more or less led the men, and always more or less followed the same route in cross country trips.
The creatures didn’t spend hours stumbling along impossible paths. They looked ahead of them and selected a way, and took it. Also they didn’t have a heavy It to transport, fifty feet at a time. Elf began to sense they bad a destina- tion in mind. Probably the place they lived.
JUST AHEAD WAS a steep bank, higher than a man, run- ning in a long line. The creatures climbed the bank and vanished on the other side. Cautiously Elf fol- lowed them, heading toward a large stone with It qualities at the top of the bank from whose conceal- ment he could see where they had gone without being seen. He reached it and cautiously peeked around it. Just below him were the creatures, but what amazed Elf was the sight of the big It.
It was very much like the big It the men had, except that there were differences in shape, and in- stead of one round thing at one comer, it had one at each corner and rested on them so that it was
59
held off the ground. It glistened in- stead of being dull. It had a strange odor that was quite strong.
The creatures were putting some of their Its into it, two of them had actually climbed into it — something neither Elf nor the men had ever dared to do with their own big It.
Elf took his eyes off of it for a moment to marvel at the ground. It seemed made of stone, but such stone as he had never before seen. It was an even width with edges going in straight lines that para- lelled the long narrow hill on which he stood, and on the other side was a similar hill, extending as far as the eye could see.
He returned his attention to the creatures and their big It. The creatures had all climbed into it now. Possibly they were settling down for the night, though it was still early for that . . .
No matter. There was plenty of time. Tomorrow and tomorrow. Elf would show himself in the morning, then run away. He would come back again after a while and show himself a little longer, giv- ing them time to get used to him so they wouldn’t panic.
They were playing their game of making voice sounds to one another again. It seemed their major preoccupation. Elf thought how much fun it would be to be one of them, making voice sounds to his heart’s content.
“I don’t see why the govern- ment doesn’t wipe out the whole lot,” one of them was saying. “It’s hopeless to keep them alive. Feeble- mindedness is dominant in them. They can’t be absorbed into the
60
race again, and any intelligent off- spring they get from mating with a renegade would start a long line of descendents, at least one fourth of whom would be mindless idiots.”
“Well,” another of them said, “It’s one of those things where there is no answer. Wipe them out, and next year it would be all the blond haired people to be wiped out to keep the race of dark haired people pure, or something. Probab- ly in another hundred years nature will take care of the problem by wiping them out for us. Meanwhile we game wardens must make the rounds every two years and weed out any of them we can find that have intelligence.” He looked up the embankment but did not notice Elf’s head, concealed partially by the grass around the concrete marker. “It’s an easy job. Any of them we missed seeing this time, we’ll probably get next time. In the six or eight visits we make be- fore the intelligent ones can become adults and mate we always find them.”
“What I hate is when they see us, those intelligent ones,” a third voice said. “When they walk right up to us and want to be friends with us it’s too much like plain murder, except that they can’t talk, and only make moronic sounds like ‘Bdl-bdl-bdl.’ Even so, it gets me when we kill them.” The others laughed.
Suddenly Elf heard a new sound from the big It. It was not a voice sound, or if it was it was one that Elf felt he could not possibly match exactly. It was a growling, “RRrr- RRrrRRrr.” Suddenly it was re-
ROG PHILLIPS
placed by still a different sound, a “p-p-p-p-p” going very rapidly. Perhaps it was the way these crea- tures snored. It was not unpleasant. Elf cocked his head to one side, listening to the sound, smiling. How exciting it would be when he could join with these creatures! He wanted to so much.
The big It began to move. In the first brief second Elf could not believe his senses. How could it move without being carried? But it was moving, and the creatures didn’t seem to be aware of it! Or perhaps they were too overcome by fear to leap out!
Already the big It was moving faster than a walk, and was mov- ing faster with every heartbeat. How could they remain unaware of it and not leap to safety?
Belatedly Elf abandoned caution and leaped down the embankment to the flat ribbon of rock, shouting. But already the big It was over a hundred yards away, and moving faster now than birds in flight!
He shouted, but the creatures didn’t hear him — or perhaps they were so overcome with fright that
they were frozen. Yes, that must be it.
Elf ran after the big It. If he could only catch up with it he would gladly join the creatures in their fate. Better to die with them than to lose them!
He ran and ran, refusing to be- lieve he could never overtake the big It, even when it disappeared from view, going faster than the wind. He ran and ran until his legs could lift no more.
Blinded by tears, he tripped and sprawled full length on the wide ribbon of stone. His nose bled from hitting the hard surface. His knees were scraped and bleeding. He was unaware of this.
He was aware only that the creatures were gone, to what un- imaginable fate he could not guess, but lost to him, perhaps forever.
Sobs welled up within him, spilled out, shaking his small naked body. He cried as he hadn’t cried since he was a baby.
And the empty Coca Cola bottle clutched forgotten in his hand glistened with the rays of the setting sun ... END
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GAME PRESERVE
61
Illustrated by Virgil Finlay
DARK
Sooner or later it would happen, and after that he wouldn’t
ever have to worry again. He’d be dead, or worse.
one of the silent living dead.
WINDOWS
I WAS SUDDENLY wide awake pain, then a choking sound, and
and listening. A gray light the the unmistakable thud of a falling
color of wet charcoal lay over the body. An odd whirring sound
chilled room. There it was again, clicked off. Then a voice said,
Plain and sharp through the thin “Grab the verminous legs of this
wall separating my room from that subversive, Marty. Let’s get him
of old man Donnicker, the shoe- in the wagon.”
maker. “You gave him too much bip.
Maybe he was sick. No, that He looks deader than Einstein.” wasn’t it. Another muted cry of “I said grab his legs.”
63
A door shut. I went to the win- dow. I was shivering in the morning chill. A black car moved away down the broken pavement. It swerved to miss a large mudhole in the middle of the street and an old woman with burlap wrapped around her feet didn’t move fast enough. She flew across the side- walk like a ragged dummy and lay in a heap.
Goodbye, Donnicker. I had seen the black car before. Donnicker was dead. But it didn’t bother me. I never had anything to do with neighbors, anybody I didn’t know had a top clearance. I was clear and intended to stay that way.
You just never knew. Donnicker had seemed like a true patriot. My carefully distant and casual ob- servations of him had led me to believe he was as happily stupid as I was. But he had been hiding something.
I turned from the window and started the day’s routine that had been the same for as long as I could remember. I warmed up some mush on the gas burner. At seven, as always, the Tevee warmed up, and Miss Info with the lac- quered lips smiled at me. “. . . and so don’t worry, citizens. The past is dead. The future is assured, and tomorrow will only be another to- day. And today we are safe and care-free.”
Amen. She said it every morn- ing, but it was nice hearing it again. Then the news came on. There was a pile of junked tractors, trucks and harvesting machines, smashed and rusting. Then a line of farmers working with hoes and hand-
64
guided ploughs drawn by horses.
“Machines took away sacred routine work from citizens. Egg- heads built the machines to rupt and spread the disease of reason. We are now replacing machines at the rate of a million a week. Soon, all of us will again be united in the happy harmonious brotherhood of labor. And when you see a rusting machine, what you are seeing is another captured Egghead, frothing and fuming in its cage . .
At a quarter to eight I walked ten blocks to work. There were the usual hectic early morning traffic jams. Wagon-loads of produce and half-starv^ horses blocking the streets. The same man was bating a nag with a board. A wagon piled with fruit and vegetables was stuck in a pot hole in the pavement. Two men were carrying a spinning wheel into the front of an apartment building. A peddler was selling oil lanterns, wicks and kerosene out of a barrel. The same women and boys in dirty sheepskin jackets were hauling rickshaws.
I really didn’t see anyone or speak to anyone. I didn’t know any- one. I knew I was safe and had nothing to worry about. Once a week I used up my GI liquor chit at a bar with a Security seal on the window. Twice a week, I slept over at a GI brothel, where every girl had a Security clearance number tattoed on her thigh.
I had nothing to worry about.
I was passed through three gates by guards and went to my little cage inside Pentagon Circle, local headquarters of the Department of
BRYCE WALTON
Internal Security.
Until that Tuesday morning I couldn’t remember ever having done anything but sort colored cards. My chief qualification for my job: I wasn’t color blind. When a green card with figures on it meaning nothing to me came out of a slot in the wall, I pushed it into a green slot that led somewhere into a filing department. When a red card came out, I pushed it into a red slot, and so forth. There were cards of fifteen colors.
Another qualification: my un- conscious efficiency. I never had even a hint of an abstract thought. I never remembered yesterday, let alone the day before. And until that Tuesday morning I never made even a tiny mistake.
I had no idea what I was doing. Nor was I at all curious. Curiosity was highly suspect. Curiosity was dangerous in the best of all possible worlds. It was ridiculous in a state where people had never had it so good.
Cards sped from my hands al- ways into correct slots. Care-free hours slipped painlessly by into the dead past. I was sure I was safe and not thinking at all. I was a blessed blank. And then all at once —
"'The eyes are the windows of the souV^
The thought meant nothing to me, except it was wrong, it didn’t belong in the routine. The routine flew to pieces. My efficiency blew up. I felt like a shiny bottle in a row of bottles with a sudden crack running down the middle. Red cards hit blue slots. Green cards
hit yellow slots. Cards piled up, spilled over the floor. The more I tried to return to my efficiency, the worse everything was.
My suit was wet with sweat. I thought of Mr. Donnicker. If a man’s routine broke, it could only be because some inner guilt was disrupting his harmony. A happy person is an efficient person. In- efficiency is the symptom of a guilty conscience.
“Mr. Fredricks,” a voice whis- pered. “You’re replaced here.”
A cold paralysis gripped me.
“Get up, Fred.”
I jumped out of my chair. A thin, stooped little man in a cheap gray suit and dull eyes took my place. In no tiipe at all he had straightened out my mess. Cards were blurs moving into the right slots.
A wide, fattish man in a wrinkled dark suit was watching me out of curiously shining eyes. He carried a black briefcase. I had seen the black briefcases before. Special Police Agent.
He opened the door of my cage and motioned for me to go out ahead of him. “Say goodbye to all this, Fred.”
I felt the smile on my wet face as I nodded and tried to feel grate- ful while at the same time trying to suppress the flood of fear com- ing up through me and turning to sickness in my throat.
I simply couldn’t be afraid. I had nothing to hide. And if I was hiding something inside me I didn’t know about, I should feel glad to have it detected and get it all cleaned out.
DARK WINDOWS
65
“My name is John Mesner,” he said as we walked down the cor- ridor. I couldn’t say anything. I felt like a string someone was be- ginning to saw on with a rusty knife.
Mesner’s office somewhere up- stairs was a dingy room with a dusty desk and a couple of chairs. The walls were made of cracked con- crete lined with dusty filing cabi- nets. The window was so soiled I could barely see the shadows of bars through the panes.
Mesner sat down, put his feet on the desk. He took an apple out of his desk drawer and started peel- ing it slowly with a small penknife.
“You scared, Fred?”
“Of course not.”
He smiled, held out a long rib- bon of apple peel and dropped it on the floor. “You’re scared, Fred.”
I put my Personology Card on his desk right in front of him. “I just had a quarterly brain-check a week ago. There it is.”
I stopped myself somehow from yelling out wildly as he stabbed the card with his penknife, then tore it in little pieces and dropped them on the floor.
“You’ve got nothing to be afraid of, Fred. But it’ll probably take you a while to realize it.” He went on peeling the apple. He had thick hands, stubby fingers, and the nails were dirty. He had a round pale face, a receding chin, thinning hair, and an absurd little red cupid bow mouth.
I tried not to hear the moaning sound that seemed to come from the other side of a door to Mesner’s right. He got up, went to the door,
66
opened it. “Shut that guy up,” he said. He shut the door and sat down again. He sliced off a bite of apple and pushed it into his mouth.
“To make it short, Fred. I’ve in- vestigated you thoroughly. And I can use you here in SPA. You’re being transferred.”
My throat was constricted. I leaned against the desk. “I don’t understand, sir. I don’t know any- thing about Police Work. I’m only a clerk, a card-sorter. I don’t have any qualifications. And you can see — my card.”
“A couple of field-trips with me, Fred, and you’ll be a veteran.” “But why me?”
“You’re already in the Security Department for one thing. That makes it convenient. Also, your In- telligence Quotient.”
“It’s a low eighty,” I said. “That’s the average. I’m well below nor- mal, and this brain-check showed I was lower this time than the last. So how could my IQ make any dif- ference?”
“Curiosity killed the cat, Fred.” I managed to sit down before I fell down. It was impossible that I should really become an agent in the SP, the most powerful and feared organization in the state. What then w^as Mesner really up to? One work error shouldn’t have snagged me. I’d never been guilty of thinking above a rudimentary and socially acceptable level. My IQ was unquestionably low. I was little more than a moron. So why was I frightened. Why did I feel guilty? Why was Mesner interested?
Mesner stood up and dropped the apple core on the floor.
BRYCE WALTON
“We’re going on a field-trip now, Fred. Your indoctrination as an SPA man is beginning.”
Mesner piloted the heliocar. Mesner said the only heliocars left in operation belonged to SPA. He dropped it on a plot of dried grass on the side of a forested hill in the Tennessee Mountains. Until we got out of the heliocar, I didn’t know Mesner had a gun. I couldn’t remember having heard of a gun or seen one before, but Mesner told me all about guns. He slid the rifle out of a canvas case, checked it, called it his favorite little field piece. Then he handed me his black briefcase.
He led the way down a narrow path. It was a quiet sunny day. Squirrels ran between the trees. Birds hopped and sang up in the leaves.
In front of a gray, dilapidated shack was a rickety wagon. Two men were lifting a sack out of the rear of the wagon. They wore rag- ged overalls and no shirts and they were both barefoot.
Mesner yelled. “You. Dirksons! This is a security check.”
The shorter one started to run. Mesner shot him in the back of the head. The tall man grabbed up a piece of iron with a hooked end and started yelling as he ran toward us.
“Open the briefcase,” Mesner said oilmly.
I opened it. Mesner leaned the rifle against a tree. He knelt down, brought a metal disc out of the briefcase attached to a wire. He turned a dial on a bank of controls
inside the case. I heard a whirring hum. The tall hillbilly screamed. He stretched up on his toes, strained his arms and neck at the sky, then fell twitching on his face.
Mesner walked toward the hill- billy and I stumbled after him. I was going to be sick, very sick. The sun worked like pins in my eye- balls.
Mesner drew a round metal cap which he called a stroboscope from the case, fitted it on the hillbilly’s head. The metal strip had a disc hanging down in front of the hill- billy’s eyes and about two inches away.
Mesner worked the dials and the flicker began blinking off and on, faster and faster, then slower, then faster again as the hillbilly’s eyes stared into it unblinkingly. His muscles began to twitch. He beat the ground with his flat hands. Grasshoppers jumped across his face.
Mesner pointed out to me that I was watching an on-the-spot brain-probe. The brain-prober, or bipper, as Mesner called it, was so effective he hardly ever had to use the other items in the case such as the psychopharmaceuticals, drugs, brain shock gadgets, extractors, nerve stretchers and the like.
Mesner sat on his haunches, worked the flicker and lit a ciga- rette. “These brain-wave flickers correspond to any desired brain- wave rhythm. You play around and you’ll get the one you want. They talk. What they don’t say comes out later from the recorder. With this bipper you can get anything out of anyone, almost. If you don’t
DARK WINDOWS
67
get the info you want it’s only be- cause they don’t have it. It bums them out considerably in the proc- ess, but that’s all to the good. They’re erased, and won’t do any meddlesome thinking again.”
The hillbilly wasn’t moving now as the flicker worked on his eyes and activated desired mental re- sponses.
“Dirkson,” Mesner said. “What happened to your sister, Elsa?” “Don’t know. She runned away.” “She was blind wasn’t she? Wasn’t she bom blind?”
I felt an icy twist in my stomach. “That’s right. Homed blind as a bat.”
“What happened to her?” “Runned away with some river rat.”
“You’ve hidden her somewhere, Dirkson. Where?”
“I ain’t hid her nowhere.” Mesner turned a dial. The hill- billy screamed. His body bent up- ward. Blood ran out of his mouth. He was chewing his tongue, Mesner stood up and frowned. “Guess he didn’t know. If he knew he’d have told us. He’s no disguised Egghead. Just a damn collaborating, bottle- headed jerk.”
I went over behind some bmsh and was sick. The hillbilly would never answer any more questions, I knew that much. Now he was laughing and babbling and crawl- ing around on his hands and knees.
“It’s rough at first, Fred. No matter how patriotic you are, and how much you hate Eggheads, it’s always rough at first. But you should get used to it.”
“What — I mean why — ?”
68
“The Dirksons didn’t show for their quarterly brain-check. You assume they’re hiding something. It turns out they’re not, then you haven’t lost an^^hing. Of course you have to bum them out a little to question them. But better to bum one innocent bottlehead than let one double-dome slip away.” Mesner turned and lookrf at me. “Isn’t that right, Fred?”
“Of course it’s right,” I said quickly. Mesner smiled at me.
N THE WAY back to Wash- ington, Mesner piloted the heliocar casually. He leaned back, smoking cigarettes, the ashes streaming down the front of his soiled lapels.
“I think you’ll work out fine in SPA, Fred.”
I was still sick. I had a throbbing ache in my head and sweat kept stinging in my eyes. I nodded numbed agreement with Mesner.
“I appreciate your trying to make an SPA man out of me,” I finally managed to say. “But could you have made some mistake? Gotten the wrong file or something?”
“No. Your IQ is a nice low eighty, Fred. But you’re just not aware that you have what is techni- cally known as a quiescent IQ.”
“What’s that?”
“You’re a true patriot, Fred. We both know that. So don’t be scared. You know the sick and evil danger of a high IQ and so you’ve put an unconscious damf>er on your own intelligence. You’re not really so dumb, Fred.”
“But I am,” I said quickly.
BRYCE WALTON
“No, Fred. You think you are, and you look and act normally stupid and believe me, Fred, I admire your patriotic suppression of your intelligence, even from your- self. But a fact is a fact, and you’re not so dumb.”
“I’m not pretending. I’m not a a subversive —
“Easy now,” Mesner said. “You’re not a subversive, that’s right. A real subversive knows he’s smart, is proud of it and conscious- ly tries to hide it from others. But you loathe your own inherent mental ability, and you’ve been able to freeze its operation, conceal it even from yourself. Now realize this, Fred. The only place we can allow intelligence to operate is in- side the Government. The Govern- ment must have a slightly superior thinking capacity in order to run things — for the present anyway.”
“But any IQ above eighty is sub- versive. It says in the — ”
“That’s an ideal, a goal for the future, Fred. When the transition’s been made, when the last Egg- head is captured and put away, then all of us will be normal. We’ll get ourselves bipped, and bum our excessive intelligence down to the eighty mark. But until that time, Fred, some of us — especially the SPA — have to keep our wits about us. An unfortunate necessity that we pray will soon be ended.”
I gazed numbly out through the plastic canopy at the white clouds streaming past. He was trying to get some admission out of me, I thought. That was the only ex- planation. Working some subtle game with me. But that was absurd
DARK WINDOWS
on its face, because I was way below normal.
“My IQ’s no good for you then,” I said. “I just don’t see — ”
Mesner interrupted with an im- patient laugh. “You’re a hell of a lot brighter than you let yourself admit that you are, Fred. That’s all I’m saying. You know it’s a terrible thing to be smart, so you keep it under wraps. But now you know there’s nothing to be afraid of. You know it’s legal for a while longer to be smart as long as you’re in SPA. Now you can start open- ing up, releasing your mental capac- ity. Believe me, Fred, it’s for the good of the state. I know it sounds like a paradox, but that’s how it is.”
“How can it be good when it’s such an evil thing?”
“Because right now it’s a neces- sary evil. SPA has problems, Fred. There are still a lot of Eggheads mnning loose, causing trouble. And the doubledomes still loose are the toughest ones to catch, and that’s our job. We’ve got to track down the old maniac physicists, chemists, engineers, professors, psyche-boys and the like who are still working underground. Until they’re all caught Fred, we’ve got to live with our own filthy brains. Because you see it takes brains to catch brains.”
“But I have hardly any brains at all,” I insisted.
“You’ll see, Fred. You’ll see.”
Before I left his office that eve- ning he gave me an SPA identity card. My name and face were on it. Suddenly it seemed impossibly official. All at once, I was one of
69
the most feared and powerful men in the State. Only I knew that the only one I really feared was me.
That card supposedly gave me a free hand. It could take me any- where, even into top-secret de- partments in Security. With it, I was immune to curfew laws, to all social restrictions and regulations. But when I went for a walk that evening, I knew I was being fol- lowed. Wherever I went, eyes watched me constantly. Shadows moved in and out of gray doorways and dissolved around comers.
After nine, after the curfew sirens howled down the emptied streets, I walked fast toward the ancient rooming house in which I thought I had always lived. Hun- dreds of silent gray women and children came out onto the streets and began cleaning them with brooms. One by one, the gas lights along the rubbled streets went out. I started to run through shadows, and footsteps moved behind me.
A dmnken man came out of an alley and staggered down the broken pavement where weeds grew. A black car whisked him away. But no black car stopped for me. I saw no one with a black briefcase either. I saw only shadows, and felt unseen eyes watcliing me.
The old woman who had been run down by a black car still lay there on the sidewalk. No one dared approach that corpse to get it off the streets. No one knew who it was, or why it was dead. No one would take any chances. One was just as suspect from associating with a guilty corpse as a living neighbor named Donnicker.
70
Upstairs, I saw a splotch of blood on the hall floor. This time I knew it was Donnicker’s. It reminded me of the Dirksons now. And of who could say how many others?
I lay down and took all three of tomorrow’s tranquitabs. We were allotted a month’s supply of tran- quitabs at a time, and we were all compelled by law to take three a day. They knocked out worry and anxiety usually. But now they didn’t seem to do me much good. I couldn’t seem to go to sleep. This had never happened to me before.
Maybe Mesner was right. May- be I did have a high IQ but wasn’t consciously aware of it. This