Crompton Divided (16 page)

On the eighteenth day they reached the banks of a shallow muddy stream. This, Rekki said, was the Rainmaker River. Two miles farther they found the Vigilante camp.

The Vigilante commander, Colonel Prentice, was a tall, spare, gray-eyed man who showed the marks of a recent wasting fever. He remembered Stack very well.

‘Yes he was with us for a while. I was uncertain about accepting him. His reputation, for one thing. And a onehanded man … But he’d trained his left hand to fire a gun better than most can do with their right, and he had a bronze fitting over his right stump. Made it himself, and it was grooved to hold a machete. No lack of guts, I’ll tell you that. He was with us almost two years. Then I cashiered him.’

‘Why?’ Crompton asked.

The commander sighed unhappily. ‘Contrary to popular belief, we Vigilantes are not a freebooting army of conquest. We are not here to decimate and destroy the natives. We
are
here to enforce treaties entered into in good faith by Yggans and settlers, to prevent raiding by Yggans and Terrans alike and, in general, to keep the peace. Stack had difficulty getting that through his thick skull.’

Some expression must have passed across Crompton’s face, for the commander nodded sympathetically.

‘You know what he’s like, eh? Then you can imagine what happened. I didn’t want to lose him. He was a rough and able soldier, skilled in forest and mountain lore, perfectly at home in the jungle. The Border Patrol is thinly spread, and we need every man we can get. Stack was valuable. I told the sergeants to keep him in line and allow no brutalizing of the natives. For a while it worked. Stack was trying hard. His record was unimpeachable. Then came the Shadow Park incident, which I suppose you’ve heard about.’

‘I’m afraid I haven’t,’ Crompton said.

‘Really? I thought everyone on Ygga had. Well, the situation was this. Stack’s patrol had rounded up nearly a hundred Yggans of an outlaw tribe that had been causing us some trouble. They were being conducted to the special reservation at Shadow Peak. On the march there was a little trouble, a scuffle. One of the Yggans had a knife, and he slashed Stack across the left wrist.

‘I suppose losing one hand made him especially sensitive to the possible loss of the other. The wound was superficial, but Stack berserked. He killed the native with a riot gun, then turned in on the rest of them. A lieutenant had to bludgeon him into unconsciousness before he could be stopped. The damage to Terran-Yggan relations was immeasurable. I couldn’t have a man like that in my outfit. He needs a psychiatrist. I cashiered him.’

‘Where is he now?’ Crompton asked.

‘Just what is your interest in the man?’ the commander asked bluntly.

‘We’re related.’

‘I see. Well, I heard that Stack drifted to Port New Hazlen and worked for a while on the docks. He teamed up with a chap named Barton Finch. Both were jailed for drunk and disorderly conduct, got out and drifted back to the White Cloud frontier. Now he and Finch own a little trading store up near Blood Delta.

Crompton rubbed his forehead wearily and said, ‘How do I get there?’

‘By canoe,’ the commander said. ‘You go down the Rainmaker River to where it forks. The left-hand stream is Blood River. It’s navigable all the way to Blood Delta. But I would not advise the trip. For one thing, it’s extremely hazardous. For another, it would be useless. There’s nothing you can do for Stack. He’s a bred-in-the-bone killer. He’s better off alone in a frontier town where he can’t do much damage.’

‘I must go to him,’ Crompton said, his throat dry.

There’s no law against it,’ the commander said, with the air of a man who has done his duty.

29

Crompton found that Blood Delta was man’s farthest frontier on Ygga. It lay in the midst of hostile Grel and Tengtzi tribesmen, with whom a precarious peace was maintained and an incessant guerrilla war was ignored. There was great wealth to be gained in the Delta country. The natives brought in fist-sized diamonds and rubies, sacks of the rarest spices, and an occasional flute or carving from the lost city of Altereine. They traded these things for guns and ammunition, which they used enthusiastically on the traders and on each other. There was wealth to be found in the Delta, and sudden death, and slow, painful, lingering death as well. The Blood River, winding slowly into the heart of the Delta country, had its own special hazards, which usually took a fifty-percent toll of travelers upon it.

Crompton resolutely shut his mind to all common sense. His component, Stack, lay just ahead of him. The end was in sight, and Crompton was determined to reach it. He bought a canoe and hired six native paddlers, purchased supplies, guns, ammunition, and arranged for a dawn departure.

That night they were in a small tent which the commander had put aside for Crompton’s use. By a smoking kerosene lamp Crompton was stuffing cartridges into a bandolier, his attention fixed on the immediate task, unwilling to look elsewhere.

Loomis said, ‘Now listen to me. I’ve recognized you as the dominant personality. I’ve made no attempt to take over the body. I’ve been in good spirits recently and I’ve kept you in good spirits while we tramped halfway around Ygga. Isn’t that true?’

‘Yes, it is,’ Crompton said, reluctantly putting down the bandolier.

‘I’ve done the best I could, but this is too much. I want Reintegration, but not with a homicidal maniac. Don’t talk to me about monolithic personalities. Stack’s
homicidal
, and I want nothing to do with him.’

‘He’s a part of us,’ Crompton said.

‘So
what
? Listen to yourself, Alistair! You’re supposed to be the part of us most in touch with reality. And you’re completely obsessed, planning on sending us into sure death on that river.’

‘We’ll get through all right,’ Crompton said, with no conviction.

‘Will we?’ Loomis asked. ‘Have you listened to the stories about Blood River? And even if we do make it, what will we find at the Delta? A homicidal maniac! He’ll shatter us, Al!’

Crompton was unable to find an adequate answer. As their search progressed he had grown more and more horrified at Stack’s unfolding personality, and more and more obsessed with the need to find the man. Loomis had never lived with the driving need for Reintegration; he had come in because of external problems, not internal needs. But Crompton had been compelled all his life by the passion for completion, transcendence. Without Stack, fusion was impossible. With him there was a chance, no matter how small.

‘We’re going on,’ Crompton said.

‘Alistair, please! You and I get on all right. We can do fine without Stack. Let’s go back to Aaia or Earth.’

Crompton shook his head.

‘You won’t go back?’ Loomis asked.

‘No.’

‘Then I’m taking over!’

Loomis’s personality surged in a surprise attack and seized partial control of the body’s motor functions. Crompton was stunned for a moment. Then, as he felt control slipping away from him, he grimly closed with Loomis, and the battle was begun.

It was a silent war, fought by the light of a smoking kerosene lamp that grew gradually dimmer toward dawn. The battleground was the Crompton mind. The prize was the Crompton body, which lay shivering on a canvas cot, perspiration pouring from its forehead, eyes staring blankly at the light, a nerve in its forehead twitching steadily.

Crompton was the dominant personality; but he was weakened by conflict and guilt, and hampered by his own scruples. Loomis, weaker, but single-minded, certain of his own course, totally committed to the struggle, managed to hold the vital motor functions and block the flow of antidols.

For hours the two personalities were locked in combat, while the feverish Crompton body moaned and writhed on the cot. At last, in the gray hours of the morning, Loomis began to gain ground. Crompton gathered himself for a final effort, but he couldn’t bring himself to make it. The Crompton body was already dangerously overheated by the fight; a little more, and neither personality would have a corpus to inhabit.

Loomis continued to press forward, seized vital synapses, and took over all motor functions.

By sunrise, Loomis had won a total victory.

30

Shakily Loomis got to his feet. He touched the stubble on his chin, rubbed his numbed fingertips, and looked around. It was
his
body now. For the first time since Aaia he was seeing and feeling directly and solely instead of having all sensory information filtered and relayed to him through the Crompton personality. It felt good to breathe the stagnant air, to feel cloth against his body, to be hungry, to be
alive!
He had emerged from a gray shadow-world into a land of brilliant colors. Wonderful! He wanted to keep it just like this.

Poor Crompton. …

‘Don’t worry, old man,’ Loomis said. ‘You know, I’m doing this for your own good also.’

There was no answer from Crompton.

‘We’ll go back to Aaia,’ Loomis said. ‘Things will work out.’

Crompton did not, or could not, answer. Loomis became mildly alarmed.

‘Are you there Al? Are you all right?’

No answer.

Loomis frowned, then hurried outside to the commander’s tent.

‘I’ve changed my mind about finding Dan Stack,’ Loomis told the commander. ‘He really sounds too far gone.’

‘I think you’ve made a wise decision,’ the commander said.

‘So I should like to return to Aaia immediately.’

The commander nodded. ‘All spaceships leave from Yggaville, where you came in.’

‘How do I get there?’

‘Well, that’s a little difficult. I suppose I could loan you a native guide. You’ll have to trek back across the Thompson Mountains to Ou-Barkar. I suggest you to take the Desset Valley route this time, since the Kmikti Horde is migrating across the central rain forest, and you can never tell about those devils. You’ll reach Ou-Barkar in the rainy season, so the ziernies won’t be able to trek to Inyoyo. But you can join the salt caravan traveling through Knife Pass, if you catch up to them in time. If you don’t, the trail is relatively easy to follow by compass, if you compensate for the variation zones. Once you’ve reached Depotsville the monsoon will be in full career. Quite a sight, too. Perhaps you can catch a heli to New St. Denis and another to Yggaville; but I doubt it because of the zicre. Winds like that can mess up aircraft rather badly. So perhaps you’d best take the paddleboat to East Marsh, then a freighter down the Inland Zee. I believe there are several good hurricane ports along the southern shore, in case the weather grows extreme. I personally prefer to travel by land or air. The final decision of route, of course, rests with you.’

‘Thank you,’ Loomis said.

‘Let me know what you decide,’ the commander said.

Loomis thanked him and returned to his tent in a state of nerves. He thought about the trip back across mountains and swamps, through primitive settlements, past migrating hordes. He visualized the complications added by the rains and the zicre. Never had his freewheeling imagination performed any better than it did now, conjuring up the horrors of that trip back.

It had been hard getting here; it would be much harder returning. And this time, his sensitive and aesthetic soul would not be sheltered by the patient, long-suffering Crompton.
He
would have to bear the full sensory impact of wind, rain, hunger, thirst, exhaustion, and fear.
He
would have to eat the coarse foods and drink the foul water. And
he
would have to perform the complicated routines of the trail, which Crompton had painfully learned and which he had ignored.

The total responsibility would be his. He would have to choose the route and make the critical decisions, for Crompton’s life and for his own.

But could he? He was a man of the cities, a creature of society. His life problems had been the quirks and twists of people, not the moods and passions of nature. He had avoided the raw and lumpy world of sun and sky, living entirely in mankind’s elaborate burrows and intricate anthills. Separated from the earth by sidewalks, doors, windows, and ceilings, he had come to doubt the strength of that gigantic grinding machine of nature about which the ancients wrote so engagingly, and which furnished such excellent conceits for poems and songs. Nature, it had seemed to Loomis, sunbathing on a placid summer day or drowsily listening to the whistle of wind against his window on a stormy night, was grossly overrated.

But now, shatteringly, he had to ride the wheels of the grindstone.

Loomis thought about it and suddenly pictured his own end. He saw the time when his energies would be exhausted, and he would be lying in some windswept pass or sitting with bowed head in the driving rain of the marshlands. He would try to go on, searching for the strength that is said to lie beyond exhaustion. And he would not find it. A sense of utter futility would pass over him, alone and lost in the immensity of all outdoors. At that point life would seem too much effort, too much strain. He, like many before him, would then admit defeat, give up, lie down, and wait for death. …