In Deep (13 page)

He stopped sending his weekly reports. The next ship to Cynara was not due for six months, and it would take more than two years for a ship to reach him after his message carriers stopped arriving. He glanced at the master board in his office only twice a day, when he awoke and before he went to bed; the rest of the time he spent with the Pattern in the Unit’s machine shops and laboratories. Minor breakdowns occurred, but he grudged the time to attend to them. Repair machines broke down and were not replaced from stock: thereafter, when anything went wrong with a robot instructor or monitor, it remained out of action. Cadets went to their assigned classrooms but heard no lectures. Krisch saw a few of these, with more initiative than the rest, wandering around the corridors. He ignored them. The Project simply did not matter any longer, by comparison with the weapon he was forging under the Pattern’s direction.

He allowed the weekly cubes from the other nine Directors I to pile up unread on his desk. On the fifteenth morning the green light of the inter-unit communicator was blinking as he entered his office. He clicked over the switch and saw Viar’s round, perspiring face on the screen. Viar said: “Director Krisch! I’ve been trying to get you since eighteen hours yesterday. Is anything wrong at your Unit?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” said Krisch curtly. “I’ve been very busy. What is it you want?”

“Why, I was only wondering if you’d decided what action to take on the special report I sent you last week. I don’t want to press you, but—”

“I’m considering it,” Krisch said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I reach a decision. Is there anything else?”

“Just one other thing—I was wondering if there had been any more trouble with the saboteur in your Unit. I haven’t had any for two weeks, now, and—”

“Nor I,” said Krisch. “There’s nothing we can do on that score until it appears again, if it does.”

He broke the contact and sorted the message cubes on his desk until he found the one labeled “Unit 1—1/17/09—Special.” He dropped it into the viewer and scanned it quickly. It appeared that Viar had been doing more archeological research on his own initiative. Krisch repressed a stab of irritation and read on. Viar had widened the converter’s field and increased its output, using the surplus to turn out ingots for small converter units, in order to excavate a pit two hundred feet square by one hundred feet deep. The objects he had so , far extracted showed clearly, he said, that two entirely distinct cultures were represented. Those that Krisch had already seen, including the enigmatic box, belonged to the later culture, and these included several artifacts which Viar considered to be weapons. Krisch frowned over this section; it was not elaborated.

Viar’s main point was that, judging by pictograms and items shaped to the wearers’ use, the first culture had been so alien biologically and sociologically as to be almost incomprehensible—but the latecomers had been men. Viar suggested, with a breathless tone showing through his careful phrases, that this was a discovery of enormous importance to galactic archeology and anthropology. Radioactive tests confirmed their previous estimate that the planet had been dead for more than ten million years. Therefore the conclusion was inescapable that mankind had not originated on Earth or Sol—that there had been a previous wave of colonisation, so ancient that no trace of it had ever been found before.

Viar, Krisch thought contemptuously, envisioned a future of academic glory. He wanted Krisch to authorise him to dispatch his finds immediately to Cynara, with the recommendation that a research group be set up on the Project planet—to be headed, no doubt, by Viar himself.

The notion of independent evolution did not even seem to have occurred to him.

The obvious thing to do was to keep him contented, and Krisch was inclined to doubt that Viar’s discoveries had any importance compared with his own. However, the thought of Viar’s cryptic reference to weapons returned to him. There were two remote but unpleasant possibilities there: one, that Viar might be hinting that if Krisch opposed him, he had force to back up his requests; the other, that among those weapons, just possibly, might be one whose strategic importance to Cynara would overshadow Krisch’s.

It would be just as well to take care of both, and satisfy Viar at the same time, if it could be done. Krisch thought for a moment, then dictated a memo: “Your suggestion is accepted. Send all artifacts and relevant data to this office for shipment. I will endorse your request for the establishment of a research group and will recommend your appointment as its head. In the meantime, however, I cannot authorise any further use of the Unit I converter for excavation purposes. Discontinue such activity, and use converter ingots pending a reply from Cynara.”

That tied it up. It was not only reasonable but accommodating; Viar could not disobey instructions without open hostility. If he did disobey, he could be dealt with; if he didn’t, Krisch could end any possibility of future trouble by removing all weapons from the shipment.

There was, however, a third alternative which Krisch had not taken into account, as he discovered when he examined the crates Viar sent. They contained a considerable number and variety of artifacts, but not one of them, as far as Krisch could tell, could possibly be classed as a weapon.

It did not ring true, somehow: Viar was simply not the type to make even so definite a stand as this against a person in authority over him. He would intrigue, and he would undermine, but he would never risk his neck in open conflict. A new weapon would give him some false courage, but not, Krisch thought, that much.

A thought struck him. He said to the Pattern: “Did you show yourself to Viar before you came to me?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Krisch gestured impatiently. “Never mind; I know. I didn’t ask you. How long did you spend and what did you discuss with him?”

“An hour and twenty minutes. I answered his questions about myself, about himself, about those who came after my makers, and about their weapons. I told him where to look for three that were in the area he was excavating.”

That was like Viar, at least, Krisch thought wryly: to get his hands on a fountainhead of power and then let go.

And Viar’s sudden aggressiveness was explained. He had been shown a path to power, and the Pattern had no doubt told him a few truths about his timidity and lack of drive. Viar was, for the time being, a reformed character—and an unstable one.

The crisis was unwelcome, since it came at a time when Krisch was almost at the end of his strenuous labors; but he was realist enough to see that it had to be dealt with immediately. He considered his problem, made his preparations—which took some time, since they included transferring all big shop and laboratory equipment to the end of a half-mile tunnel dug outward from the Unit’s perimeter—and then called Viar.

Viar’s face was arranged in an expression of careful deference, though which cunning and self-complacency were almost obscenely visible.

Krisch cut through his greeting with, “Viar, your instructions were to send all the artifacts to me. Where are the weapons you mentioned in your report?”

Viar’s features realigned themselves to produce an effect of utter surprise. “Why, everything’s there,” he said. “I sent it all over, just as you stipulated.”

“Viar,” said Krisch coldly, “you unspeakable worm, guilt is written all over your face. What do you hope to gain by lying?”

Viar’s white eyelashes blinked, and his weak mouth hardened slightly; but he replied in the same careful, polite tone. “Perhaps something was left out by error, Director Krisch. Let me suggest this—send me back the items I gave you, and I’ll make a careful search before I dispatch the shipment to Cynara.”

“You mean,” Krisch said, “that I had better do as you say, or I’ll get the weapons—but not in the way I expect.”

Viar’s eyes gleamed. “If you care to put it that way, Director.”

Instantly, Krisch launched himself into a torrent of abuse. He had had nine years’ more experience at this form of psychological punishment than Viar, and he was a past master of the art. He called Viar a majority of filthy names in his vocabulary, with special emphasis on Viar’s putative masculinity, and he delivered the whole tirade in a tone of scathing, furious contempt. He continued without slackening his pace or lowering his voice until he saw Viar redden, then turn pale; then still without a pause, he accused Viar of sabotage and treason.

Viar exploded. “You talk about treason!” he shrieked. “I know what you’ve been up to over there—I know what’s been keeping you so busy! You’ve got that thing that escaped from my box, and you’re pumping secrets out of it, to sell to the highest bidder!”

“Suppose I am?” Krisch demanded swiftly. “What can you do about it?”

Viar told him. He had warned the other eight Directors that Krisch was plotting against the Project. Krisch was one against nine—he’d never get away with it—and Viar himself had a beam projector that would cut through Krisch’s force screen like paper.

Krisch had all the information he needed. Now he wanted just one thing more—to get Viar out from behind the protection of his own screen. He told Viar, in extremely vulgar terms, to come and try it, and added an epithet he had been holding in reserve.

Viar’s moon face went whiter than before. His eyes bulged. He opened his mouth to speak, and Krisch, grinning with triumph, cut him off.

He had been about ten minutes. He checked carefully to make sure that the Pattern was being kept occupied in the interrogation room; then he got into his battle harness and strode down the corridor toward the lift.

Halfway along the corridor was a group of cadets. One of them was on the floor, his metal body contorted and writhing. As Krisch approached, the boy began to scream at the top of his lungs. Krisch winced. He glanced at the other cadets, one of which wore a squad leader’s insignia. “Why isn’t he in surgery?” he snapped.

The squad leader said in a bewildered tone of voice, “Surgery doesn’t work, sir. The control robot there is out of commission. What shall we do, sir?”

More of the unit’s services must be out than Krisch had realised; the boy evidently had some acute malfunctioning of his internal organs which should have been detected in the incipient stage by robot examiners.

“Kill him,” said Krisch, and walked on.

The voice of the squad leader followed him. “Sir, I don’t understand. Are we all going to have pain, like the lower animals?”

Krisch did not answer. He stepped into the lift at the end of the corridor and dropped swiftly to the ground level. His speedster was waiting opposite the mouth of the exit tunnel. He climbed in, worked it through the tunnel, then pointed the speedster’s nose at the sky and fed it power.

Five thousand feet above the Unit’s force screen and some distance away from its perimeter, he leveled off and hovered, scanning the surface below at high magnification. He waited.

There it came now: a tiny, slim, metal shape darting straight toward the Unit from the direction of Unit I. Viar must be furious, Krisch thought. He caught the shape on the screen of his computer and snapped the controls over to “intercept.” Instantly his craft nosed over and shot downward. He counted seconds automatically. At “three” the other speedster was nearly in the center of his forward screen. At “four” it entered the field of the force cannon Krisch had installed in the nose of his ship. He pressed the trigger and flung the ship into a steep ascent.

When he came out of the blackout, he saw the fragments of Viar’s ship still spreading, whirling crazily under the stars. Below, an amorphous column of dust and debris was rising from the site of Unit 10. The force screen was down, and every structure above ground level had been destroyed.

Krisch leveled off and turned on the scanner that was tuned to his cavern at the end of the tunnel. It responded immediately showing him a view of the machine shop, with his nearly complete assembly standing in the middle of the room. Beyond were the transparent chambers in which the Pattern worked. Krisch saw that there were still three cadets waiting in the outer of these. It was enough. After an hour there would be no more extraneous minds to ask the Pattern questions.

Satisfied, he turned his ship toward Unit 2. It was just as well that Viar had managed to destroy Krisch’s own Unit; it saved him the inconvenience of doing it himself. Neglected, the cadets had become not only distasteful but a potential danger.

He descended cautiously on Unit 2, jockeying the ship until its discharge valve was directly over the center of the force screen. Everywhere else the screen was proof against any attack likely to be mounted by a spaceship, including radioactive dust; but here, at the node, it was vulnerable to a man who knew exactly what to do. Krisch tripped the release and let the deadly stuff filter down.

He repeated the process at every remaining Unit, taking Viar’s Unit I last. He was reasonably certain that Viar had not waited to persuade any other Director to cooperate in the attack; if he had, that Director would find nothing to attack when he got there—and no place to go when he got back.

He returned to the shambles of Unit 10, reconnoitred carefully to make sure that no other speedster was waiting within attacking range, then descended and tunneled through the debris until he struck the end of excavation. He left the speedster, opened the airtight door, one of a series that had closed when the tunnel lost air, and walked back to the cavern.

The incredibly complex structure which Krisch had built was not the final stage; it was only the final fabricator. The final product would be Krisch himself.

He experimented first with a tiny cylinder into which he had built an affinity device tuned to a target plate at the opposite end of the chamber. He lined it up so that it would pass through the field of the Pattern’s machine on its way to the target, and arranged a photoelectric cell to track it and register the exact moment when it disappeared.

He released the cylinder. It streaked across the room, into the middle of the ten-foot framework of the machine—and abruptly sprouted from the target, fifty feet away. Trembling, Krisch read the meters: There was not one microsecond’s difference between the time the cylinder had passed through the field and the time it had appeared on the target plate. To the limit of his equipment’s ability to record, the passage had been instantaneous.