Janus (33 page)

“You’ve all been shown the truth about this place and the truths about yourselves. You all know how you came to be here. And you’ve managed to put that knowledge aside, to go on living as though it doesn’t exist. You’ve fitted yourselves to the clothes they hung on you. You’re model citizens now, well adjusted, patient, punctual—and I admire you for all that. You, Joe,” he said to Abercrombie, who had been leaning back on the crate he was sitting on and looking sceptical, “you’ve made a life for yourself here, haven’t you? You’ve put all that past behind you; you don’t get hankerings after things that are best forgotten. I think that’s admirable.”

He paused and looked at them all. When it seemed that the questions would start coming, he went on. “Let me confess something. I’m not like you. I’m not cut out to be a model citizen. I’m not a man with the sort of patience you have. If someone insults me, I expect an apology. If they steal from me, I expect the money to be returned with interest; I expect them to be punished so that neither they nor anyone else would be encouraged to steal from me again. If someone injures me, I expect recompense, and I expect them to be deterred from ever injuring me again. I expect them to suffer as much as I suffered. What should I do then, when someone injures me by stealing my own past, my own self, by prying into my brain, my mind, and wiping away the years of my life? If I were like you, if I were a patient man, perhaps I would be content, as you are, and do nothing. As you do.”

There were stirrings now, shufflings; someone coughed and muttered.

“You had reputations, all of you. People knew your names. Some of them shivered when they spoke them. You had weight among them, you reminded them that life was not to be taken for granted. And now you’d show them how much patience a human being can possess—except that you can’t show them anything, or you’d stop being the model citizens you’re all so content to be.

“Or are you? Are you so content? After all, you’re here. You came when I asked, and you could all guess what I wanted to talk about. And you all came here patiently and on time.”

“We’re stuck here at the arse-end of creation,” Abercrombie called out, “with an armed militia breathing over our shoulders. What do you expect us to do? Storm the U.N. garrison from here?”

“I’m going to do something. You don’t need to know what just yet. I fully expect to get what I ask without using force. But if I’m wrong, and they turn on us, and force becomes necessary—in self-defence—the militia won’t be the only ones with weapons.”

“You’re asking us to risk our necks without even telling us what you’ve got in mind.”

“I’m asking nothing yet. I’m giving every one of you the chance to be what you want to be, not what they tried to make you. If you want in, we take it from there. If you don’t, the less you know the better.”

Karl Winter stood up. “I think I understand you well enough. This is not my idea of the way to a better life. I’ll leave now. As long as no one is hurt, I will say nothing.”

“Thank you for you honesty,” Grebbel said. When the door had closed, he paced for a moment, then turned to the others. “The rest of you will want time to think. Let me point out something, though. This colony is important to them. They’ve poured money and time and effort into it, more money than any of us can imagine. They’re not going to give it up easily. And the fact that we’re at the arse-end of creation here, as you put it, cuts both ways. No, we can’t take over the Rio Council, but what sort of police action can they mount from back there—particularly if we don’t force their hand until we’re secure here? The militia aren’t invincible. I know the type of men they are; they can be broken. And remember there are a lot of other colonists here. There’s a name for people like that. They’ve been called adventurers or explorers, the builders of a new civilisation; they’ve been called misfits and escapees. But I’ve got a simpler name. I call them hostages.”

He looked at them. “Now, if you’re not interested in any more of this, you’re free to leave. But if you’re with me, we can start getting down to business. . . .”

When the group had left, Grebbel closed his eyes and sighed, then saw that Osmon had remained and was watching him. “Yes? You enjoyed the performance, did you? You’d like an encore?”

“I know one doesn’t detract from a historic performance by adding frills to it,” Osmon said softly. “I was just waiting to close up the hut.”

“Oh,” said Grebbel bitterly. “A devotee, a fan.”

“I don’t think I understand you. I was impressed. I would think you’d be well satisfied with the way things went.”

“Understand me?” Grebbel muttered. “I don’t understand myself any more. What the fuck are we doing here—?” He turned to Osmon, who had not moved. “Well, don’t let me keep you from locking up.”

“Of course. You’ve set things in motion now; there will be changes.”

“Like the kids’ slide, or the sled,” he muttered, “when you feel the thing starting to move.”
And you hear the ice under the runners and you know it’s already too late—you won’t be able to stop it, and the hill curves away, you can’t see where the run ends, and the fear is part of the excitement, the fear of the dark under the trees at the bottom of the slope, at the foot of the stairs, the mewling sounds, the room—

“For god’s sake, stop staring at me and do your work.” Grebbel turned and left.

Partridge shifted uneasily under Grebbel’s gaze. “There’s a crate of assault weapons I know about, and five thousand rounds. More than this group of boy scouts could shoot off before their pensions run dry. You think you want some of that?”

“About a dozen weapons right now, with at least thirty rounds each. If we can get that much out without it being missed straight away, so much the better. But I’ll want more later, maybe at short notice. I know where we can store things now, and I expect more recruits. When we’re ready to go, we’ll take every weapon and every round of ammunition we can get.”

“Christ on a crutch. You’re dreaming. You been sampling too much of the stuff you’re getting me?”

“Let me worry about my dreams.”

“You’ll get caught, Sonny, if you don’t keep it small and slow. Whatever you’re planning, you’ll blow it into the wind if you can’t keep it quiet. And if you go down, I know where that’ll leave me—”

“Don’t worry. They may start to suspect something, but we won’t get caught, because we’ll move fast, before they’re ready.”

The dreams were no longer waking him, though they still left him with memories of going down—of being compelled downwards—into a darkened space where something crawled and waited. The thing to do was to keep everything focussed on the main goal, keep so busy the mind had no time to wander. And there were more urgent problems than his secret night fears. . . .

He looked up from the map he had spread under the light. “We’ll have to move on two fronts. That means synchronised operations, and without the chance for a rehearsal. The main thrust will be at the landing field, because we’ll need a blimp. The secondary operation will be within the settlement. Tallis, I want you to be ready to lock up the communications network if necessary.” He turned so that he could meet all their eyes. “Is everything clear so far?”

“Where: that is clear, yes.” Werner Schuhman the former aerospace engineer. “But I do not understand the how or the why, and certainly not the when.”

“You don’t know when, because I haven’t told you.” He drew a short flutter of laughter. Encouraged that they were keyed up enough, and on his side enough, to respond to a comment like that, he went on. “Nothing is settled yet, and certainly not the timing. That depends on a lot of things, including the schedules for the blimps. I’ll give you more details as plans become clearer. You’ll get enough warning, don’t worry. As to how—I’ll answer this, since you’ve asked it—how is easy, up to a point. We take the landing field, and a dirigible, and we start detonating explosives here and there until they give us what we ask for. I have some more ideas about how we do that, but I’ll save them for a surprise later. And as for why—if you don’t know that, it’s not something I can explain in a couple of words. I’ll tell you what, though. Give me a hand clearing up at the end, and maybe I can show you something that’ll help.”

As the others began to leave in ones and twos, Grebbel said to Schuhman, “We may have a use for that training of yours.”

Schuhman waited, hands in pockets, shuffling from foot to foot.

“I’ve been wondering about some of the satellites,” Grebbel said. “I think it would be a good idea to keep an eye on them.”

“I’m not sure I understand. They do not change orbit. They are more reliable than any dirigible timetable.”

“I’m not so sure about that. But we’d need a telescope. A good optical telescope.”

“You mean Karl’s—Karl Winter’s. You’d have to talk to him about it.”

“Come outside a minute, and I’ll show you what I had in mind.” They stepped out into the dark. Grebbel led way up through the trees until the lights were almost all hidden. “You’re a friend of Karl’s, aren’t you? It’s a pity he couldn’t have come in with us.”

“I’ve helped him grind his mirror sometimes.”

“So you’d know if it would be available for something like this in a few days.”

“The silvering went much more quickly than he was hoping. But he’s very protective of it. I don’t think he would let anyone else use it.”

“You have talked to him about that, then.”

“We talk sometimes, when we grind the mirror, yes.”

“And you’re not sure about what you’ve got yourself into here, are you?”

“A few doubts—that’s only human, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Grebbel. He had positioned himself so that Schuhman was silhouetted against the moonlit clouds. He tensed himself and flexed his fingers. “It’s perfectly human. But very dangerous.”

Grebbel lurched against a tree and stumbled into a patch of moonlight. His hands were dark and sticky. They looked like talons grafted onto his wrists.

Water. He could hear a stream. A few seconds with running water and those hands would be his again. A few moments more and his heart would cease its hollow battering, his throat would ease, he would be able to breathe again. There was enough moonlight, but the world swam and blurred. The cold was making his eyes water, that was it, or sweat was running into them. It was important to explain these things, to keep a grip on reality, so there would be no doubt who he was and that he was still in command of his actions. Otherwise the mewling idiot that was trying to take control of his brain would come back, and they would have beaten him after all.