The Creatures of Man (52 page)

"Well, what did you think of it?" Tosen asked.

"A vast empty place with hard echoes. That's about as close as I can describe it," Mergly replied thoughtfully. "Even with you along for company the emptiness felt overwhelming."

"I didn't go along," objected Tosen. "I stayed right here in my own comfortable noggin."

Mergly frowned. "Oh? Perhaps you didn't, at that. What I sensed, I believe, was that you had been there before me. Maybe some of you rubbed off inside."

Tosen laughed. "Could be. I felt half exhausted when I came out." "So do I." Mergly yawned, and stared at the Bauble from beneath drooping eyelids.

"I'm going home," said Tosen heading for the door. "Tell Rogers I'll contact him around midday to see if he thinks it worthwhile for me to stand another watch."

"O.K.," replied Mergly. "I'll suggest that he take a feel inside the Bauble, too. He might have some ideas on how to make it more homey."

Walking down the hallway Tosen replied, "O.K., no harm in asking him. But I feel the Bauble's flaws are too basic to be remedied easily or cheaply." He paused outside the lab to gaze upward into the clear, starry night. Then he activated his transport implants and soared up and westward toward his home. "At the least," he added, "we would have to start again from scratch and build a completely different kind of Bauble. What would the Council say to that?"

Mergly emoted such a violent shudder that Tosen chuckled.

"I'm glad you can feel amused," complained Mergly with a flash of anger. "Unfortunately, I can't share that don't-give-a-damn attitude you've taken on. It smacks of non-competitiveness to me."

Tosen flinched. "Sorry," he said. "I got us into this thing, and I'd have no business turning deserter now."

"I didn't say you were a deserter," Mergly denied.

"No, but you felt it . . . or thought it." Suddenly Tosen gasped and whirled his body, searching the upper atmosphere for sight of Mergly.
"Say, where the hell are you, anyway?"

"Why . . . right here in the lab, in my body."

Tosen watched through Mergly's eyes as the Information man looked away from the Bauble to search the room for the man he had been talking to. "Where are
you?
" Mergly demanded, then added, "Oh . . . I . . . see."

The damned thing works! Tosen exulted.

But just for us?
from Mergly, whose mind was tumbling confusedly.

Sure! The Bauble's not a living telepath like Monte. It's merely a gadget! It doesn't reach out. We have to reach in. Give it our individual punched cards, so to speak. And so far, only you and I have reached in! You felt I had been there before you, remember. That was because it had my pattern. It has yours, too. I'm going to flip on this antique toothmike of mine and call Rogers, while you warp for the capital to give the Council the news!

Very well, but . . . but this is difficult to take in, Rof. Not thirty minutes ago you had me convinced the Bauble couldn't possibly work, that the whole project was based solely on your wishful thinking and misinformation . . . 

Tosen thought a big happy smile. Dave, we'd all still be living in Earth caves if we hadn't wished for things we couldn't possibly have. And as for misinformation . . . 

Yes?
Mergly prompted.

Well, when misinformation says the impossible can be done instead of the other way around, then it just might turn out to be the truest information you ever heard!

The AWOL Guardsmen had taken over an E-type wildworld called Jopat, the Primgranese contingent holding the northern hemisphere and those from the Lontastan Federation the southern. The tropics between served as their battleground.

And a battle was in progress as Gweanvin Oster approached the planet. She could see nothing of it, even with her amplisight blinked on, from where she hesitated fifty thousand miles out. The barbs had evidently agreed to limit their combat zone to the ground and atmosphere—perhaps because space-fights were too deadly even for them.

What Gweanvin could not see, however, she could hear quite distinctly over the comm implant in her left ear. Cryptic commands and responses were snapping like verbal firecrackers among the Primgranese forces, along with savage yells of glee and occasional grunts of dismay. She had no trouble recognizing the deep bark of Spart Dargow, general of the Primgranese barbs, as he bellowed his orders.

Using her psionic comm tuner, Gweanvin scanned the band and found the frequency being used by the Lontastan forces. All she could get was a meaningless garble, since her unscrambler could not handle the Lontastan code. She listened only a moment before tuning back to General Dargow.

" . . . Red-seven, red-seven, horseback dawn, horseback dawn! . . . Jato. Blue-forty, jato, damn it!  . . . Red-ten, red-ten, washout, washout!"

As a frontliner herself, Gweanvin had worked with Guardsmen enough to be familiar with their command language. But she could make only limited sense out of what she was hearing. Dargow was using a couple of terms she had never heard before, such as "horseback dawn." And she wasn't sure such familiar commands as "jato" meant the same thing here on Jopat as back home.

Here, after all, the language was being used in a situation that had never existed before—a pitched battle between massed forces of Guardsmen. In the econo-war, Guardsmen guarded. They defended their worlds, whether in the Primgranese Commonality or the Lontastan Federation, against entry by such enemy frontliners as spies, saboteurs and subverters. Occasionally a squad would vector out a few light-years to the assistance of a returning and hotly pursued frontliner, and a brief running battle would ensue. But never anything so insane as this combat on a wildworld.

Gweanvin grimaced in disgust. What boneheads these genetic barbarians were! Very useful in keeping the econo-war honest, very competitive, very high-survival—but boneheads!

She went full inert and let her momentum carry her slowly downward, her velocity perhaps ten thousand miles per hour relative to the planet. Except for being hungry after five days in space, she had no reason to hurry. Could be that it might be best to let the battle end before she tried to land. She had now located the scene of conflict as the late-afternoon zone, and she guessed hostilities would end by the time night fell if not before.

A Lontastan voice, speaking uncoded, suddenly boomed at her: "Hey, you at forty-seven thousand altitude! Identify yourself!"

Gweanvin's zerburst pistol was in her right hand instantly and her detector implants out full. She had trouble spotting her challengers, with the mass of the planet behind them and they only a few thousand miles up. There appeared to be about twenty of them, hanging south of the battle area, probably as rear guards and observers.

She tongued her toothmike and replied: "I'm Gweanvin Oster of the Commonality. Don't let me interrupt your stupid game. I'll wait here till it's over."

"Like hell you will!" boomed the response. "You got no business up there! You're south of the equator! Haul it north, doxie, or we'll blow you north!"

"Just try it, foghead!" she snarled back, and went on with a suggestion that the Lontastan go amuse himself in a manner both vulgar and physically impossible.

The twenty vague specks vanished abruptly. Gweanvin held her position a precise two-fifths of a second, then warped away on a minivector of some five thousand miles eastward. At that, she moved a trifle too soon to sucker the entire squad. Only six zerburst lances were fired, to terminate into flares of supersolar energy around the spot she had vacated. Gweanvin fired two quick shots of her own at the sourcepoints of two lances and vectored away quickly without waiting to see the results.

"Gweanvin Oster, what the hell are you doing?"
General Dargow's voice was blasting at her. He sounded angry and concerned.
"Vector north, girl!"

"Stay out of this, General Bonehead," she snapped, making another miniwarp when she found herself without a clear target.

"You're breaking our rules!" he protested furiously.

Her new breakout point put her close enough to one Lontastan for her to drill him cleanly through the belly. Her lance flared late, however, a hundred miles on the other side of him. Still, he would be one sick barb for a couple of weeks. "So what?" she snorted as she fired.

"So we'll come help the Lonnies blast you, if you keep fooling around!" yelled Dargow. "You'll still be gas when the universe coalesces!"

Her new minivector carried Gweanvin straight down, as close as she could warp toward the atmosphere without traumatizing herself. Here she had a few seconds respite from detection. "Send men you don't want!" she retorted warningly. As soon as she had the Lontastans above her well located, she miniwarped into their midst. This time she stayed long enough to get off three shots before making another quick drop out of normspace. She had an advantage in that she could shoot at any target she detected, whereas the Lontastans needed an extra split-second to make sure an unwarping figure was not one of their comrades.

She grinned. Playing a lone hand had its good points.

Dargow's voice was still yelling in her ear, threatening to send Primgranese fighters out to help the Lonnies blast her. But she made no response. Dargow was smart enough to know that mixing a squad of Grannies with the Lonnies would only add to the confusion already working for her, so his threat could be considered idle. She concentrated on her deadly game.

A few seconds later she noted that Dargow's yells were no longer directed at her but at some Lontastan commander.
"Pull your men back!"
he was urging.
"Ignore her. She's just an interloper from back home, not working with me!"

The general's new tack suddenly worked. The space around Gweanvin emptied as the Lonnie squad warped away.

She blinked and looked around. Far below three bodies were tumbling planetward. Two other squadmen, evidently wounded and with damaged transport implants, were going down in controlled inert mode. That made a Lonnie casualty list of six, she figured, because she was sure she had flared one into vapor.

Below, the barb battle had ended, too, evidently broken off short because of the distraction she had created. She could hear a bedlam of pull-back commands over her comm as she vectored northward and began descending toward Primgranese territory.

"Gweanvin Oster, what the hell are you up to?" Dargow snarled.

"Coming in for a landing," she replied nonchalantly. "Give me a location."

"You know what I mean!" he stormed.

"Yes, I know. I also know I'm not playing your damn-fool game so I don't have to abide by its silly rules. I wasn't bothering the Lonnies, until they came up and started shooting. Are you going to give me a location?"

"No! I'm telling you to warp for home right now."

"Nuts to that. I've been in space five days and I'm starving. Welcome or not, I'm coming down to eat."

"Okay, damn it! Somebody will meet you at forty-one north, four forty-five realtime solar. But tomorrow you head for home, girl."

"That's tomorrow's problem," she replied.

As she hit the fringe of Jopat's atmosphere her shieldscreen stiffened automatically, protecting her body from air friction. At the same time the screen bulged out to act as braking wings. A few minutes later her breathing went exterior. After five days with nothing to do, her nose sniffed the fresh smell of Jopat's air with appreciation.

She holstered her gun as she approached the location the general had given her. There she detected only one barb waiting for her, hovering at five thousand feet. She swooped to a halt six feet in front of him and saw that it was Nathel Gromon.

He grinned at her. "Well, well, Skinny Hips." He chuckled. "Come all this way because you can't live without me. Right?"

"Meatheads aren't my type," she retorted.

He chuckled some more. "And you're not old Spart Dargow's type, chicken. He's mad enough to skin you."

"This conversation reminds me of how hungry I am, for some reason," she said.

"Okay. Follow me down."

The barb dropped groundward, leveled off sharply just above the treetops and headed westward. Gweanvin trailed him closely.

"One thing puzzles me about you, Nathel," she said.

"What's that?"

"Most of you idiots came to Jopat because the econo-war back home was fizzling, and out here you and the Lonnies could have a little war of your own. That made a primitive kind of sense under the circumstances. There was nothing for genetic barbarians to do at home, and nobody seemed to know how to get the econo-war heated up again. I even dropped out myself for a couple of years . . ."

"I remember."

"But you stuck out the doldrums at home, Nathel. You didn't leave until three months ago. That was after our Bauble telepathic communicators had been developed to put the Commonality back on even terms with the Lontastans and their telepath, Monte. The econo-war was coming to life again. Guardsmen were needed—especially for planets where Baubles were being installed. There was the prospect of plenty of action for you. And that was precisely when you pulled out. Why?"

Nathel Gromon grimaced. "You said the dirty word. Bauble."

"What does the Bauble have to do with it?"

"It opened my eyes," he grunted. "It showed me how other people really think of us barbs."

"How do they think?"

"Oh . . . that we're stupid."

"Hell, did you need telepathy to find that out?" She snorted. "I've called you stupid a hundred times! Did you think I was kidding?"

Gromon frowned uncomfortably. "It's not the same thing. You and me mentacommed once, if you recall, after they got the Bauble on Prima Gran."

Gweanvin nodded. "How could I forget?"

"Well, the way you thought about me was okay. You think kind of hard and snotty about everybody, did you know that? But all them pencil-pushers . . . it's like I'm some kind of animal, the way they look at it."