The Creatures of Man (59 page)

After that she broke out of warp momentarily, got herself coordinated on a star beyond which was an entry through the gas cloud banked on this side of the Independency, and returned to warpflight on the new course.

Then there was nothing to do but relax into dormancy from pill-time to pill-time, for the several standard days the journey would take. And despite the all-out search the Lontastans were making, this routine went undisturbed.

The gas clouds that lay between the Halstayne Independency and Earth accounted for the Independency's existence. As humanity began spreading out among the stars, forming the colonial societies that eventually became the Primgranese Commonality and the Lontastan Federation, the explorers moved along the edges of the clouds without attempting to penetrate. Much later, when gas-free passageways through the clouds were found and charted, neither the Commonality nor the Federation saw much potential in the hard-to-reach handful of habitable worlds the clouds concealed.

These worlds went more or less by default to the individuals and small groups who, for various reasons, wanted no part in the econo-war. Gweanvin had never felt much affinity for any such drop-out philosophy; in fact, she had never visited the Independency before. But it was part of her job to know her way about the inhabited portion of the galaxy. She had learned the charts of the passageways through the clouds, and the locations and descriptions of the habitable worlds within.

Also, she knew enough of the down-hill history of the Independency to have some idea of what to expect on those worlds. No more than a century ago, when fair numbers of people were still moving into the Independency, it was a fairly successful society. But of late the movement had been in the other direction. The more capable Halstaynians were realizing that a society that forbade the competitive spirit was, in essence, a denial of the basic nature of man . . . of life in general, for that matter. And being unrealistic, that kind of society had to either change or fall.

The Halstaynians who could see this flaw for what it was usually found their personal solutions to it by immigrating to the Federation or Commonality, rather than staying home and pushing revolutionary reform against an opposition composed principally of a formidable mass of public inertia. As a result, the Independency as a whole had rusticated. It no longer even tried to keep up technologically with the econo-warring societies. What technology it had once had was falling into disuse. The population was dwindling.

All of which was all right with Gweanvin. If that was the way the Halstaynians wanted it, she mused, that was the way they could have it. All she asked was a simple recharge of her power pack—and surely that much technology was still left.

She was more than halfway through the series of short, zigzagging warps required to follow the charted passage through the cloud when she felt a warning twinge in her side. The power pack was advising her it was ninety per cent drained. She grunted. But at least she knew now precisely how much power she had left, and how stingy in its use she would have to be.

No corner-cutting was advisable going through the passage, however. When she came into view of the Halstaynian suns she calculated she had enough power left for one sizeable or two short jumps.

Okay, which planet was it to be? Bernswa was reportedly the most advanced Halstaynian world but unless she had greatly underestimated her remaining power it was out of reach. And Felis, with a so-so reputation, was barely within range. The only world that could be called close was Arbora, which was so far gone that the Halstaynians had blithely designated it a wilderness preserve nearly fifty years ago.

Gweanvin ate a food pill while she pondered the matter. This was a crucial decision. If she made the wrong choice, she could wind up stranded in space . . . and the Halstaynians might not have a functioning space-rescue service these days. Or, if she went to Arbora, she could be stranded there, too, if there were no functioning power supplies.

She needed more information before deciding. She tuned her comm receiver to the open-broadcast channels and drifted in space for several hours while she listened attentively for a few useful facts. There was little to hear except music, most of it ancient, interspersed with trivial gab. But there were a couple of mentions of persons on Arbora, which assured her that world wasn't totally deserted.

In any event, she decided it almost had to be Arbora, because of the possibility that she was overestimating her remaining power. That could be the only world actually within reach.

She was making the painstaking calculations needed for a precise warp when a bogie flicked into existence, a small glowing spot on the detection field surrounding her head. Whoever it was couldn't have been more than a thousand miles away, she saw, suggesting that it was someone who had followed her through the cloud.

A Lontastan agent on her tail? Very likely, indeed.

Gweanvin had gone full inert while listening to her comm, to save a trickle of power. Thus, she would not be as visible to the bogie as the bogie was to her. In fact, she might easily be mistaken for a chunk of space debris, so long as she remained inert.

She played possum and watched. A couple of minutes passed, and the bogie flicked out, the person having warped off. But others might be following, so she continued to watch.

Nobody else appeared, which was a bit puzzling. Was that bogie a single Lontastan agent, playing a lone hand on a hunch? Well, if so, Gweanvin herself had a hunch who the agent would be.

She had left clues enough behind to give somebody as sharp as Marvis Jans a clear hint of what might have happened. Marvis would know that she hadn't blasted her way out of the Gordeen building with a zerburst pistol, for the obvious reason that as a security measure hardly any such weapons were allowed inside the building. Marvis would have accounted for those weapons quickly. Then she would have checked (if she hadn't already) to be sure the building's energy outlets were fused against short-circuit overdraws, also as a security measure.

And Marvis would therefore conclude that the likelihood was very good that she had used her power pack implant, for lack of any other sufficient source, to blast through the wall. A little more checking would reveal how long it had been since Gweanvin had gotten a recharge. Marvis could then guess she would have to head for the Independency as the only non-enemy territory within reach.

But it would be a guess, not a sure thing. And it would be like Marvis—or like herself if their positions were reversed—to play the guess on her own.

Would Marvis investigate Arbora first?

Perhaps. The agent's movements were not predictable. She could see no percentage in delaying planetfall any longer. The sooner she was on the surface of a world, the sooner she could make herself impossible to find.

She warped for Arbora . . . and missed. Only by some two hundred thousand miles, but that was enough to require a mini-warp approach jump. This brought her within five hundred miles of the surface. There she went full inert and let Arbora's gravity bring her down, knowing she would be less noticeable that way than in a semi-inert approach, and also would use less energy.

When she hit air her shield screen reacted automatically, protecting her from friction and heat, and spreading into a wing conformation to slow her fall and allow her to steer. Not that it seemed to matter where she landed . . . all was field and forest below, with no indications of where the people might be.

She angled toward a small grassy valley as she neared the surface, waiting until she was down to one hundred feet before trying to go semi-inert to soften the landing. Nothing happened when she did. She came down with a jarring thump, slowed only by ground-effect compression of the air between her shield and the surface at the last instant.

She rolled over and sat up in the long grass. Her shield was off, and her respiration had gone on normal exterior mode.

Once more she tried to semi-inert, without result. Which could mean only that her power pack was totally drained. Just to be sure, she tried the shield screen again, and it did not respond.

She was definitely on Arbora until she found a recharger, and she would do her searching for it on leg-power alone.

But more urgent was the subject of food. The instant her breathing had gone external, bringing her the varied aromas of field and forest, she had become ravenous. She had been on the food-concentrate pills and stomach balloon for an uncomfortably long flight, and needed something solid.

She stood up and walked through the tall weeds to the small brook that gurgled through the valley, her eyes searching for anything edible. Arbora had, she recalled, a seeded Earth ecology—which obviously had turned out better than most other Halstaynian experiments. She recognized a number of briars and bushes that produced edible fruit in season, but the coolness of the air and the yellowish hues of the not-distant eaves of the forest told her this was not the season. It was autumn in this region of Arbora.

At the brook she knelt and drank, and splashed her face with the clear sweet water. Standing, she considered following the brook downstream, but the thick growth of brambles and weeds would make difficult walking. Instead, she headed uphill toward the nearest trees.

There her luck improved. Some of the trees were hickories, the ground beneath them liberally sprinkled with small nuts. She spent two hours smashing their tough hulls between two stones and picking out and eating their tiny but rich kernels.

Then she moved on to a rocky bald on top of the hill. It was late afternoon by now and she scanned the horizon in all directions, searching for a wisp of smoke or any other sign of human presence.

"Hey!"
she yelled at the top of her voice.
"Anybody home?"

The startled birds in her vicinity obligingly ceased their chirping while she listened for a reply. Nothing.

She turned around and yelled again with the same lack of results.

So . . . start walking—or try to build a fire and some kind of shelter for the night. The low position of the sun made her choose the latter.

Try to build a fire . . . ?

The quickest way was to strike a spark between rock and metal into easily-lit tinder, but she had thrown away everything metallic when she cleaned out her pouch. She tried hitting rock on rock instead, but the stone thereabouts was wrong for the job. It crumbled instead of sparking.

So . . . she would rub two sticks together, making a groove in one with the end of the other.

She tried that for a vigorous forty minutes and was surprised when the groove finally began smoking. She dumped the spark into a handful of cedar bark fiber she had gathered and fanned it into flame. A few minutes later she had a roaring fire going.

For a while she sat beside her fire, resting her arms and rubbing the fatigue out of them as twilight deepened. Then she rose and began searching the nearby trees for pine and cedar bough to break off for bedding. That would be better than a mound of dry leaves, which were certain to be insect-infested.

"Huy! Was that you yelling a while back?" a man's voice called out of the gloom.

Gweanvin turned, trying to see him. "Yeah . . . I didn't hear you answer."

"I was stalking a deer at the time. Couldn't make noise," the man explained. His form moved closer to the fire, and she saw he was carrying something large over a shoulder which he heaved to the ground a moment later. "I finally got within bowshot and brought her down. Then I started looking for you, and saw your fire."

He turned to look at her, and she could see his face dimly in the flickering light. He was clean-shaven, which she had not expected from a buckskin-clad man of the wilderness, and appeared to be in his thirties.

"Looks like you've strayed a long way from home, young lady," he said. "You from Bernswa?"

"Farther away than that. The Commonality," she replied. "My power pack's exhausted. I had to land here to get a recharge."

"A recharge on Arbora?" he laughed. "Well . . . probably you can, at that. There ought to be a few rechargers scattered about. I don't know for sure, though."

"You don't know?" demanded Gweanvin. "Where do
you
go for a recharge?"

He chuckled. "The only thing I recharge is my stomach. And I'm about ready to do that right now, if you'll let that fire die down to a bed of coals fit to cook over. You hungry?"

"I'm starving."

"More than plenty for both of us." He slid the large backpack off his shoulders and busied himself with knife and deer carcass.

"Then you don't have a life-support system?" she asked.

"Just Arbora. No implants. I guess that sounds primitive to you, doesn't it?"

"It sounds restrictive," she said diplomatically, not wanting to offend the source of her supper. "Doesn't anyone on Arbora use implants?"

"A few do. That's why I say you might be able to get a recharge. There's a settlement called High Pines about five days hiking west of here, and about eight days to the southeast is Lopat. You could almost call Lopat a town, I suppose."

"What's in between?"

He shrugged and motioned vaguely at the surrounding woods. "Just this. Good hunting country. And not many hunters. I don't average running into somebody three times a year out here."

Gweanvin considered this information. At last she said, "Then I'd better start walking for High Pines in the morning, if you'll tell me the way."

"Sure." he agreed. "Or maybe you should head for Lopat. It's a longer trip, but . . . well, I can't say for sure which place is more likely to have a recharger, but I'd guess Lopat is."

There was a silence. Gweanvin was waiting for the man to offer some assistance in her search, perhaps hiking to Lopat while she went to High Pines. But he made no offer. Perhaps the primitive life deadened the chivalrous inclinations . . . or perhaps he needed to know her better to exert himself in her behalf . . .

"My name is Gweanvin. Gweanny. Gweanvin Oster."