The World Swappers (2 page)

CHAPTER III

There were more than fifty people working around the excavation, and yet never in his young life had Anty Dreean felt so completely alone. Beyond the harsh brilliance of the arc lights the alien stars of Regis’ sky shone jewel-bright, jewel-hard, out of the polar night. His breath, and that of all the other men and women present, misted whitely as they exhaled; they clapped their hands and stamped their feet in spite of the encumbering parkas and fur breeches they wore.

He stood at the control panel of the lighting system, alert to answer any calls for increased brilliance in the pit before him. This pit was a hundred feet long and perhaps twenty feet wide at its widest. Moving methodically along its floor, carrying sensitive detection instruments, were half a dozen men and women. Occasionally they broke the pattern of their coming and going to claw loose some promisingly hard lump from the frozen soil, crumble it, examine the result, and throw it aside before resuming their task.

An intruder might have guessed at an archeological survey in progress. The guess would have been more than half wrong. For this was Regis, loneliest outpost of the human race, further from Earth than any other planet men had ever visited, and people had come here so lately and in such small numbers that nothing extracted from the ground would have said anything significant about their doings.

Yet the guess would have been at least partly right, too. The technique was similar to archeological excavation; the painstaking thoroughness was identical. But the searchers were not after anything as neutral as knowledge for its own sake–they were desperately seeking a warning of danger. A danger that might be the greatest the human race had ever faced.

In spite of his awareness of the consequences, Anty Dreean found himself wishing that the waiting might end and that they might find the certainty they feared.

At the end of the pit nearest to where Anty stood, Wu, the director of the expedition on Regis, and his senior aide, Katya Ivanovna, moved like grotesque, oversized dolls. In Wu’s hands was a sonar detector; its staring telltale eye flickered and changed as its beam recorded the presence of solid matter in the walls of the pit, and Katya dug at it with a trowel. Anty leaned forward, wondering if this was going to be it.

Abruptly, he was recalled to his task by a sharp command–the voice had probably been Lotus Scharf’s. He stepped up the level of illumination at the opposite end of the pit, and people all around, as though moved by a premonition, hesitated and turned to see what had happened.

Something glittered in Lotus’ gauntleted hands. She beckoned urgently to Wu, who hurried across to her. For a few moments their hooded heads were bent together as they conferred.

From the rim of the excavation someone uttered the question which had been burning for long moments in Anty’s own mind; he strained forward to hear the answer.

A little stiffly, a little solemnly, Wu raised his head and spoke. “It’s a food container,” he said. “An empty can–and it’s not one of ours.”

So the Others
had
been to Regis. And that meant they might come back.

The gathering began to break up; someone went over to the transfax and started it, so that the leakage of light from its tremendous field of pent-up power made the landscape like day. Wu handed his sonar detector over the edge of the pit, and scrambled up after it, as did the rest of the workers. Only Anty Dreean seemed to be frozen to immobility.

In the few seconds it took for Wu and his companions to leave the pit, Anty found time to review the whole series of events that had climaxed here, now, on the permafrozen tundra of Regis’ north pole. It had begun a very long way away, on Wu’s home world of K’ung-fu-tse, when a laboratory worker engaged in measuring certain atomic resonance frequencies had found his results to be disturbed by vibrations in the very fabric of space.

There were thousands of sets of vibrations such as these now, spreading through the galaxy like the wake of so many ships. That was exactly what they were–the wake of ships, driven faster than light, and straining the framework of the universe. They could be ignored, of course; they produced no noticeable effects on anything at a distance greater than a few thousand miles. Except when it came to such delicate operations as studying the interior of atomic nuclei.

There was a standard technique for dealing with the problem, tedious, but adequate, which consisted of determining the source of the vibrations to a high degree of accuracy and then calculating what allowance to make for their influence. Swearing, the laboratory worker proceeded to apply the method–and found that the source was in the wrong place.

It lay out towards Regis. And because he happened–by a minor miracle–to be a friend of Wu’s and party to a good many secrets which most people did not share, the worker felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck.

There should not have been any vibrations of this kind in the neighborhood of Regis. No human-built ship had ever been to Regis. Men had visited the planet, true, but they had traveled by a different route.

So he had shouted a warning.

They had known for a very long time that the laws of chance alone insisted that man was not unique in the cosmos; somewhere there must be other creatures with an urge towards the stars and the technical ability to fulfill that urge. For a shorter time, they had known what the nearest non-human space-going species was, and where it held sway. That was why men had come to Regis, a world ideally situated as a base from which to keep an eye on their potential competitors.

But now–!

The Others had been to Regis already. What if they were to come back? Much of this world’s surface was temperate and therefore too warm for their comfort; here at the pole the climate was quite suitable, though–and even if the prevailing planetary average made it unlikely they would decide to plant a colony here, there was always a risk. Look at what men had done on Ymir, that icebox of a world!

Anty felt a chill that was not all due to his environment.

Slowly, he returned to the reality around him, and heard his name being called. They had cut off the power from the floodlights, and were now working by the leakage from the transfax field; its glare shifted irregularly from white to green and back, and when it was in the green phase everything looked ghastly. Someone was waving to him from beside the transfax platform. Katya.

Dutifully, but despondently, Anty answered the call.

“Anty, I hate doing this to you,” Katya said as he came within earshot. “Only there doesn’t seem to be much choice. I’m going to ask you to stay behind here for a bit longer and see what else you can turn up that the Others left behind. We’ve got some really high-pressure planning to do.”

“And you can get on with it better if I’m not in the way,” Anty said with acid sarcasm. “What do you want the rest of that garbage for? Isn’t simple proof enough for you?”

Katya’s broad Slavonic face reflected momentary indecision; then she put one enormously bulky arm companionably around Anty’s shoulders. “Anty, honey, I know how you feel, believe me. But what can we do about it, except our best? We aren’t trying to shuffle you off out of the way; it’s just that we need every scrap of information we can get out of this hole here. How big the visitors’ expedition was; how it was equipped–get me?”

Anty took a deep breath and mastered himself. “I’m sorry, Katya. It’s–well, it’s everything put together, I guess. Being the newest recruit here on Regis, and being practically the only non-Earthborn person–”

Katya made to say somehing, but Anty rushed on. “Yes, I know what you’re going to say. All of us have to go through the experience of being Johnny-comelately, and there are so many more people on Earth than on all the other worlds put together that it’s only natural for me to be on my own, and that with my lack of experience I can be more valuable doing the dirty work than helping to draft policy–I
know,
blast it! I simply can’t make myself compute with it all the time.”

Katya gave him a broad grin. “You’ve won half your battle already, Anty. It takes some people an awfully long time to learn to make frank admissions like that one! But there’s another thing you ought to get through your head, and if you get that straight as well, you’ll be fully equipped.”

Anty nodded, his eyes on Katyas face.

“The human mind, Anty–and remember, ‘human’ includes you–just isn’t fitted to live with the certainty of impending disaster twenty-four hours a day. You have to have some sort of relief, or you’ll break down. Laugh! Sing! Let yourself go!”

“Laugh?” echoed Anty sourly. “What at?”

“Look for something. The expression on Counce’s face, for example–can’t you picture him when he hears that his carefully worked out plans for handling Bassett will have to be chopped to pieces?”

“You call that funny? I’d have said it was a shame!”

Katya shrugged. “It’s part of the universe-as-it-is. To give you a clearer example: half an hour ago we didn’t know that the Others had been to Regis. We know now. You’re thinking of it as a disaster. But damnation, it isn’t! The disaster would have been if we
hadn’t
found out; the actual discovery is a relief.”

Anty turned it over in his mind, and at length gave a reluctant nod. Katya clapped him on the back approvingly.

“Lotus is staying here for the time being too,” she said. “We’d spare more people if we could, because we desperately need to find out what’s down that hole. But we can’t, so it’s up to you and her.”

Again Anty nodded, and with a parting smile Katya turned and climbed through the transfax back to Main Base.

Practically everything else had gone by now; all the time he had been talking with Katya the others had been manhandling the equipment up the ramp to the transfax platform, and he was startled to see that there was now nothing left except two shovels, one large floodlight, and Lotus herself. She was offering him one of the shovels.

“Shall we get busy?” she suggested in her dry, precise voice. “The quicker we get started, the quicker we can get the hell out.”

Anty nodded, accepted the shovel, and jumped down into the pit. Digging! Actually pushing this hard ground aside with his own strength! He might as well have stayed home on Boreas and lived a nice comfortable life without knowing about the transfax, and the existence of the Others, and the hundred and one other uncomfortable secrets to which he had been initiated since he’d come to Regis.

The transfax went off, and night returned to the area. Glancing about him, Anty was struck by the sterile ugliness of the scene. Yet to the alien visitors who had come here the landscape would not have been repulsive; to them, this bare ground layered with frost and patched with snowdrifts would have been familiar–perhaps beautiful.

He tried to imagine the view through alien eyes. There would have been their ship; they would have scouted the planet and found it uninhabited except by the blobs of primal protoplasm in its soupy seas; then, secure, they would have chosen the most comfortable spot for a landing, camped here, and gone about their business.

When they were done, they would have buried their garbage and sterilized the local soil for fear of contaminating it with their own symbiotic microorganisms. And they would have gone away. Perhaps they would never return. There were more worlds that men had considered and discarded than there were worlds where they had planted colonies.

His shovel chinked against something, and he turned out the first alien artifact he had ever held in his own hands. Awe filled him as he picked it up and looked at it. It was no more than a broken cathode-ray tube, shattered perhaps by careless handling. But it had been conceived in an alien mind, and that was what counted.

Anty’s misery evaporated like frost in sunlight. This useless piece of scrap he held was recognizable, but it was
different.
How to communicate the excitement that difference inspired in him? There was the problem in a nutshell: how to make people find differences like this exciting, and not frightening. It
could
be done, couldn’t it? It would
have
to be done.

CHAPTER IV

The interior of the submersible–which was in fact a perfectly ordinary fishguard’s craft belonging to Dateline Fisheries and unofficially borrowed for the occasion–was very crowded. Half the available space was taken up by the transfax platform; the robot mechanic supervising its operation blocked off access to the dolphin kennel, and the rest of the cabin was nearly completely filled by Ram Singh and his flowing white beard, and by Falconetta, looking as usual quite dishearteningly beautiful.

When Counce arrived, therefore, he perforce remained on the transfax platform. At first he said nothing. There was no sound except the burr of the propulsor and the hum of the ventilation fans as they dealt with the heat generated by operating the transfax field.

During the pregnant silence, he removed from the belt of his shorts the neatly packaged video-audio unit which had kept the others apprised of his doings. It consisted of a flexible strip of plastic covered with printed circuitry and ostensibly decorated with twin multifaceted bosses on either side of the fastening. Bassett had dismissed it without a second thought. That was about the only thing that had gone exactly according to plan.

Weighing the unit meditatively in his hand, Counce lowered his body to a squatting position and said, “Some time, Ram, we are going to
have
to figure what’s missing from a psych-profile. Didn’t you assure me Bassett would be confused enough by the circumstances of my arrival to let me go and ask no questions?”

Ram bent his noble head as if to avoid Counce’s gaze. “There’s always one unpredictable factor–how the individual will react to your actual physical presence. I’m sorry if you consider that I failed you, Saïd. Meantime, though, I think we should be gone from here before Bassett returns; he sent his ship into orbit at about six hundred miles, and it will not take him long to land again.”

Stiffly, the old man turned to the pilot desk, and lost himself in the careful maneuvering of the vessel. Counce threw the belt over a nearby hook and sat back against the wall.

“I think that was hardly kind of you,” said Falconetta, passing her right hand through her long black hair. The tresses rustled on the gold lamé of her sari. Counce gave a shrug.

“I agree. Sorry. I just don’t feel in a mood to apologize right now. After all, we were relying on Ram–”

“Exactly. If anybody in the galaxy could have prepared a workable plan, it was Ram. That his idea didn’t come off merely shows that we’ve all been at fault in underestimating Bassett. It doesn’t detract from Ram’s ability.” She turned her smoky-yellow eyes speculatively in the direction of the pilot desk. “He knows so damned much about applied psychology, I sometimes wonder why he isn’t dictator of Earth instead of producer of a video show.”

“You know quite well why he’s not. Like ninety-nine per cent of the susceptible males on Earth, he’s hopelessly in love with you, and he wouldn’t settle for being dictator of Earth if he couldnt dictate to you too. Which he couldn’t.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Falconetta with a trace of weariness. “But I’ve gotten so used to making people fall for me that it’s a positive relief to be with you, Saïd. I know you don’t give a damn one way or the other.”

“Hello, human being,” said Counce, and quirked his lips.

“Human yourself,” said Falconetta with a fleeting smile. “Seriously, though, Said–I know I don’t have any say in the matter, but I think it might be as well for me to be ugly next time, if you follow me.” She looked down approvingly at her slender, graceful body, and shook her head. “I shall miss this … but I’m desperately afraid of coming to rely too much on physical attractiveness and not enough on my own ability.”

“I don’t think there’s much risk of that. But I’ll try and drop a hint. Were you beautiful before?”

“Not as beautiful as I am now. I turned a few heads. But when I found myself like this, it was a–a shock, you know?”

Counce nodded. “It’s always a shock. It’s always different. But adapting to the difference is like riding a bicycle or swimming–once you’ve learned, the talent of adjustment stays with you. I should know.”

Falconetta nodded. “How many times have you died, Saïd? I don’t think I’ve ever asked.”

“Five.” Counce’s eyes seemed for a moment to lose their focus, as if he was staring into memory. “The first time is always the worst.”

Falconetta shuddered. “I hope so. Did you ever go back and look at yourself?”

“No. Did you?” Counce regarded her curiously; she gave a slow nod.

“It was back on Shiva, where I was born. I went and looked at the headstone on my own grave. But the thought that there was the name I had called my own, and the idea that under that stone was the flesh I had lived inside of–ugh! I shall never do it again.”

Ram finished setting the course on the pilot desk; now he turned the chair to face the others, and Counce made a small movement that accepted him into the discussion.

“Where precisely did we go wrong?” Ram inquired. “We followed you on the screen, of course, but there’s certain information–atmosphere, if you like–which doesn’t come through.”

Counce spread his hands helplessly. “Mainly, I think we failed to realize just what an intelligent man Bassett is. And by intelligent, I mean adjusted to facts as they present themselves. His selective inattention level must be incredibly low.”

“I wish we could give him the facts,” Falconetta said musingly. “He is the sort of man we need.”

“Not quite. If intelligence were enough, we could appeal to him–intelligence is logical, after all. It’s pride and self-esteem that present the difficulties, and Bassett has plenty of those.” Counce punched fist into palm. “We need him and what he can do for us. He needs us too, though he doesn’t know what for, wouldn’t admit it if he did–and in any case we can’t tell him. Paradoxical, isn’t it?”

Ram exhaled with a gusty sigh. “Yes,” he said. “Like most very intelligent men, he is expert at looking after himself. Which implies that you and I would not rate very high on any scale of practical intelligence.”

“Because we spend a stupidly large amount of time worrying about other people?” Falconetta suggested.

“Exactly. Check the school records over the centuries –the infant geniuses have gone on to become business giants and administrators, not social reformers, artists, poets. Intelligence manifested as common sense.”

“Not quite,” objected Counce. “Common sense ought to prevent Bassett from doing as he intends to do. If his plans materalized, the thing that would please him most would be that he was the man who opened up the outworlds, who made the outworlds other Earths. And that’s the most dangerous fiction of all, because they
aren’t!
An outworlder is a human being, but he’s not an Earthman, and Bassett would treat him as if he were. You can’t reduce millions of unique individuals to a single common pattern; if they’re all being made to behave according to a norm, most of them are being driven to act in ways more or less foreign to their nature. Can you imagine people on Boreas, Astraea, Ymir, everywhere, all being hammered into a mold meant for Earthmen? That’s what Bassett would do, and the results would be terrifying!”

Falconetta shuddered. “I know. And yet he isn’t what you’d call an evil man.”

“No. Just inexperienced.”

The robot operating the transfax gave them a polite warning, and the cabin filled with a flash of brilliant light as something materialized on the platform. Frowning, Counce picked it up–a single sheet of paper with a brief message on it. He scanned it, and then deliberately folded it up before looking at the others.

“What’s the most disastrous thing you can conceive happening in the immediate future?” he asked.

“Bassett ignoring our intrusion?” suggested Falconetta with a frown. “After all, he now knows there’s someone in the galaxy with a workable matter transmitter, which is the worst mistake we’ve made in years. What that may do to his thinking–”

“Bad,” conceded Counce. “But not the worst. We could always assassinate him if we were driven to it. Ram?”

“Discovery of Ymir by the Others,” the old man said, and Counce nodded emphatically.

“Very bad indeed. You’ve more or less bracketed what has actually happened. This note is from Wu on Regis–the Others visited it before we got there. They’ve dug up proof.”

Their faces reflected their dismay. “That’s awful,” whispered Falconetta. “And coming on top of what Bassett did …”

“You already have an idea,” said Ram, scrutinizing Counce’s face keenly. “Saïd, you have one of the keenest minds in the galaxy; let us hear what your suggestion is.”

“Well, this makes it absolutely essential for us to make Bassett lose patience with his own ability to solve the Ymiran problem. Could you imagine him refusing to jump at a real live Ymiran, right here on Earth?”

“There
are
Ymirans on Earth,” objected Falconetta. “They have an embassy in Rio about four blocks from Bassett’s head office.”

“But they staff the place with the least corruptible and most masochistic of the faithful. Since Jaroslav, there hasn’t been anyone there capable of thinking for himself.”

“When I think of the Ymirans I’ve met,” Ram said quietly, “I begin to wonder if Bassett might not be doing them a favor if he went ahead unchecked.”

“They are a bunch of frigid, unthinking dullards, aren’t they?” Counce agreed. “But look at it this way. No amount of external examination will reveal the solution to the Ymiran problem. No one except ourselves could realize its true nature. Bassett would doubtless think that to get his hands on a native Ymiran, study him, drain his mind of every subjective impression he recalls, would enable him to solve the problem. When he finds that’s not enough after all, the letdown may be sufficient for him to give in and call on us for help.”

“It strikes me as being very feasible,” said Ram. “But for one thing. How do you propose getting such an Ymiran to Bassett?”

“Ask Jaroslav. If anyone can manage it, he can. He’s told us that not all the younger generation on Ymir are as mentally fogbound as their elders. We must bring one of the most alert young people to Earth–by orthodox ship. If Bassett found memories of travel by transfax in the subject’s mind, he’d recognize our hand in the matter and know he was being fooled.”

“This isn’t going to be exactly a pleasant experience for the Ymiran Jaroslav selects, is it?” put in Falconetta.

“Very unpleasant. But Jaroslav is about due to become the first, as distinct from the
only,
recruit we’ve had from Ymir. If he hasn’t a suitable person in mind, I’ll have some very unkind comments to make. But if he has, then I think the person he sends will be more than compensated for what he has to undergo by joining us later.”

“Fair enough,” nodded Falconetta. Counce glanced at Ram, and after a moment the white head inclined in agreement.

“Right. I’ll go arrange it with Jaroslav,” said Counce, pulling himself to his feet. “Ram, can you get enough power on this transfax to ship me to Ymir?”

“It’s not the transfax that’s the problem, but the propulsor pile of the submersible,” said Ram dubiously. “This will probably drain its fissiles past their half-life. But I suspect the urgency justifies it. Please go ahead.”

He rose from his chair and gave his habitual courtly bow; Falconetta smiled and lifted one slim beringed hand in salutation. In the middle of his own parting gesture, Counce found himself under a different sun.