10000 Light Years From Home Part 5

And that was how matters stood when Tillie went off to play with the alien giantesses.

With Tillie next to them, our shop became Miss Government Agency of the moment. The reluctant trickle of collateral data swelled to a flood. We found out, for instance, about the police rumors.It seemed the big girls wanted exercise, and the first thing they asked for in any city was the park.

Since they strolled at eight mph, a foot guard wasn't practical. The U.N. compromised on a pair of patrol cars bracketing them on the nearest road. This seemed to amuse the Capellans, and every now and then the police radios went dead. The main danger to the big girls was from hypothetical snipers, and n.o.body could do much about that.

After they went through Berlin the Vapos picked up four men in poor condition in the Tiergarten, and the one who lived said something about the Capellans. The Vapos didn't take this seriously-all four had vagrancy and drug records-but they bucked it along anyway. Next there was some story from a fruity type in Solsdjk Park near The Hague, and a confused disturbance in Hong Kong when the Girls went through the Botanical Gardens. And three more defunct vagrants in the wilderness preserve outside Melbourne. The Capellans found the bodies and expressed shock. Their men, they said, did not fight among themselves.

Another tidbit was the Great Body Hunt. Try as we had in Mexico we had never got one look at them completely naked. b.r.e.a.s.t.s, yes-standard human type, superior grade. But below the navel we failed. Now we found out that everybody else all along the route was failing too, although they'd pushed the perimeter pretty close. I admired their efforts-you wouldn't believe what some of our pals had gotten pickups into. But nothing worked. It seemed the Girls liked privacy, and they had some sort of routine snooper-sweep that left blank films and tapes. Once when the j.a.p I.S. got really tricky they found their gismo with the circuits not only fused but mirror reversed.

Tillie's penetration evoked a ma.s.s howl for anatomical detail. But all she gave us was, "Conception is a voluntary function with them."

I wondered if anyone else around the office was hearing mice in the woodwork. Was I the only one who knew Tillie was under pressures not listed in standard agent evaluation?

But she was helpful on the big question: How did they come to be so human? There was no doubt they were. Although we hadn't got pictures, we had enough a.s.sorted biological specimens to know they and we were one flesh. Or rather, one DNA. All the Girls themselves would tell us was interpreted as "We are an older race"-big smile.

Tillie got us the details that shook our world. The navigator had too many balloon-gla.s.ses one night and told Tillie that Capellans had been here before-long before. Hence the chart notation they'd wanted to check. There was something of interest here besides a nice planet-something the first expedition had left. A colony? The navigator grinned and shut up.

This tidbit really put the strawberries in the fan. Was it possible we were the descendants of these people? Vertigo hit the scientific sector and started a babble of protest. What about Proconsul? What about the australopithecines? What about gorilla blood-types? What about-about-about WHAT? The babble mounted; a few cooler heads pointed out that n.o.body really knew where CroMagnon came from, and he had apparently interbred with other types. Well, it's an old story now, but those were dizzy days.

True to human form, I was giving the grand flip-flop of history about two percent of my attention. To begin with, I was busy. We were fighting out a balanced representation of earth scientific specialists with all the other nations who had delegations in the visiting party to Luna. It was to be a spectacular talent show-everything from particle physics, molecular genetics, math theory, eco-systems down to a lad from Chile who combined musical notation a.n.a.lysis, icthyology and cooking. And every one of them handsome and certified heteros.e.xual. And equipped with enough circuitry to-well, a.s.sist their unaided powers of observation and report. Even in the general euphoric haze somebody had stayed cool enough to realize the boys just might not get back. Quite a job to do in two weeks.

But that again was background to a purely personal concern. The Monday before the party took off Tillie and the Girls came through D.C. I cornered her in the film vault.

"Will you receive a message in a sanitized container?"

She was picking at a band-aid over a shot-puncture some idiot had given her. (What the h.e.l.l kind ofimmunization did the medicos think they had for a.s.signments on the moon?) One eye peeked at me. She knew she was guilty, all right.

"You think your big playmates are just like yourself, only gloriously immune from rape. I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't thinking of going home with them. Right? No, don't tell me, kid, I know you. But you don't know them. You think you do, but you don't. Did you ever meet any American blacks who moved to Kenya? Talk to one some time. And there's another thing you haven't thought about-two hundred and fifty thousand miles of hard vacuum. A quarter of a million miles away. The Marines can't get you out of this one, baby."

"So?"

"All right. I just want to get it through to you-a.s.suming there is a human being under that silicon-that out here is another human being who's worried sick about you. Does that get through? At all?"

She gave me a long look as though she were trying to make out a distant rider on a lonesome plain.

Then her lashes dropped.

The rest of the day I was busy with our transmitting arrangements from-actually-Timbuctu. The Russians had offered to boost the party up in sections in six weeks, but Captain Lyampka, after a few thoughtful compliments, had waved that off. They would just send down their cargo lighter-no trouble at all, if we would point out a convenient desert to absorb the blast. Hence Timbuctu. The Capellan party was spending two nights in D.C. en route there.

They were lodged in the big hotel complex near our office and adjoining Rock Creek Park. That was how I came to find out what Capellan did in parks.

It was a d.a.m.n fool thing, to trail them. Actually I just hung around the park input. About two A.M. I was sitting on a bench in the moonlight, telling myself to give it up. I was gritty-eyed tired. When I heard them coming I was too late to take cover. It was the two J.O.'s. Two beautiful girls in the moonlight.

Two big girls, coming fast. I stood up.

"Good evening!" I essayed in Capellan.

A ripple of delighted laughter, and they were towering over me.

Feeling idiotic, I got out my cigarillos and offered them around. The first mate took one and sat down on the bench. Her eyes came level with mine.

I clicked my lighter. She laughed and laid the cigarillo down. I made a poor job of lighting mine.

There is a primal nightmare lurking deep in in most men, having to do with his essential maleness. With violation thereof. I'd gone through life without getting more than a glimpse of it, but this situation was bringing cold fingers right up into my throat. I essayed a sort of farewell bow. They laughed and bowed back. I had a clear line of exit to right rear. I took a step backward.

A hand like a log fell on my shoulders. The navigator leaned down and said something in a velvety contralto. I didn't need a translator-I'd seen enough old flicks: "Don't go 'way, baby, we won't hurt you."

My jump was fast, but those mothers were faster. The standing one had my neck in a vise at arm's length, and when I tried the standard finger-pull she laughed like a deep bell and casually twisted up my arm until things broke. In three places, it turned out later.

The ensuing minutes are what I make a point of not remembering except when I forget not to wake up screaming. My next clear view was from the ground where I was discovering some nasty facts about Capellan physiology through a blaze of pain. (Ever think about being attacked by a muscle vacuum cleaner?) My own noise was deafening me, but either I was yelling in two voices or something else was screeching and scrabbling around my head. In a dead place somewhere inside the uproar I a.s.sociated this with Tillie, which didn't make sense. Presently there was, blessedly, nothing... and somewhen else, ambulance jolts and smells and needle-jabs.At a later point in daylight George's face appeared around a ma.s.s of tapes and pulleys on my hospital bed.

He told me Tillie had screamed the captain into calling off her J.O.'s before they ruined the kid's toy. And then she got a call through to George, and he sent the special squad to haul the corpse to the hidey-hole for Cla.s.sified Mistakes. (I was now very Cla.s.sified.) While he talked he was setting up a video so we could watch Earth's scientific delegation embark for Luna.

Through the pulleys I saw them-a terrific-looking group; the cream of Terran expertise, and most of them still looking human in spite of being about thirty percent hardware. They wore the dress uniforms of various armed services-the pair of Danish biologists in naval whites and the Scotch radiation lad in dress kilts were dazzling. Myself, I had most faith in the Israeli gorilla in khaki; I had run into him once in Khartoum when he was taking time off from being a n.o.bel runner-up in laser technology.

The bands played; the African sun flamed off the gold and polish; the all-girl Capellan freighter crew lined up smartly as our lads marched up the ramp, their heads at Capellan belly-b.u.t.ton level. Going into that ship with them was enough miniaturized circuitry to map Luna and do a content a.n.a.lysis on the Congressional Library. At the last minute, a Pakistani got the hiccups, and his teeth transmitted flak all over the screen. Tillie followed the men, and behind her came the captain and her roughnecks, smiling like the girl next door. I wondered if the navigator was wearing any band-aids. My teeth had had hold of something-while they lasted.

There they went, and there they flaked out, to a man. We next saw them on a transmission from the mother ship. There wasn't a molecule of metal on them. We found out later they'd dozed off on the trip up, and waked up in the ship clean as babies, with healing scars on their hides. (The Pak had new teeth.) Their Capellan hosts acted as if it were all a big joke and served welcome drinks all around every ten minutes. Some drinks they must have been-I caught a shot of my Israeli hope. He was sitting on the captain's lap wearing her helmet. Somebody had had the sense to rig a monitor on the satellite relay, so the world at large saw only part of the send. They loved it "Round one to Mordor," said George, perched like a hobbit on my bed. He had stopped enjoying the situation.

"When the white man's ship came to Hawaii and Tahiti," I croaked through my squashed larynx, "they'd let a herd of wahines on board for the sailors."

George looked at me curiously. He hadn't had the chance to meet his nightmare socially, you see, while I was getting friendly with mine, in a grim way.

"If the girls had a machete or two, n.o.body got mad. They just took 'em away. The technological differential here is about the same, don't you think, George? We've just had our machetes taken away."

"They left some new diseases, too, when they moved on," said George slowly. He was with it now.

"If this bunch moves on."

"They have to sell that ore."

"-What?" (I'd just caught a glimpse of Tillie on the screen, standing near the Capellan male we had been calling Leif Ericsson. As I had figured, he was about my size.) "I said they have, to get home to sell their cargo."

And was he right. The operative word was cargo.

The plot unfolded about a week later when the visiting party was sent back from Luna, along with three new Capellan ratings who were to collect the VTO launch. To my inexpressible relief Tillie came with them.

The cargo lighter dumped Tillie and our deflowered male delegation in North Africa and then took off on a due south paraboloid which put the Capellans down around the hip of the globe.

"Near Kleetmanshoop, South Africa, Woomara says," George told me. "Doesn't smell good." Thethree states known, among other names, as White Man's Heaven weren't speaking to the rest of the world that year. They did not see fit to announce that the Capellans were paying them a private visit.

"Where's Tillie?"

"Being debriefed at the Veddy Highest Levels. Did you hear the mother ship is unloading its ore?"

"Where would I hear anything?" I wheezed, rattling my pulleys. "Give me that photo!"

You could see it clearly: conical piles and some sort of conveyor running out from the big hulk on Luna.

"At least they don't have matter transmitters."

The next piece of the plot came through Tillie. She sat chin on fist, talking tiredly through her hair in the general direction of my kneecaps.

"They estimate they can carry about seven hundred. It'll take them three days our time to unload, and another week to seal and atmospherize part of the cargo hold. The Bwanas bought the deal right off."

"What's the difference to them?" I groaned. "For the poor b.l.o.o.d.y Bantus the Capellan brand of slavery probably looks like cake."

That was it, of course. The men of Capella were slaves. And there were relatively few of them. A cargo of exotic human males was worth a good deal more than ore. A h.e.l.l of a lot more, it seemed. On Terra we once called it "black ivory".

So much for galactic super-civilization. But that wasn't all. I had to yell hard for George before he showed, looking gray around the nose.

"A merchant privateer who runs into a rich source of pearls, or slaves, or whatever," I wheezed, "doesn't figure to quit after one trip. And he doesn't want his source to dry up or run away while he's gone. Or learn to fight back. He wants it to stay sweet, between trips. The good captain was quite interested in the fact that the Russians offered to get up to Luna so quickly. They could expect us to develop a defensive capability before they got back. What do they propose to do about that?"

"This may come as a shock to you," George said slowly, "but you aren't the only man who's read history. We weren't going to tell you because there's nothing you can do about it in that jungle gym."

"Go on!"

"Mavrua-that's the man you called Leif Ericsson-he told me," put in Tillie. "They plan to turn off the sun a little. As they leave."

"A solar screen." George's voice was gray, too. "They can lay it with their exhaust in a couple of dozen orbits. It doesn't take much, and it lasts, that is, there's an irreversible interaction. I don't understand the physics. Harry gave me the R&D a.n.a.lysis at lunch, but the waiter kept taking the mesons away. The point is, they can screen off enough solar energy to kick us back to the ice age. Without time to prepare we'll be finished. Snow could start here about June. When it does it won't quit. Or melt. Most of the big lakes and quite a lot of ocean will go to ice. The survivors will be back in caves. Perfect for their purpose, of course-they literally put us on ice."

"What the h.e.l.l is being done?" I squeaked.

"Not counting the people who are running around cackling, there are two general lines. One, hit them with something before they do it. Two, undo it afterwards. And a ma.s.sive technological research depot is being shipped to Columbia. So far the word has been held pretty close. Bound to leak soon, though."

"Hit them?" I coughed. "Hit them? The whole U.N. military can't scratch that VTO that's sitting in their laps! Even if they could get a warhead on the mother ship, they're bound to have shielding. Christ, look at the deflectors they use to hold their atomics. And they know the state of our art. Childish! And as for dispersing the screen in time to save anything-""What do you think you're doing? Max?" They were pawing at me.

"Getting out of here.... G.o.d.a.m.nit, give me a knife, I can't untie this b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Let go. Nurse!

WHERE ARE MY PANTS?".

They finally hauled me over to George's war room in a kind of mobile mummy-case and saw I got fed all the info and rumors. I kept telling my brain to produce. It kept telling me back Tilt. With the top men of ten nations working on it, what did I imagine I could contribute? When I had been grunting to myself for a couple of hours Tillie and George filed in with a purposeful air.

"In a bad position there is no good move: Bogoljubov. Give over, Max."

"In a bad position you can always wiggle something," I rasped. "What about the men, Tillie?"

"What about them?"

"How do they feel about the plan?"

"Well, they don't like it."

"In what way don't they like it?"

"The established harem favorites don't like to see new girls brought in," she recited and quick looked me in the eye.

"Having a good time, baby?" I asked her gently. She looked away.

"Okay. There's our loose piece. Now, how do we wiggle it at a quarter of a million miles? What about that character Leif-Mavrua?" I mused. "Isn't he some sort of communications tech?"

"He's chief commo sergeant," Tillie said, and added slowly, "he's alone on duty, sometimes."

"What's he like? You were friendly with him?"

"Yes, kind of. He's-I don't know-like gay only not."

I was holding her eye.

"But in this situation your interests coincide?" I probed her hard. The American black who goes to Kenya often discovers he is an American first and an African second, no matter what they did to him in Newark. George had the sense to keep quiet, although I doubt he ever understood.

She swung back her hair, slowly. I could see mad dreams dying in her eyes.

"Yes. They... coincide."

"Think you can talk to him?"

"Yes."

"I'll get over to Harry," George jumped up, he was ahead of the play now. "We'll see what we can lash up. Ten days, maximum."

"Call the campus. I can take a meeting. But get me something so I don't sound like a frog's ghost."

The chief we had then was all right. He came to me. Of course we had only the start of a plan, but n.o.body else had anything, and we had Tillie. He agreed we were nuts and gave us everything we needed.

The lateral channels were laid on by 1500; Jodrell Bank was to set us up.

The waning moon came over Greenwich before dawn that week, and we got Tillie through to Mavrua about midnightest. He was alone. It took her about a dozen exchanges to work out agreement in principle. She was good with him. I studied him on the monitors; as Tillie said, queer but not gay. Clean cut, muscular, good grin; gonads okay. Something sapless in the eyes. What in h.e.l.l could he do?

The chief's first thought had been, of course, sabotage.

"Stupid," I husked to George. "Harem slaves don't blow up the harem and themselves just to keep the new girls out. They wait and poison the new girls when they can get away with it. That does us no good.""Nor do historical a.n.a.logies, after a point."

"a.n.a.logic reasoning works when you have the right reference frame. We need a new one. For instance, look at the way the Capellans overturned our psychic scenery, our view of ourselves as integral to this world. Or look at their threat to our male-dominant structure. Bigger, more dominant women who treat our males as s.e.x-slave material. Walking nightmares... notice that 'mare?' All right-what is the exact relationship between the Capellans and us? Give me that Danish report again."

The two gorgeous Danes had at least gotten some biological information between orgies, maybe they were more used to them. They confirmed that the Capellans carried s.e.x-linked differences. Capellan males matured to Earth-normal size and s.e.xual features, but the adolescent females went through a secondary development spurt and emerged as the giantesses we had seen. With the specialized characteristics that I had inadvertently become familiar with. And more: some milennia back a mutation started cropping up among the women. Fallout from a war, perhaps? No answer. Whatever the cause, women began failing to develop. In other words, they stayed as earth-type normals, able to reproduce in what the Capellans regarded as immature form.

Alarmed, the Capellan matriarchate dealt with the problem in a relatively humane way. They rounded up all suspected mutant lines and deported them to remote planets, of which Terra was one.

Hence the old chart notation.

Our present visitors had been ore-hunting at nearly maximum range when they decided to check on the semi-mythical colony. No one else ever had.

"What about the Capellan's own history?"

"Not much. Look at that British quote: 'We have always been as we are.' "