Hooded Swan - The Paradise Game Part 9

"Just keep it out of here," he said, but with a hint of resignation in his voice. "Keep these soldiers out of my way, and especially off my back. Let them hunt for the killer and drill on the field to their heart's content. Pretend they don't exist."

"Just's jumpy," I said.

"Forget Just. He's not important. Let Nick take over here-he'll look after things. I want you to go back to Kerman's place. I don't know what we've got here, but it won't give us anything like the full story. Just talk to people. Use your eyes and your head. We can't afford not to have a man on the spot, and I'm too busy."

"Do you honestly think it will do any good?" I asked.

"Did you have something else urgent to do?" he countered.

I went back to the alien encampment. Eve went with me-she hadn't got the full story from Charlot yet, but he would have time later for recording his thoughts.

"How ill is he?" Eve asked me, once we were clear of the field.

"So what am I?" I said. "A doctor?"

"You've seen more of him the last couple of days than anyone else," she said.

"We haven't been talking about his symptoms," I told her. "We have a king-size headache here."

"The landing of all those men is bound to count against Caradoc in the courts," she said.

"Sure," I said.

"You don't sound convinced."

"Now there's a thing," I said.

"G.o.d," she said. "You haven't changed at all. Not since you were in the port in New York. You've got that same chip on your shoulder and it hasn't shifted an inch. Don't you think for once that you could drop that razor's edge from your conversation?"

"You can't teach an old dog," I said, with a lamentable lack of originality.

"How did Michael manage to stand you for all those years?" she asked.

"With difficulty," I said. And added: "But he hadn't any choice."

"Is that your idea of an excuse?" she asked.

"No," I replied.

We occupied ourselves with such happy and irrelevant exchanges throughout the long walk. The wind never intervened, but I could feel him disapproving all the way. He was another one who believed that I ought to be making gigantic strides in reuniting myself with the human race. He didn't believe that solitude was a reasonable way of life either.

When we got to the camp, I set about making a nuisance of myself in pretty much the way Charlot had intended that I should. I didn't see any reason to be particularly cagey, but on the other hand, I didn't want to tell them anything they hadn't already worked out for themselves. Most especially, I didn't want to tell them anything that might add to their ideas about how valuable the planet was. So I kept quiet about Charlot's theory of a mutational filter replacing natural selection as the princ.i.p.al agent of evolution.

My questions weren't quite as guarded as their answers, but I had the distinct impression that we could dance around the point for years without ever getting there.

I stuck mainly with the biologists-the cellular biologists, who might have found some interesting anomalies about the way the beasties were put together at subcellular level. But it wasn't really the level at which my own know-how operated. I was no scientist, just an observer who liked to understand how things worked.

All in all, we got pretty well nowhere except frustrated.

Even so, I kept going, and it was getting close to sunset when we began to head back to the ship.

The forest was very quiet, very peaceful, and very pretty, but I no longer had any trouble with my own personal Paradise syndrome. It no longer looked to me anything like Paradise.

It wasn't, of course, that I'd been put off by what I'd learned about the Pharos life-system. It was just that every twenty minutes or so one of those great big black whirlybirds would do a slow sweep across the nearby tree-tops. They were looking for Varly. And they were having about as much success as we were.

13.

Instead of going through town, Eve and I elected to take a more direct route through the forest. Its directness was more theoretical than actual owing to the fact that it is impossible to walk a straight line in a forest, and it was undoubtedly slower than the usual route, but time-saving was not our primary objective. We were avoiding people. At least, we thought we were avoiding people.

We had barely gone halfway when one of the copters made a pa.s.s over our heads, did a tight turn, and commenced to hover over us while a stentorian voice came over a loudspeaker ordering us to stop or be shot.

We stopped.

The loudspeaker kept on bawling at us, giving out extremely precise instructions as to how still we were supposed to stand, what posture to adopt. It also took time out to tell us exactly what wouldn't happen provided we complied with the suggestions.

It took five minutes for the men in the copter to redirect men on the ground to our position, which gave me, at least, plenty of opportunity to get fed up with standing still waving my fingers in the air.

The search party arrived at the double and surrounded us, pointing their guns at us in a wholly futile display of courage and determination.

The boss was a thin man with a face like a rat and incipient acne. He peered at us both with what I supposed to be a regulation snarl, and decided after due thought and process that neither of us was Varly.

"What the h.e.l.l you doin' way out here?" he demanded, with an asperity which suggested that we were wholly to blame for the inconvenience caused him.

"It's a free country," I said.

"Don' you know there's a dangerous murderer out here someplace?"

"Son," I said, "I am fully aware of that fact. I have had the doubtful pleasure of having been on this planet for a good deal longer than you. I have had the misfortune of meeting Mr. Varly. I have even had the dubious pleasure of being pushed aside by Mr. Varly. I am not flattered by being mistaken for Mr. Varly.

If it is all right with you and your merry men, I would like each and every gun barrel to be redirected to some neutral direction, so that I can continue my walk home. It has been a long day."

"It sure as like h.e.l.l is not all right with me," he said, mixing his metaphors painfully.

"Well then," I said, "perhaps you'll tell me just exactly what you intend to do about it." I reached out a hand and gently redirected one of the gun barrels with the tip of my forefinger.

"I'm goin' to sen' you home under escort," he said.

"I don't want an escort," I said. "Do you want an escort, ex-Captain Lapthorn?"

"It might be a good idea," she said. "It's getting dark, and we don't want any of these cretins blazing away at us on suspicion."

She had a point. But there were principles at stake.

"I am not going to be shown home by a bunch of f.e.c.kless kids in black romper suits," I said coldly.

"It's for your own protection," insisted the thin man, who was presumably a corporal or thereabouts, though I didn't know how to identify him from his uniform. "We don' wan' any slipups on this job. We are here to see that n.o.body else gets hurt here. We wan' to fin' Varly before he kills anyone else an' that includes you. This man is armed and dangerous."

"There are an awful lot of things aroun' here that are armed an' dangerous," I commented, mimicking his accent in the hope that annoyance would make his acne break out.

"I insist that at leas' two of my men accompany you back to your destination," he said, doubly proud at being able to say "my men" and at being able to p.r.o.nounce "destination."

I decided that compromise, being the soul of diplomacy, was called for.

"Make it one and it's a deal," I said. "And I'll recommend you for a medal."

He smiled-not because of the medal, but because he thought he'd outmanoeuvred me into accepting an escort. One poor unfortunate was quickly appointed to remain with us, while the rest marched noisily away into the forest.

"Paradise!" I said. "It'll never recover from this lot."

"We got strict orders not to disturb anything," said the youth with the rifle, looking slightly offended.

"Yeah," I said. "Come on, sunshine, let's go home."

We didn't even get three steps. I heard a thud and turned back to see our intrepid guardian crumpling into a heap. He had been hit on the head by a gun b.u.t.t.

Varly crouched to retrieve the rifle, and before I could move the hole in the end was pointed at my stomach.

"h.e.l.l," I said. "Where did you come from?"

"Keep quiet," he hissed urgently, his expression furious. His close-set eyes were bloodshot and staring.

He pointed upward in answer to my question. It could hardly be a coincidence-he must have come in behind the search party. But why? It could hardly be idle curiosity, and he couldn't possibly think that there was anyone around that would help him.

"Taking a bit of a risk, weren't you?" I asked. And, in a low whisper, "Who do you think you are-Tarzan?"

"b.a.s.t.a.r.ds couldn't catch a cold," he whispered back.

"Possibly so," I murmured. "What now?" Eve, beside me, was very tense. I took hold of her arm and squeezed hard, trying to tell her to stay still. Between us, almost certainly, we could jump him. He knew as well as we did that if he fired the beamer he would have the army down on him in seconds. But I didn't think there was any need for either of us to risk getting hurt.

"Look," he said. "I'll surrender. But keep me away from the boys in black. You can lock me up in that ship of yours, but don't hand me back."

"Well," I said, "I don't know that you need have been so anxious to get to us rather than them. They have a lot to thank you for. If it hadn't been for you, they'd still be looking for an excuse to bring the boys in black down. Just what the h.e.l.l did you think you were doing?"

"Never mind that," he said, raising the rifle to indicate that he wasn't fooling. "I'm going with you. Turn around and stand apart. Take your hand off her arm, Grainger. Now walk. Stay slow, and stay apart.

Anything happens- anything at all-and you'll both get it in the back. I mean it."

A lot of men might not have meant it. But I was ready to believe that Varly did. He was a man habituated to violence, habituated to answering fear with fire. I knew that we were both in dire danger of being burned.

"If they get me," hissed Varly, "they're going to kill me. Just remember that. And they're going to get me if I don't go with you. I got nothing to eat and I daren't try this filthy alien stuff. I got no place to go except your ship. And that's where I'm going."

I didn't bother saying anything lest I should offend him. I often have that effect on people. I kept walking, just like he wanted me to. Eve did the same. Once now and again, I saw her glance sideways at me. That squeeze had given her the wrong idea. She was looking to me to do something-expecting heroics. I'd have thought she knew me better, but could be she had got the wrong idea from misleading accounts of what had happened on Chao Phrya when the spiders had come to tea.

-We can take him, said the wind. The light's dim, his reaction time can't be any too fast. You and I, we have speed. We can take him.

We might beat the beam, I told him, but he's big. I know you can pull some nice gimmicks, but even getting the very best out of me isn't going to put us in the same league with the best of him.

-Come off it, said the wind. We can have him laid out before he blinks. Just let go.

No.

-Coward, he said.

You know better than that, I said.

-It's true.

Maybe. Maybe not. But it's nothing to do with this. If I thought it was worth it, I might. But it isn't.

h.e.l.l-he only wants to turn himself in to someone who isn't liable to string him up. We can afford to do as he says.

-Do you believe that?

Don't you?

-He's not the type. He's hard. There's nothing inside that brain but brutality. He'll force you to the ship, and once he's there he'll keep forcing. He'll push and he'll push until somebody shoots him down. You'd be better to take him here, where there's not the same risk of people getting hurt.

There's two of us, I told him. And he's got a gun in our backs. That's a risk of someone getting hurt. It's a risk I'm not taking. Right?