Sense of Obligation Part 13

Lea was working in the lab when he came in, bent over a low-power binocular microscope. Something small, limbless and throbbing was on the slide. She glanced up when she heard his footsteps, smiling warmly when she recognized him. Fatigue and pain had drawn her face, her skin glistening with burn ointment, was chapped and peeling. "I must look a wreck," she said, putting the back of her hand to her cheek. "Something like a well-oiled and lightly cooked piece of beef." She lowered her arm suddenly and took his hand in both of hers. Her palms were warm and slightly moist.

"Thank you, Brion," was all she could say. Her society on Earth was highly civilized and sophisticated, able to discuss any topic without emotion and without embarra.s.sment. This was fine in most circ.u.mstances, but made it difficult to thank a person for saving your life. However you tried to phrase it, it came out sounding like a last act speech from an historical play. There was no doubt, however, as to what she meant.

Her eyes were large and dark, the pupils dilated by the drugs she had been given. They could not lie, nor could the emotions he sensed. He did not answer, just held her hand an instant longer.

"How do you feel?" he asked, concerned. His conscience twinged as he remembered that he was the one who had ordered her out of bed and back to work today.

"I should be feeling terrible," she said, with an airy wave of her hand.

"But I'm walking on top of the world. I'm so loaded with pain-killers and stimulants that I'm high as the moon. All the nerves to my feet feel turned off--it's like walking on two b.a.l.l.s of fluff. Thanks for getting me out of that awful hospital and back to work."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Brion was suddenly ashamed of having driven her from her sick bed.

"Don't be sorry!" Lea said, apparently reading his mind, but really seeing only his sudden drooped expression. "I'm feeling no pain.

Honestly, I feel a little light-headed and foggy at times, nothing more.

And this is the job I came here to do. In fact ... well, it's almost impossible to tell you just how fascinating it all is! It was almost worth getting baked and parboiled for."

She swung back to the microscope, centering the specimen with a turn of the stage adjustment screw. "Poor Ihjel was right when he said this planet was exobiologically fascinating. This is a gastropod, a lot like _Odostomia_, but it has parasitical morphological changes so profound--"

"There's something else I remember," Brion said, interrupting her enthusiastic lecture, only half of which he could understand. "Didn't Ihjel also hope that you would give some study to the natives as well as their environment. The problem is with the Disans--not the local wild life."

"But I am studying them," Lea insisted. "The Disans have attained an incredibly advanced form of commensalism. Their lives are so intimately connected and integrated with the other life forms that they must be studied in relation to their environment. I doubt if they show as many external physical changes as little eating-foot _Odostomia_ on the slide here, but there will be surely a number of psychological changes and adjustments that will crop up. One of these might be the explanation of their urge for planetary suicide."

"That may be true--but I don't think so," Brion said. "I went on a little expedition this morning and found something that has more immediate relevancy."

For the first time Lea became aware of his slightly battered condition.

Her drug-grooved mind could only follow a single idea at a time and had overlooked the significance of the bandage and dirt.

"I've been visiting," Brion said, forestalling the question on her lips.

"The magter are the ones who are responsible for causing the trouble, and I had to see them up close before I could make any decision. It wasn't a very pleasant thing, but I found out what I wanted to know.

They are different in every way from the normal Disans. I've compared them. I've talked to Ulv--the native who saved us in the desert--and I can understand him. He is not like us in many ways--he would certainly have to be, living in this oven--but he is still undeniably human. He gave us drinking water when we needed it, then brought help. The magter, the upper-cla.s.s lords of Dis, are the direct opposite. As cold-blooded and ruthless a bunch of murderers as you can possibly imagine. They tried to kill me when they met me, without reason. Their clothes, habits, dwellings, manners--everything about them differs from that of the normal Disan. More important, the magter are as coldly efficient and inhuman as a reptile. They have no emotions, no love, no hate, anger, fear--nothing. Each of them is a chilling bundle of thought processes and reactions, with all the emotions removed."

"Aren't you exaggerating?" Lea asked. "After all, you can't be sure. It might just be part of their training not to reveal any emotional state.

Everyone must experience emotional states whether they like it or not."

"That's my main point. Everyone does--except the magter. I can't go into all the details now, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Even at the point of death they have no fear or hatred. It may sound impossible, but it is true."

Lea tried to shake the knots from her drug-hazed mind. "I'm dull today,"

she said, "you'll have to excuse me. If these rulers had no emotional responses, that might explain their present suicidal position. But an explanation like this raises more new problems than it supplies answers to the old ones. How did they get this way? It doesn't seem humanly possible to be without emotions."

"Just my point. Not _humanly_ possible. I think these ruling cla.s.s Disans aren't human at all, like the other Disans. I think they are alien creatures--robots or androids--anything except men. I think they are living in disguise among the normal human dwellers."

First Lea started to smile, then she changed her mind when she saw his face. "You are serious?" she asked.

"Never more so. I realize it must sound as if I've had my brains bounced around too much this morning. Yet this is the only idea I can come up with that fits all of the facts. Look at the evidence yourself. One simple thing stands out clearly, and must be considered first if any theory is to hold up. That is the magters' complete indifference to death--their own or anyone else's. Is that normal to mankind?"

"No--but I can find a couple of explanations that I would rather explore first, before dragging in an alien life form. There may have been a mutation or an inherited disease that had deformed or warped their minds."

"Wouldn't that be sort of self-eliminating?" Brion asked. "Antisurvival?

People who die before p.u.b.erty would find it a little difficult to pa.s.s on a mutation to their children. But let's not beat this one point to death--it's the totality of these people that I find so hard to accept.

Any one thing might be explained away, but not the collection of them.

What about their complete lack of emotion? Or their manner of dress and their secrecy in general? The ordinary Disan wears a cloth kilt, while the magter cover themselves as completely as possible. They stay in their black towers and never go out except in groups. Their dead are always removed so they can't be examined. In every way they act like a race apart--and I think they are."

"Granted for the moment that this outlandish idea might be true, how did they get here? And why doesn't anyone know about it besides them?"

"Easily enough explained," Brion insisted. "There are no written records on this planet. After the breakdown, when the handful of survivors were just trying to exist here, the aliens could have landed and moved in.

Any interference could have been wiped out. Once the population began to grow the invaders found they could keep control by staying separate, so their alien difference wouldn't be noticed."

"Why should that bother them?" Lea asked. "If they are so indifferent to death, they can't have any strong thoughts on public opinion or alien body odor. Why would they bother with such a complex camouflage? And if they arrived from another planet what has happened to the scientific ability that brought them here?"

"Peace," Brion said. "I don't know enough to even be able to guess at answers to half those questions. I'm just trying to fit a theory to the facts. And the facts are clear. The magter are so inhuman they would give me nightmares--if I were sleeping these days. What we need is more evidence."

"Then get it," Lea said with finality. "I'm not telling you to turn murderer--but you might try a bit of grave-digging. Give me a scalpel and one of your fiends stretched out on a slab and I'll quickly tell you what he is or is not." She turned back to the microscope and bent over the eyepiece.

That was really the only way to hack the Gordion knot. Dis had only thirty-six more hours to live, so individual deaths shouldn't be of any concern. He had to find a dead magter, and if none were obtainable in the proper condition he had to violently get one of them that way. For a planetary savior he was personally doing in an awful lot of the citizenry. He stood behind Lea, looking down at her thoughtfully while she worked. The back of her neck was turned up to him, lightly covered with gently curling hair. With one of the about-face shifts the mind is capable of his thoughts flipped from death to life, and he experienced a strong desire to lightly caress this spot, to feel the yielding texture of female flesh....

Plunging his hands deep into his pockets he walked quickly to the door.

"Get some rest soon," he called to her. "I doubt if those bugs will give you the answer. I'm going now to see if I can get the full-sized specimen you want."

"The truth could be anywhere, I'll stay on these until you come back,"

she said, not looking up from the microscope.

Up under the roof was a well-equipped communications room, Brion had taken a quick look at it when he had first toured the building. The duty operator had earphones on--though only one of the phones covered an ear--and was monitoring through the bands. His shoeless feet were on the edge of the table and he was eating a thick sandwich with his free hand. His eyes bugged when he saw Brion in the doorway and he jumped into a flurry of action.

"Hold the pose," Brion told him, "it doesn't bother me. And if you make any sudden moves you are liable to break a phone, electrocute yourself or choke to death. Just see if you can set the transceiver on this frequency for me." Brion wrote the number on a scratchpad and slid it over to the operator. It was the frequency Professor-commander Krafft had given him for the radio of the illegal terrorists--the Nyjord army.

The operator plugged in a handset and gave it to Brion. "Circuit open,"

he mumbled around a mouthful of still unswallowed sandwich.

"This is Brandd, director of the C.R.F. Come in please." He went on repeating this for more than ten minutes before he got an answer.

"_What do you want?_"

"I have a message of vital urgency for you--and I would also like your help. Do you want any more information on the radio?"

"_No. Wait there--we'll get in touch with you after dark._" The carrier wave went dead.

Thirty-five hours to the end of the world--and all he could do was wait.

XII

On Brion's desk when he came in, were two neat piles of paper. As he sat down and reached for them he was conscious of an arctic coldness in the air, a frigid blast. It was coming from the air-conditioner grille which was now covered by welded steel bars. The control unit was sealed shut. Someone was either being very funny or very efficient. Either way it was cold. Brion kicked at the cover plate until it buckled, then bent it aside. After a careful look into the interior he disconnected one wire and shorted it to another. He was rewarded by a number of sputtering cracks and a good quant.i.ty of smoke. The compressor moaned and expired.