Earthman, Come Home Read online

  “How’s it coming through, Karst?” Amalfi said.

  “It is very hard,” the serf said. He took another pull at the tumbler.

  “But once grasped, it seems to bring everything into flower at once. Lord Amalfi, the Proctors claim that IMT came from the sky on a cloud. Yesterday I only believed that. Today I think I understand it.”

  “I think you do,” Amalfi said. “And you’re not alone. We have serfs by scores in the city now, learning—just look around you and you’ll see. And they’re learning more than just simple physics or cultural morphology. They’re learning freedom, beginning with the first one—freedom to hate.”

  “I know that lesson,” Karst said, with a profound and glacial calm. “But you awakened me for something.”

  “I did,” the mayor agreed grimly. “We’ve got a visitor we think you’ll be able to identify: a Proctor. And he’s up to something that smells funny to me and Hazleton both, but we can’t pin down what it is. Come give us a hand, will you?”

  “You’d better give him some time to rest, Mr. Mayor,” the monitor said disapprovingly. “Being dumped out of hypnopaedic trance is a considerable shock; he’ll need at least an hour.”

  Amalfi stared at the monitor incredulously. He was about to note that neither Karst nor the city had the hour to spare, when it occurred to him that to say so would take ten words where one was plenty. “Vanish,” he said.

  The monitor did his best.

  Karst looked intently at the judas. The man on the screen had his back turned; he was looking into the big operations tank in the city manager’s office. The indirect light gleamed on his shaven and oiled head. Amalfi watched over Karst’s left shoulder, his teeth sunk firmly in a new hydroponic cigar.

  “Why, the man’s as bald as I am,” the mayor said. “And he can’t be much past his adolescence, judging by his skull; he’s forty-five at the most. Recognize him, Karst?”

  “Not yet,” Karst said. “All the Proctors shave their heads. If he would only turn around … ah. Yes. That’s Heldon. I have seen him myself only once, but he is easy to recognize. He is young, as the Proctors go. He is the stormy petrel of the Great Nine—some think him a friend of the serfs. At least he is less quick with the whip than the others.”

  “What would he be wanting here?”

  “Perhaps he will tell us.” Karst’s eyes remained fixed upon the Proctor’s image.

  “Your request puzzles me,” Hazleton’s voice said, issuing smoothly from the speaker above the judas. The city manager could not be seen, but his expression seemed to modulate the sound of his voice almost specifically: the tiger mind masked behind a pussy-cat purr as behind a pussy-cat smile. “We’re glad to hear of new services we can render to a client, of course. But we certainly never suspected that antigravity mechanisms even existed in IMT.”

  “Don’t think me stupid, Mr. Hazleton,” Heldon said. “You and I know that IMT was once a wanderer, as your city is now. We also know that your city, like all Okie cities, would like a world of its own. Will you allow me this much intelligence, please?”

  “For discussion, yes,” Hazleton’s voice said.

  “Then let me say that it’s quite evident to me that you’re nurturing an uprising. You have been careful to stay within the letter of the contract, simply because you dare not breach it, any more than we; the Earth police protect us from each other to that extent. Your Mayor Amalfi was told that it was illegal for the serfs to speak to your people, but unfortunately it is illegal only for the serfs, not for your citizens. If we cannot keep the serfs out of your city, you are under no obligation to do it for us.”

  “A point you have saved me the trouble of making,” Hazleton said.

  “Quite so. I’ll add also that when this revolution of yours comes, I have no doubt but that you’ll win it. I don’t know what weapons you can put into the hands of our serfs, but I assume that they are better than anything we can muster. We haven’t your technology. My fellows disagree with me, but I am a realist.”

  “An interesting theory,” Hazleton’s voice said. There was a brief pause. In the silence, a soft pattering sound became evident. Hazleton’s fingertips, Amalfi guessed, drumming on the desk top, as if with amused impatience. Heldon’s face remained impassive.

  “The Proctors believe that they can hold what is theirs,” Heldon said at last. “If you overstay your contract, they will go to war against you. They will be justified, but unfortunately Earth justice is a long way away from here. You will win. My interest is to see that we have a way of escape.”

  “Via spindizzy?”

  “Precisely.” Heldon permitted a stony smile to stir the corners of his mouth. “I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Hazleton. If it comes to war, I will fight as hard as any other Proctor to hold this world of ours. I come to you only because you can repair the spindizzies of IMT. You needn’t expect me to enter into any extensive treason on that account.”

  Hazleton, it appeared, was being obdurately stupid. “I fail to see why I should lift a finger for you,” he said.

  “Observe, please. The Proctors will fight, because they believe that they must. It will probably be a hopeless fight, but it will do your city some damage all the same. As a matter of fact, it will cripple your city beyond repair, unless your luck is phenomenal. Now then: none of the Proctors except one other man and myself know that the spindizzies of IMT are still able to function. That means that they won’t try to escape with them, they’ll try to knock you out instead. But with the machines in repair, and one knowledgeable hand at the controls—”

  “I see,” Hazleton said. “You propose to put IMT into flight while you can still get off the planet with a reasonably whole city. In return you offer us the planet, and the chance that our own damages will be minimal. Hm-m-m. It’s interesting, anyhow. Suppose we take a look at your spindizzies, and see if they’re in operable condition. It’s been a good many years, without doubt, and untended machinery has a way of gumming up. If they can still be operated at all, we’ll talk about a deal. All right?”

  “It will have to do,” Heldon grumbled. Amalfi saw in the Proctor’s eyes a gleam of cold satisfaction which he recognized at once, from having himself looked out through it often—though never in such a poor state of concealment. He shut off the screen.

  “Well?” the mayor said. “What’s he up to?”

  “Trouble,” Karst said slowly. “It would be very foolish to give or trade him any advantage. His stated reasons are not his real ones.”

  “Of course not,” Amalfi said. “Whose are? Oh, hello, Mark. What do you make of our friend?”

  Hazleton stepped out of the lift shaft, bouncing lightly once on the resilient concrete of the control-room floor. “He’s stupid,” the city manager said, “but he’s dangerous. He knows that there’s something he doesn’t know. He also knows that we don’t know what he’s driving at, and he’s on his home grounds. It’s a combination I don’t care for.”

  “I don’t like it myself,” Amalfi said. “When the enemy starts giving away information, look out! Do you think the majority of the Proctors really don’t know that IMT has operable spindizzies?”

  “I am sure they do not,” Karst offered tentatively. Both men turned to him. “The Proctors do not even believe that you are here to capture the planet. At least, they do not believe that that is what you intend, and I’m sure they don’t care, one way or the other.”

  “Why not?” Hazleton said. “I would.”

  “You have never owned several million serfs,” Karst said, without rancor. “You have serfs working for you, and you are paying them wages. That in itself is a disaster for the Proctors. And they cannot stop it. They know that the money you are paying is legal, with the power of the Earth behind it. They cannot stop us from earning it. To do so would cause an uprising at once.”

  Amalfi looked at Hazleton. The money the city was handing out was the Oc Dollar. It was legal here—but back in the galaxy it was just so much paper. It was only ger
manium-backed. Could the Proctors be that naive? Or was IMT simply too old to possess the instantaneous Dirac transmitters which would have told it of the economic collapse of the home lens?

  “And the spindizzies?” Amalfi said. “Who else would know of them among the Great Nine?”

  “Asor, for one,” Karst said. “He is the presiding officer, and the religious fanatic of the group. It is said that he still practices daily the full thirty yogas of the Semantic Rigor, even to chinning himself upon every rung of the Abstraction Ladder. The prophet Maalvin banned the flight of men forever, so Asor would not be likely to allow IMT to fly at this late date.”

  “He has his reasons,” Hazleton said reflectively. “Religions rarely exist in a vacuum. They have effects on the societies they reflect. He’s probably afraid of the spindizzies, in the last analysis. With such a weapon it takes only a few hundred men to make a revolution—more than enough to overthrow a feudal set-up like this. IMT didn’t dare keep its spindizzies working.”

  “Go on, Karst,” Amalfi said, raising his hand impatiently at Hazleton. “How about the other Proctors?”

  “There is Bemajdi, but he hardly counts,” Karst said. “Let me think. Remember I have never seen most of these men. The only one who matters, it seems to me, is Larre. He is a dour-faced old man with a potbelly. He is usually on Heldon’s side, but seldom travels with Heldon all the way. He will worry less about the money the serfs are earning than will the rest. He will contrive a way to tax it away from us—perhaps by declaring a holiday, in honor of the visit of Earthmen to our planet. The collection of tithes is a duty of his.”

  “Would he allow Heldon to put IMT’s spindizzies in shape?”

  “No, probably not,” Karst said. “I believe Heldon was telling the truth when he said that he would have to do that in secret.”

  “I don’t know,” Amalfi said. “I don’t like it. On the surface, it looks as though the Proctors hope to scare us off the planet as soon as the contract expires, and then collect all the money we’ve paid the serfs—with the cops to back them up. But when you look closely at it, it’s crazy. Once the cops find out the identity of IMT—and it won’t take them long—they’ll break up both cities, and be glad of the chance.”

  Karst said: “Is this because IMT was the Okie city that did… what was done … on Thor V?”

  Amalfi suddenly found that he was having difficulty in keeping his Adam’s apple where it belonged. “Let that pass, Karst,” he growled. “We’re not going to import that story into the Cloud. That should have been cut from your learning tape.”

  “I know it now,” Karst said calmly. “And I am not surprised. The Proctors never change.”

  “Forget it. Forget it, do you hear? Forget everything. Karst, can you go back to being a dumb serf for a night?”

  “Go back to my land?” Karst said. “It would be awkward. My wife must have a new man by now—”

  “No, not back to your land. I want to go with Heldon and look at his spindizzies, as soon as he says the word. I’ll need to take some heavy equipment, and I’ll need some help. Will you come along?”

  Hazleton raised his eyebrows. “You won’t fool Heldon, boss.”

  “I think I will. Of course he knows that we’ve educated some of the serfs, but that’s not a thing he can actually see when he looks at it; his whole background is against it. He just isn’t accustomed to thinking of serfs as intelligent. He knows we have thousands of them here, and yet he isn’t really afraid of that idea. He thinks we may arm them, make a mob of them. He can’t begin to imagine that a serf can learn something better than how to handle a sidearm—something better, and far more dangerous.”

  “How can you be sure?” Hazleton said.

  “By analogue. Remember the planet of Thetis Alpha called Fitzgerald, where they used a big beast called a horse for everything— from pulling carts to racing? All right: suppose you visited a place where you had been told that a few horses had been taught to talk. While you’re working there, somebody comes to give you a hand, dragging a spavined old plug with a straw hat pulled down over its ears and a pack on its back. (Excuse me, Karst, but business is business.) You aren’t going to think of that horse as one of the talking ones. You aren’t accustomed to thinking of horses as being able to talk at all.”

  “All right,” Hazleton said, grinning at Karst’s evident discomfiture. “What’s the main strategy from here on out, boss? I gather that you’ve got it set up. Are you ready to give it a name yet?”

  “Not quite,” the mayor said. “Unless you like long titles. It’s still just another problem in political pseudomorphism.”

  Amalfi caught sight of Karst’s deliberately incurious face and his own grin broadened. “Or,” he said, “the fine art of tricking your opponent into throwing his head at you.”

  III

  IMT was a squat city, long rooted in the stony soil, and as changeless as a forest of cenotaphs. Its quietness, too, was like the quietness of a cemetery, and the Proctors, carrying the fanlike wands of their office, the pierced fans with the jagged tops and the little jingling tags, were much like friars moving among the dead.

  The quiet, of course, could be accounted for very simply. The serfs were not allowed to speak within the walls of IMT unless spoken to, and there were comparatively few Proctors in the city to speak to them. For Amalfi there was also the imposed silence of the slaughtered millions of Thor V blanketing the air. He wondered if the Proctors could still hear that raw silence.

  The naked brown figure of a passing serf glanced furtively at the party, saw Heldon, and raised a finger to its lips in the established gesture of respect. Heldon barely nodded. Amalfi, necessarily, took no overt notice at all, but he thought: Shh, is it? I don’t wonder. But it’s too late, Heldon. The secret is out.

  Karst trudged behind them, shooting an occasional wary glance at Heldon from under his tangled eyebrows. His caution was wasted on the Proctor. They passed through a decaying public square, in the center of which was an almost-obliterated statuary group, so weatherworn as to have lost any integrity it might ever have had; integrity, Amalfi mused, is not a characteristic of monuments. Except to a sharp eye, the mass of stone on the old pedestal might have been nothing but a moderately large meteorite, riddled with the twisting pits characteristic of siderites.

  Amalfi could see, however, that the spaces sculpted out of the interior of that block of stone, after the fashion of an ancient sculptor named Moore, had once had meaning. Inside that stone there had once stood a powerful human figure, with its foot resting upon the neck of a slighter. Once, evidently, IMT had actually been proud of the memory of Thor V—

  “Ahead is the Temple,” Heldon said suddenly. “The machinery is beneath it. There should be no one of interest in it at this hour, but I had best make sure. Wait here.”

  “Suppose somebody notices us?” Amalfi said.

  “This square is usually avoided. Also, I have men posted around it to divert any chance traffic. If you don’t wander away, you’ll be safe.”

  The Proctor strode away toward the big domed building and disappeared abruptly down an alleyway. Behind Amalfi, Karst began to sing, in an exceedingly scratchy voice, but very softly: a folk-tune of some kind, obviously. The melody, which once had had to do with a town named Kazan, was too many thousands of years old for Amalfi to recognize it, even had he not been tune-deaf. Nevertheless, the mayor abruptly found himself listening to Karst, with the intensity of a hooded owl sonar-tracking a field mouse, Karst chanted:

  “Wild on the wind rose the righteous wrath of Maalvin, Borne like a brand to the burning of the Barrens. Arms of hands of rebels perished then, Stars nor moons bedecked that midnight, IMT made the sky Fall!”

  Seeing that Amalfi was listening to him, Karst stopped with an apologetic gesture. “Go ahead, Karst,” Amalfi said at once. “How does the rest go?”

  “There isn’t time. There are hundreds of verses; every singer adds at least one of his own to the song. It is always
supposed to end with this one:

  “Black with their blood was the brick of that barrow, Toppled the tall towers, crushed to the clay. None might live who flouted Maalvin, Earth their souls spurned spaceward, wailing, IMT made the sky Fair.”

  “That’s great,” Amalfi said grimly. “We really are in the soup-just about in the bottom of the bowl, I’d say. I wish I’d heard that song a week ago.”

  “What does it tell you?” Karst said, wonderingly. “It is only an old legend.”

  “It tells me why Heldon wants his spindizzies fixed. I knew he wasn’t telling me the straight goods, but that old Laputa gag never occurred to me—more recent cities aren’t strong enough in the keel to risk it. But with all the mass this burg packs, it can squash us flat —and we’ll just have to sit still for it!”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “It’s simple enough. Your prophet Maalvin used IMT like a nutcracker. He picked it up, flew it over the opposition, and let it down again. The trick was dreamed up away before spaceflight, as I recall. Karst, stick close to me; I may have to get a message to you under Heldon’s eye, so watch for—Sst, here he comes.”

  The Proctor had been uttered by the alleyway like an untranslatable word. He came rapidly toward them across the crumbling flagstones.

  “I think,” Heldon said, “that we are now ready for your valuable aid, Mayor Amalfi.”

  Heldon put his foot on a jutting pyramidal stone and pressed down. Amalfi watched carefully, but nothing happened. He swept his flash around the featureless stone walls of the underground chamber, then back again to the floor. Impatiently, Heldon kicked the little pyramid.

  This time, there was a protesting rumble. Very slowly, and with a great deal of scraping, a block of stone perhaps five feet long by two feet wide began to rise, as if pivoted or hinged at the far end. The beam of the mayor’s flash darted into the opening, picking out a narrow flight of steps.

  “I’m disappointed,” Amalfi said. “I expected to see Jonathan Swift come out from under it. All right, Heldon, lead on.”