The Second Ardath Mayhar Page 9

  A huge metal hulk stood on treads beside a table on which rested a glass container. Inside that, throbbing to the rhythms of an attached pump as it forced nutrients and oxygen through its cells, was a brain. My brain.

  I was being dragged back into it, willy nilly, though I wanted to howl and curse. But in I went, whatever it is that forms the entity I am. And I found myself trapped in that blind chunk of brain matter, waiting for what I knew must come next.

  I was a part of the team that originated the techniques for implanting brains into mechanisms. All too well I understood what was taking place. To become a destroyer instead of a healer—what a terrible fate for a doctor, even one involved in such inhuman projects as that one.

  * * * *

  So, I am now a destroyer, armed to the nonexistent teeth with sensors and weaponry. I dig impatiently into the log kept electronically since the implant, and I find that I was assigned to the terraforming of Elektra Six, being given there the task of wiping out the native fauna to make room for specially adapted Terran strains. I shudder—or would, given the ability—at the thought.

  Another file. The Kamraon War. I key another in rapidly, for I have no wish to re-examine that catastrophe, but the memories flit around the edges of my memory: Living bodies burst like eggs. Cities crumple beneath the impact of the Sonosystem attacks. Other mechanical weapons not unlike myself heave over the horizon to disappear in a blast of disruptor fire.

  And all the while, trapped inside this metal monster, there has been the sensitive human spirit that was mine. Was that why I went dormant, into a sort of mechanical shock, and was out of action while this world was pocked and pitted around me with Impact missiles?

  I move forward, skimming or skipping files rapidly. Where am I now? What action had brought my kind to this undesirable little world, where the bloodshot cloud never changes to show that it rotates at all?

  At last I find the last entry in the log:

  Assigned: Celeric outpost.

  Purpose: Protect against infiltration by agents of the Rebellion.

  Guard: Protect strategic arms and fuel installations from theft or attack.

  Supply: Provide Franchise ships or detachments with needed supplies.

  NO CODE CANCEL

  NO CODE CANCEL

  NO CODE CANCEL

  NO CODE CANCEL

  And that is all. No Code Cancel—I sped through basic codes to find what that might mean. When I did, I wondered why a guard on an unmanned outpost needed to be programmed so that it was impossible to change its orders. It seems irrational to me.

  But evidently the little world had been attacked, for the evidence was all around me. Blast cones were becoming more frequent, showing that a firefight had taken place here between ground forces. Why? I can only hope to learn more as I near the center of the concentration of fire.

  Gradually, the memories filter back into my bruised mind. The Rebels had come, but I and the two others set to guard had beaten them off...too easily? Now I wonder. A fleet of Franchise transports arrived soon afterward, and much of the food and equipment left here for them was transferred into their holds.

  Before the last shuttle could take off, there was a raid, coming from nowhere, that demolished the Stashes, even those deep belowground. The shuttle cracked under Impact fire, but many of the men aboard lived to scramble out of range before its fuel tanks went.

  Unus and Duo had set their backs toward mine, forming a protective triangle inside which the survivors huddled, firing when there was some target within range of their feeble firearms. I remember hearing Captain Evinrade yell behind me, but I was engaged in firing on a line of Metallics that came over the ridge before me, their weapons busy as they approached.

  And there my recollection came to an end. Had I sustained a direct hit?

  I stop beneath that unhealthy sky and grip the External Scanner in one set of clamps. The arms are arranged so that I can reach any part of my anatomy, in order to effect repairs. Now it shows me, inch by inch, the pitted metal of my skin. Just behind the shielded spot where my visual and auditory sensors are positioned, there is a mark, old now, but still showing the blackening of fire and the subtle crinkling that denotes a hit by an Impact Bomb.

  Below, in the belly of my body, lies the computer with its vital files. Theoretically, that should have been cushioned enough to prevent damage, but I trace the connective cables to the sensors, and I realize that such a “wound” might well have put me out of commission.

  Had I gone trundling off across the desert, blinded, deaf, unable to think or to access my orders? What had happened to those I left behind me?

  I am going back; I know that now. Some mechanical instinct is taking me in a direct line the way I came...how many years ago? It had been long, for the blown sand has scoured most of the scorch from my metal. But there is no way to count years in a world without season or sun or star.

  I wonder how the conflict went for those sent by the Franchise. Were any of the men left alive? Or has it been so long that even the survivors would have died of natural causes?

  What of Unus and Duo? And I am...Tray! That opens up another memory, of a long ago communication with my two companions. Unus had been a teacher, a young woman who drowned back on Terra. Duo was...what? I tried to think. Then it came to me.

  Duo was a musician, and he managed to make his electronics form notes of exquisite purity as we sat through the endless days on Celeric. He sang many musics to us. Where is he now?

  I am hurrying now; my power sources, activated by the sun behind the endless cloud, are able to force a goodly pace. Ahead I can see the shattered remnants of the shielding that covered the Stashes.

  Instinctively, I activate my Communicator, sending the signal to any Franchise force left in the Enclave. At this point, I do not care who I find there. The Rebels have political differences, perhaps, but they are not evil people. I will be happy to find anyone, human or mechanical, to ease the terrible solitude.

  A star-signal has gone up, brilliant blue-white against the gory sky. Someone is there! I am filled with excitement, though this body has no heart to pump or blood to pulse.

  There is movement on the horizon. A Metallic—Rebel, of course, but what of that?

  The bulk about me heaves and screeches. Ports open, and a clatter rumbles through my gut. The weapons systems are readying for conflict.

  No! No! I try to force my will upon this brute beast of metal, but it is inexorable. The beams focus, the charges build.

  I try to blank out my thoughts, to return to the vegetative state in which I spent such a very long time, but I cannot ignore the quiver as the blast roars outward, or the distant sound that is my sole possible companion being scattered to the winds.

  I close myself inward, inward, encapsulating everything, folding down. Deep inside, my last wink of thought is glimmering.

  I shall shut it down...

  IN THE LONE GRAY

  Being precocious and intelligent can be extremely uncomfortable. I knew decades before this was recognized that many of the poisons used with such joy by farmers were both dangerous and destructive. If something will kill an insect, if you get enough of it, you can bet it will also kill you!

  McGeir plodded along the valley, gray dust puffing about his ankles as he forced his weary feet forward. His entire body must be lined with powdery grit by now, he was sure. His eyes felt sandpapery, his lids rough and inflamed. He blinked hard and lifted his gaze to the mountains ahead.

  The peaks rose dark in the west, silhouetted against a dim sunset. If McGeir’s calculations were correct, there should be a new moon somewhere in the murk of the west as well, but it was invisible behind seamless gray cloud. It had been a long while since he or any of his people saw a new moon.

  He had slowed while examining the horizon, and Loon passed him, leaving him at the end of the line of walk
ers. He stepped faster, for tail-folk didn’t last long. Was he growing weaker?

  At first he had led the refugees. He’d been irritated by the slowness of the pregnant women, the small children, the old, and the lame. But he’d been certain he could lead them, at last, to some promised land where the soil was loamy with the castings of earthworms, mountain streams still ran clear, living conifers rose against the sky, and wild animals lurked in the forest, watching them with eyes untainted by sickness. But as they crossed mountain passes, trekked through dead valleys, he had never found such a haven.

  He forced himself to pass Loon, then Truda. The grandchild slung against the old woman’s back was asleep, his gray-pale face thin, his eyes ringed with blue. McGeir looked away, thinking he could not deal with another dead child.

  He wondered if this abnormal weakness had begun when the last of the pregnant women delivered a dead infant and bled to death in the shelter of that last rock wall. Or had it been when Dolan, who had seemed tough as old hickory roots and who knew all there was to know about survival, had leaned on his staff, closed his eyes, and fallen, straight as a tree, into death?

  All the deaths...those were what bled away his own strength, drop by drop, to soak into the gray dust, the gray air, the gray waste that the world had become.

  Pushing himself, he passed Garsten, ignoring her inquiring glance as he drew even with her.

  Their old intimacy had no place in this new situation. This was a context that she and her peers had brought into being with their earth-shaking discoveries. Their last pesticide, supposed to save the world from insects, had killed most of the earthworms, leaving the soil barren. On the heels of that came pestilence that devastated the world.

  The only humor McGeir had found in the situation was the fact that most of the insects had sailed through unscathed. Only when nothing was left at the roots of dead grass or in the decay of cities would they begin to suffer, he was certain. Even then, they would probably survive.

  The irony was that his people now ate insects, almost exclusively.

  From time to time they found a scummy pool where a few frogs or tadpoles or minnows still survived, and he had used most of his remaining strength to keep his starving crew from eating them. If those could provide a start for another cycle of life, they must live to do it. His kind, having caused the disaster, didn’t deserve to destroy them.

  Garsten still didn’t understand his attitude. Even before the release of the pesticide, he had argued with their employers, trying to make them comprehend the risk. But most of the techs and researchers were city folk who had never seen a patch of land deprived of earthworms, hard-caked soil that dried and blew away on the wind. They insisted that only “bad” creatures would perish. T-36-D wouldn’t harm any beneficial element of the ecosystem.

  Ha!

  McGeir hitched his pants up and settled his holster against his hip. Too many things had been managed to death, literally. Too many stupid decisions had been made. He’d been told, when he was a boy, that anything that would kill a cockroach would kill him, if he got a comparable dose of it. Nobody in charge ever seemed to take that into account.

  Now he was coming up behind Seelbach, who turned at the crunch of his steps. With a sinking sensation, McGeir realized he had not looked closely at the scientist in several days.

  The blond moustache was straggly, the beard unkempt, the skin bluish. His red-rimmed eyes gave him a nightmarish look, like something from one of the old horror movies.

  McGeir grimaced. The old days were not that far in the past. Maybe three months? Or five?

  He’d been too busy, in the beginning, to keep track. Then he realized there wasn’t much use for it, though he tried his best to count days.

  For a while they’d all kept assuring each other that Europe hadn’t used the pesticide nearly as long as the U.S. had. Surely someone would come to their rescue. All the while, McGeir felt sure they were fooling themselves.

  Look at the sun! he thought. When you only know it’s there, because when the pitch blackness turns dingy gray, things are really bad. Never a star had he seen since the beginning of the end, when a huge dust storm devastated the western half of the country and covered the sky with a pall that had to be miles deep.

  Seelbach cleared his throat. “It’s about time to camp. We’re all tired, but tomorrow we ought to make the foothills, don’t you think?” Despite his words, his voice didn’t sound hopeful.

  McGeir nodded, studying the man closely. He was done for—McGeir had seen too many in his condition to be mistaken. Seelbach wouldn’t be in the file when the black sky lightened.

  Seven of his people had already gone that way, there when it grew dark, and not to be found at all when the light came again.

  McGeir pointed ahead, where a low ridge crowned with stiff growth would provide some shelter from the night wind. It was all dead, of course, like the rest of the vegetation he had seen. He spat into the dust.

  Seelbach turned toward the ridge, and those behind followed. For the first time in weeks, McGeir stood aside and counted as they passed him. Nine...ten...eleven...Truda and little Pat made thirteen. And Loon—but Loon, who had been tail-man, was no longer there.

  McGeir stared back along the valley. Had the man just turned and walked away? Or did some predator still live, stalking them as they moved? What kept happening to the last of the line, time after time? He could see nothing to provide an answer. There was no distant dark spot that might be a body...just nothing.

  McGeir hitched his holster again, automatically. Then he followed Truda to the ridge and helped her spread her scanty blanket. Tonight there was not even an insect to eat, but the three remaining children didn’t whimper. They sat patiently where they were put, their eyes huge and dark-rimmed in their sallow faces.

  They wouldn’t last long, McGeir admitted to himself for the first time. First the children would go—no, he’d forgotten. First Seelbach, tall and strong and too highly educated, would be gone tomorrow. Then the children.

  Who next? Likely Truda. Determined as she was, she was old; without her grandson to give her the will to live, she would go soon.

  He turned to check the others. Garsten had built a fire—there was plenty of dead brush, if nothing else—after digging a hole in the dust to keep the blaze from spreading to the bushes around the camp. The remnant of his group huddled in their blankets around the fire, falling asleep quickly. There was no energy left for talk.

  Yet Seelbach, as if knowing what was coming, seemed inclined to conversation. “You were right, McGeir,” he said, his voice a dry rasp in his throat. “All the time, you were right, and the Company wouldn’t listen to you. We didn’t listen, the government didn’t listen. Most of us spent our lives on cement, before the Company sent us to the isolated lab in Iowa. We didn’t understand how the soil works, not really. Just from books.”

  Garsten gripped her hands together in her lap. “It should have been enough,” she croaked. “The information was there, but it was insufficient. The people who wrote those books didn’t really want to know how totally dependent we are on the land and the trees and the creatures that grow there. It all started with water, I think....” Her voice died away as she stared into the fire.

  McGeir unbuckled his holster and laid it carefully on the dust. He’d said what he had to say, back when there was still time to save matters. Now he had no energy left for argument or discussion.

  Seelbach wouldn’t be put off, however. “You knew, McGeir. Others must have, too. Why didn’t anyone listen to you?”

  McGeir straightened his blanket and stretched out his legs. “Tame scientists told the bosses what they wanted to hear. I think most even believed their own lies. A man can do that, no matter what evidence he has in his hands.”

  Garsten shook her head. “The scientific method...,” she began.

  “…Is exercised by human bein
gs, who lie to themselves without even knowing it,” McGeir interrupted. “I read once that objectivity is impossible to mankind. True. We proved it, didn’t we?” He lay full-length, enjoying the warmth and the rest.

  She stared at him, her face gray with dust, her eyes as bloodshot as his own. “You don’t think there’s anyone much left, do you?” she asked.

  He sighed. “Maybe bunches here and there, all as desperate as we are. The plague that came on the heels of the dust storm must’ve cleaned out the cities right off, or we’d see signs of more people. Unless we can find a place with good water and plants and animals, we’re through. Maybe it’s better that way, though it’s a pity to kill off the world along with our kind. I’d hoped we might eliminate ourselves and leave the rest to regenerate. Ah, hell....” He fell silent.

  The fire fell in on itself with a soft rustle. Garsten pulled her blanket over her face and turned her back. Seelbach stared across the glimmer of coals for a long moment. Then he, too, covered himself for sleep.

  McGeir lay on his back, ignoring the pebbles beneath him. He couldn’t look up at the stars, for there were none visible. There was no place to go from here. No mountain valley, protected from contamination, lay ahead to insure life for this bunch of stragglers.

  Maybe, deep in the soil beneath him, there might survive the eggs of earthworms and grasshoppers and other vital creatures. Weed seeds almost surely waited amid the dust, and he knew seeds could sprout, given the right conditions, after hundreds or thousands of years of lying dormant. Food plants had been developed from weeds, back in the beginning.

  In the distant future, there might come a day when those things lived again and flourished.

  That was too far ahead, too long a time, with too much pain to endure before it came.

  McGeir heard Seelbach’s furtive movements, his quiet steps dying away into the darkness.

  He understood at last what happened to those they had lost.