Eden (29 page)

"I pass. Maybe you'll have better luck."

There was a moment's silence.

"I have a question," said the Captain. "How did you learn of our existence?" he asked into the microphone.

"Information. Meteorite. Ship," the computer replied after a brief exchange with the doubler. "Ship from another planet. Cosmic rays. Death rays. Degeneration. Pause. Glass encapsulation to destroy. Pause. Observation from observatory. Explosions. I took bearings. Direction of sound, source. Target of rockets. Pause. I went at night. Waited. Defender opened encapsulation. I entered, am."

"They told you that a ship had landed, with monsters in it?" asked the Engineer.

"With monsters. Degenerated. From cosmic rays. And that we are protected. With this glass. I took sound bearings. The target. Calculated. Found."

"You weren't afraid of the monsters?" the Captain asked. "You weren't … deathavoid?"

"Yes," replied the speaker almost immediately. "But the chance. One in a million planetary revolutions."

The Physicist nodded. "Each one of us would have tried to come here for that reason."

"Do you wish to stay with us? We will cure you. There will be no death," the Doctor said.

"No," answered the speaker.

"You wish to leave? To return to your people?"

"Return, no," said the speaker.

The men looked at one another.

"We can cure you! You won't die!" said the Doctor. "Tell us, what will you do when you're cured?"

The computer squawked, and the doubler made a sound so brief that it was barely audible.

"Zero," said the speaker, and repeated, as though not sure the men had understood correctly, "zero."

"He doesn't want to stay and doesn't want to go back," muttered the Chemist. "Could he be delirious?"

They looked at the doubler. His pale-blue eyes were fixed on them. The men could hear his slow, shallow breathing.

"That's enough," said the Doctor, getting up. "Everyone out."

"And you?"

"I'll join you soon. I took two psychedrins—I can sit with him a while longer."

When the men made for the door, the doubler's smaller torso fell back and his eyes closed.

In the corridor, the Engineer said, "We asked him all those questions—why didn't he ask us any?"

"Oh, but he did, earlier," said the Cyberneticist. "About conditions on Earth, our history, the development of space travel. A half-hour before you arrived, he was much more talkative."

"He must be weak now."

"He received a heavy dose of radiation. And his trek through the desert probably tired him, too, since he is old."

"How long do they live?"

"About sixty revolutions of the planet, slightly less than sixty of our years. Eden's year is shorter."

"What do they eat?"

"That was a surprise. It appears that evolution here has taken a different path from the one on Earth. They can assimilate certain inorganic substances directly."

"Ah," said the Chemist, "the soil that first one brought in!"

"Yes, but that was thousands of years ago. Now they've modernized, using those plants, the calyxes on the plain, as food accumulators. The calyxes extract from the soil and store compounds that serve the doublers as nourishment. There are different calyxes for different compounds."

"Of course, they cultivate them," said the Chemist. "To the south we saw whole fields of them. But the doubler who got into the ship, why was he digging about in the clay?"

"The calyxes retract below ground level after dark."

"Even so, there was plenty of soil available…"

"Gentlemen, to bed with you," the Captain said to the Physicist and the Cyberneticist. "We'll take over. It's almost twelve."

"Twelve midnight?"

"We've lost all sense of time."

They heard footsteps behind them. It was the Doctor coming from the library. They looked at him questioningly.

"He's sleeping," he said. "He's not well. When you went out, I had the impression, even, that…" He didn't finish.

"Did you say anything to him?"

"I did. I asked him—I thought, you see, it was all over—if we could do anything for them. For all of them."

"And what did he say?"

"'
Zero
.'" When the Doctor said this, it was like the computer's lifeless voice.

"Go lie down, all of you," said the Captain. "But first, since we're all together, let me ask you: Do we leave?"

"Yes," said the Engineer.

"Yes," said the Physicist and the Chemist at the same time.

"Yes," said the Cyberneticist.

"And you? Why are you silent?" the Captain asked the Doctor.

"I'm thinking. You know, I was never that interested in…"

"Yes, you were more concerned about how we could help them. But now you know that that's impossible."

"No. I don't know," the Doctor said softly.

An hour later Defender was riding down the lowered loading hatch. The Engineer drove it the six hundred feet to the wall of glass, which was curved inward above like unfinished vaulting, and set to work. Darkness fled in gigantic leaps into the depths of the desert, as lines brighter than the sun, thundering, cut the wall. Slabs tumbled to the ground, half molten, and overhead white smoke rose, shimmering. The Engineer left the fragments to cool and went on cutting with the annihilator, hewing out windows from which dripped fiery icicles. In rows of rectangular holes now appeared wells of starry sky. Smoke coiled across the sand. The vitreous mass groaned, creaked, glowed.

Defender finally returned to the ship. From a safe distance the Engineer checked the radiation level of the chunks. The counter chattered.

"Ideally, we should wait at least four days," said the Captain. "But let's send out Blackie and the cleaning robots."

"Yes, only the surface is really hot. A jet of sand will take care of that. And the smaller pieces can be buried."

"We'll put them in the empty tank in the stern." The Captain looked thoughtfully at the cherry-red rubble.

"Why?" said the Engineer. "It's of no use to us, just unnecessary ballast."

"I'd rather not leave radioactive traces… They know nothing of atomic energy, and it's better that they don't."

"Maybe you're right," murmured the Engineer. "Eden… You know, the picture I get, based on what the astronomer-doubler told us … it's terrifying."

The Captain nodded slowly. "An abuse—so total, so thorough, as to arouse one's admiration—of information theory. It shows that it can be an instrument of torture far worse than anything physical. Isolating, repressing, compelling without compelling—they've made a ghastly science of it, their 'procrustics,' as the computer called it."

"Do you think they realize … he realizes…?"

"You mean, does he consider such a state normal? Well, I suppose he does. He knows nothing different. Though he did refer to their earlier history—tyrants of the ordinary type, and then those 'anonymous' ones. So he is able to make comparisons."

"If to him tyranny means the good old days, I shudder to think…"

"And yet there's a logic in it. One of a series of tyrants hits upon the idea that anonymity may be advantageous. Society, unable to focus its resentment on one person, becomes, as it were, disarmed…"

"In other words, a tyrant without a face!"

"And after a certain time, when the theoretical foundation of this procrustics has been established, a successor goes one step further and does away even with his 'incognito,' abolishing himself and the whole system of government—only in words, of course, in public communications."

"But why is there no liberation movement here? That I can't understand! If they punish their 'offenders' by putting them in these isolated groups, and there are no guards, no surveillance, no external force, then individual escape, even organized resistance, should be possible."

"For organization to take place, there must first be a means of communication."

The Captain held the Geiger outside the turret hatch: the chatter was slower.

"It's not that they do not have names for things, and for the relations between things, but that the names they have are in fact false, are masks. The monstrous mutations among them are called a disease, a plague. It must be that way with everything. In order to control the world, one must first name it. Without knowledge, weapons, and organization, and in isolated groups, there is little they can do."

"Yes," said the Engineer. "But that scene at the cemetery … and in that ditch in the direction of the city suggest that the system may not be running as smoothly as our unknown ruler would like. And the fear the doubler showed when he saw the wall of glass—remember that?"

The Geiger, put outside again, ticked sluggishly. The rubble by the wall no longer glowed, but the ground around the ship still smoked, and the air shimmered, making the stars high above appear to weave.

"We're going," the Engineer went on. "If only we had learned their language better. And figured out how that damned government of theirs, which pretends not to exist, operates. And given them weapons…"

"Weapons for poor wretches like our doubler? Would you put an antimatter gun into his hands?"

"In that case we ourselves could have—"

"Destroyed the government?" the Captain said calmly. "Liberated the population by force?"

"If there was no other way."

"In the first place, these are not human beings. Remember, you spoke only with the computer, and therefore understand the doubler no better than it does. Second, no one imposed all this upon them. No one, at least, from space. They themselves…"

"If you use that argument, then there's nothing, nothing that should be done!" shouted the Engineer.

"How else can it be? Is the population of this planet a child that has got itself into a blind alley and can be led out by the hand? If things were only that simple! Liberating them, Henry, would have to begin with killing, and the fiercer the struggle, the less idealistic the killing becomes. In the end we would be killing merely to beat a retreat, to counterattack; then we would kill everything that stood in Defender's way. You know how easily that can happen!"

The Engineer nodded. "Anyway," he said, "they're undoubtedly observing us now, and those windows that we just opened in their wall, I doubt that they like that. There could be another attack."

"There could," the Captain agreed. "Maybe it would be worthwhile to post some remote-control sentries. Electronic eyes and ears."

"That would take time and require parts we can ill afford."

"True…"

"Two roentgens per second. We can send out the robots now."

"All right. Let's park Defender close to the ship, just in case."

That afternoon the sky clouded over and, for the first time since they arrived on the planet, a light, warm rain began to fall. The wall of glass darkened, and thin, pale streams of water trickled down it. The robots worked tirelessly. The sand thrown by the pulsomotors hissed over the surface of the piled slabs. Bits of glass shot into the air. The sand and rain formed a watery mud.

Blackie hauled containers filled with radioactive fragments into the ship after the other robot checked their seals with the Geiger. Next the two robots dragged the cleaned slabs to positions designated by the Engineer. Then, throwing fountains of sparks, the welding machines went to work, and the slabs softened and fused together, forming the frame of the future platform.

It soon became evident that there would not be enough slabs, so at dusk, after a whole day of work, Defender again rolled forth and faced the wall. It was a strange sight as, through the heavy rain, rectangular suns blazed and boomed, and glowing chunks of glass plunged to the ground. Thick clouds of smoke billowed, and puddles of rainwater boiled with an earsplitting hiss. Even the rain in the air boiled. High above, motionless, rainbows in pink, green, and yellow reflected the bolts of light below. Defender, black as if hewn from coal, turned amid the lightning, pointed its nose, and spat more lightning, and again the area shook with thunder.

"This could be a good thing!" the Engineer shouted into the Captain's ear. "With these fireworks, maybe they'll leave us in peace! We need at least two more days!" His face, bathed in sweat—the turret was as hot as an oven—looked like a mercury mask.

After the men retired for the night, the robots emerged again and worked until morning, dragging sand pump hoses after them, moving the slabs of glass. The rain sparkled, a dazzling azure, around the welding machines; the loading hatch swallowed up more containers. Slowly, behind the stern of the ship, a parabolic structure rose, and meanwhile the robot diggers excavated the hill beneath the belly of the ship, gnawing fiercely.

At daybreak, when the men got up, some of the glass slabs had been used to shore up the tunnel.

"That was a good idea," said the Captain. They were sitting in the navigation room, rolls of blueprints before them on the tables. "Had we removed the beams without them the roof would probably have collapsed and crushed the daggers, or trapped them."

"Do we have enough power to take off?" asked the Cyberneticist, standing in the doorway.

"Enough for ten takeoffs. If we had to—though it won't be necessary—we could always jettison the radioactive debris we're taking with us in the stern tank. We'll introduce heat ducts into the tunnel and raise the temperature to the point at which the glass begins to melt. The props will slowly sink. If they sink too quickly, we pump liquid nitrogen into the ducts. We should be able to free the ship by evening. And then the job of standing it up…"

"That's chapter two," said the Engineer.

By eight the clouds had dispersed and the sun was shining. The enormous cylinder of the ship, which until now had been embedded fast in the hillside, began to move. The Engineer, using a transit, monitored the slowly diminishing angle of the stern. He stood at a distance, near the wall, which now resembled, with its square holes, the ruins of some ancient glass coliseum.

The men and the two doublers had been evacuated from the ship. The Engineer saw the small figure of the Doctor; it was approaching, going around the hull in a wide arc; but he paid no attention to it, too absorbed in his instruments. Only a thin layer of earth and, beneath that, the melting props now bore the weight of the ship. Eighteen cables ran from the funnels to anchors set in the massive chunks cut from the wall. The Engineer thanked heaven for the wall: without it, it would have taken them four times longer to right the ship.