Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (27 page)

“Where?” invited Raven, smiling again.

“Squarely on the horns of a dilemma—and both of them uncomfortably sharp.” He shifted in his seat as if his southern aspect were peculiarly susceptible to suggestion. “Without self-government the Martians and Venusians remain Terrestrials, officially and legally, sharing this world with us, enjoying all our rights as equal citizens.”

“And so?”

“That means they can come here as often and for as long as they please, in any numbers.” Bending forward, Heraty slapped the table to emphasize his annoyance. “They can walk straight in through the ever-open door while crammed to the top hairs with arson, sabotage and every other imaginable form of malicious intent. And we can’t keep them out. We can’t refuse entry except by making them precisely what they want to be, namely, aliens. We won’t make aliens of them.”

“Too bad,” sympathized Raven. “I take it you have good reasons?”

“Of course. Dozens of them. We don’t put the brakes on somebody else’s progress out of sheer perversity. There are times when we must temporarily sacrifice that which is desirable in order to deal with that which is desperately necessary.”

“It would be clearer if it were plainer,” suggested Raven.

Hesitating a second or two, Heraty went on, “One major reason is known only to a select few. But I’ll tell you: we are on the verge of getting to the Outer Planets. That is a jump, a heck of a big jump. To back it up to the limit, get properly established and settle ourselves in strength we’ll need all the combined resources of three worlds unhampered by any short view quibbling between them.”

“I can well imagine that,” agreed Raven, thinking of Mars’ strategic position and of the immensely rich fuel deposits on Venus.

“And that’s not all, not by a long shot.” Heraty lowered his tone to lend significance to his words. “In due time there will be another jump. It will take us to Alpha Centauri or perhaps farther. There is some unpublished but rather convincing evidence that ultimately we may come head on against another highly intelligent life-form. If that should occur we’ll have to hang together lest otherwise we hang separately. There will be no room for Martians, Venusians, Terrestrials, Jovians or any other planetary tribes. We’ll all be Solarians, sink or swim. That’s how it’s got to be and that’s how it’s going to be whether nationalist-minded specimens like it or not.”

“So you’re impaled on yet another dilemma,” remarked Raven. “Peace might be assured by publishing the warning facts behind your policy—and thereby creating general alarm plus considerable opposition to further expansion.”

“Precisely. You’ve put it in a nutshell. There’s a conflict of interests which is being carried too far.”

“H’m! A pretty set-up. As sweet a mutual animosity as could be contrived. I like it—it smacks of an enticing chess problem.”

“That’s exactly how Carson sees it,” Heraty informed. “He calls it super-chess for reasons you’ve yet to learn. He says it’s time we put a new piece on the board. You’d better go see him right away. Carson’s the man who raked the world for someone like you.”

“Me?” David Raven registered mild surprise. “What does he think is so special about me?”

“That I wouldn’t know.” Heraty showed himself far from anxious to discuss the subject. “Such matters are left entirely to Carson and he has his own secrets. You must see him at once.”

“Very well, sir. Is there anything else?”

“Only this: you were not brought here merely to satisfy our curiosity but also to let you see for yourself that the World Council is behind you, though unofficially. Your job is to find some way of ending this war. You’ll have no badge, no documents, no authority, nothing to show that your personal status is different from that of any other individual. You’ll have to get along by benefit of your own abilities and our moral support. No more!”

“You consider that would be sufficient?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Heraty worriedly. “I’m in poor position to judge. Carson’s more capable in that respect.” He leaned forward, added with emphasis, “For what little it is worth my own opinion is that very soon your life won’t be worth a moment’s purchase—and I sincerely hope I’m wrong.”

“Me, too,” said Raven, blank-faced.

They fidgeted again, suspecting him of secret amusement at their expense. The deep silence came back and their formerly evasive eyes were on him as he bowed and walked away with the same slow, deliberate, confident gait as when he’d entered. Only the carpet whispered and when he went out the big door closed quietly, without a click.

“War,” remarked Heraty, “is a two-way game.”

Carson masqueraded as a mortician so far as personal appearance went. He was tall, lean, sad-faced, had the perpetual air of one who regrets the necessity and expense of floral offerings. All this was a mask behind which lurked an agile mind.

A mind that could speak without benefit of lips. In other words, he was a Type One Mutant, a true telepath. There’s a distinction here: true telepaths differ from sub-telepaths in being able to close their minds at will.

Glancing with glum approval at Raven’s equally tall but broader, heavier frame, and noting the lean, muscular features, the dark gray eyes, the black hair, Carson’s mind made contact without an instant’s hesitation. Invariably a Type One recognizes another Type One at first sense, just as an ordinary man perceives another simply because he is not blind.

His mind inquired, “Did Heraty give forth?”

“He did—dramatically and uninformatively.” Seating himself, Raven eyed the metal plate angled on the other’s desk. It bore an inscription reading:
Mr. Carson. Director—Terran Security Bureau.
He pointed to it. “Is that to remind you who you are whenever you become too muddled to remember?”

“In a way, yes. The plate is loaded on the neural band and radiates what it says. The technical boys claim that it’s anti-hypnotic.” A sour grin came and went. “To date there’s been no occasion to try it out. I’m in no great hurry to test it either. A hypno who gets this far isn’t going to be put off by a mere gadget. ”

“Still, the fact that someone thinks you could do with it is a bit ominous,” Raven commented. “Has everyone got the heebies around here? Even Heraty insinuated that I’ve already got one foot in the grave.”

“An exaggeration, but not without basis. Heraty shares something with me, namely, the dark suspicion that we’ve at least one fifth columnist on the Council itself. It’s no more than a dark thought but if there’s anything to it you’re a marked man from now on.”

“That’s pleasant. You dig me up in order to bury me.”

“Your appearance before the Council was unavoidable,” Carson told him. ‘They insisted on having a look at you whether I approved or not. I didn’t approve and Heraty knows it. He countered my objection by turning my own arguments against me.

“How?” Raven invited.

“Said that if you were only one-tenth as good as I claimed you ought to be, there was no need for anxiety. The enemy could do all the worrying instead.”

“H’m! So I’m expected to live up to an imaginary reputation you’ve concocted for me in advance. Don’t you think I’ve enough grief?”

“Plunging you into plenty of grief is my idea,” declared Carson, displaying unexpected toughness. “We’re in a jam. Nothing for it but to flog the willing horse.”

“Half an hour ago I was a goat. Now it’s a horse—or maybe part of a horse. Any other animal imitations you’d like? How about a few bird calls?”

“You’ll have to call some mighty queer birds to keep pace with the opposition, much less get ahead of it.” Sliding open a drawer, Carson took out a paper, surveyed it unhappily. “This is as far as we’ve got with a top secret list of extra-Terrestrial varieties. Nominally and according to law they’re all samples of
homo sapiens.
In deadly fact they’re
homo-something-else. ”
He glanced at his listener. “To date, Venus and Mars have produced at least twelve separate and distinct types of mutants. Type Six, for instance, are Malleables.”

Stiffening in his seat, Raven exclaimed. “
What?”

“Malleables,” repeated Carson, smacking his lips as if viewing an especially appetizing corpse. “They are not one hundred percenters. No radical alteration of the general physique. They can do nothing really startling from a surgeon’s viewpoint. But they’ve been born with faces backed with cartilage in lieu of bones, are incredibly rubber-featured and to that extent are good, really good. You would kiss one thinking he was your own mother if it struck his fancy to look like your mother.”

“Speak for yourself,” Raven said.

“You know what I mean,” Carson persisted. “As facial mimics they have to be seen to be believed.”

Indicating the highly polished surface of his desk, Carson continued, “Imagine this is a gigantic checkerboard with numberless squares per side. We’re using midget chessmen and playing white. There are two thousand five hundred millions of us against thirty-two millions of Venusians and eighteen million Martians. On the face of it that’s a huge preponderance. We’ve got them hopelessly outnumbered.” He made a disparaging gesture. “Outnumbered in what?
In pawns!”

“Obviously,” agreed Raven.

“You can see the way our opponents view the situation: what they lose in numbers, they more than make up for in superior pieces. Knights, bishops, rooks, queens and—what is so much the worse for us—new style pieces endowed with eccentric powers peculiar to themselves. They reckon they can produce them until we’re dizzy: mutants by the dozens, each one of them worth more than a regiment of pawns.”

Raven said meditatively, “Acceleration of evolutionary factors as a direct result of space conquest was so inevitable that I don’t know how it got overlooked in the first place. A child should have seen the logical consequence.”

“In those days the old-timers were obsessed by atomic power,” responded Carson. “To their way of thinking it needed a world-wide holocaust created by radioactive materials to produce mutations on a large scale. It just didn’t occur to them that hordes of Venus-bound settlers could not spend five solid, searing months in space, under intense cosmic ray bombardment, their genes being kicked around every hour and every minute, without there being normal working of cause and effect.”

“It’s occurring to them now.”

“Yes, but in bygone days they couldn’t see wood for trees. Heck, they went so far as to build double-shelled ships containing ray absorbing blankets of compressed ozone, cutting down intensity to some eighty times that at Earth level— yet failed to realize that eighty times still remains eighty times. The vagaries of chance even themselves up over a long period of time so that we can now say that Venus trips have created about eighty mutants for every one that would have just come naturally.”

“Mars is worse,” Raven pointed out.

“You bet it is,” agreed Carson. “Despite its smaller population Mars has roughly the same number and variety of mutants as Venus. Reason: it takes eleven months to get there. Every Mars settler has to endure hard radiations about twice as long as any Venus settler—and he goes on enduring them because of Mars’ thinner atmosphere. Human genes have a pretty wide tolerance of massive particles like cosmic rays. They can be walloped again and again and again—but there are limits.” He paused, his fingers tapping the desk while he reflected briefly. “Inasmuch as a mutant has military value, Mars’ war potential fully equals that of Venus. In theory—and it’s faulty theory, as we must show them—Mars and Venus together can put enough into the field to give us a run for our money. That is precisely what they are trying to do. Up to the present they’ve got away with it. We’ve now reached the point where it has ceased to be funny.”

“Seems to me,” observed Raven, thoughtfully, “that they’re making a mistake similar to that made by the original pioneers; in sheer excess of enthusiasm they’re overlooking the obvious.”

“Meaning that this planet mans the space fleets and therefore can find some mutants of her own?”

“Yes.”

“They’ll learn in the same way that we’ve had to learn. And you’re going to show them—I hope.”

“Hope springs eternal. In what way do you suggest that I show them?”

“That’s up to you,” said Carson, dexterously passing the buck. Searching through the papers on his desk, he extracted a couple, looked them over. “I’ll tell you of one case that illustrates the squabble in which we’re involved and the methods by which it’s being fought. It was this particular incident that told us for the first time that there is a war on. We’d got suspicious of a long series of apparently disconnected events, laid several camera-traps. Most were put out of action. A few failed for no known reason. But one registered.”

“Ah!” Raven bent forward, eyes keen, attentive.

“The camera showed how three men destroyed some extremely important spaceship data that can’t be replaced in less than a year. The first of this trio, a Type One Mutant, a true telepath, kept mental watch for interrupters. The second, a Type Two, a floater—”

“Meaning a levitator?” Raven chipped in.

“Yes, a levitator. He got them over two twenty-foot walls with the help of a rope ladder and then took the ladder up to a high window. The third one, a Type Seven Mutant, a hypno, took care of three guards who intervened at different times, stiffened them into immobility, erased the incident from their minds and substituted false memories covering the cogent minutes. The guards knew nothing of the camera-traps and therefore were not able to give them away to the telepath unwittingly. But for a camera we wouldn’t know a darned thing except that in some mysterious manner the data had gone up in smoke.”

“Humph!” Raven seemed more amused than aghast.

“There have been several big fires of such strategic importance that we’re inclined to blame them on pyrotics—though we can’t prove it.” Carson shook his head mournfully. “What a war! They make their own rules as they go along. Their antics play hob with military logistics and if there were any brass hats these days they’d be ripe for mental treatment.”

“Time has marched on,” Raven contributed.