Authors: Piers Anthony
"Oh-oh. I don't have them bugged, for the obvious reason. We'll lose him."
"I'll post emergency guards." And Neq went about the matter quietly, using the underground intercom system to wake those on call. Soon armed men would stand at strategic points in all the halls of that section.
But soon was not now. A horrible picture formed in Neq's mind. The person who would have known Helicon best was its former leader, Bob. He would have escaped if anyone had. Neq used his office now, and was reminded of the man more than he liked. There were little things about the setup, such as the way the metal desk faced the only door, and the gun in that desk, and the wiring for intercom connections to every part of Helicon, and the spotlights set in the ceiling. That office was a little fortress. There had been scorch-marks in it, as in the rest of Helicon--but no corpse. Sol could have caught Bob elsewhere and killed him, of course--but there was no proof of that. Bob might have survived, somehow-- and now he could be returning, determined to be avenged on the child who had rejected his perverted advances....
Abruptly something else came clear. That was why Bob had sent Soli to her presumed death! Vengeance for the embarrassment she had caused him! Instead of submitting, she had driven him off with her sticks... and at any time she could have told Sol. She had had to be eliminated--and what better way than by besieging nomads, Sol's kind?
And therein lay Bob's fatal mistake. He had not acted for the best interests of Helicon, but to avenge and cover his own mistake with Soli. He had let personal factors interfere with his duty.
"What?" Vara exclaimed as Neq entered. "Oh, it's you."
Just as Neq was letting his own involvement with the same girl interfere with his own duty. "There's a stranger in the halls, coming this way. For you, I think. There wasn't time to set guards--"
"Oh!" she said, going for her sticks.
He pushed her down on the bed again. She was heavy and her breasts were huge as he touched her in the dark. "No action for you! That's why I'm here. If he enters--"
"But I have no enemies, do I?" she asked. "Except maybe you, when I empty my belly and start sharing in a few months."
He laughed, but the remark cut him. How could he enforce the system for others, unless he honored it himself? No wonder the social system had not been working well.
Bob's mistake...
"It is over between us," he said. "I love you, but I am master of Helicon. I must be objective. Do you understand?"
"Yes, you are right," she said, and it hurt him that she could agree so readily. "It has to be that way."
He knew then that it was over. She was a child of Helicon; she understood the sharing system emotionally as well as intellectually. She had never been his to keep.
A few minutes later they both heard it. Quick furtive steps in the hall, coming near.
The door opened. Neq raised his claw to strike, wishing for his sword. He nudged the light switch with his elbow. Brilliance erupted.
Vara screamed.
Momentarily blinded, the stranger stood with tousled hair and arms lifted on guard. A woman. Naked.
Pretty face, rather shapely figure, lithe legs, well formed breasts--had he had his sword, he would have cut her down before he realized.
"Sosa!" Vara cried, scrambling from the bed.
The two women embraced while Neq stood with claw frozen. Of all the developments!
"Oh, mother, I'm so glad!" Vara sobbed. "I knew you were alive..."
Sosa: the woman Vara considered her real mother, in preference to Sola. Naturally she had returned to join her daughter. Naturally she didn't care about anyone else. Or to meet anyone else, in her silent nudity. She just wanted to visit Vara and perhaps take her away, staying clear of other entanglements. She had probably had to swim through some of the fringe-cavern waterways, avoiding radiation. The mystery had been solved.
Now the two women were reunited, and oblivious to him. Neq left quietly, knowing he would not be missed.
Vara did not leave. Sosa stayed. She merged with the group so smoothly that it seemed she had always been there. She assumed Vara's duties including the sharing, and though she was of Neq's generation the men were very glad to participate with her. She was a small, active woman in very good condition and easy to get along with. Her immediate past was a mystery; she had disappeared when Helicon was destroyed, and reappeared now that it lived again, and she confessed her troubles to no one.
If Neq had doubted Vara's need for him before, now there was no question. Vara needed nobody but Sosa. It was good that such comfort was available in her period of stress, but it cast Neq loose without even the excuse of jealousy.
Jim's call on the newly-renovated television network awakened Neq again. Another routine emergency!
"Someone in the subway," Jim said. "Going, not coming. Seems to be female."
Vara, he thought, horrified. Sosa had finally talked her into leaving, so that the baby would not be subject to Helicon! "I'll check it myself," he said.
Jim nodded in the screen, perhaps understanding Neq's concern. It was a matter to handle privately.
Someone was certainly in the subway, but not using the cars. Neq let out the breath he had held when passing through the flower-chambers and smelled the other faint perfume, the kind the women liked to wear. Of course she would not use one of the cars; such a drain on Helicon power would immediately alert the monitor. Few people knew about Jim's other monitors, as a matter of policy and security. Increasingly Neq appreciated the various mechanisms of his predecessor, Bob; it was necessary to know what was going on, without having to share that information with others.
There was no dust on the tracks now, for the subway was regularly used. He could not trace her visually. But when he put one ear to the metal he heard some faint brushing or knocking. Someone was walking along the track, headed for the hostel. Someone heavy, a bit clumsy... like a woman large with child.
He followed into the dark tunnel, running silently. Soon he could hear her directly, and he slowed to make sure he would not be prematurely detected. He wanted to catch her before she could do anything rash. Vara could be a difficult handful at the best of times....
She was picking her way along as though afraid of the dark, making slow progress. One person, not two.
Why wasn't Sosa with her? Sosa was catlike in the dark, and she had other routes--but she would not leave her adopted daughter to stumble alone. Actually, Vara herself was a competent night marcher; pregnancy should not change that completely.
He came up behind her and spoke. "Go no farther."
"Oh!" It was a shriek of surprise, and something dropped.
The voice gave her away: Sola. She had been carrying her belongings in a bundle in her arms, together with what must be a fair amount of food and water. No wonder she lumbered!
"What are you doing here?" he demanded, perversely angry at her for not being Vara.
"I'm leaving!"
Obviously. "No one leaves Helicon. You know that better than anyone."
"Then kill mel" she cried, hysterically defiant. "I won't stay with her!"
Why did everyone associate him with killing, still? "Vara? But she needs you more than ever now--"
"Sosa!" The name was hissed.
Belatedly, he made the connection. If he resented Sosa's captivity of Vara's affection, how much more should Vara's natural mother resent being shunted aside at the very time she had expected to be closest to her daughter? He had been narrow to view Sosa's impact only as it applied to himself. He had overlooked the natural reactions of others--just as Bob had, before. Was he fated to make all the same mistakes, until the same end came?
"You have other responsibilities," he said, somewhat lamely. "You can't run away just because one thing isn't right." Yet he had been feeling an increasing temptation to do just that himself, for administration bored and annoyed him as it had when he was a leader in the nomad empire, and without Vara he had little to brighten his outlook. "Here in Helicon there are no mates, no parents, no children--only jobs to do."
"I know it!" she cried. "That's the trouble! I have no mate, no child!"
"Every man is your mate. You described the policy of Helicon yourself. Sharing."
She laughed bitterly. "I'm an old woman. Men don't share with me."
Neq saw that she had more than one grudge against the underworld. Had he been doing his own job properly, he would have been aware of this problem long since. He had to do something now, or admit he was less a leader than Bob had been. Yet it was impossible to restore to her the sexual attraction she had had a generation ago.
Deprived of both sexuality and motherhood in a situation where both were doubly important--no wonder Sola was miserable! "We need you in Helicon," he said. "I shall not let you go. There is no life for you outside."
"Sosa can do my job; talk to her."
"No! Sosa has a different temperament. She--" Then he had it. "She can't bear children!"
"Do you think _I_ can?" Sola snapped. "I'm thirty-three years old!"
"You bore Vara! Then you lived with a castrate, and then a sterile man. When you tried with Var, he was sterile too. They could not make life; you could. And you can still! And Helicon must have that life! Children are our most important--"
"Childbirth would kill me at this age. I'm almost a grandmother." Yet he knew by her tone that she wanted to be convinced.
"Not with Dick the Surgeon attending. He made the Weaponless what he was--"
"Sterile!" she put in.
"That was an accident! Look what he did for these hands of mine! No one else could have restored me like that, and he didn't make me sterile! He can save life; he can save yours no matter how many babies you might bear, no matter how old. And if--it won't happen, but if-- if you do die--what difference does it make? You'll die anyway in the wilderness!"
That bit of cruelty brought a perverse glimmer of hope to her face, but it passed. "No man will touch me," she said sullenly.
"Every man will touch you!" he cried. "This is Helicon, and I am master! I'll send--" he broke off, realizing this was the wrong approach. He was saying in effect that men had to be forced, and she would never go along with that.
"You see? You don't travel; you know what I mean." He did know. Now he saw his duty. "When I first saw you, you were sixteen. You were beautiful--more lovely than any. I used to dream about you--lewd dreams." "Did you?" She seemed genuinely flattered. "You're older now--but so am I. You're bitter--and so am I. Yet we can do anything the youngsters can. I will give you your baby--one no one can take away from you."
"You've done your duty already by my daughter," she said, the hint of a chuckle in her voice.
"That's over. The baby will not bear my name. I had to give her what I had taken from her. She will share hereafter--as will I. And you. You have beauty yet."
"Do I?" It was a little-girl query, plaintive.
There on the tracks he took her. And in the dark he found that he had spoken truly, and there was a lot of Vara in her, and it was better than he had expected.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was just a faint whiff, but it brought a rash of strange feelings. Neq followed his nose.
There was a tiny crack in the wall he hadn't noticed before. From a distance it looked like an imperfection in the finish, but now he discovered that it was deep. Had
Bob had a secret compartment in his office, along with all the rest?
He inserted the corner of a sheet of paper into it and probed. The paper disappeared--and now he had lost his weapons-production statistics for the past month! There was space in there, all right--and the odor was jetting out, a very small current of air.
He fetched a dagger and maneuvered it into the crack with his pincers. He pried. Something snapped, and a section of the wall swung in. There was a passage here--
one he had missed, and might never have found, except for the little smell.
He peered in. It was dark, of course, and there was a warm draft. The odor was much stronger.
It was a man-hewn tunnel into the unexplored subterranean wilderness of Mt. Helicon. Anything at all could lie within, and the chances were more than even that it was deadly. This called for an armed party.
Neq shrugged and entered, alone. The stiflmlating breath of fragrance washed down along the corridor, lightening his step, and the stone and metal walls seemed to widen. This was Bob's escape route--and he had been right, a man needed such an exit from the tedium of leadership.
Vara had borne a fine boy and named him Vari. She had spent a reasonable period recovering and tending the baby, then begun sharing. Sosa spent considerable time with the baby also, and already it seemed as though Vari were hers. Three months after the first birth, Vara was pregnant again, and not by Neq.
Sola, too, conceived, and her joy transformed her. The two women became closer, not as mother and daughter but as sister-expectants, comparing notes and talking about plans for the Helicon nursery facilities and schooling of children. They were fine examples for the others, and the problems of the sharing system were diminishing.
Neq walked on, in a daze of memory despite the danger of exploring the unknown alone. He had a flashlight, for he never could anticipate when he might need light in Helicon, and he used it to pick out his path through the expanding passage. Now there was no metal, and the rock bore mosslike growths and was convoluted into treelike formations.
Jim the Gun had completed his initial renovation of the equipment and instituted a training program for operation and maintenance so that the work could carry on without him. "I'm not leaving," he said. "I like it here. Machines are my thing, and these are wondrous! But accidents happen, and I am aging."
As the machinery of Helicon moved toward capacity production--the capacity of the human attendants, not the machines--the exports to the crazies increased. The old trucks were renovated, for Helicon produced motors and tires and gasoline and gears, and the six trucks the crazies had been able to maintain became twenty, then fifty. Nomads had to be recruited as drivers and guards, being paid in food and good weapons and medicine. The trucks always traveled in convoys: one for the payload, another filled with warriors armed and spoiling for battle, the third carrying gasoline and replacement parts and food and similar staples. A new tribe formed: the trucker tribe, dedicated to this service. The existence and function of Helicon w,as no longer secret, of course, but the conditions of admittance remained stringent. The Truckers felt they had the best of it: Helicon provisions, a rambling nomad life. Many died in the actions against greedy outlaws, but this was the nomad way. Heroism.