CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"Ruthless even to his own men!" shuddered the mind of Elysium.

"The only salvation of his men," it replied. "Not cruel, and ruthless only at need. Men use men. But mankind uses men for the species to survive. For our species to survive . . . ."

As if in answer, the first current of opinion recalled an image from the castaway's mind. It was his last look at Blackledge's face. The dark, dilated pupils met Slade's as the ground sagged down and the fuse hissed on the wounded man's chest. "Ruthless . . . ."

 

"Captain Levine didn't want to lift ship so suddenly," Don Slade said to the Elysian faces before him, "Some of the guys who hadn't been in the scout party sort of wanted to look around for themselves, too. Nobody had planned to go looking for us if we hadn't come back, though, any more than we'd thought they would."

The big man paused and cleared his throat. It wouldn't do to put his foot in his mouth now. These were nice folks, gentle folks, and the last thing he wanted to do was to give them an accurate glimpse of life in the universe from which he came. "Some of the people who'd been with me, though, they were pretty strong about getting off Stagira before something came through the hull to eat them. Used words like 'kill everybody on the bridge if the ship didn't lift ASAP.' Just panic, of course, but I wouldn't say they were joking right at that moment, either.

"While we were trying to get out of that cave, Levine and his navigators were thinking about their problem—crewing. Now, if we'd been able to touch down at some of the busier ports, there'd have been plenty of folks on the beach that we could have struck a deal with. But we were worried about competition, and besides . . . there was a problem about the manifesting of the cargo from Desireé. The bigger places with their red tape might have kept us a year in Customs Quarantine."

Well, it would have been about a year before the courts got through their rigamarole and everybody aboard GAC 59 was executed with due ceremony.

"But there was a place called Windward, where the colony modified autochthones to handle very complex tasks. Even starship crew jobs. So when the men of the scout party pushed matters, Levine already had a course plotted to Windward . . . ."

 

"So, assuming your cargo meets the manifest," said Senior Patriarch Bledsoe, "we have a deal." He offered his hand.

Captain Levine shook, but as he did so he said sourly to the Windward official, "The thrusters are in the original packing, Patriarch. There shouldn't be any problem with them. I'm a good deal more concerned about whether your crewman is going to function as well as the ten-tonne unit we're trading for him."

"For it, good sir," said the Windward official. Bledsoe's smile was wholly on his lips, not in his tone. "Human pronouns are as out of place for the Treks as they would be for so many, oh, thrust units. You'll see."

The local man had a fringe of white hair and a cherubic expression. He had driven a bargain, however, that obviously reflected the trouble the outlaws would have in selling their cargo on any world which did not wink at piracy. Bledsoe walked to the window. Don Slade already stood there, watching port activity. The two men were nearly of a size, but the tanker had a physical hardness which the other lacked. Muscles meant very little in modern, civilized warfare, however. Slade did not remember having seen a more heavily-defended spaceport on any world which was not in the midst of open warfare.

"We certainly expect you to test our merchandise as closely as we test yours, gentlemen," Bledsoe said. "There's a necessary programming period, of course, to interface the Trek with your system. About three days, I would judge, though there may be idiosyncrasies. After that, you can expect to have one of your control stations occupied at all times by a flawless, sleepless living machine. We'll modify your synthesizers to turn out a protein supplement that won't cause allergic reactions in a Trek; that won't be a problem. You'll find your purchase well worth the expense, I assure you."

"I don't wholly understand," said Slade. "How does what would be a six month cram-course for a human with top of the line hypnocubes turn out to be three days for a, a Trek?" He turned away from the bustle of planetary and intra-system traffic outside to pin the local man with his eyes.

Bledsoe shrugged. "There are advantages to being inhuman, Mister Slade," he said. "To being unintelligent in human terms. Your Trek will act within the parameters which it deduces from the equipment it operates and the task to which it is set. As I said, three days is generally enough time for the programming to be completed."

"Well, what I'd like," snapped Captain Levine, "is to have a look at one of these things. What are they, rocks with arms?"

"We'll have your unit delivered at once," the local man said with a narrowing of his eyes. "But surely you must have seen Treks working outside?"

Bledsoe motioned Levine over. Slade made room at the window with a grim smile on his face. The tanker had a notion as to what was about to happen. "There," said the local man. "Driving that truck."

"Good heavens, Patriarch!" Levine blurted. "Surely that's a human being?"

Like much of the labor force visible, the figure in the truck's open cab was a humanoid of medium height. A closer look disclosed that its gray color was not clothing but rather the skin or natural covering—fur or fine scales—itself. The gray figures differed significantly from the occasional true humans in only one respect: the humans worked with the usual amount of waste motion and chattering. The others, the Treks, carried out their tasks without any such flaws.

"They are not human, Captain Levine!" the Senior Patriarch said sharply. "And you will not be given another warning about your language. We aren't hard to get along with, here on Windward; but if you persist in blasphemy, you'll find we have rules and ways to enforce them." Bledsoe nodded toward one of the visible barbettes. Its twin powerguns had tracked the ship all the way to landing. Now the squat tubes were trained on the engine room, ready to gut their target at the first sign of trouble. Presumably the defenses were crewed by "flawless, sleepless, living machines" also.

Levine had lapsed into shocked silence. The tanker spoke to fill the embarrassing gap. "I suppose," he said mildly, "that you have, ah, normal recreation facilities for the crew while our purchase is being programmed?" Slade almost said "programming itself," but he caught himself short of another possible blunder.

"Normal and abnormal," said the local man. His expression relapsed into a knowing smile. "We can put some activities off-limits to your personnel if you like. All the establishments are, so to speak, managed by Treks. If you don't care, though, the sky's the limit—liquor, drugs; boys, women, or combinations; honest games—anything. We on Windward believe men have a right and a duty to take pleasure, though of course we support your right as commander—" He glanced from Slade to Levine and back again. Their relationship had not been made clear to Bledsoe. "—to control your crew for the good of the vessel."

Slade nodded. "Wide open should be just fine," he said. "So long as you don't have sorm trees."

"Pardon?"

"Don't worry about it," tanker said. "Let's get a team to emptying our hold, and let's get our Trek started on learning the hardware." He grinned. "The other hardware."

 

"Here's the high-speed vector shift," said Riddle, the Midwatch navigator who was handling the training.

The Trek followed the human's pointing finger to the cylinder switch with click detents for band jumps. The gray-furred humanoid had been trying to follow the training simulation by using the rocker switch by which the three units were brought into synchrony. Amazingly, the Trek had been successful within safety parameters if not those of comfort. That was, after all, as much as one dared to hope from the regular navigation crew.

The exercise continued smoothly. The Trek used both three-fingered hands to make adjustments now that he no longer had to keep one glued to the rocker switch. Its motions had less of the manic intensity of a one-armed pianist, as a result.

"She's absolutely incredible," muttered Riddle.

Slade glanced sharply at the navigator, then back to the autochthone. "Any time you're in front of a local," the tanker said mildly, "you call Treks 'it.' I think the best thing that'd happen otherwise is we lift off short another navigator."

Though it was natural, the Lord knew, to think of the Treks as human, as people. Their thigh and upper arm bones were noticeably longer than those of the lower limbs. Their facial features were understated in the manner of primitive carvings in low relief. The fur was less obtrusive than it would have seemed, because it was so fine and clinging that even at arm's length it seemed more like clothing than it did some facet of alienness.

The Treks had no secondary sexual characteristics, however. Riddle might find the creature's lithe quickness to be feminine. Slade, however, was reminded of a gunman he had known, and whose sex was not an issue once you had seen him kill.

The conning room was designed around a three-sided pillar. The primary controls were arranged on the sides of the pillar. Behind each navigation console, the bulkhead was covered with banks of status read-outs whose information was echoed to the main screen when the central computer saw a need to do so. The Trek shot frequent glances over its shoulder.

Slade began to open a ration packet. It was sealed in a tough polymer with a metalized inner surface. The autochthone turned in soundless delight. It extended a hand palm-upward toward the tanker. The palm was not fur-covered. The Trek's skin was a smooth, rich sable.

"Food?" Slade asked. He broke off half the ration bar and offered it. The Trek reached past the offered portion and took the half still in its wrapper. It opened the polymer carefully and waggled it so that the inner surface reflected the ranks of gauges to the rear.

"You want a mirror?" Slade said in surprise. The autochthone nodded enthusiastically. "Via, we can do better than this. I'll see to it." Slade looked at Riddle and added. "Do you really have to watch all that stuff too?" He waved at the mass of dials and data windows.

The navigator shrugged. "Well, they're there, they've got some purpose. And the way things work on this trash-bucket, the more you know, the better. But Lord! She's so—" Riddle ran his hand over the Trek's shoulder and biceps. "Good isn't the word. And without being able to speak."

Slade pointed at the Trek's throat with one blunt forefinger. The tanker was careful not to touch the smooth fur. "When the light catches it the right way," he said, "you can see there's a scar there. I suspect it could speak about as well as it does everything else, except for that."

Riddle leaped from his chair in an outburst of rage. "The bastards did that?" he shouted. The Trek nodded without apparent emotion. It resumed the activities of the training program. Riddle had not needed the confirmation anyway. "Those, those—animals!" he went on. His hand touched the Trek's shoulder again. "She's not an animal, they are."

Slade lifted the navigator's hand and dropped it back at the man's side. The tanker was tall enough to look down on Riddle's bald spot when they were both standing. "I'm telling you to watch your tongue, friend," Slade said. "If you can't learn to, you'll spend the rest of this landfall tied down and sedated."

When he felt the smaller man relax somewhat, Slade continued. "Now, how much longer are you on duty here?"

"Ninety-three minutes," the navigator said sullenly. He did sit down again.

"Fine," said Slade. "As soon as you're off, I want you to get over to one of the knock shops on the Strip and have your ashes hauled. Girls are a bit pricey, but don't worry about that, the first one's on me." His eyes narrowed slightly as he watched the balding man. "Or a guy, Via, take your choice. But you've got an order, mister, and don't think I'm kidding."

The tanker slapped his thigh as he walked out of the conning room. His hard palm cracked where the pistol holster would have been had he bothered to wear one.

Behind Slade, the navigator glowered at the autochthone's dancing arms.

 

"—what can the matter be?" Don Slade caroled as he walked across the port apron. A cab would have brought him directly to the main hatch, but the tanker felt good tonight, felt like walking. Area floods made the port and the vessels in it shimmer in amber light. "Seven old maids, locked in the lavat'ry."

"Slade, where've you been?" demanded a voice. Figures detached themselves from the hatch. Captain Levine had been speaking. "They've cheated us, there's something wrong with the Trek."

"They were there from Sunday to Saturd'y," Slade continued. That was playfulness, however, not real disregard of the problem. Windward had stim cones, real Cajumel blendings, and some of the whores had carried professionalism almost to a level of enthusiasm.

The big man put his arms around his pair of greeters, Levine and Riddle. The latter's bald spot gleamed like polished copper. "Let's go see what the problem is," the tanker said.

"The problem is the curst thing's dying before we even shift atmosphere," said Captain Levine as the trio stumbled up the ramp. Slade kept hold of his two companions' waistbands as if they were coolies and he a rickshaw. "I suppose we ought to be glad it didn't happen in the middle of a Transit sequence, but dear heaven! the cost, a whole thruster, and all wasted!"

"Lot of people got wasted when we got the thrusters, too," Slade noted equably. "But we wanted them pretty bad. Want not, waste not, d'ye suppose, Captain?"

The Trek lay on the shelf of the vessel's medicomp. The creature might as well have been laid on the broiler in the gallery for all the use the primitive piece of hardware would do. The medicomp could not be reprogrammed to handle non-human life forms. Since GAC 59 lacked even the most basic parameters such as the Trek's normal heart rate and body temperature, a more flexible medicomp would not have helped anyway.

The Trek lay supine. Its body was so flaccid that the soles of its feet touched the shelf. The ankle joints obviously did not lock. The creature's eyes were covered with yellowish scum which matted the fur around the orbits as well. Fluid of some other description, possibly the Trek equivalent of blood, was leaking out of its nostrils and simple ears. The creature's breathing was rapid and louder than the stand-by hum of the equipment. It did not take experience as extensive as the tanker's to recognize imminent death.

Slade stepped to the communications unit on the wall beside the medicomp. He tapped a three-digit code into the key pad to access the ship-to ship radio; ten digits more to enter Windward's commo net through the port transponder; and finally the six digits of the Port Warden. At no time did Slade pause to check the number or to fumble with the key pad. His eyes narrowed over chill anger as he waited for the connections to go through. There was no sign of the evening's entertainment when he snapped at the men across from him. "Why in Hell didn't you get help from the locals before now? Do you like to watch things die?"

Riddle grimaced and looked away. He had not, come to think, spoken since Slade's return.

Captain Levine said bluntly, "I wasn't about to bring them in till I found you. I can deal with these people if I've got somebody like you standing behind me. But not by myself, not when they're sure to deny liability."

"Warden's Office, Third Son Tuburg speaking," said the commo unit.

"This is freighter Golf-Alpha-Charlie Five Niner," Slade replied. "Berthed on Pad Four. The Trek we purchased yesterday is in dying condition. Seems disease or poison. We need medical help right away or we're going to lose hi—ah, it."

"Roger," said the speaker. Slade was not sure whether it was a good sign or a bad one that the Windward watch officer broke the connection at once.

"All right, what happened?" the tanker asked. He might as well improve his time by getting the background while they waited. The Trek breathed with the harshness of a file on stone.

"Riddle buzzed me about three hours ago," said Captain Levine. He gestured with his thumb. "He said the thing's performance had deteriorated and now it wasn't moving at all."

Slade looked at the navigator. "Why were you still on duty then, Riddle?" he asked without expression.

The balding man looked away. "Hutchins didn't show up for his watch," he said.

"Didn't you say Hutchins paid you to stand a double?" the Captain interjected.

"No matter," said Slade. No matter that he was going to deal with at just this moment. "What happened then?"

Levine risked a puzzled glance at his navigator. "Well," he went on, "when I got to the conning room it was about like you see it here. Not quite so much, well, leaking, but sick. Limp as a coil of rope. So we brought him down here—" he nodded vaguely at the medicomp— "and called you. You weren't wearing your belt unit."

Slade wavered between anger and laughing, then laughed. "My belt unit's lying on my bunk, along with a lot of other garbage I didn't want to fool with tonight. And as for what I was wearing, Captain—for most of the night, I wasn't wearing a curst thing. And neither were the ladies I was with."

"Well, ah," Levine said. "We needed to get hold of you, you see."

"What did it eat, Riddle?" Slade said sharply.

"I gave her some water!" the navigator replied angrily. "Nothing to eat since you fed her."

"Then maybe we're all right," the tanker said as if he did not understand the attack. "If it wasn't fed anything but carbohydrates, then maybe it was just some bug it picked up. We're not responsible for that, not till we lift off, at any rate." He smiled wryly. What was the warranty on humanoids purchased by pirates? Especially under the seller's guns.

Help arrived in a growl of fans on the pad. Levine trotted down the corridor. "This way!" he shouted ahead. Moments later, the Captain was back. Two clashing pairs of boots and the bare-soled whispering of a Trek followed him.

One of the Windward humans was young and dishevelled. Slade did not recognize the symbol on the man's white cap. The tanker suspected that the fellow was not, by local law, a doctor. He and the Trek who carried the chromed medical case pushed past Slade and Riddle to the dying autochthone.

The other human was Senior Patriarch Bledsoe himself. In earlier dealings, the Windward official had covered the steel edges of his personality with a layer of bonhommie. That had not hidden the truth or even camouflaged it; but it showed the same willingness to deal rationally as did Slade's own careful control.

The bonhommie was gone now. "You were warned about certain rules, Captain Levine," said the Senior Patriarch harshly. Bledsoe must have pulled his uniform on in a rush, but his appearance was as sharp as it had been during the cargo negotiations. "I don't assume you have violated those rules—" not really a lie, so transparent were the words— "but if you have, you and your vessel will be expelled at once from Windward."

"But I don't understand, ah, Port Warden," Levine blurted.

Slade understood. So did Navigator Riddle. The balding man was pressing his palms fiercely against one another while his eyes focused on their trembling.

The medic muttered something cryptic to the autochthone which had accompanied him. That Trek made a quick gesture with its hands—sign language. It bore the laryngeal scar also, even though the speech that would otherwise be possible would clearly help in its duties. Job requirements are not always rational requirements, and a creature which speaks may too easily be thought of as human.

The healthy Trek rolled its wheezing fellow belly-down on the shelf. The Trek's strain at the activity suggested that the autochthones had less short-term strength than even human females of the same size. Despite that, the medic did not help his assistant turn the injured creature. The local man was instead pulling on a pair of disposable gloves. He bent forward as his Trek assistant spread the other autochthone's buttocks.

Slade knew too little about Trek physiology to guess whether the opening displayed was a cloaca or something more specialized than that. The black skin of its lips was distended. The surrounding fur was matted, though there was no sign of fluids leaking as they did from the creature's ears and nose.

"Well?" demanded Senior Patriarch Bledsoe.

The medic reached into his kit. Instead of speaking, he gave his superior a curt nod. The medic's face was a queasy contrast to the metallicly-calm expression of his Trek assistant.

Bledsoe's tongue touched dry lips. "Captain Levine," he said, "your crew will be delivered to you as soon as humanly possible. Humanly! You will lift off within five minutes of the last arrival." The official's eyes were as merciless as the twin-barreled gun turret aimed at the ship from outside.

"Senior Patriarch," Slade interrupted, "we'll clean our own house. You can watch if you like."

The tanker did not look at Riddle. The navigator stood in near catatonia by the bulkhead. Slade's words rang about him with deadly earnestness. Slade was going to beat the balding navigator within an inch of his life, because nothing short of that could be expected to satisfy the Windward authorities. "And we expect to pay a stiff penalty over and above the cost of a replacement Trek. But—"

"Are you mad?" Bledsoe demanded as if he and not the tanker were the man who had killed for a business. "Mister Slade, I will have them slag this ship down around me before I will consider placing another Trek into this cesspool!"

The gloved medic put an injector behind the dying Trek's ear. The creature convulsed mightily. The medic jumped back to avoid the flailing limbs. He dropped the empty injector on the shelf.

"Sir," said the tanker. His anger was obvious and as great as that of Bledsoe. "We won't leave because we can't leave that fast in our present state of crewing. If that means blasting us where we stand, then you might want to see how our powerplant's been rigged." That was a lie, but it would be the truth if Slade had half an hour's grace. "If you're willing to deal, though, we'll deal with you on any terms that give us a chance to survive."

The medic and his assistant were already leaving the cubicle. Riddle stared at the Trek. It ignored him. The other autochthone was dead, though its extremities continued to slap the shelf and walls. The injection had only speeded the process made inevitable when the Trek absorbed human proteins.

The Senior Patriarch swallowed, "All right," he said, staring fiercely back at the tanker. "I'll send aboard a navigational unit with a link to the central computer. They'll set and lock your controls onto the nearest inhabited world, that's Erlette. And if that isn't satisfactory, Mister Slade—then yes, we will see what you may have done to your powerplant. Good day!"

The Windward official turned and bounced Captain Levine out of his way. Bledsoe did not even seem to notice the contact as he strode back toward the hatch.

"Slade, Slade, Captain," Levine pleaded, "does he mean that Riddle—"

As if his name were a trigger, Riddle ran down the corridor. "You bastards!" he shouted. "You bastards! You know they're human! You know they're human!"

Levine and the tanker tried simultaneously to jump after the navigator. The instant's delay they caused each other permitted the balding man to reach the hatch before they could catch him.

Bledsoe had continued to walk toward the vehicle that had brought him to the ramp. The medic and his assistant were already seated and waiting. So were two other Treks. One was the driver.

The other crewed the pillar-mounted tribarrel.. The air cushion vehicle was not an ambulance but a gun-truck.

Riddle caught Bledsoe by the sleeve while the local official was still half-way from his vehicle. Bledsoe had ignored the navigator's previous taunts. Now he turned. Harsh light at an angle threw his face into a sequence of cold ridges and cold valleys.

Slade saw and understood the look in the Senior Patriarch's eyes. Captain Levine tried to squeeze past to run to his crewman. The tanker's arm encircled Levine's waist and immobilized the smaller man by lifting his feet from the deck. This was no time to interfere. It would be like trying to stop lava with a barrier of brushwood.

"You're human!" Riddle screamed to the Trek at the automatic weapon. "You've got to free yourselves; kill the people who torture you! Kill them!"

The medic broke his stony reserve. He leaped from the truck seat with a cry of rage. Bledsoe turned also. He was trying only to restrain the other Windward human, but Riddle reacted as if the motion were a challenge. Riddle's fist clubbed the older, heavier man on the side of the neck. Bledsoe stumbled to his knees with a grunt.

The Trek gunner fired a long burst into Riddle's body. The hot-griddle hiss of the shots was obscured by the shattering disintegration of the navigator's chest. Then both ceased, discharge and impact. What remained of Riddle slumped to the ground. Its left hand was extended as if in entreaty.

The iridium muzzles of the tribarrel glowed, and there was a glowing track in the ramp's face where a bolt had struck because the thorax at which it was aimed had vaporized. Ozone and decomposition products from the expended cartridges warred with the animal odors of burned flesh and voided wastes.

Slade released Captain Levine.

The gun's cyan flickering had frozen the medic in a half crouch from which he slowly relaxed. Senior Patriarch Bledsoe got to his feet with the clumsiness of a reanimated corpse. The right side of his face and uniform were freckled by the navigator's explosive death. "Five minutes after we deliver your last man, Captain Levine," said Bledsoe.

He swung himself aboard the truck. As the vehicle whistled off toward the Operations Building, the dimly-glowing muzzles of the tribarrel continued to track Slade and Levine in the hatchway.