“That’s true,” Koldon acknowledged. “But Fraska is not Delial, and the social customs and such that Vard needed and suppressed for so long a time are quite different than ours — and were impossible for him when he was an agent. Now such a life is still denied him as a refugee.”
“You’re quite an apologist, aren’t you, Koldon?” Savage put in. “War is a leveler, and fighting it is a team job. If Vard doesn’t realize this and adjust, we’ll have to wash him out. Put him in a little room with communications devices like he had on Fraska and let him rot.”
The Terran stalked off angrily toward the computer section, leaving the other two standing there looking at each other.
“He has quite a temper,” Gayal commented.
“True,” Koldon agreed, “but he’s right.”
“He is such a strange man…”
“I’m afraid I have to agree, knowing a lot more of his history than you do. But, even so, I cannot get down to the part that counts in him — his blocks are so strong that I can only read what he’s actually saying. I suspect there’s a complex and fascinating enigma in his brain, but it’s beyond reach. For all the power of personality he has shown and the contradictions he’s presented, one would almost think he might be quite a bit more than he appears.”
Gayal studied the big bear’s features. They betrayed nothing, as usual.
“Why shouldn’t he be anything other than what he claims?” she asked.
“You know,” Koldon mused, “one of The Hunter’s best-trained and one-hundred-percent-blocked agents would be a perfect place for The Bromgrev.”
“You don’t think he is— ?” Gayal gasped, horror stricken.
“No, I don’t,” Koldon replied thoughtfully. “But, likewise, I don’t think that he isn’t.”
Savage stalked to the computer room nearest the training center, blood in his eye. He had just fifteen more minutes and then he would have to clear out for the next simulator group — and this ass was screwing up the works. He fondly hoped he’d never be in a situation where he would have to depend on Vard.
Savage entered the computer room, one of the smaller rooms with access to the master computers, quietly. Surprisingly, no one else was around. Vard sat alone in a center chair, helmet on, figures dancing across the screens in front of him at a dizzying pace. The Fraskan seemed unaware of Savage’s existence.
Savage did not speak to him immediately. His curiosity was aroused beyond measure by the various complex figures dancing on the screen, a little too fast for him to read. But there were definitely too many equations, too many diagrams flashing on, however briefly, for Vard to be reviewing training problems.
Savage noiselessly took a seat in the back of the room and put on a helmet, punching the required codes to tie him in with Vard’s display.
At first glance they seemed to be tactical problem anyway, but Savage stuck with it for a minute or two. Something was certainly not right. It took him only second longer to realize it — the red and yellow band flashing along the sides of the picture!
They weren’t problems, they were actual exercises. The stripes denoted classified information.
They were Haven military defense contingency plans. Suddenly the display stopped, and was replaced by readout in clear English — which was particularly surprising, since Vard spoke not a word of it. It read:
HELLO SAVAGE I HAD NOT INTENDED TO BE FOUND OUT SO SOON
Savage – quickly shot back: SO THE BROMGREV IS AT HAVEN *
WHY IS THAT SO UNUSUAL TO CONTEMPLATE * DID WE NOT TELL YOU THIS *
BUT ARUMAN VARD IS FAR TOO OBVIOUS AND VULNERABLE * Savage objected. I JUST DO NOT BELIEVE IT
Savage removed his helmet and walked to the figure in the front chair. “And I still don’t, Vard,” he said aloud.
Vard turned and smiled, then removed the helmet. “I lost a great deal in the abortive attack on this place,” he said casually. “And, while here, I can’t properly coordinate the actions of my units. These will aid me when contact is again possible in avoiding the inevitable counterattacks.”
Savage shook his head negatively. “You’re no more The Bromgrev than a cell of my body is me. Just when did you assimilate Vard, anyway?”
“After the escape,” The Bromgrev replied casually. “Which, I might add, was extremely difficult to manage. The man was a total incompetent.”
“So why stick your neck out now, so early in the game?” Savage asked.
“The element of surprise is no longer of any importance. It was more necessary to have this information and to have it early. This was the easiest and most direct way to it. The classified codes are absurdly easy to crack.”
“So now what?” Savage asked the creature. “Hunter will make you as a doppelganger, if I don’t turn you in — so I have to turn you in. What good was all this?”
Vard’s face smiled again; it was an unnatural and grotesque expression for the Fraskan. “I cannot control The Hunter in this place, so removed from the realities of the galaxy. It will be necessary to establish more suitable conditions for our, shall we say, double murder?”
“And you expect me to do it?” Savage growled.
“Oh, if not you, then someone. There are lots of possibilities. But there is the girl, you know.”
Savage reached over and picked him up, shaking him violently.
“What do you gain by shaking a tenth of my toenail?” Vard managed.
Savage stopped and dropped him to the floor. The creature picked himself up slowly.
“You see? Who really controls the way of the worlds?”
“You’re crazy as a loon,” Savage snapped.
“Perhaps. Perhaps we all are. That was a wonderful story The Hunter told everyone at orientation a few days ago, about the evil one and the guardian. Absolutely correct — but, of course, with the roles reversed. The Hunter was isolated here forever — but for this cursed bubble that allowed him his escape. Finally, out again among the stars, he proved as mad as ever. He began raising forces to wreck the Next Race — and any Next Race he found that might be a challenge to his dreams of power.”
Savage looked puzzled. “Now, how the hell could he do that?”
“Oh, by making certain the wrong things happened at critical times. The almost perfect birth control of Delial was one. An ancient planet, an extremely intelligent people — worthy successors! Now they multiply not at all, having maintained a very small stable population and continuing those numbers into the infinite future in a stagnant society. The projection now is that they have no future, only a frozen present. Other cultures — young cultures — were given the tachyonic drive to dilute them early. Too early. The discovery and development of the drive must be carefully managed and timed.”
“You introduced it here,” Savage pointed out. “Charley’s ship.”
“Oh, come now,” The Bromgrev grumbled, making a gesture of dismissal with his hand. “That was a fluke— an accident. It was shot down and crashed. I assure you that they got nothing from it. The whole thing will go up in one big bang when they attempt to get at the drive; and not a shred will remain. Little by little, over years of time, people and evidence will be altered to fit a coherent but less likely form. I cover my tracks. Had you not eliminated the Kah’diz, I assure you we would have done so.”
“Nice talk — of justice and truth and all that — from one who is in league with the Kah’diz, who enslave planets and kill millions.”
Vard stood up, towering even over the tall Terran although he was less than two-thirds Savage’s weight. “I am a pragmatist. I use the tools that are available to me.” He spat angrily, then just as suddenly he calmed down.
“There was in your planet’s past a dictator,” he said, “who took over a country that was a century backward and totally impoverished, yet threatened by powerful neighbors. Inside thirty years, he built a mighty industrial nation that withstood the world. In the process, he killed off almost a third of his people — often in brutal slave labor. But the survivors and their descendants live a comfortable life undreamed of by their parents. And a safe and secure one. Would you swap misery, famine, disease, hopelessness, for the modern way of life — if that were your only choice and, if you picked the latter, it meant doing unspeakable evils?”
“That’s been the argument of dictators every ete Savage pointed out. “Somehow it seems to work out differently. Besides, what’s the moral imperative of destroying an innocent person like Vard when, with a little more effort, you could have done it otherwise?”
“This same dictator I was speaking of — well, there’s a story, perhaps apocryphal, about how he liked to drive fancy cars down lonely peasant roads at high speeds. Once, while doing so, he struck a small girl. He did not stop. When asked why, he replied, ‘It’s only one little girl.’”
“That’s disgusting,” Savage commented, looking as if he had smelled raw garbage.
“It’s your own people,” The Bromgrev pointed out. “I merely illustrate. To survive in the jungle, the ends must justify any means. Besides, it is either me or The Hunter. You — or someone like you — will have to choose.”
“And if we choose neither?”
“Then someone else will make the decision,” The Bromgrev answered matter-of-factly. “There is always a lever on anyone, always someone else if all else fails.”
They stood silently for a while, looking at each other. There seemed nothing more to say.
“This has been most interesting and refreshing,” The Bromgrev said at last, breaking the silence. “But I have accomplished what I wished to do, and the relief of this very boring existence I’ve been living since being here has been most welcome. Now I shall terminate this utensil’s usefulness.”
With that, Vard’s body crumpled over, dead.
Savage stood staring at the corpse, then turned and left. But the conversation lingered in his mind as he made his way back to the two students be had left a few minutes before.
It is either me or The Hunter, a voice seemed to whisper.
You… will have to chose, it continued.
There is. . always someone else, it insisted.
But there is the girl, you know, it taunted.
There is always a lever on anyone, it reminded.
It’s only one little girl.
Wade switched off the transceiver.
“So we know it isn’t Savage,” Koldon said cheerfully.
“We know nothing of the kind!” Hunter snapped back. “The Bromgrev knew it could be — and probably was — bugged, in there. That whole thing was a performance for my benefit, not Savage’s. It’s a taunt, a sign he’s feeling his imprisonment here and an attempt to provoke me into action. Or immobilize me here in Haven. I wish I knew which!”
“A monologue, then?” Koldon mused. “How fascinating! And, if a dialogue, it calls into question one of your best men. Nice touch.”
Wade nodded. “It was a challenge, all right. Come out and get suckered, or stay in while he can leave any old time by simply creating new components and sending them outside. No, we’ll stick to the script here,” Wade decided. “The final battle will be my choice. One of my agents must find out who in this installation is The Bromgrev. That Vard takeover stuff was bullshit. Vard was Vard when he came into Haven, so The Bromgrev’s right here, thumbing his nose at me!”
“So they find out who he is,” Koldon responded. “What good would it do? He knows who you are, after all, and it isn’t doing him a fat lot of good.”
“That’s it!” Wade exclaimed, pounding his fist on the desk. “He wouldn’t be here unless he had a plan to do away with me. And yet he hasn’t acted, despite all the opportunity. That means he can’t act in here with a certainty of success! He wants me out…”
“And then what?” Koldon asked. “You’ve been fighting each other for millennia and it’s always a draw.”
“Not this time, Koldon, not this time. A small but definitive Armageddon is looming. A decisive one. As to the how— No, no one knows that until it’s time. I don’t know who you really are, either. Or anyone else.”
“The watcher watching the watcher watching — this can’t go on forever, Hunter.”
Wade got up from his chair and put his hand on the bear-creature’s shoulder. A strange half-smile was on his face as he said, “It won’t, Koldon, it won’t. I know what he needs now, and time is on my side.”
4
THEY TOOK THE shakedown cruise in a pickup ship, which meant that there was room for passengers. Savage replaced Vard at the gunnery position with little trouble, as he had trained along with them. He would not like to get into a real firefight, he thought, particularly with Koldon as backup; but for shakedowns and normal checkouts it wasn’t much of a problem. Gayal, who seemed to be born to the job, was, of course, the pilot.
Jennifer made her way out from the rear compartment aft of the bridge. She had spent three days memorizing the fixed placements in a similar ship and now knew it very well. Koldon was on gunnery duty, and Savage was sitting in a lounge chair drinking a cup of coffee and reading a book.
“What are you reading?” she asked as she put her arms around him from the back of the chair and heard the book shut.
“Detective novel,” he replied. “An old one, as a matter of fact, by the greatest master of locked-room puzzles: John Dickson Carr.”
“You’ll have to read it to me,” she told him. “You used to read to me — until the training started taking all the time. There’s not nearly enough in Braille or talking-book for blind people.”
“Go back to the beginning? I could never reread a locked-room puzzle,” he said. “Really louses things up when you know the answer. But,” he continued, kissing her, “you’ll be learning to read regular print soon enough, you know.”
She was silent for a moment, a stiffness betraying an inner apprehension. “Paul,” she said quietly, “I’m kind of scared. How long will it be until…”
“Until Valiakea?” he completed. “Not long, love. With this space drive, there’s more time spent in slowing down on a long trip than in actually getting there.”
It was his present to her, this trip: a combination business and pleasure trip that Wade had approved. Savage himself had mixed emotions about the whole thing. On the one hand, for Jenny to have eyes, to be able to see for the first time in her life, was the greatest gift he could give her. Yet, underneath, he felt uneasy about it. It wasn’t merely that he would lose her dependence on him — he felt he was big enough to accept that — but it was all the insecurities of a life of ridicule and derision about his looks.
Deep down, he was afraid that she wouldn’t like him when she saw him. He feared this, and couldn’t put it out of his mind.
“Coming in,” Gayal’s voice, somewhat metallic sounding though the wall speakers, told them.
“Shall I strap in?” Jenny asked.
“I don’t think it will be necessary,” Gayal replied. “We are not in a fight or any other kind of rush. I can put us in orbit and hold, so that you won’t even know we’ve changed position.”
Jenny had steadfastly refused Savage’s attempts to put a helmet on her, even though she would “see” with the helmet as guide. She tried to put on a brave front, but she, too, was a product of conditioning from birth. Deep down, she was comfortable the way she was. She liked depending on Paul, partly because it bound him closer to her. Blindness was a normal condition. This was the unknown.
“There are two dozen or so ships in orbit,” Gayal’s command voice cut in. “At least four are unfriendlies. What shall I do?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Savage assured her. “This is truly neutral territory. The Valiakeans don’t like anyone fooling around with that — and within their own sphere of influence they can zap anybody who violates the truce. Besides, anybody who did so would be forbidden to use their services again — and The Bromgrev needs them as much as we do.”
Koldon growled in the background, and Savage turned to see that the huge creature had removed its helmet and was lifting itself up from the gunnery position into the bridge section. “Maybe everybody else thinks it’s just great,” he grumbled, “but all that damned thing does is give me a bad headache.”
“I’ve accepted Valiakean control and we are in a stable orbit,” Gayal reported.
Savage reached over and flipped a switch on the panel, causing Gayal’s mind to break contact with the ship’s automatics. No pilot could ever do it on his or her own, and automatic and manual systems were provided to ensure that every pilot was brought out.
Gayal groaned, and awakened in the chair next to Savage. She turned off the console and removed her helmet, then brushed her hair with her hand so that it mostly covered the shaven places where the contact points in the helmet touched her skull.
Savage broke free of Jenny’s hold and grabbed the transceiver mike, dialing the Valiakean hailing frequency.
“This is Haven Special in early for appointment,” he reported. “Can you handle two subjects?”
“Two?” Jenny repeated. “Who else?”
“That depends, Haven,” came the Valiakean answer. “We have one, Haven spectrum sight installation here. That is a minor matter. What is the nature of the others?”
“Cosmetic,” Savage replied. “I’ll read you the data as I have it, and let you decide.”
Whereupon, Savage picked up a sheet of notebook paper and read-in a long series of seemingly meaningless figures and gibberish words.
“We can handle that easily enough, although you’ll have to do it one at a itme. We have only a supplemental carrier ship to service you. Business is quite heavy, as you can see.”
“That’s all right,” Savage responded. “We’ll do the supplemental first.”
“Very well. We are finished early on another party and will send the supplemental over in five or six minutes.”
“Fine. I compliment you on your service,” Savage responded politely and switched off.
“Who’s the other?” Jenny asked him.
“Me, of course,” Savage replied with a laugh. “When you see me, I’ll be a handsome devil.”
“Just don’t let them touch the most important part,” she warned.
“Only to make it bigger and better, my dear,” he replied, and kissed her.
He had an ulterior motive in doing the cosmetic surgery, of course. If he went first and underwent any kind of modification, it would ease her own fears.
There was a shudder and bump through the ship. The Valiakeans were already here.
The Valiakean technician who entered the lock ar looked like the same being who had serviced Gayal and Koldon on their trip in. This was just the Haven nor shape of convenience for them, however, and it might or might not be the same one, the two former visitors knew. Gayal wondered again about the power to instantly change one’s molecular structure to meet any conditions. She had heard that one Valiakean had survived a cataclysmic explosion and hours in hard vacuum when a ship went up.
Savage entered the Valiakean ship and went through the same procedure as had millions before him. After the examination, they stuffed him in that chilly coffin and he went black.
He awoke a few minutes later feeling, he admitted himself, better than he had ever felt in his life. While in, the Valiakeans generally cured your minor illnesses whatever, and even cleaned the cholesterol out of your bloodstream, plus adjusting weight and muscle tone to proper — indeed, ideal — limits.
Savage unhesitatingly re-entered the Haven ship.
Gayal gasped.
He was still tall and dark-complected, but with an almost perfect build. His apish ugliness, scars, and Neanderthal-like head and shoulders had been altered to the look of a rugged outdoorsman. He’d kept his short-cropped hair and it contrasted superbly with the dark complexion.
He would have driven women on Earth wild, except for one thing.
“You didn’t regrow the hand!” Koldon exclaimed. “We all thought—”
Savage gave a slight, wistful smile. “I have reasons for not doing so right now,” he said enigmatically. “Later on, in a future trip, I will. But the claw they gave me is still great — slips on and off the stump with no straps needed!” He showed them by twisting slightly and pulling the pincers off. He slipped it back on quickly. “All electronics now,” he proclaimed proudly.
All three of the others thought he was crazy.
“Where the hell did you get the idea for the new look?” Koldon asked him. “It’s certainly distinctive — and it’s still you, sort of, but — er — well, straightened out, put in all the right places.”
Savage laughed. “From a cover painting on a paperback of an old pulp hero,” he replied. “I’ll show you sometime. ‘The Man of Bronze.’” He chuckled, then turned serious. “Now you, Jenny,” he said brightly.