3
IT WAS NEARING dusk and a gentle, warm wind was blowing the fields below in wave-like patterns, carrying the scent of new-mown grasses toward the loess caves in the distance, the rich blue sky was giving way to hues of orange, and magenta reflected off the clouds, creating a wondrous artist’s palette of beauty. The inhabitant of one of the caves barely noticed the sight, but the scent from the fields was driving her almost mad with hunger.
As the last rays of the setting sun vanished in the east, she came carefully out of her refuge, looking warily around her with caution born of weeks of being a fugitive.
Standing just outside the cave, sniffing the wind for more fearsome scents, perhaps of sentient beings, she presented a sight that would have been strange to any alien to this quiet, agrarian world. She stood about 150 centimeters high, a squat humanoid body begun with a squared head looking something like a blue gorilla’s but with short-cropped silver hair now dirty and disheveled after weeks of hiding. Her head rested on a thick wrestler’s neck and a tough, muscled torso covered with very fine, thin, bluish hair. Her arms were thick and bulging with sinew; She could easily lift twice her own weight. Two large blue-black breasts, firm and well positioned, were left uncovered by the blue hair, which close to the waist became much more coarse, long and curly, going down to and covering even the tops of her feet, which despite rudimentary toes, were hard and more like hooves. Her stance, due to the unusual nature of the feet, gave her the appearance of being on tiptoe; and she seemed about to become unbalanced and fall.
Nostrils flared as she tested the wind and found it empty of anything but nature’s own aroma.
Satisfied, she turned and made her way circuitously down the slopes, trying to leave no telltale tracks in the soft earth. Her short, bushy tail was kept straight as she moved with amazing speed down the now familiar pathways. Although she looked awkward and ungraceful at rest, she was capable of sprints of up to sixty kilometers per hour.
Reaching the fields below, she started pulling up some of the grain and grasses and shoving them into her mouth. Her people were herbivores and usually prepared all manner of exquisite and highly seasoned dishes from the plants they favored. But simple fare would have to do this time: hunger overcame civilized custom. Having had nothing since the previous evening, she gorged herself on what she could get.
The stars were out in full glory by the time she had finished, and she lay back in the grassy field looking up at them. So distant, so devoid of hope. She thought back in time, as she did almost constantly, of the good times, the happy times, the times of hopes not crushed by despair. The times before “they” came.
Her name was Gayal.
Her race was, like Aruman Vard’s, an ancient one. Unlike Vard’s, it had never gone beyond orbital space. Her planet, Delial, which meant “Mother,” was the sole planet of its sun; It had no moon, and the next nearest star was over seven lightyears distant — too huge a jump when it had to be your first time.
Her culture was dull by some standards, but it suited her people just fine. Their botanical sciences were second in the galaxy, but an era of feudal wars had killed off the excess population that threatened Delial just as effective birth control had been developed. As a result, her people were remarkably long-lived but comparatively few in number, and the population was almost totally stable. There was little government on a national or world scale, merely a few coordinators of things like trade that the local regions could not do for themselves. Delial had no large cities; the population was almost wholly agrarian, and it clustered about the thousands of small towns that were the centers ot trade and commerce. Long ago, orbital flight had led to huge space stations circling the globe. It was there that the heavy manufacturing was done, almost entirely by machine, and ferried to well placed spaceports.
Because an average of ten females were born for every male, a polygamous society had been the norm since civilization evolved on the planet.
Gayal’s herd-husband had been an old man named Fala, to whom she had been wedded while still an infant. Fala was teacher, guide, and overseer of the large plantation where they lived. From him she had learned to read and write, and to attain the skills needed to work and run the huge farm along with her sisters. Gayal had been an excellent student and Fala had sent for some of the best scholars to come and tutor her. History and theology had particularly fascinated her, and the pride and sense of accomplishment she felt when her first book of philosophical essays was publisbed was almost as great as her bearing a son to the herd.
She remembered one stern, pessimistic scholarly teacher, whose soul was empty and devoid of sensitivity to the beauty around and in the life of the world Gayal loved. They had been discussing the gods, and immortality of the soul, and had quickly gotten into a heated argument.
“There is nothing beyond this life,” she could bear the teacher’s voice saying, distantly, ghost-like in the rippling across the darkened fields. “We go out like a candle.”
“I must disagree,” she recalled her own youthful voice protesting. “All around us is a world of life interacting with life, in position around the sun at precisely the correct orbit for us to survive. Out there in space are the stars, with other such planets; and beyond them the galaxy itself — one of many, all functioning according to precise natural laws like an orderly machine. Surely this proves the existence of the gods.”
The old teacher had shaken her head sadly, and replied as one would to a retarded child. “Galaxies crash, suns explode, civilizations rise and fall. The nar-bug is eaten by the flkkil, who is in turn eaten by the dros, and good people worldwide are visited with undeserved afflictions.
“No, do not look for civilizing influences,” the old one continued, and she had taken the young Gayal’s arm and brought her over to a window. The sky was ablaze with stars, exactly like this night. “When all is said and done, you will find no paradise out there — only a jungle of stars.”
The teacher, Gayal reflected, must have felt very smug and self-righteous when the invaders came, in their great black ships, settling down and burning acres of grain and grass.
She had heard the news on the television and on her wall had seen tapes of the great ships landing and disgorging their weirdly alien troops. There had been no army to oppose them, no ships in which to flee.
A new order had been established planetwide: henceforth, they were to provide food first for the conquering hordes. What was left over was for themselves, if they worked particularly hard and if they increased production as well.
Fala had called her in, shortly after. He looked particularly old and very, very tired.
“Gayal, my favorite of all,” he began, his voice cracking with emotion, “it is time to show you some things that must be shown, and to do what must be done.”
“You have heard, then, of the invaders?” she asked innocently.
“I have known of them since only a few years after I was born,” he told her. “I have feared this day, though I knew it would come. An army travels on its stomach, always, and The Bromgrev has a huge army.”
She looked puzzled. “Who or what is a Bromgrev?” she asked, and he told her: of the Kreb, of the Union of Souls, of the great battle for the minds and hearts of the galaxy that was then being waged.
“I was taken early, when I was but three or four, to an alien world far from here. How I was chosen, or why, I know not — although it was with the approval of the Agent-in-Charge here before me, who was then old and dying, lucky him!
“I was raised both on and off-planet by the agent and by the greater organization of beings that he served. A great installation lies below our feet, with charts of the battle and the great starfield. It has kept me in contact with them for many years, and I have friends of strange races, many of whom I have never seen. Even so, none foresaw our conquest this quickly though we could do little with simple handguns against such a powerful horde. Now they are here and my job is complex.”
“What sort of job, my husband?” she asked, curious and apprehensive.
“My organization is activated. It will, by its actions, attempt to deny, at least for a time, that which the enemy seeks. Our beloved world is to be placed in ruins by my own hand.”
His voice gave completely, and he dissolved for a time in tears. Finally, he composed himself.
“There are key missions that I have not been able to verify which must be carried out,” he explained, “and we have a very little time to do them. I must see that they are done, personally, if there is no other way. The least of them is dangerous enough. Thus, someone must be here to do my job.”
He had shown Gayal the wondrous communications equipment, and the rudiments of operating it. He had told her what to say and how to say it; how to interpret the sabotage reports that would come in and how to report these to the unseen agency far off in space. Had she been any less of an intellectual, it would have been too much to grasp; as it was, her head still reeled with it.
The final shock was the little surgeon with tiny, shifty eyes who had planted something, painlessly and invisibly, in her head.
“When you have lost contact with me and my principal people, you are to destroy this place as I have shown you and use the signal to get picked up, in order to flee the planet.”
“But,” she had protested, “what about you? I would rather stay, as you would, and fight these monsters.”
Sadness had tinged his voice as he replied. “I will stay because I expect to die. If I somehow live, I will join you, I promise. But you must survive, for I have made certain that within your brain are the moral and intellectual foundations of our race. One day, these monsters will be defeated. Live for it! Work for it, and then you must come back and make our people free again!”
He had taken her head in his hands, and together they had coupled for the last time. In the morning, he was gone.
Gayal had done as instructed, and from the reports she learned just how utter the destruction was. Bacteria had been released by Delialians that killed the grain crops in most areas; by signals, they had destroyed their orbiting factories. Retaliation had been swift, although the Conquerors’ first attempt, public hangings, did not work: the Delialians had neck muscles too strong to allow them to be choked by rope. The enemy therefore settled on public torture of old men and children — particularly children. The planet caved in.
After nine days, reports from Fala ceased and all attempts to raise him failed.
Slowly, too, a horrible pattern of conquest developed. Kah’diz were dropped in the key regions and made the “adjustments” in the locals. The emotion-masters could turn hatred into love, horror into worship; they methodically started work on key towns and plantations across the planet. And there appeared to be an endless supply of them for the job. Their task was the most difficult thing in warfare: pacification of captured indigenious populations. Slowly, very slowly, but quite efficiently, the Kah’diz turned the bulk of the population from heartsick resisters into willing and loving slaves.
Word came one day, that it would soon be the turn of Gayal’s plantation for the treatment; word sent at grave risk by as yet “unaltered” relation.
The Kah’diz bad entered haughtily, mounted on the back of a Delialian, and demanded to see the man in charge. One of Gayal’s sisters — all the females in a herd were called “sisters” — had explained that be had gone away and had not been seen or heard from since.
The Kah’diz had nodded, and demanded an inventory of stock, farm reserves, tools — and people.
Gayal and her sisters had talked of killing the creature, but then decided that this would only bring more, and perhaps death and ruin for them and their children. They agreed to go along with the Kah’diz, but do as little as possible for the conquerors.
Then the true horror had begun.
She and her nine sisters had been sitting around talking of the heartbreak and bleak future that must surely await them, when the intercom buzzed.
“Send in Maral,” the Kah’diz’s dead voice commanded.
Maral, the plantation’s voice, and overseer of the business end of the operation, was not surprised; she had gotten used to being summoned whenever the Kah’diz was unhappy over something, which was always.
She left in her usual defiant spirit, ready to do battle with what she called the “one and a half-wit” in the front office. She was gone over two hours, and they began to worry. They had just decided to see what had happened when Maral walked back into the room. A tiny smile was on her lips and her eyes had a faraway, dreamy look.
They crowded around her, dying to hear the new story of what the creature had demanded and what she’d told him.
“The Master commanded that we increase production and tilled acreage, and I assured him that we would all do our duty,” she replied matter-of-factly.
There was a stunned silence. Finally, Freyal, the youngest, spoke.
“You’re not serious, are you? We swore not to help—”
“You are a thought criminal!” Maral snapped, cutting her off. “The Master warned me of this, but he assured me that he could cure such thoughts. I certainly hope so!”
And with that she stormed out of the room.
The sisters were all talking at once, most of them in stunned disbelief, when suddenly they noticed that the Kah’diz stood in the doorway.
“You see how easy it is?” it said casually. The creature was obviously enjoying their shock and horror, almost bathing in it. “If you’re thinking of leaving,” the Kah’diz warned them after a long pause, “I would advise against it. I have people around to see that no one leaves, and you cannot even be certain of your lifelong friends anymore. Besides, there is nowhere to run. Accept the new order, and work better than before. I shall be finished here in two days, anyway.”
With that, it turned and left.
There had been no mistaking that last: within two days, the entire plantation would be run by loyal slaves willing to work themselves to death to please their conquerors.
Later that night, Gayal had slipped away to the hidden passage in the stone wall of the main hail. No one saw or heard her, as it was the outside that was guarded.
She stepped into the elevator, and the wall in front became solid once again. For the final time she went to the War Room, and for the final time she made her report to the anonymous, alien voices.
“This location is in enemy bands. Those horrible parasites are enslaving everyone here. If I do not get out now, it will be too late.”
“Get away,” came a tinny reply. “Seek some place to stay that is safe for a few days. We’re very busy, but we’ll get someone there as quickly as possible.”
“My sisters and children?”
“Only you. We trust Fala’s judgment. Also, more than one of you will be too many to remain hidden until we can get there, and a child would be impossible to hide for days on end. Go. Pull the switch and get out by the emergency exit. This is the last transmission.”
“But how will you find me?” she-asked.
“We will,” came the voice for the last time, and the line went dead.
The little whine had begun instantly in her head.
Gayal had been living in caves with only that whine for company for almost ten days.
She got up now, reluctantly, from her grassy mat and headed back to the cave. As she neared it, she sniffed the air for unfamiliar scents. There was no scent in the air at all.
She stopped dead in her tracks. There is never no scent in the air at all.
They were waiting for her to return to the cave. Looking hard through the darkness, she thought she could detect movement.
Slowly she edged back down the slope and, when at a safe distance, started running for the little patch of forest just on the other side of the fields from the hills.
She had just made the first trees when she heard noises on the hill behind her: four clear shots, pop, pop, pop, pop, then silence. She stopped and stared at the trail, clearly visible from her position.
After a short interval, a creature appeared, walking slowly on the trail, from time to time consulting a little device which glowed. In its right hand was a large rifle of a design she had never seen.
Abruptly the creature halted, and seemed to be looking around. She saw that it wore goggles.
A night viewer!
She froze.
“It’s all right, Gayal,” the creature called in her own language. “I am here to pick you up. The four who sought to capture you are dead.” It patted its rifle.
Gayal was puzzled and frightened. How could she know if this weird creature was friend or enemy?
“I’m locating you by the device in your head and the device in my hand. You are — let’s see — behind the fourth tree and slightly to the right of me. Since I know where you are, you might as well trust me.”
Gayal had never felt such fear, but the creature was right. She was saved — or dead. She arose from her hiding place and came toward it.
Ralph Bumgartner smiled and slung the rifle over his shoulder. Four dead, another soul saved. All in a day’s work.
4
THE LAST RESCUE was the easiest for Bumgartner and his cyborg pilot.
“We have the lifeboat in sight,” the cyborg’s voice told him as Gayal entered from the aft compartment.
The trip had not been wasted on her; she had been handling language tapes and had progressed very well in several of the “essential” languages needed to get along in The Hunter’s polyglot world of refugees, and she’d been making use, of the ship’s master library to acquaint herself with the conflict into which she was so newly propelled. Bumgartner kept the atmosphere in the ship deliberately rich in oxygen for her sake, toning it down day by day, so she could get used to the Terran atmosphere.
“What’s the story on this one?” she asked him in Universal, the trading language used by most of the galaxy’s races when communicating with those not of their kind.
Bumgartner shrugged. “Nothing much. Koldon’s world hasn’t been touched directly by the war, and probably won’t be. They’re a race of nasty telepaths with the ability to jam some of The Bromgrev’s most useful mental frequencies, and they can’t be conned by the Kah’diz or have a successful attitude change. Also, their I planet isn’t very valuable — a neutral clearing house for interplanetary business, run by Koldon’s race of middlemen. Take them out — and The Bromgrev would have to take them out — and it would foul up trade and communication, not to mention finances, on such a drastic scale that it would hurt The Bromgrev as bad as us.”
“They are salesmen, then?”
“And bankers. Strictly mercenary, loyal only to money.”
Gayal was appalled by the vision of such cold, robotic, greedy creatures. “So what do we want with one of them?” she asked.
“Oh, Koldon’s on our side. He was a commodities broker — would buy and sell anything, really, for a price. When The Bromgrev took over Rhambda, be acquired three billion willing servants. You remember that, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she replied gravely. “A whole world of unblocked telepaths. The mass mind.”
“Right. Well, The Bromgrev had three billion little Bromgrevs, but because they had lacked competition for so long it was an extremely primitive world, too. To put those soldiers into action required technology: starships, weaponry, and the like. To get them, The Bromgrev went to Koldon.”
“Then this — this Koldon is responsible for the war!” she exclaimed. “He should be killed, not rescued!”
“Well, perhaps, but Koldon didn’t know who or what he was really dealing with. It seemed legit on the surface, and if he hadn’t made the deal, somebody else would have. At any rate, Koldon has suffered his guilty conscience over the deal ever since the first shots were fired. He feels as you do: that the war is his fault. He’s been working with us over since.”