Agent of Vega and Other Stories by James H. Schmitz

“What other forms,” said Grevan, “did you intend to apply?”

“Information,” said CG’s voice. “At this point, we can instruct you fully concerning matters it would not have been too wise to reveal previously.”

It was what he had wanted, but he felt the fear-sweat coming out on him suddenly. The effects of lifelong conditioning—the sense of a power so overwhelmingly superior that it needed only to speak to insure his continued cooperation—

“Don’t let it talk to us, Grevan!” That was Eliol’s voice, low but tense with anger and a sharp anxiety.

“Let it talk.” And that was Freckles. The others remained quiet. Grevan sighed.

“The Group,” he addressed CG, “seems willing to listen.”

“Very well,” CG’s voice resumed unhurriedly. “You have been made acquainted with some fifty of our worlds. You may assume that they were representative of the rest. Would you say, Commander, that the populations of these worlds showed the characteristics of a healthy species?”

“I would not,” Grevan acknowledged. “We’ve often wondered what was propping them up.”

“For the present, CG is propping them up, of course. But it will be unable to do so indefinitely. You see, Commander, it has been suspected for a long time that human racial vitality has been diminishing throughout a vast historical period. Of late, however, the process appears to have accelerated to a dangerous extent. Actually, it is the compounded result of a gradually increasing stock of genetic defects; and deterioration everywhere has now passed the point of a general recovery. The constantly rising scale of nonviable mutant births indicates that the evolutionary mechanism itself is seriously deranged.

“There is,” it added, almost musingly, “one probable exception. A new class of neuronic monster which appears to be viable enough, though not yet sufficiently stabilized to reproduce its characteristics reliably. But as to that, we know nothing certainly; our rare contacts with these Wild Variants, as they are called, have been completely hostile. Their number in any one generation is not large; they conceal themselves carefully and become traceable as a rule only by their influence on the populations among whom they live.”

“And what,” inquired Grevan, “has all this to do with us?”

“Why, a great deal. The Exploration Groups, commander, are simply the modified and stabilized progeny of the few Wild Variants we were able to utilize for experimentation. Our purpose, of course, has been to ensure human survival in a new interstellar empire, distinct from the present one to avoid the genetic reinfection of the race.”

There was a brief stirring among the cubs about him.

“And this new empire,” Grevan said slowly, “is to be under Central Government control?”

“Naturally,” said CG’s voice. There might have been a note of watchful amusement in it now. “Institutions, Commander, also try to perpetuate themselves. And since it was Central Government that gave the Groups their existence—the most effective and adaptable form of human existence yet obtained—the Groups might reasonably feel an obligation to see that CG’s existence is preserved in turn.”

There was sudden anger about him. Anger, and a question, and a growing urgency. He knew what they meant: the thing was too sure of itself—break contact now!

He said instead:

“It would be interesting to know the exact extent of our obligation, CG. Offhand, it would seem that you’d paid in a very small price for survival.”

“No,” the voice said. “It was no easy task. Our major undertaking, of course, was to stabilize the vitality of the Variants as a dominant characteristic in a strain, while clearing it of the Variants’ tendency to excessive mutation—and also of the freakish neuronic powers that have made them impossible to control. Actually, it was only within the last three hundred years—within the last quarter of the period covered by the experiment—that we became sufficiently sure of success to begin distributing the Exploration Groups through space. The introduction of the gross physiological improvements and the neurosensory mechanisms by which you know yourselves to differ from other human beings was, by comparison, simplicity itself. Type-variations in that class, within half a dozen generations, have been possible to us for a very long time. It is only the genetic drive of life itself that we can neither create nor control, and with that the Variants have supplied us.”

“It seems possible then,” said Grevan slowly, “that it’s the Variants towards whom we have an obligation.”

“You may find it an obligation rather difficult to fulfill,” the voice said smoothly. And there was still no real threat in it.

It would be, he thought, either Eliol or Muscles who would trigger the threat. But Eliol was too alert, too quick to grasp the implications of a situation, to let her temper flash up before she was sure where it would strike.

Muscles then, sullen with his angry fears for Klim and a trifle slower than the others to understand—

“By now,” CG’s voice was continuing, “we have released approximately a thousand Groups embodying your strain into space. In an experiment of such a scope that is not a large number; and, in fact, it will be almost another six hundred years before the question of whether or not it will be possible to recolonize the galaxy through the Exploration Groups becomes acute—”

Six hundred years! Grevan thought. The awareness of that ponderous power, the millenniums of drab but effective secret organization and control, the endless planning, swept over him again like a physical depression.

“Meanwhile,” the voice went on, “a number of facts requiring further investigation have become apparent. Your Group is, as it happens, the first to have accepted contact with Central Government following its disappearance. The systematic methods used to stimulate the curiosity of several of the Group’s members to ensure that this would happen if they were physically capable of making contact are not important now. That you did make contact under those circumstances indicates that the invariable failure of other Groups to do so can no longer be attributed simply to the fact that the universe is hostile to human life. Instead, it appears that the types of mental controls and compulsions installed in you cannot be considered to be permanently effective in human beings at your levels of mind control—”

It was going to be Muscles. The others had recognized what had happened, had considered the possibilities in that, and were waiting for him to give them their cue.

But Muscles was sitting on the couch some eight feet away. He would, Grevan decided, have to move very fast.

“This, naturally, had been suspected for some time. Since every Group has been careful to avoid revealing the fact that it could counteract mental compulsions until it was safely beyond our reach, the suspicion was difficult to prove. There was, in fact, only one really practical solution to the problem—”

And then Muscles got it at last and was coming to his feet, his hand dropping in a blurred line to his belt. Grevan moved very fast.

Muscles turned in surprise, rubbing his wrist.

“Get out of here, Muscles!” Grevan whispered, sliding the small glittering gun he had plucked from the biggest cub’s hand into a notch on his own belt. “I’m still talking to CG—” His eyes slid in a half circle about him. “The lot of you get out!” It was a whisper no longer. “Like to have the ship to myself for the next hour. Go have yourselves a swim or something, Group! Get!”

Just four times before, in all their eight years of traveling, had the boss-tiger lashed his tail and roared. Action, swift, cataclysmic, and utterly final had always followed at once.

But never before had the roar been directed at them.

The tough cubs stood up quietly and walked out good as gold.

“They have left the ship now,” CG’s voice informed Grevan. It had changed, slightly but definitely. The subtle human nuances and variations had dropped from it, as if it were no longer important to maintain them—which, Grevan conceded, it wasn’t.

“You showed an excellent understanding of the difficult situation that confronted us, Commander,” it continued.

Grevan, settled watchfully on the couch before what still looked like an ordinary, sealed-up contact set, made a vague sound in his throat—a dim echo of his crashing address to the cubs, like a growl of descending thunder.

“Don’t underestimate them,” he advised the machine. “Everybody but Muscles realized as soon as I did, or sooner, that we were more important to CG than we’d guessed—important enough to have a camouflaged Dominator installed on our ship. And also,” he added with some satisfaction, “that you’d sized up our new armament and would just as soon let all but one of us get out of your reach before it came to a showdown.”

“That is true,” the voice agreed. “Though I should have forced a showdown, however doubtful the outcome, if the one who remained had been any other than yourself. You are by far the most suitable member of this Group for my present purpose, Commander.”

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