Deathworld. Chapter 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
10
They walked downstairs in a frigid silence. In the street, Mete blasted a stingbird that couldn’t possibly have attacked them. There was an angry pleasure in the act. Jason decided not to chide her about wasting ammo. Better the bird than him.
There were empty rooms in one of the computer buildings. These were completely sealed to keep stray animal life out of the delicate machinery. While Mete checked a bedroll out of stores, Jason painfully dragged a desk, table and chairs in from a nearby empty office. When she returned with a pneumatic bed, he instantly dropped on it with a grateful sigh. Her lip curled a bit at his obvious weakness.
“Get used to the sight,” he said. “I intend to do as much of my work as I can, while maintaining a horizontal position. You will be my strong right arm. And right now, Right Aim, I wish you could scare me up something to eat. I also intend to do most of my eating in the previously mentioned prone condition.”
Snorting with disgust, Meta stamped out. While she was gone, Jason chewed the end of a stylus thoughtfully, then made some careful notes.
After they had finished the almost tasteless meal, he began the search. “Mete, where can I find historical records of Pyrrus? Any and all information about the early days of the settlers on this planet.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that. I really don’t know…
“But there has to be something-somewhere,” he insisted. “Even if your presentday culture devotes all of its time and energies to survival, you can be sure it wasn’t always that way. All the time it was developing, people were keeping records, making notes. Now where do we look? Do you have a library here?”
“Of course,” she said. “We have an excellent technical library. But I’m sure there wouldn’t be any of that sort of thing there.”
Trying not to groan, Jason stood up. “Let me be the judge of that. Just lead the way.”
Operation of the library was completely automatic. A projected index
gave the call number for any text that had to be consulted. The tape was delivered to the charge desk thirty seconds after the number had
been punched. Returned tapes were dropped through a hopper and refiled automatically. The mechanism worked smoothly.
“Wonderful,” Jason said, pushing away from the index. “A tribute to technological ingenuity. Only it contains nothing of any value to us.
Just reams of textbooks.”
“What else should be in a library?” Meta sounded sincerely puzzled. Jason started to explain, then changed his mind. “Later we will go into that,” he said. “Much later. Now we have to find a lead. Is it possible that there are any tapes-or even printed books-that aren’t filed through this machine?”
“It seems unlikely, but we could ask Poli. He lives here somewhere and is in charge of the library. Filing new books and tending the machinery.”
The single door into the rear of the building was locked, and no amount of pounding could rouse the caretaker.
“If he’s alive, this should do it,” Jason said. He pressed the out-oforder button on the control panel. It had the desired effect. Within five minutes, the door opened and Poli dragged himself through it.
Death usually came swiftly on Pyrrus. If wounds slowed a man down, the ever-ready forces of destruction quickly finished the job. Poli was the exception to this rule. Whatever had attacked him originally had done an efficient job. Most of the lower part of his face was gone. His left arm was curled and useless. The damage to his body and legs had left him with the bare capability to stumble from one spot to the next.
Yet he still had one good arm as well as his eyesight. He could work in the library and relieve a fully fit man. How long he had been dragging the useless husk of a body around the building, no one knew. In spite of the pain that filled his red-rimmed, moist eyes, he had stayed alive. Growing old, older than any other Pyrran Jason had seen. He tottered forward and turned off the alarm that had called him.