“The Guardian Etland is again attempting to contact you,” Moga said.
“Yes, I know.” The communicator in the partitioned end of the room had signaled half a dozen times during the past half hour.
“The signals,” Moga explained, “are on the cambi channel.”
The close-contact band! Ticos said thickly, “She already is in the area?”
“Could anyone else be seeking for you here?”
“No.”
“Then it is the Guardian. There is a human airvehicle high overhead. It is very small but rides the storm well. It moves away, returns again.”
“The island growth has changed since she was here last,” said Ticos. “She may not have determined yet on which of these islands I should be.” He added urgently, “This gives us a chance to forestall actions by Koll! I have the Guardian’s call symbol—”
Moga gave the whistle of absolute negation.
“It is now quite impossible to approach your communicator,” he said. “I would die if I attempted it unless it were under open orders of the Everliving. Koll will be allowed to carry out his plan. He has arranged tests to determine whether a Tuvela is a being such as the Tuvela Theory conjectures it to be. The first test will come while the Guardian is still in the air. At a selected moment the Great Palach will have a device activated which is directed at her vehicle. If she responds promptly and correctly, the vehicle will be incapacitated, but the Guardian will not be harmed. If she does not respond promptly and correctly, she dies at that point.”
Moga stared at Ticos a moment. “The significance of her death, of course, will be the Everliving’s conclusion that Tuvelas lack the basic qualities ascribed to them. The Great Plan is now in balance. If the balance is to shift again in favor of the Voice of Caution, the Guardian must not fail. Her class is being judged in her. If she fails, the Voice of Action attains full control.
“Let us assume she passes this first test. The vehicle will descend to a point where Koll’s personal company of Oganoon await the Guardian. Unless she has weapons of great effectiveness, she must surrender to them. Note that if she does not surrender and is killed, it will be judged a failure. A Tuvela, as Tuvelas are assumed to be, will not make such mistakes. A Tuvela will surrender and await better opportunities to act to advantage.”
Ticos nodded slowly. “I’ll be able to speak to the Guardian if she is captured?”
“No, Dr. Cay. Only the Great Palach Koll will speak to the Guardian following her capture. The tests will continue at once and with increasing severity until the Guardian either dies or proves to the Everliving beyond all doubt that the Tuvela Theory is correct in all its implications—specifically, that the Tuvelas, individually and as a class, are the factor which must cause us, even at this last moment, to halt and reverse the Great Plan. Koll is staking his life on his belief that she will fail. If she fails, he will have proved his point. The Everliving will hesitate no longer. And the final stages of the Plan will be initiated.”
“In brief,” Ticos said slowly, “the Great Palach intends to discredit the Tuvela Theory by showing he can torture the Guardian to death and add her to his collection of trophies?”
“Yes. That is his announced plan. The torture, of course, is an approved form of test. It is in accord with tradition.”
Ticos stared up at him, trying to conceal his complete dismay. There was no argument he could advance. This was the way they were conditioned to think. Before a Palach became a Palach he submitted to painful tests which few survived. As he progressed toward the ultimate form of existence which was a Great Palach, he was tested again and again. It was their manner of evaluation, of judgment. Ticos had convinced a majority of them that Tuvelas were at least their human counterpart. Some were convinced, however unwillingly, that the counterpart was superior to the greatest of the Great Palachs—opponents too deadly to be challenged. Koll’s move was designed to nullify that whole structure of thought. . . .
“I’ll keep you informed of what occurs, Dr. Cay,” Moga concluded. “If you have suggestions which might be useful in this situation, have word sent to me immediately. Otherwise we now see no way to block Koll’s purpose—unless the Guardian herself proves able to do it. Let us hope that she does.”
The Palach turned, moved off down the walkway toward the exit door. Ticos gazed after him. There was a leaden feeling of helplessness throughout his body. For the moment it seemed difficult even to stir from where he stood.
He didn’t doubt that Nile Etland was the operator of the aircar they were watching—and he had been hoping very much she wouldn’t arrive just yet.
Given even another two weeks, he might have persuaded the Everliving through the Voice of Caution to cancel the planned attack on Nandy-Cline and withdraw from the planet. But Nile’s arrival had precipitated matters and Koll was making full use of the fact. The one way in which Ticos could have warned her off and given her a clue to what was happening was closed completely.
Four words would have done it, he thought. Four words, and Nile would have known enough, once he’d switched on the communicator. He’d made preparations to ensure nobody was going to stop him before he got the four words out.
But now—without Moga’s help, without the permission of the Everliving—he simply couldn’t get to the communicator. It wasn’t a question of the guards. He’d made other preparations for the guards. It was the devastatingly simple fact that the partitioning wall was twelve feet high and that there was no door in it. Ticos knew too well that he was no longer in any condition to get over the wall and to the communicator in time to do any good. They’d turn him off before he turned it on. He didn’t have the physical strength and coordination left to be quick enough for such moves. . . .
If Nile had arrived a couple of weeks earlier, he could have done it. He’d counted then on being able to do it. But there’d been a few too many of their damned pain treatments since.
And if she’d delayed coming out by just two weeks, no warning might have been necessary.
But she was punctual as usual—right on time!
Well, Ticos told himself heavily, at least he’d arranged matters so that they wouldn’t simply blast her out of the air as she came down to the island. It left her a slim chance. However, it seemed time to start thinking in terms of last-ditch operations—for both of them. He had his preparations made there too. But they weren’t very satisfactory ones. . . .
* * *
“Hungry,” Sweeting announced from the aircar’s floor beside Nile.
“So starve,” Nile said absently. Sweeting opened her jaws, laughed up at her silently.
“Go down, eh?” she suggested. “Catch skilt for Nile, eh? Nile hungry?”
“Nile isn’t. Go back to sleep. I have to think.”
The otter snorted, dropped her head back on her forepaws, pretended to close her eyes. Sweeting’s kind might be the product of a geneticist’s miscalculation. Some twenty years before, a consignment of hunting otter cubs had reached Nandy-Cline. They were a development of a preserved Terran otter strain, tailored for an oceanic existence. The coastal rancher who’d bought the consignment was startled some months later when the growing cubs began to address him in a slurrily chopped-up version of the Hub’s translingue. The unexpected talent didn’t detract from their value. The talkative cubs, playful, affectionate, handsomely pelted, sold readily, were distributed about the sea coast ranches and attained physical maturity in another year and a half. As water hunters or drivers and protectors of the sea herds, each was considered the equivalent of half a dozen trained men. Adults, however, sooner or later tended to lose interest in their domesticated status and exchanged it for a feral life in the sea, where they thrived and bred. During the past few years sledmen had reported encounters with sizable tribes of wild otters. They still spoke in translingue.
Nile’s pair, hand-raised from cubhood, had stayed. She wasn’t quite sure why. Possibly they were as intrigued by her activities as she was by theirs. On some subjects her intellectual processes and theirs meshed comfortably. On others there remained a wide mutual lack of comprehension. She suspected, though she’d never tried to prove it, that their overall intelligence level was very considerably higher than was estimated.
She was holding the aircar on a southwest course, surface scanners shifting at extreme magnification about the largest floatwood island in the drift, two miles below, not quite three miles ahead. It looked very much like the one Ticos Cay had selected. Minor differences could be attributed to adaptive changes in the growth as the floatwood moved south. There were five major forest sections arranged roughly like the tips of a pentacle. The area between them, perhaps a mile across, was the lagoon, a standard feature of the islands. Its appearance was that of a shallow lake choked with vegetation, a third of the surface covered by dark green leafy pads flattened on the water. The forests, carrying the semi-parasitical growth which clustered on the floatwood’s thick twisted boles, towered up to six hundred feet about the lagoon, living walls of almost indestructible toughness and density. The typhoon battering through which they had passed had done little visible damage. Beneath the surface they were linked by an interlocking net of ponderous roots which held the island sections clamped into a single massive structure.