Un-Man and Other Novellas Read online

  Maybe Stef was the lucky one, thought Rosenberg. He died here.

  He guided the sandcat over a razorback ridge. For a moment he paused, looking at the broad valley beyond. He hadn’t been to Drygulch for a couple of years; that’d be almost four Earth years, he remembered.

  The town, half underground below its doomed roof, hadn’t changed much outwardly, but the plantations had doubled their area. The genetic engineers were doing good work, adapting terrestrial food plants to Mars and Martian plants to the needs of humans. The colonies were already self-supporting with regard to essentials, as they had to be considering the expense of freight from Earth. But they still hadn’t developed a decent meat animal; that part of the diet had to come from yeast-culture factories in the towns and nobody saw a beefsteak on Mars. But we’ll have that too, one of these years.

  A worn-out world, stem and bitter and grudging, but it was being tamed. Already the new generation was being bom. There wasn’t much fresh immigration from Earth these days, but man was unshakably rooted here. Someday he’d get around to modifying the atmosphere and weather till humans could walk free and unclothed over the rusty hills— but that wouldn’t happen till he, Rosenberg, was dead, and in an obscure way he was glad of it.

  The cat’s supercharging pumps roared, supplementing tanked oxygen with Martian air for the hungry Diesel as the man steered it along the precarious trail. It was terribly thin, that air, but its oxygen was mostly ozone and that helped. Passing a thorium mine, Rosenberg scowled. The existence of fissionables was the main reason for planting colonies here in the first plast, but they should be saved for Mars.

  Well, Tm not really a Martian any longer. I’ll be an Earth-man again soon. You have to die on Mars, like Stef, and give your body back to the Martian land, before you altogether belong here.

  The trail from the mine became broad and hard-packed enough to be called a road. There was other traffic now, streaming from all comers—a loaded ore-car, a farmer coming in with a truckful of harvested crops, a survey expedition returning with maps and specimens. Rosenberg waved to the drivers. They were of many nationalities, but except for the Pilgrims that didn’t matter. Here they were simply humans. He hoped the U.N. would get around to internationalizing the planets soon.

  There was a flag on a tall staff outside the town, the Stars and Stripes stiff against an alien sky. It was of metal—it had to be, in that murderous corroding atmosphere—and Rosenberg imagined that they had to repaint it pretty often. He steered past it, down a long ramp leading under the dome. He had to wait his turn at the airlock, and wondered when somebody would invent a better system of oxygen conservation. These new experiments in submolar mechanics offered a promising lead.

  He left his cat in the underground garage, with word to the attendant that another man, its purchaser, would pick it up later. There was an odd stinging in his eyes as he patted its scarred flanks. Then he took an elevator and a slideway to the housing office and arranged for a room; he had a couple of days before the Phobos left. A shower and a change of clothes were sheer luxury and he reveled in them. He didn’t feel much desire for the cooperative taverns and pleasure joints, so he called up Doc Fieri instead.

  The physician’s round face beamed at him in the plate. “Barney, you old sandbugger! When’d you get in?”

  “Just now. Can I come up?”

  “Yeah, sure. Nothing doing at the office—that is, I've got company, but he won’t stay long. Come right on over.”

  Rosenberg took a remembered route through crowded hallways and elevators till he reached the door he wanted. He knocked: Dry gulch’s imports and its own manufactories

  needed other things more urgently than call and recorder circuits. “Come ini” bawled the voice.

  Rosenberg entered the cluttered room, a small leathery man with gray-sprinkled hair and a beaky nose, and Fieri pumped his hand enthusiastically. The guest stood rigid in the background, a lean ascetic figure in black—a Pilgrim. Rosenberg stiffened inwardly. He didn't like that sort, Puritan fanatics from the Years of Madness who’d gone to Mars so they could be unhappy in freedom. Rosenberg didn’t care what a man’s religion was, but nobody on Mars had a right to be so clannish and to deny cooperation as much as New Jerusalem. However, he shook hands politely, relishing the Pilgrim’s ill-concealed distaste—they were anti-Semitic too.

  “This is Dr. Morton,” explained Fieri. “He heard of my research and came around to inquire about it.”

  “Most interesting,” said the stranger. “And most promising, too. It will mean a great deal to Martian colonization.”

  “And surgery and biological research everywhere,” put in Fieri. Pride was bursting from him.

  “What is it, Doc?” asked Rosenberg, as expected. “Suspended animation,” said Fieri.

  “Hm?”

  “Uh-huh. You see, in what little spare time I have, Fve puttered around with Martian biochemistry. Fascinating subject, and unearthly in two meanings of the word. We’ve nothing like it at home—don’t need it. Hibernation and estivation approximate it, of course.”

  “Ummm . . . yes.” Rosenberg rubbed his chin. “I know what you mean. Everybody does. The way so many plants and animals needing heat for their metabolisms can curl up and ‘sleep’ through the nights, or even through the whole winter. Or they can survive prolonged droughts that way, too.” He chuckled. “Comparative matter, of course. Mars is in a state of permanent drought, by Earthly standards.”

  “And you say, Dr. Fieri, that the natives can do it also?” asked Morton.

  "Yes. Even they, with a quite highly developed nervous system, can apparently ‘sleep’ through such spells of cold or famine. I had to rely on explorers’ fragmentary reports for that datum. There are so few natives left, and they’re so shy and secretive. But last year I did finally get a look at one in such a condition. It was incredible—respiration was in-detectable, the heartbeat almost so, the encephalograph showed only a very slow, steady pulse. But I got blood and tissue samples, and was able to analyze and compare them with secretions from other life forms in suspension.”

  “I thought even Martians’ blood would freeze in a winter night,” said Rosenberg.

  “It does. The freezing point is much lower than with human blood, but not so low that it can’t freeze at all. However, in suspension there’s a whole series of enzymes released. One of them, dissolved in the bloodstream, changes the characteristics of the plasma. When ice crystals form, they’re more dense than the liquid, therefore cell walls aren’t ruptured and the organism survives. Moreover, a slow circulation of oxygen-bearing radicals and nutrient solutions takes place even through the ice, apparently by some process analogous to ion exchange. Not much, but enough to keep the organism alive and undamaged. Heat, a sufficient temperature, causes the breakdown of these secretions and the animal or plant revives. In the case of suspension to escape thirst or famine, the process is somewhat different, of course, though the same basic enzymes are involved.”

  Fieri laughed triumphantly and slapped a heap of papers on his desk. “Here are my notes. The work isn’t complete yet. I’m not quite ready to publish, but it’s more or less a matter of detail now.” A Nobel Prize glittered in his eye.

  Morton skimmed through the manuscript. “Very interesting,” he murmured. His lean, close-cropped head bent over a structural formula. “The physical chemistry of this material must be weird.”

  “It is, Morton, it is.” Fieri grinned.

  “Hmmm— do you mind if I borrow this to read? As I mentioned earlier, I believe my lab at New Jerusalem could carry out some of these analyses for you.”

  “That’ll be fine. Tell you what, I’ll make up a stat of this whole mess for you. I’ll have it ready by tomorrow.”

  “Thank you.” Morton smiled, though it seemed to hurt his face. "This will be quite a surprise, 111 warrant. You haven't told anyone else?”

  “Oh, I’ve mentioned it around, of course, but you’re the first person who’s asked for t
he technical details. Everybody’s too busy with their own work on Mars. But it’ll knock their eye out back on Earth. They’ve been looking for something like this ever since—since the Sleeping Beauty story—and here’s the first way to achieve it.”

  “I’d like to read this too, Doc,” said Rosenberg.

  “Are you a biochemist?" asked Morton.

  “Well, I know enough biology and chemistry to get by, and I’ll have leisure to wade through this before my ships blasts.” “Sure, Barney,” said Fieri. “And do me a favor, will you? When you get home, tell old Summers at Cambridge— England, that is—about it. He’s their big biochemist, and he always said I was one of his brighter pupils and shouldn’t have switched over to medicine. I’m a hell of a modest cuss, huh? But damn it all, it’s not everybody who grabs onto something as big as this!"

  Morton’s pale eyes lifted to Rosenberg’s. “So you are returning to Earth?” he asked.

  “Yeah. The Phobos.” He felt he had to explain, that he didn’t want the Pilgrim to think he was running out. “More or less doctor’s orders, you understand. My helmet cracked open in'a fall last year, and before I could slap a patch on I had a beautiful case of the bends, plus the low pressure and the cold and the ozone raising the very devil with my lungs.” Rosenberg shrugged, and his smile was bitter. *1 suppose I’m fortunate to be alive. At least I have enough credit saved to retire. But I’m just not strong enough to continue working on Mars, and it’s not the sort of place where you can loaf and remain sane.”

  “I see. It is a shame. When will you be on Earth, then?" “Couple of months. The Phobos goes orbital most of the way—do I look like I could afford an acceleration passage?” Rosenberg turned to Fieri. “Doc, will there be any other old sanders coming home this trip?”

  “’Fraid not. You know there are dam few who retire from Mars to Earth. They die first. You’re one of the lucky ones.”

  “A lonesome trip, then. Well, I suppose HI survive it.”

  Morton made his excuses and left. Fieri stared after him. “Odd fellow. But then, all these Pilgrims are. They’re anti almost everything. He’s competent, though, and I’m glad he can tackle some of those analyses for me.” He slapped Rosenberg’s shoulder. “But forget it, old manl Cheer up and come along with me for a beer. Once you’re stretched out on those warm white Florida sands, with blue sky and blue sea and luscious blondes walking by, I guarantee you won’t miss Mars.”

  “Maybe not.” Rosenberg looked unhappily at the floor. “It’s never been the same since Stef died. I didn’t realize how much he’d meant to me till I’d buried him and gone on by myself.”

  “He meant a lot to everyone, Barney. He was one of those people who seem to fill the world with life, wherever they are. Let’s see—he was about sixty when he died, wasn’t he? I saw him shortly before, and he could still drink any two men under the table, and all the girls were still adoring him.”

  “Yeah. He was my best friend, I suppose. We tramped Earth and the planets together for fifteen years.” Rosenberg smiled. “Funny thing, friendship. It has nothing to do with the love of women—which is why they never understand it. Stef and I didn’t even talk much. It wasn’t needed. The last five years have been pretty empty without him.”

  “He died in a cave-in, didn’t he?”

  “Yes. We were exploring up near the Sawtooths, hunting a uranium lode. Our diggings collapsed, he held that toppling roof up with his shoulders and yelled at me to scramble out-then before he could get clear, it came down and burst his helmet open. I buried him on a hill, under a cairn, looking out over the desert. He was always a friend of high places.”

  “Mmmmm—yes— Well, thinking about Stefan Rostomily won’t help him or us now. Let’s go get that beer, shall we?”

  THE SHRILLING within his head brought Robert Naysmith to full awareness with a savage force. His arm jerked, and the brush streaked a yellow line across his canvas.

  “Naysmithl” The voice rattled 'harshly in his skull. “Report to Prior at Frisco Unit. Urgent. Martin Donner has disappeared, presumed dead. You’re on his job now. Hop to it, boy.”

  For a moment Naysmith didn’t grasp the name. He’d never met anyone called Donner. Then—yes, that was on the list, Donner was one of the Brotherhood. And dead now.

  Dead— He had never seen Martin Donner, and yet he knew the man with an intimacy no two humans had realized before the Brothers came. Sharp in his mind rose the picture of the dead man, smiling a characteristic slow smile, sprawled back in a relaxer with a glass of Scotch in one strong bluntfingered hand. The Brothers were all partial to Scotch, thought Naysmith with a twisting sadness. And Donner had been a mech-volley fan, and had played good chess, read a lot and sometimes quoted Shakespeare, tinkered with machinery, probably had a small collection of guns—

  Dead. Sprawled sightlessly somewhere on the turning planet, his muscles stiff, his body already devouring itself in proteolysis, his brain darkened, withdrawn into the great night, and leaving an irreparable gap in the tight-drawn line of the Brotherhood.

  “You might pick up a newscast on your way,” said the voice in his head conversationally. “It’s hot stuff.”

  Naysmith’s eyes focused on his painting. It was shaping up to be a good one. He had been experimenting with techniques, and this latest caught the wide sunlit dazzle of California beach, the long creaming swell of waves, the hot cloudless sky and the thin harsh grass and the tawny-skinned woman who sprawled on the sand. Why did they have to call him just now?

  “Okay, Sofie,” he said with resignation. “That’s all. I’ve got to get back.”

  The sun-browned woman rolled over on one elbow and looked at him. “What the devil?” she asked. “We’ve only been here three hours. The day’s hardly begun.”

  “It’s gone far enough, I’m afraid.” Naysmith began putting away his brushes. “Home to civilization.”

  “But I don’t want to!”

  "What has that got to do with it?” snorted the man. Treat ’em rough and tell ’em nothing, and they’ll come running. These modem women aren’t as emancipated as they think. He folded his easel.

  “But why?” she cried, half getting up.

  “I have an appointment this afternoon.” Naysmith strode down the beach toward the trail. After a moment, Sofie followed.

  “You didn’t tell me that,” she protested.

  “You didn’t ask me,” he said. He added a “Sorry” that was no apology at all.

  There weren’t many others on the beach, and the parking lot was relatively uncluttered. Naysmith palmed the door of his boat and it opened for him. He slipped on tunic, slacks, and sandals, put a beret rakishly atop his sun-bleached yellow hair, and entered the boat. Sofie followed, not bothering to don her own clothes.

  The ovoid shell slipped skyward on murmuring jets. “I’ll drop you off at your place,” said Naysmith. “Some other time, huh?”

  She remained sulkily silent. They had met accidentally a week before, in a bar. Naysmith was officially a cybernetic epistemologist on vacation, Sofie an engineer on the Pacific Colony project, off for a holiday from her job and her free-marriage group. It had been a pleasant interlude, and Naysmith regretted it mildly.

  Still—the rising urgent pulse of excitement tensed his body and cleared the last mists of artistic preoccupation from his brain. You lived on a knife edge in the Service, you drew breath and looked at the sun and grasped after the real world with a desperate awareness of litde time. None of the Brotherhood were members of the Hedonists, they were all too well-balanced for that, but inevitably they were epicureans.

  When you were trained from—well, from birth, even the sharpness of nearing death could be a kind of pleasure. Besides, thought Naysmith, I might he one of the survivors. “You are a rat, you know,” said Sofie.

  “Squeak,” said Naysmith. His face—the strange strong face of level fair brows and wide-set blue eyes, broad across the high cheekbones and in the mouth, square-jawed and crag-nosed—split i
n a grin that laughed with her while it laughed at her. He looked older than his twenty-five years. And she, thought Sofie with sudden tiredness, looked younger than her forty. Her people had been well off even during the Years of Hunger; she’d always been exposed to the best available biomedical techniques, and if she claimed thirty few would call her a liar. But—

  Naysmith fiddled with the radio. Presently a voice came out of it; he didn’t bother to focus the TV.

  “—the thorough investigation demanded by finance minister Arnold Besser has been promised by President Lopez. In a prepared statement, the President said: ‘The rest of the ministry, like myself, are frankly inclined to discredit this accusation and believe that the Chinese government is mistaken. However, its serious nature—’ ”

  “Lopez, eh? The U.N. President himself,” murmured Naysmith. “That means the accusation has been made officially now.”

  “What accusation?” asked the woman. “I haven’t heard a ’cast for a week.”

  "The Chinese government was going to lodge charges that the assassination of Kwang-ti was done by U.N. secret agents,” said Naysmith.

  “Why, that’s ridiculous!” she gasped. "The U.N.?” She shook her dark head. “They haven’t the—right. The U.N. agents, I mean. Kwang-ti was a menace, yes, but assassina-tionl I don’t believe it.”

  “Just think what the anti-U.N. factions all over the Solar System, including our own Americanists, are going to make of this,” said Naysmith. “Right on top of charges of corruption comes one of murder!”