The High Ones and Other Stories Read online

  They felt drained and lightheaded in the thin atmosphere. Its dryness caught at their throats and its cold gnawed toward their bones. But most terrible, perhaps, was the silence.

  Holbrook said at last, for them all: "Now what?"

  Unhelmeted, Ekaterina's sunlight-colored hair seemed to crackle with frost. Suddenly his living universe had narrowed to her—though he could do worse, he thought in the dimness—with Grushenko hovering on its fringes. Beyond, mystery; the stone walls enclosed him like the curvature of space. The woman said with a forlorn boldness, the breath smoking from her lips, "I suppose they will feed us. Else it would have been most logical just to shoot us. But they do not seem to care if we die of pneumonia."

  "Can we eat their food?" muttered Holbrook. "The odds are against it, I'd say. Too many incompatible proteins. The fact we can live on Novaya is nearly a miracle, and Zolotoy isn't that Earthlike."

  "They are not stupid," snorted Grushenko. "On the basis of our blood samples they can synthesize an adequate diet for us."

  "And yet they took our metallic possessions—even the most harmless." Ekaterina sat down, shivering. "And that computer, did it not give them orders? Is the computer the most powerful brain on this planet?"

  "No." Holbrook joined her on the floor. Oxygen lack slowed his thoughts, but he plowed doggedly toward an idea. "No, I don't believe in robots with creative minds. That's what intelligence itself is for. You wouldn't build a machine to eat for you, or … or make love … or any truly human function. Machines are to help, to amplify, to supplement. That thing is a gigantic memory bank, a symbolic logic manipulator, what you like; but it is not a personality."

  "But then why did they obey it?" she cried.

  Grushenko smiled wearily. "I suppose a clever dog might wonder why a man obeys his slide rule," he said.

  "A good enough analogy," said Holbrook. "Here's my guess. It's obvious the Zolotoyans have been civilized for a very long time. So I imagine they visited all the nearer stars … ages ago, maybe. They took data home with them. That computer is, as Ekaterina said a few hundred years back, the commissar of interstellar relations. It has all the data. It identifies us, our home planet—"

  "Yes, of course!" exclaimed Grushenko. "At this moment, the rulers of Zolotoy—whatever they have, perhaps the entire population—they are studying the report on us!"

  Ekaterina closed her eyes. "And what will they decide?" she asked in a dead voice.

  "They will send someone to learn our language, or teach us theirs," said Grushenko. A lift of excitement came to him, he paced up and down, his boots clacked on the floor and his face became a harsh mask of will. "Yes. The attack on us at the mine was a mistake of some kind. We must assume that, comrades, because if it was not we are certainly doomed. Now we have a chance to reason with them. And they can restore the rightful captaincy to the Rurik!"

  Holbrook looked up, startled. After a moment: "What makes you so sure they will?"

  "There is much we can offer them—it may be necessary to conceal certain elements, in the interests of the larger truth, but—"

  "Do you expect to fool a superman?"

  "I can try," said Grushenko simply. "Assuming that there is any need to. Actually, think they are sure to favor the Red side. Marxist principles would seem to predict that much. However … "

  A minute longer he rubbed his jaw, pondering. Then he planted himself, big and heavy, in front of Holbrook. He looked down from his height and snapped: "I will be the only one who talks to them. Do you understand?"

  The American stood up. The motion made his head swim. But he cocked his fists and said in anger, "Just how do you expect to prevent me … comrade?"

  "I am the better linguist," said Grushenko. "I am sure to be talking to them while you still flounder about trying to tell the syllables apart. But there are two sovietists here. Between us we can forbid you even to attempt it."

  Holbrook stared at the woman. She rose too, but backed away. One hand lifted to her mouth. "Ilya Feodorovitch," she whispered. "We are three human creatures."

  "Comrade Saburov," said Grushenko in an iron tone, "I make this a test of your loyalty. If you wish to commit treason, now is your time."

  Her gaze was wild upon Holbrook. He saw the tides of blood go through her skin, until they drained and she stood white and somehow empty.

  "Yes," she said. "Yes, comrade."

  "Good." Warmth flowed into the deep voice. Grushenko laid his hands upon her shoulders, searched her eyes, suddenly embraced her. "Thank you, Ekaterina Ivanovna!" He stepped back, and Holbrook saw the heavy hairless face blush like a boy's. "Not for what you do," breathed Grushenko. "For what you are."

  She stood quiet a long time. Finally she looked at Holbrook with eyes gone cat-green and said like a mechanism: "You understand you will keep yourself in the background, say nothing and make no untoward gestures. If necessary, we two can kill you with our hands."

  And then suddenly she went to a corner, sat down and hugged her knees and buried her face against them.

  * * * *

  Holbrook lowered himself. His heart thuttered, wild for oxygen; he felt the cold strike into his throat. He had not been so close to weeping since the hour his mother died.

  But—

  He avoided Grushenko's hooded stare; he retreated into himself and buckled on the armor of an engineer's workaday soul. There were problems to solve; well, let them be solved, as practical problems in a practical universe. For even this nightmare planet was real. Even it made logical sense; it had to, if you could only see clearly.

  He faced a mighty civilization, perhaps a million years old, which maintained interplanetary travel, giant computers, all the intricacies of a technology he did not begin to comprehend. But it ignored the unhidden human landings on Novaya. But it attacked senselessly when three strangers appeared—and then did not follow up the attack. It captured a space vessel with contemptuous ease, did not even bother to look at the booty, shoved the crew through an obviously cut-and-dried routine and then into this cell; but cosmos crack open, visitors from another star could not be an everyday affair! And it was understandable the Zolotoyans would remove a prisoner's knife, but why his watch? Well, maybe a watch could be turned into a, oh, a hyperspatial lever. Maybe they knew how to pull some such stunt and dared not assume the strangers were ignorant of it. But if so, why didn't they take some precautions with the outworld spaceship? Hell, it could be a nuclear time bomb, for all they knew—

  The uniforms, the whole repulsive discipline, suggested a totalitarian state. Could the humans only have encountered a few dull-witted subordinates so far? That would fit the facts … No, it wouldn't either. Because the overlords, who were not fools, would certainly have been informed of this, and would have taken immediate steps.

  Or would they?

  Holbrook gasped. "God in heaven!"

  "What?" Grushenko trod over to him. "What is it?"

  Holbrook struggled to his feet. "Look," he babbled, "we've got to break out of here. It's our death if we don't. The cold alone will kill us. And if we don't get back soon, the others will leave this system. I—"

  "You will keep silent when the Zolotoyans arrive," said Grushenko. He raised a fist. "If they do plan to terminate us, we must face it. There is nothing we can do about it."

  "But there is, I tell you! We can! Listen—"

  The wall dilated.

  CHAPTER VI

  Three guards stood shoulder to shoulder, their guns pointed inward, their lovely unhuman faces blank. A red-clad being, shorter than they, set down a bowl of stew and a container of water. The food was unidentifiable, but its odor was savory. Holbrook felt sure it had been manufactured for the Terrestrials.

  "For the zoo!" he said aloud. And then, wildly: "No, for the filing cabinet. File and forget. Lock us up and throw away the key because there is nothing else they can do with us."

  Ekaterina caught his arm. "Back," she warned.

  Grushenko stood making gestures and talking
, under the golden eyes of the guards. They loomed over him like idols from some unimaginable futurism. And suddenly the hatred which seethed in Holbrook left him; he knew nothing but pity. He mourned for Zolotoy the damned, which had once been so full of hope.

  But he must live. His eyes turned to Ekaterina. He heard the frosty breath rattle in her nostrils. Already the coryza viruses in her bloodstream were multiplying; chill and oxygen starvation had weakened her. Fever would come within hours, death within weeks. And Grushenko would spend weeks trying to communicate. Or if he could be talked around to Holbrook's beliefs, it might be too late: that electronic idiot-savant might decide at any moment that the prisoners were safest if killed—

  "I'm sorry," said Holbrook. He punched Ekaterina in the stomach.

  She lurched and sat down. Holbrook side-stepped the red Zolotoyan, moved in under the guards, and seized a blast-gun with both hands. He brought up his foot in the same motion, against a bony black-clad knee, and heaved.

  The Zolotoyan reeled. Holbrook staggered back, the gun in his hands. The other two guards trilled and slewed their own weapons about. Holbrook whipped the blaster up and squeezed its single switch. Lightning crashed between blue walls.

  A signal hooted. Automatic alarms—there would be guards coming, swarming all over, and their only reaction was to kill. "The computer!" bawled Holbrook. "We've got to get the computer!" Two hideously charred bodies were collapsing. The stench of burnt flesh grabbed his gullet.

  "You murdering fool!" Grushenko roared it out, leaping at him. Holbrook reversed his blaster and struck with the butt. Grushenko fell to the floor, dazed. The third black Zolotoyan fumbled after a dropped gun. Holbrook destroyed him.

  "The computer," he shouted. "It's not a brain, only an automation." He reached down, caught Ekaterina by the wrist and hauled her up. His heart seemed about to burst; rags of darkness swirled before his eyes. "But it is the interstellar commissar," he groaned. "It's the only thing able to decide about us … and now it's sure to decide on killing—"

  "You're insane!" shrieked the woman, from light-years away. She clawed after his weapon. He swayed in black mists, batted her away with his own strengthless hands.

  "I haven't time now," he whispered. "I love you. Will you come with me?"

  He turned and staggered through the door, past the scuttering red servitor, over the corpses and into the hall. The siren squealed before him, around him, through him. His feet were leaden clogs; Christ, what had become of the low gravity—help me, help me.

  Hands caught his arm. "Lean on me, Eben Petrovitch," she said.

  They went down a vaulted corridor full of howling. His temples beat, as if his brain were trying to escape the skull, but vision cleared a little. He saw the wall at the end. He stopped by the control stud.

  "Let me go through first," he said in his burning throat. "If the guards get me, remember the computer must be destroyed. We're safe if it can be destroyed. Wait, now."

  The wall gaped for him. He stepped through. The green technicians moved serenely under the huge machine, servicing it as if he did not exist. In a way, he thought, I don't. He sped across the floor. His boots resounded hollowly on the stone. He came up to the machine and opened fire.

  Thunder roared in the chamber. The technicians twittered and ran around him. One of them posted himself at a board whose pattern of signaling lights was too intricate for men to grasp, and called out orders. The others began to fetch replacement parts. And the siren yammered. It was like no alarm on Earth; its voice seemed almost alive.

  Four guards burst in from the outer hall. Holbrook sprang behind a technician, who kept stolidly by his rank of levers. The guards halted, stared around, and began to cast about like sniffing dogs. Holbrook shot past the green Zolotoyan, dropped one, dropped two. A human would have sacrificed the enemy's living shield to get at the enemy; but no black had ever fired on a green. Another guard approached and was killed. But where had the fourth gotten to?

  Holbrook heard the noise and whirled about. The gaunt shape had been almost upon him, from the rear. Ekaterina had attacked. They rolled about the floor, she snarling, he with a remote godlike calm even as he wrestled. He got her by the throat. Holbrook ran up behind and clubbed his blaster. After more blows than a man could have survived, the guard slumped.

  The woman crawled from beneath, gasping. Holbrook's strength was fled, his lungs one enormous agony. He sank to the floor beside her. "Are you all right?" he forced. "Are you hurt, my dearest?"

  "Hold."

  They crouched side by side and turned faces which bled from the nose back toward the machine. Ilya Grushenko stood there. A blaster was poised in his hands. "Drop your gun or I shoot," he said. "You and her both."

  Holbrook's fingers went slack. He heard the remote clatter of his weapon as it struck stone.

  "Thank you, Eben Petrovitch," said Grushenko. "Now they have it proven to them which of our factions is their friend."

  "You don't understand!" choked Holbrook. "Listen to me!"

  "Be still. Raise your hands. Ah, there—" Grushenko flicked eyes toward a pair of guards trotting into the room. "I have them, comrades!" he whooped.

  Their fire converged on him. He ceased to be.

  Holbrook had already scooped up his own blaster. He shot down the two black Zolotoyans. He stood up, swaying and still scrabbling after air. Ekaterina huddled at his feet. "You see," he said wearily, "we are in the ultimate collectivist state." She clung to his knees and wept.

  He had not fired many bolts into the computer when its siren went quiet. He assumed that the orders it had been giving were thereby canceled. He took the woman and they walked away from the pathetically scurrying greens, out into the hallway, past a few guards who ignored them, and so to a flying platform.

  CHAPTER VII

  Under the tall fair heaven of Novaya, Holbrook spoke to the chief of the human outpost. "You can call them back from the Rurik," he said. "There is no more danger."

  "But what are the Zolotoyans?" asked Ximénez. His eyes went in fear toward the mountains. "If they are not intelligent beings, then who … what … created their civilization?"

  "Their ancestors," said Holbrook. "A very long time ago. They were great once. But they ended up with a totalitarian government. A place for everyone and everyone in his place. The holy society, whose very stasis was holy. Specialized breeds for the different jobs. Some crude attempts at it have been made on Earth, too. Egypt didn't change for thousands of years after the pyramids had been built. Diocletian, the Roman emperor, made all occupations hereditary. The Soviets are trying that sort of thing at this moment, if they haven't been overthrown since we left. The Zolotoyans were unlucky: their attempt succeeded."

  He shrugged. "When one individual is made exactly like another—when independent thought is no longer needed, is actually forbidden—what do you expect? Evolution gets rid of organs which have stopped being useful. That includes the thinking brain."

  "But all that you saw—space travel, police functions, chemical analysis and synthesis, maintaining those wonderful machines—it is all done by instinct?" protested Ximénez. "No, I cannot believe it!"

  "Instinct isn't completely rigid, you know," said Holbrook. "Even a simple one-loop homeostatic circuit is amazingly flexible and adaptive. Remember ants or bees or termites on Earth. In their own way, they have societies as intricate as anything known to me. They even have a sort of stylized language, as do our neighbors here. Actually, I suspect the average ant faces more variety and challenge in his life than does the ordinary Zolotoyan. Remember, they have no natural enemies any more; and for tens of thousands of years, all the jobs on that highly automated planet have been stereotyped.

  "The mine guards on Novaya ignored our rocket trails beyond the mountains because—oh, to their perception it couldn't have been very different from lightning, say. But they had long ago evolved an instinct to shoot at unknown visitors, simply because large Novayan animals could interfere with operations. At h
ome, they have little or no occasion to fight. But apparently they, like the green technicians, have an inborn obedience to the computer signals."

  "Yes," said Ximénez. "The computer, what was it?"

  Holbrook sighed. "I suppose it was built in the last dying age of reason. Some atavistic genius (how lonely he must have been!) realized what was happening. Sooner or later, visitors from space were sure to arrive. He wanted to give his descendants at least a little defense against them. He built that machine, which could try to identify them, could give a few simple orders about their disarmament and care and feeding, that sort of thing. He used some controlled-mutation process to breed the technicians that serviced it, and the obedience of the guards. Or perhaps it was enough to institute a set of laws. There'd be natural selection toward an instinct … It really wasn't much he could do. A poor, clumsy protection against diseases we might have carried, or wanton looting, or … "

  Holbrook lifted his face into the wind. Sunlight streamed through summer leaves, it fell like a benediction on him and on the young woman who held his hand. Now, when the technical problem was disposed of, his voice came more slowly and awkwardly:

  "I could pity the Zolotoyans, except that they're beyond it. They are as empty of selfhood as insects. But the one who built the computer, can't you almost hear him back in time, asking for our mercy?"

  Ximénez nodded. "Well," he said, "I do not see why we should not let the … fauna … live. We can learn a great deal from them."

  "Including this:" said Holbrook, "that it shall not happen to our race. We've a planet now, and a whole new science to master. Our children or our grandchildren will return to Earth."

  Ekaterina's hand released his, but her arm went about his waist, drawing him close as if he were a shield. Her eyes ranged the great strange horizon and she asked, very low, "After all that time here, do you think they will care about Earth?"

  "I don't know," said Holbrook. He tasted the light like rain on his uplifted face. It was not the sun he remembered. "I don't know, dearest. I don't even know if it matters."