Calvin M. Knox

“ Beth said, "Major Abner Harris, formerly Aar Khiilom of Darruu—this is Paul Coburn of Medlin Intelligence and David Wrynn of Earth."
"A real Earthman? Not a phony like the rest of us?"
Wrynn smiled pleasantly and said, "I assure you I'm a home-grown product, Major Harris." His voice was like the mellow boom of a well-tuned cello.
The Darruui folded his arms. "Well. How nice of you to introduce us all. Now what?"
"Still belligerent," he heard Beth murmur to the other Medlin, Coburn. Coburn nodded. The giant Earthman merely looked unhappy in a calm sort of way. ”

“ For forty Darruui years he had been trained to hate the Medlins. Now, in a few minutes, he would be doing what was considered the noblest act a Servant of the Spirit could perform—ridding the universe of a pack of them. Yet he felt no sense of anticipated glory. It would simply be murder, the murder of strangers. ”

“ He sensed the smell of Darruu wine, and the prickly texture of thuuar spines, and then the superficial memories parted to give him a moment's insight into the deeper mind of the Darruui who wore the name of John Carver.
It was a frightening pit of foul hatreds. Shivering, Harris staggered backward, realizing that the Earther had allowed him only a fraction of a second's entry into that mind.
He covered his face with his hands.
"Are—we all like that?" he asked. "Am I?"
"No. Not—deep down," Beth said. "You've got the outer layer of hatred that every Darruui has—and every Medlin. ”

“ But your core is good. Carver is rotten. So are the other Darruui here."
"Our races have fought for centuries," Coburn said. "A mistake on both sides that has hardened into blood-hatred. The time has come to end it."
"How about those Darruui outside?"
"They must die," Beth said.
Harris was silent a moment. The five who waited for him were Servants of the Spirit, like himself; members of the highest caste of Darruui civilization, presumably the noblest of all creation's beings. To kill one was to set himself apart from Darruu for ever. ”

“ Beth said. "You Darruui always think in terms of motives, don't you? Profit and reward. Major, there's nothing in this for us but the satisfaction of knowing that we're bringing something wonderful into being in the universe."
Harris swallowed that with much salt. The concept of altruism was not unknown on Darruu, certainly, but it seemed highly improbable that a planet would go to the trouble of sending emissaries across space for the sole purpose of serving as midwives to an emerging race of super-beings on Earth. ”

“ I was sent here to help sway the Earthers to the side of Darruu. But it's the other way around; it's Darruu that will have to swear loyalty to Earth, some day."
"Not soon," Wrynn said. "The true race is not yet out of childhood. Twenty years more must pass. And we have enemies on Earth."
"The old Earthmen," Coburn said. "How do you think they'll like being replaced? They're the real enemy. And that's why we're here. To help the mutants until they can stand fully alone. You Darruui are just nuisances getting in our way."
That would have been cause for anger, once. Harris merely shrugged. ”

“ No one Should be closer to you than three feet.
He was shown into an inner room well furnished with drapes and hangings. Beth stood in the middle of the room, smiling at him. She wore thick, shapeless clothes, quite unlike the seductive garb she had had on when Harris first collided with her.
There were others in the room. Harris recognized the other Medlin, Coburn, and the giant named Wrynn who claimed to be a super-Earthman. There was another woman of Wrynn's size in the room, a great golden creature nearly a foot taller than Harris, and two people of normal size who were probably Medlins. ”

“ Their colonies stretched halfway across the galaxy. The Interstellar Development Corps of which he claimed to be a member had planted Earthmen indiscriminately on any uninhabited world of the galaxy that was not claimed by Darruu or Medlin.
And the Medlins, the ancient enemies of his people, the race he had been taught all his life to regard as the embodiment of evil—these were aiding Earthmen to progress to a plane of development far beyond anything either Darruu or Medlin had attained?
Ridiculous, he thought. No race breeds its own destruction knowingly. And the Medlins are no fools. ”

“ She said, "We had information on you from the moment you entered the orbit of Earth, Abner—or should I say Aar Khiilom?"
"How did you know that name?"
She laughed lightly. "The same way I knew you were from Darruu, the same way I knew the exact moment you were going to come out of your room before."
"The same way you knew I was coming here to kill you just now?"
She nodded.
Harris frowned. "Medlins aren't telepathic. There isn't a single telepathic race in the galaxy." ”

“ He laughed derisively. "For the good of Medlin, you mean."
"No. Listen to me. When we arrived on Earth—it was years ago, by the way—we quickly discovered that a new race was evolving here. A super-race, you might say. One with abnormal physical and mental powers. But in most cases children of this new race were killed or mentally stunted before they reached maturity. People tend to resent being made obsolete—and even a super-child is unable to defend himself until he's learned how. By then it's usually too late."
It was a nice fairy-tale, Harris thought. ”

“ Earth was a mighty force in the galaxy—so mighty that it would resent the role it really played, that of pawn between Darruu and Medlin. Darruu wanted Terran support in the conflict to come. Obtaining it was a delicate problem in consent engineering. A cadre of disguised Darruui, planted on Earth, gradually manipulating public opinion toward the Darruu camp and away from Medlin—that was the plan, and Harris, once Aar Khiilom, was one of its agents. ”

“ Wrynn smiled. "I'm somewhat better equipped for life than most other Earthmen. My children will be as far beyond me as I am beyond my parents."
"Our purpose here on Earth is to aid this evolving race until it's capable of taking care of itself—which won't be too long now. There are more than a hundred of them, of which thirty are adult. But now Darruui agents have started to arrive on Earth. Their purpose is to obstruct us, to interfere with our actions, and to win Earth over to what they think is their 'cause.' They don't see that they're backing a dead horse."
"Tell me," Harris said. ”

“ Major Harris scowled, and the face darkened.
It behaved well. The synthetic white skin acted as if it were his own. The surgeons back on Darruu had done a superb job on him.
They had removed the fleshy four-inch-long tendrils that sprouted at a Darruui's temples; they had covered his deep golden skin with an overlay of convincingly Terran white, and grafted it so skilfully that by now it had become his real skin. Contact lenses turned his eyes from red to blue-gray. Hormone treatments had caused hair to sprout on head and body, where none had been before. ”

“ Harris said. "Once an Earthman, always an Earthman."
He made a mental note to carry out a trifling adjustment on his body thermostat. His skin was lined with sub-miniaturized heating and refrigerating units—just one of the useful modifications the surgeons had given him.
Darruu's mean temperature was 120 degrees, on the scale used by the Earthers. When it dropped to 80, Darruui cursed the cold. It was 80 now, and he was uncomfortably cold. He would have to stay that way for most of the day, at least, until in a moment of privacy he could make the necessary adjustments. ”

“ It took twenty minutes by helitaxi to reach the metropolitan area from the spaceport. Handling the Terran currency as if he had used it all his life, Harris paid the driver, tipped him, and got out. He had asked for and been taken to a hotel in the heart of the city—the Spaceways Hotel. There was one of them in every major spaceport city in the galaxy; the spacelines operated them jointly, for the benefit of travelers who had no place to stay on the planet of their destination. ”

“ You'll learn why we're on Earth; once you've seen that, you'll join us and help to protect Earth against Darruu."
"And why will I do all these incredible things?"
"Because it's in your personality makeup to do them. And because you're falling in love."
"With a lot of fake female flesh plastered over a scrawny Medlin body? Hah!"
She remained calm. Harris measured the distance between them, wondering whether she would use the weapon after all. A disruptor broiled the neural tissue; death was instantaneous and fairly ghastly. ”

“ Earthmen were dangerous enough as it was; though the spheres of galactic influence still were divided as of old between Darruu and Medlin, the Earthmen in their bare three hundred years of galactic contact had taken giant strides toward holding a major place in the affairs of the universe. ”

“ Darruu's gravity was 1.5 Earthnorm. Or, as Harris had thought of it in the days when his mind centered not on Earth but on Darruu, Earth's gravity was .67 Darruunorm. Either way, it meant that his muscles would be functioning in a field two-thirds as strong as the one they had developed in. He could use the excuse that he had spent most of his time on heavy planets, and that would explain away some of his awkwardness.
But not all. A native Earther, no matter how long he stays on a heavy world, still knows how to cope with Earthnorm gravity. Harris had to learn that. ”

“ The Earther at the desk said, "You don't mind heights, do you, Major?"
"Not at all."
He gave the boy who had carried his bags a quarter-unit piece, received grateful thanks, and locked the door. For the first time since leaving Darruu he was really alone. Thumbing open his suitcases, he performed the series of complex stress-pressures that gave access to the hidden areas of the grips; miraculously, the suitcases expanded to nearly twice their former volume. There was nothing like packing your belongings in a tesseract if you wanted to keep the customs men away from them. ”

“ He shivered a moment; then, gradually, he began to feel warm. Closing the wound, he applied nuplast; moments later it had healed. He dressed again.
He surveyed his room. Twenty feet square, with a bed, a desk, a closet, a dresser. An air-conditioning grid in the ceiling. A steady greenish electroluminescent glow. An oval window beneath which was a set of polarizing controls. A molecular bath and washstand. Not bad for twenty units a week, he told himself, trying to think the way an Earthman might. ”

“ On Darruu, a woman who jostled a Servant of the Spirit could expect a sound whipping. But this was not Darruu.
He remembered a phrase from his indoctrination: it will help to create a sexual relationship for yourself on Earth.
The surgeons had changed his metabolism in that respect, too, making him able to feel sexual desires for Terran females. The theory was that no one would expect a disguised alien to engage in romantic affairs with Terrans; it would be a form of camouflage.
"Excuse me!" Harris and the female Terran said simultaneously. ”

“ Then I kill them with the disruptor and leave.
Very simple.
He looked at Beth and thought that in a few minutes she would lie dead, along with Coburn and the other two Medlins and these giants who claimed to be Earthmen. He tensed. His hand stole toward his hip.
Beth said, "It must have been a terrible nervous strain, killing him. You look very disturbed."
"You've overturned all the values of my life," Harris said glibly. "That can shake a man up."
"You didn't think I'd succeed!" Beth said triumphantly to Coburn. To Harris she explained, "Coburn didn't think you could be trusted." ”

“ Wrynn was probably a Medlin himself, on whom the surgeons had done a specially good job.
Whatever the Medlins' motive, he determined to play along with them. By now Carver had probably picked up his distress signal and had worked out the location of the place where he was being held.
He said, "So you're busily raising a breed of super-Earthmen, and you want me to help? How?"
"We told you. By disposing of your comrades before they make things complicated for us."
"You're asking me to commit treason against my people, in other words."
"We know what sort of a man you are," Beth said. ”

“ Perhaps he was surrounded by agents of Earth's own intelligence corps who had already penetrated his disguise.
Trouble lay on every hand. Inwardly Major Harris felt calm, though there was the faint twinge of homesickness for Darruu that he knew he would never be able entirely to erase.
The shuttle banked into a steep deceleration curve. Artificial grav aboard the ship remained constant, of course. Earth drew near. ”

“ As he boarded the Earth-Orbiter shuttle, an attractive stewardess handed him a multigraphed sheet of paper which contained information of a sort a tourist was likely to want to know. Harris scanned it quickly.
"The Orbiting Station is located eighty thousand miles from Earth. It is locked in a twenty-four hour orbit that keeps it hovering approximately above Quito, Ecuador, South America. During a year the Orbiting Station serves an average of 8,500,000 travellers—"
He finished reading the sheet and put it down. He eyed his fellow passengers in the Earthbound shuttle. ”