Harry Harrison

“ All this Brion knew in an instant of time, without words being spoken. Between the time he lifted one foot and walked a step he understood what he had to face. There could be no doubt, not to an empathetic.
From the group of silent men poured a frost-white wave of unemotion. An empathetic shares what other men feel. He gets his knowledge of their reaction by sensing lightly their emotions, the surges of interest, hate, love, fear, desire, the sweep of large and small sensations that accompany all thought and action. ”

“ You accept both of those noble institutions without an instant's thought. All of you haven't a single thought for the past, for the untold billions who led the bad life as mankind slowly built up the good life for you to lead. Do you ever think of all the people who suffered and died in misery and superstition while civilization was clicking forward one more slow notch?"
"Of course I don't think about them," Brion snapped back. "Why should I? I can't change the past."
"But you can change the future!" Ihjel said. "You owe something to the suffering ancestors who got you where you are today. ”

“ The magter brain cannot understand the concept of racial death, in a situation where it must understand to be able to survive. Therefore, the brain-creature is no longer a symbiote but a parasite."
"And as a parasite it must be destroyed!" Brion broke in. "We're not fighting shadows any more," he exulted. "We've found the enemy—and it's not the magter at all. Just a sort of glorified tapeworm that is too stupid to know when it is killing itself off. Does it have a brain—can it think?"
"I doubt it very much," Lea said. "A brain would be of absolutely no use to it. ”

“ Telt was scrambling back towards their crumbled entrance as he talked. His back was turned when Brion fired. The magter appeared silently as the shadow of death. They charged without a sound, running with expressionless faces into the bullets. Two died at once, curling and folding, the third one fell at Brion's feet. Shot, pierced, dying, but not yet dead. Leaving a crimson track it hunched closer, lifting its knife to Brion. He didn't move. How many times must you murder a man? ”

“ The magter, the upper-class lords of Dis, are the direct opposite. As cold-blooded and ruthless a bunch of murderers as you can possibly imagine. They tried to kill me when they met me, without reason. Their clothes, habits, dwellings, manners—everything about them differs from that of the normal Disan. More important, the magter are as coldly efficient and inhuman as a reptile. They have no emotions, no love, no hate, anger, fear—nothing. Each of them is a chilling bundle of thought processes and reactions, with all the emotions removed."
"Aren't you exaggerating?" Lea asked. ”

“ Individually they have been aggressive to the point of suicide. They will attack anything and everything with the same savage lack of emotion. Luckily there are no bigger animals on this planet. So where they have died as individuals, their utter ruthlessness has guaranteed their survival as a group. Now they are faced with a problem that is too big for their half-destroyed minds to handle. Their personal policy has become their planetary policy—and that's never a very smart thing. They are like men with knives who have killed all the men who were only armed with stones. ”

“ Lea asked. "If they are so indifferent to death, they can't have any strong thoughts on public opinion or alien body odor. Why would they bother with such a complex camouflage? And if they arrived from another planet what has happened to the scientific ability that brought them here?"
"Peace," Brion said. "I don't know enough to even be able to guess at answers to half those questions. I'm just trying to fit a theory to the facts. And the facts are clear. The magter are so inhuman they would give me nightmares—if I were sleeping these days. What we need is more evidence." ”

“ In another day this world ends and you have no way to stop it. I just might have an idea that could work and you can't afford to take any chances—not if you are really sincere. Either you are a murderer, killing Disans for pleasure, or you honestly want to stop the war. Which is it?"
"You'll have your body all right," Hys grated, hurling the car viciously around a spire of rock. "Not that it will accomplish anything—but I can find no fault in killing another magter. We can fit your operation into our plans without any trouble. ”

“ In every external physical detail the man was human.
Brion's theory was becoming more preposterous with each discovery. If the magter weren't alien, how could he explain their complete lack of emotions? A mutation of some kind? He didn't see how it was possible. There had to be something alien, about the dead man before him. The future of a world rested on this flimsy hope. If Telt's lead to the bombs proved to be false, there would be no hope left at all.
Lea was still unconscious when he looked at her. ”

“ Brion said, holding the dead weight of the magter against the truck's side. "I thought you meant it."
"Ahhh—" Telt grumbled. "You're as bad as Hys. Take things too seriously."
Brion suddenly realized that he was wet with blood, his clothing sodden. His stomach rose at the thought and he clutched the edge of the sandcar. Killing like this was too personal. Talking abstractedly about a body was one thing. But murdering a man, then lifting his dead flesh and feeling his blood warm upon you is an entirely different matter. Yet the magter weren't human, he knew that. ”

“ There were no fat men on Anvhar and it was incredible that a man so gross could ever have been a Winner. If there was muscle under the fat, it couldn't be seen. Only his eyes appeared to still hold the strength that had once bested every man on the planet to win the annual games. Brion turned away from their burning stare, sorry now he had insulted the man without good reason. ”

“ Brion insisted. "You can't deny that. And there is nothing artificial about the Twenties. They are a logical way to live a life on a planet like this."
Ihjel had to laugh, a short ironic bark. "Very logical," he said, "but how often does logic have anything to do with the organization of social groups and governments? You're not thinking. Put yourself in founder Giroldi's place. Imagine that you have glimpsed the great idea of the Twenties and you want to convince others. So you walk up to the nearest louse-ridden, brawling, superstitious, booze-embalmed hunter and explain clearly. ”

“ No one who had reached the finals in the Twenties could possibly be a weak opponent, but this one, Irolg, was the pick of the lot. A red-haired, mountain of a man, with an apparently inexhaustible store of energy. That was really all that counted now. There could be little art in this last and final round of fencing. Just thrust and parry, and victory to the stronger.
Brion closed his eyes again and knew the moment he had been hoping to avoid had arrived.
Every man who entered the Twenties had his own training tricks. Brion had a few individual ones that had helped him so far. ”

“ As soon as they were clear he activated it and the ramp slipped back like a giant tongue. As soon as the lock had swung shut the ship lifted and drifted upwards silently towards its orbit, a shrinking darkness against the stars.
There was just enough starlight to see the sandy wastes around them, as wave-filled as a petrified sea. The dark shape of a sandcar drew up over a dune and hummed to a stop. When the door opened Ihjel stepped towards it and everything happened at once. ”

“ Ihjel told him. "That may have been true in the dawn of history, but not any more. You have been reading too many of the old Earth classics, you imagine that we still live in the Ages of Superstition. Just because Fascism and Communism were once forced on reluctant populations, you think this holds true for all time. Go back to your books. In exactly the same era democracy and self-government were adapted by former colonial states, like India and the Union of North Africa, and the only violence was between local religious groups. Change is the lifeblood of mankind. ”

“ The words were louder and this time Brion recognized the voice. "I have brought you to the city as I told you I would. Have you done as you said you would?"
"I am doing it—but I need your help, Ulv. It is your life that needs saving and you must do your part—"
"What is truth?" Ulv interrupted. "All I hear is difference. The magter have done well though they live the wrong way. I myself have had bronze from them and there is water just for going. Now they tell us they are getting a different world for us all from the sky people and that is good, too. ”

“ But if they are forced to blow up Dis for their own survival—against every one of their basic tenets—their philosophy won't endure. Physically they'll live on. As just one more dog-eat-dog planet with an A-bomb for any of the competition who drop behind."
"Sounds like paradise now."
"Don't be smug. It's just another world full of people with the same old likes, dislikes and hatreds. But they are evolving a way of living together, without violence, that may some day form the key to mankind's survival. They are worth looking after. ”

“ Hys said to Brion, "he'll take care of you. Telt's my personal technical squad. Goes along on all my operations with his meters to test the interiors of the Disan forts. So far he's found no trace of a jump-space generator, or excess radioactivity that might indicate a bomb. Since he's useless and you're useless, you can both take care of each other. Use the car we came in."
Telt's wide face split in a frog-like grin, his voice was hoarse and throaty. "Wait! Just wait! Some day those needles gonna flicker and all our troubles be over. What you want me to do with the stranger?" ”

“ As a last resort I'll drop the bombs myself, rather than let the Nyjorders do it. That might save them."
"Save them—they'd all be radiated and dead!" Brion's voice was raised in anger.
"Not the Disans. I want to save the Nyjorders. Stop clenching your fists and sit down and have some of this cake. It's delicious. The Nyjorders are all that counts here. They have a planet blessed by the laws of chance. When Dis was cut off from outside contact the survivors turned into a gang of swamp-crawling homicidals. It did the opposite for Nyjord. You can survive there just by pulling fruit off a tree." ”

“ How could any single man take a barbarian planet, lightly inhabited by half-mad hunters and alcoholic farmers, and turn it into a smooth-running social machine built around the artificial structure of the Twenties? ”

“ So why was it necessary for the magter to go so far?"
"Nothing is necessary in evolution, you know that," Lea said. "Many variations are possible and all the better ones continue. You might say that Ulv's people survive, but the magter survive better. If offworld contact hadn't been re-established, I imagine that the magter would slowly have become the dominant race. Only they won't have the chance now. It looks as though they have succeeded in destroying both races with their suicidal urge."
"That's the part that doesn't make sense," Brion said. ”

“ The gunner had cracked the first aid box and was swabbing his arm with antiseptic. The knife wound was long, but not deep. Brion shivered while the bandage was going on, then quickly slipped into his coat. The air conditioner whined industriously, bringing down the temperature.
There was no attempt to follow the car. When the black tower had dropped over the horizon the guards relaxed, ran cleaning rods through their guns and compared marksmanship. All of their antagonism towards Brion was gone—they actually smiled at him. ”

“ Did Ulv have his blowgun ready to kill Brion if he should try to stop the launchings? Or had he misread the Disan entirely?
"Will you stop them, Ulv?" he asked.
How large was mankind's sense of obligation? The cave man first had this feeling for his mate, then for his family. It grew until men fought and died for the abstract ideas of cities and nations, then for whole planets. Would the time ever come when men might realize that the obligation should be to the largest and most encompassing reality of all? Mankind. ”

“ You must realize that to a biologist there is no real difference between a parasitism, symbiosis, mutualism, biontergasy, commensalism—"
"Stop, stop!" Brion said. "Those are just meaningless sounds to me. If that is what makes this planet tick, I'm beginning to see why the rest of the staff has that lost feeling."
"It is just a matter of degree of the same thing. Look. You have a kind of crustacean living in the lakes here, very much like an ordinary crab. It has large claws in which it holds anemones, tentacled sea animals with no power of motion. ”

“ Plants burst into life with a strength that cracks rocks, growing fast enough for the motion to be seen. The snow fields melt into mud and within days a jungle stretches high into the air. Everything grows, swells, proliferates. Plants climb on top of plants, fighting for the life-energy of the sun. Everything is eat and be eaten, grow and thrive in the short season. ”

“ They call your Nyjord Army terrorists."
"We are. Because we are an army and we're at war. The idealists at home only understood that when it was too late. If they had backed us in the beginning, we would have blown open every black castle on Dis—searched until we found those bombs. But that would have meant wanton destruction and death. They wouldn't consider that. Now they are going to kill everyone, destroy everything." He flicked on the panel lights just long enough to take a compass bearing, and Brion saw the tortured unhappiness in his twisted body. ”