Planet Of No Return

9: Electronic Inquisition

Brion came to the edge of the forest and paused beneath the largest tree there. He looked down the grassy slope to the empty plain beyond, past it to the vast blue waters of the Central Lake that stretched away to the horizon. The day was warm now, with the sun high in the sky. Behind him he could hear Lea stumbling through the underbrush, almost falling, muttering a choked oath. He reached past her with his senses, outward to the limit of his ability, but could still find no trace of any pursuit.

“Is there any reason … we can’t rest here … for a bit,” she gasped, leaning against the tree at his side.

“Of course not. This is a good place to stop.” She was slipping to the ground even as he spoke. “As far as I can tell no one is after us yet, so we’re safe here for the moment. But once we are out on the plain we’ll be easy to see. We must decide now what we want to do next.”

“Why not drop greybeard for openers,” Lea said, waving towards the limp body over Brion’s shoulder. “Or have you forgotten you were carrying him?”

Brion let his burden slip down onto the matted leaves. “He’s not heavy. Very thin and old as you can see.”

“Is that the best one you could find?”

“Yes. He may represent some kind of authority, since he’s the only one I observed who was wearing any kind of non-functional decoration.” Brion moved aside the matted grey hair of the man’s beard to reveal the necklace of bleached bones that he wore about his neck. “He might have answers to questions that the others might not know.”

“Do you mean you actually took the time to look around and pick and choose when you went back to grab a prisoner?”

“Of course. It was a unique opportunity.”

“Some day I’m going to understand you — but not today. I’m thirsty and hungry and exhausted, and feel as though someone has walked all over me with spiked shoes. Have you given any thought to our Future?”

“A very great deal. There was both the time and the opportunity for concentration while we were walking. First, we must face some unpleasant facts. All of the equipment we were carrying is missing, as well as our food and water, my knife …”

“And if that radio controller isn’t still hidden in that crater where you put it, we might as well sign a mutual suicide pact right now. I don’t look forward to those types laying their hands on me a second time …” She leaned forward to look closely at their prisoner; then wrinkled her nose with disgust. “How awful. Since we’re speaking of hands — aren’t those human finger bones strung on Dirty’s necklace?”

Brion nodded. “I found that fact most interesting. That’s why I brought him. I also have a strong personal interest in that necklace.”

There was an edge of anger in his voice that had not been there before, that made her look at the necklace again. Bleached finger bones, one of them darker than the others. No, not darker, different. She looked more closely and saw that it was a freshly severed finger, the blood still caked darkly upon it. With sudden realization she stared, horrified, at Brion. He nodded grimly. Holding up his right hand so that all four of his remaining fingers could be clearly seen. Lea gasped.

“They did that to you — they’re filth! You didn’t let me know …”

“No point in doing that since there’s nothing either of us can do about it now. It’s not too serious, they tied a thong around the stump to stop the bleeding. But I am most curious about the significance of the act. This man will be able to tell us.” He dismissed the matter with a wave of his truncated hand. “But that is all in the future. Before we do anything else we must call the lifeship down. And I hope that you are correct about our radio controller, that it remains untouched. Until we get to it we have no way of knowing. Then we must reach the crater as soon as possible and signal the lifeship to land. You will board it and leave at once …”

“Without you? Do you really like this disgusting place so much?”

“Not particularly. But the work we have to do must be done here. And I don’t want this man in the ship.”

“Why? Afraid he’ll take it over?”

“Quite the opposite. I have an informed hunch, backed up by the feelings I sensed in Vjer, that it would be disaster to take any of these people out of their natural environment. I’ll be perfectly safe remaining here until you return. While the lifeship is completing a single orbit you will have time enough to assemble the items from a list that we will prepare now. After the orbit you can land with what we will need.”

“Shouldn’t I make a recording of what we have discovered so far?”

“That is item one on your list. After you do that you must get together the equipment that we will need. It is unavoidable that a number of items will have a high metallic content. I believe that it is still very important not to have any metal on our persons when we move about. But if I find that the fragment of wing is still undisturbed, why then we will know that we have a cache where we could leave these metal items until we need them.”

“Items such as a few stun grenades, a gun or two?”

“Very much what I had in mind. I have no desire for a rerun of last night’s performance.”

“A hearty second to that motion.” She climbed wearily to her feet. “I’m ready to go if you are. I get a very itchy feeling sitting here with my back to these woods.”

“You must be tested to see if you have empathetic powers,” Brion said, slowly hoisting the still-unconscious man to his shoulder. “They are out there now looking for us, I have been aware of it for some minutes. But I sense only worry and confusion so I don’t think they have found our trail.”

“Now you tell me! Let’s move.” She scrambled to her feet and started down the hill.

Brion broke into an easy jog so that he caught up and passed her within a few paces. “I’m going ahead,” he told her. “They’ll probably be able to see us once we are out on the plain, so I want to send for the lifeship as soon as possible.”

“Don’t stand there talking — move it out! I’m right behind you.”

She was running as fast as she could, but still could not match his speed. Brion loped out ahead of her in ground-eating strides, his course taking him directly to the crater. Lea kept looking over her shoulder as she ran, then she had to walk for a bit to catch her breath, before she was able to run again. She struggled her way up a small rise and when she reached the top she saw Brion, far ahead, climbing out of the crater — waving something that glinted in the sun. The controller was still there!

“The lifeship, it’s on the way down,” he said as she stumbled up to him. “And there is no sign of any pursuers as yet.”

“I’ve never been … so tired in my life.” She gasped out the words as she dropped to the ground. Brion put the controller at her side and started back towards the crater.

“Give me a shout if he starts to move,” he said. “I want to make another copy of the identification plate I found on the wrecked wing. The first one is gone, I had it scratched onto my waterbottle. When you are in the ship use the modem to put this copy into the record.” He slipped over the edge.

Lea looked at the necklace around the snoring man’s neck and shuddered. What animals these people were. Cutting a man’s finger off just like that. For what reason? It must have been an important reason for them, with a ritual meaning or something. And Brion’s hand, how it must have hurt, yet he had never mentioned it. He was an unbelievable man in every way. But the stump would have to be treated at once to prevent infection; a medkit must be high on their list of necessities. A new finger would be regrown eventually — but that was not going to stop the pain and discomfort now.

“I’ve copied the symbols as best I could, onto this piece of bark,” Brion said, when he had clambered back out of the crater. “Can you make any sense of them at all?”

She turned the bark around and around, then shook her head no. “It’s not any language that I am acquainted with. Though the alphabet has a familiar look. The memory banks may come up with something …”

Their grey-haired prisoner opened his eyes and began to tremble and scream hoarsely, scrabbling to crawl away from them. Brion reached out and seized him, then pressed his thumb hard against the side of the man’s neck below the ear. The prisoner flopped twice and was still.

“Did you see that?” Brion asked.

“The way you crunched him unconscious? I sure did. You’ll have to teach me that trick …”

“No, not that. What he was looking at when he started to wail. It was the radio controller.”

“Could he have known what it is?”

“I doubt that very much. But it must have some terrible significance for him that we will have to determine.” Brion turned his head sideways, listening. “The ship is on the way down. You must memorize the list now, of the things that we will need.”

The lifeship was on the ground for less than two minutes. Brion worried for every second of the time. Even when the ship had lifted off again with Lea aboard, the nagging concern continued. It had landed safely twice — which indicated that this location might not be under continuous observation. But each time it came down the danger of possible discovery increased. Yet they had to stay in this area because the hunters were the only key they had to the deadly problem of this planet. Since there was no choice he forced himself to put the danger from his mind and concentrate on setting up the HLP.

The small metal case of the Heuristic Language Programmer contained a wealth of sophisticated circuitry and design. It functioned through a holographic projector that formed a three-dimensional image — an image that apparently floated in the air above it. The first image that appeared was a tilted white surface with operating instructions printed upon it. Brion read this and punched into the controls the codes that he wanted. The instructions vanished and the teacher-image appeared in their place. This was an elderly man dressed in a plain grey outfit who sat, crosslegged, with a lidless box on the ground before him. Brion worked with the controls until he had replaced the man’s suit with a loincloth affair, and had managed to lengthen the image’s hair as well. Though their prisoner was much filthier, teacher and student resembled each other very much.

Brion looked at the frozen three-dimensional image and nodded. It was good enough. A touch of a final control caused the image to move backward in space so that it concealed the projection mechanism. When this happened it looked as though Brion’s arm had been plunged deep into the man’s naked thigh. He withdrew his hand, satisfied.

As soon as the task was completed the worry returned. Nor would it recede until the lifeship had landed and taken off safely again with Lea aboard. Now all he had to worry about were the remaining members of the tribe. There was no sign of them yet, nor could he detect their presence anywhere nearby. The seconds ticked slowly by.

Nothing had changed by the time the ship had returned and landed. He stood and waved. “Just drop the equipment down to me, one item at a time,” he called out to Lea when the airlock had opened, “Then get down yourself as fast as you can.”

It was dangerous — but it was the fastest way to get the equipment unloaded. He caught the heavy containers, one after another, stacking them to one side, then hurrying them into the crater as Lea climbed down to join him. As soon as they were clear of the blast area of the ship he punched in the commands that sent it back into orbit again. Only after it was gone and there had been no retaliation from the sky could they relax. Lea shook her fist at the distant hills.

“All right out there, you can come back now, come down here and try to cause some more trouble. Are you going to get a lovely surprise this time! It will be my pleasure. Not one of you smelly creatures is worth a finger of Brion’s hand!”

“I appreciate the sentiments,” he said, putting a bandage over the antiseptic foam that had been spread on the stump of the missing finger. He looked down. “Our guest seems to be stirring again.”

“I’ll go get us some food while you start up the machine. You can find out if it’s possible to strike up a conversation with him.”

The education technique of the HLP was painfully slow and painstakingly precise. It was essential that the subject cooperate at all times. This proved difficult because there was no active cooperation by the captive at first, something that was necessary to make this technique work. It wasn’t that the man was belligerent — just that he was terrified out of his wits.

Brion had known that the man was about to awake when he sensed the unconscious brain rhythms begin to change. First there was worry and a sensation of pain, and nothing else until he opened his eyes. Then they were replaced by simple and unmitigated fear, the same fear that had possessed Vjer when he had first seen Brion. But this was worse because it was unending and relentless. When the captive focused his eyes on Brion he tried to scramble away, mewling with terror. Brion seized him by the ankle to prevent his escape, but when he did this the sensation of fear grew even stronger. The man moaned in agony, venting his bowels uncontrollably. His eyes rolled up so that only the whites showed as he fainted. Brion went to get the medkit.

“Would you like some food?” Lea asked as he joined her in the shelter of the crater.

“Not quite yet. He’s being very uncooperative, so I’m going to give him the shot of scopalamine that the instructions recommended for this kind of case.”

The slight sting of the subcutaneous pressure spray from the capsule stirred the man to consciousness; Brion slipped the device into his pocket before it could be seen. This time a numbness spread over the captive’s fear. The man moved uncomfortably, wiping at himself, eyeing Brion with fear-ridden suspicion. Brion did nothing, simply sat on the ground and waited. He could see the man looking at the projected image, and at the same time felt the first touches of curiosity behind the ebbing fear. To the prisoner’s eyes the image was that of a man of his own age. A man who appeared to have astonishing body control, for he sat, not moving his body in the slightest, just breathing very lightly. Without this computer simulation of life the image would have been a statue. When the curiosity grew stronger-Brion spoke the cue word softly.

“Begin.”

The captive glanced at Brion with a sudden spurt of fear — then back to the image which had stirred for the first time. The image nodded and smiled, then reached into the open box that was sitting on the ground before him. He withdrew his hand holding what appeared to be an ordinary rock.

“Rock,” the image said clearly. “Rock…rock.” Each time it spoke the word it nodded and smiled. Then it extended the rock and made an interrogative sound. The old man only gaped, his brain filled with confusion.

With infinite machine patience the image repeated the demonstration and the interrogative. There was no positive reaction. On the third repetition the image was no longer smiling. When the old man did not answer to its interrogation the face grew ugly, the lips drew back from the teeth, it frowned — expressing every outward indication of aggression and anger that the anthropologists had ever discovered in any culture. The captive quailed away, moaning with fear. On the next repetition, when the rock was thrust in his direction, he stammered out “Prtr”. The image smiled and nodded and made all kinds of reinforcing friendly gestures. The learning process had begun.

Brion had moved back out of the old man’s line of vision, so his presence would not interrupt the lesson. He watched as the image poured water, over and over again, from one container to another, never spilling a drop.

“Does this really work?” Lea asked, “Every time. The computer program is self-checking. As soon as a few words are memorized it will play them back to the subject for cross reference. As its vocabulary grows the process is speeded up. Within a short period of time it will be able to ask questions, simple ones at first, then more and more abstract ones. When the old man gets tired, the machine will give him time to rest. Then it can teach us whatever it has learned.”

“Drilling us and correcting our accents, grammar and all the rest I suppose?”

“Exactly. Now where’s that food you were talking about? I don’t have to watch the man to keep track of him. His emotional patterns will let me know if he is up to anything.”

It was late afternoon before the captive began to nod with fatigue. Brion brought him some water in a wooden bowl and he slurped at it noisily.

“What’s his name?” Brion asked the HLP.

“The subject is named Ravn. Ravn. Ravn. I repeat, Ravn…”

“That’s enough.” He turned and smiled broadly. “Ravn: Welcome to the human race.”