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"They're not that tricky."
"Yeah. I didn't know that then. If he tried something I didn't
like, I was going to back down the duct, scream for the warriors,
and lay a charge of mutiny on him. But maybe he just wanted me
on record, encouraging mutiny myself. I thought I'd better see if
there were witnesses.
"So I took the wing nuts off and worked the grill loose. I was
going to go in, but I heard something, so I pulled the grill back in
place. Fathisteh-tulk came in, walking along the wall on those Velcro
shoes they wear.
"He got right to the point, like we'd never ended the last
conversation. He told me about the dissidents, the fufisthengalss,
mostly spaceborn, who don't think conquering Earth is worth the
bother. It sounded ideal. I was actually wishing I had Dmitri Grushin
with me. He said there are a lot of dissidents, and they want to
make peace, but they, um, they're diffident. They don't want to
make waves, they don't want to be rogues. Stick with the herd.
Like voters in the natural state. They need jazzing up, something
to get them moving."
His eyes shone, and he waved his hands excitedly. I can see
why they vote for him. Especially women. She felt a tingling in her
loins. It was a feeling she'd long since known was dangerous, and
for a moment the old fears came -back. He won't like me- He left
her no time for more thought. -
"I said it would be easy to make peace. I tried to tell
Fathistehtalk how often yesterday's enemies become today's allies.
I think that confused him. For the fithp, yesterday's enemies are
today's slaves are tomorrow's citizens. I think he believed me,
though."
He would. I would.
"I told him. If the fithp would mine the asteroids, we could
trade their metals for our fertilizer and soil and nitrogen. We'd all
get rich! I told him we'd grow fithp plants and animals for them.
There's bound to be somewhere on Earth where any damn thing
will grow that grows in water and air. I really don't think I lied to
him at any point.
"Alice, I can't blame myself. I was being as persuasive as I
knew how-"
"They're different. They're crazy." It's a great story. But get
through with it! She'd never felt that way, not since a certain high
school dance. The anticipation had been there, but things had gone
too far too fast and she panicked and ran from the car.. . and the
next morning everyone knew the tale. For a moment the dread rose
in her again- But this was very different. She hadn't expected to
find herself
playing therapist. Should she resent it?
"Oh, but I had Fathisteh-tulk all figured out," he said. "I talked
about how to use space. I'm good at that too, I was doing the
research in my teens. Solar power collectors. Free-fall chemistry.
Alloys that won't mix in gravity. Single-crystal fibers stronger than
anything you can make in a gravity field. They'd missed a lot of
that!"
"Why?"
"It's not in their granite cubes. Alice, they're powerful, but
they're stupid!"
"Not stupid. Crazy, maybe."
"Or something in between. They don't think for themselves.
Maybe they never had to. But I told him. I told him about mass
drivers. It's easy to put stuff in orbit from the Moon. O'Leary's plan
to mine the asteroids, do you know that one? You land a fully
equipped mine on a metal asteroid. Put a big bag-around the
asteroid. You refine the metal, but you keep the slag-that's what
the bag is for. You make hemispherical mirrors from the metal and
use them for solar power. More metal becomes a linear accelerator.
It gets longer and longer. Before you quit, the accelerator's so long
that the asteroid looks like the head of a sperm. Now you run slag
down the linear accelerator. You get a rocket with arbitrarily high
exhaust velocity! You put the rest of the asteroid into orbit around
Earth and-"
"You told him all that in fithp?"
Wes Dawion stared, then laughed. "I stuttered a lot and used
simple words and waved my hands through the air. I must have got
it across. It killed him."
"How?"
"I told him too much the fithp don't know. He said, 'You must
be of our fithp when we take the riches of the worlds! You must be
swallowed into the Traveler Herd."
Wes's chest was heaving. "I think-if I hadn't known it was my
mistake-I wouldn't have been so mad. I said we could tell them
anything they wanted to know. He said, 'I hear more than you say,
Dawson. You want this wealth for your fithp. If we do not fight you
for your own planet, we will presently fight you for the others.'
"I threw the grill at him and jumped behind it. The grill
bounced off his head. Must have startled him. I was still in the air
when I realized I was committing suicide. He turned his head away-
he must have remembered how I attacked Takpusseh-and I kicked
against his shoulder and was headed back into the duct, just trying
to get away, thinking, Damn! I've blown it.
"I made the duct and wiggled in, quick like an eel. Something
wrapped around my knee. I looked back and the grill aperture was
full of a fi's face, and the other digits were reaching for me."
Nightmare! Alice found herself gripping his arm, and her nails-
She eased off, but didn't let go.
And he hadn't noticed. "I must have been crazy. Maybe I
couldn't have pulled loose. I didn't even try. I snatched my gear
and swarmed back down the duct at him. Felt like I was attacking
an octopus. I squirted that bag of soapy water in his eyes, pfoosh!
He backed away a little, and I jammed my feet into the duct walls
and shook the line loose and knotted it around his trunk, above the
nostril, and pulled it tight. Then I heaved backward.
"You know, he didn't have any leverage. I pulled back and he
came with me. He had all eight digits around me. It felt like he was
tearing my leg off, but he couldn't get a digit around my neck
because I kept my chin tucked down. I pulled that line just as tight
as I could and hung on, and after a bit the grip slacked off. I guess
the digits weren't getting any blood. I pulled him farther into the
duct, and I clawed that door-on-springs open and hooked the line
over the knob."
Wes looked at her suddenly. "From there on it was murder."
"So you're an inhuman murderer. Go on."
"What?.. . Yeah. But this inhuman would have blown the
dissident movement apart. It was easy. It wasn't as if I was fighting
a fi' any more. I was fighting a fi's head. His torso was out there in
the mudroom, useless as tits on a boar. I had a tourniquet above
his nostril. I crawled down toward his mouth. He said, 'Dawson, you
gave your surrender.'
"I said, 'I was raped.'"
Alice burst out laughing. Wes said, "English, of course. I wish I
could have said it in fithp. . . hell, they don't have rape. I crawled
down until I could get my knees braced under his jaw, and I
jammed his mouth closed. His digits were patting at me, and I could
hear him thrashing outside. After a while all of that stopped. I held
on for.. . God, I don't know how long. His eyes weren't looking at
anything and he wasn't moving.
"I kicked him out into the mudroom. I pulled the grill into place,
and then I couldn't find the goddam wing nuts. It looked like it'd
stay, so I just left.
"He'd wrenched my knee and hip. They were hurting when I
got out of the ducts. I hailed a soldier, and he didn't notice.
Couldn't read a man's face, maybe, or a politician's. By the time I
reached my cell, my knee was the size of a football. In gravity I
couldn't have moved. But I had four days to heal before Thu ktun
Flishithy disconnected from the Foot."
"You didn't push him into the mud?"
"Nope. I don't know who did that. There are some funny
politics going on aboard this ship."
Alice smiled slowly. "That's frustrating. Well, Congressman?
I'm still here."
"Yeah." He studied her for a moment. He was a little afraid of
her; she saw. As if she were dangerously fragile? "You've had some
time to think. Maybe what you need is just a hug? God knows I
owe you."
What Was he waiting for? She hadn't intended to say- "Do I
look to you like a freemartin?"
"A what?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]