CHAPTER IX
She was just outside the door and Parr felt something like momentary confusion before the hate came. Yet when it did it was tinged and colored as he thought of her walking toward them, alone. He tried to concentrate on her remembered image, tried to call up the previous hate in all its glory. He could not; instead, even the hate he knew drained away. In its place he felt—not fear exactly—not fear for himself but of the inevitability of death. Not his death—hers.
He saw Kal's lips curl, and then he winced. Fingernails dug into his palms.
And the door opened and she stood before them. There was a breathless instant, absolutely still, while time hung fire. Her eyes were aflame. Eyes, he knew, that were capable of softness as well. Eyes steady, intent, unafraid. He was frozen in delicious surprise that tingled his spine, and he felt his scalp crawl. He also felt deep awe at her courage.
She came into the room, closed the door, stood with her back leaning lightly against it. Her eyes blazed into his.
Her red lips moved delicately. "Hello," she said. "I've been looking for you." She had not glanced at Kal.
"Now!" Kal cried wildly.
Parr wanted to scream something meaningless, but before the sound could bubble forth the room seemed to erupt into a colored blaze. She had struck at him with a lethal assault!
He reeled, fighting back for his life, conscious now of Kal fighting at his side.
Her eyes were steady, and her face frowned in concentration. She was icy calm in the struggle and there was cold fury in her whips of thought. But slowly, under their resistance, her eyes began to widen in surprise.
For a breath-held moment, even with the two of them against her, the issue seemed in doubt; Kal half crumpled, stunned by a blast of hot thought that seared away his memory for one instant.
She could not turn fast enough to Parr, nor could she, in feinting his automatic attack, strike again at Kal. Then again, the two of them were together, and slowly, very slowly, they hedged her mind between them and shielded it off.
Kal recovered.
Parr gritted his teeth in a mental agony he could not account for and stripped at her outer shield. Kal came in too and the shield began to break.
The Oholo still stood straight and contemptuous in defeat, her eyes calm and deadly as she still struggled against them.
She struck once; more with fading strength and Parr caught the thrust and shunted it away. And then he was in her mind.
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He held a stroke that would burn like a sun's core, and almost hurled it. But there was a great calmness before him and he hesitated a fraction of a second in doubt as he stared deep into her glazing eyes. He felt his heart throb in new pain.
Kal struck over him, and the Oholo went limp, suddenly, and sank unconscious to the floor, a pathetic rag doll. A tiny wisp of thought struggled out and faded.
Kal cried in triumph and gathered for the final blow.
Great, helpless rage tore at Parr then, and almost before he realized it he sent a powerful blast into Kal's relaxing shield. Kal rocked to his heels, dazed, and his left hand went to his eyes. He whirled, lax mouthed, surprised.
"What...?"
"She's mine!" Parr screamed wildly, "She's mine!"
"The hell—"
In fury Parr slapped the other Knoug a stinging blow across the mouth. "Get out! Get out! Get out or I'll kill you!"
Kal's eyes glazed in surprise.
Parr was panting. "I'll finish her," he gasped. "Now get out!"
Kal's eyes met his for a moment but they could not face the anger in Parr's.
"Get out or I'll kill you!" Parr said levelly, his mind a welter of emotions that he could not sort out and recognize.
Kal rubbed his cheek slowly. "Okay," he said hoarsely. "Okay."
Parr let breath out through his teeth. "Hurry!"
Kal's lips curled. His shoulders hunched and he seemed about to charge. But Parr relaxed, for he saw fear in the Knoug's eyes. Kal straightened. He shrugged his shoulders indifferently, spat on the carpet without looking at Parr and stepped over the unconscious Oholo. He jerked the door open and without looking back slammed it behind him.
Parr was trembling and suddenly emotionally exhausted.
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Parr's knees were water. He stared fascinated at the fallen Oholo. He sank to the bed. He let his thoughts touch her unconscious mind as it lay exposed and helpless, and he wondered why he did not strike the death blow. He tried to think of stripping her mind away slowly, layer by layer, until she lay a helpless babbling infant, her body weak and pliant to his revenge. But he thought of her clear eyes and he was sickened and ashamed.
He called up memories of Oholos—the captured few—and now for the first time he knew general respect rather than hate. And thinking of Knougs, he writhed.
Yet he was conditioned to hate and he was conditioned to kill. He must kill, for the conditioning was strong. He tried to fight down the revolt of his thoughts, and, in recognizing the revolt at last, knowledge came. The guilt of treason. Not for any act. His treason was doubt, and doubt was weakness, and weakness was death. He could not be weak for the weak are destroyed. But he seemed, for a heart beat, to see through the fabric of Empire which was not strength at all. No he thought, I've believed too long. It's in my blood. There's nothing else.
He went to the wash basin and drew a glass of water. He carried it to the Oholo, knelt by her head and bathed her temple with his dampened handkerchief until she moaned and threw an arm weakly over her forehead. Her hand met his, squeezed, relaxed, and was limp again.
He carried her to the bed and sat beside her, staring at her clear face, which was an Earthface. (I've been in this body too long, he thought, I'm beginning to think all wrong.) For the face was not without beauty for him.
He shook his head dazedly, trying to understand himself.
(Here is the enemy, he thought. How do I know? I have been told ever since I can remember. But is it true? Does saying it make it true? But what else can I believe? One must believe something!)
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She opened her eyes, stared at him uncomprehending. He waited patiently as she gathered her loose thoughts and tied them down. She smiled uncertainly, not yet recognizing him.
Finally he could see understanding in her eyes.
"Your mind is too weak to fight," he said. "If you try to shield I will kill you."
Her lips curled. "What do you want?"
"Don't try to shield," he warned. He studied her face and his chest was tight. He looked away from her face.
"I've got to ask you some questions," he said. "After that, I'm going to kill you."
There was no fear in Lauri's eyes. "Go ahead," she said calmly. "Kill me."
"I ... I ... want to ask you something first," he said. "I've got to ask you some questions."
Her lips glistened and he felt sympathy that he could not understand. And seeing her frown, he shielded the thoughts from her.
"You're not ... quite like I thought you were," she said, very calmly.
"I am!" he snarled. "I am what you thought!" He was ashamed of the sympathy he had let her sense, and then he was ashamed of being ashamed, and his mind was confusion.
"Why did you—did you leave this planet as an unprotected flank, like this?" he said. It was a question, he knew, that had to be answered, before ... before ... what?
"They weren't ready to join us," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"They were not developed enough to join us," she said.
"Why didn't you conquer them!" he insisted. "You were strong enough. Why didn't you conquer them?"
She said: "We couldn't do that. We don't have any right to do that."
In that instant, it all became clear. Suddenly truth overwhelmed him, wave after wave, like a sickness. "No!" he cried. "No!" He dropped his head into his hands. "Lies," he murmured. "Lies, lies, lies!" He saw the wrongness, the terrible wrongness, and he searched desperately over his life for repudiation, an excuse. But he found none.
They had come to him and said, This is the law of life. And they took him and trained him, and showed him nothing else. He had been scarcely a child at the first school of soldiery, and they had fashioned his mind, a pliant mind, and ground doubts out (if there had been any.) They told him that the law was strength, and strength was destiny, and destiny was to rule those below, obey those above, and destroy those who did not agree. There were no friends and enemies—only the rulers and the ruled. And the ruler must expand or die of admitted weakness.
"It's all lies!" he said. He felt the crumbling away of the certainty he had lived by. And before the helpless Oholo he felt weak and defeated and suddenly he realized that his mind shield was down.
She reached out gently to touch him.
Below, a police siren wailed in the streets. A car for corpses.
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He tried to shake the hand away. "They lied," he said. "They lied about everything. They lied that you were ready to conquer us. They told us you were cowardly and would kill us if we did not kill you first, and that we must take...."
She said: "It was worse than we thought. We did not think you were strong enough to attack us. Not here. We thought if we let you alone you would collapse of your own weight."
"I never knew," he said. "There wasn't any way to know. You have to do what everyone else does. You get to think they must be right." He made a small sound. "When I first came here—it started to bother me, when I saw the planet was unprotected—when I saw how strong you were.... But I had so many things to do. I was too busy to think. But I felt something at the very first about your presence here...."
She stirred restlessly on the bed. He knew that he was defenseless before her because she had recovered, but she did not strike out. "Trying to help them," she said. "A few of us came to help them. They needed us. We were trying to prevent a war. And a few more years—if we'd ... but that's gone now. You'll destroy it all."
He stood from the bed and it creaked.
"We were slowly changing their governments," she said. "We would have succeeded." He felt her mind slowly gather, and there was infinite bitterness, and he tensed. But still she did not strike at him.
"I want you to go," Parr said. "Before the other Knoug comes back. Get out."
Words damned up inside him. He had been trained to hate and trained to kill. The emotions were loose now. There was no outlet for them. He was frustrated and enraged. Hate bubbled about in him, fermenting. He had been trained to hate and to kill. Lauri winced as she felt the turmoil. "Get out!" he screamed.
The door crashed open.
Three figures lunged through.
"Lauri, thank God!" one of them cried. "We thought he'd killed you."
Parr suddenly found his arms held by two Oholos.
"We got here as soon as we could pick up your thoughts."
Lauri said, "Jen is already dead."
One of the Oholos slapped Parr's face savagely. "We'll kill this one for that!" he snarled.
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Lauri sprang from the bed and sent the weapon spinning from the hand of the leader of the three Oholos. He gave a startled gasp. The weapon hit the carpet and slammed to rest against the far wall. "Don't!" she cried.
"You're crazy!" the leader snarled. "What's wrong with you?"
"He saved my life," Lauri said, panting.
"He's Knoug," the leader sneered. "You know damned well he was trying to use you for something or other."
Parr stared, fascinated. He was surprised to find that he was not afraid. The shock of capture had not yet passed, and he seemed to be watching a drama from which he was removed.
"No!" Lauri said. "No, he wasn't!"
"How can you say that, Lauri? Look what he's done! Look what he's already done!"
"Unshield, Parr, show them," Lauri commanded.
Parr hesitated, trying to divine the plot and see what was required of him.
"It's a trick," the leader said. "They've got some way to fool us, even with an open mind!"
Lauri's eyes were wide.
The leader jerked his hand. "Kill him," he instructed.
The Oholo on Parr's left released Parr's arm and reached inside his coat for a weapon.
Lauri darted across the room and pounced on the weapon lying at the base of the wall. She seized it and rolled over. She aimed it steadily at the Oholo on Parr's left. "Don't do that," she said. "Let him go." She got to one knee.
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Parr felt the grip ease on his right arm. He stood free. And for the first time—with strange hope—the feeling of unreality vanished.
"You're insane!" the Oholo on Parr's right rasped.
She jerked the muzzle of the weapon. "I told you. He saved my life. He could have killed me. He didn't."
"A trick!"
"Get away from him!"
Reluctantly the two stood back, and the leader shifted uneasily on his feet.
"Don't you try it," Lauri suggested. "For all you know, I might really shoot. You aren't that quick."
Parr let out his breath.
"You!" she snapped at him. "Get to the door!"
Dazed, he obeyed her. He shook his head to clear it. He was afraid they would try to stop him.
"Open it!"
He opened the door and hesitated, looking at her.
"I'm coming," she snapped. Still covering the three Oholos she got to her feet and began to back toward him. "Don't follow," she warned the three before her.
"You know what this means?" the leader said. "You know what it means to help the enemy?"
"Go on out," she told Parr. "He saved my life," she said doggedly.
He obeyed. She followed him. She fumbled for the door knob, found it. "Run!" she cried. She slammed the door.
They ran desperately for the stairs. Their feet pounded on the soft carpet as they clattered down. She was almost abreast of him.
"Help me!" she cried when they passed the first landing.
And a moment later Parr knew what she meant. They were trying to tear into his mind, and she was holding them off with her own shield. He joined her as well as he could, marveling at the vast strength she had recovered.
"Hurry!" she cried. "I can't hold it much longer." She lurched into him and he put an arm around her waist.
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And then they were through the lobby and into the silent street. No curious spectators were lingering to stare at the drying patch of dirty brown in the gutter beyond the awning.
"This way!" she cried.
As they fled on the pressure weakened. She was running fleetly at his side now, her brow unfurrowed, and yet he knew that she was still holding the shield under terrific pressure.
"In here," she gasped, suddenly turning into a narrow alleyway. "Stop!" she said. She half dragged him down to the pavement behind a row of packing crates.
"They'll be right after us!" he panted.
"No. Listen. Follow my lead. I think I can blanket us, if you help me."
Parr felt the warmth of her thoughts around him, and then they began to go up beyond his range and he had to strain to stay with them. Underneath her thoughts his mind began to quiet, and, in a moment he felt—isolation.
"Help, here," she said.
He saw the weakness and strengthened it. With her helping, he found the range less high, and he could almost relax under it. And their minds were very close together, and their thoughts were completely alone. "We're safe here," she whispered.
He listened to his own far away breathing, and heard hers, too, softer but labored.
They crouched, waiting, and the street before them was quiet in the sunlight, for the mail trucks were out, and no taxis moved. The city—for the moment—was deathly still and waiting uneasily. The high air was sharp in his lungs.
"They've missed us," she said at length. "Wait! They're.... They're after ... it's another Knoug. They think we've separated, and they think it's you."
"That would be Kal," Parr said. "He must have been waiting nearby." He brought out the comset. "He must have seen us come out together."
He flicked open the comset, heard, "... joined with the Oholos. Parr and the other just left the hotel together."
"He's told the Advanceship," Parr said to the girl.
"It doesn't make any difference," Lauri replied wearily.
And Parr breathed a nervous sigh, for the hate had found its channel. The Empire had made him unclean and debased him, and he had to cleanse himself. His vast reserve of hate shrieked out against the Empire; their own weapon turned against them.
"I'd like to get back to the Advanceship," Parr said. "If I could get back, I could smash in their faces!"
"Oh," she said.
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The comset sputtered excitedly. "Three Oholos after me! They're armed! Must be new ones. The other two weren't armed!"
The comset was silent.
"Three?" Parr said. "That's right, there were three. I thought there were just five on the whole planet."
"There's about fifty now. They landed last night. Out in the Arizona desert. They're the only ones who could get here in time."
Parr felt elation. But it passed. "Fifty.... That's not enough to stop the invasion."
"It's all we could get here," Lauri repeated.
Parr groaned. "The Knougs will shield the planet tomorrow. It will trap those fifty on the surface. And us. They'll shoot us, if we're lucky. But I'd like to kill some first!"
The comset crackled, and the Ship voice said: "How many new ones altogether?"
"I don't know," Kal answered. "I only know of three."
"We'll hurry the attack, then, before they're set. Can you hold out, Kal?"
"I don't know," Kal said.
The attack. The meaning of it suddenly rang in Parr's ears. Until a second ago, he had seen his hate as personal, and now he realized that the Empire was ready to capture a planet and then to destroy a System. And he saw the vast evil of the Empire hurtling toward Oholo civilization. He gnashed his teeth.
Lauri's hand jerked on Parr's elbow. "The one you call Kal is dead."
"I'm glad," Parr was grim. He remembered the savage eyes which the Earth disguise could not conceal. "I'm glad."
"Kal, Kal," the Advanceship called into emptiness. "Kal! Come in, advanceman Kal!"
Parr flipped off the comset.
She lowered the thought blanket completely. "Relax. Try to relax."
"Why did you do it?" he said. "Why didn't you let them kill me?"
"I don't know," she said slowly. "You saved my life. I couldn't let them kill you. I saw how you felt, how you suddenly changed. How you'd become a new person all at once. I couldn't pass judgment on you after that. I hated you and then I didn't hate you anymore. It doesn't matter. It's too late to matter. I ... I...."
Her mind was warm against his.
"They're going back to join the others in the desert now," she said. "They're going to get ready to fight the attack."
"Lauri," Parr said. "Lauri, I've got to do something!"