Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 11th Part 10

She recognized the plastishelter she wanted by its Intelli-gence insignia.

The guard outside aimed a rifle at her. "Halt!" His boyish voice cracked over with nervousness. More than one sentry had been found in the morning with his throat cut.

"It's all right," she told him. "I'm to see the prisoner Ivalo."

"The gooze officer?" He flashed a pencil-beam across her face. "But you're a-uh-"

"A Vaynamoan myself. Of course. There are a few of us along, you know.

Prisoners taken last time, who've enlisted in your cause as guides and spies. You must have heard of me. I'm Elva, Commander Golyev's lady."

"Oh. Yes, mistress. Sure I have."

"Here's my pa.s.s."

He squinted at it uneasily. "But, uh, may I ask what, uh, what you figure to do? I've got strict orders-"

Elva gave him her most confidential smile. "My own patron had the idea.

The prisoner is withholding valuable information. He has been treated roughly, but resisted. Now, all at once, we'll take the pressure off. An attractive woman of his own race..."

"I get it. Maybe he will crack. I dunno, though, mistress. These slant-eyed towheads are mean animals-begging your pardon! Go right on in. Holler if he gets rough or, or any-thing."

The door was unlocked for her. Elva went on through, into a hemicylindrical room so low that she must stoop. A lighting tube switched on, showing a pallet laid across the floor.

Captain Ivalo was gray at the temples, but still tough and supple. His face had gone haggard, sunken eyes and a stubble of beard; his garments were torn and filthy. When he looked up, coming awake, he was too exhausted to show much surprise. "What now?" he said in dull Chertkoian. "What are you going to try next?"

Elva answered in Vaynamoan (Oh, G.o.d, it was a year and a half, her own time, nearly seventeen years cosmic time, since she had uttered a word to anyone from her planet!): "Be quiet. I beg you. We mustn't be suspected."He sat up. "Who are you?" he snapped. His own Vay-namoan accent was faintly pedantic; he must be a teacher or scientist in that peacetime life which now seemed so dis-tant. "A collaborator? I understand there are some. Every barrel must hold a few rotten apples, I suppose."

She sat down on the floor near him, hugged her knees and stared at the curving wall. "I don't know what to call myself," she said tonelessly. "I'm with them, yes. But they cap-tured me the last time."

He whistled a soft note. One hand reached out, not al-together steady and stopping short of touching her. "I was young then," he said. "But I remember. Do I know your family?"

"Maybe. I'm Elva, daughter of Byarmo, the Magnate of Ruuyalka. My husband was Karlavi, the Freeholder of Tervola." Suddenly she couldn't stay controlled. She grasped his arm so hard that her nails drew blood. "Do you know what became of my son? His name was Hauki. I got him away, in care of an Alfa servant. Hauki, Karlavi's son, Freeholder of Tervola. Do you know?"

He disengaged himself as gently as possible and shook his head. "I'm sorry. I've heard of both places, but only as names. I'm from the Aakinen Islands myself."

Her head dropped.

"Ivalo is my name," he said clumsily.

"I know."

"What?"

"Listen." She raised her eyes to his. They were quite dry. "I've been told you have important information."

He bridled. "If you think-"

"No. Please listen. Here." She fumbled in a pocket of her gown. At last her fingers closed on the vial. She held it out to him. "An antiseptic. But the label says it's very poisonous if taken internally. I brought it for you."

He stared at her for a long while.

"It's all I can do," she mumbled, looking away again.

He took the bottle and turned it over and over in his hand. The night grew silent around them.

Finally he asked, "Won't you suffer for this?"

"Not too much."

"Wait ... If you could get in here, you can surely escape completely. Ourtroops can't be far off. Or any farmer hereabouts will hide you."

She shook her head. "No, I'll stay with them. Maybe I can help in some other small way. What else has there been to keep me alive, but the hope of-It wouldn't be any better, living here, if we're all conquered. There's to be a final attack, three decades hence. Do you know that?"

"Yes. Our side takes prisoners too, and quizzes them. The first episode puzzled us. Many thought it had only been a raid by-what's the word-by pirates. But now we know they really do intend to take our planet away."

"You must have developed some good linguists," she said, seeking impersonality. "To be able to talk with your prisoners. Of course, you yourself, after capture, could be edu-cated by the hypnopede."

"The what?"

"The language-teaching machine."

"Oh, yes, the enemy do have them, don't they? But we do too. After the first raid, those who thought there was a danger the aliens might come back set about developing such machines. I knew Chertkoian weeks before my own capture."

"I wish I could help you escape," she said desolately. "But I don't see how.

That bottle is all I can do. Isn't it?"

"Yes." He regarded the bottle with a fascination.

"My patron ... Golyev himself-said his men would rip you open to get your knowledge. So I thought-"

"You're very kind." Ivalo grimaced, as if he had tasted something foul. "But your act may turn out pointless. I don't know anything useful. I wasn't even sworn to secrecy about what I do know. Why've I held out, then? Don't ask me. Stubbornness. Anger. Or just hating to admit my people-our people, d.a.m.n it!-that they could be so weak and foolish."

"What?"

"They could win the war at a stroke," he said. "They won't. They'd rather die, and let their children be enslaved by the Third Expedition."

"What do you mean?" She crouched to hands and knees.

He shrugged. "I told you, a number of people on Vaynamo took the previous invasion at its word, that it was the vanguard of a conquering army. There was no official action. How could there be, with a government as feeble as ours? But some of the research biologists-"

"Not a plague!"

"Yes. Mutated from the local paracoryzoid virus. Incuba-tion period,approximately one month, during which time it's contagious. Vaccination is still effective two weeks after exposure, so all our population could be safeguarded. But the Chertkoians would take the disease back with them.

Esti-mated deaths, ninety percent of the race."

"But-"

"That's where the government did step in," he said with bitterness. "The information was suppressed. The virus cultures were destroyed. The theory was, even to save ourselves we couldn't do such a thing."

Elva felt the tautness leave her. She sagged. She had seen small children on Chertkoi too.

"They're right, of course," she said wearily. "Perhaps. Perhaps. And yet we'll be overrun and butch-ered, or reduced to serfdom. Won't we? Our forests will be cut down, our mines gutted, our poor Alfavala exterminated ... To h.e.l.l with it."

Ivalo gazed at the poison vial. "I don't have any scientific data. I'm not a virologist. It can't do any military harm to tell the Chertkoians. But I've seen what they've done to us. I would give them the sickness."

"I wouldn't." Elva bit her lip.

He regarded her for a long time. "Won't you escape? Never mind being a planetary heroine. There's nothing you can do. The invaders will go home when they've wrecked all our industry. They won't come again for thirty years. You can be free most of your life."

"You forget," she said, "that if I leave with them, and come back, the time for me will only have been one or two years." She sighed. "I can't help make ready for the next battle. I'm just a woman. Untrained. While maybe ... oh, if nothing else, there'll be more Vaynamoan prisoners brought to Chertkoi. I have a tiny bit of influence. Maybe I can help them."

Ivalo considered the poison. "I was about to use this any-way," he muttered. "I didn't think staying alive was worth the trouble. But now-if you can-No." He gave the vial back to her. "I thank you, my lady."

"I have an idea," she said, with a hint of vigor in her voice. "Go ahead and tell them what you know. Pretend I talked you into it. Then I might be able to get you ex-changed. It's barely possible."

"Oh, perhaps," he said.

She rose to go. "If you are set free," she stammered, "will you make a visit to Tervola? Will you find Hauki, Karvali's son, and tell him you saw me? If he's alive."

569 A.C.C.:.

Dirzh had changed while the s.h.i.+ps were away. The evolu-tion continuedafter their return. The city grew bigger, smokier, uglier. More people each year dropped from client status, went underground and joined the gangs.

Occasionally these days, the noise and vibration of pitched battles down in the tunnels could be detected up on patron level. The desert could no longer be seen, even from the highest towers, only the abandoned mine and the slag mountains, in process of conversion to tenements. The carcinogenic murkiness crept upward until it could be smelled on the most elite balconies. Teleshows got noisier and nakeder, to compete with live performances, which were now offering more elaborate blood-lettings than old-fas.h.i.+oned combats. The news from s.p.a.ce was of a revolt suppressed on Novagal, resulting in such an acute labor shortage that workers were drafted from Imfan and s.h.i.+pped thither.

Only when you looked at the zenith was there no appar-ent change. The daylit sky was still cold purplish-blue, with an occasional yellow dustcloud.

At night there were still the stars, and a skull.

And yet, thought Elva, you wouldn't need a large tele-scope to see the Third Expedition fleet in orbit-eleven hundred s.p.a.cecraft, the unarmed ones loaded with troops and equipment, nearly the whole strength of Chertkoi mar-shalling to conquer Vaynamo. Campaigning across interstellar distances wasn't easy. You couldn't send home for supplies or reinforcements. You broke the enemy or he broke you. Fleet Admiral Bors Golyev did not intend to be broken.

He did not even plan to go home with news of a successful probing operation or a successful raid. The Third Expedition was to be final. And he must allow for the Vaynamoans having had a generation in which to recuperate. He'd smashed their industry, but if they were really determined, they could have rebuilt. No doubt a s.p.a.ce fleet of some kind would be waiting to oppose him.

He knew it couldn't be of comparable power. Ten million people, forced to recreate all their mines and furnaces and factories before they could lay the keel of a single boat, had no possibility of rrfatching the concerted efforts of six-and-a-half billion whose world had been continuously industrialized for centuries, and who could draw on the resources of two subject planets.

Sheer mathematics ruled it out. But the ten million could accomplish something; and nuclear-fusion mis-siles were to some degree an equalizer.

Therefore Bors Golyev asked for so much strength that the greatest conceivable enemy force would be swamped. And he got it.

Elva leaned on the balcony rail. A chill wind fluttered her gown about her, so that the rainbow hues rippled and ran into each other. She had to admit the fabric was lovely. Bors tried hard to please her. (Though why must he mention the price?) He was so childishly happy himself, at his accom-plishments, at his new eminence, at the eight-room apartment which he now rated on the very height of the Lebedan Tower.

"Not that we'll be here long," he had said, after they first explored its mechanized intricacies. "My son Nivko has done good work in the home office. That's how come I got this command; experience alone wasn't enough. Of course, he'll expect me to help along his sons ... But anyhow,the Third Expedition can go even sooner than I'd hoped. Just a few months, and we're on our way!"

"We?" murmured Elva.

"You do want to come?"

"The last voyage, you weren't so eager."

"Uh, yes. I did have a deuce of a time, too, getting you aboard. But this'll be different. First, I've got so much rank I'm beyond criticism, even beyond jealousy. And second-well, you count too. You're not any picked-up native female. You're Elva! The girl who on her own hook got that fellow Ivalo to confess."

She turned her head slightly, regarding him sideways from droop-lidded blue eyes. Under the ruddy sun, her yellow hair turned to raw gold. "I should think the news would have alarmed them, here on Chertkoi," she said. "Being told that they nearly brought about their own extinction. I won-der that they dare launch another attack."

Golyev grinned. "You should have heard the ruckus. Some Directors did vote to keep hands off Vaynamo. Others wanted to sterilize the whole planet with cobalt missiles. But I talked 'em around. Once we've beaten the fleet and occupied the planet, its whole population will be hostage for good be-havior. We'll make examples of the first few goozes who give us trouble of any sort. Then they'll know we mean what we say when we announce our policy. At the first sus-picion of plague among us, we'll lay waste a continent. If the suspicion is confirmed, we'll bombard the whole works. No, there will not be any bug warfare."

"I know. I've heard your line of reasoning before. About five hundred times, in fact."

"Destruction! Am I really that much of a bore?" He came up behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders. "I don't mean to be. Honest. I'm not used to talking to women, that's all."

"And I'm not used to being shut away like a prize gold-fish, except when you want to exhibit me," she said sharply.

He kissed her neck. His whiskers tickled. "It'll be different on Vaynamo.

When we're settled down. I'll be governor of the planet. The Directorate has as good as promised me. Then I can do as I want. And so can you."

"I doubt that! Why should I believe anything you say? When I told you I'd made Ivalo talk by promising you would exchange him, you wouldn't keep the promise." She tried to wriggle free, but his grip was too strong. She contented her-self with going rigid. "Now, when I tell you the prisoners we brought back this time are to be treated like human beings, you whine about your d.a.m.ned Directorate-"

"But the Directorate makes policy!""You're the Fleet Admiral, as you never lose a chance to remind me. You can certainly bring pressure to bear. You can insist the Vaynamoans be taken out of those kennels and given honorable detention-"

"Awww, now." His lips nibbled along her cheek.

She turned her head away and continued: "-and you can get what you insist on. They're your own prisoners, aren't they? I've listened enough to you, and your dreary officers when you brought them home. I've read books, hundreds of books. What else is there for me to do, day after day and week after week?"

"But I'm busy! I'd like to take you out, honest, but-"

"So I understand the power structure on Chertkoi just as well as you do, Bors Golyev. If not better. If you don't know how to use your own influence, then slough off some of that conceit, sit down and listen while I tell you how!"

"Well, uh, I never denied, sweetling, you've given me some useful advice from time to time."

"So listen to me! I say all the Vaynamoans you hold are to be given decent quarters, recreation, and respect. What did you capture them for, if not to get some use out of them? And the proper use is not to t.i.tillate yourself by kicking them around. A dog would serve that purpose better.

"Furthermore, the fleet has to carry them all back to Vaynamo."

"What? You don't know what you're talking about! The logistics is tough enough without-"

"I do so know what I'm talking about. Which is more than I can say for you.

You want guides, intermediaries, puppet leaders, don't you? Not by the score, a few cowards and traitors, as you have hitherto. You need hundreds. Well, there they are, right in your hands."

"And hating my guts," Golyev pointed out.

"Give them reasonable living conditions and they won't. Not quite so much, anyhow. Then bring them back home-a generation after they left, all their friends aged or dead, everything altered once you've conquered the planet.