The Harry Harrison Megapack Page 8

  “All the training machines are physical duplicates of the real surface of the planet, corrected constantly as the life forms change. The only difference between them is the varying degree of deadliness. This first machine you will use is of course the one infants are put into—”

  “You’re too kind,” Jason murmured. “Your flattery overwhelms me.” The instructor continued, taking no notice of the interruption.

  “…Infants are put into as soon as they can crawl. It is real in substance, though completely deactivated.”

  * * * *

  Training machine was the wrong word, Jason realized as they entered through the thick door. This was a chunk of the outside world duplicated in an immense chamber. It took very little suspension of reality for him to forget the painted ceiling and artificial sun high above and imagine himself outdoors at last. The scene seemed peaceful enough. Though clouds banking on the horizon threatened a violent Pyrran storm.

  “You must wander around and examine things,” the instructor told Jason. “Whenever you touch something with your hand, you will be told about it. Like this—”

  The boy bent over and pushed his finger against a blade of the soft grass that covered the ground. Immediately a voice barked from hidden speakers.

  “Poison grass. Boots to be worn at all times.”

  Jason kneeled and examined the grass. The blade was tipped with a hard, shiny hook. He realized with a start that every single blade of grass was the same. The soft green lawn was a carpet of death. As he straightened up he glimpsed something under a broad-leafed plant. A crouching, scale-covered animal, whose tapered head terminated in a long spike.

  “What’s that in the bottom of my garden?” he asked. “You certainly give the babies pleasant playmates.” Jason turned and realized he was talking to the air, the instructor was gone. He shrugged and petted the scaly monstrosity.

  “Horndevil,” the impersonal voice said from midair. “Clothing and shoes no protection. Kill it.”

  A sharp crack shattered the silence as Jason’s gun went off. The horndevil fell on its side, keyed to react to the blank charge.

  “Well…I am learning,” Jason said, and the thought pleased him. The words kill it had been used by Brucco while teaching him to use the gun. Their stimulus had reached an unconscious level. He was aware of wanting to shoot only after he had heard the shot. His respect for Pyrran training techniques went up.

  Jason spent a thoroughly unpleasant afternoon wandering in the child’s garden of horror. Death was everywhere. While all the time the disembodied voice gave him stern advice in simple language. So he could do unto, rather than being done in. He had never realized that violent death could come in so many repulsive forms. Everything here was deadly to man—from the smallest insect to the largest plant.

  Such singleness of purpose seemed completely unnatural. Why was this planet so alien to human life? He made a mental note to ask Brucco. Meanwhile he tried to find one life form that wasn’t out for his blood. He didn’t succeed. After a long search he found the only thing that when touched didn’t elicit deadly advice. This was a chunk of rock that projected from a meadow of poison grass. Jason sat on it with a friendly feeling and pulled his feet up. An oasis of peace. Some minutes passed while he rested his gravity-weary body.

  “ROTFUNGUS—DO NOT TOUCH!”

  The voice blasted at twice its normal volume and Jason leaped as if he had been shot. The gun was in his hand, nosing about for a target. Only when he bent over and looked closely at the rock where he had been sitting, did he understand. There were flaky gray patches that hadn’t been there when he sat down.

  “Oh you tricky devils!” he shouted at the machine. “How many kids have you frightened off that rock after they thought they had found a little peace!” He resented the snide bit of conditioning, but respected it at the same time. Pyrrans learned very early in life that there was no safety on this planet—except that which they provided for themselves.

  While he was learning about Pyrrus he was gaining new insight into the Pyrrans as well.

  VIII

  Days turned into weeks in the school, cut off from the world outside. Jason almost became proud of his ability to deal death. He recognized all the animals and plants in the nursery room and had been promoted to a trainer where the beasts made sluggish charges at him. His gun picked off the attackers with dull regularity. The constant, daily classes were beginning to bore him as well.

  Though the gravity still dragged at him, his muscles were making great efforts to adjust. After the daily classes he no longer collapsed immediately into bed. Only the nightmares got worse. He had finally mentioned them to Brucco, who mixed up a sleeping potion that took away most of their effect. The dreams were still there, but Jason was only vaguely aware of them upon awakening.

  By the time Jason had mastered all the gadgetry that kept the Pyrrans alive, he had graduated to a most realistic trainer that was only a hair-breadth away from the real thing. The difference was just in quality. The insect poisons caused swelling and pain instead of instant death. Animals could cause bruises and tear flesh, but stopped short of ripping off limbs. You couldn’t get killed in this trainer, but could certainly come very close to it.

  Jason wandered through this large and rambling jungle with the rest of the five-year-olds. There was something a bit humorous, yet sad, about their unchildlike grimness. Though they still might laugh in their quarters, they realized there was no laughing outside. To them survival was linked up with social acceptance and desirability. In this way Pyrrus was a simple black-and-white society. To prove your value to yourself and your world, you only had to stay alive. This had great importance in racial survival, but had very stultifying effects on individual personality. Children were turned into like-faced killers, always on the alert to deal out death.

  Some of the children graduated into the outside world and others took their places. Jason watched this process for a while before he realized that all of those from the original group he had entered with were gone. That same day he looked up the chief of the adaptation center.

  “Brucco,” Jason asked, “how long do you plan to keep me in this kindergarten shooting gallery?”

  “You’re not being ‘kept’ here,” Brucco told him in his usual irritated tone. “You will be here until you qualify for the outside.”

  “Which I have a funny feeling will be never. I can now field strip and reassemble every one of your blasted gadgets in the dark. I am a dead shot with this cannon. At this present moment, if I had to, I could write a book on the Complete Flora and Fauna of Pyrrus, and How to Kill It. Perhaps I don’t do as well as my six-year-old companions, but I have a hunch I do about as good a job now as I ever will. Is that true?”

  Brucco squirmed with the effort to be evasive, yet didn’t succeed. “I think, that is, you know you weren’t born here, and—”

  “Come, come,” Jason said with glee, “a straight-faced old Pyrran like you shouldn’t try to lie to one of the weaker races that specialize in that sort of thing. It goes without saying that I’ll always be sluggish with this gravity, as well as having other inborn handicaps. I admit that. We’re not talking about that now. The question is—will I improve with more training, or have I reached a peak of my own development now?”

  Brucco sweated. “With the passage of time there will be improvement of course—”

  “Sly devil!” Jason waggled a finger at him. “Yes or no, now. Will I improve now by more training now?”

  “No,” Brucco said, and still looked troubled. Jason sized him up like a poker hand.

  “Now let’s think about that. I won’t improve—yet I’m still stuck here. That’s no accident. So you must have been ordered to keep me here. And from what I have seen of this planet, admittedly very little, I would say that Kerk ordered you to keep me here. Is that right?”

  “He was only doing it for your own sake,” Brucco explained, “trying to keep you alive.”

  “The truth is o
ut,” Jason said, “so let us now forget about it. I didn’t come here to shoot robots with your offspring. So please show me the street door. Or is there a graduating ceremony first? Speeches, handing out school pins, sabers overhead—”

  “Nothing like that,” Brucco snapped. “I don’t see how a grown man like you can talk such nonsense all the time. There is none of that, of course. Only some final work in the partial survival chamber. That is a compound that connects with the outside—really is a part of the outside—except the most violent life forms are excluded. And even some of those manage to find their way in once in a while.”

  “When do I go?” Jason shot the question.

  “Tomorrow morning. Get a good night’s sleep first. You’ll need it.”

  * * * *

  There was one bit of ceremony attendant with the graduation. When Jason came into his office in the morning, Brucco slid a heavy gun clip across the table.

  “These are live bullets,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll be needing them. After this your gun will always be loaded.”

  They came up to a heavy air lock, the only locked door Jason had seen in the center. While Brucco unlocked it and threw the bolts, a sober-faced eight-year-old with a bandaged leg limped up.

  “This is Grif,” Brucco said. “He will stay with you, wherever you go, from now on.”

  “My personal bodyguard?” Jason asked, looking down at the stocky child who barely reached his waist.

  “You might call him that.” Brucco swung the door open. “Grif tangled with a sawbird, so he won’t be able to do any real work for a while. You yourself admitted that you will never be able to equal a Pyrran, so you should be glad of a little protection.”

  “Always a kind word, that’s you, Brucco,” Jason said. He bent over and shook hands with the boy. Even the eight-year-olds had a bone-crushing grip.

  The two of them entered the lock and Brucco swung the inner door shut behind them. As soon as it was sealed the outer door opened automatically. It was only partly open when Grif’s gun blasted twice. Then they stepped out onto the surface of Pyrrus, over the smoking body of one of its animals.

  Very symbolic, Jason thought. He was also bothered by the realization that he hadn’t remembered to look for something coming in. Then, too, he couldn’t even identify the beast from its charred remains. He glanced around, hoping he would be able to fire first himself, next time.

  This was an unfulfilled hope. The few beasts that came their way were always seen first by the boy. After an hour of this, Jason was so irritated that he blasted an evil-looking thorn plant out of existence. He hoped that Grif wouldn’t look too closely at it. Of course the boy did.

  “That plant wasn’t close. It is stupid to waste good ammunition on a plant,” Grif said.

  There was no real trouble during the day. Jason ended by being bored, though soaked by the frequent rainstorms. If Grif was capable of carrying on a conversation, he didn’t show it. All Jason’s gambits failed. The following day went the same way. On the third day, Brucco appeared and looked Jason carefully up and down.

  “I don’t like to say it, but I suppose you are as ready to leave now as you ever will be. Change the virus filter noseplugs every day. Always check boots for tears and metalcloth suiting for rips. Medikit supplies renewed once a week.”

  “And wipe my nose and wear my galoshes. Anything else?” Jason asked.

  Brucco started to say something, then changed his mind. “Nothing that you shouldn’t know well by now. Keep alert. And…good luck.” He followed up the words with a crushing handshake that was totally unexpected. As soon as the numbness left Jason’s hand, he and Grif went out through the large entrance lock.

  IX

  Real as they had been, the training chambers had not prepared him for the surface of Pyrrus. There was the basic similarity of course. The feel of the poison grass underfoot and the erratic flight of a stingwing in the last instant before Grif blasted it. But these were scarcely noticeable in the crash of the elements around him.

  A heavy rain was falling, more like a sheet of water than individual drops. Gusts of wind tore at it, hurling the deluge into his face. He wiped his eyes clear and could barely make out the conical forms of two volcanoes on the horizon, vomiting out clouds of smoke and flame. The reflection of this inferno was a sullen redness on the clouds that raced by in banks above them.

  There was a rattle on his hard hat and something bounced off to splash to the ground. He bent over and picked up a hailstone as thick as his thumb. A sudden flurry of hail hammered painfully at his back and neck, he straightened hurriedly.

  As quickly as it started the storm was over. The sun burned down, melting the hailstones and sending curls of steam up from the wet street. Jason sweated inside his armored clothing. Yet before they had gone a block it was raining again and he shook with chill.

  Grif trudged steadily along, indifferent to the weather or the volcanoes that rumbled on the horizon and shook the ground beneath their feet. Jason tried to ignore his discomfort and match the boy’s pace.

  The walk was a depressing one. The heavy, squat buildings loomed grayly through the rain, more than half of them in ruins. They walked on a pedestrian way in the middle of the street. The occasional armored trucks went by on both sides of them. The midstreet sidewalk puzzled Jason until Grif blasted something that hurtled out of a ruined building towards them. The central location gave them some chance to see what was coming. Suddenly Jason was very tired.

  “Grif, this city of yours is sure down at the heels. I hope the other ones are in better shape.”

  “I don’t know what you mean talking about heels. But there are no other cities. Some mining camps that can’t be located inside the perimeter. But no other cities.”

  This surprised Jason. He had always visualized the planet with more than one city. There were a lot of things he didn’t know about Pyrrus, he realized suddenly. All of his efforts since landing had been taken up with the survival studies. There were a number of questions he wanted to ask. But ask them of somebody other than his grouchy eight-year-old bodyguard. There was one person who would be best equipped to tell him what he wanted to know.

  “Do you know Kerk?” he asked the boy. “Apparently he’s your ambassador to a lot of places, but his last name—”

  “Sure, everybody knows Kerk. But he’s busy, you shouldn’t see him.”

  Jason shook a finger at him. “Minder of my body you may be. But minder of my soul you are not. What do you say I call the shots and you go along to shoot the monsters? O.K.?”

  * * * *

  They took shelter from a sudden storm of fist-sized hailstones. Then, with ill grace, Grif led the way to one of the larger, central buildings. There were more people here and some of them even glanced at Jason for a minute, before turning back to their business. Jason dragged himself up two flights of stairs before they reached a door marked CO-ORDINATION AND SUPPLY.

  “Kerk in here?” Jason asked.

  “Sure,” the boy told him. “He’s in charge.”

  “Fine. Now you get a nice cold drink, or your lunch, or something, and meet me back here in a couple of hours. I imagine Kerk can do as good a job of looking after me as you can.”

  The boy stood doubtfully for a few seconds, then turned away. Jason wiped off some more sweat and pushed through the door.

  There were a handful of people in the office beyond. None of them looked up at Jason or asked his business. Everything has a purpose on Pyrrus. If he came there—he must have had a good reason. No one would ever think to ask him what he wanted. Jason, used to the petty officialdom of a thousand worlds, waited for a few moments before he understood. There was only one other door. He shuffled over and opened it.

  Kerk looked up from a desk strewed about with papers and ledgers. “I was wondering when you would show up,” he said.

  “A lot sooner if you hadn’t prevented it,” Jason told him as he dropped wearily into a chair. “It finally dawned on me that I coul
d spend the rest of my life in your blood-thirsty nursery school if I didn’t do something about it. So here I am.”

  “Ready to return to the ‘civilized’ worlds, now that you’ve seen enough of Pyrrus?”

  “I am not,” Jason said. “And I’m getting very tired of everyone telling me to leave. I’m beginning to think that you and the rest of the Pyrrans are trying to hide something.”

  Kerk smiled at the thought. “What could we have to hide? I doubt if any planet has as simple and one-directional an existence as ours.”

  “If that’s true, then you certainly wouldn’t mind answering a few direct questions about Pyrrus?”

  Kerk started to protest, then laughed. “Well done. I should know better by now than to argue with you. What do you want to know?”

  Jason tried to find a comfortable position on the hard chair, then gave up. “What’s the population of your planet?” he asked.

  For a second Kerk hesitated, then said, “Roughly thirty thousand. That is not very much for a planet that has been settled this long, but the reason for that is obvious.”

  “All right, population thirty thousand,” Jason said. “Now how about surface control of your planet. I was surprised to find out that this city within its protective wall—the perimeter—is the only one on the planet. Let’s not consider the mining camps, since they are obviously just extensions of the city. Would you say then, that you people control more or less of the planet’s surface than you did in the past?”

  Kerk picked up a length of steel pipe from the desk, that he used as a paperweight, and toyed with it as he thought. The thick steel bent like rubber at his touch, as he concentrated on his answer.

  “That’s hard to say offhand. There must be records of that sort of thing, though I wouldn’t know where to find them. It depends on so many factors—”

  “Let’s forget that for now then,” Jason said. “I have another question that’s really more relevant. Wouldn’t you say that the population of Pyrrus is declining steadily, year after year?”