Always cold, he had said. True enough, as well as nothing green, nothing ever growing. This could be a midsummer day for all I knew. If so they could keep the winter. Fish in the sea, Kraj had said, all native life in the sea. Nothing lived on the snow. Except me, that is. And how long I lived depended on how long I kept moving. The clothes I was wearing were fine—as long as I put a little heat into them by putting one foot after the other. This could not go on forever. But I had seen one building when we landed. There should be others. There had to be something other than the unending snow.
There was—and I almost fell into it. As I put my foot down I felt something give way, shift out from under me. Purely by reflex I threw myself backward, falling into the snow. Before me the packed snow cracked open, moved away, and I looked down at the dark water. As the crack widened and I saw the edge of the ice I realized I was not on the land at all—but had walked out onto the frozen surface of the sea.
At this temperature if I fell in, as much as got a hand or foot wet, I would be dead. Frozen. I did not think much of this idea at all. Without standing up, keeping my weight spread out as much as I could, I pushed and slithered back from the brink. Only when I was well away from the edge did I dare stand and shamble back the way I had come, retracing the track of my rapidly disappearing footsteps.
“Now what, Jim? Think fast. There’s water out there, which is very difficult stuff to walk on.”
I stopped and looked around carefully in a complete circle. The snow had stopped falling, but the wind kept picking it up and whipping it about in gusty clouds. But, now that I knew what to look for, I could see the dark line of the ocean in the moments when visibility cleared. It stretched as far as I could see to right and left, directly across the route I had been taking.
“Then you won’t go that way.” I turned about. “From the looks of your ragged trail, mighty arctic explorer, you came in from that direction. There is no point in going back. Yet. The reception party will be sharpening their knives now. So think.”
I thought. If the land were as barren as Kraj had said, their settlements and buildings would never be far from the ocean’s edge. Therefore I had to stay close to the shore as I could without falling in. Follow the edge of the ice away from the direction I had come. Hoping that the spaceport building I had left was not the last one on the outskirts of town. I plodded on. Trying very hard to ignore the fact that the feeble glow of the sun was lower in the sky. When night fell so would I. I had no idea how long the days and nights on Kekkonshiki were—but I had a sinking sensation that, short or long, I would not be around to see the dawn. Shelter must be found. Go back? Not yet. Madness probably—but press on.
As the sun sank so did my hopes. The snow plain was darker now, but still featureless. Pushing through the heavy snow had wearied me to exhaustion and past. Only the knowledge that I would be dead if I stopped kept me putting one leaden foot in front of the other. Although I had pulled the hat far down over my face there was little sensation left in my nose and cheeks.
Then I found myself falling and had to stop. On my hands and knees in the snow, panting hoarsely, gasping for breath.
“Why not stay here, Jim?” I asked myself. “It will be easier than going on, and they say it is painless to freeze to death.” It sounded like a good idea.
“It does not sound like a good idea, you idiot. Stand up and keep going.”
I did, though it took a decided effort to struggle to my feet. An even greater effort to put one foot in front of the other. The simple act of walking took so much of my attention that the dark spots on the horizon were visible for some time before I became consciously aware of them. At first all I did was stand and stare, trying to gather my ice-numbed thoughts. They were moving, getting larger. With this realization I dropped full length in the snow. Lay there, watching intently, while three figures whipped silently by on skis no more than a hundred meters away.
After they had passed I forced myself to wait until they were out of sight before getting to my feet again. This time I was not even aware that it took any effort to do this. A small spark of hope had not only been kindled but burst into flame. The snow had stopped falling and the wind had died down. The tracks of the skis were sharp and clear. They were going someplace—someplace they planned to be before dark. Well, so was I! Filled with sudden false energy I stepped onto the tracks and turned to follow them.
Although the energy burned away very quickly I still kept going. Now the approaching night brought encouragement instead of despair. The skiers were faster than I—but not that fast. They would be at their destination before nightfall and, hopefully, so would I. I slogged on.
The theory had to be correct, but in practice it was just not working out. The sun was still above the horizon, but behind thick and nasty-looking clouds, while the visibility was falling. The tracks were getting harder and harder to follow. And I had to rest. Tottering to a stop I looked up and blinked and peered ahead and saw a black smudge on the horizon. My brain was still in the deepfreeze and it took a good number of seconds to understand the significance of what I was looking at.
“Black is beautiful!” My voice was hoarse, almost gone. “It is not white snow and anything but snow is what you need right now.”
My shambling walk became a far superior shamble, and I swung my arms and kept my head high. I tried to whistle too, but my lips were too cracked and cold for that. It was a good thing, since the wind had died as sunset approached and everything was deathly still. The dark blur resolved itself into a building—no, a group of buildings. Closer and closer. Dark stone. Small windows. Slanted roofs that would not collect snow. Solid and ugly. What was that squeaking, crunching sound, growing louder?
I was walking silently because I was still in the heavy snow. But those were footsteps on packed snow. Getting closer. Back? No, drop. As I dived for cover the footsteps turned the corner of the nearest building.
About all I could do was lie there motionless and hope that I would not be seen. It was sheer luck that I was not. The footsteps, more than one person, grew louder and louder, crunched by and died away. I risked a quick look and saw the retreating backs of a column of short figures. About twenty of them. They turned another corner and were out of sight and hearing. With a desperate effort I scratched and scrambled to my feet and stumbled after them. Turning the corner behind the column just in time to see the last one vanishing into a building. A large and heavy door closed with a positive sound. That was for me. I was falling forward more than running, using my last reserves of energy, reserves I had not known I had. Ending up against the gray metal door, tugging at the handle.
It did not move.
Life has moments like this that are best forgotten and glossed over. In later years they may seem funny, and people can laugh over them when they are described after dinner, warming drink in hand, sitting by a roaring fire. At the time, though, this not only didn’t seem funny, it seemed to be the absolute end.
Pulling didn’t work and the handle did not turn when I fumbled at it with numb fingers. In the end I fell forward with exhaustion, leaning against the handle so I wouldn’t fall. It pushed in and the door opened.
Just for once I made no attempt to reconnoiter what was on the other side. I half walked, half fell into the dark alcove inside and let the door close behind me. Warmth, delicious warmth washed over me and I just leaned against the wall and appreciated it. Looking down a long and badly illuminated corridor of roughly carved stone. I was alone, but there were doors all along the corridor and someone could emerge at any moment. But there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. If the wall had been taken away I would have fallen down. So I leaned there like a frozen statue, dripping melting snow onto the flagstones of the floors, feeling life ooze back as the heat seeped in. The nearest door, just two meters before me, opened and a man stepped out.
All he had to do was turn his head a bit to spot me. I could see him clearly, even in the dim light, the gray clothes, long greasy hair—even the flecking of dandruff on his shoulders. He closed the door, still with his back turned, inserted a key and locked it.
Then he walked away from me down the corridor and was gone.
“It’s almost time you stopped leaning here and thought of something to do, you rusty stainless steel rat,” I encouraged myself in a throaty whisper. “Don’t stretch your luck. Get out of the corridor. Why not through that door? After he locked it that way the chances are good that no one else is inside.”
Good thinking, Jim. Except what do I do for a picklock? Improvise, that’s what. I pulled off the gloves and tucked them into my jacket along with the fur hat. Though it was probably chill and dank inside the building it felt like a furnace after the outside. Life, as well as a certain amount of tingling pain, was coming back to my blue fingers. I took up the dangling end of the cable that hung from the metal collar still locked around my neck. Wires inside. Small but possible. I chewed them into a pointed mass with my teeth, then probed the lock.
It was a simple lock, the keyhole was very big, I have great burglar’s skills. Well…I was lucky. I pushed and twisted and grunted and did everything but kick the door until the lock sprung open. Darkness beyond. I eased through, closed and locked it behind me—and breathed a very deep sigh of relief. For the first time since I had made my break I felt that I had a chance. With a happy sigh I slumped to the floor and fell asleep.
Well, almost. Tired and exhausted as I was, even as my eyes were closing, I realized that this was definitely not the right thing to do. To have come this far—and to be recaptured because I fell asleep. That was ludicrous.
“To work,” I told myself, then bit my tongue. It worked fine. I lurched to my feet, muttering uncouthly at the pain, and felt my way through the blackness with outstretched hands. I was in a narrow room or corridor, little wider than my shoulders. There was nothing to be accomplished standing there so I shuffled forward to a bend where there was a dim glow of light. Still wary, I poked my head around it carefully to see a window set into the wall beyond. A small boy was standing on the other side of the window, looking directly at me.
It was too late to pull back. I tried smiling at him, then frowning, but he did not respond. Then he raised his fingers and ran them through his hair, patting the hair into place afterward. A bell rang dimly in the distance and he turned his head to look, then walked away.
Of course. One-way glass. A mirror from his side, a foggy window from mine. Set there with a purpose. To observe without being observed. To observe what? I walked around and looked at what was obviously a classroom. The boy, along with a number of counterparts, now sat at a desk watching the teacher intently. This individual, a gray man with equally gray hair, stood before the glass lecturing unemotionally. His face was expressionless as he talked. And so were—I realized suddenly—the faces of the boys. No smiling, laughter, gum-chewing. Nothing but stolid attention. Very unschoolroomlike, at least in my experience. The framed poster behind the teacher’s back carried the message. In large, black letters it read:
A second sign to one side of it continued the message.
Both admonitions were being grimly obeyed. What kind of a schoolroom was this? As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness I saw a switch and a loudspeaker next to the glass; the function seemed obvious. I flicked the switch and the teacher’s voice rolled over me in drab tones.
“…Moral Philosophy. This course is a required course and every one of you will take it and stay with the course until you have a perfect grade. There are no failures. Moral Philosophy is what makes us great. Moral Philosophy is what enables us to rule. You have read your history books, you know the Days of Kekkonshiki. You know how we were abandoned, how we died, how only the Thousand were left alive. When they were weak, they died. When they were afraid, they died. When they allowed emotion to rule reason, they died. All of you are here today because they lived. Moral Philosophy enabled them to live. It will enable you to live as well. To live and grow and to leave this world and bring our rule to the weaker and softer races. We are superior. We have that right. Now tell me. If you are weak?”
“We die.” The boyish voices chanted in expressionless harmony.
“If you are afraid?”
“We die.”
“If you allow emotion…”
I switched off the program, having the feeling that I had heard more than enough for the moment. It gave pause for thought. For all of the years that I had been pursuing and battling with the gray men I had never bothered to stop and think why they were what they were. I had just taken their nastiness for granted. The few words I had overheard told me that their brutality and intransience was no accident. Abandoned, that’s what the teacher had said. For reasons lost in the depths of time a colony must have been established on this planet. For ore or minerals of some kind, possibly. It was so inhospitable, so far from the nearest settled worlds, that there had to have been a good reason to come here, to work to establish a settlement. Then the people here had been abandoned. Either for local reasons, or during the bad years of the Breakdown. Undoubtedly the colony had never been meant to be self-sustaining. But, once on its own, it had to be. The majority must have died; a handful lived. Lived—if it can be called that—by abandoning all human graces and emotions, lived by devoting their lives simply to the battle for existence. They had fought this implacably brutal planet and had won.
But they had lost a good deal of their humanity in doing this. They had become machines for survival and had brutalized themselves emotionally, crippled themselves. And passed on this disability as a strength to the future generations. Moral Philosophy. But moral only when it related to surviving on this savage planet. Most unmoral when it came to subjugating other people. Yet there was a horrible kind of correctness to it—at least from their point of view. The rest of mankind was weak and filled with unneeded emotions, smiling and frowning, wasting energy on frivolities. These people not only thought they were better– their training forced them to believe that they were better. That and the inculcated generations of hatred of the others who had abandoned them here made them into the perfect galaxy conquerors. On their terms they were helping all the planets they conquered. The weak should die; that was right. The survivors would be led down the path of righteousness to a better life.
Being few in number they could not conquer directly but must work through others. They had engineered and managed the interplanetary invasions of the Cliaand. Invasions that had been succeeding until the Special Corps had busted things up. A busting-up that I had organized. No wonder they had been eager to get their cold little hands on me.
And this was the training ground. The school that made sure that every little Kekkonshiki kid was turned into an emotionless copy of his elders. No fun here. This school for survival that perverted every natural tendency of youth fascinated me. I was warm now, and safe enough for the moment, and the more I learned about this place the better chances I would have to make some plan to do something. Other than lurk in dark corridors. I went on to the next classroom. A workshop, applied science or engineering. Bigger boys here working on apparatus of some kind.
Some kind. That kind! I clutched the metal ring about my neck while I looked on, as hypnotized and paralyzed as a bird by a snake.
They were working on the little metal boxes with push buttons. Boxes with cables that ran to collars like the one I was wearing. Scientific torture machines. I moved my hand slowly and switched on the speaker.
“…the difference is in application, not in theory. You assemble and test these synaptic generators in order to familiarize yourself with the circuitry. Then, when you go on to axion feeds you will have a working knowledge of the steps involved. Now, turn to the diagram on page thirty…”
Axion feeds. That was something I would have to learn more about. It was only a guess—but it seemed a sound one—that this gadget was the one I had never seen. But had experienced. The brainstomper that had generated all my horrible memories. Memories of things that had never happened, never existed outside of my brain. But which were none the better for that. It was all very revealing.
All very stupid of me. Standing there like a sadistic voyeur and not thinking of my flanks. Because of the teacher’s voice muttering away and I did not hear the footsteps approaching, did not know the other man was there until he turned the corner and almost walked right into me.
Action is superior to thought in a situation like this and I hurled myself at him, hands gasping for his throat. Silence first then quickly unconscious. He did not move but he did speak.