_It's hard to ferret out a gang of fanatics; it would, obviously, be
even harder to spot a genetic line of dedicated men. But the problem
Orne had was one step tougher than that!_
When the Investigation & Adjustment scout cruiser landed on Marak it
carried a man the doctors had no hope of saving. He was alive only
because he was in a womblike creche pod that had taken over most of his
vital functions.
The man's name was Lewis Orne. He had been a blocky, heavy-muscled
redhead with slightly off-center features and the hard flesh of a heavy
planet native. Even in the placid repose of near death there was
something clownish about his appearance. His burned, ungent-covered face
looked made up for some bizarre show.
Marak is the League capital, and the I-A medical center there is
probably the best in the galaxy, but it accepted the creche pod and Orne
more as a curiosity than anything else. The man had lost one eye, three
fingers of his left hand and part of his hair, suffered a broken jaw and
various internal injuries. He had been in terminal shock for more than
ninety hours.
Umbo Stetson, Orne's section chief, went back into his cruiser's
"office" after a hospital flitter took pod and patient. There was an
added droop to Stetson's shoulders that accentuated his usual slouching
stance. His overlarge features were drawn into ridges of sorrow. A
general straggling, trampish look about him was not helped by patched
blue fatigues.
The doctor's words still rang in Stetson's ears: "This patient's vital
tone is too low to permit operative replacement of damaged organs. He'll
live for a while because of the pod, but--" And the doctor had shrugged.
Stetson slumped into his desk chair, looked out the open port beside
him. Some four hundred meters below, the scurrying beetlelike activity
of the I-A's main field sent up discordant roaring and clattering. Two
rows of other scout cruisers were parked in line with Stetson's
port--gleaming red and black needles. He stared at them without really
seeing them.
_It always happens on some "routine" assignment_, he thought. _Nothing
but a slight suspicion about Heleb: the fact that only women held high
office. One simple, unexplained fact ... and I lose my best agent!_
He sighed, turned to his desk, began composing the report:
"The militant core on the Planet Heleb has been eliminated. Occupation
force on the ground. No further danger to Galactic peace expected from
this source. Reason for operation: Rediscovery & Re-education--_after
two years on the planet_--failed to detect signs of militancy. The major
indications were: 1) a ruling caste restricted to women, and 2)
disparity between numbers of males and females _far_ beyond the Lutig
norm! Senior Field Agent Lewis Orne found that the ruling caste was
controlling the sex of offspring at conception (see attached details),
and had raised a male slave army to maintain its rule. The R&R agent had
been drained of information, then killed. Arms constructed on the basis
of that information caused critical injuries to Senior Field Agent Orne.
He is not expected to live. I am hereby urging that he receive the
Galaxy Medal, and that his name be added to the Roll of Honor."
Stetson pushed the page aside. That was enough for ComGO, who never read
anything but the first page anyway. Details were for his aides to chew
and digest. They could wait. Stetson punched his desk callbox for Orne's
service record, set himself to the task he most detested: notifying next
of kin. He read, pursing his lips:
"Home Planet: Chargon. Notify in case of accident or death: Mrs.
Victoria Orne, mother."
He leafed through the pages, reluctant to send the hated message. Orne
had enlisted in the Marak Marines at age seventeen--a runaway from
home--and his mother had given post-enlistment consent. Two years later:
scholarship transfer to Uni-Galacta, the R&R school here on Marak. Five
years of school and one R&R field assignment under his belt, and he had
been drafted into the I-A for brilliant detection of militancy on
Hammel. And two years later--_kaput_!
Abruptly, Stetson hurled the service record at the gray metal wall
across from him; then he got up, brought the record back to his desk,
smoothing the pages. There were tears in his eyes. He flipped a switch
on his desk, dictated the notification to Central Secretarial, ordered
it sent out priority. Then he went groundside and got drunk on Hochar
Brandy, Orne's favorite drink.
* * * * *
The next morning there was a reply from Chargon: "Lewis Orne's mother
too ill to travel. Sisters being notified. Please ask Mrs. Ipscott
Bullone of Marak, wife of the High Commissioner, to take over for
family." It was signed: "Madrena Orne Standish, sister."
With some misgivings, Stetson called the residence of Ipscott Bullone,
leader of the majority party in the Marak Assembly. Mrs. Bullone took
the call with blank screen. There was a sound of running water in the
background. Stetson stared at the grayness swimming in his desk visor.
He always disliked a blank screen. A baritone husk of a voice slid:
"This is Polly Bullone."
Stetson introduced himself, relayed the Chargon message.
"Victoria's boy dying? Here? Oh, the poor thing! And Madrena's back on
Chargon ... the election. Oh, yes, of course. I'll get right over to the
hospital!"
Stetson signed off, broke the contact.
_The High Commissioner's wife yet!_ he thought. Then, because he had to
do it, he walled off his sorrow, got to work.
At the medical center, the oval creche containing Orne hung from ceiling
hooks in a private room. There were humming sounds in the dim, watery
greenness of the room, rhythmic chuggings, sighings. Occasionally, a
door opened almost soundlessly, and a white-clad figure would check the
graph tapes on the creche's meters.
Orne was lingering. He became the major conversation piece at the
internes' coffee breaks: "That agent who was hurt on Heleb, he's still
with us. Man, they must build those guys different from the rest of
us!... Yeah! Understand he's got only about an eighth of his insides ...
liver, kidneys, stomach--all gone.... Lay you odds he doesn't last out
the month.... Look what old sure-thing McTavish wants to bet on!"
On the morning of his eighty-eighth day in the creche, the day nurse
came into Orne's room, lifted the inspection hood, looked down at him.
The day nurse was a tall, lean-faced professional who had learned to
meet miracles and failures with equal lack of expression. However, this
routine with the dying I-A operative had lulled her into a state of
psychological unpreparedness. _Any day now, poor guy_, she thought. And
she gasped as he opened his sole remaining eye, said:
"Did they clobber those dames on Heleb?"
"Yes, sir!" she blurted. "They really did, sir!"
"Good!"
Orne closed his eye. His breathing deepened.
The nurse rang frantically for the doctors.
It had been an indeterminate period in a blank fog for Orne, then a time
of pain and the gradual realization that he was in a creche. Had to be.
He could remember his sudden exposure on Heleb, the explosion--then
nothing. Good old creche. It made him feel safe now, shielded from all
danger.
Orne began to show minute but steady signs of improvement. In another
month, the doctors ventured an intestinal graft that gave him a new
spurt of energy. Two months later, they replaced missing eye and
fingers, restored his scalp line, worked artistic surgery on his burn
scars.
Fourteen months, eleven days, five hours and two minutes after he had
been picked up "as good as dead," Orne walked out of the hospital under
his own power, accompanied by a strangely silent Umbo Stetson.
Under the dark blue I-A field cape, Orne's coverall uniform fitted his
once muscular frame like a deflated bag. But the pixie light had
returned to his eyes--even to the eye he had received from a nameless
and long dead donor. Except for the loss of weight, he looked to be the
same Lewis Orne. If he was different--beyond the "spare parts"--it was
something he only suspected, something that made the idea, "twice-born,"
not a joke.
* * * * *
Outside the hospital, clouds obscured Marak's green sun. It was
midmorning. A cold spring wind bent the pile lawn, tugged fitfully at
the border plantings of exotic flowers around the hospital's landing
pad.
Orne paused on the steps above the pad, breathed deeply of the chill
air. "Beautiful day," he said.
Stetson reached out a hand to help Orne down the steps, hesitated, put
the hand back in his pocket. Beneath the section chief's look of weary
superciliousness there was a note of anxiety. His big features were set
in a frown. The drooping eyelids failed to conceal a sharp, measuring
stare.
Orne glanced at the sky to the southwest. "The flitter ought to be here
any minute." A gust of wind tugged at his cape. He staggered, caught his
balance. "I _feel_ good."
"You look like something left over from a funeral," growled Stetson.
"Sure--my funeral," said Orne. He grinned. "Anyway, I was getting tired
of that walk-around-type morgue. All my nurses were married."
"I'd almost stake my life that I could trust you," muttered Stetson.