THRILL-MILLS, F.O.B.
The first three Kel Celeste rooted out were loyal to their species.
Unto death.
The fourth, it seemed, felt differently about it. Even life in the
FedGov's interplanetary zoo, apparently, was acceptable, when weighed
against no life at all.
Our problems resolved themselves into routine, almost, after that ... a
course to set, the ship to steer, messages to send to lure other globes
into range of FedGov weapons.
Then, finally, the job was done. The last Kel ship save this one had
been swept from space and blasted into atoms.
Now, in a rush, fatigue welled up to claim me. I slumped, half-sick.
By the time our craft came to rest on Rizal, I wasn't sure I even had
strength left to climb out.
Then, at last, our hatches swung open. Aid parties swarmed aboard.
I moved back out of sight. Somehow, I couldn't face the excited
flummery and fawning.
Celeste Stelpa, too, seemed to have vanished. No matter where I looked,
I couldn't find her.
The first party into the globeship brought paraguns and proton blasters
with them. Relentlessly, they cleared out what was left of the Kel
crew, pushing past me almost without notice in the grimness of their
work.
Wave Two hoisted Controller Kruze and the other prisoners up from their
spherical scarlet dungeon.
It was a moment to remember. For if I couldn't stand the thought of
obsequiousness and adulation, Security's chief had no such inhibitions.
His heavy body seemed to swell. He beamed and puffed and pranced and
strutted.
Conveniently, too, he made no slightest mention of me. Without saying
so in so many words, he made it ever so clear that Controller Alfred
Kruze himself had saved mankind from the Kel menace.
I smiled a small and twisted smile. That was the way of officialdom, it
seemed--in this world or any other.
And what did it really matter?
Only then, without warning, someone said, "--and these people,
Controller: the ones who received thrill-mills from the Kel and kept it
secret. What do you plan to do about them?"
Kruze's heavy features grew dark. "What would you have me do--to
traitors?" He wheeled like an angry mastiff; shook his fist. "They die,
of course! All of them! The very fact of past or present possession
of a thrill-mill be punished by summary execution, without trial, as
collaboration with the Kel!"
I almost cried out, then, by instinct.
Only that could do no good. The thinking part of my brain knew it. So
I stood silent, instead; immobile. This quick wave of approval from
Kruze's adulators roused only numb shock in me.
Then the controller's aides moved him on out. The rescue parties
followed.
I let them go. For my own part, I couldn't leave. Not quite yet.
The last stragglers disappeared. The echoes died. Aching with
weariness, I began my own bleakly purposeful tour of inspection.
A dozen times, I lost my way in the maze of rooms and shafts and
intersecting passages. A hundred--a thousand--I came upon strange
sights, alien things my human mind could never hope to fathom.
Now fatigue bore me down till I had to stop and lean against a wall to
rest. I began to wonder if I'd come on a fool's errand.
Then, close to the globeship's exit hatch, I glimpsed a narrow storage
niche--a niche stacked high with neat oblong cases.
Fibrox transit boxes.
Involuntarily, my breathing quickened. Dragging down the nearest box,
I ripped it open.
A folded paper fell to the floor: a cargo manifest.
I clawed it up ... fumbled it open with fingers numb and stiff as
sticks.
And there was the stamp, the familiar scarlet label:
CLASSIFIED FEDGOV SECURITY SUPPLIES!
_PORT INSPECTION FORBIDDEN_
--The label that would permit these boxes to pass customs checks at any
port on any planet, throughout FedGov Security's whole far-flung field
of operations.
* * * * *
I turned back to the case itself and tugged out one of the smaller
boxes within ... tore off its wrapper, read the nameplate: 'Apex
Perceptual Intensifier'.
Behind me, Celeste Stelpa asked, "Who is it from, Mark?"
I whirled, already crouching. "What are you doing here?"
Her wan smile didn't change. "Waiting for you, of course." And then:
"You see--I knew you wouldn't go till you'd run this down. There's
still too much of your hate left in you."
"Oh?"
"Hate's that way, Mark, when you displace it. Even if you win one
fight, you've got to turn around and hunt another. Because the thing
you fight isn't the thing you're really trying to destroy."
I said harshly, "I don't know what you're trying to say. I don't think
you do, either. But whether you do or don't, I don't care. So far as
I'm concerned, you're just another traitor to your race. You're like
that Kel who helped us kill the rest of them so he could live. You did
the same thing when the globes took over Bejak II. You let them bring
you here, helped them put out these thrill-mills--"
I broke off as Celeste began to shake. My own hands suddenly weren't
steady.
A minute passed, and then another and another.
Slowly, then, Celeste raised her face. "I hope you think it through
sometime, Mark Traynor," she whispered in a tear-choked voice. "I hope
you ask yourself what's back of all the hate that's in you, and then
try to link that up with me, so you can find the reason why I helped
the Kel put out their thrill-mills."
I stood very still. "Go on."
"Why should I? You already know the answer. Or if you don't, you
haven't the mind ever to understand it."
Her hands drew into fists, then. Her words came in a furious rush: "I
hated them, do you understand? I hated them more than you could ever
dream of! I was on Bejak II! I saw the things they did--the way the
people were slaughtered.
"Only I saw other things too, Mark Traynor! I saw it wasn't the Kel's
fault, not all of it. We could have fought them off, if it hadn't been
for the FedGov and its racked compulsory conditioning.
"That conditioning--it made us like so many sheep. It robbed us of our
imagination, our lust for life, our fighting spirit. And then, later
on, when my own patterns broke and I found what our world looked like
when inhibition wasn't muting our senses and our feelings--"
Another change of mood, a shift in fervor. Warmth replaced rage.
Pleading took the place of anger:
"That's why I did it, Mark. All at once it dawned on me I was hating
the wrong thing, the wrong race. I thought that if even a few of our
kind could break loose, throw off their patterns, there might be a
chance for human freedom. And with freedom, we could beat the Kel.
"You know how I felt, Mark--because you've felt the same way! You hated
going back, being reconditioned. Every time, it got harder for you to
give up freedom. Only you didn't dare admit it, not even to yourself."
"So I took it out on the Kel, you mean?" It was an effort to keep my
own voice steady. "You may be right."
"Then--"
"No. Because this is something else again." I gestured to the boxes
that held the thrill-mills. "Do you know where these came from?"
"I can guess."
"Then you know why I've got to follow through on them."
"But--"
"Say that it's for the cause of human freedom. The freedom of all those
poor lost souls Kruze has ordered executed. No matter what I have to
do, I'm not going to see them die."
Abruptly, I was tired of talking, tired of listening. I turned away.
Celeste said, "But he's gone, Mark. Beyond your reach."
I stopped short. "What--?"
"He warped back as soon as he left the globeship, here. All the way
back, clear to the Interplanetary Center."
It rocked me, for an instant. Then I shrugged. "Fair enough."
"You mean--?"
"I warped out to Rizal without a clearance. I can leave the same way."
"No Mark! You mustn't! He could kill you!"
"I'll have a paragun by the time I get there."
"Then I'll go too, Mark! Take me with you!"
"No."
"But why, Mark? Why? Don't you understand how I feel? No matter what
happens, I want to be with you."
I said, "You still can't go, Celeste. For two reasons.
"In the first place, I still don't trust you.
"In the second, and no matter what you do or have done, I'm not going
to let anything further happen to you. Not if I can help it."
"Mark, I don't care! Even if you try to leave me here, I'll follow!"
"You'll have to, then." Smiling, I pushed past her towards the exit.
"Goodbye, Celeste."
"No, Mark! I won't let you go!"
"Goodbye, Celeste," I said again, patting her cheek.
Still smiling, then, I hammered home a knockout blow....