He killed it, mercifully. And then bent down to examine it. Because something had caught his eye: a flash of metal.
The m-gopher wore a harness.
It was artificial, of course; the harness fitted snugly around the animal’s thick neck. Almost invisible, hair-like wires passed from the harness and disappeared into the scalp of the gopher near the front of the skull.
“Lord,” Tony Costner said, picking the gopher and its harness up and standing in futile anxiety, wondering what to do. Right away he connected this with the carnival dolls; they had gone off and done this, made this—the settlement, as Hoagland had said, was under attack.
He wondered what the gopher would have done had he not killed it.
The gopher had been up to something. Tunneling toward—his house!
Later, he sat beside Hoagland Rae in the workshop; Rae, with care, had opened the harness, inspected its interior.
“A transmitter,” Hoagland said, and breathed out noisily, as if his childhood asthma had returned. “Short range, maybe half a mile. The gopher was directed by it, maybe gave back a signal that told where it was and what it was doing. The electrodes to the brain probably connect with pleasure and pain areas… that way the gopher could be controlled.” He glanced at Tony Costner. “How’d you like to have a harness like that on you?”
“I wouldn’t,” Tony said, shivering. He wished, all at once, that he was back on Terra, overcrowded as it was; he longed for the press of the crowd, the smells and sounds of great throngs of men and women, moving along the hard sidewalks, among the lights. It occurred to him then, in a flash, that he had never really enjoyed it here on Mars. Far too lonely, he realized. I made a mistake. My wife; she made me come here.
It was a trifle late, however, to think that now.
“I guess,” Hoagland said stonily, “that we’d better notify the UN military police.” He went with dragging steps to the wallphone, cranked it, then dialed the emergency number. To Tony he said, half in apology, half in anger, “I can’t take responsibility for handling this, Costner; it’s too difficult.”
“It’s my fault too,” Tony said. “When I saw that girl, she had taken off the upper part of her garment and—”
“UN regional security office,” the phone declared, loudly enough for Tony Costner to hear it.
“We’re in trouble,” Hoagland said. And explained, then, about the Falling Star Entertainment Enterprises ship and what had happened. As he talked he wiped his streaming forehead with his handkerchief; he looked old and tired, and very much in need of a rest.
An hour later the military police landed in the middle of the settlement’s sole street. A uniformed UN officer, middle-aged, with a briefcase, stepped out, glanced around in the yellow late-afternoon light, made out the sight of the crowd with Hoagland Rae placed officially in front. “You are General Mozart?” Hoagland said tentatively, holding his hand out.
“That’s correct,” the heavy-set UN officer said, as they shook briefly. “May I see the construct, please?” He seemed a trifle disdainful of the somewhat grimy settlement people; Hoagland felt that acutely, and his sense of failure and depression burgeoned.
“Sure, General.” Hoagland led the way to his store and the workshop in the rear.
After he had examined the dead m-gopher with its electrodes and harness, General Mozart said, “You may have won artifacts they did not want to give up, Mr. Rae. Their final—in other words actual—destination was probably not this settlement.” Again his distaste showed, ill-disguised; who would want to bother this area? “But, and this is a guess, eventually Earth and the more populated regions. However, by your employment of a parapsychological bias on the ball-throwing game—” He broke off, glanced at his wristwatch. “We’ll treat the fields in this vicinity with arsine gas, I think; you and your people will have to evacuate this whole region, as a matter of fact tonight; we’ll provide a transport. May I use your phone? I’ll order the transport—you assemble all your people.” He smiled reflexively at Hoagland and then went to the telephone to place his call back to his office in M City.
“Livestock, too?” Rae said. “We can’t sacrifice them.” He wondered just how he was supposed to get their sheep, dogs and cattle into the UN transport in the middle of the night. What a mess, he thought dully.
“Of course livestock,” General Mozart said unsympathetically, as if Rae were some sort of idiot.
The third steer driven aboard the UN transport carried a harness at its neck; the UN military policeman at the entrance hatch spotted it, shot the steer at once, summoned Hoagland to dispose of the carcass.
Squatting by the dead steer, Hoagland Rae examined the harness and its wiring. As with the m-gopher, the harness connected, by delicate leads, the brain of the animal to the sentient organism—whatever it was—which had installed the apparatus, located, he assumed, no farther than a mile from the settlement. What was this animal supposed to do? he wondered as he disconnected the harness. Gore one of us? Or—eavesdrop. More likely that; the transmitter within the harness hummed audibly; it was perpetually on, picking up all sounds in the vicinity. So they know we’ve brought in the military, Hoagland realized. And that we’ve detected two of these constructs, now.
He had a deep intuition that this meant the abolition of the settlement. This area would soon be a battleground between the UN military and the—whatever they were. Falling Star Entertainment Enterprises. He wondered where they were from. Outside the Sol System, evidently.
Kneeling momentarily beside him a blackjack—a black-clad UN secret police officer—said, “Cheer up. This tipped their hand; we could never prove those carnivals were hostile, before. Because of you they never made it to Terra. You’ll be reinforced; don’t give up.” He grinned at Hoagland, then hurried off, disappearing into the darkness, where a UN tank sat parked.
Yes, Hoagland thought. We did the authorities a favor. And they’ll reward us by moving massively into this area.
He had a feeling that the settlement would never be quite the same again, no matter what the authorities did. Because, if nothing else, the settlement had failed to solve its own problems; it had been forced to call for outside help. For the big boys.
Tony Costner gave him a hand with the dead steer; together they dragged it to one side, gasping for breath as they grappled with the still warm body. “I feel responsible,” Tony said, when they had set it down.
“Don’t.” Hoagland shook his head. “And tell your boy not to feel bad.”
“I haven’t seen Fred since this first came out,” Tony said miserably. “He took off, terribly disturbed. I guess the UN MPs will find him; they’re on the outskirts rounding everybody up.” He sounded numb, as if he could not quite take in what was happening. “An MP told me that by morning we could come back. The arsine gas would have taken care of everything. You think they’ve run into this before? They’re not saying but they seem so efficient. They seem so sure of what they’re doing.”
“Lord knows,” Hoagland said. He lit a genuine Earth-made Optimo cigar and smoked in glum silence, watching a flock of black-face sheep being driven into the transport. Who would have thought the legendary, classic invasion of Earth would take this form? he asked himself. Starting here at our meager settlement, in terms of small wired figurines, a little over a dozen in all, which we labored to win from Falling Star Entertainment Enterprises; as General Mozart said, the invaders didn’t even want to give them up. Ironic.
Bob Turk, coming up beside him, said quietly, “You realize we’re going to be sacrificed. That’s obvious. Arsine will kill all the gophers and rats but it won’t kill the microrobs because they don’t breathe. The UN will have to keep blackjack squads operating in this region for weeks, maybe months. This gas attack is just the beginning.” He turned accusingly to Tony Costner. “If your kid—”
“All right,” Hoagland said in a sharp voice. “That’s enough. If I hadn’t taken that one apart, closed the circuit—you can blame me, Turk; in fact I’ll be glad to
resign. You can run the settlement without me.”
Through a battery-driven loudspeaker a vast UN voice boomed, “All persons within sound of my voice prepare to board! This area will be flooded with poisonous gas at 14:00. I repeat—” It repeated, as the loudspeakers turned in first one direction and then another; the noise echoed in the night darkness.
Stumbling, Fred Costner made his way over the unfamiliar, rough terrain, wheezing in sorrow and weariness; he paid no attention to his location, made no effort to see where he was going. All he wanted to do was get away. He had destroyed the settlement and everyone from Hoagland Rae on down knew it. Because of him—
Far away, behind him, an amplified voice boomed, “All persons within sound of my voice prepare to board! This area will be flooded with poisonous gas at 14:00. I repeat, all persons within sound of my voice—” It dinned on and on. Fred continued to stumble along, trying to shut out the racket of the voice, hurrying away from it.
The night smelled of spiders and dry weeds; he sensed the desolation of the landscape around him. Already he was beyond the final perimeter of cultivation; he had left the settlement’s fields and now he stumbled over unplowed ground where no fences or even surveyor’s stakes existed. But they would probably flood this area, too, however; the UN ships would coast back and forth, spraying the arsine gas, and then after that special forces troops would come in, wearing gas-masks, carrying flame throwers, with metal-sensitive detectors on their backs, to roust out the fifteen microrobs which had taken refuge underground in the burrows of rats and vermin. Where they belong, Fred Costner said to himself. And to think I wanted them for the settlement; I thought, because the carnival wanted to keep them, that they must be valuable.
He wondered, dimly, if there was any way he could undo what he had done. Find the fifteen microrobs, plus the activated one which had almost killed Hoagland Rae? And—he had to laugh; it was absurd. Even if he found their hideout—assuming that all of them had taken refuge together in one spot—how could he destroy them? And they were armed. Hoagland Rae had barely escaped, and that had been from one acting alone.
A light glowed ahead.
In the darkness he could not make out the shapes which moved at the edge of the light; he halted, waited, trying to orient himself. Persons came and went and he heard the voices, muted, both men’s and women’s. And the sound of machinery in motion. The UN would not be sending out women, he realized. This was not the authorities.
A portion of the sky, the stars and faint nocturnal swath of haze, had been blotted out, and he realized all at once that he was seeing the outline of a large stationary object.
It could be a ship, parked on its tail, awaiting take-off; the shape seemed roughly that.
He seated himself, shivering in the cold of the Martian night, scowling in an attempt to trace the passage of the indistinct forms busy with their activity. Had the carnival returned? Was this once more the Falling Star Entertainment Enterprises vehicle? Eerily, the thought came to him: the booths and banners and tents and platforms, the magic shows and girl platforms and freaks and games of chance were being erected here in the middle of the night, in this barren area lost in the emptiness between settlements. A hollow enactment of the festivity of the carny life, for no one to see or experience. Except—by chance—himself. And to him it was revolting; he had seen all he wanted of the carnival, its people and—things.
Something ran across his foot.
With his psycho-kinetic faculty he snared it, drew it back; reaching, he grabbed with both hands until all at once he had snatched out of the darkness a thrashing, hard shape. He held it, and saw with fright one of the microrobs; it struggled to escape and yet, reflexively, he held onto it. The microrob had been scurrying toward the parked ship, and he thought, the ship’s picking them up. So they won’t be found by the UN. They’re getting away; then the carnival can go on with its plans.
A calm voice, a woman’s, said from close by, “Put it down, please. It wants to go.”
Jumping with shock he released the microrob and it scuttled off, rustling in the weeds, gone at once. Standing before Fred the thin girl, still wearing slacks and a sweater, faced him placidly, a flashlight in her hand; by its circle of illumination he made out her sharply-traced features, her colorless jaw and intense, clear eyes. “Hi,” Fred said stammeringly; he stood up, defensively, facing the girl. She was slightly taller than he and he felt afraid of her. But he did not catch the stench of Psi about her and he realized that it had definitely not been she there in the booth who had struggled against his own faculty during the game. So he had an advantage over her, and perhaps one she did not know about.
“You better get away from here,” he said. “Did you hear the loudspeaker? They’re going to gas this area.”
“I heard.” The girl surveyed him. “You’re the big winner, aren’t you, sonny? The master game-player; you dunked our anti-ceph sixteen times in a row.” She laughed merrily. “Simon was furious; he caught cold from that and blames you. So I hope you don’t run into him.”
“Don’t call me sonny,” he said. His fear began to leave him.
“Douglas, our p-k, says you’re strong. You wrestled him down every time; congratulations. Well, how pleased are you with your take?” Silently, she once more laughed; her small sharp teeth shone in the meager light. “You feel you got your produce’s worth?”
“Your p-k isn’t much good,” Fred said. “I didn’t have any trouble and I’m really not experienced. You could do a lot better.”
“With you, possibly? Are you asking to join us? Is this a proposition from you to me, little boy?”
“No!” he said, startled and repelled.
“There was a rat,” the girl said, “in the wall of your Mr. Rae’s workshop; it had a transmitter on it and so we knew about your call to the UN as soon as you made it. So we’ve had plenty of time to regain our—” She paused a moment. “Our merchandise. If we cared to. Nobody meant to hurt you; it isn’t our fault that busybody Rae stuck the tip of his screwdriver into the control-circuit of that one microrob. Is it?”
“He started the cycle prematurely. It would have done that eventually anyhow.” He refused to believe otherwise; he knew the settlement was in the right. “And it’s not going to do you any good to collect all those microrobs because the UN knows and—”
“ ‘Collect’?” The girl rocked with amusement. “We’re not collecting the sixteen microrobs you poor little people won. We’re going ahead—you forced us to. The ship is unloading the rest of them.” She pointed with the flashlight and he saw in that brief instant the horde of microrobs disgorged, spreading out, seeking shelter like so many photophobic insects.
He shut his eyes and moaned.
“Are you still sure,” the girl said purringly, “that you don’t want to come with us? It’ll ensure your future, sonny. And otherwise—” She gestured. “Who knows? Who really can guess what’ll become of your tiny settlement and you poor tiny people?”
“No,” he said. “I’m still not coming.”
When he opened his eyes again the girl had gone off. She stood with the no-head, Simon, examining a clipboard which the no-head held.
Turning, Fred Costner ran back the way he had come, toward the UN military police.
The lean, tall, black-uniformed UN secret police general said, “I have replaced General Mozart who is unfortunately ill-equipped to deal with domestic subversion; he is a military man exclusively.” He did not extend his hand to Hoagland Rae. Instead he began to pace about the workshop, frowning. “I wish I had been called in last night. For example I could have told you one thing immediately… which General Mozart did not understand.” He halted, glanced searchingly at Hoagland. “You realize, of course, that you did not beat the carnival people. They wanted to lose those sixteen microrobs.”
Hoagland Rae nodded silently; there was nothing to say. It now did appear obvious, as the blackjack general had pointed out.
“Prior appearances of th
e carnival,” General Wolff said, “in former years, was to set you up, to set each settlement up in turn. They knew you’d have to plan to win this time. So this time they brought their microrobs. And had their weak Psi ready to engage in an ersatz ‘battle’ for supremacy.”
“All I want to know,” Hoagland said, “is whether we’re going to get protection.” The hills and plains surrounding the settlement, as Fred had told them, were now swarming with the microrobs; it was unsafe to leave the downtown buildings.
“We’ll do what we can.” General Wolff resumed pacing. “But obviously we’re not primarily concerned with you, or with any other particular settlement or locale that’s been infested. It’s the overall situation that we have to deal with. That ship has been forty places in the last twenty-four hours; how they’ve moved so swiftly—” He broke off. “They had every step prepared. And you thought you conned them.” He glowered at Hoagland Rae. “Every settlement along the line thought that as they won their boxload of microrobs.”
“I guess,” Hoagland said presently, “that’s what we get for cheating.” He did not meet the blackjack general’s gaze.
“That’s what you get for pitting your wits against an adversary from another system,” General Wolff said bitingly. “Better look at it that way. And the next time a vehicle not from Terra shows up—don’t try to mastermind a strategy to defeat them: call us.”
Hoagland Rae nodded. “Okay. I understand.” He felt only dull pain, not indignation; he deserved—they all deserved—this chewing out. If they were lucky their reprimand would end at this. It was hardly the settlement’s greatest problem. “What do they want?” he asked General Wolff. “Are they after this area for colonization? Or is this an economic—”
“Don’t try,” General Wolff said.
“P-pardon?”
“It’s not something you can understand, now or at any other time. We know what they’re after—and they know what they’re after. Is it important that you know, too? Your job is to try to resume your farming as before. Or if you can’t do that, pull back and return to Earth.”