The Untouchable Adolescents - (2)

"Look," he found himself speaking, "you don't seem to understand." The aliens moved back as Shreve approached. They didn't seem to want him near them. "Your planet is a young one. There are internal stresses that are going to rip open your continents. We can set up machines that will re-direct these eruptions--into the ocean, back in the jungle where it's uninhabited--so your people won't die. We--"
    Did you see the blood pits near the Great Ocean?
    Shreve caught the thought, and knew there was more to it than the Diamorai had thought at first. The thought was laden with blast-furnace hatred and a deadly bitterness.
    He remembered the planet-circling landing the Wallower had made. He remembered the single body of water, the Great Ocean, stretching yellow and rippling across a third of Diamore. The picture completed itself in his mind and he saw the monstrous gouges ripped into the land, near the shore of that ocean. Pits of fused, crimson soil; bare, gaping wounds, nothing but emptiness and dead plants surrounding them for miles.
    Those are the ones, the thought came. Those were the cities of Golamoor, Nokrosch and Huyt on the shores of the Great Ocean we resisted the Kyben when they wanted to drill out our ceremonial grounds for their soils they said were radioactive we would not let them drill and they sent down death to our cities.
    Tinged with such emotion, the words were so boldly put, their meaning was all too clear. These people would never reverse their decision. They hated all outsiders. Shreve wondered whether they could be blamed.
    "But you need our help! You've got to believe me! You can read my thoughts--can't you see I'm telling the truth!"
    We could read the Kyben thoughts, too.
    Silence in their minds for an instant, then:
    Have you seen the blood pits?
    *       *       *       *       *
    Luther Shreve felt as though he were being dragged down into a whirlpool. He didn't know why it was suddenly so important to him that he help the Diamoraii. There was certainly no sense of brotherhood with the aliens. But he knew, on a level that defied all doubt, that he must save these people, or never feel at peace with himself again.
    Behind him, Shreve heard Teller snort in disgust. The psych officer took two quick steps forward, jerked his head toward the massive bulk of the Wallower. "Children! That's all they are. They think those masks protect them from evil, they think their blind arrogance will protect them if trouble comes! They think they know better than us! They don't know when they need help. Come on, Luther, leave them if that's what they want!" He turned to go, his face flushed in anger.
    Shreve looked back at the aliens. He searched the blank and grotesque masks for some evidence of willingness to reason. There was none. Shreve gritted his teeth in frustration; he wanted to help, he wanted to save them--but they wouldn't let themselves accept his help. The aliens didn't want to be saved. They stood there, tall, impassive, the thought radiating unendingly:
    Go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go.
    Luther Shreve stepped toward them, anger boiling hot in his brain. "All right, damn you! If you're too stupid, or too swollen up with your own importance to realize you need help, we'll help you despite yourselves!"
    Why do you think the Kyben left Diamore?
    Shreve's words stopped before they could be spoken. His fury checked itself. He hadn't considered that. Why had another race, one that could decimate a planet as the blood pits indicated they could, leave when they seemed to be on the verge of getting what they wanted?
    We are not defenseless we can stop you we will hurt you go.
    Teller's sharp laugh interrupted before Shreve could get an answer out. "Fools! Pompous adolescents! What makes you think your primitive warriors with their bogey masks can harm us? Look!" He stepped toward the alien. The Diamorai backed up. Teller stepped quickly, coming into sharp contact with the alien's body. The Diamorai leaped back, the short hairs on his body standing straight out. He thought something at his brothers. It was incomprehensible to the Earthmen.
    "That's a stat-field. And there are a dozen guns pointed at you from the ship. We'll set up the machines and save you whether you like it or not." He turned away with a low chuckle, adding ruefully, "Though why you want to bother with such a bunch of arrogant children is beyond me, Luther." He walked toward the ship.
    Casting nervous glances at one another, the aliens leaped to the backs of their mounts, reined in and turned to leave. Shreve stood and watched them as they loped to the jungle's edge.
    The ebony giraffe-things drew up short, and the leader's reared up as the alien turned to stare at Shreve.
    Go or we will hurt you.
    In an instant they were gone, melting into the colored riot of the jungle, the beasts' hoofs beating ever more faintly as they moved away.
    Shreve turned back to the ship. He should have felt no temperature changes within his stat-field, yet somehow he had grown chilled in a few seconds.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Night had descended quickly, dropping like a sea of ink over Diamore. The robomechs had set out the floodlamps, almost to the edges of the jungle, and the Wallower was bathed in white light, sharply outlining her plate construction, and the clean transparency of the conning bubbles.
    Paul Jukovsky, Roboexec, jg, stood behind his control console in the construction bubble, watching the thirty ton robomech carrying its burden. The sixteen-wheeled robomech rolled off the extended cargo hatch ramp, sinking just a bit into the springy ground of Diamore. Jukovsky grinned at his foresight in spreading a primary hardener over the surface before the big boys went to work.
    He two-fingered a cigarette out of his lapel pocket, stifling a belch. "Damn that cookie," he muttered. "If he doesn't stop putting cayenne in the salad...." He stuck the cigarette in his mouth, lipping it irritably for a second. He withdrew it, spitting out a loose bit of tobacco. Satisfied, he inserted it again, began to scratch it alight with his fingertip.
    He moved a calibrated knob on the board three clicks. The lumbering monster outside revolved its head, the huge drilling plate it carried on its flattened and magnetized top moving also. "Like an old woman carrying a water urn on her head," he chuckled, puffing the cigarette.
    The robomech neared phosphorescent markings laid out on the ground, where the fibreglass base plate should be planted. Stress Rectifiers would be magno-clamped to the base plate, then would begin their search-position-drilling.
    He moved to press the release button that would cause the robomech to set its burden down lightly.
    Paul Jukovsky's teeth suddenly began to ache with terrible intensity. He clutched at his face wildly, burning the palm of his hand on the cigarette.
    A strangled sob began to form, ended in a gurgling half-scream. His eyes rolled upwards and a trickle of blood emerged from the corner of his mouth.
    Stone-dead he fell across the control console, depressing all studs.
    The thirty ton robomech whirled twice and burst toward the edge of the jungle. It struck the boles of three huge intertwined trees with a resounding clang; the base plate bounced from its head and crashed, shattering, onto a projecting rock spear. The robot struggled for a moment more, driving into the jungle, knocking trees from its path in blind fury.
    The smell of cordite soaked through the clearing, and a wisp of smoke issued from the service box. An instant later its chambers fused their baffles and the robomech exploded with a terrifying burst of heat, impossible light, and the scream of ripping metal.
    *       *       *       *       *
    "His brains were fused," Teller said.
    The psych officer looked Shreve directly in the eyes, trying to find meaning in the captain's closed expression. Teller's face was unnaturally white, his usually drooping lips thinned to a black line. "The autopsymen were shaking like loose bolts when they reported to me, Luther. They swore they'd never seen anything like it before. It was as if someone had taken that boy's brains in his red-hot hands and molded them like clay."
    Shreve's jaw muscles worked in a strange rhythm. His voice was cold and determined. "We are going to get those Rectifiers set up. Better stay in your cabin, Karl; I've got to put men on it."
    When Teller had left, the odd stare he had cast still haunting Shreve, the captain sank onto his couch. He pressed the p-a stud and crisped his orders, naming men and leaving no room for argument.
    He felt the tremors through the soles of his boots as the men began unchocking their mechs. His balled fist found its way into his mouth.
    He was not aware his hand was bleeding till several minutes after the teeth had pierced the skin.
    After the sixth death--all of them with their brain-pans charred and their grey matter stuck together--Shreve broke down.
    He threw a blanker over the shaft and sat there swearing. His body shook and heaved as he mumbled into his hands. In one stride he was off the couch and had smashed his fist full into the reflecting metal of the console face. It left a shallow dent, and he didn't seem to notice the angry inflammation of his knuckles. Teller stood across the room, keeping very still, shaking his head slowly, and thinking soft sounds.
    After a while Shreve stopped, and collapsed onto the couch, his face red and swollen. "Sorry, Karl," he said.
    "Why don't you try crying, it's easier on the metabolism," he suggested.
    Shreve gave a bitter laugh, thin and short. "Last time I cried I was eating cream cheese and jelly sandwiches and didn't know where little babies come from." Teller didn't smile. He knew Shreve was covering up. He had never seen the man break as he had today, and he knew the knowledge should go no further.
    "But why? Why?" Shreve pounded his fist into the yielding couch. "We came to help them, why won't they let us?"
    "Luther, Luther," Teller soothed him, sitting down beside him on the couch, "don't you see? They're adolescents. They don't know when to call for help. They've been hurt, and with the single-minded purpose of the immature they're bound not to let it happen again. You can't blame yourself for what's happened.
    "You had no way of knowing about this power of theirs. Why don't we leave right now. If we lay on all power we can make the schedule still pretty close."
    Shreve stood up, flicked on the view-plates. He stared into them a moment, seeing nothing but tangled jungle. He drew up a bit, laid his hands flat on the console. "I've got to talk to them once more. To beg them again."
    *       *       *       *       *
    We warned you came the cold, hard tones. The group-mind is infinitely stronger than our individual power now that you have seen our strength will you go?
    "I've come to beg you once more," Shreve pleaded, looking up at the masked Diamoraii, astride their mounts. He had made certain all outside pickup mikes were off. "We only want to help you. Won't you let us re-direct the coming eruptions. Please!" Shreve had plumbed the depths of his mind in an attempt to find reasons for sacrificing such efforts to save the Diamoraii. The only reasons he had found he had not been able to translate--yet there was a sense of identification with the long-legged and stubborn aliens. He wanted to save them!
    "Can't you read my thoughts?" he said, projecting truth, projecting honesty and sincerity. "Can't you see I want to help you, help your people?"
    They did not even bother answering. He knew their acquaintance with the truth that men of other worlds had offered. To be defeated because those who need your help had been spoiled by another race!
    The bitterness, the hatred, the distrust, washed over him, as the Diamorai leaned across his beast's neck, thought one snarled word: Go.
    Shreve felt the futility of everything he had done, suddenly caving in on him. He looked up into the blank stares of the masked aliens, said slowly, "We will hang above your atmosphere till you call us."
    He walked back to the Wallower. The huge plug-port closed behind him. The aliens sat astride their beasts, staring at the ship.
    Their minor-key whoops of victory rang and bounced in the jungle's treetops as they swung their mounts roughly, dug boney knees into their sides, and careened into the multi-colored vastness.
    The Diamoraii had won again!
    *       *       *       *       *
    The Wallower spun slowly in space, the eternal dust of the universe lapping at her ports. Below her, enveloped by clouds of steam, the planet Diamore blasted and erupted and screamed and belched and tore itself apart.
    Luther Shreve sat before the control console, staring with almost hypnotized attention at the view-plates. He watched the world die.
    His face was hard and unyielding. He had refused entrance even to Teller, barring everyone from the control room.
    At every eruption, with each fissure that opened wide enough to be seen from that fantastic height, he felt a strange sinking in his heart. His throat was dry, and there was an odd pressure behind his eyes.
    He watched silently, every once in a while letting the thought They didn't know when to ask for help filter through his mind.
    *       *       *       *       *
    The Group of Deciders huddled in the blasted Council Hall. The floor--what was left of the inlaid tiles--shivered and heaved. Beyond the twisted lattices of the windows they could hear the mighty rending of the planet as it opened and swallowed all that stood.
    Within an hour of the first eruptions, so quickly and with such fury that there had been no time for preparation, almost three-fifths of their race had been decimated.
    The cities Kes and Uykvabask and Laylor had gone under with roaring flames and the scraping of stone against flesh. The Great Ocean had exploded with a red-hot bubbling and roared onto the land, washing everything before it. The lava flows raced Eastward to the Ceremonial Grounds and Westward to the Hunting Preserve. Everywhere the ground opened without warning or reason, and life sank beneath the earth.
    Wrong, the Group of Deciders admitted in their last refuge. We were wrong we have been foolish we have rejected our only salvation we must prepare the group-mind send our plea for aid into space speak to the outsiders ask them to help us.
    They thought their instructions away from themselves, to their kin across Diamore's blasted face. Prepare! Join! Speak to the outsiders!
    And when they had gathered together every last Diamorai, with more dying as they joined the chain, with the feel of agony radiating through the group-mind, the message weakly rose. Tentatively it probed at the inner surface of Diamore's atmosphere.
    The power was, perhaps, insufficient to reach the spaceship. Three-fifths of the Diamoraii were lost to the group-mind.
    The group-mind struggled, frantically beaming, in hopelessness trying to get through to the Earthmen who rode above them.
    The men who rode above them--waiting for a signal from the Diamoraii.
    *       *       *       *       *
    Shreve turned away from the plates, flicking them off. "I can't stand it, Karl! How senseless! Because one race dealt them unfairly, they closed their eyes to help from anyone else."
    Teller crossed his legs as he sat on the couch. He did not appear to be disturbed by the sight from below.
    "Luther, you can't go on destroying yourself. You did everything you could. You were as resourceful as any man could have been.
    "Now you'd better get back to the schedule. We're over four and a half months due at our next landfall." He saw his words were having no effect. "Look, Luther, I've been in this business almost as long as you. I've seen this time and again. When you come up against an adolescent race, that doesn't know when it's got something too big to handle, there's nothing you can do but back off and let them handle it themselves. If they don't get smart enough to know when to call the fireman--that's their agony. Not yours!"
    "What's the next stop on our itinerary?" he asked the last almost jauntily, consciously trying to take Shreve's mind off the cinder that spun below the Wallower. He rose and stretched, as though from a profound sleep.
    For a moment he stared in wonder. Then he stepped into the shaft and quietly left the control room.
    He had never thought he'd see the day when Luther Shreve cried like a child.
    THE END