The Voices of Heaven

  Don't think we're talking about some kind of pitiful drug addiction here. It wasn't anything like that. It was nothing more than that I just hated not being hyper anymore. I liked having that unbeatable vigor that came with the manic phase. When I'm going hyper I have all the energy in the world. I grasp things quickly. I see instant solutions to any problem around. I'm fast as greased lightning, and I don't get tired. It's a remarkably satisfying way to be, actually.

  I'm not the only one to feel that way. People have always treasured that state. It's a historical fact that over the years many, many millions of human beings have spent all the money they could get their hands on, and all the health they had, on such ultimately destructive things as alcohol and alkaloids, just so they could get that feeling, or even just the illusion of it, even for just a moment. It's craziness, all right, but while you have it it feels so fine. You can't beat that feeling . . . until you crash.

  Jimmy Queng wasn't around, but Dabney Albright was straw-bossing a gang unloading supplies into the kitchen storage. No, he didn't know where the leps had gone. "They got pissed off about something, I guess. Anyway, we're in the deep shit here. You up to a little work? All right, give us a hand getting this stuff stored and then you and Hillary here can go down to the landing strip for another load."

  So that was the first I knew that Captain Tscharka had let the shuttle come back.

  On the ride down I tried to find out more from the driver—that was Hillary Tetsui; she'd come out with me on Corsair, though I'd hardly seen her since. There wasn't much to find out. Yes, because of the emergency Captain Tscharka had agreed to send down food out of the ship's supplies, but he himself was still up there. The leps? No, she didn't know any more than I did, but it was a total nuisance; she was supposed to be a cook, not a longshoreman. And when I tentatively asked her if she had any idea about whether I'd be able to get a ride up to the factory orbiter, seeing as the shuttle was right there on the surface now, she just shook her head.

  So did Jillen Iglesias. Jillen was the one who'd brought the shuttle down, and she and two others were shifting its cargo to the ground when we got to the strip—mostly food. There was a lot of it, bags of flour, cartons of cuts of meat in then: sterile pouches, concentrated soups and stews.

  Jillen seemed preoccupied, as though she were worrying about something, but she managed to give me a smile—until I asked her the question. "Oh, I don't think there's time to take you to the factory right now, Barry," she said. "Nobody seems to know how long the leps will stay away, so we've all just got to pitch in to keep things going. Are you all right? I heard you've been sick."

  "I'm fine," I said. I was, too, because I'd popped an extra one of the white ones on the way down.

  "Well," she said, "when I get back to the ship I'll ask the captain what he thinks about getting you to the factory—when things ease up, I mean." But she didn't sound hopeful, and neither was I.

  Things had changed while I was out of it. I wasn't the great white hope of the Pava colony any longer. Public opinion had shifted. The mood of the moment wasn't concerned with building for a wonderful future anymore; it was anger at the leps for deserting us without warning.

  I don't suppose I'd fully realized until that time just how dependent we were on lep helpers. The leps were there; they helped out; they always had. They were a natural resource, like the rain and the sushi bushes. When they were gone it was a totally unexpected blow, and a serious one.

  As I shifted cargo and pondered over this, it seemed to me that I could perhaps be of great use to the community there, too. I was thinking of Geronimo. Geronimo wasn't just my helper when there was drudge work to do, he was my friend. I felt that if I could just have a word with Geronimo, perhaps the whole thing could be straightened out somehow.

  I didn't kid myself that that would be easy, maybe not even possible. Geronimo might well be still in his transition cocoon; I knew that, and then of course there would be no way to talk to him. But I kept thinking that maybe, if I just went up to the nest and asked around, somebody would talk to me.

  The problem was that I had no real idea of where the nest was, in spite of having been there once, and if anyone else did they wouldn't tell me. Jimmy Queng flatly forbade me to even think about it. "We can't spare anybody for harebrained roaming around the hills. You'd better go up and help cut brush for the power plant."

  I tried to be agreeable. "Then, listen, I've been thinking. As long as we've got the shuttle in service again, what about my making a quick trip up to the factory, the way we talked about?"

  He groaned. "Look," he said patiently, "maybe we can start thinking about crap like that in a week or so. Buccaneer's reported in; they're in full deceleration and they'll be in parking orbit by then. With any luck at all maybe they'll have brought us some extra help for the work that needs doing. Talk to me then. Now there's a boat going upstream to the woodcutters in twenty minutes or so. Be on it. You hear?"

  "All right," I said—not because I was giving up on my idea—just trying to be agreeable.

  At least twenty minutes meant I had time to go back to the apartment and pick up a couple of changes of clothes. I popped another pill on the way, for extra energy, and got to the boat just as they were beginning to get irritated about waiting for me.

  I sat down next to Madeleine Hartly's great-granddaughter, Debbie. The weather had turned decent, and actually the boat ride up to the fuel-cutting area was pleasant enough. "At least we've got a nice day for it," I said to her sociably. "How's Madeleine bearing up?"

  She looked startled. "You haven't heard?"

  "Heard what?" The expression on her face was making me feel edgy. But I wasn't prepared for what she said.

  "She died, Barry. She was out gathering fruit, all by herself, and she must have fallen. When they found her she had a broken ankle and pneumonia, and she died before they could get her to the doctor."

  I was cutting fuel for two days before the boat came back with fresh supplies. I wasn't enjoying it, either. I kept going, with the help of some of those little white pills now and then, but they certainly weren't the best two days of my life. There were a lot of reasons for that. I was mourning Madeleine. (And blaming the leps for her death—a little, anyway—if she'd had a lep with her at least he could have gone for help.) It began to rain again, which made the work twice as miserable, but we had to keep on cutting and bundling the fuel into rafts regardless. I was physically exhausted. I wanted to talk to Geronimo. I wanted—

  I wanted all kinds of things, but none of them were happening. It was only the pills that kept me going—kept me in high gear, really. Sometimes I wondered if I wasn't overdoing them a bit, because once in a while I could feel myself beginning to get sort of jittery.

  It wasn't just me and the pills, though. When I tried talking to the others in the fuel-cutting gang, they weren't any too cheerful, either. Or forgiving. When I ventured the opinion that, really, we shouldn't be blaming the leps so much because they weren't obliged to do our scut work for us, I was drowned out by a chorus of denunciations. When I very tentatively mentioned that, on the other hand, if we'd gone ahead and got the factory working properly we wouldn't need to do so much dreary manual labor, they were positively insulting.

  The glory days were over for me. The kindest word I heard was "crackpot."

  Well, that's the way humans are. The way they are when they're in groups, anyway. Any single human being can be quite reasonable, at least most of the time, but when they're a pack they can't seem to hold more than one thought at a time in their minds, and the big thought in everybody's head just then was angry resentment.

  The person who brought the boat up was Becky Khaim-Novello. As soon as we heard the whine of the hydrogen-fueled motor, we all dropped what we were doing and gathered hopefully at the riverbank. Our hopes weren't gratified. We could see long before she landed that she was alone in the boat. "Where's our relief?" somebody shouted, but all she gave back was a look of dislike—maybe more for
me than for the others, because I expect she was remembering our little disagreements, but with plenty for everybody.

  She didn't waste any time trying to be conciliatory about it, either. She kicked one of the crates of food. "This is all there is," she said flatly. "If you want it, start unloading, and, no, there's nobody coming up to take over for you."

  That just about doubled the complaining, and she doubled her glare at us. "You think I like this goddamn job? You've got complaints, you take them to Jimmy Queng. And, oh," she said, remembering, "he gave me a message for you. He says for Christ's sake, you guys, get your asses in gear, the power plant needs more fuel."

  "Then he should send us more people!" someone called. She didn't even answer that. She was in a worse mood even than we were, I thought. She refused to talk anymore. As soon as the supplies were unloaded she cast off and putt-putted away without another word. She seemed to be brooding about something. Well, that didn't surprise me; she wasn't the only one, and if there was something special that was troubling her I didn't know what it was . . . then.

  When it was too dark to work anymore we ate and climbed painfully into our sleeping bags, and I sneaked another white pill.

  I know that wasn't too smart, even in itself. What I should have been doing was sleeping, and those pills wouldn't help that along. But I had other things on my mind. I lay there, wide-awake, staring up into the far hills to the general area where I thought the nest was; and after a while I couldn't stand it anymore, so I got up.

  I was as quiet as I could be as I headed for the slit-trench latrine, in case anybody was wide-awake enough to ask me what I was doing. No one did, and when I got to the latrine area I just kept going.

  Sure, it was a stupid idea. But it was the best idea I had, and I had to do something.

  I don't know if I ever would have found the nest by myself. By the time I got to the slopes of those "Rockies," I was beginning to doubt it. I'd had to wade three streams and swim one. I was wet and my legs were sore, and I had about come to suspect that I might have bitten off more than I was going to be able to chew.

  I thought about turning back.

  The trouble with that was that I wasn't really sure how to get back to the fuel-cutting camp, either, and there wasn't anyone around to ask. I wasn't alone in the woods. I could hear distant whickerings and squeals from the local wildlife, but none I could identify, and none that sounded as if they would be of any help. I was on my own, and I was getting really tired. I reached in my pocket for another of those little white pills to start my motor spinning again.

  There wasn't any. The pills were all gone. I'd taken the whole two dozen-odd.

  It occurred to me that I probably hadn't been very smart about those pills. I probably wasn't being smart about this notion of going up to the lep nests by myself, either. But, since I seemed to have run out of smart ideas, I thought I might as well continue with a dumb one.

  I kept on going.

  I kept on for a long time—I don't know how long, but at some point along the way I happened to notice the sun was well up in the sky. What made me notice it was that the rain was over and it had become hot. I was sweating. I was beginning to feel really spacey, too. I felt as though I were being followed. I kept seeing little movements in the brush. I even thought I caught a glimpse of somebody, or something, slipping hurriedly out of sight.

  What that something could have been I had no real idea. It crossed my mind that it might be something nasty, something like one of those ugly predators that were supposed to be almost, but not quite, extinct in these parts. I didn't let that stop me. I paused for a breather, leaning against a water tree, with my eyes half-closed. If something was hunting me, the best defense was a sudden attack, I told myself, and when I saw that movement again I jumped for it. Crashed into a sticky, prickly bush. Grabbed what was behind it.

  It wasn't a killer snake or a dinowolf or any of the other unpleasant things I'd imagined. It was a lep.

  The thing didn't want me holding on to it. It struggled energetically in my grasp. I'd never really felt what a lep was like until then—not slimy, as I'd sort of expected, and not cold either; it was like the skin of a pretty woman, kitten-soft and puppy-warm.

  "Got you!" I shouted.

  The lep stopped wriggling. He lay quiet for a moment, the giant, blotchy eyes turned on me. I'd seen him before somewhere, I thought, maybe around Freehold, maybe in the nests.

  He made a hissing sound, as though he'd made up his mind to something. Then he said, "You are Barrydihoa. You are the friend of the person presently undergoing transformation, Geronimo."

  I eased up on my grip. "I am," I agreed. "I just want to talk to you."

  He stated, "I do not wish that."

  "Come on, damn it! Please! I want to clear this problem up. What-ever's wrong, there must be something we can do to make it right."

  He released himself from me and raised himself up, peering at me. "That is not desired."

  "Do you desire that I die out here? Because I might. I'm going to keep on trying to find your nests, whether you help me or not!"

  He pondered that for a moment, hissing to himself. Then he shrank down again and began to move away. "You may follow me," he said. "I will take you to our nests, where we will take advice."

  And, as you know, that's what he did.

  Here again, you're probably in a better position than I to remember what happened when I got there. By then I was really spaced out—with fatigue, sure, but also with the delayed effects of those two dozen little white pills. I remember seeing you, Merlin. I even remember talking to you. I remember pleading with you to call off the boycott so we could all be friends together again, and what you told me about what Becky Khaim-Novello had done, and how sadly you explained that there were things leps simply could not accept. But it's all really hazy, because I was. The last thing I remember was mentioning that I needed to lie down, please, for just a moment, and that was all I remembered at all clearly until I was back in Freehold with Dr. Billygoat bending over me.

  I suppose some of you guys had somehow dragged me back to town; Billy said they'd found me snoring away in front of this office. "Jesus," he added, more wondering than angry, "you do come up with all different kinds of ways of screwing things up, don't you, Barry? Did it ever occur to you that you're a lot more trouble than you're worth?"

  "But the problem was all Becky Khaim-Novello's fault," I told him. "She tried to make Saladin clean her apartment. Merlin told me so himself. That's why the leps are shunning us, because when he wouldn't do what she told him Becky picked up a stick and hit him."

  "So what?"

  "So we have to apologize to them! Make them understand we're not all like that!"

  "Barry," Billy said, "listen closely to what I'm going to say to you now, okay? I don't care. Whatever Becky did, it's done, and we'll just have to live with it. Nobody wants you messing around with the leps and maybe just making things worse. I certainly don't want that, personally. All I really want is for you to take your problems somewhere else and get the hell out of my life for good. Please."

  24

  THAT is it, then, Barrydihoa. You said it for your self. This Billygoethe person had no concern that the Beckykhaimnovello person had physically abused one of our people. This cannot be overlooked.

  Oh, hell, Merlin, he didn't mean anything by it. It was me he was really pissed off at, not you guys.

  It was not the Billygoethe person alone. Was it not then generally known that Beckykhaimnovello had transgressed against behavioral norms?

  You bet it was. I told everybody that. I even told them about all the good things you'd done, like how some leps must have rigged up a travois or something to drag me back to Freehold, probably saving my life.

  Was Beckykhaimnovello, then, in your term, "punished" for her behavior?

  Well, no, I didn't say that.

  I have to admit Becky wasn't exactly punished. Not then, anyway. I think she probably would have been, sooner
or later. Somehow. But, as it turned out, that wasn't necessary.

  Anyway, you have to realize that I was not considered a very reliable witness at the time and things were in crazy shape in Freehold. All sorts of things were going wrong. There were power cutbacks because there wasn't enough biofuel coming down to feed the generator; everybody was worried about what would happen to our crops without any lep helpers; Buccaneer was coming close to its parking orbit and everybody was excited about that; Friar Tuck was making things worse by going around and telling all the Millenarists that he'd always known I was just a troublemaker. People were beginning to feel a little bit ashamed that they'd ever listened to me, and so naturally turned right to the other side—there just was too much going on to worry about whether Becky Khaim-Novello had lost her temper and whacked a lep.

  Or to worry much about me, for that matter.

  I can understand that. I must have struck most people as a thoroughly unwanted nuisance. I don't blame them for what they did.

  Billygoat may not have been much of a doctor, but he had some real good fix-up drugs on his shelves. He gave me some shots and pills and vitamins and tucked me in. After a good night's sleep I was ready for action again. I thought so, anyway. Billygoat gave me a quick check and said the same thing.

  As a matter of fact, he used those exact words. "I think you're ready for action again, Barry," he said, speaking fast and sounding rehearsed. "And I've got good news for you. Buccaneer's in full deceleration mode. It'll be in low orbit in a couple of days. Then we'll be shipping antimatter from both ships to the factory—as soon as it's ready to receive—and we're going to send you up to the factory now to check it out!"