“A what?”
He brought it out. “Bacco. Smoke it sometimes.”
Oh—one of the containers of pseudo tobacco. Some folk, still used the stuff, igniting it and sucking in the vapors through a tube below the container. This habit had once been quite widespread, but the deleterious effects it had on the human body caused it to be outlawed several centuries ago. Today the only remnant of it was the harmless imitation. But this had one immediate advantage, in this crisis: It generated a minute quantity of smoke.
He filled and lit his pipe, puffed on it, and held it before him. A curl of smoke wafted up from it.
He moved it slowly about, the smoke following. The process was infuriatingly slow, in the fractional gee used to make the car float, but this was all we had.
When he held the pipe low, we got a deviation. “Draft,”, he said.
“You trace it down; I’ll get a tool!” I said. I cast about for something suitable. If this had been space, there would have been a repair kit with hull patches. But this was not space, and no ordinary hull patch could withstand eight bars.
“Toolkit in back,” the man said as he oriented on the slight draft.
I scrambled back and found it. It was a shoemaker’s outfit, with a hammer and stapler and awl. Evidently the folk here were strong on hand trades, as perhaps they had to be to make up for the interminable delays and inordinate expense of necessary articles. But this car was no shoe!
“Found it,” the driver said. He was down on the floor now, and the pipe smoke was swirling violently. There was a leak, all right.
If only I had something to plug it! But shoe cement would never hold, and I couldn’t hammer in a staple.
Then I perceived the obvious. The awl! It was a slender rod of metal, almost needle-thin, with a rounded plastic ball on the end. That was exactly what I needed.
I grabbed it and joined the driver on the floor. Now I could hear it: the faint hiss of atmosphere pressuring in. Eight bars outside, one bar inside; it would keep coming until the pressure equalized. But an awl, normally used to punch holes in leather, could put a lot of pressure on a small point. More than eight bars’ worth.
I set the point, then pressed it into the tiny hole. If this worked, we would have it plugged; if instead it aggravated the leak, we would be dead that much sooner.
It worked. The leak stopped. I had, as it were, my finger in the dike.
“Drive on,” I said, with affected casualness.
He hastened to oblige.
We made it to the steelworks. Then I was able to relax, my hands shaking. It was a little thing I had done, but if it hadn’t worked my life would have been forfeit.
The personnel of the steelworks inspected the bubble, using their equipment. The leak appeared to be artificial: a tiny hole drilled to intersect a natural flaw, so that the stress of travel could cause the flaw to give way and amplify the leak. Had I not plugged it, the aggravation of the leak could have eliminated the traces of the tampering. My death would have been judged to be an accident, an act of fate.
I proceeded with the tour of inspection, asking questions, making notes, interviewing personnel. But my mind was distracted by the event of the leak: It had been another effort to assassinate me. I don’t think a person ever becomes completely inured to such efforts.
A few days later, without warning, I suffered stomach cramps. “Poison!” I exclaimed, then wondered if I was being paranoid. It was probably only a bout of indigestion.
But Tasha insisted on rushing me to the hospital, and I was too sick to protest. The doctor checked me, ran a quick test, and nodded. “Contaminated yeast,” he said. “Medication will nullify it.”
“This happens often?” I asked.
“The spores mutate, in the uncontrolled conditions of the atmosphere; our quality control is not as apt as Jupiter’s,” he said. Saturn, of course, was using the supplementary yeast-farming system I had helped develop on Jupiter, in which the spores were cultivated in the atmosphere itself and harvested as convenient. This had solved Jupiter’s food crisis, and presumably would solve Saturn’s, once the special problems of its environment were dealt with. Obviously those problems had not yet yielded.
I took the initial dose of medication at the hospital and was given supplementary pills of another kind to take at regular intervals. It seemed that the contamination was active, and tough, as it had to be to survive the radical exterior environment, so that an extended period of medication was necessary to make certain it was expunged from the human system. Fortunately the Saturn medical establishment was competent; I should be in no further trouble.
Except that I did have further trouble. My cramps returned worse than ever after I started on the refill prescription. I was promptly back at the hospital for treatment.
“What’s this?” the doctor demanded, appalled. “This is not the prescription!”
He had it analyzed, and it turned out to be concentrated contamination of exactly the kind I had suffered from before.
The pills had been exchanged for more poison. It turned out that the pharmacy was not at fault; its product had been eliminated, and the poison substituted, somewhere between the filling of the prescription and its delivery to me. Conditions were crowded; a number of people could have had access to the collected prescriptions in the interim. The culprit could not be identified.
But we knew. The nomenklatura had struck again. Like a nebulous ghost, it had waited and watched, and found a way to make another attempt on me that would, if successful, seem like a mere flare-up of the original malady. Inadequate medication would be blamed. But thanks to the promptness of Tasha’s reaction, and the competence of the doctor, that had been foiled. There was nothing inadequate about the socialized medicine of Saturn.
Nevertheless, I had had a bad double dose of an extremely ornery contaminant, and harm had been done. It was, the doctor warned, too early to be sure of the full extent of it, but certainly I had suffered some liver and kidney damage. Since the liver could regenerate, and the kidneys had enormous overcapacity, I was probably all right, but he urged me to report back regularly for retesting. I, however, was developing an aversion to hospitals and intended to ignore this advice. And so I did. In retrospect I see this as one of the major follies of my life. I suppose I thought the Tyrant was indestructible. Nature has her way of educating idiots like me.
We remained on guard, but already there had been too many close calls. We had to abolish the nomenklatura before it abolished us! But we had to proceed in proper order, or all would be for nothing.
So we proceeded, warily. We were assembling a comprehensive list of personnel to be eliminated, and a similar list of those to be promoted. Under competent and motivated management, Saturn’s industry would improve; I was sure of that. But it had a long way to go, for aside from the military complex, it was in an abysmal state. I wished we could import a few thousand technical supervisors from Jupiter.
One problem was theft, and another was sabotage. Much of that might be because of disaffected workers. Proper motivation should help, but until we could set our program in motion, key installations had to be protected. But even the police were not to be completely trusted; some crimes were evidently committed despite the knowledge of the guards. How could we eliminate this complication?
In Jupiter we would have gone to technology, setting up laser perimeters that would detect and foil any unauthorized intrusions. But Saturn lacked that kind of technology in the civilian sector. We needed something considerably more primitive, but just as effective.
“Animals,” Spirit said.
As it happened, Saturn had been doing research on animals. In Sibirsk there was a massive project dedicated to reconstitution of primitive species. We were sure this would not be altruistic; there was bound to be some militaristic motive. So we inquired, and in due course managed to cut through the bureaucratic resistance and arrange an inspection.
We visited. The complex was in its own bubble, separate fro
m the city and restricted; even the local residents hardly knew what went on there.
It turned out that they meant the appellation “primitive” literally. They were using gene-splicing techniques to breed back extinct species, some of which were prime prospects for guard duty.
They had, it seemed, made progress toward the recovery of Earth’s Pleistocene mammals. Equus, the ancestral horse, had a range within this bubble; Spirit, with a woman’s fascination with horses, wanted to see that. I wanted to see Amphicyon, the huge ancestral dog. It was an irony that contemporary horses and dogs were rare today, because of the wasteful expense of maintaining them in space, but the more primitive variants were being bred in the name of research and defense.
We had the tour. The interior of the bubble was like a monstrous zoo, with many layers of exhibits and many more of laboratories and storage facilities. The outer levels had vast fields planted with special high-gee-tolerant grasses and shrubs, to be grown and harvested for the grazers. The ceilings were huge day-glow panels, emulating the course of natural sunlight, cloud, and night.
“But I thought the stress was on guard animals,” I said innocently. “Surely hay-eaters aren’t—?”
The guide smiled. “Some of the grazers are quite competent guards,” he said. “There are aggressive horned species that can stand up to almost any predator, such as Bison crassiocornis. But it is true they are not the best guard animals, because of their need for constant grazing, and their manure. Our herbivores are grown mainly as prey for the carnivores.”
“Oh,” I said, disgruntled. Of course the true predators would need food, and if they were to be truly lean and vicious, they had to hunt it for themselves. Survival of the fittest: never a pretty business.
We went to the upper levels, where the gee reduced toward Earth-norm. We did indeed see the primitive horses, right back to Merychippes and Mesohippus, the dog-sized, three-toed version of the Oligocene epoch. It was strange to see such a horselike creature so small.
And we saw the canines I had come for. There was Canis dirus, a primitive wolf, and of course Amphicyon, the primitive dog that surely was the wolf ’s match. There was the Eocene’s Mesonyx, perhaps the earliest canine, though the line can be hard to draw. “How are they for guard duty?” I inquired.
“There are some problems,” the guide confessed. “The primitives are less intelligent than the moderns, and their instincts less developed, which means that they are slower to accept the principle of mastery. The truth is, the modern breeds remain the best guards.”
“But you don’t breed superior modern canines?” I asked.
“We breed only the types specified.”
I exchanged, a glance with Spirit. Here too, the nomenkatura dominated, seeing to it that no project become too efficient in the pursuit of its objective. That would shortly change.
We continued to the upper reaches, where gee was less. There were enormous and high chambers, reaching to the center of the bubble. These were for the flying creatures.
We gaped, for there in the air was an impossibly monstrous bird, reminiscent of the fabled roc. “Teratornis, the guide said. “The largest flying bird ever to exist. It has a wingspan of twelve feet. But it is a carrion-eater, a hunter, and cannot operate in confined quarters; it remains a novelty.”
“Flying bird,” Spirit said. “There were larger land-bound birds?”
“Oh, certainly.” The guide showed us to a closed-off chamber where a bird taller than a man stood, “Diatryma, seven feet tall when he stands up straight, a ferocious predator on small mammals.” We looked at the massively muscled legs and the huge claws and monstrous beak, and agreed that small mammals would have been in trouble, and perhaps some larger ones. “But the birds, as a general rule, aren’t smart,” the guide continued. “They can be trained only marginally—and again, the modern ones are superior to the primitives.”
We started down, to the far sides of levels we had ascended before. We saw the huge Miocene pig Dinohyus, as tall as a man and almost as massive as a hippopotamus, the largest of land-dwelling swine. “Now, pigs,” I said. “They are relatively intelligent, aren’t they? And with tusks—”
“They may be our best prospect,” the guide agreed. “The appropriate breeds can be tamed and housebroken, yet remain effective fighters. Of course, again—”
“The moderns are better than the ancients,” I concluded. We certainly knew the direction to encourage future research.
We came to the section devoted to the felines. “In many respects, the cats are our most effective present product,” the guide said. “They are unmatched as individual predators, on a pound-for-pound basis and their natural preference for lurking and pouncing enables them to surprise intruders that would avoid running dogs.” He smiled faintly, for the term “running dogs” remained a popular disparagement in Saturnine circles. “However, they have a tendency to revert to wild behavior, and that can be awkward for the proprietors as well as the intruders.”
I nodded. Even small cats could be wild, and large ones could be savage. The felines were more independent than the canines, a quality I respected, but an organized society had diminishing use for independence. The Saturn philosophy found it easier to embrace the somewhat slavish, lick-master’s-hand attitude of the dogs than the bug-me-and-I’ll-scratch one of cats.
“Don’t you have ways to differentiate the friends from the enemies?” Spirit asked. “A cat doesn’t have to be friendly, if it knows whom to obey and whom to attack.”
“We are working with smell,” the guide said. “The cats tend to go into a killing frenzy when they detect certain odors, while other smells tend to pacify them.” He stopped at a box mounted on the wall and opened it. “Here, for example, is the pacification odor. We keep it strategically placed, in case of emergency. Unfortunately, it has an unpredictable effect on some felines, and of course intruders could use it also. So we prefer to seek other mechanisms.” He handed me a sample tube. “You can test this on one of the caged animals, if you wish.”
I took the tube. “Let’s complete the formal tour first.”
“However, we do have some prospects with the weasels and ferrets,” the guide said, showing the way to the next complex of chambers.
Suddenly an alarm sounded. The guide glance nervously about. “That means an emergency,” he said. “An animal must have escaped. We had better get to a safety chamber. There’s one in the ferret complex.”
But before we could get there, the chamber door behind us burst open and a monster appeared. It was catlike, but larger than any tiger, with two six-inch fangs.
“Smilodon!” the guide cried in horror. “That one was due to be destroyed!”
Indeed, it was the dread saber-toothed tiger—right in the hall with us. It paused, recovering its balance, orienting on us. It growled with a certain anticipation.
We were too far from the exit to reach it before the horrendous cat could catch us. Someone was bound to be its prey. It was clear that a single stab with those fangs could kill a man.
“This chamber is empty,” the guard whispered, grasping the handle of a door behind us. “We can shut it in the hall.”
He opened the door, and we scrambled through: Spirit, the guide, Tasha, and me. But before the guide could secure the door, the tiger smashed into it. The guide was knocked aside, stunned. Tasha screamed.
Spirit’s laser pistol was in her hand, bearing on the tiger. “Don’t fire,” I protested. “We have the pacifier!”
Spirit held her fire. This was a combat situation, and she and I were versed in combat. We never acted carelessly when lives were at stake.
I opened the tube and quickly smeared its foam on me. Now I was protected. I had no weapon, but hoped I needed none.
I approached the tiger, trying to put myself between him and the other three people. “Take it easy, Smilodon,” I said, extending my odor-covered hand.
The tiger sniffed. Then he sneezed. Then he growled.
“He??
?s reacting wrongly,” the guide exclaimed. “He’s one of the exceptions! It’s maddening him!”
Evidently so. But it was too late for me to unsmear myself. I backed away—and the tiger strode forward. He opened his mouth, and his jaws gaped to almost a full right-angle aperture. Those tusks now pointed right at me!
I knew I could not escape this beast; the cat seemed to weigh close to a thousand pounds, and was hugely muscled, with stout yet sharp claws. The supreme predator! How on Earth had it ever come to be extinct? Perhaps it had consumed all its prey and had none left.
I knew I was in extreme peril, but I didn’t want to kill that animal. I had never seen such a superb example of survival fitness, and that appealed to me on a special level. But if the tiger sprang, Spirit’s laser would catch it before it landed; she would not let me be killed, and her aim had always been perfect. I had to find some other way to pacify this creature.
The odd thing was, I thought I understood him. I felt almost an empathy with the tiger, who had broken from his cage or confinement before being condemned in the name of a failed experiment. I was the Tyrant, another type of failed experiment. Lord of the jungle, lord of a planet, deposed—what was the essential distinction? Smilodon was alive beyond his time, and so was I.
I focused my talent, trying to comprehend the reality of this superb creature, not merely the illusion. Did the tiger really want prey—or did he want freedom?
He wanted, I decided, neither. He wanted acceptance. That would encompass freedom. This was not his world, and he understood that; he could not survive here alone. The only place he could hunt naturally was in a bubble chamber, when some frightened animal was loosed to him. A stupid tiger might settle for that, but not a smart one.
A smart tiger—that was what made this one adverse. He rebelled against the confinement of plastic walls, but also against that of tailored odors. He knew that the smell was not the essence. Since his brain was wired into smell far more than was a man’s, that was a considerable revelation, but he had accomplished it.
“Tiger, tiger,” I breathed. “I know you. I respect you. Come to me as friend, not as prey.” My words were not what counted; rather it was the sound of my voice, and the motion of my body. I had no remaining fear of this creature, and not because of Spirit’s laser; I understood Tyrants of any stripe. My talent was working, causing me to react in subtle ways that few other people comprehended, returning encouraging signals to the tiger.