Part 3

A hunter's assignment, Lanny found, was easier than it had been in the smaller Santa Barbara settlement. The Almost-men had set up a vast hunting preserve north and east of the bay; it was kept well-stocked with game. There was no need for the hunting parties to break through the pylon barrier and raid territory ceded to the invaders. The hunters simply crossed the skyport bridge, circled the opalescent dome, and entered the forest, where broad trails had been conveniently laid out under the trees.

This generous provision came about because the enemy considered the San Francisco compound something of a showplace, an experimental laboratory for improving relations with the conquered. A steady stream of tourists, sociologists, politicians and religious leaders poured into the San Francisco skyport from the mechanized home world of the Almost-men. They came to satisfy their curiosity, to purchase tourist relics, to examine and sometimes criticize the occupation policy.

Frequently, when Lanny was hunting in the forest, he saw Almost-men who were recent arrivals in the skyport. Usually they floated above the trees in their individual, degravitized, force-field capsules, watching the hunt and eagerly recording the activity with their expensive cameras. Sometimes they whipped up enough courage to descend to the forest trails and talk to their captives.

Several times Lanny was interviewed by the enemy, and slowly he began to flesh out a more realistic definition of the Almost-men. They were no longer a clear-cut symbol for something he hated, but suddenly more human and more understandable. They were physically weak, just like the older survivors in the treaty settlements. They were timid and unsure of themselves. They were hopelessly caught in a mire of pretty words, which they seemed to believe themselves. And without their machines they were helpless.

* * * * *

After Lanny and his brother had been in the San Francisco area for nearly two weeks, they were invited to a formal session of the local resistance council, where they were accepted as new citizens of the community. The delegates met at night in the rubble of the old city. A narrow passage tunneled through the ruins to an underground room which had once been the vault of a bank and had, therefore, survived the bombing and the slashing fire of the energy guns.

Gill did not stay with his brother in the rear of the vault. Instead he joined the young hotheads who formed the war party in the local council. At home Gill had dominated the same element.

The men in every treaty area were split between two points of view. One group wanted to organize an immediate attack upon the invader, in spite of the inequality in arms. The others counciled caution, until they had the strength to strike a real blow to free the Earth.

Since men had no weapons and no metals from which to make them, the obvious basis for any successful attack had to be a scheme for seizing arms from the enemy. "We can only destroy the Almost-men if we use their own machines." Again and again the San Francisco war party repeated that fact; it seemed an argument so self-evident that it was beyond any rational challenge. "The machines have no intelligence, no sense of values; they will obey us just as readily as they obey the enemy."

"More so." Gill spoke clear and loud, in crisp self-confidence. "I do not believe the enemy knows how to feel the structure of matter."

This statement created a minor sensation. The heads of the delegates turned slowly toward Gill. Gill was smiling, his mane of blond hair shimmering like gold in the flickering light. Lanny felt, as always, a tremendous admiration for his brother. Gill was so sure of himself, so certain that he was right. Gill's mind would never have been plagued by shadowy fears he couldn't understand.

"I have seen an enemy bleed," Gill went on. "They do not know how to heal a wound."

"That might be true of some," one of delegates answered. "Some of our old ones have forgotten, too. But you spoke as if the individual community of cells could be extended to include integration with all external matter."

"By touch; I have done it myself."

"You mean the extension into the energy units of your hunting club." The delegate smiled depreciatingly. "We all understand that. But a wooden club was once a living thing. Community control over other forms of matter is entirely different."

"No, the machines respond the same way. I made a motor turn over, when it had been idle and without fuel for twenty years. It frightened me when it happened. The energy in the metal was something new, and I couldn't understand the structure at first. But I've thought about it since, and I'm sure--"

"We'll look into the possibilities--after we capture the enemy machines. Our problems at the moment is to get the machines."

The delegates returned to their discussion. They had agreed, long ago, that the only way to attack the skyport was from inside the protective, force-field dome. For years the Almost-men had tried to encourage trade between the skyport and the treaty area, and the resistance council had turned that to their advantage.

Gradually they had increased the number of young men who went to the city with necklaces of animal teeth and meaningless gee-gaws for the tourist trade. The Almost-men had grown used to seeing a mob of men milling on the bridge and in the lower tiers of the city. The council had regularly altered the trading parties, so that every man in the San Francisco colony had been under the dome half a dozen times. They knew their way around in the skyport; they knew the location of the power station and the city arsenal. When the attack came, fifty men in the city would seize the power plant and the rest would attempt to take the arsenal.

One of the hotheads arose from his place beside Gill. "We have discussed this and argued it for almost as long as I can remember," he said. "There is nothing more to be said, for it or against it. Hasn't the time come to take a vote?"

A moderate protested mildly, "But have we weighed all the risks? If we make a mistake now--"

"Can you suggest a better way to get weapons?"

And the moderate admitted, "True, we can't defeat the enemy unless we have weapons comparable to theirs."

It was the last gasp of an old argument. Everything that could be said had already been said; every delegate knew both sides to the debate, and every delegate was driven by the same instinct to make a fight to reclaim his lost world. When the vote was counted, a majority of the council favored war. A committee was appointed to make the final disposition of forces and to set the time for the attack. Lanny was not surprised when Gill was named a member of the committee.

* * * * *

On the afternoon following the meeting, Lanny was assigned to a group of traders so he might learn the geography of the skyport before the attack. As the enemy capital on Earth and a tourist attraction, the San Francisco skyport was a miniature replica of an enemy city. Under the dome were tiers of streets and walkways, interwoven in complex patterns, and the battlement spires of luxury hotels, theatres, cabarets, public buildings. The streets overflowed with a flood of jangling traffic, and the air was filled with the well-to-do riding their de-grav cars in the enviable security of their private capsules.

Lanny's overall impression was a place of intolerable noise and glitter. The Almost-men seemed to make a fetish of their machines. They found it necessary to use their clattering vehicles even though their destination might be a building only one tier away. The air under the dome was fetid with the stench of vehicle fuels.

The trading area was confined to a small, metal-surfaced square on the lowest level of the city, close to the narrow, neutralized vent through the force-field dome. Tall buildings swarmed above the trading booths, blotting out the sun. Lanny felt boxed in, imprisoned by the high walls, choked by the artificial, filtered air.

He sold a satisfactory quota of trade goods to the tourists who had adventured down to the booths. And he dutifully noted the location of the walkway to the power center and the arsenal. But he gave a sigh of relief when his duty was done and he was free to go back across the bridge to the treaty area. He filled his lungs with the crisp, damp air, unsterilized by the fans of the enemy city. How could the Almost-men survive, he wondered, how were they capable of clear-headed thinking, in such seething confusion?

In the treaty areas, where men could put their naked feet upon the soil and feel the life-energy of the earth, where men breathed the fresh wind and held sovereignty over their environment--only there were men really free. Would he trade that for the city walls that blotted out the sun, and the monotonous throbbing of machines? The victor was the slave; the conquered had found the road to liberty. For the first time in his life Lanny understood the paradox. Stated in those terms, what did men actually have to fight for?

As he always did when he had a problem, Lanny went to Juan Pendillo. It was late in the afternoon. Already the cooking fires were being lighted on the small rectangles of earth in front of the houses where the older survivors lived. But Pendillo and Dr. Endhart were still inside, packing away the models which Endhart had used to teach his last class for the day. They usually waited for Lanny or Gill to make their night fire, since Pendillo's sons did the work so effortlessly. Tak Laleen was with the teachers. She sat on the only chair in the room, playing abstractly with one of Endhart's teaching tools--a crude mock-up of the structure of a living energy unit. It was the same sort of learning-toy Lanny himself had been given when he was a child.

Lanny burst in on them excitedly. He began to talk at once, trying to put in words the conviction that had come to him as he stood on the bridge. Suddenly the words were gone. In his own mind it was clear enough, but how was he to explain it? How could he tell them it would be self-destruction to capture the city of the Almost-men?

"You wanted to talk to us?" Pendillo prompted him.

"It--it's this vote we've taken for war, father." Lanny glanced at Tak Laleen. His father and Endhart smiled disarmingly.

"You can talk quite freely," Endhart said. "Tak Laleen knows the vote has been counted. She knows what it means."

"Unarmed men are going to attack the city," the missionary said without expression. "You are very courageous people. But you are certain you will win--against our machines and our energy guns." With a frown, she put aside the model she had been holding. Her face was drawn and tense; there was doubt and fear in her eyes.

"Of course we'll take the skyport," Lanny assured her. "That doesn't worry me. It's what happens afterward--what we do when we have your guns and your machines."

Endhart and Pendillo exchanged glances, in subtle understanding. "The city will belong to us," his father said.

"Why do we want it? The city is a prison!"

The eyes of the elders met again. "We need guns to protect ourselves. Haven't you always said that, Lanny? You've heard all the discussions in the council meetings."

"But do we, father? Answer me honestly."

"You can answer that better than I, my son."

Tak Laleen stood up, wringing her hands. "You will face the force-field and our guns--but you wonder if you need weapons." With an effort she checked the hysterical laughter bubbling in her throat. "My people would say you had gone mad; but who knows the meaning of madness?"

Pendillo took the missionary's hand firmly in his. "She's tired, Lanny. Our ways are still new to her."

"And we've had her cooped up in the house too long," Endhart added.

Pendillo glanced sharply at his friend. Endhart nodded. "It is time," he said cryptically.

Pendillo turned toward his son. "A walk outside would do her good, Lanny."

"Is it safe?"

"She won't try to escape; you and I will go with her."

Pendillo led her toward the door. Her face glowed with hope. She glanced eagerly down the long street, lit by the evening fires. Lanny was sure she was looking for the nearest Chapel of the Triangle, calculating her chances of escape. She was the enemy. What reason did his father or Endhart have to trust her so blindly?

At the door Pendillo turned for a moment toward Endhart. "You'll make sure Gill knows?"

"At the proper time; leave it to me."

"Knows what?" Lanny demanded.

"That we may be a little late for dinner," his father answered blandly. He nodded toward Tak Laleen and Lanny understood.

Lanny walked on one side of Tak Laleen and slid his arm firmly under hers. She kept running her fingers nervously over his arm. She tripped once, when her foot caught in a shallow hole; her nails tore a deep gash in Lanny's flesh as he reached out to keep her from falling. He healed the wound at once, except for a small area where the germ colony needed exposure to the life-energy of the sun. She looked at his arm. Her lips were trembling; her face was white.

"So you can do it, Lanny."

For a moment he had forgotten her remarkable inability. "You mean the healing? All men do that; we always have. A rational mind controls the structure and energy of organized matter."

"I've listened to Dr. Endhart teaching that to the small children," she replied. "It--it is difficult to believe." She began to laugh again; waves of hysteria swept her body. "I'm sorry, Lanny. I've thought, sometimes, that I'm losing my mind. We're never really certain of ourselves, are we? Two plus two doesn't have to make four, I suppose; it's just more convenient when it does."

"I could show you how to heal yourself, Tak Laleen."

"Ever since I came here I've been learning, Lanny. But it does no good unless I'm willing to learn first. My mind is tied down by everything I already know. I can put my two and two together as often as I like, and I still come up with four. Any other answer is insanity."

Twice, as they walked through the streets, Pendillo took a turn which led toward one of the enemy chapels. Lanny swiftly guided the missionary in another direction. The third time they came upon the Chapel of the Triangle suddenly, and before he could pull Tak Laleen back she broke free and fled toward the glowing Triangle, crying for help in her native tongue.

Lanny sprinted after her. Tak Laleen beat with her fists on the metal door. From the air above them came the high whine of a materializing force-field. Capsules swung down upon them. The missionary was swallowed within the church. Lanny and his father were enveloped in a single bubble.

It rose on an automatic beam and arched toward the skyport. In panic Lanny glanced down through the opalescent field at the settlement rolling by beneath them, and the choppy water of the bay, turned scarlet by the setting sun. Pendillo leaned calmly against the curved wall of their prison.

"She betrayed us!" Lanny cried.

"I expected her to, my son."

"You--you knew this would happen?"

"A teacher must sometimes contrive a unique--and possibly painful--learning situation. It's one of the risks of our profession."

"Why, father? She'll tell the Almost-men about the attack on the skyport; she'll tell them--"

Pendillo tapped the curved wall of force. "We're in a tight spot, Lanny. It's up to you to get us out--without a gun and without any of the enemy machines. All you have to work with are your brains and what we've taught you for the past twenty years. I think you can count on some help from Gill later on. He'll have to attack the skyport tonight, without working out all his fine plans for seizing the arsenal. And Gill won't have any guns, either."

"So you and Endhart planned this."

"That's why I insisted on keeping Tak Laleen alive. I thought we might need her as--as a catalyst. The vote of the resistance council rushed things a little, but on the whole I think it worked out quite satisfactorily. Your education is finished, Lanny--for all of you who are the new breed. Now start applying what we think you know."

* * * * *

For a brief time the prison sphere that held Lanny and Juan Pendillo was suspended above the teeming tiers of skyport streets. Enough time, Lanny guessed, for the enemy to question Tak Laleen and to reach some decision based upon what she had to tell them. Abruptly the capsule was hauled down. Lanny and his father were dumped into barred cells buried somewhere in the bowels of the city.

"What will they do with us?" Lanny asked.

From the adjoining cell his father answered placidly, "It depends on Tak Laleen's statement--and how much of it they believe."

"Will they condemn us to readjustment?"

"Undoubtedly, unless you solve our problem first--and these bars seem thoroughly solid to me."

Lanny drew in his breath sharply, suddenly afraid. "What's it like, father--the readjustment?"

"No one knows, really. A machine tears your mind apart and puts it together again--differently."

Lanny shivered as he remembered the half-dozen readjustment cases he had seen in the Santa Barbara treaty area--living shells, with all initiative and individuality drained from their souls. He moved to the barred door of his cell. For a split-second of panic he seized the bars and futilely tried to pry them apart. Slowly edging into his consciousness came a vague awareness of the structural pattern of the energy units in the metal. It was the same extension of his integrated community of cells which he had with his hunting club. His panic vanished; he felt a little ashamed because he had been afraid. It would be no problem to escape.

He held the bars and allowed his mind to feel through the pattern of energy organization. The metal was very different from any of the familiar substances Lanny knew, but far less complex because the arrangement was so rigidly disciplined. There were two things that Lanny might do. He could fit the energy units of his own body past the space intervals of the metal--in effect, passing through the metal barrier. But that would be slow and exacting work. It would require a considerable concentration to move the specialized cells of his body across the metal maze. The second method was easier. As he extended his cerebral integration into the metal, he could rearrange the energy unit pattern. The bars should fragment and fall apart.

Lanny was amazed how rapidly the change took place. Before he could adjust the pattern of more than half a dozen energy units, a chain reaction began. Lanny found he had to absorb an enormous flow of superfluous energy to prevent an explosion.

As soon as he crossed into the corridor, watching photo-electric cells sent an alarm pulsing into the guard room on the tier above. The metal-walled corridor throbbed with the deafening cry of a siren.

Lanny darted toward his father's cell. "Hold the metal and make it over with your mind--just as we integrate with our clubs. It's the same principal, father."

Pendillo shrugged. "I can't, Lanny. I don't know how."

Lanny had no time to weigh the significance of what his father said for the scream of the siren stopped and a guard appeared at the head of the corridor. The guard wrapped himself hastily in the shell of a force-field capsule. He fired his energy gun. The knife of flame arched through the corridor and struck Lanny's face. His body reacted instinctively, absorbing and storing part of the charge and re-constructing the rest so that it became a harmless combination of inert gasses.

But as the blinding flame splashed bright in Lanny's eyes--the way it had once before, when he murdered old Barlow--Lanny's mind faced the traumatic shock of remembering. Lanny had murdered Barlow--he knew that, now--murdered him with a blaze of energy which he had stored when he brushed against the force-field capsule surrounding Tak Laleen.

It was not the fact of murder that had clamped the strait-jacket of forgetfulness on Lanny's mind and allowed him to think Tak Laleen had killed Barlow. He had known, for one split-second, the full maturity of the education Pendillo had given his sons. Known it too soon, with too little preparation. Now he understood why he had felt ashamed, why he'd retreated deliberately from the truth: because he had killed Barlow to resolve an old argument, not to be rid of a traitor. The method of murder had, ironically, given him the answer to Barlow's poison of despair; but because the two had happened simultaneously, the emotional shock of one had affected the other.

The bursting charge of energy washed away his absurdly exaggerated sense of guilt. He achieved the mature integration he had lost before; his mind was whole again. The integration was nothing new--merely a restatement of what Pendillo had taught him, what all the treaty area teachers taught the new children. The mind of man could control the energy structure of matter. Pendillo called that rationality. But matter and energy were synonymous. The teachers had implied that without teaching it directly. A mind that could heal a body wound was also able to control the energy blast from an enemy gun.

* * * * *

From his father's cell Lanny heard a stifled groan. He looked back. The bars of the cell had been twisted by the blast; Pendillo was badly hurt. His wounds seemed to be extensive, but Lanny was sure his father would heal himself quickly.

Lanny sprang at the guard. The Almost-man had enough courage to hold his ground, still sure of his impregnable machines. He was aiming his energy gun again when Lanny touched the opalescent capsule. That, too, was nothing now; Lanny had found his way into the new world. The field of force was simply energy in another form. Lanny could have reshaped the field, intensified it, or dissolved it as he chose.

He shattered the capsule, like a bubble of glass. He smashed the gun aside. The guard stood before him, stripped of his mechanical armor--a man, facing his enemy as a man.

As the guard turned to run, Lanny reached out for him leisurely. Weakly the guard swung his fist at Lanny's face. Lanny laughed and slapped at the ineffectual, white hand. The guard howled and clutched the broken fingers against his mouth. Desperately he kicked at Lanny with his metal-soled boots. Lanny dodged. The unexpected momentum sent the guard reeling and he had no efficient capsule to hold him up.

He sprawled on the metal floor close to his energy gun. He grasped for the weapon as Lanny leaped toward him. For one brief moment Lanny saw madness film his enemy's eyes. Then the guard began to scream. He thrust the muzzle of the energy gun against his own chest and pressed the firing stud.

Lanny turned away from the smoldering heap of charred flesh and went back to his father's cell. He disorganized the energy units of the tormented knot of metal bars and knelt beside Pendillo. Lanny was amazed that his father had made no effort to heal his wounds. Juan was bleeding profusely; his eyes were glazed with pain. Lanny lifted Pendillo tenderly in his arms.

"Father! You must begin the healing--"

"I do not know how, Lanny."

"All men control their own body cells!"

"So you were taught, and what a man believes is true--for him."

Cautiously Lanny extended his energy integration into his father's body. It was something he had never done before with a living man. The weak disorganization of cells frightened him. Clearly Pendillo was telling the truth; he was incapable of ordering his own healing. Then how had he taught his sons so well, if he could not use the technique himself?

Hesitantly Lanny released into his father's body some of the energy he had stored. He wasn't sure what the effect would be, but it seemed to help. Pendillo tried to smile; his eyes became clearer.