The Reefs of Space Page 3

  "That wasn't on Friday." Donna Creery’s eyes were veiled, strange. "According to the records in your folder, you were taken into precautionary custody at eighteen hundred hours on a Monday afternoon. That leaves at least three days missing from your story."

  Ryeland gulped.

  "That couldn't be!" He shook his head. "Oddball and the teletype girl had just gone out—"

  "I studied your folder with considerable care." She failed to say why. "I am certain that you were picked up on a Monday."

  Ryeland felt a tingle of excitement. This was more than he had ever been able to learn about the case against him.

  "I suppose it's possible," he muttered. "At first I was in a place miscalled a recreation center, somewhere underground. We weren't allowed to inquire where. The therapy sessions went on around the clock. I had no way of knowing the time or the date.

  "But I still don't know how to build a reactionless propulsion system. And I still believe that the Machine has permitted itself to make a mistake."

  Donna Creery shook her head reprovingly.

  Ryeland stopped, the collar tight around his neck. This was crazy! Staying here like this with the Planner's daughter! He said abruptly, harshly: "Miss Creery, I'm interrupting your bath. I must go!"

  She laughed, like a shimmer of pale music. "I don't want you to," she coaxed.

  "But—your bath—"

  "I always stay in the tub in these subtrain rides, Steven. It's comfortable, when the up-grav drag begins to work. And don't worry about my father. He rules the world—under the Plan, of course! But he doesn't rule me." She was smiling. She could hardly be twenty, Rye-land thought ruefully, but there was no more doubt in his mind that she knew she was a woman. She said comfortably: "Sit down, Steven. There. On the bench."

  One slim arm, wearing wristlets of foam, gestured at an emerald bench next to the tub. The doves moved nervously as he approached. Donna Creery said: "Don't be afraid of my Peace Doves." He looked quizzically at the silver-steel beaks. "Oh, I'm sorry they hurt your friend," she apologized, "but they thought he was going to hurt me. You see, even without the guard I am protected."

  She waved a hand, and faint music seeped into the room from concealed speakers. "What was the girl like?" she demanded.

  "She was beautiful," he said shortly.

  "And dangerous?"

  He nodded, but under the heavy weight of the collar the stiff hairs at the back of his neck were trying to rise. Dangerous? This girl was far more dangerous to him. He had no right to be here. The Machine would not be blind to this. But Donna Creery said soothingly: "Tell me about her. Was she really lovely?"

  "I believed she was. She had long yellow hair and green eyes. Eyes like yours. And she was in the secret police, but I didn't know that until the day of the raid."

  Laughter pealed from the girl's lips, and the Peace Doves fluttered their wings fretfully for balance. "And she betrayed you. Are you afraid I might? But I won't, Steven, I promise."

  He shrugged. “I’ve told you. I suppose I was lucky, at that. I was sent to a maximum-security camp. It could have been the Body Bank."

  She tilted her head to ponder that, and he watched the red glints flow through the dark waves of her hair. At last she sighed and said, "And for that you became a Risk. But you should have been more careful, Steven. You should not have defied the Plan. And now you have to wear that collar. Can't you get it off?"

  He laughed sharply.

  She said seriously: "No, I suppose not. But if I were you, I think I might. You said you were a mathematician. If I were a mathematician, and wore the collar, it would be only one more problem for me. I would find a way to solve it."

  He said with a touch of anger: 'The collar was invented by Colonel Zamfirescu, the best engineer in the Technicorps—before he was salvaged himself. He thought of everything."

  "It's only a metal band, Steven."

  "The toughest armor plate in the world! And inside it there's a decapitation charge, fused with a hydrogen power cell—it won't last forever, no, but it will keep full power for a century! And that's longer than I can wait. And the collar's booby-trapped. If I try to cut it open— if I even try to unlock it, and use the wrong key, or turn it the wrong way—it will kill me on the spot. Have you ever seen a decapitation charge go off, Miss Creery? I have."

  She shuddered, but she said: "If I were you, I would run away."

  "Not very far! Radar runs faster. And even if you could get away—out to the Cold Planets, say, or to one of the orbiting stations around Mercury—there's a timing device in the collar. It has to be reset periodically, with a key. If not—boom. And you never know when; just that it will be less than a year."

  "Oh." She shook her head sadly. "Then you must take it off," she said wisely.

  He laughed out loud; he couldn't help it. The idea was preposterous!

  "Don't laugh, Steven. Ron Donderevo did," she told him.

  "Donderevo! What do you know about Donderevo?"

  She said, "Oh, a little. I knew him, you see, when I was very small. I remember seeing him with the collar— and I saw him again, without."

  He stopped, staring. He began: "You saw Donderevo—"

  But there was a sudden, harsh knocking at the door. "Miss Creery!" a worried male voice clamored. "The Planner has sent for that Risk!"

  Ryeland sat bolt upright. For a moment he had forgotten; the voice had brought him back to the realities of his life.

  The girl said, "You'll have to go, Steven." She whispered, and one of the Peace Doves restlessly rose from her shoulders and circled the room, its hot red eyes fixed on Ryeland. It touched the door, and without sound the door opened. "Be careful," the girl said gently. "And don't think too much about Angela."

  "All right," Ryeland said, numb, walking like a mechanical man to where the radar-horned officer of the Planner's guard waited for him, with an expression like malevolent granite. It wasn't until the door had slid silently closed behind him that he remembered he had never mentioned the name of the girl who betrayed him, his teletype girl, Angela Zwick.

  For all of Ryeland's life the Planner had been watching him. That fearless, genial, giant face had looked down on him from stereo posters in the home of his parents, the barracks of the Technicubs, the classrooms of his school—in every public square, and all the laboratories and buildings where he had worked. Ryeland knew that face as well as his own father's—better—and so did every other human alive.

  The Planner sat behind a great hardwood desk in a chair that was all air cushions and cunning springs. He was looking absorbedly through a folder of papers on his desk. Uncomfortably Ryeland stood waiting.

  There was no resemblance between the Planner and his daughter. She was brunette and lovely, with the face of a child saint; he was square and silver, a lion's face. His hair was short, gray-white; it sat firmly on his head like a collision mat And over his head, on the back of the great chair, a steel-gray raven sat frozen; but it was not an ornament, for slowly metal-sheathed eyes opened and tiny bright red eyes peered out at Ryeland.

  At last the Planner looked up and smiled. He said in a velvet bass voice: "Son, don't you check in?"

  Ryeland jumped. "Oh. Sorry, sir." He hurried over to the gold-plated teletype and tapped out his name. The station plate on the machine said simply: "ONE".

  The old man chuckled. "You're Steven Ryeland. I saw you once before, but you wouldn't remember that."

  Ryeland started. "Sir?"

  "It was a long time ago, boy," the Planner said contemplatively. "I visited your home; you were a baby. Don't look shocked. You see, I knew your father."

  Ryeland staggered. He was half floating as the hurtling sphere reached maximum velocity, hundreds of miles under the open air; but it was not that which made him dizzy, nor even the fact that he had not eaten for nearly a full day; it was this man on the other side of the desk. He said incredulously: "Sir, my parents never said anything about knowing the Planner. Surely they would have been proud..
. ."

  The Planner laughed, a glorious huge laugh. "My boy," he cried, "it's a wise child, eh? And you are not that wise. You don't know much about your parents. They were not proud of knowing me at all; they were ashamed because, you see, your father hated me very much." He nodded, the smile drying on his face. His voice became like the rasp of a file. "Your father was an enemy of the Plan!" he barked.

  "Sir," Ryeland protested, "I don't know anything about my father. He disappeared when I was young. And my mother never told me that."

  "She wouldn't," the Planner said savagely. "She was a dangerous woman, but not a stupid one. Neither of your parents were stupid, Ryeland; so how is it that you are?"

  Ryeland said baffled: "Sir?"

  "You're a Risk!" rasped the Planner. "You should not have dared defy the Plan. That was an act of stupidity!"

  Ryeland took a deep breath. Perhaps this was his chance to get his case on the record. He began: "Sir, let me explain. I had no intention of defying the Plan. There was a girl who reported me, and the Machine reclassified me as a Risk. I think this was an error, but—"

  "You question the Machine?"

  "No, sir. Not the Machine, but the information that—"

  "Never mind!” snapped the Planner. "I don't want you to incriminate yourself further. You are your father's son, and you must remember that everything you do is suspect for that reason."

  It took Ryeland's breath away. For a moment he couldn't speak. He stood there, weaving slightly in the unsteady footing as the sphere rolled restlessly about in the beginning of its up-drive back to the surface.

  Then he burst out: "Sir, do I understand you? You're saying that the Machine considers me a Risk because of what my father may have done before I was born! That's not fair. That's—"

  "Fair!" bellowed the Planner, while the raven opened its tiny eyes and whirred restlessly over his head. "What sort of word is that, Ryeland? 'Fairness.' 'Freedom.' 'Democracy.' All those words your father used to use, they run in the blood. And they mean nothing. What does fairness have to do with seventeen hundred and fifty calories a day?

  "Fairness," he sneered, "is used up, gone, spent! Do you know what your blessed ancestors did, boy? They mined 'fairness' and 'democracy' from the untapped resources of the world. They didn't invent them, they mined them—just as the old farmers mined minerals from their cornfields, twenty crops of corn and a foot of soil! Well, the topsoil's gone now. And so is fairness and freedom. The world is a closed system now boy, and there isn't enough to go around!"

  The ferocity of the outburst left Ryeland stunned. "But—but sir," he said, "surely the far planets offer new frontiers, new resources—"

  "Be still!" barked the Planner, the square silver head thrust forward like a hammer. Above him the steel-grey falcon whirred threateningly.

  The Planner glowered up at Ryeland, shifting his position in the compensating chair as the subtrain began its up-grav thrust. Weight came back to normal, then more than normal. Planner Creery said: "Ryeland, you're like your father. He never learned that the frontier was gone, but you must. The Plan of Man is based upon a systematic reduction of the pernicious personal liberties that almost destroyed our world. War! Dust bowls! Floods! Forest fires!" Each word was a foul epithet; he spat them at Ryeland. "We have to pay the bill for the waste that has gone before—waste that your father, and those like him, would have spread. Never forget it, boy!"

  Ryeland stood silent. There was no reasoning with this man; there was a power and assurance that a gun might shatter, but no human power ever could. After a moment Ryeland said: "I haven't forgotten." Nor ever would, he thought. Not while the collar weighed around his neck.

  "The collar bothers you," said the Planner surprisingly, and grinned. It was as though he had read Ryeland's thoughts—easy enough, Ryeland realized. "But we all wear them, boy. Each one of us, from the Planner down to the castoffs waiting for salvage in the Body Bank, must account to the Machine for every hour of every day; and each of us wears the Machine's shackle. On some of us they're intangible," he explained gravely "and I admit that that does make a difference."

  Unwillingly Ryeland smiled. Not only power, he realized; the man had personality, charm—even to use on a Risk.

  "But if you like," the Planner added, off-handedly "you can get that particular collar off your own particular neck."

  For a moment Ryeland couldn't believe what he had heard. "Get the collar off, sir?"

  The Planner nodded majestically. He shifted his position again, touching a button. The massive, cushioned chair inclined slightly backward. The raven flapped with a tinkling metallic sound into the air, hovering, as a neck-rest rose out of the chair's back and enveloped the Planner's silver head. The subtrain sphere was well into its upward thrust now. A faint squeal filtered through the soundproofing of the room—testimony of the pressure that forced the car against the invisible, unfeelable wall of electrostatic force. It wasn't friction that made the squeal, but a heterodyne of vibrations from the generators that drove the car. Ryeland staggered as his weight grew.

  The Planner said suddenly: "We are all bound to the Plan in one way or another. I must try to find unbreakable links that can replace your iron collar—or you must find them yourself; then the collar can come off."

  Ryeland said desperately: "Surely my work proves that I am loyal."

  "Surely it does not!" the Planner mocked. He shook his head like a great father hear with a naugbty cub. "It is not what you have done already," he reproved, "but what you can do now that will matter. You have worked freely, Ryeland; perhaps brilliantly, but you must work within the Plan. Always. Every moment. The Planning Machine will assign you a task. If you complete it—"

  He shrugged, with an effort.

  Ryeland was gasping now, the sag of his flesh a trap as the subtrain sphere forced its way up from Earth's molten center. He wanted to talk—question the Planner

  —perhaps learn the secret of those missing days. But his body refused. All around them was white-hot rock under pressure; only the electrostatic hoops kept it out; they were down many miles, but now rising. It was like an elevator again, but going up. The vertical component of the sphere's speed was rapidly reaching a hundred and fifty miles an hour; and even the Planner's voice, cushioned and protected as he was, began to grow hoarse and slow.

  "You'd better go now, Ryeland," he grumbled. "But would you like to know what your task will be?"

  Ryeland didn't answer—he couldn't; but his eyes answered for him. The Planner chuckled slowly. "Yes, of course. The Machine thinks you can handle it. It sounds

  —Well," said the Planner thoughtfully, "we each have our part to play, and mine is not necessarily to understand everything the Machine requires. Your task is to develop a jetless drive."

  Ryeland rocked, and clutched frantically at the edge of the Planner's huge desk. "A—a jetless drive?"

  The Planner looked somberly amused. "I see," he said. "Perhaps your task does not include understanding it either? But that is what the Machine asks of you."

  "You mean—" Ryeland tried to recover his breath. "You mean, a reactionless propulsion system?"

  "Precisely."

  "Do you know that your torture experts—your reconstruction therapists—have been trying for three years to make me tell them how to build a jetless drive? They seem to think I know how."

  "I know." The big man shrugged. "I know their efforts failed. The Machine had received information that you had designed such a mechanism. Apparently that information was mistaken. But the past three years have made such a device more than ever essential to the security of the Plan—more than ever dangerous to the Plan, if it should fall into unfriendly hands.

  "The Machine requires a jetless drive. Its records of your abilities and achievements indicate that you are qualified to develop such a device. I have decided to disregard the evidence of your unplanned behavior, the problem of whether your amnesia is real or assumed, voluntary or not. If you want to come out of your co
llar in one piece, you will design a working method of reactionless propulsion. Now," he said in an exhausted voice, "you must go."

  Through a haze Ryeland saw him make a faint motion with the huge gnarled hand that lay on the arm of his chair. The raven shifted position ever so little and beat the air frantically with its steel wings. Across the room a door opened.

  One of the Planner's guard officers came in. He was a giant of a man, but he stepped very carefully under the thrust of the sphere's climb.

  "Ryeland," whispered the great old man behind the desk.

  Ryeland turned, half leaning on the officer in guard blue.

  "About my daughter," said the Planner softly. The squeal had become a roar, almost drowning him out. "Donna has a soft heart, which she inherited from her mother; but her brain she inherited from me. Do not attach importance to the fact that she allowed you to talk with her in her bath." And the old man's eyes closed, as the Planner allowed his head to slump back at last.

  Chapter 3

  Machine Major Chatterji said comfortingly: "You'll like us here, Ryeland. We're a brisk outfit, brisk."

  "Yes, sir." Ryeland looked around him. He was in a steel-walled cubicle with a Security designation. He had no idea where on, or under, Earth he might be.

  "You don't have to worry about nonsense," the major chattered. "Get the work done, that's all we care about."

  Ryeland nodded. The little major moved with the youthful grace of a kitten. He wore the radar-horned helmet of a risk-pusher debonairly, as though it were part of a fancy-dress costume. He caught Ryeland's glance.

  "Oh, that," he said, embarrassed. "Confounded nuisance, of course. But you are a Risk and the Machine's orders—"

  "I'm used to it."

  "Not that you're the only Risk here," Major Chatterji added quickly. "Heavens, no! Some of our best men, and all that."

  Ryeland interrupted, "Excuse me, Major." He bent to the teletype and rapidly typed out his identification number and the fact that he had arrived. Without delay the teletype rapped out: