The Fury Out of Time (23 page)

“We’re going back to Earth.”

“Is that all? From the look on your face I thought you’d lost your U.O. again. I’ll tell Wilurzil.”

The Overseer came to the landing dome to see them off. Karvel and Marnox boarded the Shuttle; Wilurzil hung back.

“Aren’t you coming?” Karvel called to her.

“The Overseer has invited me to stay,” she answered.

The Overseer flashed a triumphant grin. “Good luck with the operation. I’ll look in on you to see how you’re getting along, but probably not very soon.”

Karvel seated himself beside Marnox, shaking his head bewilderedly. An enormous lapse of time had altered woman’s appearance almost beyond recognition, and changed her fickle nature not at all.

But that was no surprise to Bowden Karvel

Chapter 7

On the third day after his operation Karvel had three visitors: the leaders of the cities of Bribun, Galdu, and Lewir. These men were neither doddering oldsters nor naive woodsmen. They were administrative heads of enormous cities, and they were intelligent, shrewd, and competent—and suspicious. Merely bringing them together in Karvel’s presence represented a substantial diplomatic achievement.

Karvel watched their faces intently while he spoke, and learned nothing. He paused frequently for questions or comment, and received none. He had no way of knowing whether their solemn expressions conveyed shock, anger, or boredom.

They remained silent when he finished, sending fleeting glances about the hydrotherapy room, watching the foam bubbling around Karvel’s immersed leg, studying Karvel, exchanging long, meaningful looks with each other.

It was the Galdu leader who spoke first.
“Individuals?
The Overseer trades our people to. . .to
individuals?”

“He does.”

“And. . .they are then the servants of the will of those individuals?”

“They are.”

“What of their cities?”

“On Earth all people are the property of their cities. On other worlds this is not so. Men choose their own cities, change them at will, and follow pursuits of their own choosing. Their cities do not own them.”

“They own each other?”

“No. Only the people of Earth are owned—owned by the individuals to whom the Overseer trades them. Had you no notion at all of what happens to those the Overseer takes in trade?”

“We knew that he traded some of our people away to other worlds,” Galdu said slowly, “but we suspected nothing like this. There are cities on other worlds, and we naturally thought—” He broke off, and a moment later he said incredulously, “The Overseer trades the citizens of Earth to. . .to
individuals?”

In a world where there was not even individual ownership of material things, the ownership of one human by another was inconceivable. Finally they began to understand, and with their understanding came anger.

“We did not suspect such a thing,” the leader of Lewir said. “How could we? On Earth it would not even be possible.”

“Your mistake was in having no interest in your people after you traded them.”

“How could we have an interest in what was no longer ours? Anyway, many of the people the Overseer acquires in trade are traded to other Earth cities. And he does not trade only people—he trades everything. If we should have a temporary shortage of grain, for example, rather than attempt to find a city with a surplus we notify the Overseer. All of the cities tell him what they have to trade, and he obtains the grain, perhaps in exchange for fuel. We might trade him a young doctor for the grain. This is much more convenient than dealing directly with other cities, because the Overseer can supply whatever is wanted. An individual city cannot often do that.”

“What would the Overseer do with the young doctor?” Karvel asked.

“He would trade him to a city that had a need for a doctor. He would receive in return whatever the city had in surplus, or—”

“People?”

“Yes. He might receive a hundred or more untrained young people for a doctor.”

“Then your economy works on a barter system, and the common denominator is people. The Overseer sees that the needs of all of the cities are satisfied, and in the process he converts his own gains into as many untrained young people as possible—to be sold into slavery.”

Karvel leaned back and watched the foam bubble around the leg. He still thought of it as
the
leg. Later, perhaps, he would accept its four-toed structure as part of himself, but after three days it still seemed more alien than the artificial leg it had replaced.

“There is the U.O. to consider,” the Bribun leader said.

Karvel nodded. The leader from Galdu met his eyes, and said simply, “It must not happen again.”

“It must not,” Karvel repeated firmly.

“You wish to leave in the U.O.?” Bribun asked Karvel. “You will undertake to see that it does not come here again?”

“That is my intention,” Karvel said. “I cannot promise success, because I do not know what I will find in the distant past. I do not know what manner of creatures these unhuman beings are. I do not even know if a man can survive such a tremendous journey in time. But I shall do my best.”

“Is there anything that you require?”

“A few small things. The urgent need is to place the U.O. where the Overseer cannot take possession of it.”

“That shall be done at once,” Bribun said. “I will send a message.”

“The Overseer might intercept it. His people frequently listen in on Earth messages.”

“A messenger, then. May I have a messenger?”

Karvel waved Marnox into the room, and he listened to Bribun’s message, grinned at Karvel, and hurried away.

“Thank you,” Karvel said to Bribun. “I wish that the slave trade could be dealt with that easily. If you refuse to trade your people to the Overseer, the Overseer will not supply the fuel and fertilizer and other things you need. Earth is a worn-out planet. It cannot support itself. Its cities will starve.”

Exactly how the problem looked to them Karvel could not guess, but to him it represented a horrendous injustice. Earth had spent its resources generously to send its people to the stars. Now, with its resources exhausted, its remaining people could support themselves only by selling each other. Earth was an aged parent that had impoverished itself for its ungrateful children, and it deserved better of them.

But Earth was not wholly blameless in the matter. The inception of the evil lay in the cities’ ownership of their citizens. A man owned by a government was as much a slave as a man owned by an individual, and in some cases the government would be the more exacting master.

Clearly Earth’s only hope lay in an appeal to the government of worlds—and the only way to communicate with it was through the Overseer.

Medical attendants interrupted them to remove the leg from the churning liquid, dry it, and cushion it into position under stinging jets of air. The doctors had finally conceded the practicality of two simultaneous operations, so that a normal male leg could be shortened at the same time that it was joined to Karvel. The leg was still immobilized in a brace, but there was feeling in it, and the toes moved easily at his distant command. He was aware of a persistent, searing itch in the small toe, which was missing, and lesser itches along the two invisible scar lines—but even this did not make the leg seem a part of him.

When Karvel turned again to his visitors he expected to find them sharing his pessimism. Instead they were watching him confidently. They actually believed that he was about to offer them a solution, much as an audience would expect a magician to produce a rabbit from a demonstrably empty hat.

He said weakly, “If there were one leader for all of your cities and all of the tribes of Unclaimed People, you would be better able to contend with the Overseer.”

“I doubt that the cities would consent to such a thing,” Galdu said. “Even if they did there would be difficulties. The distant cities have different languages, and we know little about the cities across the oceans.”

“You must talk with other leaders, and see what can be done. Together you have at least a measure of strength. Divided you are helpless.”

Finally they realized that he could give them nothing but advice. They arranged to meet with him again, but they were glum when they took their leave.

“It’s their problem,” Karvel told himself, though without much conviction. “I really can’t take on any more mountains.” He was fighting the numbing certitude that his own mission had been delayed too long, that a vengeful twentieth century might at that moment be arming a U.O. for atomic retaliation—in the wrong direction.

Marnox burst into the room, panting despairingly. “The Overseer beat us. His men got there this morning and took your dratted sphere to the moon.”

“All right,” Karvel said.

“If you’d let me go yesterday—”

“You couldn’t have done anything. We needed the leaders’ support, and we couldn’t get them together until today. The Overseer isn’t stupid. He couldn’t be expected to let pleasure interfere with business indefinitely, and it was bound to occur to him that I couldn’t be trusted on the same planet with the U.O.”

“What do we do now?”

“Think of something else.”

“We can’t steal it unlawfully from the moon. The Overseer—”

“Controls the transportation. I know.”

Marnox lifted his hands helplessly.

The leader of Lewir came in, and listened silently while Marnox repeated his story. “It would seem that the Overseer is suspicious,” he said. “I have had a message from him. He asks when you will be sufficiently recovered to return to the moon.”

“Will I really be able to walk tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

“If you say so. In my time a cut finger took this long to heal.”

“Do you have a plan?” Marnox demanded.

“A sort of a plan, but first I may have to learn to walk. Would you ask the Overseer to send the Shuttle for me day after tomorrow?”

“Certainly,” Lewir said.

“How many men could we pack into it? Twelve? Could you find twelve young men who won’t mind a fight?”

Lewir stroked his bald head thoughtfully. “Twelve men from Galdu, perhaps. The physical arts are stressed at Galdu.”

“Get them. Get the roughest twelve young men they have. Marnox, I left my rifle and pack with the Unclaimed People near Bribun.”

Marnox left without a word.

“We need an excuse for sending so many men to the moon,” Karvel said. “Could you arrange an emergency trade of some kind?”

“It would be very irregular. Normally the Overseer keeps records, and people are exchanged only on a Day of Settlement.”

“When is that?”

“The Overseer informs us.”

“I see. When he has transportation for a new load of slaves, he asks you to settle your accounts. It saves him the trouble of feeding his slaves, and looking after them, between ships.”

Lewir winced. “I could say that we have received more men than we need from Galdu in payment for the doctors we sent to replace those who were killed. I could ask him to take them now.”

“Do that.”

“It will be an unusual request. He might be suspicious. Do you really have a plan?”

Karvel smiled wistfully. “I have the feeling that I’ve dedicated my entire life to the theft of that damned U.O. One of these times I’m going to bring it off.”

Karvel stepped forward cautiously as the Shuttle settled onto the city’s tallest tower. The leg was no longer merely joined to him. It was his servant, it obeyed his wishes; but he continued to regard it as an honored guest, in delicate health, rather than as a member of the family. He babied it.

He also had a precarious sensation of lopsidedness. The people of the future had short, wide feet that were phenomenally flat. The shoe that he’d worn on his artificial leg would not fit his new foot, and probably would have been uncomfortable if it had. The wide, flat footwear they were able to furnish was extremely uncomfortable on his other foot. He retained his own shoe on his own foot, and wore an ovular, flat, hard-soled moccasin on the foot of his joined leg, and felt lopsided.

One of the doctors suggested, with more jocularity than Karvel had thought existed among these people, that they replace his good leg, just to even things up. “Nothing doing,” Karvel told him. “It might start a trend, and before I knew it I’d be outnumbered.”

The Shuttle’s air lock slid open, and the pilot jumped down unceremoniously. “Where are the six men?” he asked.

“Twelve men,” Karvel said. “Here they are.”

“We have no use for twelve. The Overseer said to bring six.”

“You heard wrong. Twelve men for trade, plus two passengers.”

“Six,” the pilot said firmly. “Come along. These two trips to Lewir have ruined my schedule.”

Karvel looked helplessly at Lewir’s leader. The Overseer had more than a dozen staff members at the base, plus an unknown number of Earthmen and the Shuttle and cargo carrier pilots who came and went. He had no idea what weapons they might have, and his rifle and pistol were the total armament of the planet Earth, where men fought with bare hands on the rare occasions when they came to blows, and had no word for
weapon.
He had fashioned blackjacks for his men, but even with the twelve he would have to rely heavily on surprise if his coup were to succeed. He did not dare to confront the Overseer in his lair with fewer men than that.