Underkill, page 17
Ann’s face was composed but her grip on Malcolm’s hand was threatening to crush his fingers as she said, “I know we didn’t utter a word, but I think we must have said the wrong thing.”
Chapter Seventeen Major Surgery
They were expecting the worst to happen—a visit from one of the Guardians, the sudden hissing of lethal gas, oblivion in one form or another. What actually happened was that the dome went opaque and they were once again surrounded by the sights and sounds of the reorientation programme. They were still expecting the worst, but they could not help watching and listening.
Earth’s population was only a fraction of that of Plessat, but the number of concealed sensors covering the planet was many times greater.
There were sight and sound pick-ups in all of the important government agencies, military and City Security departments, medical and educational establishments, and in a shockingly large number of private dwellings as well. Not every tree in every jungle was bugged, but the houses of the village headmen were, as was much of the equipment used by local guerrilla forces and armed protesters. Every point where decisions were being made or where trends were becoming manifest or where key actions were taking place—all had their sensors.
The sheer numbers of the devices required, the degree of technological sophistication contained in the pinhead-sized devices, and the vast quantity of data which was being instantly processed and translated by the Trennechorans was mind-staggering. The Malcolms were not so much ignorant natives watching a television set, they were like Bell or Marconi watching the same set and realising how truly magical it was.
“The clinical picture of the patient,” said Malcolm, trying to loosen Ann’s grip on his hand, “is complete in every detail. Is treatment to be medical or surgical, do you think?”
“They seem to think Earth is a case for major surgery, I’d say,” Ann replied. Then her voice broke and she cried, “How can we stop these…these super-intelligent and ultra-ethical bloody murderers? And don’t look at me like that, I know they’ve probably got this place bugged along with everywhere else. But they would have to be stupid to believe that two people in our line of work would, or could even pretend to, like what they’re doing.”
Malcolm nodded, then gestured towards the projection encircling them and said, “I don’t think there is anything we can do. The operation is already beginning…”
The scene was a City Security control centre. Neither the city nor the country was identified and the language spoken, which should have been an indicator, was being translated so rapidly—if it was, in fact, being translated for this sequence—that the process was indetectable.
An officer, grey-haired and face grey-tinged with fatigue, was saying, “Eighteen living blocks decimated last night, five the night before! An average of eight thousand people in each block, all killed by asphyxiation or crushed in the ensuing panic. The same modus operandi, a few disciplined and highly-trained saboteurs who knew exactly what to do to achieve the maximum effect. Who are these saboteurs? What demands are they making?”
“We don’t know,” said the senior officer present. He was a much younger man than the first speaker, but the lines around his mouth and the dark smudges under his eyes gave him a prematurely aged look.
“I know that we aren’t supposed to exchange information about our problems these days,” the grey-haired officer went on, “but there are rumours to the effect that our opposite numbers all over the world are having similar trouble, exactly similar trouble. Is this true?”
The senior officer nodded.
“Speaking as a psychologist,” said a young officer in a very untidy uniform, “I would say that this city is in a highly unstable condition. Food distribution is becoming a bad joke, more than half the supplies disappear before they reach the centres, which means that the law-abiding citizenry are becoming angrier and hungrier with every hour that passes. These massacres cannot be concealed from them, so they feel frightened and helpless as well. They are going to react and, because the killers and food-stealers are not being punished, their reaction will be directed largely towards ourselves. Plainly, so far as they arc concerned, we will not have done our duty. We will not have given them protection under the law.
“They are far too angry to realise,” he went on, “that we can only function effectively against a very small proportion of law-breakers within a population, and when that proportion increases by even a few per cent, we cannot function at all. To act effectively we must have the widespread and positive support of the citizens.
“But support for the Security departments is no longer forthcoming,” he continued, a note of anger creeping into his tone, “because we have been forced into a position of waging all-out war on the law-breakers while ignoring the law-abiding, simply because they are law-abiding and make no trouble for us. But in any police action, even a minor food riot or traffic incident, IB casualties are always high. Granted the protesters and political action groups have no regard at all for the number of innocent bystanders they kill, but we are supposed to protect the innocent, law-abiding people—”
“Inspector,” the senior officer broke in, “stating the obvious does not make it go away, regardless of whose sins of omission or commission were the original cause. We are stuck with this situation, so what do we do right now?”
“Now,” replied the psychologist, “we take urgent steps to protect ourselves and to retain our integrity as an organisation against the time when—”
“Things return to normal?” asked an unidentified voice.
“Things will never return to normal,” the police psychologist replied. “But we must retain our identity and purpose until the present trouble burns itself out. We will do this by ensuring that we obtain our own supplies of food by whatever means are necessary. We must also protect key installations such as powerhouses, news media, hospitals, food processing plants and the personnel associated with them. Regrettably, the rest of the population will be right out of luck.”
“Surely we are being a bit harsh,” said the senior officer, but it was obvious from his tone that he was making a statement and not asking a question.
“We are harsh, sir,” replied the psychologist. “There are too many people for us to be otherwise. We have neither the time nor the manpower available to change.”
“Why not accede to the demands of this protest group…?” began the grey-haired officer. He was interrupted by another voice saying angrily, “But what the hell do they want?”
“I think,” said the psychologist very seriously, “they want to kill people…”
The small room was quiet with the quality of silence which was obtainable only at a considerable distance underground. Two officers sat before a twin console, their beribboned uniforms hanging loosely on age-shrunken shoulders. From the necks hung the two bright metal keys which together would open the arming device in the centre of their console, and their eyes looked everywhere but at the big red firing button inside its locked, transparent cover.
The voice from the console’s speaker sounded unnaturally loud as it said, “Silos One to Ten and Thirty-one to forty reprogramming complete. Changes follow. Silo One, was TM42, now TT12. Silo Two, was RW5, now TT53. Silo Three, was PT227, now TT57. Silo Four, no change…”
The voice continued to recite target coding changes for a few minutes, then clicked off. One of the old men said worriedly, “TT53 and TT57 are not military targets, while TM42 most definitely is. What is going on?”
“How many people, I wonder,” said the second old man musingly, “know that places like this still exist. That the Powerdown left us virtually untouched, because solid fuel rockets and nuclear warheads don’t need all that much power, and there is always enough food and fuel made available for an installation like this. When people don’t trust each other, there are always places like this.”
“Take RW5, now,” said the other man, continuing his own half of a different conversation. “That is in the Urals, a place like this one and which deserves to be clobbered, just as we deserve to be clobbered. But instead they are reprogramming for earthquake fault lines and dense population centres of questionable strategic value.”
“It’s an isolated life,” his companion went on, “but far more comfortable than the life of the starving and sweating civilians outside. I’m glad my parents decided to stay here.”
“In our day,” said the other officer, “the idea was to paralyse the other side’s capability for making a retaliatory strike, then take out ports, manufacturing centres and…This is a complete reversal of doctrine. I can’t see any reason for it unless we are trying to pressure the other side by threatening a massive strike against their population, in which case the casualty figures would be so high that the countries concerned might give in and—”
“Give in to what?” said the other old man, reacting to his companion’s words for the first time. “Nobody is demanding anything that I know of. And hitting at each other’s civilians while ignoring military installations, if that is what they have in mind, is simply urban terrorism on a world scale. Political activists knock off innocent bystanders and not each other. Are you suggesting that the launching sites on each side will not be hit, by mutual agreement?”
“I’m not sure,” said the other man.
His companion was silent for a moment, then he said, “It takes two of us to arm that thing. We were chosen originally because of our stable, well-integrated personalities and the purity of our idealogical motivation. If the red light goes on, will you unlock your half?”
Before the other man could reply there was an interruption from the speaker.
“Arming Room, Control here. Your reliefs are on the way, gentlemen. The recognition phrase for today is ‘Luke needs John’.”
” Arming Room, we copy,” said the first old man. To his companion he added, “Maybe we won’t be on duty when it happens.”
The wind lifted the thin, powdery soil and laid it down again as a fine grey film of dust on the branches of the desiccated trees and on the ragged clothing and incredibly emaciated husks of humanity which carpeted the compound of the medical mission, and as the dust settled on to the staring eyes it identified the dead and the living by making the latter category blink. It drifted through windows shattered by natives in their vain search for food, and on to the still, white-sheeted figures on and between the lines of narrow beds. It penetrated even into the staff room where all that remained of the medical personnel, a Caucasian doctor and five nurses of as many different racial types, sat or stood in white uniforms which had become much too large for them.
“There is nothing more we can do here,” said the doctor firmly. “The helicopter is being sent to evacuate the medical staff. It will not return again.”
“But it will bring food,” said an Asian nurse. “We can distribute it before—”
“No, Nurse,” said the doctor. “It will land without shutting down engines. We will board quickly and go.”
The nurse was staring through the broken windows at the motionless, blanket-wrapped near-skeletons littering the mission’s courtyard as she said angrily, “Why did they come here? Who started the story that this area, out of all the famine and disease-ridden expanse of this awful country, had food available? Why didn’t somebody tell them that the new irrigation system stopped working because the dam went dry? No, it didn’t go dry, it drained away like bathwater when the plug is pulled out, through a subterranean fault which the survey engineers must have known about. And so millions of people trekked here because there was famine and blight in the other provinces and everything was supposed to be fine here. The other provincial authorities did not contradict this terrible lie because they wanted rid of all those hungry people…”
“Here it comes,” said the doctor.
A few minutes later the helicopter clattered out of the sky to land on a clear area of the compound. A Trennechoran sensor on the aircraft showed the nurses running through the dust storm it had created and with the doctor bringing up the rear, stepping over the emaciated figures lying all around them. Many of the natives were trying to crawl towards the helicopter, their cries for help drowned by its engine noise. Suddenly the doctor stooped and lifted one of the blanket-wrapped figures, that of a very old man with crinkled white hair and beard, and pushed him into the open hatch.
The medical mission dropped away, shrank into a dusty matchwood model surrounded by dry twigs, then it slid aside as the helicopter went into lateral flight.
“Why didn’t you take some of the children?” shouted the Asian nurse accusingly.
The doctor, who bore a striking resemblance to Professor Donnelly, did not reply.
In the observation dome of Trennechoran B, Ann answered for him. She said bitterly, “Children become adults and increase the population, dear. I don’t think that is the purpose of this exercise. Besides, the good doctor needs a counterbalance …”
The scene changed suddenly and they were looking down from another helicopter which was flying over tree-tops which projected only a few feet above swirling, muddy water. Sections of roofing, furniture and the bloated bodies of animals and human beings floated spinning and rolling in the flood or bobbed gently, entangled by the branches. The picture changed again.
This time the scene was being transmitted from orbit by a Trennechoran robot ship. It showed fires raging on hundreds of fronts all the way across a continent, spreading like a great red cancer and throwing out secondaries which sometimes burned themselves out against the natural barriers of mountains or lakes too wide for the fiery contagion to jump. A few small cities had been successful in building fire-breaks, but the populations would not survive for long when their food was gone. Neither would the people who had managed to escape smoke asphyxiation by escaping to mountains or lake islands, because all the edible plant and animal tissue over a wide area had been destroyed.
Where the worst fire-storms had raged there was a uniformly ashen countryside dotted with city-sized heaps of smoking rubble. The connecting roads were carpeted with the charred bodies and melted bicycles of the people who had tried unsuccessfully to flee. In other areas there was heavy rain or an evident lack of natural combustibles, but in these places the country burned with the even hotter flames of civil war.
Another sequence, also taken from space, showed the characteristically rumpled terrain which was the aftermath of a major earthquake. Survivors, some with tents but the majority without, shivered on the snow-streaked, tumbled earth or huddled among the ruins of their homes. There were no indications of relief operations being mounted because food and fuel were in too short supply all over the world for the necessary aid to be sent.
The scenes of carefully engineered natural disasters continued, some of them current events and many which had obviously been recorded in the recent past. The voice of a Mary broke into the sound-track from time to time with verbal footnotes to the effect that the orbiting weather-control ships had not yet been fully utilised, or that Earth’s nuclear weapons had not yet been brought into play, in the production of these disasters.
“This has got to stop,” said Ann desperately. “Somebody has the power to stop it. We’ve got to tell them, explain that…Or are we all being fooled? The cloned super-humans, the local Guardians, everybody? Is their intention simply to wipe out every human being on Earth?”
“I don’t know,” said Malcolm dully. “The people with the power to stop it are then;.” He looked upwards, but the Trennechoran home planet was concealed by the dome’s projection of a particularly violent food riot.
The scenes of violence were interspersed with sequences in which small groups of people made the plans or gave the orders which resulted in the preceding or succeeding incidents. They talked quietly and seriously about the actions they would take, their features glowing as if from some great inner light. A few of the faces resembled those of the cloned Luke and John Guardians, but the majority of them did not have that excuse for what they were doing.
The next change of scene showed a large room with about twenty cots ranged along opposite walls and a desk occupying most of the clear area of floor in the centre. The cots held men who were badly injured but untreated, some of them were obviously terminal. Weapons leaned against the walls between the cots, so the room was probably a medical aid post for one of the protest groups. The only uninjured people in the room were the man seated at the desk and a man and woman standing before it. The woman wore hospital whites.
“You have been brought here,” said the seated man, “to do what you can for my people. Some of them you may be able to help. The others, well, you can help ease their passing. When you have finished I promise to do my best to return you safely to the hospital. And now, Doctor, will you kindly go to work without delay.”
“Why,” said the girl in the white uniform which was only a shade lighter than her shocked and angry face, “why did they kill Tim?”
Impatiently, the man at the desk said, “What is she talking about?”
The other man who was gripping the lady doctor’s arm with one hand and holding her medical satchel with the other, said, “The driver of the ambulance we hijacked, a non-medic. You said to bring a doctor and we brought a—”
“It was an emergency call,” said the girl with quiet intensity. “He was off-duty, wearing casuals, and he knew how to drive. He was Charge Nurse of our casualty department, among other things, and he had not done a harmful or dishonourable thing since he left school. He helped people. He could have helped your people here.”
The man at the desk gestured and the other man relinquished his grip on her arm and medical bag, then left the room.
“I’m sorry, Doctor,” said the man at the desk, “doubly sorry at the loss of your friend. But these things happen, unfortunately. Subordinates place a too-literal interpretation on orders which of necessity have to be simple to avoid confusion. There was a lot of confusion at Tamar Street when City Security jumped us, and our casualties were heavy. I would appreciate it if you looked at them as quickly as possible.”
