“Professional reasons?”
He nodded helplessly. The girl stared strangely at him. Quietly she said, “I wonder just what your profession is.”
“I’m a jewel-trader. You know that.”
“I’m not so sure. The hotel people whisper a lot about you, you know. They say you have strange friends, that you get visi-screen calls from distant continents. And last night there was a fight in your room.”
“How do you know that?”
“I came up here late last night just to tell you how sorry I was to have caused you trouble, you know. I still thought you were a married man. I heard the sound of a struggle going on in here. There was another man, and he said something about the Confederacy of Rim Stars paying highly for information he could give them, and you were talking about torture, and Security, and then there was the sound of furniture breaking…” She stared at the floor. “I was frightened. I ran away. And then, did you know, this morning they found the dead body of an Earthman named Archer a few blocks from here? He had been knifed. He was the man you were fighting with in your room, wasn’t he? Roy, what are youT
Gardner felt a knot of tension tightening in his belly. The girl’s face, frightened, accusing, hovered before him. He knew that what he was about to do violated all precepts of Security. Yet he had to do it. He had to unburden his soul of the massive weight it bore.
“You want the truth?” he said. “All right. I’ll give you the truth. But you’ll have to keep it locked up in your own skull. No one will believe you if you blab it, anyway.”
“Roy, I don’t understand.”
“Quiet, and listen to me.” Gardner’s face was set in a stern mask. “Archer, the dead man, was part of a team of five men sent out by Earth Central to do a job here on Lurion. Then Archer sold out, or was planning to as soon as he had a confession from my lips. He didn’t get it.”
“What kind of job?” Lori asked.
“We were sent here to destroy Lurion.”
The girl’s eyes widened for a moment, then focused on him in a bewildered glare.
“What?”
He told her. Speaking slowly, dragging each word out from where he had hidden it so long, Gardner told her about Karnes and about the assignment. And why he had felt it necessary to pretend he was married. His heart felt lighter with each word of the bizarre confession.
When he was finished, she forced a little lopsided smile and said, “And I was studying cruelty on Lurion! I could have stayed at home and done a better job.”
He shook his head. “Look at it through the computer’s eyes. From the data given, the computer determined that there would be nothing cruel about what Earth would do to Lurion. We would be killing three billion people, destroying an entire culture. But we would be removing a filthy plague spot from the universe. We would be saving Earth and we would be protecting the rest of the civilized galaxy.”
“It would be murder in cold blood,” she said numbly.
“Yes. To save Earth the agony and destruction involved in acting in hot blood when Lurion springs its war on us.”
“But are you God? Once you take this power on yourself, to destroy whole worlds, where does it stop? Suppose you decide that Argonav is evil next, and then Simulor, and then Hannim? Do you go around blasting one planet after another, in the name of saving Earth and civilization?”
“Look at it from the viewpoint of the computed data. Lurion is rotten through and through. Eventually some of that rottenness is going to flare up into a galactic war. Fifty billion people may die—fifty billion, not just three billion. The economies of hundreds of worlds may be disrupted. A dozen future generations will have their birthrights mortgaged to pay for the havoc Lurion will cause. And, the computer says, the probability is extremely high that Earth herself will be destroyed in a surprise attack, as the opening salvo in the war. To avoid all this, I was sent here… to destroy Lurion.”
“But I would have died tool” Lori exclaimed, realizing the fact all at once.
Gardner nodded. “That’s why I’ve been trying to keep away from you. It was a mistake for me ever to get entangled with you. You couldn’t have been saved if the project had gone off as scheduled.”
“But now there’ll be a delay, you say, because this man Archer is dead. You’ll have to send for a replacement, and by the time he gets here my ship will have left. But then Lurion will be destroyed when that fifth man gets here.”
“I have another man going, breaking down under the strain. He’s been here too long, you see. So I would have to replace him. More delay. And by the time the replacements finally did get here, most likely it would be my turn to have a breakdown, and then…” Gardner clenched his fists. “But all this doesn’t matter. There isn’t going to be any project. Lurion won’t be destroyed.”
“Lurion won’t—”
“At least, not by me.” Gardner smiled, feeling the strength of his decision now. “The computer has made some big mistakes already. It let Archer get past, and Archer was a traitor. It approved me, even though I wasn’t really the right kind of person to act as executioner. It bungled the whole first batch it sent out. I can’t trust the computer’s judgments any more. Certainly I can’t give the order to destroy a world on the basis of them.”
“But, what are you going to do, Roy?”
“I’m not sure. But I’ve found a group, an underground organization of Lurioni, who are working to change the ways of society here. I’m seeing some of them tonight, to find out just what their program is. Then I’ve got to return to Earth. I’ve got to find out whether the existence of that group was known, whether it was fed into the computer with the original data on Lurion.”
“What difference will that make?”
Gardner leaned forward anxiously. “If the group didn’t get computed in, it meant that the extrapolation of Lurion’s future is faulty. I’ll demand a new computation before any drastic steps are taken. On the other hand, if the computer did know about these people, and extrapolated that they would have no effect on the general trend…” Gardner shrugged. “In that case, I guess Lurion will have to die.”
Chapter XIII
Steeves’ house was a tall old building, one of a group of identical tall, narrow buildings that bordered a tiny grassy square in a quiet part of the city. Steeves lived on the top floor. Lori and Gardner rode up in a creaking lift-shaft.
They were slightly early, but the two Lurioni, Kinrad and Damiroj, had already arrived. They rose politely as Gardner and Lori entered.
“Miss Lori Marks,” Gardner said. “An anthropologist from Terra. A very close friend of mine.”
“Pleased,” Kinrad said.
“A pleasure,” said Damiroj.
Their manners, thought Gardner, were very refined. He was willing to bet that these two had been off Lurion, had picked up their cultured ways on some more genteel world.
There was a frosty little moment of uncertainty. The two Lurioni, doubtless remembering the peculiar behavior of Gardner at their last meeting, were slow to-begin a conversation. Steeves broke up the rigidity by offering drinks; he served, instead of the ubiquitous khall, a sort of local brandy that Gardner found interesting. The apartment was small but well furnished, with objects from a number of worlds arranged tastefully. Steeves had prospered in his twenty years on Lurion, no doubt of that.
Gardner smiled disarmingly and said, “I guess I ought to begin with apologies for my queer behavior the last time we met.”