General Wheeler rapped, "Be silent! I will not speak again! The men will take care of your beast!" His voice was queerly loud, Gann thought, even in his confusion—almost as if the general were speaking not to him, but to the roomful of witnesses.
But he could not help himself. He knew what one single pyropod could do, knew that even the Planner's guards might not be able to cope with it—and knew that in that room was the body and heart of the girl he loved, even though they might be inhabited by the cold, machinelike mind of Sister Delta Four. He whirled, drew his laser gun and was ready as the roar of the pyropod shrieked to the door of the room and the creature appeared.
Gann fired at the red eyes.
The guards were ready too, alerted by the sound and by Gann's quick action; they had turned and were firing. The creature was caught in a dozen bolts of destroying energy. It puffed into flame and exploded . . .
And between Gann and the door, Sister Delta Four, whispering into her linkbox, fell silently forward. She dropped to the floor and did not move, though the linkbox hooted questioningly to her.
"She's hit!" cried Gann and, dropping his weapons, raced to her. He caught her up in his arms, and stared into her black eyes.
His hands were covered with blood. Along one side of her black robes a spreading patch of sticky moisture began to seep, clouding the bright electronic symbols, trickling to the floor.
There was no heartbeat.
He raised his eyes, stared vacantly at the approaching General Wheeler. "Is she dead?" he demanded, unable to take it in. "Was it my shot? Or . . ." He paused, trying to remember. Had there been another pencil-thin lance of laser light coming from his side of the room? Had General Wheeler fired over his shoulder and shot Sister Delta Four?
But there was no time to think of that. The general was on him now, his face a metallic mask of sternness. "Disarm that man!" he rasped to the guards. "Take him before the Planner! I accuse him of bringing this document here! I accuse him of admitting the beasts we have destroyed. I accuse him of slaying Sister Delta Four to keep her from denouncing him. I accuse him of being the Starchild!"
10
The battered veterans of the skirmish with the pyropods, limping out of the battlefield and taking the swift elevators to the surface, found the Planner standing like a jovial Santa Claus on a quartz-walled balcony, near the snowy summit of the mountain in which his headquarters was buried.
This was his eyrie, the great crow's-nest of his palace. He chuckled to General Wheeler, "They tried to get me and missed! They'll not have another chance! We'll wipe out every last lone rebel."
The general rasped, "Sir, here is your first traitor! This is the man who is responsible. I found him bearing this document."
Gann cried, "Planner, the general is lying! He knows I didn't—"
"Silence!" snapped the general.
The Planner did not even look at Gann. Smiling and nodding, he read the square of paper, then dropped it negligently to the floor. "You're sure he's the Starchild, General?" he asked.
"Consider the evidence, sir!" rapped the general. "One. He appeared originally in the vaults of the Machine, with no explanation of how he got there. Two. At the same time, the Writ of Liberation appeared, also unexplained. Three. He was bearing this document when I apprehended him. Four. He displayed a suspicious knowledge of the vulnerable spots on the pyropods when his own life was in danger. Five. He purposely slew Sister Delta Four, making it look like an accident, so that she could not speak against him. Six. He was about to do the same to me when I ordered the guards to disarm him. The conclusion, sir, is overwhelmingly indicated that Machine Major Boysie Gann is indeed the Star-child."
"But, sir," cried Gann.
The Planner gestured, and one of the guards wrenched his arm, forcing him to be quiet. "That's better," chuckled the old Planner, beaming down on Boysie Gann. His dose of communion had clearly lasted him a long time; he was as bubbling with good humor as if the Machine even now were shooting pleasure sensations into his brain. "Yet," said the Planner, smiling good-humoredly at General Wheeler, "one of the guards reported that it was you, not Gann, who killed the sister. Could you have been mistaken?"
"No, sir! Impossible, sir. I had no reason."
The Planner nodded cheerfully and scratched his plump old cheek. He got to his feet and went to the quartz wall of his eyrie, squinting out into the sunset sky. To windward of the summit, the descending sun picked out a towering crown of cumulus. Beyond the crystal parapet, its last rays shimmered on a small waterfall and tinted the falling slopes of evergreens.
"As a matter .of fact," the Planner added over his shoulder, "Sister Delta Four is not dead." He stared smiling down the slopes toward a brown-smogged city below. "She is now in surgery. Her heart was destroyed, but circulation was restored before the brain was damaged. Even now a donor is being provided to replace her lost parts."
Boysie Gann cried joyfully, "Plan be thanked! Sir, she'll tell you that I knew nothing of the pyropods until she herself told me about them!"
"Silence!" rasped General Wheeler. "Guards! Your orders are to keep him quiet. I understand donors are needed for several of your wounded comrades. The first man who fails to keep the prisoner silent will be considered a volunteer!"
"Not so fast," said the Planner, chuckling. "Your zeal goes too far, General." His heavy-lidded eyes looked dark and as old as the lichen-crusted stone below the crystal wall as he gazed benignly toward the far city in the smog. "Let us Plan," he said, turning and smiling. "Let us decide what to do."
The Vice-Planner for Venus spoke up promptly: "Double the guards in the vaults of the Machine, sir. Institute maximum security measures, admitting no unauthorized person . . ." He broke off and scratched his enormous nose in puzzlement as he realized that neither Boysie Gann nor the pyropods had submitted to security check before entering the most heavily guarded places in the Plan of Man.
A male acolyte in the black robes of the Machine, listening to a subdued buzzing from his linkbox, raised his voice suddenly. "The Machine requires the services of the prisoner," he chanted. "The Machine instructs Machine General Wheeler that the prisoner is not to be harmed in any way that will affect his memory or his intellect."
Wheeler's expression was that of a steel-gray thundercloud. The Planner turned toward him, chuckling. "You have your orders, General," he said good-humoredly. "Be sure they are carried out. Do you know what those orders are, young man?" he added, turning with a bland expression of cheer to Boysie Gann.
"No, sir. But I stand ready to serve the Plan of Man!"
"Oh, you do indeed," nodded the Planner. "In a very special way, as it happens. Major, you have been selected to replace Sister Delta Four. The Machine is about to permit you to receive training in its special service as an acolyte—and then communion!"
The heavy iron security collar was not enough for so precious an enemy of the Plan as Boysie Gann.
"You're not just a Risk," one of the guards explained solicitously. "See, we can't take a chance, Major. We don't want to blow your little head off. We don't want to kill you. We want to deliver you in one piece, right? So just stand still there while we put these cuffs on you . . . and we'll take you to the training base . . . and then, when the Machine's all finished with you, then we'll blow your head off!" And the guard snapped the fetters cruelly tight on Gann's wrists and started him moving with a shove.
They took him to a subtrain station first, and would not answer his questions. Was Julie Martinet all right? Why had General Wheeler lied? What was the Machine going to do with him? To each question there was only one response: "Shut up, you! Move on!"