A disagreeable roar from B’dikkat’s cabin made them stir mildly.
Those two, and one or two others, looked toward the speaker of the public address system.
The Lady Da brought herself to speak, though the matter was unimportant beyond words. “I do believe,” said she, “that we used to call that the War Alarm.”
They drowsed back into their happiness.
A man with two rudimentary heads growing beside his own crawled over to them. All three heads looked very happy, and Mercer thought it delightful of him to appear in such a whimsical shape. Under the pulsing glow of super-condamine, Mercer regretted that he had not used times when his mind was clear to ask him who he had once been. He answered it for them. Forcing his eyelids open by sheer will power, he gave the Lady Da and Mercer the lazy ghost of a military salute and said, “Suzdal, Ma’am and Sir, former cruiser commander. They are sounding the alert. Wish to report that I am… I am… I am not quite ready for battle.”
He dropped off to sleep.
The gentle peremptorinesses of the Lady Da brought his eyes open again.
“Commander, why are they sounding it here? Why did you come to us?”
“You, Ma’am, and the gentleman with the ears seem to think best of our group. I thought you might have orders.”
Mercer looked around for the gentleman with the ears. It was himself. In that time his face was almost wholly obscured with a crop of fresh little ears, but he paid no attention to them, other than expecting that B’dikkat would cut them all off in due course and that the dromozoa would give him something else.
The noise from the cabin rose to a higher, ear-splitting intensity.
Among the herd, many people stirred.
Some opened their eyes, looked around, murmured. “It’s a noise,” and went back to the happy drowsing with super-condamine.
The cabin door opened.
B’dikkat rushed out, without his suit. They had never seen him on the outside without his protective metal suit.
He rushed up to them, looked wildly around, recognized the Lady Da and Mercer, picked them up, one under each arm, and raced with them back to the cabin. He flung them into the double door. They landed with bone-splitting crashes, and found it amusing to hit the ground so hard. The floor tilted them into the room. Moments later, B’dikkat followed.
He roared at them, “You’re people, or you were. You understand people; I only obey them. But this I will not obey. Look at that!”
Four beautiful human children lay on the floor. The two smallest seemed to be twins, about two years of age. There was a girl of five and a boy of seven or so. All of them had slack eyelids. All of them had thin red lines around their temples and their hair, shaved away, showed how their brains had been removed.
B’dikkat, heedless of danger from dromozoa, stood beside the Lady Da and Mercer, shouting.
“You’re real people. I’m just a cow. I do my duty. My duty does not include this. These are children.”
The wise, surviving recess of Mercer’s mind registered shock and disbelief. It was hard to sustain the emotion, because the super-condamine washed at his consciousness like a great tide, making everything seem lovely. The forefront of his mind, rich with the drug, told him, “Won’t it be nice to have some children with us!” But the undestroyed interior of his mind, keeping the honor he knew before he came to Shayol, whispered, “This is a crime worse than any crime we have committed! And the Empire has done it.”
“What have you done?” said the Lady Da. “What can we do?”
“I tried to call the satellite. When they knew what I was talking about, they cut me off. After all, I’m not people. The head doctor told me to do my work.”
“Was it Doctor Vomact?” Mercer asked.
“Vomact?” said B’dikkat. “He died a hundred years ago, of old age. No, a new doctor cut me off. I don’t have people-feeling, but I am Earth-born, of Earth blood. I have emotions myself. Pure cattle emotions! This I cannot permit.”
“What have you done?”
B’dikkat lifted his eyes to the window. His face was illuminated by a determination which, even beyond the edges of the drug which made them love him, made him seem like the father of this world-responsible, honorable, unselfish.
He smiled. “They will kill me for it, I think. But I have put in the Galactic Alert — all ships here.”
The Lady Da, sitting back on the floor, declared, “But that’s only for new invaders! It is a false alarm.” She pulled herself together and rose to her feet. “Can you cut these things off me, right now, in case people come? And get me a dress. And do you have anything which will counteract the effect of the super-condamine?”
“That’s what I wanted!” cried B’dikkat. “I will not take these children. You give me leadership.”
There and then, on the floor of the cabin, he trimmed her down to the normal proportions of mankind.
The corrosive antiseptic rose like smoke in the air of the cabin. Mercer thought it all very dramatic and pleasant, and dropped off in catnaps part of the time. Then he felt B’dikkat trimming him too. B’dikkat opened a long, long drawer and put the specimens in; from the cold in the room it must have been a refrigerated locker.
He sat them both up against the wall.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “There is no antidote for super-condamine. Who would want one? But I can give you the hypos from my rescue boat. They are supposed to bring a person back, no matter what has happened to that person out in space.”
There was a whining over the cabin roof. B’dikkat knocked a window out with his fist, stuck his head out of the window and looked up.
“Come on in,” he shouted.
There was the thud of a landing craft touching ground quickly. Doors whirred. Mercer wondered, mildly, why people dared to land on Shayol. When they came in he saw that they were not people; they were Customs Robots, who could travel at velocities which people could never match. One wore the insigne of an inspector.
“Where are the invaders?”
“There are no—” began B’dikkat.
The Lady Da, imperial in her posture though she was completely nude, said in a voice of complete clarity, “I am a former Empress, the Lady Da. Do you know me?”
“No, Ma’am,” said the robot inspector. He looked as uncomfortable as a robot could look. The drug made Mercer think that it would be nice to have robots for company, out on the surface of Shayol.
“I declare this Top Emergency, in the ancient words. Do you understand? Connect me with the Instrumentality.”
“We can’t—” said the inspector.
“You can ask,” said the Lady Da.
The inspector complied.
The Lady Da turned to B’dikkat. “Give Mercer and me those shots now. Then put us outside the door so the dromozoa can repair these scars. Bring us in as soon as a connection is made. Wrap us in cloth if you do not have clothes for us. Mercer can stand the pain.”
“Yes,” said B’dikkat, keeping his eyes away from the four soft children and their collapsed eyes.
The injection burned like no fire ever had. It must have been capable of fighting the super-condamine, because B’dikkat put them through the open window, so as to save time going through the door. The dromozoa, sensing that they needed repair, flashed upon them. This time the super-condamine had something else fighting it
Mercer did not scream but he lay against the wall and wept for ten thousand years; in objective time, it must have been several hours.
The Customs robots were taking pictures. The dromozoa were flashing against them too, sometimes in whole swarms, but nothing happened.
Mercer heard the voice of the communicator inside the cabin calling loudly for B’dikkat. “Surgery Satellite calling Shayol. B’dikkat, get on the line!”