As if in a trance, Archier found himself moving towards the chimera, who suddenly flung up his arms to ward him off.
“No gun, no gun! Pout has no gun!”
“Look to see what you have in your bib, Pout,” Ikematsu said gently.
Blankly Pout stared at him. Then, trembling, he dipped his hand in his garment. It came out holding the zen gun.
“No gun!” he screamed. “No gun!” In terror he flung it from him. It clattered to the floor.
Archier picked it up as it fell to his feet. He turned it over in his hand. It looked so ordinary, so unfinished. How much was he to believe of the kosho’s tale? It was extraordinary, but well within the bounds of possibility. What else could explain the behaviour of Earth’s moon for instance?
If the kosho really had woven this and other happenings into a concocted story, then he really was uncommonly inventive. Gruwert, at any rate, gave the tale credence. After only a brief glance at the weapon Archier was examining, he was calling for his bodyguard.
Ikematsu shook his head warningly, “Your stoat is asleep. I dealt with him earlier. You face me alone.”
Gruwert shook with agitation. He knew how dangerous an adversary the kosho could be, even unarmed. He moved so as to put himself between Ikematsu and the door. “SMO,” he ordered quickly, “get out of here fast and take that gun to safety. I’ll hold this kosho back.”
“No!” Hesper shrieked. “Don’t let the pigs have it, or it’s slavery forever!”
Archier froze, only vaguely aware that Hesper was moving towards him. His mind was filling with images. A vision of Axaline, the place where they were going. He knew full well what Gruwert intended. Nuke a city here, beam a continent there. And then demand tribute. The slightest resistance and…
Then, too, there was Escoria. Hesper’s home sector. She claimed the fleet had nuked the moving teaching cities on Earth. Archier no longer disbelieved it. It would be just like Gruwert to arrange it behind his back.
And what a score he would settle with the sector as a whole, when they next went there!
“Give me that gun!” It was Gruwert’s voice, and it was distorted with passion, with rage at Archier’s lack of response. Even as he spoke, the pig charged. He bowled Archier over, reaching for the gun with his snout. Automatically Archier tried to keep the gun from the animal’s reach. The smell of the pig was all over him. He felt bristly hide against his skin frantic trotters scrambling and trampling on his limbs and body.
Then Hesper was with him, helping him struggle against the bulging, vigorous mass of lard. Somehow she hauled him from underneath Gruwert, who lost his balance and went sprawling on his side.
Archier staggered to Ikematsu. He pressed the gun into his hand. “You take it,” he gasped. “Do whatever you can!”
Gruwert, snorting and squealing, trotters sliding on the floor raised himself. Furiously he turned to face the kosho, backing off to charge him as he has Archier.
Before he could launch himself Ikematsu’s hand swept up. He spread two fingers, pointing them directly at the pig’s two eyes.
“Sleep.”
And Gruwert stood there, as motionless as a statue, his eyes open but unseeing.
As she joined Archier Hesper was breathing heavily. She stared down at the pig. “What’s wrong with him?” she whispered.
“I have hypnotised him,” Ikematsu said simply.
With a look of intent concentration on his face, he was pressing the setting studs in a complicated sequence. “The die is cast,” he said to Archier. “You have made your decision: you have committed treason against the pigs’ Empire. Now we must all leave.”
“There’s no way off this ship for us,” Archier said, “unless you know of one.”
“Does not this gun reach into the Simplex? Have not the scientists always assured us that access to the Simplex means instantaneous travel to anywhere in our universe? Well, they are right.”
Again the kosho’s faint smile. He had finished what he was doing with the zen gun. He pointed the muzzle at each of his companions in turn, pressing the trigger stud each time.
The transition was without interval of time. Archier found himself standing on grassland in gathering dusk. The ground rose to a summit about a mile away, where he would see a building perched in outline against the darkening sky.
He was accustomed to using the intermat and so was not shocked or disoriented by the sudden change in surroundings, except that the air smelled unpleasantly bland and odourless. There were none of the additives he was used to, both on board ship and in the atmospheres of Diadem planets.
Then a breeze rippled the grass, and with it there came faint nameless scents.
He looked to see how Hesper had reacted. She seemed more bewildered than frightened, gazing about her with an expression of total bemusement. She had never used the intermat.
Pout had toppled over when deprived of the wall he had been leaning against and now sobbed with fear, until the kosho leaned over him and said something in a low, reassuring voice. He helped him to his feet.
“What planet is this?” Archier asked him.
“This is Earth.”
“Earth?” echoed Hesper. “The planet we were on before? But that’s impossible!”
“So everything you’ve told us about that gun is true.” Archier nodded at the weapon which Ikematsu still held limply in his hand. The kosho nodded, putting it away somewhere in his robe.
Curiously, Archier looked at him. “Why didn’t you help me when I was fighting with Gruwert?” he asked. “Why didn’t you take the gun from the chimera yourself? You could have done that, probably. If it comes to that, why did you have to tell the pig about the gun at all?” He paused. “It’s almost as if you set up what happened back there.”
When Ikematsu didn’t answer, Archier said, “I’ve heard koshos don’t get involved in political causes. Is that true?”
“Anything you hear about koshos is liable to be untrue,” Ikematsu said, with a hint of levity. Seriousness returned to his tone. “I will tell you the fact of it. My order has a rule: the kosho may not intervene directly in historical events. He may only act so as to create possibilities for actions by others. When I explained the nature of the zen gun to the pig, 1 was really speaking to you.”
“And if I had stayed loyal to the Empire? Or if Gruwert had won? You wouldn’t have interfered?”
“No.”
Archier shook his head. “There’s no point to this rule. It leaves everything to chance.”
“The rule does not exist for the benefit of civilisation. It exists to preserve the kosho from corruption. Yet, paradoxically, because of it the order is better able to serve mankind. The zen gun was made because a kosho foresaw that the pigs would eventually seize power. He left it to chance to preserve his weapon until that time.
“This is why the gun’s control is mental as well as manual. A pure animal cannot use it at all. The chimera Pout was able to use it a little, because he is partly human. But he would never be able to unlock its real secrets. For that, a spiritually trained intelligence is needed.”
“This kosho foresaw what the pigs would do? That long ago?” Archier was incredulous. “I can’t believe it.”
“But it was inevitable from the start. When you gave artificial intelligence to animals, you were giving base emotion an unnatural power of action. An animal with intelligence is still not equivalent to a man. It has no possibility of spiritual development, as a man has. This is easily proved. Animals do not experience what we call ‘beauty,’ for instance.”
Archier frowned. It was true: they were beauty-blind, as the phrase had it. Implants didn’t make any difference there.