Dancers in the Afterglow (10 page)

But they never thought of his inner turmoil, his ' human needs. It tore him apart inside. Yet he was powerless to heal the psychic wounds inflicted on him by camp life, by imposing
his
needs on the prisoners. He had too much respect for them as individuals and as human beings for that, far more than they had for themselves or each other or him.

Time passed. They tried to keep track of it at the beginning, but the effort proved a failure.

Occasionally a Machist flyer would come by and give them a look, but only rarely would it stop, and then only to check the generator, count the people, and, occasionally, tend to badly set broken arms and the like. Twice they gave everyone shots, which must have been effective, for despite the minor injuries, the cuts, and the unsanitary conditions there was little disease and no infection.

We're animals in their zoo, Yuri thought bitterly.

It amazed him that there were no suicides. Oh, two or three had tried that way out, but they'd been so
clumsy at it that they'd been stopped easily. He knew they really wanted to be stopped. All you had to do to kill yourself was jump over the generator fence or rip off your collar.

The one person who attached himself to Yuri with what seemed like genuine affection was Genji. The little man was eager to help in every way. A bad lightning storm had set a small fire nearby one afternoon, and he'd done a good job keeping the campfire going since, even making an enclosure in the woods that was protected from the rain.

Moira had adjusted beautifully, charming a male and a female into a cozy little arrangement where they did most of the work under her direction.

Everyone's hair was growing long, and all the men had beards except Genji, who didn't seem to be able to manage one. Some of the women's hair was getting to be a problem; it was so long it got in the way.

Using stones and sticks, they managed to make some crude spears, which weren't totally effective. But every once in a while the group managed to spear one of the antelope that cautiously crept out on the meadow. It disturbed Yuri that many of the people, the products of civilization, took such delight in the animal's death, and joined in the stabbing until it thrashed no more.

The vegetables and fruit trees grew with astonishing speed. Yuri couldn't be sure, but he knew, even as a city man born and bred, that plants didn't grow that fast, nor bear fruit that quickly. They were rationed carefully, and their own seeds were planted in new ground.

The diet began showing on them, along with the effects of sun and work. Their skins became tough and bronzed, all traces of fat were disappearing, to be replaced by muscle. Even the excessively thin, like Genji, were filling out.

They were becoming savages—rather quickly, too. Fewer discussions about the past, the Machists, or the future were held. Talk centered on more practical things, the crops, making better spears. Huts made of
leaves and sticks were becoming the place of preference to live in some privacy. Although even Yuri didn't realize it, they had become a tribe, and he, as decision-maker and ultimate problem-solver, was becoming the chief.

Naturally, this turn of events attracted Moira to him. He accepted her and her entourage simply because of his hunger for companionship and his pressing need for sex. And yet, he didn't like her, her imperious manner, or her unwillingness to do her share.

Even the sex was unsatisfactory; he could satisfy her, but she couldn't satisfy him. It disturbed her ego, but it bothered him more. That old feeling was back in spades: he could dominate human beings, he could control them, even empathize with them, but he couldn't join with them.

All over the planet the pattern repeated, with some variations. Some camps needed close supervision, some had massive suicides, some broke out into intratribal strife, and some simply collapsed.

But most worked, as the Machists knew they would.

The Machist command was a mixture of satisfaction and worry. This phase of the transition required a fairly long time, and they didn't have the time. Already Combine forces were probing their defenses, pressing a number of areas. The next phase should be a while off, but it couldn't wait. Time was pressing. Time. . .

Vibrato

STEN ROLVAG HAD DONE VERY WELL FOR HIMSELF.
Slowly other refugees of the bush had come to him, and, in their desperation to find some sort of leadership, some rock of sanity in their new world, they had embraced him.

Not without some struggle, of course. Some had come and tried to take the mantle of leadership, but Rolvag was too swift, too cunning, to be overcome by such moves.

He was not above shooting a man in the back, either.

The Hurley Mama Caves had become the center of a mini-empire ruled by the Viking Rolvag and his princess Amara, as tough and ruthless as he. The community, which included some children, was over two hundred strong.

Rolvag often wondered why the Machists hadn't found him or blocked the still broadcasting clandestine radio network. Certainly he worried a lot that so many people clustered in the caves area would attract attention from the occasional low-flying patrol.

But the Machists didn't come. Some close shaves, of course, but never anything serious. Some of his group managed a few brief patrols down the other side of the mountains to see the camps. The sight stunned and sickened them: people who'd once been a part of the most progressive civilization living and behaving like colonies of apes in a zoo, complete with pet collars.

"Ain't no silver collars on
you!"
Rolvag always reminded his people, and it never occurred to any of them, him included, that they were, in their own way, as trapped, primitive, and tribal as the captives.

Nor were they any trouble to the hard-pressed Machist forces, so limited in numbers and so rushed in their program. As long as they didn't cause problems, it was unlikely that Rolvag's band, and those of many others all over Ondine, would be disturbed.

They were irrelevant.

Rolvag suspected as much, but he was content, playing out his dream fantasy.

Until, one day, the stranger appeared. He looked human enough and wore no Machist collar. He was rather well dressed, really, in a hunting-type outfit A strikingly handsome, dark-complected man with thick kinky hair who looked as if he had just stepped out of a renewal parlor in the old Ondine. He asked to see their leader and was ushered, at gunpoint, to Rolvag without much ado.

Rolvag, dressed outlandishly in skins, grass skirt, and loud sport shut, chomping on his inevitable cigar —he had thousands hidden somewhere, it was rumored —stopped eating his mutton leg and looked up at the newcomer.

"You're the leader of this, ah, community?" the stranger inquired politely, as if he were a tourist just stopping by the mayor's office.

Rolvag eyed him suspiciously. Something smelled wrong; the fellow was a bit
too
clean and perfect to be here at this juncture. He was glad for his own sidearm and for the guns of his people, but nervous all the same.

"I'm Rolvag," he acknowledged. "Who're you, and where do you come from?"

The stranger sighed. "My name is Daniel, Mr. Rolvag, and I come from the Combine."

Rolvag threw the leg of mutton down like a hammer, shaking the table.

"Liar! The Combine scrammed months ago! A flea couldn't have gotten in after that!"

"I'm very good at getting into impossible places," Daniel replied matter-of-factly. "That's why they sent me."

A set of ideas hit Rolvag all at once. "You got any armament with you? Maybe a ship to get us out of here?"

Daniel shook his head. "No, I doubt if anything less than an all-out fleet attack could break through right now, but we're working on that. As for me, it's a one-way trip. I have a drone in orbit that can put me in contact with the Combine, but I—that is, we, since more of us are placed in different spots around the planet, all linked to the drone—came down in cargo capsules. They aren't meant for quick takeoffs."

Rolvag was almost relieved. "So you're stuck here with the rest of us. How long you been here?"

"Several months," the other replied.

Rolvag's sense of wrongness 'came back. "Impossible! You'd never look like that if you'd been out here only a few days. I think you're a Machist."

"If I were it'd mean you were finished," Daniel noted calmly. "I mean, if I'm here, and I'm a Machist, then they've found you and are preparing to take you out Right?"

This puzzled Rolvag. He was used to acting, not considering the subtleties of things. The argument was unassailable, though; he just wished this fellow made more sense.

"So, if you're from the Combine, what the hell are they doing sending people in now?"

Daniel reached for bis pocket and was amused to see all the guns come up. "Take it easy," he cautioned. "I'm only getting some paper."

Rolvag felt more unnerved by the other's manner. This was one very cool customer. It wasn't human to be that confident.

Daniel spread out a map of the front close up, then of the distance showing the telltale bulge, much as Admiral Hudkins had done for him. This much Rolvag could understand. The Machist position was held only by inordinate strength, most of it wasted. In the long run, Ondine couldn't be kept by the enemy unless it moved outward to consolidate its position and won, something which, considering the new forces massing on the Combine side as units became available, was unlikely.

Ondine would be liberated.

Curiously, Rolvag felt no thrill, no excitement at the prospect. When you're living in your dream world, it is never welcome to have it pointed out that you must sometime wake up to reality.

"When?" Rolvag asked seriously.

Daniel shrugged. "Not soon. Not for many months, maybe longer. Last estimate I got was a little over a year and a half from now."

"Uh huh, a year and a half," Rolvag repeated. "So? We can hold out that long, I think."

Daniel sighed. He understood the situation well— Rolvag was only the latest in a long series of petty dictators he'd had to deal with.

"Mr. Rolvag," he said in a concerned tone, "you must know what's happened to the rest of the people on this world. That's only the first stage. My information is that the second stage is getting underway now— the re-education phase. We're in a race with the Machists, Mr. Rolvag. A race for those people's minds. We can't beat them now, so we have to stall for time. Time's on our side. The more time we can give those people, the better it will be when liberation finally comes."

"Just what are you asking?" Sten Rolvag responded, feeling that he already knew the answer.

"The Machists didn't spare a whole hell of a lot of men and equipment for this project of theirs," Daniel told him. "There are sixteen supply centers, one for each city, and only one serviceable spaceport— Lamarine's."

"They blew that one up," the colony leader growled.

"They only made it look that way," Daniel replied. "Look, we now have groups training, preparing to blow thirteen of the sixteen supply centers. The other two will be a matter of time, the free humans being less numerous and poorly organized through there. But I think we'll have them in line within a month. That leaves Lamarine, and the toughest job, which falls to you if you'll take it.

"I want to make this mob into a military force, train it, arm it, and send it against Lamarine to blow that supply dump and the four serviceable pads. Do that, at the same time you blow the rest, and the Machists are
our
prisoners until the Combine comes to our liberation."

There was a strange gleam in Sten Rolvag's eye, one that looked somewhat like madness.

"The rest of you! Clear out!" he snarled at the bodyguard. He turned, saw two of the women in the back of the cave. "You, too!" he snapped. "This fella and me, we got things to discuss!"

They moved out, and quickly.

Finally satisfied that they were alone, the self-styled Viking prince relaxed, seemed friendly. "Sit down," he invited. "Have some mutton."

Daniel took the log bench, but declined the mutton.

"So you want to train my people to blow up Lamarine," Rolvag said warily.

"That's right," Daniel replied. "I don't see why—"

At that moment, Rolvag pulled his pistol from under the table, and fired at the stranger.

The action caught Daniel completely by surprise. He moved forward in reflex action, and the beam caught him full, bathed him.

He'd been prepared for hunting rifles, but Sten Rolvag had an illicit service revolver.

The Combine agent was frozen for a second, then flared and winked out. Rolvag noted with irritation that it'd also taken out part of the bench.

"Damned Machist spy," he murmured, and he almost believed it.

Stringendo

The denial of technology phase is important as a psychological softener. Most people adjust to it, which is the first strong indication of the malleability of humanity. When social and psychological degradation becomes an accepted norm, barriers to much deeper alterations have already been partially lifted. The next step is a crucial one, one about which we know little because we can see only its effects. Our best guess is that, having lived the way, they have, the captives are offered a way back to civilized existence, a way out of the dreary, filthy life they lead. To do so, they must fulfill a set of psychological goals. These goals are achieved by applied psychology and Pavlovian conditioning. Whatever the Machists do, it works in a majority of cases fairly quickly, and—as the group of primitives living in squalor diminishes—in almost every case in time.

—
A Primer on Machist Behavior,
p. 974.

THE FLYER ATTRACTED LITTLE NOTICE FROM THE
group; flyers were always stopping to check on this or that. Even the fact that this one landed in the diamond wasn't unusual. The generator was regularly checked and serviced as a precautionary measure. By this point the tribal group was so conditioned to their territorial limits they would never have exceeded them in any case.