Restoree (21 page)

I did not trust myself to answer him. Instead, I pulled out the slate Harlan had given me for him and thrust it across the table. Ferrill took it with a brief glance at the outer inscription and shoved it into his belt.

“Surely it’s not restoration that makes you fear Monsorlit. The punishment is the same for the operator as the victim.”

I looked nervously around to reassure myself no one could overhear us.

“As I told Monsorlit,” Ferrill continued, “I am merely an interested bystander. I consider myself qualified to make all kinds of deep, penetrating observations which, to project my new image, I like to think are acute and perceptive. I have had much time for passive reflection, you know.

“Monsorlit is a great artist, a genius in his field. He is interested in achieving perfection, to which I say ‘well done.’ But he must have allowed himself to be carried away with his zeal, if he can be said ever to be carried away by anything.” Ferrill’s grin was a bit malicious. “For he neglected one axiom of nature . . . which prohibits her from duplicating anything . . . even two sides of the same face.” He stopped and, narrowing his eyes, stared keenly at me. Pointing negligently to my wrists, he continued, “He was exceptionally deft in disguising the graft joints. I gather he has done a great deal of work on that crucial spot. But he made your features too symmetrical. If a mirror were handy, I could easily prove that both sides of your face are the same, except for your eyes. The left one droops a trifle at the outside edge. I wonder if that irked him in his search for perfection,” and Ferrill chuckled. “However, if he had been able to change that, I do believe he would have ruined the total effect. That slight imperfection gives your face a touch of humanity it would otherwise lack.”

I wasn’t sure I understood all he was talking about. His tone was so light, so conversational, that his disclosures were robbed of their gravity.

“Still,” and he frowned thoughtfully, “I doubt anyone has the time for the close scrutiny my conclusions require. And, since Monsorlit has conveniently done away with the one weak spot, the one detectable, unmistakable weakness in a total restoration, what do you have to fear?

“I should say he has proved his point. And Monsorlit doesn’t care for the approbation of the multitude as long as he has satisfied his own curiosity. As you know, he has always maintained that restoration itself did not cause mental vegetation. As he expresses it,” and Ferrill evidently did not agree completely with the theory, “it is our ancient fear and superstition that breaks the mind. He says we had so many centuries of passive acceptance of death under the godlike Mil that a man unconsciously wills himself to die when he is captured, whether his body dies or not.”

His words began to make some reassuring sense to me and I started to relax. After all, Harlan had said that Ferrill was the only one who would or could understand and help me. Had he guessed that Ferrill knew I had been restored? At least, Ferrill did not regard me with horror and revulsion. I sipped my cup and the warm liquid ran down my throat, spreading its comfort to my fingers.

“That’s better,” Ferrill said with a grin. I realized he had been talking as much to put me at ease as to tell me of his theories.

“I gather,” he continued, smiling, “Monsorlit’s new techniques of shock treatments worked on you to bring you out of the mental death. You certainly are a far cry from the ghastly parodies that gave restoration its death sentence. I shall suggest to Harlan that he repeal that law quietly if you’re the result of the latest techniques of restoration. Or should I say ‘repossession’?” Ferrill’s smile mocked the semantic hairsplitting. “So you see, you don’t have anything to fear from Monsorlit. Anything.”

“But I do,” I protested. “He wants me to go back to that horrible Clinic of his. He said he’d
make
me if I didn’t come willingly.”

“He can do nothing to you,” Ferrill said blithely. “For one thing . . . well, Harlan knows you’ve been restored, doesn’t he? Well,
he
won’t permit it.”

“But . . . if Harlan doesn’t . . .” I stammered and couldn’t finish the sentence.

Ferrill tapped his chest with a thin finger. “Then
I
won’t let you go back. Oh, I may be a frail invalid, my dear, but I am still Ferrill,” he announced, his voice ringing.

“I’m so terribly sorry . . .” I began but Ferrill waggled an admonishing finger to silence me.

“At the risk of repetition, I owe you my life, Lady Sara, or whatever is left of it. Besides, I wouldn’t be very good at that sort of thing,” and his gesture indicated the spatial tank. “Now, Maxil, as is the habit of younger brothers, has always been a scrapper. You never saw a boy keener on spaceships. Right now, if he isn’t free-fall sick, he’s having the time of his life. By the way, there’s Harlan on the screen now.”

I rose hastily, peering over the obstructing partition for the best view of Harlan. I ignored Ferrill’s chuckle.

Harlan was addressing his remarks to Stannall, Jokan and the elder Councilmen, continuing an argument that must have been going on for several minutes.

“Sir,” said Harlan, stressing the title as one whose patience is also stressed, “I
know
it hasn’t been tried before. But neither have we had the equipment or the emergency. I insist, and so do my commanders, that the gamble is worth the game. We are fortunate that so many of our ships were equipped with the electromagnetic crystals during my disability. We may thank Gorlot for that at least,” and Harlan permitted himself a wry smile at the shocked distaste occasioned by his remark.

“That is enough to make me distrust that innovation completely,” Stannall said stiffly, looking for agreement among his fellow Councilmen. Several of them sided with him by their nods of disapproval.

“You forget, sir,” Jokan put in, defending a system he had developed, “that it was Harlan’s innovation, a development of war research under my guidance. And you forget that it was Fathor who thought the Ertoi planetary defense mechanism might be adapted to shipborne armament. Gorlot was at least strategist enough to recognize its value as a weapon when no one else considered it more than a toy.”

“Sir Harlan,” expostulated Lesatin pompously, “a decision of this magnitude cannot be made in so off-hand a manner.”

“By my Clan Mother,” Harlan exploded, “your own committee of specialists approved the installation of the magnetos two years ago, Lesatin. Why all this time-consuming chatter? I’ve not asked for your decision. I’ve already made it for you. I’m telling you what I’m going to do. The battle plan remains as I have outlined it.”

“The responsibility,” Stannall said forcefully, “of the people lies on our shoulders, too, not yours alone. Your disregard of time-proved successful action . . .”

“Time-proved in the jetwash,” snapped Harlan impatiently, “life-wasting, you mean. The resonant phenomenon produced by the electromagnets can crush the Mil with greater personnel safety, less risk and loss of ships and lives than any improvement in our battle tactics since we refitted the first Star-class ship. By all that lies in the stars, I will use the resonant barrage if we have to form before Lothar itself.

“What you grandly ignore, good sirs, in your preference for these time-proved orthodox methods is the plain and simple fact that we’ve never had such a concentration of Mil against us. You ignore the recorded facts that it takes the concerted action and an eighty-five percent casualty of twenty ships to disable . . . with luck . . . a Star-class vessel. We have
fifteen
out there in the black speeding toward our puny four Stars. And whether we form before Lothar or at the first circle of defense, the casualties from your ‘time-proved tactics’ will be the same.”

Jokan had been writing furiously on a slate. He passed the results to the most disturbed Councilmen. They grouped around him, their voices rising in the excitement his figures aroused. Harlan glanced down at the confusion, at first with annoyance, until he saw the change of attitude in these skeptics.

“We are approaching communication limit. If I don’t come back, you can skin me in effigy. If I do, it will be as a victorious commander and we’ll debate the ethics involved. In the meantime, Jokan has as many answers as I since he’s been in charge of the project. You have the benefit of his talents and I do not. Jokan, jet it into their thick heads, will you?” Harlan urged. “I’ll beam you at zero hour and, unless you like the noise, you’d better cut the sound on all screens,” he warned.

“You technicians got the spatial coordinates now?” he asked the clerks in the banks around the tank. They raised right hands in reply. Harlan’s eyes left the immediate foreground and scanned the space above the Councilmen’s heads. I made myself as tall as I could in the hope he might be looking for me, but the expression on his face, set, cold, tired, did not change. The picture began to waver. Harlan looked off to his right in the control room, then back to the Councilmen.

“We’re at the limits, sirs. My respects to you all,” and the picture dissolved into blurs.

The droning voice had ended, too. The big room was strangely silent for what seemed a long, long time. As if everyone found the quiet unbearable, everyone began to talk at once. The Councilmen turned on Jokan with intense expressions and garrulous queries. Messengers began to move back and forth around the room. I sat down, confused by all the discussion and disheartened by its tone. Ferrill appeared disinterested and I drew some courage from his attitude.

“What was that all about?” I asked, abandoning any pretense of knowledge.

My request did not surprise Ferrill. He leaned forward, planting his forearms on the table comfortably as he enlightened me.

“The Ertois are workers of crystal and quartzite. They had developed a primitive form of energy, electricity, they called it, long before the Mil descended on them. Our force screens are an adaption of their electricity. They discovered, by what freak chance I don’t remember, that the Mil cannot stand electrical currents or sonic vibrations. They ringed their planet with gigantic electromagnetos, activating them in case of Mil attack. The metal of the Mil ships became a conductor and the Mil were electrocuted. Now, we had to figure a way to adapt this principle to use in space. Sound doesn’t travel in the vacuum, of course, but regulate the frequency of the electromagnetic radiation and you produce a resonant phenomenon in the ship hulls that literally tears the Mil cell from cell. Ironically, though the Mil are much larger than we, they are easy victims to a weapon that we can endure.

“My father was very interested in this application of resonators. You see, we’ve never had an offensive weapon. That’s why our casualties have always been so high. The only advantage we have had over the Mil in battle has been our ability to take higher accelerations and make sharper maneuvers. It’s a pretty slim advantage.

“This project has been going on for several decades. It’s been expensive and was discontinued when Fathor died. Council had an attack of conservatism and the Mil were quiet on the Rim. Harlan reinstated the project under Jokan who is one of our few creative geniuses.

“The reason our skeptics have been so upset is that they have never seen what the resonators can do to a simulated Mil protoplasm. I have seen it and, granted it was under ideal laboratory conditions, the results were incredible.” His eyes narrowed. “There is a minor theory going around, which I am inclined to support, that Gorlot used the resonators to herd the Mil into Tane. It’s the only way he could have managed to control their direction.”

“Why didn’t Harlan mention that?” I asked. “Didn’t he know?”

Ferrill shrugged. “Where the Mil are concerned, logic is sometimes useless. Particularly right now. Look what’s happened. The Mil have actually been allowed past the Perimeter. They have been allowed to wipe out an entire race. For seventy-five years, they haven’t been able to penetrate the Rim defenses for more than a few parsecs.

“Our ancestors were used to the menace of the Mil in their skies. As accustomed as one is able to get to such a thought. But we aren’t. Stannall may be our leading Councilman and a very intelligent fellow, but the mere thought of the possibility of the Mil coming back into Lotharian skies turns him into a quivering mass of ancient fears and superstition. And Harlan has just blithely assured him that he will wait to reform before Lothar itself in order to test this new weapon!”

“Why does he have to wait?” I asked confused.

“Because, Lady Sara,” Ferrill explained patiently, “the beam attenuates with distance, losing its strength. The maximum effect is gained at close quarters—spatially speaking—from an encirclement, so that each resonator is equidistant from the target, setting up the resonating phenomenon at maximum efficiency.”

“If they can’t encircle?” I asked, perceiving some of the dread with which Stannall and the others received Harlan’s gamble.

“The usual tactics, only we will have a ringside seat,” and Ferrill gestured heavenward.

“What
are
the usual tactics?” I insisted.

Ferrill regarded me seriously for a moment.

“You really don’t know, do you?” he remarked with amazement. “We have discovered only two ways to dispose of a Mil ship. Both are dangerous to the attacker because we lack an offensive weapon other than speed and maneuverability. We must either knock out their control room, which means a close-range assault with nucleonic weapons that match theirs, or we must make a direct hit on their fuel source. The first is preferable because it leaves us a new recruit for our fleet . . . after decontamination, of course. The second method blows up the ship.”

“You heard Harlan mention eighty-five percent casualties, didn’t you?” Ferrill continued and I nodded. “He means just that. There are only four Star-class cruisers in our fleet, eighty-five planet weight and forty satellite variety plus about fifty rider suicide ships. Figure out your eighty-five percent against a force of twenty-three Mil ships,
fifteen
of them Star-class and you can see why Harlan is going to gamble on our new offensive weapon.”

My mental arithmetic was not up to estimating the odds, but eight-five percent was obviously a Pyrrhic victory.