John Wade Farrell

Destiny Deferred

Sevridge sat down without waiting to be asked. “Three days I wait to see you, Blount. How important can you get?”

Blount’s side-of-beef face was impassive. He looked at Sevridge from under up-curled grey eyebrows with little eyes like a shoemaker’s tools. “You suffer. You kill me.”

“I want to see the plan, Blount. Aren’t you dizzy sitting on the top rung of the ladder? Maybe you forgot that three years ago we were drawing the same pay for the same dirty work, and when you did the cooking, it stank.”

“Don’t get shirty, Sevridge. You can be replaced.”

“I want to see the plan for R eighty-eight. I may have something to say about it.”

Blount sighed. “Habilitation Service is not paying you for anything you have to say, Bob. You draw your pay for making the surveys, organizing the equipment and making the planet fit the plan.”

“Let’s see the plan, Blount. And don’t try to bluff me. You can replace me and get some kid that’ll be running back panting every time he breaks the jaws on a BX pulverizer. I capsuled all the photos and projections back here and you’ve had the seven months I was in transit to work it out. So let’s see it.”

Blount shrugged and swung around in his chair. He dialed the index and waited until the requested objects thudded into the scoop. He slid the door back and took out the first globe. “There she is now,” he said.

He flipped the almost weightless globe, on a scale of ten thousand miles to a foot, over to Sevridge. It was the result of forty thousand separate pieces of datum, so exact that microscopic examination would reveal no variation between it and the actuality — the newly-charted world, R-88, ninety-one light years distant, one of a score of current projects of Habilitation Service.

Sevridge spun it in his fingers and set it aside casually. It was the second map-globe that he cared about. Blount handed Sevridge the second globe, settled back in his chair with the hooded expression of a poker player.

Sevridge made a careful examination. The mountain ranges were gone, the seas’ ragged borders geometrized, polar caps and tropic belt sterilized into featureless flatness, the asceptic cubes of the power transmitters dotted in checkerboard pattern over the whole face of the planet.

He set it gently on the desk in front of him. “I thought so,” he said heavily. “I heard the rumor but I couldn’t believe it.”

“It’s a natural answer,” Blount said, his voice casual. “I don’t see why you should be so excited. Even you should have seen it coming when you knew we’d taken the regular options on the whole five planets of the system. If we made a normal habilitation, it would give us just R eighty-eight. But by turning R eighty-eight into an automatic power station transmitting to the other planets it gives us four instead of one. That’s simple economics, Sevridge. Common sense.”

“How about sun-boost stations on each one, giving you five planets?”

“You know better than that. Too bulky, too expensive. And less net habitation space in the end.”

“They giving you a bonus for this, Blount?”

“That’s hardly any of your business. But maybe if you get this plan through ahead of deadline I can arrange you a bonus.”

“You can’t buy me like you bought Species Rating.”

Blount’s heavy face reddened. “Watch what you say, Sevridge,” he said softly.

“I’m saying it. You saw my reports. I’m an amateur at it, but I rated them. They came out sixteen point three on the scale — well over the minimal sentience rating of nine point nine. But if Species Rating puts them officially over nine point nine your little plan is licked. You’ve got to leave them their planet and their little civilization. Who did you buy off, Blount, to have the Cheeps put through at a nine point eight?”

“Cheeps? I thought they—”

“I call them that because they make that sound more often than any other. Like a box of baby chicks. And I got to know them pretty well. Wouldn’t it make a bit of a stink on Earth if they learned that Habilitation Service was going to wipe out a race that had already devised a crude internal combustion engine?”

“The official rating is nine point eight. There’s no use talking about it. R eighty-eight is ideal for the power station. You’ll follow orders.”

“Oh, great!” Sevridge said. “After they got over their first fright, they made me a guest of honor. So I pull the switch that drops half a billion tons of auto-control construction equipment onto their planet. Push the mountains into their laps and chew up their cities and spit out the pieces.”

“Aren’t you getting a little emotional, Sevridge?”

“Not emotional. Just sick to the stomach. I thought that Species Rating was one outfit that couldn’t be bought like a cookie. Congratulations, Blount. I quit. Get yourself another boy.”

“It isn’t that easy, Sevridge.”

“Just what do you mean?”

“If you returned to Earth and started spreading that sort of nasty rumor it might hurt our competitive position. You might remember for a moment where you are. On C seventeen. There’s not a soul on this planet who isn’t an employee of Habilitation Service. No craft leaves C seventeen except on company business. I don’t think you’re going anywhere.”

Sevridge grinned. “That won’t work, Al. Not for a minute. I’ll demand to see old C.B. He may be a ruthless old monkey, but he isn’t crooked.”

Blount said, very gently, “Maybe you were so mad when you stormed in here that you didn’t notice the title on my door. Take a look. You can read it in reverse through the glass.”

Sevridge turned his head slowly. He looked back at Blount. “So you made it, eh? All the way to the top. The big boss now. Where’s C. B.?”

“Dead. A little accident. He was inspecting some new equipment.”

“Very handy. Play ball or else, eh? You’re rotten all the way through, Al. Maybe I’ll take the ‘or else’. Maybe I’m just that stubborn.”

“The ‘or else’ as you put it, Sevridge, is a diagnosis of space fever and a little excitation of neuron patterns. We’ll give you a post-excitation fix that will make you do the assigned job, willing or unwilling. So you might just as well give up and do it willingly.”

Sevridge stared at the ceiling. “What a sucker I’ve been!” he said softly. “Walking right in here, knowing you as well as I do, and still thinking that there might be a scruple or two tucked away in all that beef.”

“You’ll find the performance bonus satisfactory, Sevridge.”

“No doubt. Then you’ve bought me and you can put me on the next dirty job and the next. Anyway, here’s the trump card. Take a look.”

Sevridge unbuttoned his tunic pocket. It bulged. A small head popped up out of the pocket and stared at Blount with two intensely curious brown eyes. The wrinkled skin of the face was a pale aqua, and the two huge front teeth were a soft shade of rose. “Meet the Big Cheep,” Sevridge said.

Blount could barely restrain his anger. “You know the penalty for bringing alien life forms here!”

Sevridge picked the creature out of his tunic pocket with a thumb and forefinger in the armpits and set him on the edge of the desk. It was about six inches tall, a biped with two multi-jointed arms ending in three articulated fingers and an opposed thumb. It wore a skirt of woven fabric, a shirt of overlapping metallic plates, a toy gun in the holster at its waist.

Sevridge said, “It took, me a long time to figure out what they reminded me of. Then I remembered the exhibit on primitive art forms. Maybe you saw it. They had a rabbit. Bugs Bunny, they called him. Every Cheep looks like Bugs Bunny without the ears. See? The same sassy look. Sort of jaunty, isn’t he?”

The Cheep trotted over to the globe representing his world as it existed. He bent over and peered at it closely. He made a series of rapid chirping sounds, straightened up and slapped himself on the chest plates three times.

Blount said, “And you’d try to block the plan for the sake of a bunch of little animals like that?”

“Careful!” Sevridge said. “I can’t communicate with them yet, but they seem to be able to feel our emotions. Look at him now.”

The Cheep was in a half crouch his splayed fingers inches from the butt of the holstered weapon. There was no mistaking the look of cold ferocity with which he regarded Blount.

“Could he kill me with that thing?” Blount asked.

“He sure as hell could.” Sevridge spoke gently to the Cheep. It relaxed and moved backward. “They’ve got a nice brand of courage,” Sevridge said, “and a pretty good social order. They have nations and wars. As near as I can gather, they’ve given up big-scale wars in favor of hand to hand combat between the heads of nations. Saves them a lot of money and energy. You can see from the structure that they’re distant cousins of the human race. Mammals, meat-eaters. They farm, have music, build factories and send the little Cheeps to school. Life span is about fifty years, I think. Their bright boys are fooling around with gliders. Give them another twenty years and they’ll be in the air. That’s an automatic twenty rating, as you damn well know.”

“Nobody is giving them another twenty years, Sevridge.”

“How about letting me move them?”

“No.”

“Of course not. Too much chance of it getting out if you let me do that. And if the knowledge got into the hands of the right people, the Habilitation Service license would be yanked so fast you’d spin for a week like a fat top.”

“You know what you have to do, Sevridge.”

“They’ll fight, you know.”

Blount sneered. “A lot of good that will do. Even a Federation planet would have a very bad time if you dropped our equipment on it. They might wreck one or two pieces of equipment, if they’re lucky.”

“Come on out yourself and take a look at their cities first, Al. For old time’s sake. Like doll cities. Pastel towers overlooking little blue lakes. Their females wear crimson. At dusk when they walk in the streets of their cities it is like moving paths of flame.”

“We can skip the poetry. I’m too busy to go look at doll houses. You fail to realize, Sevridge, that planets don’t grow on trees. We’re having to go further and further afield. D. A. C. got the jump on us in Uranus Sector. You can afford the luxury of going soft over these little green animals. I can’t. I’ve got my responsibility to the employees and the stockholders. R eighty-five through R eighty-nine means the difference between a good year and a bad year.”

“But the law on Species Rating wasn’t passed just on account of the big words. And how are you going to get around the ruling that you have to select one colony of the spiecies and transport it to S. R. Headquarters — even low-rating stuff?”

“I don’t believe they’ll survive the trip. That’s all been arranged.”

“Think of everything, don’t you?”

Blount looked steadily at him. “Yes, I do. And that’s why I’m where I am, and why you’re exactly where you were five years ago, if you want me to be frank. Now, will you do what you’re told, or will I arrange it so that you can’t help doing what we want?”

Sevridge looked down at his strong brown hands, knotted into fists. “I’ll do as I’m told,” he said dully. “But I don’t have to like it. And I hope the Cheeps have some talent I haven’t seen and you haven’t thought of. I hope they put up the kind of a fight that you can’t hide from Earth.”

Blount looked at the Cheep which was still watching him warily. “I hardly think there’ll be much of a fight, Sevridge. Take that revolting little animal off my desk and put it back in your pocket. Don’t let anyone see it, and I’ll let you get away with bringing it here. All your equipment is in Orbit D. The technicians have been installing the coordination tapes. They’ll be through tomorrow at about this time. Then you can make up your train and head for R eighty-eight. We’ve already sent out the prospectus and we’re getting a nice response. My hands are tied.”

Sevridge put the Big Cheep back in his pocket. The Cheep gave Blount one last look, spat neatly through the crack between the two huge front teeth and ducked down into the pocket. Sevridge buttoned it.

“I wish your hands were tied,” he said reflectively, “to a concrete block and you were standing on the rail of a bridge. Happy planning, Buster.”

Sevridge went scowling back to his assigned room. He shut the door and put the Big Cheep on the bed. The Cheep dug into his own small baggage and took out the food package. He sat down with his back against the edge of the pillow and began eating. Sevridge thought he seemed moody.

“Just how much did you understand, boss?” Sevridge said.

The Cheep looked at him, munching.

“How about a night on the town, boss? Forget our troubles. You ever try any alcohol? No, I guess not. Remember, now. Stay down in the pocket. Give me that little cup of yours and I’ll fill it up and slip it to you at regular intervals.”

The Cheep picked up the tiny cup and tossed it into Sevridge’s lap. “I’ll be damned!” Sevridge said softly.

At three in the morning Sevridge came rolling back down the corridor, singing in a ragged baritone. The Big Cheep had his chin over the edge of the pocket. The brown eyes looked glassy.

Inside the room Sevridge tossed the Cheep onto the bed. It stood up, took three wavering steps and went down onto its face, aqua arms outspread. Sevridge held his ear close to it. He could hear a faint snoring sound.

“Poor li’l guy,” Sevridge said thickly. “Poor li’l ole Cheep. Dyin’ race, by God. Wiped out by big-mouth Al Blount. Las’ toot for the Big Cheep.” He sat solemnly in the chair and cried for a while and then passed out peacefully.

By mid-morning Sevridge’s hangover had diminished to the point where it was merely excruciating agony. He held his pocket open. “Climb in, chum. I can’t lift you. Ain’t you a little greener than usual?”

The hangover was handy. It kept Sevridge from thinking about what was ahead. He picked up his orders, climbed the ramp, tossed his duffle aboard the reequipped control ship and got clearance. He went upstairs to where the equipment was in orbit around C-17. Massive, monolithic equipment, with atomic jaws and sightless eyes. Three super-bulldozers with their fifty mile blades. Forty BX pulverizers, ready to yonk and chonk their way through vegetation and soil and subsoil, leaving behind a glistening and vitrified path. Three hundred other massive pieces, with specialized functions. The coordination tapes were all installed. The dim mechanical minds knew the shape of the planet-to-be. All Sevridge had to do was lead the train in his control ship. They’d follow with deceptive docility. Then, with the planet in range, yank the master switch and get out of the way. A half billion tons of auto-control equipment would drop onto the planet like locusts onto a corn patch. All he had to do was sit upstairs with the panel board and yank out any breakdowns and feed in the replacements. Dust would obscure the planet. And after a time there would be no dust, no hills, no green, no rivers. Just the shining surface, the block-like power stations, the drying seas. Then R-88 could be activated to provide the necessary heat for her four sister planets — and Blount would be warmly commended.

The last technician ship dropped away from the side of a Fabricator, and Sevridge received the all-clear signal.

He slid over into line just ahead of the lead machine, muttered “Come on, you tin wonders,” and straightened out on astrogation pattern on the Symetric Arc from C-17 to the R-85-89 system. Each piece of equipment broke out of orbit at the precise spot where Sevridge had. He set his screens and looked back to see if all broke free. They had. He headed through space at Continual Acceleration, equipment strung out behind him for two hundred and twenty thousand miles.

The Big Cheep crawled over to his accustomed place atop the panel board.

“They licked us, boss,” Sevridge said wearily. “They stomped us ragged. But try to remember that it wasn’t my fault.”

Sevridge yawned. The Cheep watched him for a time, then crawled down the panel board, talked across Sevridge’s thigh, arms outspread for balance, used the buttons to climb up the front of his tunic, and sat on his shoulder.

“You’re going to be one unhappy little guy when you see it happen,” Sevridge said sleepily. He put his head back on the acceleration rest. The Cheep made a soft chittering sound in Sevridge’s ear. A small three-fingered hand reached around and the Cheep began to stroke Sevridge’s head, just over the right eye.

“Mmmm,” Sevridge said. “That’s right where it aches. How did you know?”

The Cheep chittered some more. “Mmmm,” Sevridge said. His chin dropped down onto his chest.

A sharp and painful yank on Sevridge’s ear brought him quickly out of sleep. The Cheep scrambled over onto the instrument panel, chittering shrilly. Sevridge gave one frightened glance at the planet looming up in the front screen. He slapped the gyro switch, spun the ship through a ninety degree arc and slammed on all the power he dared. The iron fist of acceleration clamped on him, sickening him. He felt his eyes drag back into his head. His hand dropped leadenly from the gyro switch and he felt it strike the master switch. Alarm bells rang in the back of his mind, but until the acceleration blow lightened, he could do nothing.

As soon as he could see and think again, he put on the slow brakes and set the screens with trembling fingers. The incredible thing he had suspected from that one glance at the planet became true in the screens.

The equipment train was dropping onto C-17. There was no time left in which to insinuate himself at the head of the line and pick up the train again. There were no relays to halt the inevitable drop, no switch to stop work in progress.

He heightened the magnification on the screen, dimly conscious of the dazed and battered Cheep pulling itself to its feet, just under the screen. Now the equipment was a string of dots merging with the planet. He focused on the Administration Tower.

Two BX pulverizers went into action at the base of it — dark beetles, thrashing and grinding and darting, their tail spouts alight with the unbearable flame of fission. The tower, with Blount’s offices on the top floor, toppled slowly down toward the flames. The patrol craft darted and lancets of flame scoured down at the busy, mindless equipment. Then the dust rose so that he could see no longer. The lights on his panel indicated the equipment that had ceased to operate. Eleven pieces, fifteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. For a long time no other lights appeared. Then the twenty-second. Not enough, he knew. Not nearly enough to halt progress. The crest of the western range was visible above the cloak of dust. Then, slowly, it began to settle down toward the planet floor as the dozers sheared away the base.

The Big Cheep had dug into his food parcel. He had a stalk of something purple and very brittle. It made crisp sounds as he chomped it.

Sevridge tried to determine how this horror had happened. The Cheep had disturbed the set of the instruments while crawling on the panel. Of course, on the long trip to C-17 the Cheep would have had a chance to observe how the panel worked...

But that was insane, of course. And that vague feeling of compulsion when his hand had struck the master switch... no, this was a tragic accident, compounded of coincidence.

The Big Cheep finished the purple stalk and licked his fingers. There was something ineffably jaunty about him. Jaunty and wise and satisfied, as he avidly watched the dust-screened planet.

Content

John Wade Farrell
Destiny Deferred