Exploiter's End Part 4

I toiled feverishly over operation schedules, the crazily fluctuating cost charts. My headache was gone, but I still couldn't remember my axioms! I felt guilty over not going to Psych, but there just wasn't the time.

h.e.l.l, _I'd_ never needed indoctrination. I was an Amalgamated man through and through. Finally I grabbed an engineering manual, leafed angrily through it--and sat there, empty and shaking.

I'd gone insane.

The words were gibberish. Oh, I could read them all right, but they didn't make _sense_. What a filthy trick. Semantic block, Starza would call it. I kept staring at the meaningless words, conscious of a tearing sense of loss. And I wanted to cry.

Six o'clock was zero hour.

Six o'clock came, and the factory held its collective breath while nothing happened.

At six-thirty Starza made a long speech over the public address. About the selfless spirit of man, helping the Terms reach the stars, about how we would never admit defeat, and about how, after tonight, the Term festival would be discontinued. The Terms had adopted mankind's culture, they had no further need of their effete native customs.

At seven, Fern and I were walking past Administration towards the lighted square-mile enclosure of the Term village. Fern had never seen a festival.

"A throwback," I said, "to their old tribal days. Their harvest, when they pay tribute to the Queen-Mother and pray for good crops and work well done. It's their yearly subst.i.tute for _Stammverstand_. Back in the native villages, whenever a Term's in trouble, he goes to the council hut and the others join him in a silent, group telepathy. But we've just about weaned them, angel! They'll be individuals soon."

We walked down the deserted row of Term huts, past the council hall, to the great stone amphitheatre, and sat with the other execs. Fern was very gay and cheerful, but I kept thinking about my axioms, trying to bring them back to life. I felt dead, all dead inside.

Starza came up, frowning, and I congratulated him.

"It's too pat, Jake, it worries me. Where's Carmody?"

"Setting up those semantic reaction tests you gave him," Fern said.

"But I never gave him--"

Abruptly the lights snuffed out. At one end of the arena loomed a twelve-foot statue of a bloated Term, limned in a soft pale glow. The Queen-Mother.

The hush. Then the radiance.

Slowly the Terms filed into the arena, rank upon rank of living flame.

First the fighters, their antennae s.h.i.+ning crimson and splendid against the tall night. Then the twins glows of blue that denoted the spinners, the weavers. The golden blaze of the harvesters. The lambent colors crept through the air like a mood, like a dream, and deepened into a s.h.i.+mmering cataract of rainbow fire, a paean of light and glory that whirled and spun in a joyous rhythm as old as the race itself.

Then--chaos.

A blinding flare cascaded from the six-foot antennae of the statue. The radiance grew, brighter than an atomic flare, more terrible than the sun. The Terms stood frozen. Beside me, Starza swore.

This wasn't in the script.

That colossal voice.

Ear-snapping clicks, and liquid vowels. Terminese. The forbidden tongue.

The voice blared. I caught most of it.

"_Children, you have sinned. You are defiled with the taint of alien monsters. You have failed the Queen-Mother. Return, my children, return to your tribes. Return to the tabernacle of unity, the one-in-all, the Queen-Mother! For in death there is life, and there is joy in immolation. Return!_"

Lastly, the climax. That last shattering hunk of propaganda that would have been so tritely amusing if it hadn't been so terrifying.

"_You have nothing to lose but your chains._"

The giant antennae faded to a liquid silver. The silver of hope, of forgiveness.

For a moment I was blind. I felt Fern trembling against me. The execs were chattering like frightened sheep. Then I could see. I saw Starza.

He was moving down the aisle, cursing in a tight, dull monotone.

I followed him down into the arena. The Terms stood shriveled, mute.

Starza was fumbling at the base of the statue, and he said in a thick horrible voice, "Look." The loudspeaker. The coiled wiring.

The Terms stirred.

Starza leaped to the lap of the statue. He bawled, "Listen! This is sacrilege! You have been victims of a hoax--"

Not listening, they filed in silent groups out of the arena. Their antennae were the color of ashes. Starza jumped down. He pounded after them. He was shouting at Los Tichnat.

"I know," Tichnat droned. He kept walking. "You are right. It does not matter that you are right. The Queen-Mother called."

"Listen," Starza mouthed. "It was a fraud, a trick. You can't--"

"We must." Tichnat paused. For a long moment the great faceted eyes stared somberly. "It was a splendid dream, the thing you offered us. But this is the final reality. And yours is but a dream."

He tramped stolidly on, after the others. The council hall door closed.

Starza clawed at the door. It opened. He was too late. They sat silently around the great table, the faceted eyes dead, the antennae coruscating indigo, now green, now rose. Communion. The mes.h.i.+ng of minds. Starza shouted at them. Stillness.

Starza looked blindly at me. He was shaking. "Carmody," he said.

"Carmody knows the Term mind. He can do something. Come on," he said.

We found Carmody in his quarters, methodically packing. His eyebrows rose as we burst in. "Did you gentlemen ever try knocking?"

Starza just looked at him. Carmody drew a long breath. "You'll find my resignation on your desk, Dave."

"Ah?" Starza's voice was very soft.

"It's only a question of time," Carmody said. "Call it the rat deserting the s.h.i.+p if you like, but I'm through."

Starza was smiling, a fat man's smile. "So you really think you can pull it off," he whispered.

Carmody shrugged, and Starza calmly took out a sonic pistol and shot him in the belly.

A sonic blast hemorrhages. It rends the capillaries, ploughs the flesh into a flaccid collection of shattered nerve fibers and ruined arteries.

It's a rotten way to die.

Starza watched Carmody thrash himself to death on the floor. I turned away.

"For the record, Jake, he made a full confession. We both heard him."