Gordon Dickson - The Human Edge

Time flowed by, catching him up in the rhythm of his work as it went.

His job with Annie required just this sort of concentration and involvement, and for a little while he forgot the two watching him. He looked up at last to see the window aperture flushed with yellow-pink dawn, and guessed that perhaps an hour had gone by.

He tore loose the tape he had been handling, and walked with it to the Chedal.

“Here,” he said, putting the tape into the blunt, three-fingered hands, and pointing to the first figures. “There’s your G.R.P. half a standard year after agreement to co-exist with Laburti.—Up three thousandths of one per cent already. And here it is at the end of a full year—”

“And the Laburti?” demanded the translated chittering of the alien.

“Down here. You see…” Ty talked on. The Chedal watched, his perfectly round, black eyes emotionless as the button-eyes of a child’s toy. When Ty was finished, the alien, still holding the tape, swung on Mial, turning his back to Ty.

“We will check this, of course,” the Chedal said to Mial. “But your price is high.” He turned and went out.

Ty stood staring after him.

“What price?” he asked, huskily. His throat was suddenly dry. He swung on Mial. “What price is it that’s too high?”

“The price of cooperation with the Laburti!” snarled Mial. “They and the Chedal hate each other—or haven’t you noticed?” He turned and stalked off into the opposite bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Ty stood staring at the closed surface. He made a step toward it. Mial had evidently been up all night. This, combined with the emotional situation between them, would make it pointless for Ty to try to question him.

Besides, thought Ty, hollowly and coldly, there was no need. He turned back across the room to the pile of their supplies and got out the coffeemaker. It was a little self-contained unit that could brew up a fresh cup in something like thirty seconds; for those thirty seconds, Ty kept his mind averted from the problem. Then, with the cup of hot, black coffee in his hands, he sat down to decide what to do.

Mial’s answer to his question about the Chedal’s mention of price had been thoughtless and transparent—the answer of a man scourged by dislike and mind-numbed by fatigue. Clearly, it could not be anything so simple as the general price of cooperation with a disliked other race, to which the Chedal Observer had been referring. No—it had to have been a specific price. And a specific price that was part of specific, personal negotiations held in secret between the alien and Mial.

Such personal negotiations were no part of the Demonstration plans as Ty knew them. Therefore, Mial was not following those plans. Clearly, he was following some other course of action.

And this, to Ty, could only be the course laid down by those political minds back on Earth who had wanted to use Annie as a pawn to their maneuvering, instead of presenting the statistical analysis instrument plainly and honestly by itself to the Laburti and the Chedal Observers.

If this was the case, the whole hope of the Demonstration hung in the balance. Mial, sparked by instinctive hatred for Ty, was opposing himself not merely to Ty but to everything Ty stood for—including the straightforward presentation of Annie’s capabilities. Instead, he must be dickering with the Chedal for some agreement that would league humanity with the Chedal and against the Laburti—a wild, unrealistic action when the solar system lay wholly within the powerful Laburti stellar sphere of influence.

A moment’s annoyance on the part of the Laburti—a moment’s belief that the humans had been trying to trick them and play games with their Chedal enemy—and the Laburti forces could turn Earth to a drifting cinder of a world with as little effort as a giant stepping on an ant.

If this was what Mial was doing—and by now Ty was convinced of it—the other man must be stopped, at any cost.

But how?

Ty shivered suddenly and uncontrollably. The room seemed abruptly as icy as a polar tundra.

There was only one way to stop Mial, who could not be reasoned with—by Ty, at least—either on the emotional or the intellectual level; and who held the paper proofs of authority over Ty and Annie. Mial would have to be physically removed from the Demonstration. If necessary—rather than risk the life on Earth and the whole human race—he would have to be killed.

And it would have to look like an accident. Anything else would cause the aliens to halt the Demonstration.

The shiver went away without warning—leaving only a momentary flicker of doubt in Ty, a second’s wonder if perhaps his own emotional reaction to Mial was not hurrying him to take a step that might not be justified. Then, that flicker went out. With the Demonstration only hours away, Ty could not stop to examine his motives. He had to act and hope he was right.

He looked across the room at Annie. The statistical analysis instrument housed her own electrical power source and it was powerful enough to give a lethal jolt to a human heart. Her instruments and controls were insulated from the metal case, but the case itself…

Ty put down his coffee cup and walked over to the instrument. He got busy. It was not difficult. Half an hour later, as the sun of this world was rising out of the sea, he finished, and went back to his room for a few hours’ sleep. He fell instantly into slumber and slept heavily.

He jerked awake. The loon-like hooting in his ears; and standing over his bed was the darkly robed figure of a Laburti.

Ty scrambled to his feet, reaching for a bathrobe.

“What…?” he blurted.

Hairless, gray-skinned and dog-faced, narrow-shouldered in the heavy, dark robes he wore, the Laburti looked back at him expressionlessly.

“Where is Demonstration Chief Arthur Mial?” The words came seemingly without emotion from the translator collar, over the sudden deep, harsh-voiced yammering from the face above it.

“I—in the bedroom.”

“He is not there.”

“But…” Ty, belting the bathrobe, strode around the alien, out of his bedroom, across the intervening room and looked into the room into which Mial had disappeared only a few hours before. The bed there was rumpled, but empty. Ty turned back into the center room where Annie stood. Behind her black metal case, the alien sun was approaching the zenith position of noon.

“You will come with me,” said the Laburti.

Ty turned to protest. But two more Laburti had come into the suite, carrying the silver-tipped devices which, Ty had been briefed back on Earth, were weapons. Following them came mechs which gathered up the baggage and Annie. Ty cut off the protest before it could reach his lips. There was no point in arguing. But where was Mial?

They crossed a distance of the alien city by flying platform and came at last into another tower, and a large suite of rooms. The Laburti who had woken Ty led him into an interior room where yet another Laburti stood, robed and impassive.

“These,” said the Laburti who had brought Ty there, “are the quarters belonging to me. I am the Consul for your human race on this world. This—” the alien nodded at the other robed figure, “is the Observer of our Laburti race, who was to view your device today.”

The word was, with all the implications of its past tense, sent a chill creeping through Ty.

“Where is Demonstration Chief Arthur Mial?” demanded the Laburti Observer.

“I don’t know!”

The two Laburti stood still. The silence went on in the room, and on until it began to seem to roar in Ty’s ears. He swayed a little on his feet, longing to sit down, but knowing enough of protocol not to do so while the Laburti Observer was still standing. Then, finally, the Observer spoke again.