Zach Hughes - The Stork Factor

sickness and I was just fifteen. I feel the same way you feel, Luke. I don't like it, but that's the way I am. No man has ever touched me and it doesn't

look as if one of you ever will, not the way I feel. So your virtue would be safe with me.» Luke was unable to speak. He turned away. It wasn't the act he was

afraid of. It was the continuous smutty talk of these people. Alone with one of them in a city? He'd die if she said something similar to what she'd been saying where people could hear. «And I also know that you don't talk about things like that,» Caster said. He looked at her quickly. Maybe she could read his thoughts. «I pray every night,» she said simply. «Huh?» «I shouldn't. My prayers have never been answered. I've never had a sign from heaven like you, but I pray. I pray because I think there has to be something. Something better than this.» He was silent. He thought about the big Fare who had come to his defense, who had fought the Techs to allow him to preach without heckling. He thought about the way the big man was breathing, all jerky and gaspy, how the blood and ooze covered his lower body. He thought about how he felt, seeing the sign from God. And Caster prayed. She

believed. And things were bad outside. If he could help. If he could make it easy for the people. If he could help bring them ease from their illnesses and make life better… «They don't have the right, do they, the Brothers, to live while we die?» «No,» she said. «They don't.» «Then I'll go,» Luke said. «I'll tell them,» Caster said. When she left, Luke fell to his knees, hands clasped. «Help me,» he prayed. «Please help me.» There was no light in the sky, only a lightening in his heart as if a weight had been lifted. CHAPTER NINE Truly, she thought, those who were responsible would suffer. It was a living hell. The massive ship of the line was a prison. Time was, for the first time within her immediate memory, a thing to be endured. Back on the Trangized planets, entire solar circuits meant little. In the small, enclosed, Trangless ship, a standard rotation period was eternity. Being alone was a new and unsettling experience. The navigation and handling of the ship was automatic, of course, directed by the huge computer back on A-l. Shipboard computers regulated the life of the ship. She was merely a passenger. Moreover, she was a prisoner. The shipboard computers were tyrannical. Machines directed her every movement, controlled her every moment. Machines indicated when it was time to take nourishment, time to sleep. Machines forced her into an indoctrination room where her mind was invaded, stimulated, shuffled around. Knowledge she had once been fed was reactivated from the memory storage banks of her brain, useless knowledge which had been force-fed her when she was a child, so long, long ago. It was there, but it was beyond her reach under normal conditions, for her pleasure-filled life on A-l had not been concerned with such things. It was traumatic to be jerked out of a sweet mixture of Trang and the joys of endless coition into a world of machines and complicated areas of knowledge. It is the function of the beings aboard a ship of the line to be capable of backing up any mechanical system. And, thus, she was crammed with terribly dry data regarding arms systems, navigation systems, the life system, power systems, emergency systems. It pleased her to find that the armament of the ship was sufficient to destroy a planetary grouping. She entertained bloody, joyful thoughts of finding the disturbing elements in Section G-1034876 and of blasting them into cosmic dust with one flyby. It pleased her to think of the sub-beings on Planet 3, Star R-875948 watching the nighttime skies to see planet after planet nova and spread death toward them, broiling them slowly before the actual effects of the guns reached them. One of the most frustrating aspects of the entire miserable situation was the remoteness of the suspected planet. It was far out from galactic center, an outpost planet near the thinning edge of the galaxy, remote, small, insignificant. Getting there was a series of lightning-fast jumps which ate vast distances. Incredible distances were covered in each jump into sub-space, but there were interminable waiting periods between jumps while the shipboard computers located a suitable power source from among the near stars, focused onto it, hummed in motionless energy as the power banks were recharged for yet another jump. It was the recharging periods which were deadly. The indoctrination helped, after the shock of having areas of the mind stimulated wore off. The indoctrination, after the first few sessions, became somewhat of a release from the sheer boredom of shipboard loneliness. There was even a sort of pride in finding that one's memory banks were so completely stocked with a vast technology. And there was a sense of childish pride in being reminded of the history of the race. Once she had been taught all of it and it had been pushed aside into unused areas of the brain during the eons of Trang-life. Once, when she was a child, she'd been indoctrinated in the

history of a people who started, ageless eternities ago, to people an empire which encompassed most of the galaxy. Having completed the necessary technical re-education, she passed the time with historical sessions and knew, with a sense of renewed wonder, the achievements of the race. Reliving it almost as if she participated, she saw the formation of the empire, the spreading out from A-l to near star systems, then on and on, the race proliferating as if it had been given a mandate to people the entire island universe. She saw the early starships flash into sub-space, some never to resurface. She saw the trials of the early colonists in primitive surroundings. She met the greats of the race. All were preserved in the banks of the great knowledge banks, almost alive in her mind. Outside, during the recharging periods of floating, seemingly motionless in space, she saw the great suns and the whorls of gaseous nebula and the great dark clouds and the distance, the sheer distance, involved in her trip. Far ahead of the ship, using sub-space as an instant medium of conduction, the small sensor near R-875948 acted as a beacon. Ancient records, exhumed by the central computer on A-1, proved the coordinates for each jump, and yet it was time-consuming. There was boredom, in spite of the interest in the historical archives. There was, after all, a physical limit to the time she could stay under the preceptors in the indoctrination room. For the remaining time, she was forced to endure long, Trangless periods of dissatisfaction. And alone! For the most desired female in the original system to be alone was the most unforgivable thing of all. There were times when her entire being cried out for male companionship, for the closeness, the joy of it. And for that, she determined, the sub-beings on that miserable, stinking planet would pay, and pay, and pay. At last the shipboard computer joined onto the weak, distant rays of the star R-875948 and the power banks hummed to gather strength for the last jump. It was then that she was summoned—summoned! Her!—to the indoctrination room. She went sullenly. She had just completed a thorough self-survey making minute adjustment to a gland, revitalizing dying cells, changing her hair color, just to pass the time, to a more glowing red. She felt wonderful, of course. She'd never felt any other way.

But she still longed for the peaceful languor of Trang and for the thrilling endlessness of love. Communication was not in words. It was in concepts passed directly into her mind. However, the information conveyed by the computer, in contact through sub-space with the central memory bank on A-l, concerned the destination planet. She absorbed the information with a certain interest. She would, at least, know what manner of sub-beings she was going to destroy. Not destroy. No? She was of the race. She was in command, in spite of the fact that she was, seemingly, directed in every action by machines. Machines were creations of the race. Thus, she was the last word. Sample, check, learn. There was no time to do those things. She had to get back. Her partner, alone. A commitment to be made. A thousand thousand sleeping, Trangized worlds, the race, threatened. How threatened if she destroyed the offending planet completely? So