Robert Silverberg - The Silent Invaders

“I tell you, they know everything. They know about the cut-off memory circuit too.”

“Impossible. Flatly impossible that they should know a thing like that.”

Harris began to feel impatient with his superior. Restraining his temper, he said as evenly as he could, “Do you choose not to believe me?”

“I believe you. But I don’t understand.”

“You think I do?”

“Very well. What else happened to you last night?”

“After she stunned me, she carted me off to the Medlin headquarters. It’s a sub-surface building far on the other side of town. When I woke up she introduced me to two staff members. A disguised Medlin named Paul Coburn and an oversized Earther who calls himself David Wrynn.”

“Coburn is on our list,” Carver said. “He’s Medlin Intelligence. I don’t know anything about this Wrynn. He is probably an Earthman as he says.”

Harris said, “The girl started giving me some weird line about raising a breed of super-Earthmen.” Quickly he repeated the story Beth had told about the supposed species of mutants. “They asked me if I would help them in this noble cause.”

“You agreed?”

“Of course I agreed,” Harris said. “They let me go and sent me out to handle my first assignment for them.”

“Which is?”

“I’m supposed to eradicate all the Darruui on Earth, beginning with you.”

“The others are well scattered,” Carver said.

“The Medlins seem to know where they are. The Medlins seem to know every phase of our operation from top to bottomn. You’d better start hunting for that security leak, Carver. One of your men’s been selling us out.”

Carver was silent for a moment. Then he said, “There’s only one thing we can do now. We’ll have to accelerate the program and strike at once. Surprise may overcome the disadvantages we’re under. We’ll attack the Medlin headquarters and kill as many of them as we can. Do you really think they trust you?”

“It’s hard to tell. I’m inclined to think that they don’t trust me at all, that they’re using me as bait for an elaborate trap,” Harris said.

“That’s more likely. Well, we’ll take their bait. Only they won’t be able to handle us once they’ve caught hold of us.”

“Don’t underestimate them, Carver.”

“I’m not. But don’t underestimate our strength either. Don’t underestimate yourself, Harris. Remember that we’re Servants of the Spirit. Doesn’t that count for something? What are a hundred Medlins against us, after all?”

Harris closed his eyes. His body throbbed with hunger, and at the moment, having had some demonstration at close range of Medlin abilities, he was not so buoyantly imbued with religious faith as was Carver.

He said noncommittally, “Yes. Yes, we must keep that in mind.”

Carver broke contact. Carefully Harris packed the equipment away again, watching it slither into the tesseract and vanish.

A prolonged session under the molecular showerbath was the next item on the agenda. The soothing abrasion of the dancing molecular particles not only ground away the grime of his night’s imprisonment, but rid his body of the poisons of fatigue, leaving him better able to face up to the new challenges the Medlins posed.

Breakfast came next. Dressing in a crisply laundered fresh uniform, he rode downstairs to the hotel restaurant and had a terran-style breakfast of fruit juice, hot rolls, bacon, coffee. For all his hunger, the meal was close to tasteless to him. The harsh acids of fear rolled in his digestive tract.

Returning to his room, he locked himself in, and threw himself wearily on the bed. He was a tired man, and a deeply troubled one. Superman , he thought.

He rolled the argument around in his mind for the hundredth time in the last two hours.

Did it make sense for the Medlins to rear and nurture a possible galactic conqueror? No, no, an infinity of times, no!

Earthmen were dangerous enough as it was, without laboring long and mightily to enhance their powers. Though the spheres of galactic influence still were divided as of old between Darruu and Medlin, the two-edged blade that had sundered the universe for millenia, the Earthmen in their bare three hundred years of galactic contact with the older races had taken giant strides toward holding a major place in the affairs of the universe.

Three hundred years was only a moment in galactic history. It had taken ten times that long for Darruu to reach outward and plant colonies. The active phase of the Darruu-Medlin conflict had gone on for nearly as long as the entire dominant culture-group of Earth had been in cohesive existence. The present, or inactive phase of the conflict, had begun when Earthers were still using animal-drawn vehicles for transportation.

Yet a slim three centuries had gone by since the first Earther ship broke the barrier of light, and in the time since then they had planted colonies halfway across the galaxy, stretching on to the dim reaches of the star cluster. The Interstellar Development Corps, of which he in the guise of Abner Harris claimed to be a member, had planted colonies of Earthmen indiscriminately on any uninhabited and habitable world of the galaxy that was not claimed by Darruu or Medlin—including some that both the older races had written off as uninhabitable by oxygen-breathing species.

And the Medlins, the ancient enemies of his people, the race that he had been taught all his life to regard as the embodiment of evil—these Medlins were aiding Earthmen to progress to a plane of development far beyond anything either Darruu or Medlin had attained?

Ridiculous , he thought.

No race knowingly and enthusiastically breeds its own destruction, not even a race of fools. And the Medlins were anything but fools.

Certainly not fools enough to let me get out of their hands on nothing but a mere promise that I’ll turn traitor and help them , he thought.

He shook his head in bewilderment.

After a while he rose, got his precious flask of Darruui wine, uncorked it, poured a small quantity out into a glass. He held the glass in the palm of his hand a long moment without drinking it, warming the wine so that he could inhale the bouquet.

Finally he lifted the wine to his lips and allowed himself a grudging sip. It was almost unbearable to taste the velvet-textured dark wine of his homeworld again. It soothed him a little, but the ultimate result was simply to increase beyond toleration his already painful longing for home.

He closed his eyes and pictured the vineyards of Moruun Türa, ripening slowly in the crimson mists of summer. He had been born in the wine country. He remembered the cellars of his grandfather’s house, with the casks of wine a century old and more, ranged in dusty rows. Only on special occasions were those casks disturbed. On the day of his coming of age, they had let him sip wine that was young when the Earthers were still planetbound. On the day of the trimming of his birth-tree, his grandfather let him taste the tongue-searing pure brandy he distilled.

On the day of his adoption into the ranks of the Servants of the Spirit, the wine had flowed freely too. Old wine, new wine. A joyous night, that one had been, a night never to forget.

Now, on Darruu, the grapes hung heavy on the vines, swelling with sugar, ripening, almost ready to ferment. Soon it would be harvest-time, and then weeks afterward the first bottles of new wine would reach the shops, and in Moruun Türa there would be the days of thanksgiving, when wine flowed like water in praise of the Spirit that had granted the summer’s blessings, and women gave themselves to all without stint, and happiness reigned.

This would be the first year, he realized, that he had not tasted the new vintage while it still held the bouquet of youth. On Darruu they would be gathering to pronounce the verdict on this year’s vintage. But they would do it without him. He would not share that time of happiness this year, and perhaps never again would he know the joys of vintage time. Others back home would have the delights.