Robert Silverberg - The Silent Invaders

The helitaxi lifted. Harris settled back, tried to calm himself. The situation was coming under control. In short order the Medlins would be eliminated, and then there would be nothing to fear from Earth and its new race.

Aragon Boulevard, for all its grand-sounding name, turned out to be a crooked, dusty excuse for a street far to the east, at the edge of the river. There was not even a helitaxi ramp in sight, and the cabbie had to let him off in the middle of a plaza some blocks away.

Harris trudged through gathering darkness toward the 8900 block, and found the building, shabby and old-fashioned, weatherbeaten and worn. There was no one on duty in the lobby. He simply walked in and made his way toward the gravshaft.

He rode up eight stories in a creaking antique of a gravshaft that vibrated so badly he expected to be hurled back down at any moment, and made his way down a dusty, poorly-lit corridor to a peeling, frayed door that gave off the faint hiss and yellow glow that indicated the presence of a protection-field.

Harris felt the gentle tingling in his stomach that told him he was getting a radionic scanning. He waited patiently.

Finally the door opened.

“Come in,” Carver said.

Harris stepped inside. There were four others in the room, besides himself and the Darruui leader. Carver said, speaking carefully in Terran as though determined not to make use of his Darruui background in any way, “This is Major Abner Harris, gentlemen.”

The other four introduced themselves in turn—a pudgy, balding man named Reynolds; a youthful, smiling one who called himself Tompkins; a short, cold-eyed man who gave his name as McDermott; and a lanky, lean fellow who introduced himself drawlingly as Patterson. As each of them in turn gave his name, he made the Darruui recognition signal, and Harris acknowledged it.

“The other four of us are elsewhere in the eastern hemisphere of Earth,” Carver said. “But six should be enough to handle the situation.”

Harris glanced at his five Darruui comrades. They looked run-of-the-mill, ordinary. Of the group, only he, with his crisp uniform and stiff military bearing, would seem capable to an outsider of being able to handle any kind of situation.

But he knew that that was a superficial way of assessing their strength. These five had been designed to look unobtrusive and unheroic. Beneath their Terran exteriors, all five were Servants of the Spirit, and so reliable to the utmost in any crisis.

“What are your plans?” Harris asked Carver.

“As discussed yesterday. We’re going to attack the Medlins, of course. We’ll have to wipe them out at once, down to the last of them.”

Harris nodded. But to his own surprise he felt troubled and dismayed. The image of Beth Baldwin, dead by his hand, crossed his mind. Frowning, he tried to clear his brain of such treacherous thoughts. But despite his earlier conviction of the need to destroy the Medlins, it seemed to him now that they had been strangely sincere in releasing him.

He knew that that was preposterous. He dismissed the idea from his mind.

“How will we wipe them out?” he asked.

“They trust you,” Carver said. “You’re one of their agents now, as far as they know.”

“Right.”

“You’ll return to them and tell them you’ve disposed of me, as instructed, and are reporting for your next assignment. Only you’ll be bearing a subsonic on your body. We’ll implant it now. Once you’re inside the headquarters, you activate the subsonic and knock them out.”

“And knock myself out as well?”

“No,” Carver said. “You’ll be fully shielded.”

“I see,” Harris said. “Then I’m supposed to… kill them when they’re unconscious?”

“Exactly,” Carver said.

The fat man, Reynolds, said slowly, “It would seem to me that there is a trace of reluctance on the Major’s face, yes?”

Harris fought to get his rebellious features to wear a properly patriotic, dutiful expression.

McDermott said, “Perhaps the Major has some lingering emotional feelings about one of the Medlins?”

Harris flashed a furious look at him. Was he that transparent, he wondered? Could they all fathom him so easily?

Carver said, “Is there anything troubling you, Major Harris?”

“No.”

“You’re completely willing to carry out the assignment?”

“I am a Servant of the Spirit,” Harris said stiffly.

Carver nodded. “So you are. I should not have questioned your motives even by implication.” There seemed to be more than a trace of mockery about his tone, Harris thought. Carver went on, “You know, you can’t be humane with Medlins, Harris. It’s axiomatic, I’d say. It’s like being humane with bloodsucking bats or with snakes.”

Harris felt tremors running through his legs. Five pairs of Darruui eyes were fixed balefully on him.

What are they thinking? Do they suspect me of something? Maybe they think I really have sold out to the Medlins!

The Darruui called McDermott said, “We’ll wait outside the Medlin headquarters until we get the signal from you telling us that you’ve done the job. If you need any help, just let us know.”

“How does the plan strike you?” Carver asked.

Harris moistened his lips and tried to look soldierly. This sudden access of weakness troubled and bewildered him. He had never reacted this way before, even in much greater stress situations. “It sounds like it’ll work,” he said thinly. “It sounds all right.”

“Very well,” Carver said curtly. “I’m glad you approve. Reynolds, insert the subsonic.”

Harris watched impassively as the bald man produced a small metal pellet no larger than a tiny bead, from which three tantalum filaments projected. With his body already a mass of surgically implanted devices, Harris was stoically ready for one more.

“Your trousers, Major…”

Harris dropped them. Reynolds drew a scalpel from a case in his pocket, and, kneeling, lifted the flap of nerveless flesh on Harris’ left thigh that served as trapdoor to the network of devices underneath.

Looking down curiously, Harris stared into the dark recesses of his own leg, eyeing the coiling hardware that lived there. Reynolds inserted two fingers and uncoiled a packet of wires.

Harris winced, holding himself rigidly in check as a searing wave of hellish pain rocked him.

“Sorry, Major,” Reynolds said casually, untwisting the wires. “Hit the cortical centers that time, didn’t I? Won’t let it happen again.”

Harris did not reply. The pain was receding slowly, leaving a residue of aches, but it was not his place to protest. He watched as with steady, unquivering fingers Reynolds affixed the bead to the minute wires already set into Harris’ leg, and closed the wound with nuplast. Harris covered himself again. He felt only a faint itching where the fleshy trapdoor had been opened.

Carver said, “You activate it by pressing against the left-hip neural nexus. It’s self-shielding for a distance of three feet around you, so make sure none of your victims are any closer than that. It won’t work during an embrace, for instance.”

Harris met the suggestion with a blank stare.

Reynolds said, “You’ll find that it radiates a pretty potent subsonic. A guaranteed knockout for a radius of forty feet.”

“Fatal?’

“Not to complex organisms. It’ll kill anything lesser than a primate, though.”

“And suppose the Medlins are shielded against subsonics?” Harris asked.

Carver chuckled confidently. “This is a variable-cycle transmitter, Major. If they’ve perfected anything that can shield against a random wave, we might as well give up right now.”

“They’ve shown some other very surprising abilities,” Harris pointed out.