Judith Merril - The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7

The wise, surviving recess of Mercer’s mind registered shock and disbelief. It was hard to sustain the emotion, because the super-condamine washed at his consciousness like a great tide, making everything seem lovely. The forefront of his mind, rich with the drug, told him, “Won’t it be nice to have some children with us!” But the undestroyed interior of his mind, keeping the honor he knew before he came to Shayol, whispered, “This is a crime worse than any crime we have committed! And the Empire has done it.”

“What have you done?” said the Lady Da. “What can we do?”

“I tried to call the satellite. When they knew what I was talking about, they cut me off. After all, I’m not people. The head doctor told me to do my work.”

“Was it Doctor Vomact?” Mercer asked.

“Vomact?” said B’dikkat. “He died a hundred years ago, of old age. No, a new doctor cut me off. I don’t have people-feeling, but I am Earth-born, of Earth blood. I have emotions myself. Pure cattle emotions! This I cannot permit.”

“What have you done?”

B’dikkat lifted his eyes to the window. His face was illuminated by a determination which, even beyond the edges of the drug which made them love him, made him seem like the father of this world-responsible, honorable, unselfish.

He smiled. “They will kill me for it, I think. But I have put in the Galactic Alert — all ships here.”

The Lady Da, sitting back on the floor, declared, “But that’s only for new invaders! It is a false alarm.” She pulled herself together and rose to her feet. “Can you cut these things off me, right now, in case people come? And get me a dress. And do you have anything which will counteract the effect of the super-condamine?”

“That’s what I wanted!” cried B’dikkat. “I will not take these children. You give me leadership.”

There and then, on the floor of the cabin, he trimmed her down to the normal proportions of mankind.

The corrosive antiseptic rose like smoke in the air of the cabin. Mercer thought it all very dramatic and pleasant, and dropped off in catnaps part of the time. Then he felt B’dikkat trimming him too. B’dikkat opened a long, long drawer and put the specimens in; from the cold in the room it must have been a refrigerated locker.

He sat them both up against the wall.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said. “There is no antidote for super-condamine. Who would want one? But I can give you the hypos from my rescue boat. They are supposed to bring a person back, no matter what has happened to that person out in space.”

There was a whining over the cabin roof. B’dikkat knocked a window out with his fist, stuck his head out of the window and looked up.

“Come on in,” he shouted.

There was the thud of a landing craft touching ground quickly. Doors whirred. Mercer wondered, mildly, why people dared to land on Shayol. When they came in he saw that they were not people; they were Customs Robots, who could travel at velocities which people could never match. One wore the insigne of an inspector.

“Where are the invaders?”

“There are no—” began B’dikkat.

The Lady Da, imperial in her posture though she was completely nude, said in a voice of complete clarity, “I am a former Empress, the Lady Da. Do you know me?”

“No, Ma’am,” said the robot inspector. He looked as uncomfortable as a robot could look. The drug made Mercer think that it would be nice to have robots for company, out on the surface of Shayol.

“I declare this Top Emergency, in the ancient words. Do you understand? Connect me with the Instrumentality.”

“We can’t—” said the inspector.

“You can ask,” said the Lady Da.

The inspector complied.

The Lady Da turned to B’dikkat. “Give Mercer and me those shots now. Then put us outside the door so the dromozoa can repair these scars. Bring us in as soon as a connection is made. Wrap us in cloth if you do not have clothes for us. Mercer can stand the pain.”

“Yes,” said B’dikkat, keeping his eyes away from the four soft children and their collapsed eyes.

The injection burned like no fire ever had. It must have been capable of fighting the super-condamine, because B’dikkat put them through the open window, so as to save time going through the door. The dromozoa, sensing that they needed repair, flashed upon them. This time the super-condamine had something else fighting it

Mercer did not scream but he lay against the wall and wept for ten thousand years; in objective time, it must have been several hours.

The Customs robots were taking pictures. The dromozoa were flashing against them too, sometimes in whole swarms, but nothing happened.

Mercer heard the voice of the communicator inside the cabin calling loudly for B’dikkat. “Surgery Satellite calling Shayol. B’dikkat, get on the line!”

He obviously was not replying.

There were soft cries coming from the other communicator, the one which the customs officials had brought into the room. Mercer was sure that the eye-machine was on and that people in other worlds were looking at Shayol for the first time.

B’dikkat came through the door. He had torn navigation charts out of his lifeboat. With these he cloaked them.

Mercer noted that the Lady Da changed the arrangement of the cloak in a few minor ways and suddenly looked like a person of great importance.

They re-entered the cabin door.

B’dikkat whispered, as if filled with awe, “The Instrumentality has been reached, and a lord of the Instrumentality is about to talk to you.”

There was nothing for Mercer to do, so he sat back in a corner of the room and watched. The Lady Da, her skin healed, stood pale and nervous in the middle of the floor.

The room filled with an odorless intangible smoke. The smoke clouded. The full communicator was on.

A human figure appeared.

A woman, dressed in a uniform of radically conservative cut, faced the Lady Da.

“This is Shayol. You are the Lady Da. You called me.”

The Lady Da pointed to the children on the floor. “This must not happen,” she said. This is a place of punishments, agreed upon between the Instrumentality and the Empire. No one said anything about children.”

The woman on the screen looked down at the children.

“This is the work of insane people!” she cried.

She looked accusingly at the Lady Da, “Are you imperial?”

“I was an Empress, madam,” said the Lady Da.

“And you permit this!”

“Permit it?” cried the Lady Da. “I had nothing to do with it.” Her eyes widened. “I am a prisoner here myself. Don’t you understand?”

The image-woman snapped, “No, I don’t.”

“I,” said the Lady Da, “am a specimen. Look at the herd out there. I came from them a few hours ago.”

“Adjust me,” said the image-woman to B’dikkat. “Let me see that herd.”

Her body, standing upright, soared through the wall in a flashing arc and was placed in the very center of the herd.

The Lady Da and Mercer watched her. They saw even the image lose its stiffness and dignity. The image-woman waved an arm to show that she should he brought back into the cabin. B’dikkat tuned her back into the room.

“I owe you an apology,” said the image. “I am the Lady Johanna Gnade, one of the lords of the Instrumentality.”

Mercer bowed, lost his balance and had to scramble up from the floor. The Lady Da acknowledged the introduction with a royal nod.

The two women looked at each other.

“You will investigate,” said the Lady Da, “and when you have investigated, please put us all to death. You know about the drug?”

“Don’t mention it,” said B’dikkat, “don’t even say the name into a communicator. It is a secret of the Instrumentality!”