Bob Shaw - The Fugitive Worlds

In addition to all the other knowledge which I have impressed on your mind, Toller Maraquine, it is necessary for you to appreciate that the Xa is almost complete. It will be activated in approximately six days from now, and when that happens the planet Dussarra will simply vanish from your sight. It will have been instantaneously relocated in another galaxy — one which is nine million light years from here.

Absorb what I am telling you, Toller Maraquine—for your own sake, for your own peace of mind.

There is nothing you can do to retrieve your females. The massed resources of a thousand civilizations like yours would be powerless in this situation. I urge you — accept what I say and return to your home world in peace and with no qualms of conscience, knowing that you have done all that any individual could possibly do…

Toller stared into the black-drilled orbs of the alien’s eyes, tranced, communing with himself and with another—that heroic figure from heroic times past whose example and counsel, although inferred, he prized above all else. “What would the real Toller have done?” he asked himself, silently moving his lips to frame the words. He remained immobile for several seconds, half-seduced by the blandishments of the alien logic, then he recoiled, eyes widening, like a man evading the jaws of a steel trap.

’Take this pistol from me,” he said to Steenameert. “And give me my sword.”

I have lost you again. Divivvidiv cowered back from him. You are acting without thinking. What are you going to do?

Toller accepted the weapon from Steenameert, closing his fingers around the familiar moldings of the haft, and pressed the tip of the blade to the alien’s throat. Crimson stars sparkled across his vision.

“What am I going to do, greyface?” he whispered. “Why, I am going to part your head from your foul body unless you stop telling me what you want me to hear and start telling me what I want to hear. Has your wonderful intellect absorbed that message? Tell me— now! —how I can rescue our women.” He bored with the steel blade into Divivvidiv’s throat.

The alien’s black-rimmed mouth distorted and his frail body began its convulsive trembling, but this time the threat of instant death did not entirely destroy his self-control. I have told you all there is to tell. You have to understand the situation — there is nothing you can do.

“I could kill you!”

Yes, but what would that achieve? Nothing! Nothing!

*T…” Toller refused to be diverted. “You said the women were transported to your world… instantaneously … by one of your machines…”

Yes?

“In that case, we will pursue them by the same mode of transport,” Toller ground out, shocked by his own words.

The quaking of Divivvidiv’s body grew less severe. Is there no end to your obtuseness, Toller Maraquine? You ask to be transported to the heart of a Dussarran mega-city, the population of which is in excess of thirty millions! What do you think you and your companion could achieve there?

“I would have you as a hostage. I will bargain with your miserable life.”

The tremors in Divivvidiv’s frame ceased altogether. This is quite incredible, but there is just a chance — infinitesimal though it may be — that in your blind and primitive stubbornness you could succeed where vastly superior beings would have been doomed to failure. What an intriguing concept! This could even form a major topic for discussion at the next meeting of the…

“Enough!” Still gripping the alien’s shoulder with his left hand, Toller lowered his sword slightly. “You will do as I command? You will take us to Dussarra?”

You leave me no choice. We will go immediately.

“This is more to my liking.” Toller released his grip on Divivvidiv’s shoulder, then tightened his fingers again, so fiercely that the alien winced. “Or is it less to my liking?”

I do not understand you! What has happened?

“You ceased your shivering, greyface. You ceased being afraid.”

But that was a natural reaction to your new proposal.

“Was it? I don’t trust you, greyface.” Toller produced a cold smile. “This is the way we Primitives conduct ourselves when negotiating with an enemy. We rely to a great extent on our brute instincts—the instincts which are so despised by an advanced being like you—and mine are telling me that you would like us to proceed to Dussarra by way of your magical machine. I suspect that were we to do so I would be immediately overwhelmed, or rendered unconscious, or disadvantaged in some other way which would put me at your mercy.”

There would be no point in my pitting reason against your wild and uninformed imaginings. A note of challenge had begun to insinuate itself into Divivvidiv’s manner. May I therefore be informed as to what fresh proposals you are going to put forward under the aegis of your treasured primitive instincts?

“Certainly!” Toller thought of his grandfather and smiled again. “I am taking you to Dussarra as my hostage—exactly as planned—but the journey will be completed without resort to geometrical sorceries. Two good Kolcorronian spaceships—built of the finest wood and fully provisioned—are waiting close by.

“One of them will carry the three of us to Dussarra.”

The Primitive’s words, coming at Divivvidiv out of shifting and formless blurs of emotional activity, were so unexpected—so ludicrous in their content—that at first he felt little sense of shock or alarm. It had been disconcerting to find that the Primitives were capable of coordinated, purposeful action while their neural systems were emitting no coherent signals, but he had put that down as a transient condition brought about by rage or fear. Surely an accidental sequence of words, with only a superficial resemblance to a rational sentence, would be abandoned by the larger Primitive as soon as the storms subsided in his mind.

“What do you think of that idea?” the Primitive said, his disgustingly pink and thick-lipped mouth widening.

Divivvidiv gazed at him for a moment and felt the beginnings of terror as he observed alien mental processes slowly taking place. The Primitive had heard his own words as if they were being uttered by another being. He had been almost as surprised as Divivvidiv by their content, but now he was returning to what passed for his rational mode of cerebration and was actually assuming responsibility for the words and the preposterous notion they embodied.

The idea is insane, Divivvidiv projected. You do not have to try putting it into practice merely because you verbalized it in a moment of stress. Be sensible, Toller Maraquine — protect your modern self from your ancient self!

Divivvidiv forced an understanding of his thoughts into the Primitive’s mind, fully expecting the odiferous giant to modify his mental stance. To Divivvidiv’s dismay the Primitive reacted with a blend of contempt, amusement, pride and sheerest blind obstinacy.

“Stiffen your backbone, greyface,” he boomed. “And try to show proper gratitude to me! You have tested my patience with your boasts about your kind’s space-faring prowess—if that word can be applied to your geometrical sorceries—but now I am going to acquaint you with the realities of going into the black.

“My paternal grandfather—whose name I am proud to bear—was the first man to take one of our spaceships to another world, and I feel privileged that destiny has called upon me to emulate his exploits. Get back into your silver fineries, greyface—we have work ahead of us.”