LINKS
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The Christa Affair
Chapter Nineteen
For long moments, the darkened room remained silent, save for the ragged breathing of its occupants. Karli moaned quietly, slowly regaining consciousness; her first thought was of Jashi, but attempted telepathic contact brought no response.
At last Toko switched on his torch, adjusted it to wide beam, and set it on the floor. In the glow of the hand lamp, the ceiling was its original pale yellow color; the furniture and the interior walls were gone, leaving the room as featureless as before. After a few moments, Rang too switched on his light, and the two of them could see the others in the room. Karli crawled painfully to where Jashi lay as he had fallen when shot by his shipmate, and felt for a pulse. "He's alive, Toko, but his pulse is weak and fast," she reported, before the scientist could ask. "I get only random activity telepathically, as I would expect if he were in deep, dreamless sleep. I think he's in deep shock. What the hell \was\ that?"
"Leave him be, for now. Advise me of any change." He didn't ask about the wound. The cauterizing effect of the beam would prevent heavy bleeding, and he was sure Karli wasn't aware that Jashi had been shot. She had been in the grip of her own personal insanity at the time; no use upsetting her any more until necessary. "Roi, are you with us?" he asked.
"Wait!" answered Roi, in the clipped tones of a telepath engaged in total contact with his partner. Long moments passed; no one spoke or moved. At last Roi answered crisply, obviously in control, "Sorry, I was talking with Lito. Everything is okay at the ship. They report a slight rise in the output of the underground power source, lasting just under eighty seconds, and terminating six and one-half minutes ago. Lito requests your instructions, Toko."
Although they both outranked him, neither Karli nor Rang protested. Toko was the scientist; his training made him the logical choice to take charge. "Maintain contact, situation here stable. No immediate action necessary here. No imminent danger to us." He knew Lito received the message, even as he spoke the words, via her contact with Roi.
Rang stood and walked to Karli, still huddling over the unconscious form of her bondmate. As he knelt beside them, she straightened and put her arms around his neck; pillowing her head on his shoulder, she began to sob quietly. With obvious effort, he straightened and picked her up in his arms. After a few moments she stopped crying. "What do you mean, 'no action necessary'?" Rang asked, putting Karli to her feet and steadying her with his arm around her waist. "Are you sure the door will keep them out? Won't they have a key?"
"There's no one here, Rang. No one except us."
"But Roi said..." Rang responded, his voice trailing off. "Explain!"
"Roi misunderstood my warning. I wasn't warning of intruders; the danger was quite different in form." He paused; no one else spoke.
"When I turned on the multiscanner, the indicator went off-scale... But not from alien life-form. It was from us. The biostats of all of us were dangerously high and climbing, with Jashi and Karli the worst. I think it has something to do with whatever turned the city from yellow to red, but I'm not sure. The fact that it began to ease as soon as we got inside here would seem to support that assumption -- the interior of this room was yellow when we entered."
"I did feel better after we got inside," said Karli. "Until all hell broke loose! What \was\ that?" she repeated her earlier question. "And where did the furniture come from? And the walls?"
"Like the helmet and the booth in the Hall of Records -- manipulated from nothing when activated, apparently," was Toko's reply.
Rang entered the conversation. "When I stumbled and fell into the control panel, I must have activated them, along with whatever caused this room to go crazy. I'm glad the master cut-out was the same as the panel the Keeper taught me how to use in the entrance chamber."
"If it hadn't been, we'd be dead by now." reflected Roi. "If not for my contact with Lito, I'd have gone over the edge too. I felt \so angry\! I don't think she could have kept me sane much longer, and I would have taken her with me." There was a long moment of silence as the implication of his last statement sank in -- even the \Klondike\ had been in danger.
"It seemed to affect the telepaths more than the others," Toko continued. "Jashi and Karli were far worse off than you -- the effects were amplified for them because they were both here, receiving altered sensory input and feeding it to each other thru their contact, while Lito was aboard the ship and not directly affected -- but you were in worse condition than Rang or myself. We were all feeling noticeably irritable by the time we got the door open. Must be some kind of mood-control device; the colors of the buildings change in sync with it."
"That would explain why everything is the same color," agreed Karli. "They might have found mood control necessary in the confines of this place -- especially if it was crowded."
After a long moment of silence Toko spoke again. "We are in no immediate danger as long as we stay in this room and don't turn anything on, but I am afraid we can't get back to the ship as long as the city outside is red."
"But the elevator to the surface is just next door!" protested Karli. "Surely we can take it for the few seconds we'd be exposed. We gotta get Jashi back to the ship!"
"Karli, I'm afraid you're right... More right than you know. I had to shoot him to keep him from killing Rang," Toko responded matter-of-factly. "I didn't have any choice," he finished over her protest. "Roi, take a look at his leg."
Karli tried to follow as Roi crossed to where Jashi still lay unmoving; Rang held her back. Toko spoke to her sharply. "Karli! Let Roi do that -- you see if you can contact him. Maximum possible intrusion. I need him at least partly conscious."
*********
By its very nature, the relationship of a telepair is a fine line between sharing and intrusion; what Toko was asking was a violation of the natural etiquette necessary to the stability of the relationship. As Roi rolled him onto his back to examine the wounded leg, Karli slowly sank to the floor beside Jashi. She reached out to him, cupping his face in her hands. "I love you, Jashi!" she whispered, then she blanked out the room as she poured her entire consciousness into a concentrated effort to reach into her bondmate's unreceptive mind by sheer force.
Roi finished his inspection of the small hole left in Jashi's right leg by the pulsed beam of the needlegun and stood to his feet, moving quietly away so as not to disturb Karli. "Clean shot, Toko," he whispered. "Flesh wound with minimal muscle damage, but he'll be limping for a few days. Low power?"
"No. Single pulse," replied Toko. "Didn't have time to reset."
"Nice job! Saved Rang for sure... Maybe all of us. If he dies, it won't be from the wound."
"Only if the added shock kills him," agreed Toko a bit apprehensively. They lapsed into silence; across the room Karli moaned softly as she continued her efforts to contact her bondmate.
At last, Karli broke the contact and raised her head. "It's no use," she said forlornly. "He's comatose. Completely disorganized past the fourth level. We gotta get him back to the ship."
"Rang, can you turn on normal lighting in here, without activating anything else?" asked Toko.
"Yes, I think so."
"Be sure! Or don't do anything. If in doubt, forget the lights and just open the door. I want a look at the outside."
After only a few moment's hesitation Rang had the lights on and the door open. All the buildings within their field of vision thru the opening were red; the color was several shades deeper than when they'd first noticed the change. "Close it, Rang. We can't go out there," said Toko disparagingly. "You'd better dress Jashi's wound. We're going to be here a while."
Rang and Karli made Jashi as comfortable as possible, and sprayed the wound with Plastiskin -- about all that could be done under the circumstances. Karli sat in the middle of the room, pillowing Jashi's head in her lap; the rest sat on the floor, backs to the wall. Roi removed a container of protostick from his backpack and passed it around. They ate in silence -- all except Karli, who refused the food offered her. Suddenly, Roi broke the silence. "Lito asks if we have requested assistance from the Keeper. Can we contact him from here?"
Instead of answering, Toko addressed the Keeper. "Keeper, if you hear me, we require assistance." Silence was his only answer. Three more tries brought the same result. "Apparently not," said Toko, in answer Roi's question; the room returned to its former silence.
"Toko, one of us is going to have to make a dash for the entrance chamber," said Karli a few minutes later. "Jashi's getting worse. He's gotta be treated for shock, immediately. We \know\ we can contact the Keeper from there... He's \gotta\ help us!"
Toko agreed, and there ensued a minor argument over who would go. Rang won out as the logical choice; of the group, he was the most familiar with the operations of the city, and being non-telepathic, he would be less-severely affected than either Karli or Roi. "Once inside the chamber, stay there," ordered Toko. "Keep us informed over the comm. We'll leave the door open till you report safely inside."
Rang dashed down the street at a dead run, covering the thirty-five yards to the entrance chamber in a few seconds. He stuffed the sphere into its receptacle and slipped inside, closing the door quickly behind him; in spite of the brevity of his exposure, his heart was pounding and his tunic was drenched in perspiration. "Safely inside," he reported when his breathing was under control, then addressed the Keeper. "We are in trouble, Keeper. Can you assist?"
"What is the nature of your difficulty, Rang?" replied the pleasant voice of the machine.
"One of my companions is injured and we must return to the ship for medical aid. The present red condition of the city causes us great discomfort, therefore my companions are trapped in the dwelling one door away. Can you assist?"
"The outside city is distressing to you when in active-environment phase?"
"If by that you mean when it is red, yes. Extremely distressing! Can you return it to yellow?"
"That is not permitted. This is active phase. Without stimulation no work would be done."
"Keeper, the stimulation is harmful to us. It will cause us to be terminated."
"Nonsequitur." replied the computer. "Stimulation is necessary or the People will not continue. No work will be done."
"We do not require stimulation."
"Nonsequitur. Stimulation is necessary to the continuance of the People. That is the law! Without stimulation, no work will be done." The voice grew slightly sharp.
Rang changed tactics. "Has stimulation always been necessary?" he asked.
"Negative. It became necessary after the disaster."
"What was the nature of the disaster?"
"That information is recorded in the Log of History, volume eighty-six, book forty-two, chapter sixty-three. See also..."
"Wait!" Rang interrupted. "Is the document you refer to in the Hall of Records?"
"Yes."
"I cannot go there while the city is red. It is urgent that I know the nature of the disaster!"
"That information is recorded in the..."
"Stop!" barked Rang; the Keeper lapsed into silence, then added, "Stimulation is necessary to the continuance of the People. That is the law!"
When he reported to his shipmates after entering the chamber, Rang had left his communicator on voice control, maximum sensitivity; the others trapped in the dwelling next door were able to hear the discussion. Now Toko spoke in his ear, "Rang, don't respond, just listen. You said that when you were trapped in the surface chamber, the Keeper said the sphere bestowed on its possessor the highest authority of this world -- Supreme Authority, I believe you said. Use that against it. Pull rank. If you understand, tap your pickup twice."
Rang hesitated. He understood what Toko was thinking, but it seemed a drastic measure; he kept remembering the deadly countdown when they were trapped in the surface chamber and the Keeper had been convinced they were intruding without proper authority.
At last he tapped his pickup in acknowledgement and took a deep breath. After a short pause to organize his thoughts he spoke firmly. "Keeper, when we entered the surface chamber and found ourselves trapped, you said the \Dyolfknip\ bestows the Supreme Authority of this world upon the person possessing it. Is that not true?"
"That is correct."
"Do you acknowledge that I posses the \Dyolfknip\, the device that we refer to as the sphere?"
"You posses the \Dyolfknip\," admitted the computer. "You may refer to it as the Sphere if you wish. I detect difficulty with the language of this world."
"Thank you," replied Rang. "Then -- by your previous statement -- because I posses the Sphere, I am the Supreme Authority. Is that not correct?"
"Granted."
"I order you to return the city to Yellow Phase."
"Nonsequitur! Stimulation is necessary to the continuance of the People. That is the law. Stimulation is scheduled to be removed two units before nightfall."
"Does the Supreme Authority have power to change the law?"
"Only if the change promotes the continuance of the People."
"Dead end!" thought Rang bitterly, and lapsed into silence. The People are dead, but the law can't be changed. He tried one last tactic. "How many People are there in the city?" he asked.
"There are none. They were unable to continue. Following the disaster, procreation became impossible."
"If there are no People, stimulation is no longer necessary. There is no one to continue."
"Nonsequitur!"
"There are no People, stimulation is no longer necessary. Return the city to yellow phase."
"Nonsequitur! Stimulation is necessary. That is the law... Nonsequitur! Nonsequitur! Stimulation is necessary..."
"There \are\ no People! Stimulation is no longer necessary. As the Supreme Authority I order you to turn it off. Return the city to Yellow Phase! Now!!" To add emphasis to his order Rang crammed the Sphere back into the receptacle above the control panel. He held his breath, expecting a deadly outburst from his automated debating opponent; none came.
The silence stretched from long seconds into a minute, then two; Rang was about to press the argument again when the Keeper spoke. "There is no precedent. The People continued and stimulation was necessary. Then there were no People... There was no one to change the law. What you say is logical, but there is no precedent."
"Does not the Supreme Authority have power to establish precedent?" As he said it, Rang new the outcome hung on the Keeper's answer to that question.
Again, silence that stretched beyond a minute's duration; at last the Keeper spoke. "Your request has been granted. The law has been changed -- the city has been returned to yellow phase. There are no People; stimulation is no longer necessary." The Sphere popped from its socket and hovered, waiting to be snagged.
CHAPTER TWENTY
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