Sense of Obligation Part 20

A partial truth was best, saving all of the details that he could for later. "The magter attacked the Foundation building," he said. "They are getting angry at all offworlders now. You were still knocked out by a sleeping drug, so Ulv helped bring you here. It's afternoon now--"

"Of the last day?" She sounded horrified. "While I'm playing sleeping beauty the world is coming to an end. Was anyone hurt in the attack? Or killed?"

"There were a number of casualties--and plenty of trouble," Brion said.

He had to get her off the subject. Walking over to the corpse he threw back the cover from its face. "But this is more important right now.

It's one of the magter. I have a scalpel and some other things here--will you perform an autopsy?"

Lea huddled back on the couch, her arms around herself, looking chilled in spite of the heat of the day. "What happened to the people at the building?" she asked in a thin voice. The injection had removed her memories of the tragedy, but echoes of the strain and shock still reverberated in her mind and body. "I feel so ... exhausted. Please tell me what happened. I have the feeling you're hiding something."

Brion sat next to her and took her hands in his, not surprised to find them cold. Looking into her eyes he tried to give her some of his strength. "It wasn't very nice," he said. "You were shaken up by it, I imagine that's why you feel the way you do now. But--Lea, you'll have to take my word for this. Don't ask any more questions. There's nothing we can do now about it. But we can still find out about the magter. Will you examine the corpse?"

She tried to ask something, then changed her mind. When she dropped her eyes Brion felt the thin s.h.i.+ver that went through her body. "There's something terribly wrong," she said. "I know that. I guess I'll have to take your word that it's best not to ask questions. Help me up, will you, darling? My legs are absolutely liquid."

Leaning on him, with his arm around her supporting most of her weight, she went slowly across to the corpse. She looked down and shuddered.

"Not what you would call a natural death," she said. Ulv watched intently as she took the scalpel out of its holder. "You don't have to look at this," she told him in halting Disan. "Not if you don't want to."

"I want to," he told her, not taking his eyes from the body. "I have never seen a magter dead before, or without covering, like ordinary people." He continued to stare fixedly.

"Find me some drinking water, will you Brion," Lea said. "And spread the tarp under the body. These things are quite messy."

After drinking the water she seemed stronger, and could stand without holding onto the table with both hands. Placing the tip of the scalpel just below the magter's breast bone, she made the long continuous post-mortem incision down to the pubic symphysis. The great, body-length wound gaped open like a red mouth. Across the table Ulv shuddered but didn't avert his eyes.

One by one she dissected the internal organs and removed them. Once she looked up at Brion, then quickly returned to work. The silence stretched on and on until Brion had to break it.

"Tell me, can't you. Have you found out anything?"

His words snapped the thin strand of her strength, and she staggered back to the couch and collapsed on to it. Her blood-stained hands hung over the side, making a strangely terrible contrast to the whiteness of her skin.

"I'm sorry, Brion," she said. "But there's nothing, nothing at all.

There are minor differences, organic changes I've never seen before--his liver is tremendous for one thing. But changes like this are certainly consistent within the pattern of h.o.m.o sapiens as adopted to a different planet. He's a man. Changed, adopted, modified--but still just as human as you or I."

"How can you be sure?" Brion broke in. "You haven't examined him completely, have you?" She shook her head now. "Then go on. The other organs. His brain. A microscopic examination. Here!" he said, pus.h.i.+ng the microscope case towards her with both hands.

She dropped her head onto her forearms and sobbed. "Leave me alone, can't you! I'm tired and sick and fed up with this awful planet. Let them die. I don't care! Your theory is false, useless. Admit that! And let me wash the filth from my hands--" Sobbing drowned out her words.

Brion stood over her and drew in a shuddering breath. Was he wrong? He didn't dare think about that. He had to go on. Looking down at the thinness of her bent back, with the tiny projections of her spine pus.h.i.+ng through the thin cloth, he felt an immense pity--a pity he couldn't surrender to. This thin, helpless, frightened woman was his only resource. She had to work. He had to _make_ her work.

Ihjel had done it. Used projective empathy to impress his emotions upon Brion. Now Brion must do it with Lea. There had been some sessions in the art, but not nearly enough to make him proficient. Nevertheless he had to try.

Strength was what Lea needed. Aloud he said simply "You can do it. You have the will and the strength to finish." And silently his mind cried out the order to obey, to share his power now that hers was drained and finished.

Only when she lifted her face and he saw the dried tears did he realize that he had succeeded. "You will go on?" he asked simply.

Lea merely nodded and rose to her feet. She shuffled like a sleep-walker, jerked along by invisible strings. Her strength wasn't her own and it reminded him unhappily of that last event of the Twenties when he had experienced the same kind of draining activity. Wiping her hands roughly on her clothes she opened the microscope case.

"The slides are all broken," she said.

"This will do," Brion told her, cras.h.i.+ng his heel through the gla.s.s part.i.tion. Shards tinkled and crashed to the floor. He took some of the bigger pieces and broke them to rough squares that would fit under the clips on the stage. Lea accepted them without a word. Putting a drop of the magter's blood on the slide she bent over the eyepiece.

Her hands shook when she tried to adjust the focusing. Using low power she examined the specimen, squinting through the angled tube. Once she turned the substage mirror a bit to catch direct the light streaming in the window. Brion stood behind her, fists clenched, forcefully controlling his anxiety. "What do you see?" he finally blurted out.

"Phagocytes, platelets ... leucocytes ... everything seems normal." Her voice was dull, exhausted, her eyes blinking with fatigue as she stared into the tube.

Anger at defeat burned through Brion. Even faced with failure he refused to accept it. He reached over her shoulder and savagely twisted the turret of microscope until the longest lens was in position. "If you can't see anything--try the high power! It's there--I know it's there!

I'll get you a tissue specimen." He turned back to the disemboweled cadaver.

His back was turned and he did not see the sudden stiffening of her shoulders, or the sudden eagerness that seized her fingers as they adjusted the focus. But he did feel the wave of emotion that welled from her, impinging directly on his empathic sense. "What is it?" he called to her, as if she had spoken aloud.

"Something ... something here," she said, "in this leucocyte. It's not a normal structure, but it's familiar. I've seen something like it before, but I just can't remember." She turned away from the scope and unthinkingly pressed her gory knuckles to her forehead. "I know I've seen it before."

Brion squinted into the deserted microscope and made out a dim shape in the center of the field. It stood out sharply when he focused--the white, jellyfish shape of a single-celled leucocyte. To his untrained eye there was nothing unusual about it. He couldn't know what was strange--when he had no idea of what was normal.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Do you see those spherical green shapes grouped together?" Lea asked.

Before Brion could answer she gasped "I remember now!" Her fatigue was forgotten in her excitement. "_Icerya purchasi_ that was the name, something like that. It's a coccid, a little scale insect. It had those same shapes collected together within its individual cells."

"What do they mean? What is the connection with Dis?"

"I don't know," she said, "it's just that they look so similar. And I never saw anything like this in a human cell before. In the coccids, the green particles grow into a kind of yeast that lives within the insect.

Not a parasite, but a real symbiote--"

Her eyes opened wide as she caught the significance of her own words. A symbiote--and Dis was the world where symbiosis and parasitism had become more advanced and complex than on any other planet. Lea's thoughts spun around this fact and chewed at the fringes of the logic.

Brion could sense her concentration and absorption. He did nothing to break the mood. Her hands were clenched into fists, her eyes staring unseeingly at the wall as her mind raced.

Brion and Ulv sat quietly, watching her, waiting for her conclusions.

The pieces were falling into shape at last.

Lea opened her clenched fists and smoothed them on her sodden skirt. She blinked and turned until she saw Brion. "Is there a tool box here?" she asked.

Her words were so unexpected that it took Brion a moment to answer.

Before he could say anything she spoke again.

"No hand tools, it would take too long. Could you find anything like a power saw--that would be ideal?" She turned back to the microscope, so he didn't have any opportunity to question her. Ulv was still looking at the body of the magter and had understood nothing of what they had said.

Brion went out into the loading bay.

There was nothing he could use on the ground floor, so he took the stairs to the floor above. A corridor here pa.s.sed by a number of rooms.

All of the doors were locked, including one with the hopeful sign TOOL ROOM on it. He battered at the metal door with his shoulder without budging it. As he stopped to look for a way in he glanced at his watch.

Two o'clock! In ten hours the bombs would fall on Dis.

The need for haste tore at him. Yet there could be no noise--someone in the street might hear it. He quickly stripped off his s.h.i.+rt and wrapped it in a loose roll around the barrel of his gun, extending it in a loose tube in front of the barrel. Holding the rolled cloth in his left hand, he jammed the gun up tight against the door, the muzzle against the lock. The single shot was only a dull thud, inaudible outside of the building. Pieces of broken mechanism jarred and rattled inside the lock and the door swung open.