The Final Planet Read online

  If the Zylongi had sound-scanners focused on him, they knew he was a minstrel—that is, if their culture had any sense of such a person. And if they had the good taste to enjoy his music.

  Do they even have music here?

  All rational life forms have music, the teacher had insisted in the monastery school’s class in xenology.

  How do we know? Seamus had demanded.

  Well, he had not been designed to be a scholar anyway. “You’re not stupid at all, at all, Seamus Finnbar O’Neill,” the Lady Deirdre had said with some sympathy. “It’s just that your talents are not in the scholarly direction.”

  “Not anywhere near it,” he admitted ruefully. “I find it hard to concentrate in a classroom.…”

  “Especially when there are young women present.”

  “Well,” he admitted with a winning smile, “they do make concentration a little more difficult.”

  “Sure you’d be thinking about them even if they weren’t there.”

  “It might even be worse,” he agreed.

  “You’ll be the death of me yet,” she had sighed. “You’re a terrible cross for an old woman to bear.”

  Seamus had refrained from denying that she was old. His instincts said that her displeasure over his grades was not to be turned away by compliments—even accurate ones.

  Seamus had no objection to accurate flattery, but he never considered his creativity to be limited by accuracy—especially when women were the issue.

  The Captain Abbess’s comment on his intelligence was motivated by a mistake he had made in one of the planning sessions for this mission. She had been giving the standard lecture about the origins of space exploration. In the middle of the twenty-first century, it was said, the abundance of cheap energy, combined with a long period of tranquillity on Earth, had produced the Second Great Exploration, during which many pilgrimages went forth for wealth or adventure or faith or ideology or in search of a better world.

  Seamus had been daydreaming about the glorious swelling breasts of his “proper” woman. He felt he ought to say something to indicate that he was listening.

  “Columbus and Leif and Brendan and them fellas, and them all being Irish too…”

  Herself was quite upset. “No, that was the First Exploration, a thousand years and more before the settlement of Tara.

  “Our Holy Order exists,” she said icily, “to keep alive the Spirit of Exploration that brought our forebears to Tara so long ago.”

  “’Tis true,” Seamus had said, as though giving the woman good grades on her historical knowledge. The Tarans wanted to keep alive the era of adventure, and the Zylongi, apparently, wanted to forget all about it.

  While he sang of the lamentations of his unfortunately imaginary lover, O’Neill considered his chances. Carmody, a Brigadier serving as the Iona’s Operations Officer, assured him that the best data indicated no serious danger in this reconnaissance. The Zylongi were far below normal on the aggression scale; they would probe, find him harmless, and release him.

  “Will they now?” O’Neill strummed a chord on his harp that was supposed to indicate irony. “Would you care to offer an estimate of the probability of such a happy outcome?”

  Carmody, shrugging his massive shoulders, a frown crossing his craggy face, muttered, “Between sixty and seventy-five percent.”

  O’Neill laughed out loud. Fitzgerald, Carmody, even the sainted Podraig were guessing.

  A lavender twilight was descending, and with it a powerfully sweet, enticing smell, one which brought back all of his virtuously dismissed fantasies. It would be a good place to bring the proper woman on a proper honeymoon. Sure wouldn’t the smell turn her on too? His daydreams returned to the issue of her breasts, a subject on which Seamus had a tolerant and open mind, so many different arrangements were there that might prove satisfactory.

  You bed the woman here and then you take her back to Tara, where you’ve never been yourself, and maybe on the Green Hills impregnate her there, and then you go on to Earth and your child is born in the Old Ground or on the shore of the Great Lake. ‘Twould be a fine honeymoon and religious pilgrimage all combined into one. He made the sign of the cross reverently. Sure there’d be nothing wrong after you’re married with mixing lovemaking and praying.

  With the Transit stations developed half a millennium ago, Tara was only two weeks from Earth. If ever the components of such a station, long stored in the hold of the Iona, were assembled here on Zylong, it would be only a little more than two months from Zylong to Earth, and the Transit circuits were not crowded in this era between Explorations—save of course for Tarans, who were incorrigible travelers and pilgrims.

  The Holy Rule said that no pilgrim could return to Tara or to Earth, unless his monastery had found a planet that would accept it. Then that planet became your home, but you could visit previous homes for reasonable times, “so long as the purpose is educational and religious.”

  Sure that was all I had in mind. Education and religion.

  The pilgrim ships were wisely forbidden contact with the planet they had left behind, save for purposes of canonical obligations (like the Captain Abbess’s participation in Roman elections). Zylong was, of course, even more isolated because, except for an occasional wandering space tramp, it had no contact with the world its founders had left behind for a millennium, by their choice at that. They wanted no part, the Abbess said with a twist of distaste in her aristocratic mouth, of the “corruption” of earth.

  She was not exactly naive about human nature, but as she added, “Seamus, corruption comes with the genes and not with the place. Isn’t that true?”

  He had agreed, of course, though he did not know either Earth or Tara. Born on pilgrimage, he had never seen either, save in pictures. To visit the Old Worlds with your proper woman would be almost as much fun as making love with the proper woman.

  He was so pleasantly occupied with his daydreams that he almost missed the Zylongi patrol. They crept stealthily through the jungle, like the pack of heathen savages they probably were. O’Neill read their presence before he heard them. His rather dull psychic sense—dull compared to the real experts like herself, anyway—felt five “persons,” anxious but not hostile. That foulmouthed computer, Podraig, insisted that they would be humanoid. “Somewhat different from us in their biology after a thousand years and more,” Commodore Fitzgerald said at his briefing, “probably not so different as to exclude crossbreeding,” adding, with a faint touch of irony, “not that you need feel obliged to make any experiments in that direction.”

  “Persons” probably meant humanoid. And as for breeding, all thought of anything related to that praiseworthy and perennial process faded from Seamus O’Neill’s frightened head as he waited for them.

  I’m not an anthropologist, I’m not an explorer. I’m a soldier and a second-rate bard. What the hell am I doing here?

  And you’re just as dead if you’re killed by “anxious” folk instead of “hostile” folk.

  Then the Zylongi slipped out of the jungle. Seamus lost some of his fear. They didn’t look all that scary. In fact, they looked almost as frightened of him as he was of them.

  “Sure isn’t that always the way,” he spoke his profound wisdom aloud. “Everyone is scared of everyone else.”

  The Zylongi stopped in their tracks at the sound of his voice, as though his words had frozen them in place. There were three men and two women. Shorter than Tarans, with darker skin, brown hair, European faces, the Zylongi showed their Earth origins. Four of them carried spears; one of the men had a rather ancient carbine-type weapon that he pointed directly at O’Neill’s skull.

  The women were lovely—short and full-figured like vest-pocket Venuses. Their dark arms and shoulders invited a caress despite the wicked spears they carried. One was a little older than the other, a dusting of gray in her curly brown hair.

  Well, they don’t know what to make of my voice. What will they think of my music?

  He re
ached for the harp. The man with his weapon raised it warningly. Seamus struck a chord. The fellow lowered the weapon—a little.

  Mostly to offend the Lady Deirdre, whom he was sure was listening, he devoted his long song to highly clinical praise of the women and their attributes, which would have made them proper bed partners indeed.

  The Zylongi listened, their faces still blank and wary, but their bodies relaxing as the melody went on.

  Sure they know it’s sensual music and they can’t help but like it. Good thing for me they don’t know exactly what I’m suggesting might be done with those wee lasses.

  Finally he stopped and waited. The man who seemed to be in charge spoke, softly but as though giving an order. The younger woman walked gingerly toward him, touched his harp, and when she realized that he would not resist, gently took it out of his hand. She strummed its strings with a nervous smile. O’Neill patted her approvingly on her head. Well, they know about music, O’Neill thought.

  There was nothing about the men’s slender, smooth bodies to suggest they would be particularly competent in a brawl. They were handsome in a diminutive sort of way—much like Taran boys in their early teens.

  I could lick a dozen of them without working up a sweat. I could disarm this crowd in a couple of seconds. Knock out the men and carry off the girls. They’d probably come willingly enough. They seem fascinated by my six feet four and red beard.

  Seamus O’Neill, you’re an idjit for even thinking such things.

  Well, it’s all right to think about them as long as you have no intention of doing them. The Rules say you don’t exploit the locals sexually or any other way. And God knows, Seamus O’Neill, you’ve always been one to keep the Rules.

  All of his captors were clad in wraparound, turquoise-colored kilts with markings that suggested they were uniforms. The men’s garments were fastened at the waist; the women’s under their arms. Despite the heat and humidity, the light fabric showed no sign of wilt or wrinkle.

  There ought to be no trouble removing such garments, if it ever came to that.

  Hey, Seamus O’Neill, what about the Rules?

  I’m only thinking those things because I have no idea how to be a spy. A man is entitled to calm his nerves, isn’t he?

  The local with the gun approached the captive and began speaking in a soft musical language. O’Neill was reluctant to reach for his universal translator with a spear point just an inch from his bare chest. He kept his hands high and smiled in what he hoped was a winning way. The young girl tentatively touched his red beard. Don’t they have such things here?

  In a sharp tone the armed man spoke directly to her. She blushed, pulled her hand back quickly, lowered her eyes, and murmured what sounded like an apology to Seamus.

  “’Tis no problem at all, at all,” Seamus said soothingly. “Sure, even Taran women like red-bearded men.”

  The girl blushed more deeply. Isn’t it remarkable now, how much you can convey by a tone of voice.

  Seamus began to relax. The police patrol probably had orders to bring him in alive if he didn’t seem hostile. (Carmody’s prediction had suggested this.) They hesitated. The man with the gun gave an order and the older woman set down her spear. There were a lot of fancy gold stripes at the top of her uniform, which didn’t hurt the view of her full breasts at all, at all. Probably the insignia of some kind of senior medical type. She looked efficient and competent, the kind that was used to giving orders and being obeyed.

  She took from a pocket in her wrap something that looked suspiciously like a syringe. The police doctor, thought O’Neill slowly and carefully, for the benefit of the readers on Iona, must have been ordered to put me under.

  The woman approached O’Neill slowly, apprehensively, a gauzelike pad in one hand, the needle in the other. The others moved a step closer, their spears poised, ready to strike. Her head came barely to his chest, her deep brown eyes looked up into his blue ones. She seemed to plead with him not to hurt her. O’Neill felt a wrench of desire. His heart went out gently toward her fear. For a moment their eyes locked. She looked away quickly. Then resolutely she looked up at him again. Her brown eyes, deep, dark, and inviting, were even more frightened. O’Neill had always been a sucker for terrified women.

  She’s probably old enough to be my mother. There were lines around her eyes, hints of wrinkles on her pretty face, touches of fleshpads on her neck and chin. She was, however, very nicely built and poignantly attractive.

  “Don’t be afraid of me.” O’Neill touched her cheek. “I’m not going to hurt you, and unless our biologies are more unlike than they seem, whatever you have in that great terrible needle isn’t going to hurt me much either.”

  She lowered the needle and waited, as though submitting, not at all unwillingly, to a heathen greeting ritual.

  “I’m not the heathen.” Seamus laughed. “You are.”

  She laughed lightly too, probably assuming that was part of the ritual.

  It was a pleasant face to touch, warm and smooth. Almost without realizing what he was doing, Seamus caressed it lightly, first with his fingers and then with his whole hand. The woman seemed to sag, as though she were yielding to him completely.

  Seamus glanced around. The others did not seem angry or offended. Rather they watched with intent fascination.

  So, because it couldn’t possibly do any harm, he kissed her forehead. The woman tensed in surprise but did not try to fend him off. Her friends gasped. More in astonishment than in outrage, he thought.

  “Keep your hands off the women, Seamus,” the Captain Abbess had said, “and yourself with more than enough of the chemicals of the young in you.”

  Well, she didn’t forbid a little ritual kiss at the beginning, did she? Besides, what kind of a Taran bard would it be that didn’t brush his lips against hers? His kiss was quick, and her startled lips were firm and warm. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped, and her head tilted down. Seamus noted with interest that firm nipples were pressing against the fabric of her uniform.

  Ah, now, it wasn’t that much of a kiss. But then, you’ve never been kissed by a red-bearded giant before.

  The second gasp from the rest of the gang seemed more like envy than anything else.

  See, Your Ladyship, I am skilled at this spy business after all. The kissing isn’t really to calm my fears. Sure I’m not afraid at all, at all.

  Well, not as afraid as this poor thing is.

  Hesitantly, the woman lifted the syringe and nodded at it, as if asking his permission.

  “No problem at all, at all.” Seamus took her hand and guided it toward his arm. She was trembling; he felt her pulse racing through her arm and imagined her heart beating rapidly.

  “Nothing to be afraid of.” He rolled the gown off his shoulder and pointed at his upper arm muscle. “Is it here you’re wanting to stick me?”

  She nodded dubiously, still not sure that he wouldn’t break her back.

  He thought about kissing her again but, instead, drew her hand to its target. He hardly felt the needle when it plunged into his arm.

  Well, it was a pleasant enough feeling to go out with.

  As his limbs began to weaken, he wondered vaguely whether the programming the geniuses on the Iona had built into him would resist probes for lust. It won’t do to have the Zylongi know how you reacted to one of their mature police medical types. They might not approve at all of such exchanges. Still, they didn’t object too strongly. Maybe they don’t object to a few minor exchanges of affection now and then with weird outworld giants.

  Even if he’s the first weird outworld giant they’ve ever seen.

  O’Neill felt very peaceful and very sleepy. He began to slide toward the ground. The medical woman threw her arms around him and shouted. The others raced to help her. Very gently they lowered him to the turf that he had so recently claimed, albeit tentatively and subject to approval by the locals, for the pilgrimage of the Iona.

  Everything’s gone according to plan so far.
Isn’t that nice.

  His second-to-last thought was not of the Zylongi woman or his mission; it was of herself, the Holy Captain Abbess Deirdre Cardinal Fitzgerald. His last thought was that it had suddenly turned very dark.

  Ritual kiss or not, the woman doctor tried to kill me.

  2

  “Commandant O’Neill, reporting for final instructions, Your Ladyship, ma’am,” he said, saluting sloppily, his tone containing just enough servile respect to stop a half-step short of insolence. This time the black-haired witch was going to have to tell him the whole truth, not the half-truths that she liked as a matter of political principle even when expediency did not demand that she be evasive.

  The Cardinal took her hand off the quartz rock that transmitted psychic impulses to the huge viewing screen on the oak-paneled wall of her throne room. Zylong faded away; thick red curtains fell back to cover the screen. The matching observation port remained open, revealing the cold stars staring implacably from the darkness of eternal night. O’Neill, who did not like darkness, shivered slightly and turned away from the port.

  “Oh, yes, Seamus,” she said absently. “Do come in.” There was always a faint twinkle in her eyes when he entered. Seamus knew that he was half a son to her, a replacement for her own slaughtered children. It made for an awkward relationship, especially since neither of them would ever dare mention it. On the other hand, it never hurt to know that the Cardinal Abbess had a soft place in her heart for you.

  “Having a look at our friends down there?” he asked with elaborate casualness.

  Sorting through papers, she began to read a summary: “This report, Seamus, has been compiled basically from four sources: (a) reports from the occasional traveler who landed on Zylong, usually by mistake, and lived to tell about it; (b) estimations from what we know of communitarian utopian societies of similar perfectionist bent; (c) our own physical scanning—which they do not seem to have intercepted, by the way; and finally (d) our psychic reading, which, like the physical scanning, is less than completely satisfactory at this distance. Clear?”