This World Is Taboo Read online

  2

  There was a certain coldness in the manner of those at the Wealdspaceport when the Med Ship left next morning. Calhoun was not popularbecause Weald was scared. It had been conditioned to scare easily,where blueskins might be involved. Its children were trained to reactexplosively when the word _blueskin_ was uttered in their hearing, andits adults tended to say it when anything causing uneasiness enteredtheir minds. So a planet-wide habit of irrational response had formedand was not seen to be irrational because almost everybody had it.

  The volunteer who'd discovered the tragedy on the ship from Orede wassafe, though. He'd made a completely conscientious survey of the shiphe'd volunteered to enter and examine. For his courage, he'd have beendoomed but for Calhoun.

  The reaction of his fellow citizens was that by entering the ship hemight have become contaminated by blueskin infectious material of theplague still existed, and _if_ the men in the ship had caught it (butthey certainly hadn't died of it), and _if_ there had been blueskinson Orede to communicate it (for which there was no evidence), and _if_blueskins were responsible for the tragedy. Which was at the momentpure supposition. But Weald feared he might bring death back to Wealdif he were allowed to return.

  Calhoun saved his life. He ordered that the guardship admit him to itsairlock, which then was to be filled with steam and chlorine. Thecombination would sterilize and even partly eat away his spacesuit,after which the chlorine and steam should be bled out to space, andair from the ship let into the lock.

  If he stripped off the spacesuit without touching its outer surface,and reentered the investigating ship while the suit was flung outsideby a man in another spacesuit, handling it with a pole he'd flingafter it, there could be no possible contamination brought back.

  Calhoun was quite right, but Weald in general considered that he'dpersuaded the government to take an unreasonable risk.

  There were other reasons for disapproving of him. Calhoun had beenunpleasantly frank. The coming of the death-ship stirred to frenzythose people who believed that all blueskins should be exterminated asa pious act. They'd appeared on every vision screen, citing not onlythe ship from Orede but other incidents which they interpreted ascrimes against Weald.

  They demanded that all Wealdian atomic reactors be modified to turnout fusion-bomb materials while a space fleet was made ready for ananti-blueskin crusade. They confidently demanded such a rain of fusionbombs on Dara that no blueskin, no animal, no shred of vegetation, nofish in the deepest ocean, not even a living virus particle of theblueskin plague could remain alive on the blueskin world.

  One of these vehement orators even asserted that Calhoun agreed thatno other course was possible, speaking for the Interstellar MedicalService. And Calhoun furiously demanded a chance to deny it bybroadcast, and he made a bitter and indiscreet speech from which aplanet-wide audience inferred that he thought them fools.

  He did.

  So he was definitely unpopular when his ship lifted from Weald. He'dcurtly given his destination as Orede, from which the death-ship hadcome. The landing-grid locked on, raised the small spacecraft untilWeald was a great shining ball below it, and then somehow scornfullycast him off. The Med Ship was free, in clear space where there wasnot enough of a gravitational field to hinder overdrive.

  He aimed for his destination, his face very grim. He said savagely,"Get set, Murgatroyd! Overdrive coming!"

  He thumbed down the overdrive button. The universe of stars went out,while everything living in the ship felt the customary sensations ofdizziness, of nausea, and of a spiraling fall to nothingness. Thenthere was silence.

  The Med Ship actually moved at a rate which was a preposterous numberof times the speed of light, but it felt absolutely solid, absolutelyfirm and fixed. A ship in overdrive feels exactly as if it were burieddeep in the core of a planet. There is no vibration. There is no signof anything but solidity and, if one looks out a port, there is onlyutter blackness plus an absence of sound fit to make one's eardrumscrack.

  But within seconds random tiny noises began. There was a reel andthere were sound-speakers to keep the ship from sounding like a grave.The reel played and the speakers gave off minute creakings, andmeaningless hums, and very tiny noises of every imaginable sort, allof which were just above the threshold of the inaudible.

  Calhoun fretted. Sector Twelve was in very bad shape. A conscientiousMed Service man would never have let the anti-blueskin obsession gounmentioned in a report on Weald. Health is not only a physicalaffair. There is mental health, also. When mental health goes acivilization can be destroyed more surely and more terribly than byany imaginable war or plague germs. A plague kills off those who aresusceptible to it, leaving immunes to build up a world again. Butimmunes are the first to be killed when a mass neurosis sweeps apopulation.

  Weald was definitely a Med Service problem world. Dara was another.And when hundreds of men jammed themselves into a cargo spaceshipwhich could not furnish them with air to breathe, and took off andwent into overdrive before the air could fail.... Orede called for noless of worry.

  "I think," said Calhoun dourly, "that I'll have some coffee."

  _Coffee_ was one of the words that Murgatroyd recognized. Ordinarilyhe stirred immediately on hearing it, and watched the coffeemaker withbright, interested eyes. He'd even tried to imitate Calhoun's motionswith it, once, and had scorched his paws in the attempt. But this timehe did not move.

  Calhoun turned his head. Murgatroyd sat on the floor, his long tailcoiled reflectively about a chair leg. He watched the door of the MedShip's sleeping cabin.

  "Murgatroyd," said Calhoun. "I mentioned coffee!"

  "_Chee!_" shrilled Murgatroyd.

  But he continued to look at the door. The temperature was kept lowerin the other cabin, and the look of things was different than thecontrol compartment. The difference was part of the means by which aman was able to be alone for weeks on end--alone save for his_tormal_--without becoming ship-happy.

  There were other carefully thought out items in the ship with the samepurpose. But none of them should cause Murgatroyd to stare fixedly andfascinatedly at the sleeping cabin door. Not when coffee was in themaking!

  Calhoun considered. He became angry at the immediate suspicion thatoccurred to him. As a Med Service man, he was duty-bound to beimpartial. To be impartial might mean not to side absolutely withWeald in its enmity to blueskins.

  And the people of Weald had refused to help Dara in a time of famine,and had blockaded that pariah world for years afterward. And they hadother reasons for hating the people they'd treated badly. It wasentirely reasonable for some fanatic on Weald to consider that Calhounmust be killed lest he be of help to the blueskins Weald abhorred.

  In fact, it was quite possible that somebody had stowed away on theMed Ship to murder Calhoun, so that there would be no danger of anyreport favorable to Dara ever being presented anywhere. If so, such astowaway would be in the sleeping cabin now, waiting for Calhoun towalk in unsuspiciously, only to be shot dead.

  So Calhoun made coffee. He slipped a blaster into a pocket where itwould be handy. He filled a small cup for Murgatroyd and a large onefor himself, and then a second large one.

  He tapped on the sleeping cabin door, standing aside lest ablaster-bolt come through it.

  "Coffee's ready," he said sardonically. "Come out and join us."

  There was a long pause. Calhoun rapped again.

  "You've a seat at the captain's table," he said more sardonicallystill. "It's not polite to keep me waiting!"

  He listened, alert for a rush which would be a fanatic's desperateattempt to do murder despite premature discovery. He was prepared toshoot quite ruthlessly, because he was on duty and the Med Service didnot approve of the extermination of populations, however justifiedanother population might consider it.

  But there was no rush. Instead, there came hesitant foot-falls whosesound made Calhoun start. The door of the cabin slid slowly aside. Agirl appeared in the opening, desperately white and desper
atelycomposed.

  "H-how did you know I was there?" she asked shakily. She moistened herlips. "You didn't see me! I was in a closet, and you didn't even enterthe room!"

  Calhoun said grimly, "I've sources of information. Murgatroyd told methis time. May I present him? Murgatroyd, our passenger. Shake hands."

  Murgatroyd moved forward, stood on his hind legs and offered a skinny,furry paw. She did not move. She stared at Calhoun.

  "Better shake hands," said Calhoun, as grimly as before. "It mightrelax the tension a little. And do you want to tell me your story? Youhave one ready, I'm sure."

  The girl swallowed. Murgatroyd shook hands gravely. He said,"_Chee-chee!_" in the shrillest of trebles and went back to his formerposition.

  "The story?" said Calhoun insistently.

  "There--there isn't any," said the girl unsteadily. "Just that I--Ineed to get to Orede, and you're going there. There's no other way togo, now."

  "To the contrary," said Calhoun. "There'll undoubtedly be a fleetheading for Orede as soon as it can be assembled and armed. But I'mafraid that as a story yours isn't good enough. Try another."

  She shivered a little.

  "I'm running away...."

  "Ah!" said Calhoun. "In that case I'll take you back."

  "No!" she said fiercely. "I'll--I'll die first! I'll wreck this shipfirst!"

  Her hand came from behind her. There was a tiny blaster in it. But itshook visibly as she tried to aim it.

  "I'll shoot out the controls!"

  Calhoun blinked. He'd had to make a drastic change in his estimate ofthe situation the instant he saw that the stowaway was a girl. Now hehad to make another when her threat was not to kill him but to disablethe ship. Women are rarely assassins, and when they are they don't useenergy weapons. Daggers and poisons are more typical. But this girlthreatened to destroy the ship rather than its owner, so she was notactually an assassin at all.

  "I'd rather you didn't do that," said Calhoun dryly. "Besides, you'dget deadly bored if we were stuck in a derelict waiting for our airand food to give out."

  Murgatroyd, for no reason whatever, felt it necessary to enter theconversation:

  "_Chee-chee-chee!_"

  "A very sensible suggestion," observed Calhoun. "We'll sit down andhave a cup of coffee." To the girl he said, "I'll take you to Orede,since that's where you say you want to go."

  "I have a sweetheart there...."

  Calhoun shook his head.

  "No," he said reprovingly. "Nearly all the mining colony had packeditself into the ship that came into Weald with everybody dead. But notall. And there's been no check of what men were in the ship and whatmen weren't. You wouldn't go to Orede if it were likely yoursweetheart had died on the way to you. Here's your coffee. Sugar orsaccho, and do you take cream?"

  She trembled a little, but she took the cup.

  "I don't understand."

  "Murgatroyd and I," explained Calhoun--and he did not know whether hespoke out of anger or something else--"we are do-gooders. We go aroundtrying to keep people from getting sick or dying. Sometimes we eventry to keep them from getting killed. It's our profession. We practiseit even on our own behalf. We want to stay alive. So since you makesuch drastic threats, we will take you where you want to go.Especially since we're going there anyhow."

  "You don't believe anything I've said!" It was a statement.

  "Not a word," admitted Calhoun. "But you'll probably tell us somethingmore believable presently. When did you eat last?"

  "Yesterday."

  "Would you rather do your own cooking?" asked Calhoun politely. "Orwould you permit me to ready a snack?"

  "I--I'll do it," she said.

  She drank her coffee first, however, and then Calhoun showed her howto punch the readier for such-and-such dishes, to be extracted fromstorage and warmed or chilled, as the case might be, and served atdialed-for intervals. There was also equipment for preparing food foroneself, in one's own chosen manner--again an item to help makesolitude not unendurable.

  Calhoun deliberately immersed himself in the Galactic Directory,looking up the planet Orede. He was headed there, but he'd had noreason to inform himself about it before. Now he read with everyappearance of absorption.

  The girl ate daintily. Murgatroyd watched with highly amiableinterest. But she looked acutely uncomfortable.

  Calhoun finished with the Directory. He got out the micro-film reelswhich contained more information. He was specifically after the MedService history of all the planets in this sector. He went through thefilmed record of every inspection ever made on Weald and on Dara.

  But Sector Twelve had not been run well. There was no adequate accountof a plague which had wiped out three-quarters of the population of aninhabited planet! It had happened shortly after one Med Ship visit,and was over before another Med Ship came by.

  There should have been a painstaking investigation, even after thefact. There should have been a collection of infectious material and areasonably complete identification and study of the agent. It hadn'tbeen made. There was probably some other emergency at the time, and itslipped by. Calhoun, whose career was not to be spent in this sector,resolved on a blistering report about this negligence and itsconsequences.

  He kept himself casually busy, ignoring the girl. A Med Ship man hasresources of study and meditation with which to occupy himself duringoverdrive travel from one planet to another. Calhoun made use of thoseresources. He acted as if he were completely unconscious of thestowaway. But Murgatroyd watched her with charmed attention.

  Hours after her discovery, she said uneasily, "Please?"

  Calhoun looked up.

  "Yes?"

  "I don't know exactly how things stand."

  "You are a stowaway," said Calhoun. "Legally, I have the right to putyou out the airlock. It doesn't seem necessary. There's a cabin. Whenyou're sleepy, use it. Murgatroyd and I can make out quite well outhere. When you're hungry, you now know how to get something to eat.When we land on Orede, you'll probably go about whatever business youhave there. That's all."

  She stared at him.

  "But you don't believe what I've told you!"

  "No," agreed Calhoun, but didn't add to the statement.

  "But--I will tell you," she offered. "The police were after me. I hadto get away from Weald! I had to! I'd stolen--"

  He shook his head.

  "No," he said. "If you were a thief, you'd say anything in the worldexcept that you were a thief. You're not ready to tell the truth yet.You don't have to, so why tell me anything? I suggest that you getsome sleep. Incidentally, there's no lock on the cabin door becausethere's only supposed to be one person on this ship at a time. But youcan brace a chair to fasten it somehow or other. Good night."

  She rose slowly. Twice her lips parted as if to speak again, but thenshe went into the other cabin and closed herself in. There was thesound of a chair being wedged against the door.

  Murgatroyd blinked at the place where she'd disappeared and thenclimbed up into Calhoun's lap, with complete assurance of welcome. Hesettled himself and was silent for moments. Then he said, "_Chee!_"

  "I believe you're right," said Calhoun. "She doesn't belong on Weald,or with the conditioning she'd have had, there'd be only one placeshe'd dread worse than Orede, which would be Dara. But I doubt she'dbe afraid to land even on Dara."

  Murgatroyd liked to be talked to. He liked to pretend that he carriedon a conversation, like humans.

  "_Chee-chee!_" he said with conviction.

  "Definitely," agreed Calhoun. "She's not doing this for her personaladvantage. Whatever she thinks she'd doing, it's more important to herthan her own life. Murgatroyd...."

  "_Chee?_" said Murgatroyd in an inquiring tone.

  "There are wild cattle on Orede," said Calhoun. "Herds and herds ofthem. I have a suspicion that somebody's been shooting them. Lots ofthem. Do you agree? Don't you think that a lot of cattle have beenslaughtered on Orede lately?"

  Murgatroyd yawned. He settled hims
elf still more comfortably inCalhoun's lap.

  "_Chee_," he said drowsily.

  He went to sleep, while Calhoun continued the examination of highlycondensed information. Presently he looked up the normal rate ofincrease, with other data, among herds of _bovis domesticus_ in a wildstate, on planets where there are no natural enemies.

  It wasn't unheard-of for a world to be stocked with useful types ofTerran fauna and flora before it was attempted to be colonized. Terranlife-forms could play the devil with alien ecological systems--verymuch to humanity's benefit. Familiar microorganisms and a standardvegetation added to the practicality of human settlements on otherwisealien worlds. But sometimes the results were strange.

  They weren't often so strange, however, as to cause some hundreds ofmen to pack themselves frantically aboard a cargo ship which couldn'tpossibly sustain them, so that every man must die while the ship wasin overdrive.

  Still, by the time Calhoun turned in on a spare pneumatic mattress, hehad calculated that as few as a dozen head of cattle, turned loose ona suitable planet, would have increased to herds of thousands or tensor even hundreds of thousands in much less time than had probablyelapsed.

  The Med Ship drove on in seemingly absolute solidity, with no soundfrom without, with no sight to be seen outside, with no evidence atall that it was not buried in the heart of a planet instead offlashing through emptiness at a speed so great as to have no meaning.

  Next ship-day the girl looked oddly at Calhoun when she appeared inthe control room. Murgatroyd regarded her with great interest. Calhounnodded politely and went back to what he'd been doing before sheappeared.

  "Shall I have breakfast?" she asked uncertainly.

  "Murgatroyd and I have," he told her. "Why not?"

  Silently, she operated the food-readier. She ate. Calhoun gave a verygood portrayal of a man who will respond politely when spoken to, butwho was busy with activities remote from stowaways.

  About noon, ship-time, she asked, "When will we get to Orede?"

  Calhoun told her absently, as if he were thinking of something else.

  "What--what do you think happened there? I mean, to make that tragedyin the ship."

  "I don't know," said Calhoun. "But I disagree with the authorities onWeald. I don't think it was a planned atrocity of the blueskins."

  "Wh-what are blueskins?" asked the girl.

  Calhoun turned around and looked at her directly.

  "When lying," he said mildly, "you tell as much by what you pretendisn't, as by what you pretend is. You know what blueskins are!"

  "But what do you think they are?" she asked.

  "There used to be a human disease called smallpox," said Calhoun."When people recovered from it, they were usually marked. Their skinhad little scar pits here and there. At one time, back on Earth, itwas expected that everybody would catch smallpox sooner or later, anda large percentage would die of it.

  "And it was so much a matter of course that if they printed a pictureof a criminal they never mentioned it if he were pock-marked. It wasno distinction. But if he didn't have the markings, they'd mentionthat!" He paused. "Those pock-marks weren't hereditary, but otherwisea blueskin is like a man who had them. He can't be anything else!"

  "Then you think they're human?"

  "There's never yet been a case of reverse evolution," said Calhoun."Maybe Pithecanthropus had a monkey uncle, but no Pithecanthropus everwent monkey."

  She turned abruptly away. But she glanced at him often during thatday. He continued to busy himself with those activities which make MedShip life consistent with retained sanity.

  Next day she asked without preliminary, "Don't you believe theblueskins planned for the ship with the dead men to arrive at Wealdand spread plague there?"

  "No," said Calhoun.

  "Why?"

  "It couldn't possibly work," Calhoun told her. "With only dead men onboard, the ship wouldn't arrive at a place where the landing-gridcould bring it down. So that would be no good. And plague-strickenliving men wouldn't try to conceal that they had the plague. Theymight ask for help, but they'd know they'd instantly be killed onWeald if they were found to be plague victims. So that would be nogood, either! No, the ship wasn't intended to land plague on Weald."

  "Are you friendly to blueskins?" she asked uncertainly.

  "Within reason," said Calhoun, "I am a well-wisher to all the humanrace. You're slipping, though. When using the word _blueskin_ youshould say it uncomfortably, as if it were a word no refined personliked to pronounce. You don't. We'll land on Orede tomorrow, by theway. If you ever intend to tell me the truth, there's not much timeleft."

  She bit her lips. Twice, during the remainder of the day, she facedhim and opened her mouth as if to speak, and then turned away again.Calhoun shrugged. He had fairly definite ideas about her, by now. Hecarefully kept them tentative, but no girl born and raised on Wealdwould willingly go to Orede, with all of Weald believing that ashipload of miners preferred death to remaining there. It tied in,like everything else that was unpleasant, to blueskins. Nobody fromWeald would dream of landing on Orede! Not now!

  A little before the Med Ship was due to break out from overdrive, thegirl said very carefully, "You've been very kind. I'd like to thankyou. I--I didn't really believe I would live to get to Orede."

  Calhoun raised his eyebrows.

  "I wish I could tell you everything you want to know," she addedregretfully. "I think you're ... really decent. But some thing...."

  Calhoun said caustically, "You've told me a great deal. You weren'tborn on Weald. You weren't raised there. The people of Dara--noticethat I don't say blueskins, though they are--the people of Dara havemade at least one space ship since Weald threatened them withextermination. There is probably a new food shortage on Dara now,leading to pure desperation. Most likely it's bad enough to make themrisk landing on Orede to kill cattle and freeze beef to help. They'veworked out--"

  She gasped and sprang to her feet. She snatched out the tiny blasterin her pocket. She pointed it waveringly at him.

  "I have to kill you!" she cried desperately. "I--I have to!"

  Calhoun reached out. She tugged despairingly at the blaster's trigger.Nothing happened. Before she could realize that she hadn't turned offthe safety, Calhoun twisted the weapon from her fingers. He steppedback.

  "Good girl!" he said approvingly. "I'll give this back to you when weland. And thanks. Thanks very much!"

  She wrung her hands. Then she stared at him.

  "Thanks? When I tried to kill you?"

  "Of course!" said Calhoun. "I'd made guesses. I couldn't know thatthey were right. When you tried to kill me, you confirmed every one.Now, when we land on Orede I'm going to get you to try to put me intouch with your friends. It's going to be tricky, because they must bepretty well scared about that ship. But it's a highly desirable thingto get done!"

  He went to the ships' control board and sat down before it.

  "Twenty minutes to breakhour," he observed.

  Murgatroyd peered out of his little cubbyhole. His eyes were anxious._Tormals_ are amiable little creatures. During the days in overdrive,Calhoun had paid less than the usual amount of attention toMurgatroyd, while the girl was fascinating.

  They'd made friends, awkwardly on the girl's part, very pleasantly onMurgatroyd's. But only moments ago there had been bitter emotion inthe air. Murgatroyd had fled to his cubbyhole to escape it. He wasdistressed. Now that there was silence again, he peered out unhappily.

  "_Chee?_" he queried plaintively. "_Chee-chee-chee?_"

  Calhoun said matter-of-factly, "It's all right, Murgatroyd. If wearen't blasted as we try to land, we should be able to make friendswith everybody and get something accomplished."

  The statement was hopelessly inaccurate.

  * * * * *