the other worlds, Whirlygig seemed like vacation-land.
The suits had efficient recycling systems, and ample food supplies. The contestants agreed to carry on right to the pole, then rest there for a few hours before returning to the equator and leaving. According to Gilby they would find a sizeable research dome at the north pole, where they would be able to sleep in comfort and remove suits for a few hours. All scientific surveys on Whirlygig had been completed many years earlier, but the dome facilities should still be in working order.
Elissa and Peron had chosen to travel side by side, with their radios set for private conversation. The suit computers would monitor incoming messages and interrupt for anything urgent. Elissa was bubbling over with high spirits and cheerfulness.
“Lots of things to tell you,” she said. “I didn’t have a chance to talk to you yesterday, you were too busy getting ready for the landing here. But I’ve spent a lot of time making friends with one of the crew members — Tolider, the short-haired one with the pet tardy.”
“That hadn’t escaped my attention,” said Peron drily. “I saw you petting it and pretending you liked it, too. Disgusting. Why would anybody want a big, fat, hairy pet worm?”
Elissa laughed. “If I were to tell you what some people want with it, I’d shock your innocent soul. But Tolider just likes it for company, and he looks after it well. Love me, love my tardy, that’s what he seems to think. Once he thought I was a tardy-lover, too, he was ready to bare his soul. Now, are you going to spend the next few hours sounding jealous, or do you want to know what he said?” “Oh, all right.” Peron’s curiosity was too great to allow him to maintain an aloof tone, and he knew from his own experience how good Elissa was at winkling information out of anyone. “What did he tell you?”
“After he felt comfortable with me we talked about the Immortals. He says they aren’t a hoax, or something invented by the government. And they aren’t human, or alien, either. He says they are machines.”
“How does he know?”
“He saw them. He’s been working in space for over twenty years, and he remembers the last time the Immortals came. He said something else, too, once I’d softened him up — shut up, Peron — something that he says the government doesn’t want anyone down on Pentecost ever to know. He told me because he wanted to warn me, because he feels sorry for me. He says that some of the winners of the Planetfest games who go off-planet are sacrifices to the Immortals. They — that means us — will become machines, themselves.”
“Rubbish!”
“I agree, it sounds like it. But he made a lot of good points. You hear about the Immortals, but you never hear a description of one — no stories that they’re just like us, or that they’re big or little, or have green hair, or six arms. And you tell me: what does happen to Planetfest winners when they go off-planet?”
“You know I can’t answer that. But we’ve seen videos of them, after they won the games. How could that happen if they had been converted to machines?” “I’ll tell you what Tolider says — and this is supposed to be common rumor through the whole space division. It’s like an old legend that goes back to the time we were first contacted by the Immortals. We know that the computer records on The Ship were destroyed, but there’s no real doubt that it left Sol over twenty thousand years ago, and travelled around in space until five thousand years ago when it found Pentecost.”
“No one will argue with that, except maybe your old aunt who thinks we’ve been on Pentecost forever. We were even taught it in school.”
“But the old records say that everything on Earth was wiped out, and everyone died in the Great Wars. Suppose that’s not true — partly true, but exaggerated. Suppose there were enough people left to start over again, says Tolider, and suppose they survived the bombs and the Long Winter. They wouldn’t be starting from scratch, the way we began on Pentecost. They’d be able to breed back quickly — it took us less than five thousand years to grow from The Ship’s people to over a billion. Earth would have had at least fifteen thousand years to develop their technology, beyond anything we can imagine, while we were wandering round on The Ship, looking for a home. They would have machines hundreds of generations better than our best computers. Maybe they would have reached the point where the dividing line between organic and inorganic would be blurred. We definitely know they have better computers — did you realize that the Immortals, not Pentecost, control space travel through the Cass system, because their computerized tracking system is enormously better than ours? Sy told me that, and he got it from Gilby. Anyway, that’s what Tolider believes: the Immortals are intelligent computers, maybe with biological components, sent here from Earth. There. You’re the smart one — so find a hole in that logic.” They flew along in silence as Peron thought it over.
“I don’t need to find a logical gap,” he said at last. “Tolider’s story doesn’t fail on logical grounds, it fails on sense. People do things for reasons. If Earth had recovered and gone back to space, they might have sent ships out to look for us, sure — and for the other ships that supposedly left at the same time we did. Suppose that’s true, and suppose they eventually found us. Then they’d come and tell us we had been discovered. Why would they ever not want to tell us? Tolider is repeating old stories. Nothing wrong with that, but you don’t expect legends to make sense. Let me ask you a question that doesn’t depend on myths for an answer. Supposedly we get scientific information from the Immortals, and they drop off a new batch of ideas every twenty years, along with a few rare materials that are in short supply in the Cass system. Right?” “I think that’s definitely true. Tolider says he has actually been involved in the materials transfer. He also says that the government down on Pentecost is obsessed with control and maintaining the status quo, and that they use new technology to remain in power. That’s why we’ve had a stable, single regime ever since we were contacted by the Immortals, and that’s one reason he prefers to stay out in space where there’s more freedom.”
“He should meet my father — he’s been saying for years that the government is run by a bunch of repressive tyrants. But don’t you see the problem? The Immortals give us things, and it’s a one-way transfer. Nobody, not even a machine, will stand for a one-way trade for four hundred and fifty years. If all they wanted to do was give us information, they could do that using radio signals. But they actually come here. So here’s my question: What do the Immortals get from their visits to Pentecost?”
“Some of us, if you want to believe Tolider. You and me, that’s what the government trades to get new information.”
“That makes even less sense if we want to believe Tolider. We winners are a talented group, but we’re not that special. If Earth had been repopulated to the point where they could explore the stars again, they’d have thousands like us.” “Tolider told me that we are an unusual group. Rumor says it’s the first time for many games that all the top five in the Planetfest games are
‘troublemakers’ — he couldn’t define the term for me.”
“I think I can. We won’t take answers without digging for ourselves. That’s one reason I feel so comfortable with the rest of you.”
“I’ll accept that. So let me point out one other thing. You can tell me what it means. The contestant groups for surface visits to Glug and Bedlam and Crater and Camel and the other planets were all some random mixture of all twenty-five winners. But look who’s here on Whirlygig: Sy, me, you, Kallen, and Lum — the top five, all ‘troublemakers,’ plus Rosanne and Wilmer. I think Rosanne can be classed as a wild one, too, difficult to control — your hair would curl if I told you some of the things she’s done. And we all wonder about Wilmer. We’ve been specially picked for this trip, and I’m worried about what might happen here.” Peron moved their suits closer together so that he could see her face. He realized she was genuinely worried, not just joking. He reached across to take her suit glove. “Relax, Elissa. You’re as bad as Tolider, all wild surmises. They wouldn’t bring us all this way to dispose of us on Whirlygig. If we are that much nuisance we could have been chucked out of the contest back on Pentecost, and nobody would ever have suspected a thing.” He laughed. “Don’t worry. Now we’ve landed we’re safe enough on Whirlygig.”
They had made good progress. The north pole would soon be in sight. And in less than an hour, Peron would know the falseness of his final words.
The dome was a hemisphere of tough, flexible polymer, roughly twenty meters across. It was located on the exact axis of rotation of the planet. That axis was highly tilted to Whirlygig’s orbit plane, so at this time of year the golden sun of Cassay was permanently invisible, hovering down over the other pole. Only the weak companion, Cassby, threw its ruddy glow across the landscape, providing adequate light but little heat. There were no free
