Silence is Deadly. Lloyd Biggle jr.
upon the character of a world’s inhabitants than upon their achievements, and the Synthesis demonstrated no official interest in whether any world attained membership or not. Non-member worlds were ignored unless their activities posed a threat to Synthesis members or seemed likely to.
As Director of the Department of Uncertified Worlds, Rok Wllon placed observation teams on such planets wherever or whenever he thought they were needed. These teams supplied voluminous and continuing reports on the worlds, and if through some evolutionary coincidence a world achieved eligibility by way of its own self-improvement, the department recommended it for membership. Rok Wllon performed a highly responsible and thankless job, and he did it superbly. For all of his petty idiosyncrasies, he was the government’s best top level administrator.
Rok Wllon’s young administrative assistant, a compatriot of his named Kom Rmmon, politely expressed his regrets to Darzek. The director had left that morning with a team of administrators for the world of Slonfus to attend a conference about something or other.
That seemed perfectly normal. The Director of Uncertified Worlds spent more than half of his time traveling.
But he did not normally leave for that kind of conference unexpectedly—especially when he had an appointment with the First Councilor. Darzek’s uneasiness remained, but for the present there was nothing that he could do. He asked to be notified the moment the director returned; but Rok Wllon’s trip proved to be an extended one, and Darzek had his own work to do, and eventually his puzzlement over the Eighth Councilor’s conduct—and Kamm, the Silent Planet—faded.
* * * *
Periodically Supreme divested its computer self of a list of worlds under the heading, “Potential Trouble Sources.” The projected difficulties were sometimes monumental and sometimes unbelievably trivial, and the word potential not infrequently meant, as Darzek had discovered in the past, that even a computer’s imagination could be overly active.
But Darzek felt obliged to investigate each world named. In most instances the action needed was obvious and easily taken: to avert a medical crisis due to inept public health measures; to prevent a looming economic catastrophe caused by a failing source of critical metals; to defuse an interworld dispute with timely mediation. Darzek’s practice was to first skim through the columns, picking out those worlds he was familiar with.
On this particular list, his rapid skimming was brought to an abrupt halt by one word: Kamm.
CHAPTER 3
Darzek immediately asked Supreme for a posting on its councilors. Supreme did not know where Rok Wllon was.
Neither did the Department of Uncertified Worlds. The director was traveling, Kom Rmmon informed Darzek politely. Doubtless he would soon supply the department with a new itinerary.
Kom Rmmon had been trained superbly. He radiated efficiency and intelligence; but beneath the imposing veneer of those qualities, it seemed to Darzek that the youngster was as badly frightened as Rok Wllon had been.
As First Councilor, Darzek possessed an impressive portfolio of emergency powers. Although he disciplined himself to use them only in genuine crises, and as a last resort, he had little difficulty in persuading himself that the disappearance of a member of the Council of Supreme had to be investigated at once, with every means available to him.
Darzek went directly to the Eighth Councilor’s official residence and had himself admitted by Supreme. He sat down at the communications panel in Rok Wllon’s study and asked Supreme to show him, one at a time, the last things the Eighth Councilor had viewed before his departure.
A projection filled the room just above Darzek’s head—an enlarged portion of the same shallow slice of the galaxy that Rok Wllon had displayed to him. Darzek picked out the sun Gwanor and its one habitable planet, Kamm; but the pinpoints of light told him nothing.
The star projection faded, and the desk screen came to life. The beautifully drawn calligraphy shown there was Rok Wllon’s own angular script. Darzek moved over to the desk and pondered the three poems that filled the screen.
The night was cloudless
and shimmering with moon shadows
I reached for its beauty
and Death’s talons clutched my hand.
A keeper of secrets
knows my death date
She sculpts my future
with sinewy hands
intertwining happiness and longevity
but while she speaks
the whip is pointed
and I feel unseen vibrations.
Vibrant Death
unwanted
uninvited
scrupulously keeps the appointment
that no one made.
The screen went blank. Darzek searched the residence thoroughly, but he found no clues—not even the evidence of a hasty departure.
He returned to his own residence and filed an official request. A few minutes later he had a visitor: Kom Rmmon, now flustered with excitement because he had just received a direct command from Supreme. To a governmental bureaucrat on Primores, this was the equivalent of a message from God. He faced Darzek with consternation, and his naturally bluish complexion had taken on a purplish tint.
Darzek got him seated. He said sternly, “It is the command of Supreme and of Supreme’s First Councilor, myself, that you answer. Where is the director of your department?”
Kom Rmmon gazed at Darzek woodenly.
“Answer! You cannot refuse a command from Supreme and from Supreme’s First Councilor. Where is the director?”
“Not here,” Kom Rmmon muttered.
“We know that he is not here. Where is he?”
“I can’t speak here. Come.”
He dashed to the entrance hall, punched a destination on Darzek’s transmitter, and stepped through. Darzek paused to look at the setting before he followed him, frowning perplexedly.
He emerged in a public park. Kom Rmmon already was twenty strides from Darzek and hurrying away. Darzek matched his pace and followed him.
The world of Primores was beautiful as only an artificial world could be, crafted to perfection in each of its parts and with each small perfection skillfully fitted into the harmonious whole. At one time it had been an airless world, and the tinted domes that enclosed each of its public parks were a reminder of that sterile antiquity. Now the world’s rainbow atmosphere provided a shimmering halo above the domes. Kom Rmmon wound his way through the lush, multicolored vegetation until he reached the edge of the park. Only then did he look back, and when he had assured himself that Darzek was following, he opened a door in the base of the dome and stepped through.
Darzek stepped through after him and followed, maintaining the twenty-pace distance.
The transmitter, which permitted whole world populations to move instantly between the blind oases that were windowless buildings and homes and enclosed parks, had transformed many worlds to unseen wastelands; but on Primores, the carefully kept landscape outside the dome was as park-like as that within. Kom Rmmon marched straight ahead for a hundred meters or more, finally coming to a stop at a low building that looked like a massive block of concrete.
He punched an indentification code, opened a heavy door, and stood waiting for Darzek, who had turned to look back at the park. There was no suggestion of a path worn through the closely cropped vegetation. Whatever the structure was used for, it was not used frequently.
Darzek entered, and Kom Rmmon followed and closed the door firmly behind them and secured it. They were in a small, tastefully furnished conference room.
Kom Rmmon dropped into a chair with an attitude of