Free To Conquer Chaos by John Brunner Page B

desert was the same as before.
    For that reason, when Nestamay turned from contemplating the hideous tangle of the miniature jungle beneath the dome, she looked long at the unalterable desert—just as inhospitable, but not actively hostile. It was there, and it was a fact, and it was.
    Oddly comforted, she hurried to complete her rounds with the canister of broth and the bag of bread.

    It was at the next call but one that she found Jasper, cursing and sweating over the removal of a large pile of scrap metal which the terrified thing had overset last night as it howled away from the torture of the electrofence. Tightening her lips, Nestamay left him till last of the party to receive his rations. He noticed the fact; he was meant to.
    “Not looking very cheerful this morning, Nestamay!” he taunted. “Grandfather been scolding you—hey?”
    “No,” Nestamay contradicted with a toss of her head. “As a matter of fact, he’s been praising me for a change. No thanks to you, you—!”
    “Ho-o-o-o!” Jasper raised his eyebrows. “I suppose it’s my fault now, is it? I’m responsible for hatching out things, and I do it during your watch to make trouble for you!”
    “You do your best to make trouble for me, and you can’t deny it!” Nestamay retorted. “Suppose I’d been taken in by your wheedling last night, and skipped my watch—what would have happened then?”
    Jasper laughed. It wasn’t a friendly sound. He said, “You were the one supposed to be on watch, my dear, not me. I didn’t know. After all, you didn’t tell me that was where you were going!”
    The barefaced audacity of the lie shocked Nestamay into paleness. Stamping her foot, she snapped, “Jasper, you make me sick to my guts!”
    “Too bad,” Jasper said with a shrug, turning away. “A time will come when I make you literally sick for a much better reason—because my kid’s kicking you in the belly. And you don’t have much choice in the matter, do you? Not even if you go weeping to your precious grandfather. He doesn’t think tears are constructive.”
    Unconstructive tears blurred Nestamay’s sight as she moved away. For, like it or not, what Jasper said was undeniable.

X

    Yanderman ducked under the door flap of the Duke’s tent and saluted. The Duke leaned back so that his chair—as always—creaked with his weight, and smiled in the depths of his enormous beard.
    “Well, Yan? What do you think of our progress so far?”
    Yanderman ignored the question. He said curtly, “Ampier died in the night—did you know?”
    “Of course. I was informed directly it happened; I’d given instructions.”
    “Have you seen the body?”
    “No.”
    Yanderman shuddered. “I saw it. They were carrying it out for burning as I came by. He looked as though he’d simply rotted to death. He was completely covered in that filthy green mould.”
    Duke Paul nodded. “So they told me. Obviously the beak of the thing he killed was infected, and poisoned his wound. The medics said they could find nothing that would stop the mould growing without killing the sufferer, so I ordered the burning of everything Ampier had touched—his bandages, the blanket he was wrapped in, his clothes, even the tent where he lay dying. And told all his attendants to burn their clothes and scrub themselves from head to foot with good strong soap. Does that answer what you were going to say?”
    Yanderman took a chair. “I guess so,” he agreed, feeling conscious relief that the Duke had been so thorough. “But I’m afraid the death is having a bad effect on the men.”
    “We mustn’t let it,” the Duke countered briskly. “We must keep them busy.”
    “They’re busy already,” Yanderman pointed out. “With reconnaissance parties surveying the boundary of the barrenland, the fact-finding teams compiling data on the things that have been killed over the years by the people of Lagwich, and arms practice—in fact, I ought to be out-drilling my company right