When the agents of evil murdered Martin
Dormer, they thought that the un-man was no more, that they had deprived the
world organization of its greatest chance to achieve peace. Now their
world-wide conspiracy could take over the entire planet, still recovering
from a nuclear war.
But
if the un-man was dead, who was this man who looked identically like him, who
fought the conspirators with the same fantastic skill and wit which Donner had
possessed?
Suddenly this new un-man (or was he really
new?) became the object of a planetary search, the outcome of which would
determine the future of the world.
POUL
ANDERSON was
born in Bristol, Pennsylvania, and was graduated as a physics
major from the University of Minnesota. Writing was a hobby of his, and he sold
a few stories while in college. With jobs hard to find after graduation, he
continued to write and found to his surprise that he was not a scientist at
all, but a born writer. Best known for his science-fiction, he has also written
mysteries, non-fiction, and historical novels.
Poul
Anderson lives in Orinda, California, with his wife and young daughter. Novels
of his published in Ace Books editions include PLANET OF NO RETURN (D-199),
STAR WAYS (D-255), WAR OF THE WING-MEN (D-303), SNOWS OF GANYMEDE (D-303), WAR
OF TWO WORLDS (D-335), WE CLAIM THESE STARS (D-407), EARTHMAN GO HOMEI (D-479),
and MAYDAY ORBIT (F-104).
UN-MAN And Other Novellas
by
POUL ANDERSON
ACE
BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
un-man
and other novellas
Copyright ©, 1962, by Ace Books, Inc.
All
Rights Reserved
Magazine
versions, copyright 1953, 1956, 1958, by Street & Smith Publications, Inc.
table of contents
UN-MAN 5
MARGIN
OF PROFIT 105
THE
LIVE COWARD 133
the makeshift rocket
Copyright ©, 1962, by Ace
Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
UN-MAN
by Poul Anderson I
They
were gone, their boat
whispering into the sky with all six of them aboard. Donner had watched them
from his balcony—he had chosen the apartment carefully with a view to
such features—as they walked out on the landing flange and entered the shell.
Now their place was vacant and it was time for him to get busy.
For
a moment hesitation was in him. He had waited many days for this chance, but a
man does not willingly enter a potential trap. His eyes strayed to the picture
on his desk. The darkly beautiful young woman and the child in her arms seemed
to be looking at him, her lips were parted as if she were about to speak. He
wanted to press the button that animated the film, but didn't quite dare.
Gently, his finger stroked the glass over her cheek.
"Jeanne," he whispered.
"Jeanne, honey."
He
got to work. His colorful lounging pajamas were exchanged for a gray outfit
that would be inconspicuous against the walls of the building. An ordinary
featureless mask, its sheen carefully dulled to non-reflection, covered his
face. He clipped a flat box of tools to his belt and painted his fingertips with
collodion. Picking up a reel of cord in one hand, he returned to the balcony.
From
here, two hundred and thirty-four stories up, he had a wide
view of the Illinois plain. As far as he could see, the land rolled green with
com, hazing into a far horizon out of which the great sky lifted. Here and
there, a clump of trees had been planted, and the white streak of an old
highway crossed the field, but otherwise it was one
immensity of growth. The holdings of Midwest Agricultural reached beyond
sight.
On either hand, the apartment building lifted
sheer from the trees and gardens of its park. Two miles long, a city in its own
right, a mountain of walls and windows, the unit dominated the plain, sweeping
heavenward in a magnificent arrogance that ended sixty-six stories above
Dormer's flat. Through the light prairie wind that fluttered his garments, the
man could hear a low unending hum, muted pulsing of machines and life-^the
building—itself like a giant organism.
There
were no other humans in sight. The balconies were so designed as to screen the
users from view of neighbors on the same level, and anyone in the park would find his upward glance blocked by trees. A few brilliant points of light in
the sky were airboats, but that didn't matter.
Donner
fastened his reel to the edge of the balcony and took the end of the cord in
his fingers. For still another moment he stood, letting the sunlight and wind
pour over him, filling his eyes with the reaching plains and the high,
white-clouded heaven.
He
was a tall man, his apparent height reduced by the width of shoulders and
chest, a curious rippling grace in his movements. His naturally yellow hair had
been dyed brown, and contact lenses made his blue eyes dark, but
otherwise there hadn't been much done to his face—the broad forehead, high
cheekbones, square jaw, and jutting nose were the same. He smiled wryly behind
the blank mask, took a deep breath, and swung himself over the balcony rail.
The
cord unwound noiselessly, bearing him down past level after level. There was a
risk involved in this daylight burglary—someone might happen to glance around
the side wall of a balcony and spot him, and even the custom of privacy would
hardly keep them from notifying the unit police. But the six he was after
didn't time their simultaneous departures for his convenience.
The
looming facade slid past, blurred a little by the speed of his descent. One,
two, three— He counted as he went by, and at the eighth story down tugged the
cord with his free hand. The reel braked and he hung in midair.
A
long and empty way down— He grinned and began to swing himself back and forth,
increasing the amplitude of each arc until his soles were touching the unit
face. On the way back, he grasped the balcony rail, just beyond the screening
side wall, with his free hand. His body jerked to a stop,
the impact like a blow in his muscles.
Still
clinging to the cord, he pulled himself one-armed past the screen, over the
rail, and onto the balcony floor. Under the gray tunic and the sweating skin,
his sinews felt as if they were about to crack. He grunted with relief when he
stood freely, tied the cord to the rail, and undipped his tool case.
The needle of his electronic detector
flickered. So there was an alarm hooked to the door leading in from the
balcony. Donner traced it with care, located a wire, and cut it. Pulling a
small torch from his kit, he approached the door. Beyond its transparent
plastic, the rooms lay quiet: a conventional
arrangement of furniture, but with a waiting quality over it.
Imagination,
thought Donner impatiently,
and cut the lock from the door. As he entered, the autocleaner sensed his
presence and its dust-sucking wind whined to silence.
The
man forced the lock of a desk and riffled through the papers within. One or two
in code he slipped into his pocket, the rest were uninteresting. There must be
more, though. Curse it, this was their regional headquarters!
His
metal detector helped him about the apartment, looking for hidden safes. When
he found a large mass buried in a wall, he didn't trouble with searching for
the button to open it, but cut the plastic facing away. The gang would know
their place had been raided, and would want to move. If they took another flat
in the same building, Donner's arrangement with the superintendent would come
into effect; they'd get a vacancy which had been thoughtfully provided with all
the spy apparatus he could install. The man grinned again.
Steel gleamed at him through the scorched and melted wall. It was a good
safe, and he hadn't time to diddle with it. He plugged in his electric drill,
and the diamond head gnawed a small hole in the lock.
With a hypodermic he inserted a few cubic centimeters of levinite, and touched
it off by a UHF beam. The lock jangled to min, and Dormer opened the door.
He
had only time to see the stet-gun within, and grasp the terrible fact of its
existence. Then it spat three needles into his chest, and he whirled down into
darkness.
n
Once
oh twice he
had begun to waken, stirring dimly toward light, and the jab of a needle had
thrust him back. Now, as his head slowly cleared, they let him alone. And that
was worse.
Donner
retched and tried to move. His body sagged against straps that held him fast in
his chair. Vision blurred in a huge nauseous ache; the six who stood watching
him were a ripple of fever-dream against an unquiet shadow.
"He's coming around," said the thin
man unnecessarily.
The heavy-set, gray-haired man in the
conservative blue tunic glanced at his timepiece. "Pretty fast,
considering how he was dosed. Healthy specimen."
Donner
mumbled. The taste of vomit was bitter in his mouth. "Give him some
water," said the bearded man.
"Like
hell!" The thin man's voice was a snarl. His face was dead white against
the shifting, blurring murk of the room, and there was a fever in his eyes.
"He doesn't rate it, the—Un-man!"
"Get
him some water," said the gray-haired one quietly. The skeletal younger
man slouched sulkily over to a chipped basin with an old-fashioned tap and drew
a glassful.
Donner
swallowed it greedily, letting it quench some of the dry fire in his throat and
belly. The bearded man approached with a hypo.
"Stimulant,"
he explained. "Bring you around faster." It bit into Donner's arm and
he felt his heartbeat quicken. His head was still a keen pulsing pain, but his
eyes steadied and he looked at the others with returning clarity.
"We
weren't altogether careless," said the heavy-set man. "That stet-gun
was set to needle anybody who opened the safe without pressing the right button
first. And, of course, a radio signal was emitted which brought us back in a
hurry. We've kept you unconscious till now."
Dormer looked around him. The room was bare, thick with the dust and cobwebs of many years, a few
pieces of old-style wooden furniture crouched in ugliness against the cracked
plaster walls. There was a single window, its broken glass panes stuffed with rags, dirt so thick on it that he could not be sure if there
was daylight outside. But the hour was probably after dark. The only
illumination within was from a single fluoro in a stand on the table.
He must be in Chicago, Donner decided through
a wave of sickness. One of the vast moldering regions that
encompassed the inhabited parts of the dying city—deserted, not worth
destroying as yet, the lair of rats and decay. Sooner or later, some
agricultural outfit would buy up the nominal title from the government which
had condemned the place and raze what had been spared by fire and rot. But it
hadn't happened yet, and the empty slum was a good hideaway for anybody.
Donner
thought of those miles of ruinous buildings, wrapped in night, looming hollow against a vacant sky-dulled echoes in the cracked and
grass-grown streets, the weary creak of a joist, the swift patter of feet and
glare of eyes from the thick dark, menace and loneliness for further than he
could run.
Alone, alone. He was more alone here than in the outermost reaches of space. He knew
starkly that he was going to die.
Jeanne. O Jeanne, my darling.
"You
were registered at the unit as Mark Roberts," said the woman crisply. She
was thin, almost as thin as the bitter-eyed young man beside her. The face was
sharp and hungry, the hair close cropped, the voice harsh with purpose.
"But your ID tattoo is a fake—it's a dye that comes off with acid. We got
your thumbprint and that number on a check and called the bank central like in
an ordinary verification, and the robofile said yes, that was Mark Roberts and
the account was all right." She leaned forward, her face straining against
the blur of night, and spat it at him. "Who are you really? Only a secret
service man could get by with that kind of fake. Whose service are you
in?"
"It's obvious, isn't it?" snapped
the thin man. "He's not American Security. We know that. So he must be an Un-man."
The
way he said the last word made it an ugly, inhuman sound. "The Un-man!" he repeated.
"Our great enemy," said the heavy-set one thoughtfully.
"The Un-man—not just an ordinary operative, with
human
limitations, but the great and secret one who's made so much
trouble for us." \
He
cocked his gray head and stared at Dormer. "It fits what fragmentary
descriptions we have," he went on. "But then, the U.N. boys can do a
lot with surgery and cosmetics, can't they? And the Un-man has been killed several times. An operator was bagged in Hong
Kong only last month which the killer swore must be our enemy—he said nobody
else could have led them such a chase."
That
was most likely Weinberger, thought Donner. An immense weariness settled on
him. They were so few, so desperately few, and one by
one the Brothers went down into darkness. He was next, and after him—
"What
I can't understand," said a fifth man—Donner recognized him as Colonel
Samsey of the American Guard— "is why, if the U. N. Secret Services does
have a corps of— uh—supermen, it should bother to disguise them to look all
alike. So that we'll think we're dealing with an immortal?" He chuckled
grimly. "Surely they don't expect us to be rattled by that!"
"Not
supermen," said the gray-haired one. "Enormously able, yes, but the
Un-men aren't infallible. As witness this one." He stood before Donner,
his legs spread and his hands on his hips. "Suppose you start talking.
Tell us about yourself."
"I
can tell you about your own selves," answered Donner. His tongue felt
thick and dry, but the acceptance of death made him, all at once, immensely
steady. "You are Roger Wade, president of Brain Tools, Incorporated, and a
prominent supporter of the Americanist Party." To the woman: "You
are Marta Jennings, worker for the Party on a full-time basis. Your secretary,
Mr. Wade—" his eyes roved to the gaunt young man—"is Rodney Borrow,
Exogene Number—"
"Don't call me that!" Cursing, Borrow lunged at Donner. He clawed
like a woman. When Samsey and the bearded ■man dragged him away, his face
was death-white and he dribbled at the mouth.
"And
the experiment was a failure," taunted Donner cruelly.
"Enough!"
Wade slapped the prisoner, a ringing open-handed buffet. "We want to know
something new, and there isn't much time. You are, of
course, immunized against truth drugs—Dr. Lewin's tests have already confirmed
that— but I assume you can still feel pain."
After
a moment, he added quietly: "We aren't fiends. You know that we're
patriots." Working
with, the nationalists of a dozen other countries! thought Donner. "We don't want to hurt or kill
unnecessarily."
"But
first we want your real identity," said the bearded man, Lewin. "Then
your background of information about us, the future plans of your chief, and so
on. However, it will be sufficient for now if you answer a few questions pertaining
to yourself, residence and so on."
Oh,
yes, thought Donner, the
weariness like a weight on his soul. That'll do. Because then they'll find Jeanne and Jimmy, and bring them
here, andre
Lewin
wheeled forth a lie detector. "Naturally, we don't want our time wasted by
false leads," he said.
"It
won't be," replied Donner. "I'm not going to say tny-thing."
Lewin nodded, unsurprised, and brought out
another machine. "This one generates low-frequency, low-voltage
current," he remarked. "Quite painful. I
don't think your will can hold out very long. If it does, we can always try
prefrontal lobotomy; you won't have inhibitions then. But we'll give you a
chance with this first."
He adjusted the electrodes on Dormer's skin.- Borrow locked his lips with a dreadful hunger.
Donner
tried to smile, but his mouth felt stiff. The sixth man, who looked like a
foreigner somehow, went out of the room.
There was a tiny receiver in Dormer's skull,
behind the right mastoid. It could only pick up messages of a special wave
form, but it had its silencing uses too. After all, electric torture is a
common form of inquisition, and very hard to bear.
He
thought of Jeanne, and of Jimmy, and of the Brotherhood. He wished that the
last air he was to breathe weren't stale and dusty.
The
current tore him with a convulsive anguish. His muscles jerked against the
straps and he cried out. Then the sensitized communicator blew up, releasing a
small puff of fluorine.
The
image Donner carried into death was that of Jeanne, smiling and bidding 'him
welcome home.
in
Barney
Rosenberg drove along a dim, rutted trail toward the
sheer loom of the escarpment. Around its comer lay Dry-gulch. But he wasn't
hurrying. As he got closer, he eased the throttle of his sandcat and the
engine's purr became almost inaudible.
Leaning
back in his seat, he looked through the tiny plastiglass cab at the Martian
landscape. It was hard to understand that he would never see it again.
Even
here, five miles or so from the colony, there was no trace of man save himself
and his engine and the blurred track through sand and bush. Men had come to
Mars on wings of fire, they had hammered out their cities with a clangorous
brawl of life, mined and smelted and begun their ranches, trekked in sandcats
and airsuits from the polar bogs to the equatorial scrubwoods—and still they
had left no real sign of their passing. Not yet. Here a tin can or a broken
tool, there a mummified corpse in the wreck of a burst seal-tent, but sand and
loneliness drifted over them, night and cold and forgetfulness. Mars was too
old and strange for thirty years of man to matter.
The
desert stretched away to Rosenberg's left, tumbling in steep drifts of sand
from the naked painted hills. Off to the sharply curving horizon the desert
marched, an iron barrenness of red and brown and tawny yellow, knife-edged
shadows and a weird vicious shimmer of pale sunlight. Here and there a crag
lifted, harsh with mineral color, worn by the passing of ages and thin wind to
a fluted fantasy. A sandstorm was blowing a few miles off, a scud of dust
hissing over stone, stirring the low gray-green brush to a sibilant murmur. On
his right the hills rose bare and steep, streaked with
blue and green of copper ores, gashed and scored and murmurous with wind. He
saw life, the dusty thom-bushes
and the high gaunt cactoids and a flicker of
movement as a tiny leaper fled. In one of the precipices, a series of carved,
time-blurred steps went up to the ruin of a cliff dwelling abandoned—how long
ago?
Overhead
the sky was enormous, a reaching immensity of deep greenish blue-violet,
incredibly high and cold and remote. The stars glittered faintly in its abyss,
the tiny hurtling speck of a moon less bright than they. A shrunken sun stood
in a living glory of corona and zodiacal light, the winged disc of royal Egypt
lifting over Mars. Near the horizon a thin layer of ice crystals caught the
luminescence in a chilly sparkle. There was wind, Rosenberg knew, a whimpering
ghost of wind blowing through the bitter remnant of atmosphere, but he couldn't
hear it through the heavy plastjglass and somehow he felt that fact as a deeper
isolation.
It
was a cruel world, this Mars, a world of cold and ruin and soaring scornful
emptiness, a world that broke men's hearts and drained their lives from
them—rainless, oceanless, heatless, landless, where the great wheel of the
stars swung through a desert of millennia, where the days cried with wind and
the nights rang and groaned with frost. It was a world of waste and mystery, a
niggard world where a man ate starvation and drank thirst and finally went down
in darkness. Men trudged through unending miles, toil and loneliness and quiet
creeping fear, sweated and gasped, cursed the planet and wept for the dead and
snatched at warmth and life in the drab colony towns. It's all right when you find yourself talking
to the sandhuggers—but when they start talking hack,
it's time to go home.
And
yet—and yet— The sweep of the polar moors, thin faint skirl of wind, sunlight
shattered to a million diamond shards on the hoarfrost cap; the cloven
tremendousness of Rasmussen Gorge, a tumbling sculptured wilderness of fairy
stone, uncounted shifting hues of color and fleeting shadow; the high cold
night of stars, fantastically brilliant constellations marching over a crystal
heaven, a silence so great you thought you could hear God speaking over the
universe; the delicate dayflowers of the Syrtis forests, loveliness blooming
with the bitter dawn and dying in the swift sunset; traveling and searching,
rare triumph and much defeat, but always the quest and the comradeship. Oh,
yes, Mars was savage to her lovers, but she gave them of her strange beauty and
they would not forget her while they lived.
Maybe
Stef was the lucky one, thought
Rosenberg. He
died here.
He
guided the sandcat over a razorback ridge. For a moment he paused, looking at
the broad valley beyond. He hadn't been to Drygulch for a couple of years;
that'd be almost four Earth years, he remembered.
The
town, half underground below its doomed roof, hadn't changed much outwardly,
but the plantations had doubled their area. The genetic engineers were doing
good work, adapting terrestrial food plants to Mars and Martian plants to the
needs of humans. The colonies were already self-supporting with regard to
essentials, as they had to be considering the expense of freight from Earth.
But they still hadn't developed a decent meat animal; that part of the diet had
to come from yeast-culture factories in the towns and nobody saw a beefsteak on
Mars. But we'll have that
too, one of these years.
A wom-out world, stem and bitter and
grudging, but it was being tamed. Already the new generation was being bom.
There wasn't much fresh immigration from Earth these days, but man was
unshakably rooted here. Someday he'd get around to modifying the atmosphere and
weather till humans could walk free and unclothed over the rusty hills— but
that wouldn't happen till he, Rosenberg, was dead, and in an obscure way he was
glad of it.
The
cat's supercharging pumps roared, supplementing tanked
oxygen with Martian air for the hungry Diesel as the man steered it along the
precarious trail. It was terribly thin, that air, but its oxygen was mostly
ozone and that helped. Passing a thorium mine, Rosenberg scowled. The existence
of fissionables was the main reason for planting colonies here in the first
plast, but they should be saved for Mars.
Well, I'm not really a Martian any longer.
I'll be an Earthman again soon. You have to die on Mars, like Stef, and give
your body back to the Martian land, before you altogether belong here.
The
trail from the mine became broad and hard-packed enough to be called a road.
There was other traffic now, streaming from all corners—a loaded ore-car, a
farmer coming in with a truckful of harvested crops, a survey expedition
returning with maps and specimens. Rosenberg waved to the drivers. They were of
many nationalities, but except for the Pilgrims that didn't matter. Here they
were simply humans. He hoped the U.N. would get around to internationalizing
the planets soon.
There
was a flag on a tall staff outside the town, the Stars and Stripes stiff
against an alien sky. It was of metal—it had to be, in that murderous corroding
atmosphere—and Rosenberg imagined that they had to repaint it pretty often. He
steered past it, down a long ramp leading under the dome. He had to wait his
turn at the airlock, and wondered when somebody would invent a better system of
oxygen conservation. These new experiments in submolar mechanics offered a
promising lead.
He
left his cat in the underground garage, with word to the attendant that another
man, its purchaser, would pick it up later. There was an odd stinging in his
eyes as he patted its scarred flanks. Then he took an elevator and a slideway
to the housing office and arranged for a room; he had a couple of days before
the Phobos left. A shower and a change of clothes were
sheer luxury and he reveled in them. He didn't feel much desire for the
cooperative taverns and pleasure joints, so he called up Doc Fieri instead.
The
physician's round face beamed at him in the plate. "Barney,
you old sandbugger! When'd you get in?"
"Just
now.
Can I come up?"
"Yeah, sure. Nothing doing at the office—that is, I've got company, but he won't
stay long. Come right on over."
Rosenberg
took a remembered route through crowded hallways and elevators till he reached
the door he wanted. He knocked: Dry gulch's imports and its own manufactories
needed other things more urgently than call and recorder circuits. "Come
inl" bawled the voice.
Rosenberg
entered the cluttered room, a small leathery man with gray-sprinkled hair and a
beaky nose, and Fieri pumped his hand enthusiastically. The guest stood rigid
in the background, a lean ascetic figure in black—a Pilgrim. Rosenberg
stiffened inwardly. He didn't like that sort, Puritan fanatics from the Years
of Madness who'd gone to Mars so they could be unhappy in freedom. Rosenberg
didn't care what a man's religion was, but nobody on Mars had a right to be so
clannish and to deny cooperation as much as New Jerusalem. However, he shook
hands politely, relishing the Pilgrim's ill-concealed distaste—they were
anti-Semitic too.
"This
is Dr. Morton," explained Fieri. "He heard of my research and came
around to inquire about it."
"Most
interesting," said the stranger. "And most
promising, too. It will mean a great deal to
Martian colonization."
"And
surgery and biological research everywhere," put in Fieri. Pride was
bursting from him.
"What is it,
Doc?" asked Rosenberg, as expected.
"Suspended animation,"
said Fieri.
"Hm?"
"Uh-huh.
You see, in what little spare time I have, I've puttered around with Martian
biochemistry. Fascinating subject, and unearthly in two
meanings of the word. We've nothing like it at home—don't need it.
Hibernation and estivation approximate it, of course."
"Ummm
. . . yes." Rosenberg rubbed his chin. "I know what you mean.
Everybody does. The way so many plants and animals needing heat for their
metabolisms can curl up and 'sleep' through the nights, or even through the whole
winter. Or they can survive prolonged droughts that way, too." He
chuckled. "Comparative matter, of course. Mars is
in a state of permanent drought, by Earthly standards."
"And
you say, Dr. Fieri, that the natives can do it also?" asked Morton.
"Yes.
Even they, with a quite highly developed nervous system, can apparendy 'sleep'
through such spells of cold or famine. I had to rely on explorers' fragmentary
reports for that datum. There are so few natives left, and they're so shy and
secretive. But last year I did finally get a look at one in such a condition.
It was incredible—respiration was in-detectable, the heartbeat almost so, the
encephalograph showed only a very slow, steady pulse. But I got blood and
tissue samples, and was able to analyze and compare them with secretions from
other life forms in suspension."
"I
thought even Martians' blood would freeze in a winter night," said
Rosenberg.
"It
does. The freezing point is much lower than with human blood, but not so low
that it can't freeze at all. However, in suspension there's a whole series of
enzymes released. One of them, dissolved in the bloodstream, changes the
characteristics of the plasma. When ice crystals form, they're more dense than the liquid, therefore cell walls aren't
ruptured and the organism survives. Moreover, a slow circulation of
oxygen-bearing radicals and nutrient solutions takes place even through the
ice, apparently by some process analogous to ion exchange. Not much, but enough
to keep the organism alive and undamaged. Heat, a sufficient temperature,
causes the breakdown of these secretions and the animal or plant revives. In
the case of suspension to escape thirst or famine, the process is somewhat
different, of course, though the same basic enzymes are involved."
Fieri
laughed triumphantly and slapped a heap of papers on his desk. "Here are
my notes. The work isn't complete yet. I'm not quite ready to publish, but it's
more or less a matter of detail now." A Nobel Prize glittered in his eye.
Morton
skimmed through the manuscript. "Very interesting,"
he murmured. His lean, close-cropped head bent over a structural formula.
"The physical chemistry of this material must be weird."
"It is, Morton, it
is." Fieri grinned.
"Hmmm-do
you mind if I borrow this to read? As I mentioned earlier, I believe my lab at
New Jerusalem could carry out some of these analyses for you."
"That'll
be fine. Tell you what, I'll make up a stat of this
whole mess for you. I'll have it ready by tomorrow."
"Thank you." Morton smiled, though
it seemed to hurt his face. "This will he quite a
surprise, 111 warrant.
You haven't told anyone else?"
"Oh, I've mentioned it around, of
course, but you're the first person who's asked for the technical details.
Everybody's too busy with their own work on Mars. But it'll knock their eye out
back on Earth. They've been looking for something like this ever since—since
the Sleeping Beauty story—and here's the first way to achieve it."
"I'd like to read this
too, Doc," said Rosenberg.
"Are you a
biochemist?" asked Morton.
"Well,
I know enough biology and chemistry to get by, and 111 have leisure to wade through this before my ships blasts."
"Sure,
Barney," said Fieri. "And do me a favor,
will you? When you get home, tell old Summers at
Cambridge-England, that is—about it. He's their big biochemist, and he always
said I was one of his brighter pupils and shouldn't have switched over to
medicine. I'm a hell of a modest cuss, huh? But damn it all, it's not everybody
who grabs onto something as big as this!"
Morton's
pale eyes lifted to Rosenberg's. "So you are returning to Earth?" he
asked.
"Yeah. The Phobos." He
felt he had to explain, that he didn't want the Pilgrim to think he was running
out. "More or less doctor's orders, you understand. My helmet cracked open
in-a fall last year, and before I could slap a patch on I had a beautiful case
of the bends, plus the low pressure and the cold and the ozone raising the very
devil with my lungs." Rosenberg shrugged, and his smile was bitter. suppose I'm fortunate to be alive. At least I have enough
credit saved to retire. But I'm just not strong enough to continue working on
Mars, and it's not the sort of place where you can loaf and remain sane."
"I see. It is a shame.
When will you be oh Earth, then?"
"Couple of months. The Phobos
goes orbital most of the
way—do I look like I could afford an acceleration passage?" Rosenberg
turned to Fieri. "Doc, will there be any other old sanders coming home
this trip?"
"Traid not. You know there are dam few who retire from Mars to Earth. They die
first. You're one of the lucky ones."
'A
lonesome trip, then. Well, I suppose 111 survive
it."
Morton
made his excuses and left. Fieri stared after him. "Odd
fellow. But then, all these Pilgrims are. They're anti almost
everything. He's competent, though, and I'm glad he can tackle some of those
analyses for me." He slapped Rosenberg's shoulder. "But forget it,
old manl Cheer up and come along with me for a beer. Once you're stretched out
on those warm white Florida sands, with blue sky and blue sea and luscious
blondes walking by, I guarantee you won't miss Mars."
"Maybe not." Rosenberg looked unhappily at the floor. It's never been the same since
Stef died. I didn't realize how much he'd meant to me till I'd buried him and
gone on by myself."
"He
meant a lot to everyone, Barney. He was one of those people who seem to fill
the world with life, wherever they are. Let's see—he was about sixty when he
died, wasn't he? I saw him shortly before, and he could still drink any two men
under the table, and all the girls were still adoring him."
"Yeah. He was my best friend, I suppose. We tramped Earth and the planets
together for fifteen years." Rosenberg smiled. "Funny
thing, friendship. It has nothing to do with the love of women—which is
why they never understand it. Stef and I didn't even talk much. It wasn't
needed. The last five years have been pretty empty without him."
"He died in a cave-in,
didn't he?"
"Yes.
We were exploring up near the Sawtooths, hunting a uranium lode. Our diggings
collapsed, he held that toppling roof up with his shoulders and yelled at me to
scramble out-then before he could get clear, it came down and burst his helmet
open. I buried him on a hill, under a cairn, looking out over the desert. He
was always a friend of high places."
"Mmmmm—yes— Well,
thinking about Stefan Rostomily won't help him or us now. Let's go get that
beer, shall we?"
The
shrilling within
his head brought Robert Naysmith to full awareness with a savage force. His arm
jerked, and the brush streaked a yellow line across his canvas.
"Naysmithl"
The voice rattled harshly in his skull. "Report to Prior at Frisco Unit. Urgent. Martin Donner has disappeared, presumed dead. You're
on his job now. Hop to it, boy."
For a moment Naysmith didn't grasp the name.
He'd never met anyone called Donner. Then—yes, that was on the list, Donner was
one of the Brotherhood. And dead now.
Dead— He had never seen Martin Donner, and
yet he knew the man with an intimacy no two humans had realized before the
Brothers came. Sharp in his mind rose the picture of the dead man, smiling a
characteristic slow smile, sprawled back in a relaxer with a glass of Scotch in
one strong blunt-fingered hand. The Brothers were all partial to Scotch,
thought Naysmith with a twisting sadness. And Donner had been a mech-volley fan,
and had played good chess, read a lot and sometimes quoted Shakespeare,
tinkered with machinery, probably had a small collection of guns-Dead. Sprawled
sightlessly somewhere on the turning planet, his muscles stiff, his body
already devouring itself in proteolysis, his brain darkened, withdrawn into the
great night, and leaving an irreparable gap in the tight-drawn line of the
Brotherhood.
"You might pick up a newscast on your
way," said the voice in his head conversationally. "It's hot
stuff."
Naysmith's
eyes focused on his painting. It was shaping up to be a good one. He had been
experimenting with techniques, and this latest caught the wide sunlit dazzle of
California beach, the long creaming swell of waves, the hot cloudless sky and
the thin harsh grass and the tawny
skinned woman who sprawled on the sand. Why did they
have to call him just now?
"Okay,
Sofie," he said with resignation. "That's all. I've got to get
back."
The
sun-browned woman rolled over on one elbow and looked at him. "What the
devil?" she asked. "We've only been here three hours. The day's
hardly begun."
"It's
gone far enough, I'm afraid." Naysmith began putting away his brushes. "Home to civilization."
"But I don't want
tol"
"What
has that got to do with it?" snorted the man. Treat 'em rough and tell 'em nothing, and they'll come running. These modern women aren't
as emancipated as they think. He folded his easel.
"But why?" she
cried, half getting up.
"I
have an appointment this afternoon." Naysmith strode down the beach toward
the trail. After a moment, Sofie followed.
"You didn't tell me
that," she protested.
"You
didn't ask me," he said. He added a "Sorry" that was no apology
at all.
There
weren't many others on the beach, and the parking lot was relatively
uncluttered. Naysmith palmed the door of his boat and it opened for him. He
slipped on tunic, slacks, and sandals, put a beret rakishly atop his
sun-bleached yellow hair, and entered the boat. Sofie followed, not bothering
to don her own clothes.
The
ovoid shell slipped skyward on murmuring jets. "I'll drop you off at your
place," said Naysmith. "Some other time, huh?"
She
remained sulkily silent. They had met accidentally a week before, in a bar.
Naysmith was officially a cybernetic epistemologist on vacation, Sofie an
engineer on the Pacific Colony project, off for a holiday from her job and her
free-marriage group. It had been a pleasant interlude, and Naysmith regretted
it mildly.
Still—the
rising urgent pulse of excitement tensed his body and cleared the last mists of
artistic preoccupation from his brain. You lived on a knife edge in the
Service, you drew breath and looked at the sun and grasped after the real world
with a desperate awareness of little time. None of the Brotherhood were members of the Hedonists, they were all too
well-balanced for that, but inevitably they were epicureans.
When
you were trained from—well, from birth, even the sharpness of nearing death
could be a land of pleasure. Besides, thought
Naysmith, I
might he one of the survivors.
"You are a rat, you
know," said Sofie.
"Squeak,"
said Naysmith. His face—the strange strong face of level fair brows and
wide-set blue eyes, broad across the high cheekbones and in the mouth,
square-jawed and crag-nosed—split in a grin that laughed with her while it
laughed at her. He looked older than his twenty-five years. And she, thought
Sofie with sudden tiredness, looked younger than her forty. Her people had been
well off even during the Years of Hunger; she'd always been exposed to the best
available biomedical techniques, and if she claimed thirty few would call her a
liar. But—
Naysmith
fiddled with the radio. Presently a voice
came out of it; he didn't bother to focus the TV.
"—the
thorough investigation demanded by finance minister Arnold Besser has been
promised by President Lopez. In a prepared statement, the President said: 'The
rest of the ministry, like myself, are frankly
inclined to discredit this accusation and believe that the Chinese government
is mistaken. However, its serious nature—' "
"Lopez, eh? The U.N. President himself," murmured
Naysmith. "That means the accusation has been made officially now."
"What
accusation?" asked the woman. "I haven't
heard a 'cast for a week."
"The
Chinese government was going to lodge charges that the assassination of
Kwang-ti was done by U.N. secret agents," said Naysmith.
"Why, that's ridiculous!" she
gasped. "The U.N.?" She shook her dark head. "They haven't the—right. The U.N. agents,
I mean. Kwang-ti was a menace, yes, but assassination!
I don't believe it."
"Just think what the anti-U.N. factions
all over the Solar System, including our own Americanists, are going to make of
this," said Naysmith. "Right on top of charges of corruption comes
one of murder!"
"Turn it off,"
she said. "It's too horrible."
"These are horrible
times, Sofie."
"I
thought they were getting better." She shuddered. "I remember the
tail-end of the Years of Hunger, and then the Years of Madness, and the
Socialist Depression—people in rags, starving; you could see their bones—and a
riot once, and the marching uniforms, and the great craters-No! The U.N.'s like
a dam against all that hell. It can't break!"
Naysmith
put the boat on automatic and comforted her. After all, anyone loyal to the
U.N. deserved a little consideration.
Especially
in view of the suppressed fact that the Chinese charge was absolutely true.
He
dropped the woman off at her house, a small prefab in one of the colonies, and
made vague promises about looking her up again. Then he opened the jets fully
and streaked north toward Frisco Unit.
There
was a lot of traffic
around the great building, and his autopilot was kept
busy bringing him in. Naysmith slipped a mantle over his tunic and a
conventional half-mask over his face, the latter less from politeness than as a
disguise. He didn't think he was being watched, but you were never sure.
American Security was damnably efficient.
If
ever wheels turned within wheels, he thought sardonically, modern American
politics did the spinning. The government was officially Labor and pro-U.N.,
and was gradually being taken over by its sociotynamicists, who were even more
in favor of world federation. However, the conservatives of all stripes, from
the mildly socialist Republicans to the extreme Americanists, had enough seats
in Congress and enough power generally to exert a potent influence. Among other
things, the conservative coalition had prevented the abrogation of the
Department of Security, and Hessling, its chief, was known to have Americanist
leanings. So there were at least a goodly number of S-men out after
"foreign agents"—which included Un-men.
Fourre
had his own agents in American Security, of course. It was largely due to their
efforts that the American Brothers had false IDs and that the whole tremendous
fact of the Brotherhood had remained secret. But some day, thought Naysmith,
the story would come out—and then the heavens would fall.
So thin a knife edge, so deep an abyss of chaos
and ruin— Society was mad, humanity was a race of insane, and the few who
strove to build stability were working against shattering odds. Sofie was right. The U.N. is a dike, holding
hack a sea of radioactive blood from the lands of men. And I, thought Naysmith wryly, seem to be the little boy with his finger in
the dike.
His
boat landed on the downward ramp and rolled into the echoing vastness of the
unit garage. He didn't quite dare land on Prior's flange. A mechanic tagged the
vehicle, gave Nay'smith a receipt, and guided him toward an elevator. It
was an express, bearing him swiftly past the lower levels of shops, offices,
service establishments, and places of education and entertainment, up to the
residential stories. Naysmith stood in a crowd of humans, most of them masked,
and waited for his stop. No one spoke to anyone else,
the custom of privacy had become too ingrained. He was just as glad of that.
On
Prior's level, the hundred and seventh, he stepped onto the slideway going
east, transferred to a northbound strip at the second corner, and rode half a
mile before he came to the alcove he wanted. He got off, the rubbery floor
absorbing the very slight shock, and entered the recess. When he pressed the
door button, the recorded voice said: "I am sorry,
Mr. Prior is not at home. Do you wish to record a message?"
"Shut up and let me
in," said Naysmith.
The
code sentence activated the door, which opened for him. He stepped into a
simply furnished vestibule as the door chimed. Prior's voice came over the
intercom: "Naysmith?"
"The
same."
"Come on in, then. Living room."
Naysmith hung up his mask and mantle, slipped
off his sandals, and went down the hall. The floor was warm and resilient under
his bare feet, like living flesh. Beyond another door that swung aside was the
living room, also furnished with a bachelor austerity. Prior was a lone wolf by
nature, belonging to no clubs and not even the loosest free-marriage group, His
official job was semantic analyst for a large trading outfit; it gave him a lot
of free time for his U.N. activities, plus a good excuse for traveling anywhere
in the Solar System.
Naysmith's eyes flickered over the dark
negroid face of his co-worker—Prior was not a Brother, though he knew of the
band—and rested on the man who lay in the adjoining relaxer. "Are you here, chief?" He whistled. "Then it must be really big."
"Take
off your clothes and get some sun-lamp," invited Prior,
waving his eternal cigaret at a relaxer. "I'll try to scare up some Scotch
for you."
"Why
the devil does the Brotherhood always have to drink Scotch?" grumbled
Etienne Fourre. "Your padded expense accounts eat up half my budget. Or
drink it up, I should say."
He
was squat and square and powerful, and at eighty was still more alive than most
boys. Small black eyes glistened in a face that seemed carved from scarred and
pitted brown rock; his voice was a bass rumble from the shaggy chest, its
English hardly accented. Geriatrics could only account for some of the vitality
that lay like a coiled spring in him, for the entire battery of diet, exercise,
and chemistry has to be applied almost from birth to give maximum effect and
his youth antedated the science. But he'll probably outlive us all, thought Naysmith.
There
was something of the fanatic about Etienne Fourre. He was a child of war whose
most relentless battle had become one against war itself. As a young man he had
been in the French Resistance of World War II. Later he had been high in the
Western liaison with the European undergrounds of- World War III,
entering the occupied and devastated lands himself on his dark missions. He had
fought with the liberals against the neofascists in the Years of Hunger and
with the gendarmerie against the atomists in the Years of Madness and with U.N.
troops in the Near East where his spy system had been a major factor in suppressing
the Great Jehad. He had accepted the head of the secret service division of the
U.N. Inspectorate after the Conference of Rio revised the charter and had
proceeded quietly to engineer the coup which overthrew the anti-U.N. government
of Argentina. Later his men had put the finger on Kwang-ti's faked revolution
in the Republic of Mongolia, thus ending that conquest-from-within scheme; and
he was ultimately the one responsible for the Chinese dictator's assassination.
The Brotherhood was his idea from the beginning, his child and his instrument.
Such
a man, thought Naysmith, would in earlier days have stood behind the stake and
lash of an Inquisition, would have marched at Cromwell's side and carried out
the Irish massacres, would have helped set up world-wide Communism —a sternly
religious man, for all his mordant atheism, a living sword which needed a war. Thank God he's on our side!
"All right, what's the
story?" asked the Un-man aloud.
"How
long since you were on a Service job?" countered Fourre.
"About a year. Schumacher and I were investigating the Arbeitspartei in Germany. The other German Brothers were
tied up in that Austrian business, you remember, and I speak the language well
enough to pass for a Rhinelander when I'm in Prussia."
"Yes,
I recall. You have been loafing long enough, my friend." Fourre took the glass of wine offered him by Prior, sipped it, and
grimaced. "Merdel
Won't these Califomians ever give up trying?"
Swinging back to Naysmith: "I am calling in the whole Brotherhood on this.
I shall have to get back to Rio fast, the devil is running loose down there
with those Chinese charges and I will be lucky to save our collective necks.
But I have slipped up to North America to get you people organized and under
way. I am pretty damn sure that the leadership of our great unknown enemy is
down in Rio—probably with Besser, who is at least involved in it but has taken
some very excellent precautions against assassination—and it would do no good
to kill him only to have someone else take over. At any rate, the United States
is still a most important focus of anti-U.N. activity, and Donner's capture means
a rapid deterioration of things here. Prior, who was Donner's contact man tells
me that he was apparendy closer to spying out the enemy headquarters for this
continent than any other operative. Now that Donner is gone, Prior
has recommended you to succeed in his assignment."
"Which was what?"
"I will come to that. Dormer was an
engineer by training. You are a cybernetic analyst, hein?"
"Yes,
officially," said Naysmith. "My degrees are in epistemology and
communications theory, and my supposed job is basic-theoretical consultant. Troubleshooter in the realm of ideas." He grinned.
"When I get stuck, I can always refer the problem to Prior
here."
"Ah, so. You are then necessarily something of a linguist too, eh? Good.
Understand, I am not choosing you for your specialty,
but rather for your un-specialty. You are too old to have had the benefit of
Synthesis training. Some of the younger Brothers are getting it, of
course—there is a lad in Mexico, Peter Christian, whose call numbers you had
better get from Prior in case you need such help.
"Meanwhile, an epistemologist or
semanticist is the closest available thing to an integrating synthesist. By
your knowledge of language, psychology, and the general sciences, you should
be well equipped to fit together whatever information you can obtain and
derive a large picture from them. I don't know." Fourre fit a cigar and
puffed ferociously.
"Well,
I can start anytime. I'm on extended leave of absence from my nominal job
already," said Naysmith. "But what about this
Donner? How far had he gotten, what hap-pened-to him,
and so on?"
"I'll
give you the background, because you'll need it," said Prior.
"Martin Donner was officially adopted in Canada and, as I said, received
a mechanical engineering degree there. About four years ago we had reason to
think the enemy was learning that he wasn't all he seemed, so we transferred
him to the States, flanged up an American ID for him and so on. Recently he was
put to work investigating the Americanists. His leads were simple: he got a job
with Brain Tools, Inc., which is known to be lousy with Party members. He
didn't try to infiltrate the Party—we already have men in it, of course, though
they haven't gotten very high—but he did snoop around, gather data, and finally
put the snatch on a certain man and pumped him full of
truth drug." Naysmith didn't ask what had happened to the victim; the
struggle was utterly ruthless, with all history at stake. "That gave him
news about the midwestem headquarters of the conspiracy, so he went there. It
was one of the big units in Illinois. He got himself an apartment and—
disappeared. That was almost two weeks ago." Prior shrugged. "He's
quite certainly dead by now. If they didn't kill him themselves, hell have found a way to suicide."
"You
can give me the dossier on what Donner learned and communicated to you?"
asked Naysmith.
"Yes,
of course, though I don't think it'll help you much." Prior looked moodily
at his glass. "You'll be pretty much on your own. I needn't add that
anything goes, from privacy violation to murder, but that with the Service in
such bad odor right now you'd better not leave any evidence. Your first job,
though, is to approach Dormer's family. You see, he was married."
"Oh?"
"I
don't mean free-married, or group-married, or trial-married, or any other
version," snapped Prior impatiendy. "I mean married. Old style. One kid."
"Hmmm—that's not so
good, is it?"
"No.
Un-men really have no business marrying that way, and most especially the
Brothers don't. However—You see the difficulties,
don't you? If Donner is still alive, somehow, and the gang
traces his ID and grabs the wife and kid, they've got a hold on him that may
make him spill all he knows. No sane man is infinitely loyal to a cause."
"Well,
I suppose you provided Donner with a midwestem ID."
"Sure.
Or rather, he used the one we already had set up— name, fingerprints, number,
the data registered at Midwest Central. Praise Allah, we've got friends in the
registry bureau I But Donner's case is bad. In previous instances where we lost
a Brother, we've been able to recover the corpse or were at least sure that it
was safely destroyed. Now the enemy has one complete Brother body,
ready for fingerprinting, retinals, bloodtyping, Bertillon measurements,
autopsy, and everything else they can think of. We can expect them to check
that set of physical data against every
ID office in the country. And when they find the same identification
under different names and numbers in each and every file—all hell is going to
let out for noon."
"It
will take time, of course," said Fourre. "We have put in duplicate
sets of non-Brother data too, as you know; that will give them extra work to
do. Nor can they be sure which set corresponds to Donner's real identity."
In
spite of himself, Naysmith grinned again. "Real identity" was an
incongruous term as applied to the Brotherhood. However—
"Nevertheless,"
went on Fourre, "there is going to be an investigation in every country on
Earth and perhaps the Moon and planets. The Brotherhood is going to have to go
underground, in this country at least. And just now when I
have to be fighting for my service's continued existence down in Rio!"
They're
closing in. We always knew, deep in our brains, that this day would come, and
now it is upon us.
"Even
assuming Donner is dead, which is more likely," said Prior,
"his widow would make a valuable captive for the gang. Probably she knows
very little about her husband's Service activities, but she undoubtedly has a
vast amount of information buried in her subconscious—faces, snatches of
overheard conversation, perhaps merely the exact dates Donner was absent on
this or that mission. A skilled man could get it out of her, you know—thereby
presenting the enemy detectives with any number of leads—some of which would go
straight to our most cherished secrets."
"Haven't you tried to
spirit her away?" asked Naysmith.
"She
won't spirit," said Prior. "We sent an
accredited agent to warn her she was in danger and advise her to come away with
him. She refused flat. After all, how can she be sure our agent isn't the
creature of the enemy? Furthermore, she took some very intelligent precautions,
such as consulting the local police, leaving notes in her bankbox to be opened
if she disappears without warning, and so on, which have in effect made it
impossibly difficult for us to remove her against her will. If nothing else, we
couldn't stand the publicity. All we've been able to do is put a couple of men
to watching her
—and one of these was picked up by the cops
the other day and we had hell's own time springing him."
"She's got backbone," said Naysmith.
"Too
much," replied Prior. "Well, you know your
first assignment. Get her to go off willingly with you, hide her and the kid
away somewhere, and then go undergound yourself. After that, it's more or iess
up to you, boy."
"But how'll I persuade
her to—"
"Isn't it
obvious?" snapped Fourre.
It
was. Naysmith grimaced. "What kind of a skunk do you take me for?" he
protested feebly. "Isn't it enough that I do your murders and robberies
for you?"
Brigham
City, Utah was not
officially a colony, having existed long before the,
postwar resettlements. But it had always been a lovely town, and had converted
itself almost entirely to modem layout and architecture. Naysmith had not been
there before, but he felt his heart warming to it— the same as Donner, who is dead now.
He
opened all jets and screamed at his habitual speed low above the crumbling
highway. Hills and orchards lay green about him under a high clear heaven, a
great oasis lifted from the wastelands by the hands of men. They had come
across many-miled emptiness, those men of another day, trudging dustily by
their creaking, bumping, battered wagons on the way to the Promised Land. He,
today, sat on plastic-foam cushions in a metal shell, howling at a thousand
miles an hour till the echoes thundered, but was himself
fleeing the persecutors.
Local
traffic control took over as he intersected the radio beam. He relaxed as much
as possible, puffing a nervous cigaret while the autopilot brought him in. When
the boat grounded in a side lane, he slipped a full mask over his head and
resumed, manually, driving.
The houses nestled in their screens of lawn
and trees, the low half-underground homes of small families. Men and women,
some in laboring clothes, were about on the slideways, and there were more
children in sight, small bright flashes of color laughing and shouting, than
was common elsewhere. The Mormon influence, Naysmith supposed; free-marriage
and the rest hadn't ever been very fashionable in Utah. Most of the
fruit-raising plantations were still privately owned small-holdings too, using
cooperation to compete with the giant government-regulated agricultural
combines. But there would nevertheless be a high proportion of men and women
here who commuted to outside jobs by
airbus—workers on the Pacific Colony project, for instance.
He
reviewed Prior's file on Donner, passing the scanty items through his memory.
The Brothers were always on call, but outside their own circle they werfe as
jealous of their privacy as anyone else. It had, however, been plain that
Jeanne Dormer worked at home as a mail-consultant semantic linguist—correcting
manuscript of various kinds—and gave an unusual amount of personal attention to
her husband and child-
Naysmith felt inwardly
cold.
Here
was the address. He brought the boat to a silent halt and started up the walk
toward the house. Its severe modern lines and curves were softened by a great
rush of morning glory, and it lay in the rustling shade of trees, and there was
a broad garden behind it. That was undoubtedly Jeanne's work; Donner would have
hated gardening.
Instinctively,
Naysmith glanced about for Prior's watchman. Nowhere in
sight. But then, a good operative wouldn't be. Perhaps
that old man, white-bearded and patriarchal, on the slideway; or the delivery
boy whipping down the street on his biwheel; or even the little girl skipping
rope in the park across the way. She might not be what she seemed: the
biological laboratories could do strange things, and Fourre had built up his
own secret shops—
The
door was in front of him, shaded by a small vine-draped portico. He thumbed the
button, and the voice informed him that no one was at home. Which
was doubtless a lie, but— Poor kid! Poor girl, huddled in there against fear,
against the night which swallowed her man—waiting for his return, for a dead
man's return. Naysmith
shook his head, swallowing a gorge of bitterness, and spoke into the recorder:
"Hello, honey, aren't you being sort of
inhospitable?"
She
must have activated the playback at once, because it was only a moment before
the door swung open. Naysmith caught her in his arms as he stepped into the
vestibule.
"Marty, Marty, Marty!" She was sobbing and laughing, straining
against him, pulling his face down to hers. The long black hair blinded his
stinging eyes. "Oh, Marty, take off that blasted mask. It's been so
long—"
She
was of medium height, lithe and slim in his grasp, the face strong under its
elfish lines, the eyes dark and lustrous and very faintly slanted, and the feel
and the shaking voice of her made him realize his own loneliness with a sudden
desolation. He lifted the mask, letting its helmet-shaped hollowness thud on
the floor, and kissed her with hunger. God damn it, he
thought savagely, Donner
would have to pick the kind I'm a sucker for! But then, he'd he bound to do so,
wouldn't he?"
"No time, sweetheart," he said
urgently, while she ruffled his hair. "Get some clothes and a mask—Jimmy
too, of course. Never mind packing anything. Just call up the police and tell
'em you're leaving of your own accord. We've got to get out of here fast."
She
stepped back a pace and looked at him with puzzlement. "What's happened,
Marty?" she whispered.
"Fast,
I saidl" He brushed past her into the living room. "I'll explain
later."
"She
nodded and was gone into one. of the bedrooms, bending
over a crib and picking up a small sleepy figure. Naysmith lit another cigaret
while his eyes prowled the room.
It
was a typical prefab house, but Martin Donner, this other self who was now
locked in darkness, had left his personality here. None of the mass-produced
featureless gimmickry of today's floaters: this was the home of people who had
meant to stay. Naysmith thought of the succession of apartments and hotel rooms
which had been his life, and the loneliness deepened
in him.
Yes—just
as it should be. Donner had probably built that stone fireplace himself, not
because it was needed but because the flicker of burning logs was good to look
on. There was an antique musket hanging above the mantle, which 'bore a few
objects: old marble clock, wrought-brass candlesticks, a flashing bit of Lunar crystal. The desk was a mahogany anachronism among
relaxers. There were some animated films on the walls, but there were a couple
of reproductions too—a Rembrandt rabbi and a Constable landscape—and a few
engravings. There was an expensive console with a wide selection of music
wires. The bookshelves held their share of microprint rolls, but there were a
lot of old-style volumes too, carefully rebound. Naysmith smiled as his eye
fell on the well-thumbed set of Shakespeare.
The
Donners had not been live-in-the-past cranks, but they had not been rootless
either. Naysmith sighed and recalled his anthropology. Western society had been
based on the family as an economic and social unit; the first raison dêtre had gone out with technology, the second had
followed in the last war and the postwar upheavels. Modem life was an impersonal
thing. Marriage—permanent marriage—came late, when both parties were tired of
chasing, and was a loose contract at best; the crèche, the school, the public
entertainment, made children a shadowy part of the home. And all of this
reacted on the human self. From a creature of strong, highly focused emotional
life, with a personality made complex by the interaction of environment and
ego, Western man was changing to something like the old Samoan aborigines;
easy-going, well-adjusted, close friendship and romantic love sliding into
limbo. You couldn't say that it was good or bad, one way or the other; but you
wondered what it would do to society.
But
what could be done about it? You couldn't go back again,
you couldn't support today's population with medieval technology even if the
population had been willing to try. But that meant accepting the philosophical
basis of science, exchanging the cozy medieval cosmos for a bewildering grid of
impersonal relationships and abandoning the old cry of man shaking his fist at
an empty heaven. Why?
If you wanted to control
population and disease, (and the first, at least, was still a hideously urgent
need) you accepted chemical contraceptives and antibiotic tablets and educated
people to carry them in their pockets; but then it followed that the
traditional relationships between the sexes became something else. Modem
technology had no use for the pick-and-shóvel laborer or for the routine
intellectual; so you were faced with a huge class of people not fit for
anything else, and what were you going to do about it? What your great,
unbelievably complex civilization-machine needed, what it had to have in appalling quantity, was the trained man, trained to the limit
of his capacity. But then education had to start early and, being free as long
as you could pass exams, be ruthlessly selective. Which meant that your first
classes, Ph.D.'s at twenty or younger, looked down on the Second schools, who
took out their frustration on the Thirds-intellectual snobbishness, social
friction, but how to escape it?
And
it was, after all, a world of fantastic anachronisms. It had grown too fast and
too unevenly. Hindu peasants scratched in their tiny fields and 'lived in mud
huts while each big Chinese collective was getting its own powerplant. Murderers
lurked in the slums around Manhattan Crater while a technician could buy a
house and furniture for six months' pay. Floating colonies were being
established in the oceans, cities rose on Mars and Venus and the Moon, while
Congo natives drummed at the rain-clouds. Reconciliation— how?
Most
people looked at the surface of things. They saw that the great upheavals, the
World Wars and the Years of Hunger and the Years of Madness and the economic
breakdowns, had been accompanied by the dissolution of traditional social
modes, and they thought that the first was the cause of the second. "Give
us a chance and we'll bring back the good old days." They couldn't see
that those good old days had carried the seeds of death within them, that the
change in technology had brought a change in human nature itself which would
have deeper effects than any ephemeral transition period. War, depression, the
waves of manic perversity, the hungry men and the marching men and the doomed
men, were not causes, they were effects—symptoms. The world was changing and
you can't go home again.
The
psychodynamicists thought they were beginning to understand the process, with
their semantic epistemology, games theory, least effort principle, communications theory— maybe so. It was too early to tell.
The Scientific Synthesis was still more of a dream than an achievement, and
there would have to be at least one generation of Synthesis-trained citizens
before the effects could be noticed. Meanwhile, the combination of geriatrics
and birth control, necessary as both were, was stiffening the population with
the inevitable intellectual rigidity of advancing years, just at the moment
when original thought was more desperately needed than ever before in history.
The powers of chaos were gathering, and those who saw the truth and fought for
it were so terribly few. Are you absolutely sure you're right? Can you really justify your
battle? "Daddy!"
Naysmith
turned and held out his arms to the boy. A two-year-old, a sturdy lad with
light hair and his mother's dark eyes, still half misted with sleep, was
calling him. My son—
Donner's son, damn it\ "Hullo,
Jimmy."
His voice shook a little.
Jeanne
picked the child up. She was masked and voluminously cloaked, and her tones
were steadier than his. "All right, shall we go?"
Naysmith
nodded and went to the front door. He was not quite there when the bell chimed.
"Who's
that?" His ragged bark and the leap in his breast told him how strained
his nerves were.
"I
don't know. I've been staying indoors since—" Jeanne strode swiftly to one
of the bay windows and lifted a curtain, peering out. "Two
men. Strangers."
Naysmith
fitted the mask on his own head and thumbed the playback switch. The voice was
hard and sharp: "This is the Federal police. We know you are in, Mrs.
Dormer. Open at once."
"S-men!" Her whisper shuddered.
Naysmith
nodded grimly. "They've tracked you down so soon, eh? Run and see if there
are any behind the house."
Her
feet pattered across the floor. "Four in the garden," she called.
"All right." Naysmith caught himself just before asking if she could shoot. He
pulled the small flat stet-pistol from his tunic and gave it to her as she
returned. He'd have to assume her training; the needier was recoilless anyway.
'Once
more unto the breach, dear friends—' We're getting out
of here. Keep close behind me and shoot at their faces
or hands. They may have breastplates under the
clothes."
His
own magnum automatic was cold and heavy in his hand. It was no gentle
sleepy-gas weapon. At short range it would blow a hole in a man big enough to
put your arm through, and a splinter from its bursting slug killed by
hydrostatic shock. The rapping on the door grew thunderous.
She
was all at once as cool as he. "Trouble with the law?" she asked
crisply.
"The
wrong kind of law," he answered. "We've still got cops on our side,
though, if that's any consolation."
They
couldn't be agents of'Fourre's or they would have given him the code sentence. That meant they were sent by the
same power which had murdered Martin Donner. He felt no special compunctions
about replying in kind. The trick was to escape.
Naysmith
stepped back into the living room and picked up a light table, holding it
before his body as a shield against needles. Returning to the hall he crowded
himself in front of Jeanne and pressed the door switch.
As
the barrier swung open, Naysmith fired, a muted hiss
and a dull thump of lead in flesh. That terrible impact sent the S-man off the
porch and tumbling to the lawn in blood. His companion shot as if by instinct,
a needle thunking into the table. Naysmith gunned him down even as he cried
out.
Now—outside—to
the boat" and fast! Sprinting across the grass, Naysmith felt the wicked
hum of a missile fan his cheek. Jeanne whirled, encumbered by Jimmy, and
sprayed the approaching troop with needles as they burst around the comer of
the house.
Naysmith
was already at the opening door of his jet. He fired once again while his free
hand started the motor.
The
S-men were using needles. They wanted the quarry alive. Jeanne stumbled, a dart
in her arm, letting Jimmy slide to earth. Naysmith sprang back from the boat. A
needle splintered on his mask and he caught a whiff that made his head swoop.
The detectives spread out, approaching from
two sides as they ran. Naysmith was shielded on one side by the boat, on the
other by Jeanne's unstirring form as he picked her up. He crammed her and the
child into the seat and wriggled across them. Slamming the door, he grabbed for
the controls.
The
whole performance had taken less than a minute. As the jet stood on its tail
and screamed illegally skyward, Naysmith realized for the thousandth time that
no ordinary human would have been fast enough and sure enough to carry off that
escape. The S-men were good but they had simply been outclassed.
They'd
check the house, inch by inch and find his recent fingerprints, and those would
be the same as the stray ones left here and there throughout the world by
certain Un-man operatives—the same as Donner's. It was the Un-man, the hated and feared shadow who could strike in a dozen places
at once, swifter and deadlier than flesh had a right to be, and who had now
risen from his grave to harry them again. He, Naysmith, had just added another
chapter to a legend.
Only—the
S-men didn't believe in ghosts. They'd look for an answer. And if they found
the right answer, that was the end of every dream.
And
meanwhile the hunt was after him. Radio beams, license numbers, air-traffic
analysis, broadcast alarms, ID files —all the resources of a great and
desperate power would be hounding him across the world, and nowhere could he
rest.
Jimmy
was weeping in fright,
and Naysmith comforted him as well as possible while ripping through the sky.
It was hard to be gay, laugh with the boy and tickle him and convince him it
was all an exciting game, while Jeanne slumped motionless in the seat and the
earth blurred below. But terror at such an early age could have devastating
psychic effects and had to be allayed at once. It's all I can do for you, son. The
Brotherhood owes you that much, after the dirty trick it played in bringing you
into this world as the child of one of us.
When
Jimmy was at ease again, placed in the back seat to watch a televised
robotshow, Naysmith surveyed his situation. The boat had more legs than the law
permitted, which was one good aspect. He had taken it five miles up, well above
the lanes of controlled traffic, and was running northward in a circuitous
course. His hungry engines gulped oil at a frightening rate; he'd have to stop
for a refill two or three times. Fortunately, he had plenty of cash along. The
routine identification of a thumbprint check would leave a written invitation
to the pursuers, whereas they might never stumble on the isolated fuel stations
where he meant to buy.
Jeanne
came awake, stirring and gasping. He held her close to him until the spasm of
returning consciousness had passed and her eyes were clear again. Then he lit a
cigaret for her and one for himself, and leaned back against the cushions.
"I
suppose you're wondering what this is all about," he said.
"Uh-huh."
Her smile was uncertain. "How much can you tell me?"
"As
much as is safe for you to know," he answered. Damn it, how much does she already know I
can't give myself away
yet! She must be aware that her husband
is—was—an Unman, that his nominal job was a camouflage, but the details? "Where are we going?" she asked.
"I've
got a hiding place for you and the kid, up in the Canadian Rockies. Not too
comfortable, I'm afraid, but reasonably safe. If we can get
there without being intercepted. It—"
"We
interrupt this program to
bring you an urgent announcement. A dangerous criminal is at large in an
Airflyte numbered USA-1349-U-7683 Repeat, USA-1349-U-7683. This man is believed
to be accompanied by a woman and
child. If you see the boat, call the
nearest police headquarters or Security office
at once. The man is wanted for murder and kidnaping, and is thought to be the
agent of a foreign power. Further
announcements with complete description will follow as soon as possible."
The
harsh voice faded and the robotshow came back on. "Man, oh man, oh
man," breathed Naysmith. "They don't waste any time, do they?"
Jeanne's
face was white, but her only words were: "How about painting this boat's
number over?"
"Can't
stop for that now or they'd catch us sure." Nay-smith scanned the heavens.
"Better strap yourself and Jimmy in, though. If a police boat tracks us,
I've got machine guns in this one. Well blast them."
She
fought back the tears with a heart-wrenching gallantry. "Mind explaining
a little?"
"I'll
have to begin at the beginning," he said cautiously. "To get it all
in order, I'll have to tell you a lot of things you already know. But I want to
give you the complete pattern. I want to break away from the dirty names like
spy and traitor, and show you what we're really trying to do."
"We?" She caressed the pronoun. No sane human likes to stand utterly alone.
"Listen,"
said the Naysmith. "I'm an Un-man. But a rather special kind. I'm not in the Inspectorate,
allowed by charter and treaty to carry out investigations and report violations
of things like disarmament agreements to the Council. I'm in the U.N. Secret
Service—the secret
Secret
Service—and our standing is
only quasi-legal. Officially we're an auxiliary to the Inspectorate; in
practice we do a hell of a lot more. The Inspectorate is supposed to tell the
U.N. Moon bases where to plant their rocket bombs; the Service tries to make
bombardment unnecessary by forestalling hostile action."
"By assassinating
Kwang-ti?" she challenged.
"Kwang-ti
was a menace. He'd taken China out of the U.N. and was building up her armies.
He'd made one attempt to take over Mongolia by sponsoring a phony revolt, and
nearly succeeded. I'm not saying that he was knocked off by a Chinese Un-man,
in spite of his successor government's charges. I'm just saying it was a good
thing he died."
"He did a lot for
China."
"Sure.
And Hitler did a lot for Germany and Stalin did a lot for Russia, all of which
was nullified, along with a lot of innocent people, when those countries went
to war. Never forget that the U.N. exists first, last, and all the time to keep
the peace. Everything else is secondary."
Jeanne
lit another cigaret from the previous one. "Tell me more," she said
in a voice that suggested she had known this for a long time.
"Look," said Naysmith, "the
enemies the U.N. has faced in the past were as nothing to what endangers it
now. Because before the enmity has always been more or less open. In the
Second War, the U.N. got started as a military alliance against the fascist
powers. In the Third War it became, in effect, a military alliance against its
own dissident and excommunicated members. After Rio it existed partly as an
instrument of multilateral negotiation but still primarily as an alliance of a
great many states, not merely Western, to prevent or suppress wars anywhere in
the world. Oh, I don't want to play down its legal and cultural and
humanitarian and scientific activities, but the essence of the U.N. was force,
men and machines it could call on from all its member states—even against a
member of itself, if that nation were found guilty by a majority vote in the
Council. It wasn't quite as large of the United States as you think to turn its
Lunar bases over to the U.N. It thought it could still
control the Council as it had done in the past, but matters didn't work out
that way. Which is all to the good. We need a truly international body.
"Anyway,
the principle of intervention to stop all wars,
invited or not, led to things like the Great Jehad and the Brazil-Argentine
affair. Small-scale war fought to prevent large-scale war. Then when the
Russian government appealed for help against its nationalist insurgents, and
got it, the precedent of active intervention within a country's own boundaries
was set—much to the good and much to the distaste of almost every government,
including the American. The conservatives were in power here about that time,
you remember, trying unsuccessfully to patch up the Socialist Depression, and
they nearly walked us out of membership. Not quite, though. And those other
international functions, research and trade regulation and so on, have been
growing apace.
"You
see where this is leading? I've told you many times before—" a safe guess,
that—"but I'll tell you again. The U.N. is in the process of becoming a
federal world government. Already it has its own Inspectorate, its own small
police force, and its Lunar Guard. Slowly, grudgingly, the nations are being
induced to disarm—we abolished our own draft ten years or so back, remember?
There's a movement afoot to internationalize the planets and the ocean developments,
put them under direct U.N. authority. We've had international currency
stabilization for a long time now; sooner or later, we'll adopt one money unit
for the world. Tariffs are virtually extinct. Oh, I could go on all day.
"Previous
proposals to make a world government of the U.N. were voted down. Nations were
too short-sighted. But it is nevertheless happening, slowly, piece by piece, so
that the final official unification of man will be only a formality.
Understand? Of course you do. It's obvious. The trouble is,
our enemies have begun to understand it too."
Naysmith
lit a cigaret for himself and scowled at the blue cloud swirling from his
nostrils. "There are so many who would like to break the U.N. There are
nationalists and militarists of every kind, every country, men who would rise to power if the old anarchy returned.
The need for power is a physical hunger in that sort. There are big men of
industry, finance and politics, who'd like to cut their enterprises loose from
regulation. There are labor leaders who want a return of the old strife which
means power and profit for them. There are religionists of a dozen sorts who
don't like our population-control campaigns and the quiet subversion of
anti-contraceptive creeds. There are cranks and fanatics who seek a chance to
impose their own beliefs, everyone from Syndics to Neocommunists, Pilgrims to
Hedonists. There are those who were hurt by some or other U.N. action; perhaps
they lost a son in one of our campaigns, perhaps a new development or policy
wiped out their business. They want revenge. Oh, there are a thousand kind of them, and if once the U.N. collapses they'll all be
free to go fishing in troubled waters."
"Tell me something
new," said Jeanne impatiently.
"I
have to lead up to it, darling. I have to explain what this latest threat is.
You see, these enemies of ours are getting together. All over the world,
they're shelving their many quarrels and uniting into a great secret
organization whose one purpose is to weaken and destroy the U.N. You wouldn't
think fanatical nationalists of different countries could cooperate? Well, they
can, because it's the only way they'll ever have a chance later on to attack
each other. The leadership of this organization, which we Un-men somewhat
inelegantly refer as to the gang, is brilliant; a lot of big men are members
and the whole thing is beautifully set up. Such entities as the Americanist
Party have become fronts for the gang. Whole governments are backing them,
governments which are reluctant U.N. members only because of public opinion at
home and the pressure that can be brought to bear on non-members. Kwang-ti's
successors brought China back in, I'm sure, only to ruin us from within. U.N.
Councillors are among their creatures, and I know not
how many U.N. employees."
Naysmith smiled humorlessly. "Even now,
the great bulk of people throughout the world are pro-U.N., looking on it as a
deliverer from the hell they've survived. So one way the enemy has to destroy us is by sabotage from
inside. Corruption, arrogance, inefficiency, illegal
actions—perpetrated by their own agents in the U.N. and becoming matters of
public knowledge. You've heard a lot of that, and you'll hear still more
in the months to come if this is allowed to go on. Another way is to ferret out
some of our darker secrets-secrets which every government necessarily has—and
make them known to the right people. All right, let's face it: Kwang-ti was assassinated by an Un-man. We thought the job
had been passed off as the work of democratic conspirators, but apparently
there's been a leak somewhere and the Chinese accusation is shaking the whole
frail edifice of international cooperation. The Council will stall as long as
possible, but eventually it'll have to disown the Service's action and heads
will roll. Valuable heads.
"Now
if at the proper moment, with the U.N. badly weakened, whole nations walking
out again, public confidence trembling, there should be military revolutions
within key nations—and the Moon bases seized by ground troops from a nearby
colony— Do you see it? Do you see the return of international anarchy,
dictatorship, war—and every Un-man in the Solar System hunted to his death?"
By
a roundabout course avoiding
the major towns and colonies, it was many hours even at the airboat's speed to
Naysmith's goal. He found his powers of invention somewhat taxed enroute. First
he had to give Jeanne a half true account of his whereabouts in the past weeks.
Then Jimmy, precociously articulate—as he should be, with both parents well
into the genius class—felt disturbed by the gravity of his elders and the
imminent re-disappearance of a father whom he obviously worshipped, and could
only be comforted by Naysmith's long impromptu saga of Crock O'Dile, a green
Irish alligator who worked at the Gideon Kléinmein Home
for Helpless and Houseless Horses. Finally there were others to contend with, a
couple of filling station operators and the clerk in a sporting goods store
where he purchased supplies: they had to be convinced in an unobtrusive way
that these were dully everyday customers to bo forgotten as soon as they were
gone. It all seemed to go off easily enough, but Naysmith was cold with the
tension of wondering whether any of these people had heard the broadcast
alarms. Obviously not, so far. But when they got home
and, inevitably, were informed, would they remember well enough?
He zigzagged over Washington, crossing into
British Columbia above an empty stretch of forest. There was no official
reason for an American to stop, but the border was a logical place for the
S-men to watch.
"Will
the Canadian police cooperate in hunting us?" asked Jeanne.
"I don't know," said Naysmith.
"It depends. You see, American Security, with its broad independent
powers, has an anti-U.N. head. On the other hand, the President is pro-U.N. as
everybody knows, and Fourre will doubtless see to
it that he leams who this wanted criminal is.
He can't actually countermand the chase without putting himself in an untenable
position, but he can obstruct it in many ways and can perhaps tip off the
Canadian government. All on the Q.T., of course."
The
boat swung east until it was following the mighty spine of the Rockies, an
immensity of stone and forest and snow turning gold with sunset. Naysmith had
spent several vacations here, camping and painting, and knew where he was
headed. It was after dark when he slanted the boat downward, feeling his way
with the radar.
There
was an abandoned uranium-hunting base here, one of the shacks still habitable.
Naysmith bounced the boat to a halt on the edge of a steep cliff, cut the
engines, and yawned hugely. "End of the line," he said.
They
climbed out, burdened with equipment, food, and the sleeping child. Naysmith
wheeled the vehicle under a tall pine and led the way up a slope. Jeanne drew a
lungful of the sharp moonlit air and sighed. "Martin, it's beautiful! Why
didn't you ever take me here before?"
He
didn't answer. His flashlight picked out the crumbling face of the shack, its
bare wood and metal blurred with many years. The door creaked open on darkness.
Inside, it was bare, the flooring rotted away to a soft black mould, a few
sticks of broken furniture scattered like bones. Taking a purchased ax, he went
into the woods after spruce boughs, heaping them under the sleeping bags which
Jeanne had laid out. Jimmy whimpered a little in his dreams, but they didn't
wake him to eat.
Naysmith's watch showed midnight before the
cabin was in order. He strolled out for a final cigaret and Jeanne followed to
stand beside him. Her fingers closed about his.
The
Moon was nearly full, rising over a peak whose heights were one glitter of
snow. Stars wheeled enormously overhead, flashing and flashing in the keen cold
air. The forests growing up the slant of this mountain soughed with wind, tall
and dark and heady-scented, filled with night and mystery. Down in the gorge
there was a river, a long
gleam of broken
moonlight, the fresh wild noise of its passage drifting up to them. Somewhere
an owl hooted.
Jeanne
shivered in the chill breeze and crept against Nay-smith. He drew his mantle
about both of them, holding her close. The little red eye of his cigaret waxed
and waned in the dark.
"It's
so lovely here," she whispered. "Do you have to go tomorrow?"
"Yes."
His answer came harshly out of his throat. "You've supplies enough for a
month. If anyone chances by, then you're of course just a camper on vacation.
But I doubt they will, this is an isolated spot. If
I'm not back within three weeks, though, follow the river down. There's a small
colony about fifty miles from here. Or I may send one of our agents to get you.
He'll have a password—let's see—'The crocodiles grow green in Ireland.'
Okay?"
Her laugh was muted and
wistful.
"I'm
sorry to lay such a burden on you, darling," he said contritely.
"It's
nothing—except that you'll be away, a hunted man, and I won't know—'' She bit
her lip. Her face was white in the streaming moon-glow. "This is a
terrible world we five in."
"No,
Jeanne. It's a—a potentially lovely world. My job is to help keep it that
way." He chucked her under the chin, fighting to smile. "Don't let it
worry you. Goodnight, sweet princess."
She
kissed him with yearning. For an instant Naysmith hung back. Should I tell her? She's safely away now—she has a right to know I'm
not her husband—
"What's wrong, Marty?
You seem so strange."
ƒ don't dare. I can't tell her—not while the enemy is abroad, not while
there's a chance of their catching
her. And a little longer in her fool's paradise—I can drop out of sight, let someone else give her the
news— You crawling coward!
He
surrendered. But it was a cruel thing to know, that she was really clasping a
dead man to her.
They walked slowly back to the cabin.
Colonel
Samsey woke with an animal swiftness and sat up in bed. Sleep drained from him
as he saw the tall figure etched black against his open balcony door. He
grabbed for the gun under his pillow.
"I
wouldn't try that, friend." The voice was soft. Moon-fight streamed in to
glitter on the pistol in the intruder's hand.
"Who
are you?" Samsey gasped it out, hardly aware of the
incredible fact yet. Why—he was a hundred and fifty stories up. His
front entrance was guarded, and no copter could so silently have put this
masked figure on his balcony.
"Out of bed, boy. Fast! Okay, now clasp your hands on top of your head."
Samsey
felt the night wind cold on his naked body. It was a
helplessness, this standing unclothed and alone, out of his uniform and
pistol belt, looking down the muzzle of a stranger's gun. His close-cropped
scalp felt stubbly under his palms.
"How did you get
in?" he whispered.
Naysmith
didn't feel it necessary to explain the process. He had walked from the old
highway on which he had landed his jet and used vacuum shoes and gloves to
climb the sheer face of Denver Unit. "Better ask why I came," he
said.
"All
right, blast youl Why? This is a gross violation of
privacy, plus menace and—" Samsey closed his mouth with a snap. Legality
had plainly gone by the board.
"I
want some information." Naysmith seated himself halfway on a table, one
leg swinging easily, the gun steady in his right hand while his left fumbled in
a belt pouch. "And you, as a high-ranking officer in the American Guard
and a we"-known associate of Roger
Wade, seemed likeliest to have it."
"You're crazyl This
is— We're just a patriotic society. You know that. Or should.
We—"
"Cram it, Samsey," said Naysmith
wearily. "The American Guard has ranks, uniforms, weapons, and drills.
Every member belongs to the Americanist Party. You're a private army, Nazi
style, and you've done the murders, robberies, and beatings of the Party for
the past five years. As soon as the government is able to prove that in court,
you'll all go to the Antarctic mines and you know it. Your hope is that your
faction can be in power before there's a case against you.
"Libel! We're a patriotic social group—"
"I
regret my approach," said Naysmith sardonically. And he did. Direct attack
of this sort was not only unlawful, it was crude and of very limited value. But
he hadn't much choice. He had to
get some kind of line on the enemy's plans, and the
outlawing of the Brotherhood and the general suspicion cast on the Service
meant that standard detective approaches were pretty well eliminated for the
time being. Half a loaf— "Nevertheless, I want certain information. The
big objective right now is to overthrow the U.N. How do you intend to
accomplish that? Specifically, what is your next assignment?"
"You don't
expect—"
Samsey
recoiled as Naysmith moved. The Un-man's left hand came out of his pouch like a
striking snake even as his body hurtled across the floor. The right arm grasped
Samsey's biceps, twisting him around in front of the intruder, a knee in his
back, while the hypodermic needle plunged into his neck.
Samsey
struggled, gasping. The muscles holding him were like steel, cat-lithe, meeting
his every wrench with practiced ease. And now the great wave of dizziness came.
He lurched and Naysmith supported him, easing him back to the bed.
The
hypo had been filled with four cubic centimeters of a neoscopaneurine mixture,
very nearly a lethal dose. But it would act fast! Naysmith did not think the
colonel had been immunized against such truth drugs. The gang wouldn't trust
its lower echelons that much.
Moonlight
barred the mindlessly drooling face on the pillow with a streak of icy silver.
It was very quiet here, only the man's labored breathing and the sigh of wind
blowing the curtains at the balcony door. Naysmith gave his victim a stimulant
injection, waited a couple of minutes,' and began his interrogation.
Truth drugs have been misnamed. They do not
intrinsically force the subject to speak truth; they damp those higher brain
centers needed to invent a lie or even to inhibit response. The subject
babbles, with a strong tendency to babble on those subjects he has previously
been most concerned to keep secret. A skilled psychologist can lead the general
direction of the talk.
First,
of course, the private nastinesses which every human has buried within himself
came out, like suppuration from an inflamed wound. Naysmith had been through
this before, but he grimaced—Samsey was an especially bad sort. These
aggressively manly types often were. Naysmith continued patiently until he got
onto more interesting topics.
Samsey
didn't know anyone higher in the gang than Wade. Well, that was to be expected.
In fact, Naysmith though scornfully, he, the outsider, knew more about the
organization of the enemy than any one member below the very top ranks. But
that was a pretty general human characteristic too. A man did his job, for
whatever motives of power, profit, or simple existence he might have, and
didn't even try to leam where it fitted into the great general pattern. The
synthesizing mentality is tragically rare.
But
a free society at least permitted its members to learn, and a rational society
encouraged them to do so; whereas totalitarianism, from the bossy foreman to
the hemispheric dictator, was based on the deliberate suppression of communications.
Where there was no feedback, there could be no stability except through the
living death of imposed intellectual rigidity.
Back
to business! Here came something he had been waiting for, the next task for the
American Guard's thugs. The Phobos was
due in from Mars in a week. Guardsmen were supposed to arrange the death of one
Bamey Rosenberg, passenger, as soon as possible after his debarkation on Earth.
Why? The reason was not given and had not been asked for, but a good
description of the man was available.
Mars—yes,
the Guard was also using a privately owned spaceship to run arms to a secret
base in the Thyle II country, where they were picked up by Pilgrims.
So! The Pilgrims were in on the gang. The
Service had suspected as much, but here was proof. This might be the biggest
break of all, but Naysmith had a hunch that it was incidental. Somehow, the
murder of an obscure returnee from Mars impressed him as involving greater
issues.
There
wasn't more which seemed worth the risk of waiting. Naysmith had a final
experiment to try.
Samsey
was a rugged specimen, already beginning to pull out of his daze. Naysmith
switched on a lamp, its radiance falling across the distorted face below him.
The eyes focused blurrily on his sheening mask. Slowly, he lifted it.
"Who am I,
Samsey?" he asked quietly.
A sob rattied in the throat. "Donner^-but you're dead. We killed you
in Chicago. You died, you're dead."
That
settled that. Naysmith replaced his mask. Systematically, he repaired the
alarms he had annulled for his entry and checked the room for traces of his
presence. None. Then he took Samsey's gun from beneath
the pillow. Silenced, naturally. He folded the lax
fingers about the trigger and blew the colonel's brains out.
They'd suspect it wasn't suicide, of course,
but they might not think of a biochemical autopsy before the drugs in the
bloodstream had broken down beyond analysis. At least there was one less of
them. Naysmith felt no qualms. This was not a routine police operation, it was
war.
He
went back to the balcony, closing the door behind him. Swinging over the edge
as he adjusted his vacuum cups, he started the long climb earthward.
The Service could ordinarily have provided
Naysmith with an excellent disguise, but the equipment needed was elaborate and
he dared not assume that any of the offices which had it were unwatched by
Security. Better rely on masks and the feeble observational powers of most
citizens to brazen it out.
Calling
Prior from a public communibooth, even using the scrambler, was risky too, but
it had to be done. The mails were not to be trusted any more, and communication
was an absolute necessity for accomplishment.
The voice was gray with weariness:
"Mars, eh? Nice job, Naysmith. What should we do?"
"Get
the word to Fourre, of course, for whatever he can make of it. And a coded
radio message to our operatives on Mars. They can check this Pilgrim business
and also look into Rosenberg's background and associates. Should
be a lot of leads there. However, I'll try to snatch Rosenberg myself,
with a Brother or two to help me, before the Americanists get him."
"Yeah,
you'd better. The Service's hands are pretty well tied just now while the U.N.
investigation of the Chinese accusations is going on. Furthermore, we can't be
sure of many of our own people. So we, and especially the Brotherhood, will
have to act pretty much independently for the time being. Carry on as well as
you can. However, I can get your information to Rio and Mars all right."
"Good man. How are
things going with you?"
"Don't
call me again, Naysmith. I'm being watched, and my own men can't stop a really
all-out assassination attempt." Prior chuckled dryly. "If they
succeed, we can talk it over in hell."
"To
modify what the old cacique
said about Spaniards in
Heaven—if there are nationalists in hell, I'm not sure if I want to go there.
Okay, then. And good luck!"
It
was only the next day that the newscasts carried word of the murder of one
Nathan Prior, semanticist residing at Frisco Unit. It was believed to be the
work of foreign agents, and S-men had been assigned to aid the local police.
Most
of the Brothers had, of
course, been given disguises early in their careers. Plastic surgery had
altered the distinctive countenance and the exact height, false fingerprints
and retinals been put in their ID records; each of them had a matching set of
transparent plastic "tips" to put on his own fingers when he made a
print for any official purpose. These men should temporarily be safe, and there
was no justification for calling on their help yet. They were sitting tight and
wary, for if the deadly efficiency of Hessling's organization came to suspect
them and pull them in, an elementary physical exam would rip the masquerade
wide open.
That
left perhaps a hundred undisguised Brothers in the United States when word came
for them to go underground. Identical physique could be too useful—for example,
in furnishing unshakeable alibis, or in creating the legend of a superman who
was everywhere—to be removed from all. Some of these would be able to assume
temporary appearances and-move in public for a while. The rest had to cross
the border or hide.
The
case of Juho Lampi was especially unfortunate. He had made enough of a' name as
a nucleonic engineer in Finland to be invited to America, and his disguise was
only superficial. When Fourre's warning went out on the code circuit, he left
his apartment in a hurry. A mechanic at the garage where he hired an airboat
recognized the picture that had been flashed over the entire country. Lampi
read the man's poorly hidden agitation, slugged him, and stole the boat, but it
put the S-men on his trail. It told them, furthermore, that the identical men
were not only American.
Lampi
had been given the name and address of a woman in Iowa. The Brothers were
organized into cells of half a dozen, each with its own rendezvous and
contacts, and this
was to be Lampi's while he was in the States. He
went there after dark and got a room. Somewhat later, Naysmith showed up.
Naysmith, being more nearly a full-time operative, knew where several cells
had their meeting places. He collected Lampi and decided not to wait for anyone
else. The Phobos
was coming to Earth in a
matter of hours. Naysmith had gone to Iowa in a self-driver boat hired from a
careless office in Colorado; now, through the woman running the house, the two
men rented another and flew back to Robinson Field.
"I
have my own boat—repainted, new number, and so on—parked near here," said
Naysmith." We'll take off in it. If we get away."
"And
then what?" asked Lampi. His English was good, marked with only a trace of
accent. The Brothers were natural linguists.
"I
don't know. I just don't know." Naysmith looked moodily about him.
"We're being hunted as few have ever been hunted." He murmured half
to himself:
"7 heard myself proclaim d;
And by the happy
hollow of a tree
Escap'd the hunt. No port is free; no place,
That guard and most unusual vigilance
Does not attend my taking."
They were sitting in the Moonjumper, bar and
restaurant adjacent to the spaceport. They had chosen a booth near the door,
and the transparent wall on this side opened onto the field. Its great pale
expanse of concrete stretched under glaring floodlights out toward darkness, a
gigantic loom of buildings on three sides of it. Coveralled mechanics were busy
around a series of landing cradles. A uniformed policeman strolled by,
speaking idly with a technician. Or was it so casual? The technie looked
solemn.
"Oh,
well," said Lampi. "To get onto a more cheerful subject, have you
seen Warschawski's latest exhibition?"
"What's so cheerful about that?"
asked Naysmith. "It's awful. Sculpture just doesn't lend itself to
abstraction as he seems to think."
Though the Brothers
naturally tended to have similar tastes, environment could make a difference.
Naysmith and Lampi plunged into a stiff-necked argument about modern art. It
was going at a fine pace when they were interrupted.
The
curtains of the booth had been drawn. They were twitched aside now and the
waitress looked in. She was young and shapely, and the skimpy playsuit might
have been painted on. Beyond her, the bar room was a surge of people, a buzz
and hum and rumble of voices. In spite of the laboring ventilators, there was a
blue haze of smoke in the air.
"Would you like
another round?" asked the girl.
"Not
just yet, thanks," said Naysmith, turning his masked face toward her. He
had dyed his yellow hair a mousey brown at the hideaway, and Lampi's was now
black, but that didn't help much; there hadn't been time to change the wiry
texture. He sat stooped, so that she wouldn't see at a casual glance that he
was as big as Lampi, and hoped she wasn't very observant.
"Want some
company?" she asked. "I can fix it up."
"No,
thanks," said Naysmith. "We're waiting for the rocket."
"I
mean later. Nice girls. YouH like them." She gave
him a mechanically meretricious smile.
"Ummm—well—" Naysmith swapped a
glance with Lampi, who nodded. He arranged an assignation for an hour after the
landing and slipped her a bill. She left them, swaying her hips.
Lampi
chuckled. "It's hardly fair to a couple of hardworking girls," he
said. "They will be expecting us."
"Yeah, Probably
supporting aged grandmothers, too." Naysmith grinned and lifted the Scotch
to the mouth-slit of his mask. "However, it's not the sort of arrangement
two fugitives would make."
"What about the
American Guardsmen?"
"Probably those burly characters lounging at the bar. Didn't you notice them as we came in?
They'll have friends elsewhere who'll—"
"Your attention, please. The first tender from the Phobos will be cradling in ten minutes, carrying half the passengers from Mars. The second will follow ten
minutes later. Repeat, the first-"
"Which one is
Rosenberg on?"
asked Lampi.
"How
should I know?" Naysmith shrugged. "Well just have to take our chance. Drink up."
He
patted his shoulder-holstered gun and loosened the tunic over it. He and Lampi
had obtained breastplates and half-boots at the
hideaway; their masks were needle-proof, and an arm or groin or thigh
was hard to hit when a knee-length cloak flapped around
the body. They should be fairly well immune to stet-guns if they worked fast. Not to bullets— but even the Guardsmen probably wouldn't care to use those
in a crowd.
The
two men went out of the booth and mingled with the people
swirling toward the passenger egress. They separated as they neared the gate
and hung about on the fringe of the group. There were a couple of big
hard-looking men in masks who had shouldered their way up next to the gate. One of them had been in the Moonjumper, Naysmith
remembered.
He
had no picture of Rosenberg, and Samsey's incoherent description had been of little value. The man was a nonentity who must have been off Earth for years. But presumably the Guardsmen knew what to look for. Which meant that—
There
was a red and yellow glare high in the
darkened heavens. The far thunder became a howling, bellowing, shaking roar
that trembled in the bones and echoed in the skull. Nerves
crawled with the nameless half terror of unheard
subsonic vibrations. The tender grew to a
slim spearhead, backing down with radio control on the landing cradle. Her chemical blasts splashed vividly off the
concrete baffles. When she lay still and the rockets cut off, there was a
ringing silence.
Endless
ceremony—the mechanics wheeled up a
stairway, the airlock ground open, a steward emerged, a medical crew stood by to handle space sickness—Naysmith longed for a cigaret. He shifted on his feet and forced his nerves to a thuttering
calm.
There came the passengers, half a dozen of them filing toward the gateway. They stopped one by one at the clearance
booth to have their papers stamped. The two Guardsmen exchanged a masked
glance.
A
stocky Oriental came through first. Then there was a woman engineer in
Spaceways uniform who held up the fine as she gathered two waiting children
into her arms. Then-He was a small bandy-legged marj with a hooked nose and a
leathery brown skin, shabbily clad, lugging a battered valise. One of the
Guardsmen tapped him politely on the arm. He looked up and Naysmith saw his
lips moving, the face etched in a harsh white glare. He couldn't hear what was
said over the babble of the crowd, but he could imagine it. "Why, yes, I'm
Barney Rosenberg. What do you want?"
Some
answer was given him; it didn't really matter what. With a look of mild
surprise, the little fellow nodded. The other Guardsman pushed over to him, and
he went out of the crowd between them. Naysmith drew his stet-gun, holding it
under his cloak, and cat-footed after. The Guardsmen didn't escort Rosenberg
into the shadows beyond the field, but walked over toward the Moonjumper. There
was no reason for Rosenberg to suspect their motives, especially if they stood
him a drink.
Naysmith lengthened his stride and fell in
beside the right-hand man. He didn't waste time: his gun was ready, its muzzle
against the victim's hip. He fired. The Guardsman strangled on a yell.
Lampi was already on the left, but he'd been
a trifle slow. That enemy grabbed the Finn's gun wrist with a slashing
movement. Naysmith leaned over the first guardsman, who clawed at him as he
sagged to his knees, and brought the edge of his left palm down on the second
one's neck, just at the base of the skull. The blow cracked numbingly back into
his own sinews.
"What
the blazes—" Rosenberg opened his mouth to shout. There was no time to
argue, and Lampi needled him. With a look of utter astonishment, the prospector
wilted. Lampi caught him under the arms and hoisted him to one shoulder.
The kidnaping had been seen. People were
turning around, staring. Somebody began to scream. Lampi stepped over the two
toppled men and followed Naysmith.
Past the door of the bar,
out to the street, hurry!
A
whistle skirled behind them. They jumped over the slideway and dashed across
the avenue. There was a transcontinental Diesel truck bearing down on them,
its lights one great glare, the roar of its engine filling the world. Naysmith
thought that it brushed him. But its huge bulk was a cover. They plunged over
the slideway beyond, ignoring the stares of passersby, and into the shadows of
a park.
A
siren began to howl. When he had reached the sheltering gloom thrown by a tree,
Naysmith looked behind him. Two policemen were coming, but they hadn't spotted
the fugitives yet. Naysmith and Lampi ducked through a formal garden, jumping
hedges and running down twisted paths. Gravel scrunched underfoot.
Quartering
across the park, Naysmith led the way to his airboat. He fumbled the door open
and slithered inside. Lampi climbed in with him, tossing Rosenberg into the
back seat and slamming the door. The boat slid smoothly out into passing
traffic. There were quite a few cars and boats abroad, and Naysmith mingled
with them.
Lampi
breathed heavily in the gloom. A giant neon sign threw a bloody light over his
mask. "Now what?" he asked.
"Now
we get the devil out of here," said Naysmith. "Those boys are smart.
It won't take them long to alert traffic control and stop all nearby vehicles
for search. We have to be in the air before that time."
They
left the clustered shops and dwellings, and Naysmith punched the board for
permission to take off southbound. The automatic signal flashed him a
fourth-lane directive. He climbed to the indicated height and went obediently
south on the beam. Passing traffic was a stream of moving stars around him.
The
emergency announcement signal blinked an angry red. "Fast is right,"
said Lampi, swearing in four languages.
"Up we go," said
Naysmith.
He climbed vertically,
narrowly missing boats in the higher levels, until he was above all lanes. He
kept climbing till his vehicle was in the lower stratosphere. Then he turned
westward at top speed.
"We'll
go out over the Pacific," he explained. "Then we find us a nice
uninhabited islet with some trees and lie doggo till tomorrow night. Won't be
any too comfortable, but it'll have to be done and I have some food
along." He grinned beneath his mask. "I hope you like cold canned
beans, Juho."
^And then-?"
"I
know another island off the California coast," said Naysmith. "Well
disguise this boat at our first stop, of course, changing the number and
recognition signal and so on. Then at the second place well refuel and I'll
make an important call. You can bet your last mark the enemy knows who pulled
this job and will have alerted all fuel station operators this time. But the
man where we're going is an absentminded old codger who won't be hard to
deceive." He scowled. "That'll take about the last of my cash money,
too. Have to get more somehow, if we're to carry on in our present style."
"Where do we go from
there?" said Lampi.
"North,
I suppose. We have to hide Rosenberg somewhere, and you—" Naysmith shook
his head, feeling a dull pain within him. That was the end of the masquerade.
Jeanne Donner would know.
At first Barney Rosenberg didn't believe it.
He was too shocked. The Guardsmen had simply told him they were representatives
of some vaguely identified company which was thinking of developments on Mars
and wanted to consult him. He'd been offered a hotel suite and had been told
the fee would be nice. Now he looked at his kidnapers with bewildered eyes and
challenged them to say who they were.
"Think
we'd be fools enough to carry our real IDs around?" snorted Naysmith,
"You'll just have to take our word for it that we're U.N. operatives—till
later, anyway, when we can safely prove it. I tell you, the devil is loose on
Earth and you need protection. Those fellows were after your knowledge, and
once they got that you'd have been a corpse."
Rosenberg looked from one masked face to the
other. His
head
felt blurred, the drug was still in him and he couldn't
think straight. But those
voices-He thought he remembered the voices. Both of
them. Only
they were the same.
"I don't know
anything," he said weakly, "I tell you, I'm
just a prospector, home from Mars."
"You must have
information—that's the only possibility,"
said
Lampi. "Something you learned on Mars which is
important to them, perhaps to the whole world.
What?" Fieri
in Drygulch, and the Pilgrim who had been so
eager—
Rosenberg shook his head, trying to clear it.
He looked at the two big cloaked figures hemming him in. There was darkness
outside the hurtling airboat.
"Who are you?" he
whispered.
"I
told you we're friends. Un-men. Secret
agents." Nay-smith laid a hand on Rosenberg's shoulder. "We want
to help you, that's all. We want to protect you and
whatever it is you know."
Rosenberg
looked at the hand—strong, sinewy, blunt-fingered,
with fine gold hairs on the knuckles. But no, no, no! His heart began thumping
till he thought it must shatter his ribs.
"Let me see your
faces," he gasped.
"Well—why
not?" Naysmith and Lampi took off their masks. The dull panel fight
gleamed off the same features; broad, strong-boned, blue-eyed. There was a deep
wrinkle above each jutting triangle of nose. The left ear was faintly bigger
than the right. Both men had a trick of cocking their head a trifle sideways
when listening.
We'll tell him we're twin brothers, thought Naysmith and Lampi simultaneously.
Rosenberg shrank into the seat. There was a
tiny whimper in his throat.
"Stef," he murmured. "Stefan
Rostomily."
The
newcasts told
of crisis in the U.N. Etienne Fourre, backed by its President, was claiming
that the Chinese government was pressing a fantastic charge to cover up designs
of its own. A full-dress investigation was in order. Only—as Besser, Minister
of International Finance, pointed out—when the official investigating service
was itself under suspicion, who could be trusted to
get at the facts?
In
the United States, Security was after a dangerous spy and public enemy. Minute
descriptions of Donner-Naysmith-Lampi were on all the screens. Theoretically,
the American President could call off the hunt, but that would mean an uproar
in the delicately balanced Congress; there'd have been a vote of confidence,
and if the President lost that, he and his cabinet would have to resign—and who
would be elected to succeed? But Naysmith and Lampi exchanged grins at the
interview statement of the President, that he thought
this much-hunted spy was in Chinese pay.
Officially,
Canada was cooperating with the United States in. chasing the fugitive.
Actually, Naysmith was sure it was bluff, a sop to the anti-U.N. elements in
the Dominion. Mexico was doing nothing—but that meant the Mexican border was
being closely watched.
It
couldn't go on. The situation was so unstable that it would have to end, one
way or another, in the next several days. If Hessling's men dragged in a
Brother— Whether or not Fourre's organization survived, it would have lost its
greatest and most secret asset.
But the main thing, Naysmith reflected
grimly, was to keep Fourre's own head above water. The whole purpose of this
uproar was to discredit the man and his painfully built-up service, and to
replace him and his key personnel with nationalist stooges. After that, the
enemy would find the next stages of their work simple.
And what can I do?
Naysmith
felt a surge of helplessness. Human society had grown too big, too complex and
powerful. It was a machine running blind and wild, and he was a fly caught in
the gears.
There
was one frail governor on the machine, only one, and if it were broken the
whole thing would shatter. What to do? What to do?
He
shrugged off the despair and concentrated on the next moment. The first thing
was to get Rosenberg's information to his own side.
The
island was a low sandy swell in an immensity of ocean. There was. harsh grass on it, and a few trees gnarled by the great
winds, and a tiny village. Naysmith dropped Lampi on the farther side of the
island to hide till they came back for him. Rosenberg took the Finn's mask, and the two jetted across to the fuel station. While
their boat's tanks were being filled, they entered a public communibooth.
Peter
Christian, in Mexico City—Naysmith dialed the number given him by Prior. That
seemed the best bet. Wasn't the kid undergoing Synthesis training? His logic
might be able to integrate this meaningless flux of data.
No
doubt every call across either border was being monitored, illegally but
thoroughly. However, the booth had a scrambler unit. Naysmith fed it a coin,
but it didn't activate it immediately.
"Could
I speak to Peter Christian?" he asked the servant whose face appeared in
the screen. "Tell him it's his cousin Joe calling. And give him this
message: 'The ragged scoundrel leers merrily, not peddling babies.' "
"Señor?" The brown face looked astonished.
"It's a private signal. Write it down,
please, so you get it correct." Naysmith dictated slowly. " "The ragged scoundrel-' "
"Yes, understand. Wait, please, I will
call the young gentleman."
Naysmith stood watching the screen for a
moment. He could vaguely make out the room beyond, a solid and handsomely
furnished place. Then he stabbed at the scrambler buttons. There were eight of
them, which could be punched in any order to yield 40,320 possible combinations
The key letters, known to every Brother, were
currently MNTSRPBL, and "the ragged scoundrel" had given Christian
the order Naysmith was using. When Hessling's men got around to playing back
their monitor tapes, the code sentence wouldn't help them unscramble without
knowledge of the key. On the other hand, it wouldn't be proof that their quarry
had been making the call; such privacy devices were not uncommon.
Naysmith blanked the booth's walls and
removed his own and Rosenberg's masks. The little man was in a state of
hypnosis, total recall of the Fieri manuscript he had read on Mars. He was
already drawing structural formulas of molecules.
The
random blur and noise on the screen clicked away as Peter Christian set the
scrambler unit at that end. It was his own face grown younger which looked out
at Naysmith— a husky blond
sixteen-year-old, streaked with sweat and panting a little. He grinned at his
Brother.
"Sorry to be so long," he said.
"I was working out in the gym. Have a new mech-volley play to develop
which looks promising." His English was fluent and Naysmith saw no reason
to use a Spanish which, in his own case, had grown a little
rusty.
"Who'resyou the adoptive son
of?" asked the man. Privacy customs didn't mean much in the Brotherhood.
"Holger Christian—Danish career deplomat, currently ambassador to
Mexico.
They're good people, he and his wife."
Yes,
thought Naysmith, they would be, if they let their foster child, even with his
obvious brilliance, take Synthesis. The multi-ordinal integrating education was
so new and untried, and its graduates would have to make their own jobs. But
the need was desperate. The sciences had grown too big and complex, like
everything else, and there was too much overlap between the specialties.
Further progress required the fully trained synthesizing mentality.
And progress itself was no longer something
justified only by Victorian prejudice. It was a matter of survival. Some means
of creating a stable social and economic order in the face of continuous
revolutionary change had to be found. More and more technological development
was bitterly essential. Atomic-powered oil synthesis had come barely in time
to save a fuel-starved Earth from industrial breakdown. Now new atomic energy
fuels had to be evolved before the old ores-were depleted. The rising incidence
of neurosis and insanity among the intelligent and apathy among the insensitive
had to be checked before other Years of Madness came. Heredity damaged by hard
radiation had to be unscrambled, somehow, before dangerous recessive traits
spread through the entire human population. Communications theory, basic to
modern science and sociology, had to be perfected. There had to be. Why
enumerate? Man had come too far and too fast. Now he was balanced on a knife
edge over the red gulfs of hell.
When
Peter Christian's education was complete, he would be one of Earth's most
important men—whether he realized it himself or not. Of course, even his foster
parents didn't know that one of his Synthesis instructors was an Un-man who was quietly teaching him the fine points of
secret service. They most assuredly did not know that their so normal and
healthy boy was already initiated into a group whose very existence was an
unrecorded secret.
The first Brothers had been raised in the
families of Unman technies and operators who had been in on the project from
the start. This practice continued on a small scale, but most of the new
children were put out for adoption through recognized agencies around the
world—having first been provided with a carefully faked background history.
Between sterility and the fear of mutation, there was no difficulty in placing
a good-looking man child with a superior family. From babyhood, the Brother was
under the influence—a family friend or a pediatrician or instructor or camp
counselor or minister, anyone who could get an occasional chance to talk
intimately with the boy, would be a sparetime employee of Fourre's and helped
incline the growing personality the right way. It had been established that a
Brother could accept the truth and keep his
secret from the age of twelve, and that he never refused to turn Un-man. From
then on, progress was quicker. The Brothers were precocious: Nay smith was only
twenty-five, and he had been on his first mission at seventeen; Lampi was an
authority in his field at twenty-three. There should be no hesitation in
dumping this responsibility on Christian, even if there had been any choice in
the matter.
"Listen,"
said Naysmith. "You know all hell has broken loose and that the American
S-men are out to get us. Specifically, I'm the one they think they're hunting.
But Lampi, a Finnish Brother, and I have
put the snatch on one Barney Rosenberg from Mars. He has certain information
the enemy wants." The man knew that the boy must be thinking—in a way,
those were his own thoughts—and added swiftly: "No, we haven't let him in
on the secret, though the fact that he was a close friend of Rostomily's makes
it awkward. But it also makes him trust us. He read the report of a Fieri on
Mars, concerning suspended animation techniques. He'll give it to you now.
Stand by to record."
"Okay, ja, si." Christian
grinned and flipped a switch. He was stiil young
enough to find this a glorious cloak-and-dagger adventure. Well, he'd leam, and
the learning would be a little death within him.
Rosenberg
began to talk, softly and very fast, holding up his structural formulas and
chemical equations at the appropriate places. It took a little more than an
hour. Christian would have been bored if he hadn't been so interested in the
material; Naysmith fumed and sweated unhappily. Any moment there might come
suspicion, discovery— The booth was hot.
"That's all, I guess," said
Naysmith when the prospector had run down. "What do you make of it?"
"Why,
it's sensational! It'll jump biology two decades!" Christian's eyes
glowed. "Surgery—yes, that's obvious. Research
techniques— Gud Fader i
himlen, what a discovery!"
"And
why do you think it's so important to the enemy?" snapped Naysmith.
"Isn't it plain? The
military uses, man! You can use a light
dose to immunize against terrific accelerations. Or you can pack a spaceship
with men in frozen sleep, load em in almost like boxes, and have no supply
worries enroute. Means you can take a good-sized army from planet to planet.
And of course there's the research aspect. With what can be learned with the
help of suspension techniques, biological warfare can be put on a wholly new
plane."
"I
thought as much." Naysmith nodded wearily. It was the same old story, the
wom-out tale of hate and death and oppression. The logical end-product of
scientific warfare was that all data
became military secrets—a society without communication in its most vital
department, without feedback or stability. That was what he fought against.
"All right, what can you do about it?"
"I'll
unscramble the record—no, better leave it scrambled— and get it to the right
people. Hmmm—give me a small lab and I'll undertake to develop certain phases
of this myself. In any case, we can't let the enemy have it."
"We've
probably already given it to them. Chances are they have monitors on this line.
But they can't get around to our recording and to trying all possible
unscrambling combinations in less than a few days, especially if we keep them
busy." Naysmith leaned forward, his haggard eyes probing into the screen.
"Pete, as the son of a diplomat you must have a better than average notion
of the overall politico-military picture. What can we do?"
Christian
sat still for a moment. There was a curious withdrawn expression on the young
face. His trained mind was assembling logic networks in a manner unknown to
previous history. Finally he looked back at the man.
"There's
about an eighty percent probability that Besser is the head of the gang,"
he said. "Chief of international finance, you know. That's an estimate of
my own; I don't have Fourre's data, but I used a basis of Besser's past history
and known character, his country's recent history, the necessary
communications for a least-effort anti-U.N. setup on a planetary scale,
the—never mind. You already know with high probability that Roger Wade is his
chief for North America. I can't predict Besser's actions very closely, since
in spite of his prominence he uses privacy as a cover-up for relevant
psychological data. If we assume that he acts on a survival axiom, and
logically apart from his inadequate grounding in modem socio-theory and his
personal bias—hm."
"Besser, eh? I had my own suspicions, besides what I've been told. Financial
integration has been proceeding rather slowly since he took office. Never mind.
We have to strike at his organization. What to do?"
"I
need more data. How many American Brothers are underground in the States and
can be contacted?"
"How
should I know? All that could would try to skip the
country. I'm only here because I know enough of the overall situation to act
usefully, I hope."
"Well,
I can scare up a few in Mexico and South America, I think. We have our own
communications. And I can use my 'father's' sealed diplomatic circuit to get in
touch with Fourre. You have this Lampi with you, I suppose?" Christian sat
in moody stillness for a while. Then:
"I
can only suggest—and it's a pretty slim guess—that you two let yourselves be
captured."
The man sighed. He had
rather expected this.
Naysmith brought the boat whispering down
just as the first cold light of sunrise crept skyward. He buzzed the narrow-
ledge where he had to land, swung back, and lowered the wheels. When they
touched, it was a jarring, brutal contact that rattled his teeth together. He
cut the motor and there was silence.
If
Jeanne was alert, she'd have a gun on him now. He opened the door and called
loudly: "The crocodiles grow green in Ireland." Then he stepped out
and looked around him.
The
mountains were a shadowy looming. Dawn lay like roses on their peaks. The air
was fresh and chill, strong with the smell of pines, and there was dew
underfoot and alarmed birds clamoring into the sky. Far below him, the river
thundered and brawled.
Rosenberg
climbed stiffly after him and leaned against the boat. Earth gravity dragged at
his muscles, he was cold and hungry and cruelly tired, and these men who were
ghosts of his youth would not tell him what the darkness was that lay over the
world. Sharply he remembered the thin bitter sunup of Mars, a gaunt desert
misting into life and a single crag etched against
loneliness. Homesickness was an ache in him.
Only—he had not remembered
Earth could be so lovely.
"Martin!
Oh, Martin!" The woman came down the trail,
running, slipping on the wet needles. Her raven hair was cloudy about the
gallantly lifted head, and there was a light in
her eyes which Rosenberg had almost forgotten. "Oh, my darling, you're
back!"
Naysmith
held her close, kissing her with hunger. One minute more, one little minute
before Lampi emerged, was that too much?
He
hadn't been able to leave the Finn anywhere behind. There was no safe hiding placé in all America, not when the S-men were after him. There could be no
reliable rendezvous later, and Lampi would be needed. He had to come along.
Of
course, the Finn could have stayed masked and mute the entire while he was at
the cabin. But Rosenberg would have to be left here,
it was the best hideaway for him. The prospector might be trusted to keep
secret the fact that two identical men had brought him here—or he might not. He
was shrewd; Jeanne's conversation would lead him to some suspicion of the
truth, and he might easily decide that she had been the victim of a shabby
trick and should be given the facts. Then anything could happen.
Oh,
with some precautions Naysmith could probably hide his real nature from the
girl a while longer. Rosenberg might very well keep his mouth shut on request.
But there was no longer any point in concealing the facts from her—she would
not be captured by the gang before they had the Unman himself. In any case,
she must be told sooner or later. The man she thought was her husband was
probably going to die, and it was as well that she think
little of him and have no fears and sorrows on his account. One death was
enough for her.
He
laid his hands on the slim shoulders and stood back a bit, looking into her
eyes. His own crinkled in the way she must know so
well, and they were unnaturally bright in the dawn-glow. When he spoke, it was
almost a whisper.
"Jeanne, honey, I've
got some bad news for you."
He
felt her stiffen beneath his hands, saw the face tighten and heard the litde
hiss of indrawn breath. There were dark rings about her eyes,
she couldn't have slept very well while he was gone.
"This is a matter for absolute
secrecy," he went on, tone-lessly. "No one, repeat
no one, is to have a word of it. But you have a right to the truth."
"Go
ahead." There was an edge of harshness in her voice. "I can take
it."
"I'm
not Martin Dormer," he said. "Your husband is dead."
She
stood rigid for another heartbeat, and then she pulled wildly free. One hand
went to her mouth. The other was half lifted as if to fend him off.
"I had to pretend it, to get you away
without any fuss," he went on, looking at the ground. "The enemy
would have-tortured you, maybe. Or killed you and Jimmy.
I don't know."
Juho
Lampi came up behind Naysmith. There was compassion on his face. Jeanne
stepped backward, voiceless.
"You'll
have to stay here," said Naysmith bleakly. "It's the only safe place.
Here is Mr. Rosenberg, whom we're leaving with you. I assure you he's
completely innocent of anything that has been done. I can't tell either of you
more than this." He took a long step toward her. She stood her ground,
unmoving. When he clasped her hands into his, they were cold. "Except that
I love you," he whispered.
Then,
swinging away, he faced Lampi. "We'll clean up and get some breakfast
here," he said. "After that, we're off."
Jeanne
did not follow them inside. Jimmy, awakened by their noise, was delighted to
have his father back (Lampi had re-assumed a mask) but Naysmith gave him disappointingly
little attention. He told Rosenberg that the three of them should stay put here
as long as possible before striking out for the village, but that it was hoped
to send a boat for them in a few days.
Jeanne's
face was cold and bloodless as Naysmith and Lampi went back to the jet. When it
was gone, she started to cry. Rosenberg wanted to leave and let her have it out
by herself, but she clung to him blindly and he comforted her as well as he
could.
XI
There
was no difficulty about
getting captured. Naysmith merely strolled into a public lavatory at Oregon
Unit and took off his mask to wash his face; a man standing nearby went
hurriedly out, and when Naysmith emerged he was knocked over by the stet-gun of
a Unit policeman. It was what came afterward that was tough.
He
woke up, stripped and handcuffed, in a cell,
very shortly before a team of S-men arrived to lead him away. These took the
added precaution of binding his ankles before stuffing him into a jet. He had
to grin sourly at that, it was a compliment of sorts. Little was said until the
jet came down on a secret headquarters which
was also a Wyoming ranch.
There
they gave him the works. He submitted meekly to every identification procedure
he had ever heard of. Fluoroscopes showed nothing Judden within his 'body
except the communicator, and there was some talk of operating it out; but"
they decided to wait for orders from higher up before attempting that. They
questioned him and, since he had killed two or three of their fellows, used
methods which cost him a couple of teeth and a sleepless night. He told them
his name and address, but little else.
Orders
came the following day. Naysmith was bundled into another jet and flown
eastward. Near the destination, the jet was traded for an ordinary,
inconspicuous airboat. They landed after dark on the grounds of a large new
mansion in western Pennsylvania—Naysmith recalled that Roger Wade lived
here—and he was led inside. There was a soundproofed
room with a full battery of interrogation machines under the residential
floors. The prisoner was put into a chair already equipped with straps,
fastened down, and left for a while to ponder his situation.
He
sighed and attempted to relax, leaning hack against the metal of the chair. It
was an uncomfortable seat, cold and stiff as it pressed into his naked skin.
The room was long and low-ceilinged, barren in the
white glare of high-powered fluoros, and the utter stillness of it muffled his
breath and heartbeat. The air was cool, but somehow that absorbant quiet choked
him. He faced the impassive dials of a he detector and an electric
neurovibrator, and the silence grew and grew.
His
head ached, and he longed for a cigaret. His eyelids were sandy with
sleeplessness and there was a foul taste in his mouth. Mostly, though, he
thought of Jeanne Donner.
Presently
the door at the end of the room opened and a group of people walked slowly
toward him. He recognized Wade's massive form in the van. Behind him trailed a
bearded man with a lean, sallow face; a young chap thin as a rail, his skin
dead white and his hands clenching and unclenching nervously; a gaunt homely
woman; and a squat, burly subordinate whom he did not know but assumed to be an
S-man in Wade's pay. The others were familiar to Service dossiers: Lewin,
Wade's personal physician; Rodney Borrow, his chief secretary; Marta Jennings,
Americanist organizer. There was death in their eyes.
Wade
proceeded quietly up toward Naysmith. Borrow drew a chair for him and he sat
down in it and took out a cigaret. Nobody spoke till he had it lighted. Then he
blew the smoke in Naysmith's direction and said gently: "According to the
official records, you really are Robert Nay-smith of California. But tell me, is that only another false identity?"
Naysmith
shrugged. "Identity is a philosophical basic," he answered.
"Where does similarity leave off and identity begin?"
"Mmmmm-hm." Wade nodded slowly. "We've killed you
at least once, and I suspect more than once. But are you Martin Donner, or are
you his twin? And in the latter case, how does it happen that you two, or you
three, four, five, ten thousand—are completely identical?"
"Oh, not quite,"
said Naysmith.
"No
-o-o. There are the little scars and peculiarities due to environment—and
habits, language, accent, occupation. But for police purposes you and Dormer
are the same man. How was it done?"
Naysmith
smiled. "How much am I offered for that information?" he parried.
"As well as other information you know I have?"
"So." Wade's eyes narrowed. "You weren't captured— not really. You gave
yourself up."
"Maybe. Have you caught anyone else yet?"
Wade
traded a glance with the Security officer. Then, with an air of decision, he
said briskly: "An hour ago, I was informed that a man answering your
description had been picked up in Minnesota. He admitted to being one Juho
Lampi of Finland, and I'm inclined to take his word for it though we haven't
checked port-of-entry records yet. How many more of you can we expect to
meet?"
"As
many as you like," said Naysmith. "Maybe more than
that."
"All right. You gave yourself up. You must know that we have no reason to spare
your life—or lives. What do you hope to gain?"
"A
compromise," answered Naysmith. "Which will, of
course, involve our release."
"How much are you
willing to tell us now?"
"As
little as possible, naturally. We'll have to bargain."
Stall!
Stall for time! The message from Rio has got to come soon. It's got to, or
we're all dead men.
Borrow
leaned over his master's shoulder. His voice was high and cracked, stuttering
just a trifle: "How will we know you're telling the truth?"
"How
will you know that even if you torture me?" shrugged Naysmith. "Your
bird dogs must have reported that I've been immunized to drugs."
"There
are still ways," said Lewln. His words fell dull fn
the muffling silence. "Prefrontal lobotomy is usually effective."
Yes,
this is the enemy. These are the men of darkness. These are the men who in
other days sent heretics to burning, or fed the furnaces of Beken, or stuffed
the rockets with radioactive death. Now they're opening skulk and slashing
brains across. Argue with them! Let them kick and slug and whip you, but don't
let them know—
"Our
bargain might not be considered valid if you do that."
"The
essential element of a bargain," said Wade pompously, "is the free
will and desire of both parties. You're not free."
"But
I am. You've killed one of me and captured two others. How do you know the
number of me which is still running loose, out there in the night?"
Borrow
and Jennings flickered uneasy eyes toward the smooth bare walls. The woman
shuddered, ever so faintly.
"We
needn't be clumsy about this," said Lewin. "There's the he detector,
first of all. Its value is limited, but this man is too old to have had
Synthesis training, so he can't fool it much. Then there are instruments that
make a man quite anxious to talk. I have a chlorine generator here, Naysmith.
How would you like to breathe a few whiffs of chlorine?"
"Or
just a vise—applied in the right place," snapped Jennings.
"Hold
up a minute," ordered Wade. "Let's find out how much he wants to
reveal without such persuasion."
"I
said I'd trade information, not give it away," said Nay-smith. He wished
the sweat weren't running down his face and body for all of them to see. The
reek of primitive, uncontrollable fear was sharp in his nostrils; not the fear
of death, but of the anguish and mutilation which were worse than oblivion.
"What
do you want to know?" snapped the Security
officer contemptuously.
"Well,"
said Naysmith, "first off, I'd like to know your organization's
purpose."
"What's that?" Wade's heavy face blinked
at him, and an angry flush mottled his cheeks.
"Let's not play crèche games. You know what we want."
"No, seriously, I'm puzzled."
Naysmith forced mildness into his tones. "I realize you don't like the
status quo and want to change it. But you're all well off now. What do you hope
to gain?"
"What—
That will do!" Wade gestured to the officer, and Naysmith's head rang with a buffet. "We
haven't time to listen to your bad jokes."
Naysmith
grinned viciously. If he could get them mad, play on those twisted emotions
till the unreasoning thalamus controlled them—it would be hard on him, but it
would delay their real aims. "Oh, I can guess," he said. "It's
personal, isn't it? None of you really know what's driving you to this, except
for the stupid jackals who're in with you merely
because it pays better than any work they could get on their own merits. Like
you, for instance." He glanced at the S-man and sneered deliberately.
"Shut
up!" This time the blow was to his jaw. Blood ran out of his mouth, and he sagged a little against the straps that held
him. But his voice lifted raggedly.
"Take
Miss Jennings, for one. Not that I would, even if you paid me. You're all
twisted up inside, aren't you? Too ugly to get a man, too scared of yourself to get a surgical remodeling. You're trying your
clumsy damndest to sublimate it into patriotism—and what kind of symbol is a
flagpole? I notice it was you who made that highly personal suggestion about
torturing me."
She
drew back, the rage of a whipped animal in her. The S-man took out a piece of
hose, but Wade gestured him away. The leader's face had gone wooden.
"Or Lewin—another case of psychotic frustration." Nay-smith smiled, a
close-lipped and unpleasant smile of bruised lips, at the doctor. "I
warrant you'd work for free if you hadn't been hired. A two-bit sadist has
trouble finding outlets these days.
"Now we come to Rodney
Borrow."
"Shut up!" cried the thin man. He
edged forward. Wade swept him. back with a heavy arm.
"Exogene!" Naysmith's smile grew warm, almost pitying.
"It's too bad that human exogenesis was developed during the Years of
Madness, when moral scruples went to hell and scientists were as fanatical as
everyone else. They grew you in a tank, Borrow, and your pre-natal life, which
every inherited instinct said should be warm and dark and sheltered, was one
hell of study—bright lights, probes, micro-slides taken of your 'tissues. They
learned a lot about the human fetus, but they should have killed you instead of
letting such a pathetic quivering mass of engrammed psychoses walk around
alive. If you could call it life, Exogene."
Borrow
lunged past Wade. There was slaver running from his hps, and he clawed for
Naysmith's eyes. The S-man pulled him back and suddenly he collapsed, weeping
hysterically. Naysmith shuddered beneath his skin. There but for the grace of God—
"And
how about myself?" asked Wade. "These amateur analyses are most
amusing. Please continue."
"Guilt drive. Overcompensation. The Service has investigated
your childhood and adolescent background and—"
"And?"
"Come on, Roger. It's fun. It won't hurt
a bit."
The
big man sat stiff as an iron bar. For a long moment there was
nothing, no sound except Borrow's sobs; no movement. Wade's face turned
gray.
When
he spoke, it was as if he were strangling: "I think you'd better start
that chlorine generator, Lewin."
"With pleasurel"
Naysmith
shook his head. "And you people want to run things," he murmured.
"We're supposed to turn over a world slowly recovering its sanity to the
likes of you."
The
generator begin to hiss and bubble at his back. He
could have turned his head to watch it, but that would have been a defeat. And
he needed every scrap of pride remaining in this ultimate loneliness.
"Let me run the
generator," whispered Borrow.
"No," said Lewin.
"You might kill him too fast."
"Maybe
we should wait till they bring this Lampi here," said Jennings. "Let
him watch us working Naysmith over."
Wade shook his head.
"Maybe later," he said.
"I
notice that you still haven't tried to find out what I'm willing to tell you
without compulsion," interjected Naysmith.
"Well,
go ahead," said Wade in a flat voice. "We're listening."
A
little time, just a little more time, if I can spin them a yarn—
"Etienne
Fourre has more resources than you know," declared Naysmith. "A
counter blow has been prepared which will cost you dearly. But since it would
also put quite a strain on us, we're willing to discuss—if not a permanent
compromise, for there can obviously be none, at least an armistice. That's
why—"
A
chime sounded. "Come in," said Wade loudly. His voice activated the
door and a man entered.
"Urgent
call for you, Mr. Wade," he reported. "Scrambled."
"All right." The leader got up. "Hold off on that chlorine till I get back,
Lewin." He went out.
When the door had closed behind him, Lewin
'said calmly: "Well, he didn't tell us to refrain from other things, did
her
They
took turns using the hose. Naysmith's mind grew a little hazy with pain. But
they dared not inflict real damage, and it didn't last long.
Wade
came back. He ignored Lewin, who was hastily pocketing llie truncheon, and said
curtly: "We're going on a trip. All <>l ns.
Now."
The
word had come. Naysmith sank back, breathing hard. Just ul dial instant, the
relief from pain was too great for him to think of anything else. It took him
several minutes to start worrying about whether Peter Christian's logic had
been correct, and whether the Service could fulfill its part, and even whether
the orders that came to Wade had been the right ones.
It
was late afternoon
before Bamey Rosenberg bad a chance to talk with Jeanne Donner, and then it was
she who sought him out. He had wandered from the cabin after lunch, scrambling
along the mountainside and strolling through the tall forest. But Earth gravity
tired him, and he returned in a few hours. Even then, he didn't go back to the
cabin, but found a log near the rim of the gorge and sat down to think. So this
was Earth.
It
was a cool and lovely vision which opened before him. The cliffs tumbled in a
sweep of gray and slate blue, down and down into the huge sounding canyon of
the river. On the farther side, the mountain lifted in a mist of dim purple, up
to its sUn-blazing snow and the skyey vastness beyond. There were bushes
growing on the slopes that fell river-ward, green
blurring the severe rock, here and there a cluster of fire-like berries. Behind
Rosenberg and on either side were the trees, looming pine in a cavern of
shadow, slim whispering beech, ash with the streaming,
blinding, raining sunlight snared in its leaves. He had not remembered how
much color there was on this planet.
And it was alive with sound. The trees
murmured. Mosquitoes buzzed thinly around his ears. A bird was singing-he
didn't know what kind of bird, but it had a wistful liquid trill that haunted
his thoughts. Another answered in whistles, and somewhere a third was
chattering and chirping its gossip. A squirrel darted past like a red comet,
and he heard the tiny scrabble of its claws.
And
the smells—the infinite living world of odors; pine and mould and wildflowers
and the river mist! He had almost forgotten he owned a sense of smell, in the
tanked sterility of Mars.
Oh, his muscles ached and he was lonely for
the grim bare magnificence of the deserts and he wondered how he would ever fit
into this savage world of men against men. But still—Earth was home, and a
billion years of evolution could not be denied.
Someday
Mars would be a full-grown planet and its people would be rich and free.
Rosenberg shook his head, smiling a little. Poor Martians!
There
was a light footstep behind him. He turned and saw Jeanne Donner approaching.
She had on a light blouse-and-slack outfit which didn't hide the grace of her
or the weariness, and the sun gleamed darkly in her hair. Rosenberg stood up
with a feeling of awkwardness.
"Please
sit down." Her voice was grave, somehow remote. "I'd like to join you
for a litde while, if I may."
"By all means." Rosenberg lowered himself again to the mossy trunk. It was cool and
yielding, a little damp, under his hand. Jeanne sat beside him, elbows on
knees. For a moment she was quiet, looking over the sun-flooded land. Then she
took out a pack of cigarets and held them toward the man. "Smoke?"
she asked.
"Uh—no,
thanks. I got out of the habit on Mars. Oxygen's too scarce, usually. We chew
instead, if we can afford tobacco at all."
"M-hm." She lit a cigaret for herself and drew hard on it, sucking in her
cheeks. He saw how fine the underlying bony structure was. Well—Stef had always
picked the best women, and gotten them.
"We'll
rig a bed for you," she said. "Cut some spruce boughs and put them
under a sleeping bag. Makes a good doss."
"Thanks." They sat without talking
for a while. The cigaret smoke blew away in ragged streamers. Rosenberg could
hear the wind whistling and piping far up the canyon.
"I'd
like to ask you some questions," she said at last, turning her face to
him. "If they get too personal, just say so."
"I've
nothing to hide—worse luck." He tried to smile. "Anyway, we don't
have those privacy notions on Mars. They'd be too hard to maintain under our
living conditions."
They're a recent phenomenon on Earth,
anyway," she said. "Go back to the Years of Madness, when there was
so much eccentricity of all kinds, a lot of it illegal. Oh,
hell!" She threw the cigaret to the ground and stamped it savagely
out with one heel. "I'm going to forget my own conditioning too. Ask me
anything you think is relevant. We've got to get to the truth of this
matter."
"If
we can.
I'd say it was a well-guarded secret."
"Listen,"
she said 'between her teeth. "My husband was Martin Donner. We were
married three and a half years— and I mean married. He couldn't tell me much
about his work. I knew he was really an Un-man and that
his engineering work was only a blind, and that's about all he ever told me.
Obviously, he never said a word about having— duplicates. But leaving that
aside, we were in love and we got to know each other as well as two people can
in that length of timé.
More
than just physical appearance. It was also a matter of personality, reaction-patterns, facial expressions,
word-configuration choices, manner of moving and working, the million little
things which fit into one bit pattern. An over all gestalt, understand?
"Now this man—What did you say his name was?"
"Naysmith. Robert Naysmith. At least, that's what he told me. The other fellow was
called Lampi."
"I'm
supposed to believe that Martin died and that this— Naysmith—was substituted
for him," she went on hurriedly. "They wanted to get me out of the
house fast, couldn't stop to argue with me, so they sent in this ringer. Well,
I saw him there in the house. He escaped with me and the boy. We had a long and
uneasy flight together up here—you know how strain will bring out the most
basic characteristics of a person. He stayed here overnight—" A slow flush
crept up her cheeks and she looked away. Then, defiantly, she swung back on
Rosenberg. "And he fooled me completely. Everything about him was Martin.
Everything! Oh, I suppose there were minor variations,
but they must have been very minor indeed. You can disguise a man these days,
with surgery and cosmetics and whatnot, so that he duplicates almost every
detail of physique. But can surgery give him the same funny slow way of
smiling, the same choice of phrases, the same sense of humor, the same way of
picking up his son and talking to him, the same habit of quoting Shakespeare,
and way of taking out a cigaret and lighting it one-handed, and corner-cutting
way of piloting an airboat— the same soul? Can
they do thatr
"I
don't know," whispered Rosenberg. "I shouldn't think so."
"I
wouldn't really have believed it," she said. "I'd have thought he was
trying to tell me a story for some unknown reason. Only there was that other
man with him, and except for their hair being dyed I couldn't tell them
apart—and you were along too, and seemed to accept the story," She
clutched his arm. "Is it true? Is my husband really dead?"
"I
don't know," he answered grayly. "I think they were telling the
truth, but how can I know?"
"It's
more than my own sanity," she said in a tired voice. "I've got to
know what to tell Jimmy. I can't say anything now."
Rosenberg looked at the ground. His words came
slowly and very soft: "I think your best bet is to sit tight for a while.
This is something which is big, maybe the biggest secret in the universe. And
it's either very good or very bad. I'd like to believe that it was good."
"But
what do you know of it?" She held his eyes with her own, he couldn't look
away, and her hand gripped his arm with a blind force. "What can you tell
me? What do you think?"
He
ran a thin, blue-veined hand through his grizzled hair and drew a breath.
"Well," he said, "I think there probably are a lot of these
identical Un-men. We know that there are-were—three, and I got the impression
there must be more. Why not? That Lampi was a foreigner; he had an accent; so
if they're found all-over the world—"
"Un-man." She shivered a little, sitting there in the dappled shade and sunlight.
"It's a hideous word. As if they weren't human."
"No,"*
he said gendy. "I think you're wrong there. They— well, I knew their
prototype, and he was a man."
"Their—no!" Almost, she sprang to her feet. With an
effort, she controlled herself and sat rigid. "Who was that?"
"His
name was Stefan Rostomily. He was my best friend for fifteen years."
"I—don't
know—never heard of him.'' Her tones were thick.
"You
probably wouldn't have. He was off Earth the whole time. But his name is still
a good one out on the planets. You may not know what a Rostomily valve is, but
that was his invention. He tinkered it up one week for
convenience, sold it for a good sum, and hinged that away." Rosenberg
chuckled dimly, "It made history, that binge. But the valve has meant a
lot to Martian colonists."
"Who was he?"
"He
never said much about his background. I gathered
he was a European, probably Czech or Austrian. He must have done heroic things
in the underground and guerrilla fighting during the Third War. But it kind of
spoiled him for a settled career. By the time things began to calm a little,
he'd matured in chaos and it was too late to do any serious studying. He
drifted around Earth for a while, took a hand in some of the fighting that
still went on here and there—he was with the U.N. forces that suppressed the
Great Jehad, I know. But he got sick of killing, too, as any sane man would. In
spite of his background, Mrs. Donner, he was basically one of the sanest men I
ever knew. So at last he bluffed his way onto a spaceship—didn't have a degree,
but he learned engineering in a hell of a hurry, and he was good at it. I met
him on Venus, when I was prospecting around; I may not look it, but I'm a
geologist and mineralogist. We ended up on Mars. Helped build Sandy Landing,
helped in some of the plantation development work, prospected, mapped and
surveyed and explored—we must've tried everything. He died five years ago. A cave-in. I buried him there on Mars."
The trees about them
whispered with wind.
"And
these others are—his sons?" she murmured. She was trembling a little now.
Rosenberg shook his head. "Impossible.
These men are
him. Stef in every last
feature, come alive and young again. No child could ever be that close to his
father."
"No.
No, I suppose not." <
"Stef
was a human being, through and through," said Rosenberg. "But he was
also pretty close to being a superman. Think of his handicaps: childhood gone
under the Second War and its aftermath, young manhood gone in the Third War,
poor, self-educated, uprooted. And still he was
balanced and sane, gentle except when violence was called for—then he was a
hellcat, I tell you. Men and women loved him; he had that kind of personality.
He'd picked up a dozen languages, and he read their literatures with more
appreciation and understanding than most professors. He knew music and
composed some good songs of his own—rowdy but good.
They're still being sung out on Mars. He was an artist, did some fine murals
for several buildings, painted the Martian landscape
like no camera has ever shown it, though he was good with a camera too. I've
already told you about his inventiveness, and he had clever hands that a
machine liked. His physique stood up to anything—he was almost sixty when he
died and could still match any boy of twenty. He—why go on? He was everything,
and good at everything."
"I
know," she answered.
"Martin was the same way." Her brief smile was wistful. "Believe
me, I had the devil's own time hooking him. Real competition there." After a moment she added
thoughtfully: "There must be a few such supermen walking around in every
generation. It's just a matter of a happy genetic accident, a preponderance of
favorable characteristics appearing in the same zygote, a highly intelligent
mesomorph. Some of them go down in history. Think of Michelangelo, Vespucci, Raleigh—men who worked at everything: science, politics,
war, engineering, exploration, art, literature. Others weren't interested in
prominence, or maybe they had bad luck. Like your friend."
"I
don't know what the connection is with these Un-men," said Rosenberg.
"Stef never said a word to me—but of course, he'd've been sworn to
secrecy, or it might even have been done without his knowledge. Only what was
done? Matter duplication? I don't think so. If the U.N. had matter duplication,
it wouldn't be in the fix it is now. What was done—and why?"
Jeanne
didn't answer. She was looking away now, across the ravine to the high clear
beauty of mountains beyond. It was blurred in her eyes. Suddenly she got up and
walked away.
XIII
There
was a night of stars and
streaming wind about the jet. The Moon was low, throwing a bridge of broken
light across the heaving Atlantic immensity. Once, far off, Nay-smith saw a
single meteoric streak burning upward, a rocket bound for space. Otherwise he
sat in darkness and alone.
He
had been locked into a tiny compartment in the rear of the jet. Wade and his
entourage, together with a pilot and a couple of guards, sat forward; the jet
was comfortably furnished, and they were probably catching up on their sleep.
Naysmith didn't want a nap, though the weakness of hunger and his injuries was
on him. He sat staring out of the port, listening to the mighty rush of wind
and trying to estimate where they were.
The
middle Atlantic, he guessed, perhaps fifteen degrees north latitude. If
Christian's prognosis of Besser's reactions was correct, they were bound for
the secret world headquarters of the gang, but Wade and the others hadn't told
him anything. They were over the high seas now, the great unrestful wilderness
which ran across three-fourths of the planet's turning surface, the last home
on Earth of mystery and solitude. Anything could be done out here, and when
fish had eaten the bodies who would ever be the wiser?
Naysmith's
gaze traveled to the Moon, riding cold above the sea. Up there was the dominion
over Earth. Between the space-station observatories and the rocket bases of the
Lunar Guard, there should be nothing which the forces of sanity could not
smash. The Moon had not rained death since the Third War, but the very threat
of that monstrous fist poised in the sky had done much to quell a crazed
planet. If the Service could tell the Guard where to
shoot-Only it couldn't. It never could, because this rebellion was not
the armed uprising of a nation with cities and factories
and mines. It was a virus within the body of all
humankind. You wouldn't get anywhere bombing China, except to turn four hundred
million innocent victims who had been your friends against you—because it was a
small key group in the Chinese government which was conspiring against sanity.
You
can blast a sickness from outside, with drugs and antibiotics and radiation.
But the darkness of the human mind can only be helped by a psychiatrist; the
cure must come from within itself.
If
die U.N. were ndt brought tumbling down, but slowly eaten away, mutilated and
crippled and demoralized, what would there be to shoot at? Sooner or later,
official orders would come disbanding its police and Lunar Guard. Or there were
other ways to attack those Moon bases. If they didn't have the Secret Service
to warn them, it would be no trick for an enemy to smuggle military equipment
to the Moon surface itself and blow them apart from
there.
And in the end—what? Complete and immediate collapse into the dog-eat-dog
madness which had come so close once to ruining civilization? (Man won't get another chance. We were
luckier than we deserved the last time.) Or a jerry-built world empire of oppression, the stamping out of that
keen and critical science whose early dawn-light was just beginning to show man
a new path, a thousand-year nightmare of humanity turned into an ant-hill?
There was little choice between the two.
Naysmith
sighed and shifted on the hard bare seat. They could have had the decency to
give him some clothes and a cigaret. A sandwich at the very
least. Only, of course, the idea was to break down his morale as far as
possible.
He
tried again, for the thousandth time, to evaluate the situation, but there were
too many unknowns and intangibles. It would be stupid to insist that tonight
was a crisis point in human history. It could be—then again, if this attempt of
the Brotherhood ended in failure, if the Brothers themselves were hunted down,
there might come some other chance, some compensating factor. Mightl But passive reliance on luck was ruin.
And in any case, he thought bleakly, tonight
would surely decide the fate of Robert Naysmith.
The
jet slanted downward, slowing as it wailed out of the upper air. Naysmith
leaned against the wall, gripping the edge of the port with manacled hands, and
peered below. Moonlight washed a great rippling mass of darkness,
and in the center of it something which rose like a metal cliff.
A sea station!
I
should have guessed it, thought
Naysmith wildly. His brain felt hollow and strange. The most logical place; accessible, mobile,
under the very nose of the world but hidden all the same. I imagine the Service
has considered this possibility—only how could it check all the sea stations
in existence? It isn't even known how many there are.
This
one lay amidst acres of floating weed. Probably one of the specially developed
sea plants with which it was hoped to help feed an overcrowded planet; or maybe
this place passed itself off as an experiment station working to improve the
growth. In either case, ranch or laboratory, Naysmith
was sure that its announced activities were really carried out, that there was
a complete working staff with all equipment and impeccable dossiers. The gang's
headquarters would be underneath, in the submerged bowels of the station.
An
organization like this had to parallel its enemy in most respects. Complex and world-wide—no. System-wide, if it really
included Pilgrim fanatics who wanted to take over Mars. It would have to keep
extensive records, have some kind of communications center. This is it! By Heaven, this is their brain!
The shiver of excitement faded into a hard subsurface
tingle. A dead man had no way of relaying his knowledge to Fourre.
There was a landing platform at one end of
the great floating structure. The pilot brought his jet down to a skillful
rest, cut the motors, and let silence fall. Naysmith heard the deep endless
voice of the sea, rolling and washing against the walls. He wondered how far it
was to the next humanity. Far indeed. Perhaps they
were beyond the edge of death.
The door opened and light filtered into the
compartment. "All right, Naysmith," said the guard. "Come
along."
Obediently,
the Un-man went out between his captors to stand on the platform. It was
floodlit, cutting off the view of the ocean surging twenty or thirty feet under
its rails. The station superstructure, gymbal-mounted and gyro-stabilized above
its great caissons, wouldn't roll much even in the heaviest weather. There were
two other jets standing nearby. No sign of armament, though Naysmith was sure
that missile tubes were here in abundance and that each mechanic carried a gun.
The
wind was chill on his body as he was led toward the main cabin. Wade strode
ahead of him, cloak flapping wildly in the flowing, murmuring night. To one
side, Naysmith saw Borrow's stiff white face and the sunken expressionlessness
of Lewin. Perhaps those two would be allowed to work him over.
They
entered a short hallway. At the farther end, Wade pressed his hand to a
scanner. A panel slid back in front of an elevator cage. "In,"
grunted one of the S-men.
Naysmith
stood quietly, hemmed into a corner by the wary bodies of his guards. He saw
that Borrow and Jennings were shivering with nervous tension. A little
humorless smile twisted his mouth. Whatever else happened, the Brotherhood had
certainly given the enemy a jolt.
The
elevator sighed to a halt. Naysmith was led out, down a long corridor lined
with doors. One of them stood ajar, and he saw walls covered with micro-file
cabinets. Yes, this must be their archive. A besmocked man went the other way,
carrying a computer tape. Unaided human brains were no longer enough even for
those who would overthrow society. Too big, too big.
At the end of the hall, Naysmith was ushered
into a large room. It was almost as if he were back in Wade's torture
chamber—the same bright lights, the same muffling walls, the same instruments
of inquisition. His eyes swept its breadth until they rested on the three men
who sat behind a rack of neuroanalyzers.
The Brothers could tell _ each other apart;
there were enough subtle environmental differences for that. Naysmith recognized
Lampi, who seemed undamaged except for a black eye; he must have been taken
directly here on orders. There was also Carlos Martinez of Guatemala, whom he
had met before, and a third
man whom he didn't recognize but who was probably South American.
They
smiled at him, and he smiled back. Four pairs of blue eyes looked out of the
same lean muscular faces, four blond heads nodded, four brains flashed the same
intangible message: You
too, my Brother? Now we must endure.
Naysmith
was strapped in beside Martinez. He listened to Wade, speaking to Lucientes who had been suspected of
being the Argentine sector chief of the rebels: "Besser hasn't come
yet?"
"No, he is on the way.
He should be here very soon."
Besser
is the real head, then, the organizing brain—and he is on his way! The four Brothers held themselves rigid, four
identical faces staring uncannily ahead, not daring to move or exchange a
glance. Besser
is coming!
Wade
took a restless turn about the room. "It's a weird business," he
said thinly. "I'm not sure
I like the idea of having all four together—in this very place."
"What
can they do?" shrugged Lucientes. "My men captured Villareal here in
Buenos Aires yesterday. He had been
an artist, supposedly, and dropped out of sight when word first came about a fugitive Un-man answering
that description. But he made a childish
attempt to get back to his apartment and was arrested without difficulty.
Martinez was obtained in Panama City with equal ease. If they are that
incompetent—"
"But they aren't! They're anything
but!" Wade glared at the prisoners.-"This was done on purpose, I tell
you. Why?"
"I
already said—" Naysmith and Villareal spoke almost simultaneously. They
stopped, and the Argentine grinned and closed his mouth. "I told
you," Naysmith finished. "We wanted to bargain. There was no other
quick and expedient way of making the sort
of contact we needed."
"Were
four of you needed?" snapped Wade. Tour valuable men?"
"Perhaps
not so valuable," said Lewin quietly. "Not if there are any number of them still at large."
"They are not supernatural!"
protested Lucientes.
"They are flesh and
blood. They can feel pain, and cannot break handcuffs. I know! Nor are they
telepaths or anything equally absurd. They are—" His voice faltered.
"Yes?" challenged
Wade. "They are what?"
Naysmith drew into himself. There was a
moment of utter stillness. Only the heavy breathing of the captors, the captors
half terrified by an unknown, and all the more vicious and deadly because of
that, had voice.
The real reason was simple, thought
Naysmith—so simple that it defeated those tortuous minds. It had seemed reasonable,
and Christian's logic had confirmed the high probability, that one man
identical with the agent who had been killed would be unsettling enough, and
that four of them, from four different countries, would imply something so
enormous that the chief conspirator would want them all together in his own
strongest and most secret place, that he himself would want to be there at the
questioning.
Only what happened next?
"They aren't human!" Borrow's voice
was shrill and wavering. "They can't be. Not four or five or a thousand
identical men. The U.N. has its own laboratories. Fourre could easily have had
secret projects carried out."
"So?" Lewin's
eyes blinked sardonically at the white face.
"So
they're robots—androids—synthetic life—whatever you want to call it. Test-tube monsters!"
Lewin shook his head, grimly. "That's
too big a stride forward," he said. "No human science will be able to
do that for centuries to come. You don't appreciate the complexity of a living
human being—and our best efforts haven't yet synthesized even one functioning
cell. I admit these fellows have something—superhuman—about them. They've done
incredible things. But they can't be robots. It isn't humanly possible."
"Humanly!" screamed Borrow. "Is man the only
scientific race in the universe? How about creatures from the stars? Who's the
real power behind the U.N?"
"That
will do," snapped Wade. "Well find out pretty soon." His look
fastened harsh on Naysmith. "Let's forget this stupid talk of bargaining.
There can be no compromise until one or the other party is done for."
That's
right. The same thought
quivered in four living brains.
"I—"Wade
stopped and swung toward the door. It opened for two men who entered.
One was Arnold Besser. He was a small man,
fine-boned, dark-haired, still graceful at seventy
years of age. There was a flame in him that burned past the drab plainness of
his features, the eerie light of fanaticism deep within his narrow skull. He
nodded curtly to the greetings and stepped briskly forward. His attendant came
after, a big and powerful man in chauffeur's uniform, cat-quiet, his face
rugged and expressionless.
Only—only—Naysmith's
heart leaped wildly within him. He looked away from the chauffeur-guard, up
into the eyes of Arnold Besser.
"Now, then." The chief stood before his prisoners, hands on hips, staring
impersonally at them but with a faint shiver running beneath his pale skin.
"I want to know you people's real motive in giving yourselves up. I've
studied your 'vised dossiers, such as they are, on the way here, so you needn't
repeat the obvious. I want to know everything else."
'The
quality of mercy is not strained.' " murmured
Lampi. Naysmith's mind continued the lovely words. He needed their comfort, for
here was death.
"The
issues are too large and urgent for sparring," said Besser. There was a
chill in his voice as he turned to Lewin. "We have four of them here, and
presumably each of them knows what the others know. So we can try four
different approaches. Suggestions?"
"Lobotomy on one," answered the
physician promptly. "We can remove that explosive detonator at the same
time, of course. But it will take a few days before he can be questioned, even
under the best conditions, and perhaps there has been some precaution taken so
that the subject will die. We can try physical methods immediately on two of
them, in the presence of each other. We had better save a fourth—just in
case."
"Very well." Besser's gaze went a white-jacketed man behind the prisoners. "You
are the surgeon here. Take one away and get to work on his brain."
The
doctor nodded and began to wheel Martinez' chair out of the room. Lewin started
a chlorine generator. The chauffeur-guard leaned against a table, watching with
flat blank eyes.
The end?
Goodnight, then, world, sun and moon and wind in the heavens. Goodnight, Jeanne.
A siren hooted. It shrilled up and down a
saw-edged scale, ringing in metal and glass and human bones. Besser whirled
toward a communicator. Wade stood heavy and paralyzed. Jennings screamed.
The
room shivered, and they heard the dull crumping of an explosion. The door
opened and a man stumbled in, shouting something. His words drowned in the
rising whistle and bellow of rocket missiles.
Suddenly
there was a magnum gun in the chauffeur's hand. It spewed a rain of slugs as he
crouched, swinging it around the chamber. Naysmith saw Besser's head explode.
Two of the guards had guns halfway out when the chauffeur cut them down.
The
communicator chattered up on the wall, screaming something hysterical about an
air attack. The chauffeur was already across to the door switch. He closed and
locked the barrier, jumped over Wade's body, and grabbed for a surgical saw.
It bit at the straps holding Naysmith, drawing a little blood. Lampi, Martinez,
and Villareal were whooping aloud.
The chauffeur spoke in rapid Brazilo-Portuguese:
"111 get you free. Then take some weapons and be ready to fight. They may
attack us in here, I don't know. But there will be paratroops landing as soon
as our air strength has reduced their defenses. We should be able to hold out till
then."
It had worked. The incredible, desperate,
precarious plan had worked. Besser, in alarm and uncertainty, had gone
personally to his secret headquarters. He had been piloted by his trusted
gunman as usual. Only—Fourre's office would long have known about that pilot,
studied him, prepared a surgically disguised
duplicate from a Brazilian Un-man and held this agent in reserve. When
Christian's message came, the chauffeur had been taken care of and the Un-man
had replaced him—and been able to slip a radio tracer into Besser's jet—a
tracer which the Rio-based U.N. police had followed.
And now they had the base!
Naysmith
flung himself out of the chair and snatched a gun off
the floor. He exchanged a glance with his rescuer, a brief
warm glance of kinship and comradeship and belonging-ness. Even under the
disguise and the carefully learned mannerisms, there had been something
intangible which he had known—or was it only the fact that the deliverer had
moved with such swift and certain decision?
"Yes,"
said the Brazilian unnecessarily. "I too am a Brother."
XIV
There
was one morning when
Naysmith came out of his tent and walked down to the sea. This was in Northwest
National Park, the new preserve which included a good stretch of Oregon's
coast. He had come for rest and solitude, to do some thinking which seemed to
lead nowhere, and had stayed longer than he intended. There was peace here, in
the great rocky stretch of land, the sandy nooks between, the loneliness of
ocean, and the forest and mountains behind. Not many people were in the park
now, and he had pitched his tent remote from the camping grounds anyway.
It
was over. The job was finished. With the records of Besser's headquarters for
clues and proof, Fourre had been in a position to expose the whole conspiracy.
Nobody had cared much about the technical illegality of his raid. Several
governments fell—the Chinese had a spectacularly bloody end—and were replaced
with men closer to sanity. Agents had been weeded out of every regime. In
America, Hessling was in jail and there was talk of disbanding Security altogether.
The U.N. had a renewed prestige and power, a firmer allegiance from the peoples
of the world. Happy ending?
No.
Because it was a job which never really ended. The
enemy was old and strong and crafty, it took a million forms and it could never
quite be slain. For it was man himself—the madness and
sorrow of the human soul, the revolt of a primitive animal against the
unnatural state called civilization and freedom. Somebody would try again. His
methods would be different, he might not have the same avowed goal, but he
would be the enemy and the watchers would have to break him. And who shall watch the watchmen?
Security was a meaningless
dream. There was no stability
except in death. Peace and happiness were not a
reward to be earned, but a state to be maintained with toil and grief.
Naysmith's
thinking at the moment concerned personal matters. But there didn't seem to be
any answer except the one gray command: Endure.
He
crossed the beach, slipping on rocks and swearing at the chill damp wind. His
plunge into the water was an icy shock which only faded with violent swimming.
But when he came out, he was tingling with wakefulness.
Romeo,
he thought, toweling
himself vigorously, was
an ass. Psychological troubles are no excuse for losing your appetite. In fact,
they should heighten the old reliable pleasures. Mercutio was the real hero of
that play.
He
picked his way toward the tent, thinking of bacon and eggs. As he mounted the
steep, rocky bank, he paused, scowling. A small airboat had landed next to his own. Damn! I don't feel like being polite to anybody. But when he saw the figure which stood beside
it, he broke into a run.
Jeanne
Donner waited for him, gravely as a child. When he stood before her, she met
his gaze steadily, mute, and it was he who looked away.
"How
did you find me?" he whispered at last. He thought the fury of his
heartbeat must soon break his ribs. "I dropped out of sight pretty
thoroughly."
"It
wasn't easy," she answered, smiling a little. "After the U.N. pilot
took us back to the States, I pestered the life out of everyone concerned.
Finally one of them forgot privacy laws and told me—I suppose on the theory
that you would take care of the nuisance. I've been landing at every isolated
spot in the park for the last two days. I knew you'd want to be alone."
"Rosenberg— P"
"He
agreed to accept hypno-conditioning for a nice payment—since he was sure he'd
never learn the secret anyway. Now he's forgotten that there ever was another
Stefan Rostomily. I refused, of course."
"Well—"
His voice trailed off. Finally he looked at her again and said harshly:
"Yes, I've played a filthy trick on you. The whole Service has, I guess.
Only it's a secret which men have been killed for learning."
She
smiled again, looking up at him with a biting challenge in her eyes. "Go
ahead," she invited. .
His
hands dropped. "No. You've got a right to know this. I should never have—oh, well, skip it. We aren't complete fanatics. An
organization which drew the line nowhere in reaching its aims wouldn't be worth
having around."
"Thank you," she
breathed.
"Nothing to thank me for. You've probably guessed the basis of the
secret already, if you know who Rostomily was."
"And what he was. Yes,
I think I know. But tell me."
"They
needed a lot of agents for the Service—agents who could meet specifications.
Somebody got acquainted with Rostomily while he was still on Earth. He himself
wasn't trained, or interested in doing such work, but his heredity was
wanted—the pattern of genes and chromosomes. Fourre had organized his secret
research laboratories. That wasn't hard to do, in the Years of Madness.
Exogenesis of a fertilized ovum was already an accomplished fact. It was only
one step further to take a few complete cells from Rostomily and use them as—as
a chromosome source for undifferentiated human tissue. Proteins are
autocatalytic, you know, and a gene is nothing but a set of giant protein
molecules.
"We
Brothers, all of us, we're completely human. Except that our hereditary pattern
is derived entirely from one person instead of from two and, therefore,
duplicates its prototype exactly. There are thousands of us by now, scattered
around the Solar System. I'm one of the oldest. There are younger ones coming
up to carry on."
"Exogenesis—" She
couldn't repress a slight shudder.
"It
has a bad name, yes. But that was only because of the known experiments which
were performed, with their prenatal probing. Naturally that would produce
psychotics. Our artificial wombs are safer and more serene
even than the natural kind."
She nodded then, the dark wings of her hair
falling past the ivory planes of her cheeks. "I understand. I see how it
must be—you can tell me the details later. And I see why. Fourre needed
supermen. The world was too chaotic and violent—it still is—for anything less
than a brotherhood of supermen."
^Oh-look
now!"
"No,
I mean it. You aren't the entire Service, or even a majority of it. But you're
the crack agents, the sword-hand." Suddenly she smiled, lighting up the
whole universe, and gripped his arm. Her fingers were cool and slender against
his flesh. "And how wonderful it is! Remember King Henry the Fifth?"
The words whispered from
him:
"And Crispin Crispían shall néer
go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered,
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers—"
After
a long moment, he added wryly: "But we can't look for fame. Not for a long
time yet. The first requirement of a secret agent is secrecy, and if it were
known that our kind exists half our usefulness would
be gone."
"Oh,
yes. I understand." She stood quiet for a while. The wind blew her dress
and hair about her, fluttering them against the great clean expanse of sea and
forest and sky.
"What are you going to
do now?" she asked.
"I'm
not sure. Naturally, we'll have to kill the story of a wanted murderer
answering our description. That won't be hard. We'll announce his death
resisting arrest, and after that—well, people forget. In a year or two the
memory will be gone. But of course several of us, myself included, will need
new identities, have to move to new homes. I've been thinking of New
Zealand."
"And
it will go on. Your work will go on. Aren't you ever lonely?"
He nodded, then
tried to grin. "But let's not go on a crying jag. Come on and have
breakfast with me. I'm a hel-luwa good egg frier."
?No,
wait." She drew him back and made him face her. "Tell me—I want
the'truth now. You said, the last time, that you loved me. Was that true?"
"Yes," he said steadily. "But
it doesn't matter. I was unusually vulnerable. I'd always been the cat who
walks by himself, more so even than most of my Brothers. Ill get
over it."
"Maybe I don't want
you to get over it," she said.
He
stood without motion for a thunderous century. A sea gull went crying overhead.
"You
are Martin," she told him. "You aren't the same, not quite, but
you're still Martin with another past. And Jimmy needs a father, and I need
you."
He couldn't find words, but they weren't
called for anyway.
MARGIN OF PROFIT
MARGIN OF PROFIT
by Poul Anderson
It
was an anachronism to
have a human receptionist in this hall of lucent plastic, among the machines
that winked and talked between jade columns soaring up into vaulted dimness—but
a remarkably pleasant one when she was as long-legged and red-headed a
stun-blast as the girl behind the desk. Captain Torres drew to a crisp halt,
and a gauntleted hand went to his gilt helmet. Traveling down sumptuous curves,
his eye was jarred by the small needier at her waist.
"Good
day, sir," she smiled. "One moment, please, I'll see if Freeman van Rijn is ready for
you." She switched on the intercom and a three-megavolt oath bounced out.
"No, he's still conferring on the vid. Won't you be seated?"
Before
she turned it off, Torres caught a few words: "...
By damn, he'll give us the exclusive franchise or do without our
business. Who do these little emperors think they are? All right, so he has a
million soldiers under arms. You can tell him to take those soldiers, with
field artillery and hobnailed boots, by damn, and—" Click.
Torres
wrapped his cape about the deep-blue tunic and sat down, laying one polished
boot across the other knee of his white culottes. He felt out of his depth,
simultaneously overdressed and naked. The regalia of a Lodgemaster in the
Federated Brotherhood of Spacemen was stiff with gold
braid, medals, and jewelry, far removed from the gray coverall he wore on deck
or the loungers of planet leave. Worse, the guards in the tower entrance, a
kilometer below, had not only checked his credentials and retinal patterns, but
had unloaded his sidearm.
Blast
Nicholas van Rijn and the whole Polesotechnic League! Good saints, drop him on
Pluto without his underwear!
Of course, a merchant prince did have to be
wary of assassins—and most of them went to great lengths to avoid formal duels,
though Van Rijn himself was supposed to be murderously fast with a handgun.
Nevertheless, arming your receptionist was not a high-bom thing to do-Torres
wondered, rather wistfully, if she was one of the old devil's mistresses.
Perhaps not; but with the trouble between the Company—no, the whole League—and
the Brotherhood, she'd have no time for him, being doubdess bound by a contract
of personal fealty. His gaze went to the League emblem on the wall, a golden
sunburst afire with opals, surrounding an ancient-style rocketship of the
Caravel model, and the motto: AH the traffic will bear. That could be taken two ways, he reflected sourly. Beneath it was the
trademark of Van Rijn's own outfit, the Solar Spice & Liquors Company.
The girl turned on the intercom again and
heard the vido-phone being switched off; there followed a steady rumble of
obscenities. "Go on in now, sir," she said, and into the speaker:
"Captain Rafael Torres, representing the Brotherhood."
The
spaceman straightened himself and went through the
inner door. His lean dark face clamped into careful lines. It would be a new
experience, meeting his ultimate boss; for ten yea'rs, as
captain of a ship and Lodgemaster of the union local, he had not called
anyone "sir."
The office was big, with an entire side
transparent, overlooking a precipitous vista of Batavia's towers, green landscape,
hot with tropical gardens, and the molten glitter of the Java Sea. The other
walls were lined with the biggest referobot Torres had ever seen, with shelves
of extraterrestrial curios, and—astonishingly—a thousand or more old-type
folio books, exquisitely bound in tooled leather and looking well-worn. The
room and the desk were littered, close to maximum entropy, and the ventilators
could not quite dismiss a tobacco haze. The most noticeable object on the desk
was a small image of St. Dismas, carved from sandroot in the
Martian style. The precise and perfect patron for Nicholas
van Rijn, thought Torres.
He
clicked his heels and bowed till the helmet plume swept his nose.
"Lodgemaster-Captain Torres speaking for the Brotherhood, sir."
Van
Rijn grunted. He was a huge man, two meters high, and the triple chin and swag
belly did not make him appear soft. Rings glittered on the hairy hands and
bracelets on the thick wrists, under snuff-soiled lace. Small gray eyes, set
close to the great hook nose under a sloping forehead, blinked at the spaceman.
He went back to filling his churchwarden, and said nothing until he had a good
head of steam up.
"So,
by damn," he muttered then. "You speak for the whole louse-bound
union, I hope." The long handlebar mustaches and goatee waggled over a
gorgeously embroidered waistcoat. Beneath it was only a sarong, columnar legs
and bare splay feet.
Torres
checked his temper. "Yes, sir. For
all the locals in the Solar Federation, and every other lodge within ten
light-years. We understood that you would represent the League."
"Only tentatively. I will convey your demands to my colleagues, such of them as I can drag
out of their offices and harems. Sit."
Torres
did not give the chair an opportunity to mold itself to him; he sat on the edge
and said harshly: "It's simple enough, sir. You already know our decision.
We aren't calling a real strike . . . yet. We just refuse to take any more
ships through the Kossaluth of Borthu till the menace there has been stopped.
If you insist that we do so, we will strike."
"By
damn, you cut your own throats," replied Van Rijn with surprising
mildness. "Not alone the loss of pay and commissions. No, but if Antares
is not kept steady supplied, she loses taste maybe for cinnamon and London dry
gin. Not to speak of products offered by other companies. Like
if Jo-Boy Technical Services bring in no more indentured scientists, Antares builds
her own academies. Hell and lawyersl In a few
years, no more market at Antares and all fifteen planets. You lose, I lose, we all lose."
"The
answer is simple enough, sir. We just detour around the Kossaluth. I 'know
that'll take us through more hazardous regions, we'll have more wrecks, but the
brothers don't mind that risk."
"What?"
Somehow, Van Rijn managed a basso scream. "Pest and
cannon balls! Double the length of the voyage! Double the fuel bills,
salaries, ship and cargo losses . . . halve the deliveries per year! We are
ruined! Better we give up Antares at once!"
It
was already an expensive route, Torres knew; whether or not the companies could
actually afford the extra cost, he didn't know, for by the standard treaty
which Sol had also signed, the League's books were its own secret. He waited
out the dramatics, then said patiendy:
"The Borthudian press gangs have been
operating for two years now, sir. We've tried to fight them, and can't. We
didn't make this decision overnight; if it had been up to the brothers at
large, we'd have voted right at the start not to go through that hellhole. But
the Lodgemasters held back, hoping something could be worked out. Apparently
it can't."
"See
here," growled van Rijn. "I don't like this losing of men and ships
any better than you. Worse, maybe. A million credits a
year or more it costs this company alone. But we can afford it. Only fifteen
per cent of our ships are captured,. We would lose
more, detouring through the Gamma Mist or the Stonefields. Crewfolk should be
men, not jellyfish."
"Easy enough for you to say!"
snapped Torres. "We'll face meteors and dust clouds, rogue planets and
hostile natives, warped space and hard radiation . . . but I've seen one of those pressed men. That's what decided me. I'm not going to risk
it happening to me, and neither is anyone else."
"Ah, so?" Van Rijn leaned over the desk. "By damn, you tell me."
"Met
him on Arkan III, ■
autonomous planet on the
fringe of the Kossaluth, where we put in to deliver some tea. One of their
ships was in, too, and you can bet your brain we went around in armed parties
and were ready to shoot anyone who even looked like a crimp. I saw him, this
man they'd kidnaped, going on some errand, spoke to him, we even tried to
snatch him back so we could bring him to Earth for deconditioning— He fought us
and got away. Godl He wasn't human any more, not inside. And still you could
tell he wanted out, he wanted to break the conditioning, and he couldn't, and he
couldn't go crazy either—"
Torres
grew aware that Van Rijn was thrusting a full goblet into his hand.
"Here, you drink this." It bumed all the way down. "I have seen
conditioned men. I was a rough-and-tumbler myself in younger days." Tha. merchant went back behind his
desk and rekindled his pipe. "It is a fiendish thing to do, ja."
"If
you want to outfit a punitive expedition, sir," said Torres savagely,
"I guarantee you can get full crews."
"No." The curled, shoulder-length black locks swished
greasily as Van Rijn shook his head. "The League does not
have many capital ships. It is unprofitable. The cost of a war
with Borthu would wipe out ten years' gains. And then we
will have trouble with the milksop governments of a hundred
planets. No." /
"Isn't there some kind of pressure you can
put on the Kos-salu himself?"
"Hah! You think maybe we have not tried?
Economic sanctions do not work; they are not interested in trade outside their
own empire. Threats they laugh at. They know that they have more navy than we
will ever build. Assassins never get close to the big potatoes." Van Rijn
cursed for two straight minutes without repeating himself. "And there they
sit, fat and greedy-gut, across the route to Antares and all stars beyondl It
is not to be stood!"
He had been prowling the floor; now he
whirled about with surprising speed for so large and clumsy a man. "This
strike of yours brings it to a head. And speaking of heads, it is getting time
for a tall cold beer. I shall have to confer with my fellows. Tell your men
there will be steps taken if it is financially possible. Now get out!"
It is a truism that the structure of a
society is basically determined by its technology. Not in an absolute
sense—there may
be totally different cultures using identical tools—but the tools settle the
possibilities: you can't have interstellar trade without spaceships. A race
limited to one planet, possessing a high knowledge of mechanics but with all
its basic machines of commerce and war requiring a large capital investment,
will inevitably tend toward collectivism under one name or another. Free
enterprise needs elbow room.
Automation
made manufacturing cheap, and the cost of energy nose-dived when the proton
converter was invented. Gravity control and the hyperdrive opened a galaxy to
exploitation. They also provided a safety valve: a citizen who found his
government oppressive could usually emigrate elsewhere, which strengthened the
libertarian planets; their influence in turn loosened the bonds of the older
world.
Interstellar
distances being what they are, and intelligent races all having their own ideas
of culture, there was no union of planetary systems. Neither was there much
war: too destructive, with small chance for either side to escape ruin, and
there was little to fight about. A race doesn't get to be intelligent without
an undue share of built-in ruthlessness, so all was not sweetness and
brotherhood—but the balance of power remained fairly stable. And there was a
brisk demand for trade goods. Not only did colonies, want the luxuries of home,
and the home planets want colonial produce, but the/old worlds had much to
swap.
Under
such conditions, an exuberant capitalism was bound to strike root. It was also
bound to find mutual interest, to form alliances and settle spheres of
influence. The powerful companies joined together to squeeze out competitors,
jack up prices, and generally make the best of a good thing. Governments were
limited to a few planetary systems at most; they could do little to control
their cosmopolitan merchants. One by one, through bribery, coercion, or sheer
despair, they gave up the struggle.
Selfishness
is a potent force. Governments, officially dedicated to altruism, remained
divided; the Polesotechnic League became a super-government, sprawling from
Cano-pus to Polaris, drawing its membership from a thousand species. It was a
horizontal society, cutting across all political and cultural boundaries. It
set its own policies, made its own treaties, established its own bases, fought
its own minor wars^and, in the course of milking the Milky Way, did more to
spread a truly universal civilization and enforce a lasting Pax than all the diplomats in the galaxy. But it had its own troubles.
One of Nicholas van Rijn's mansions lay on
the peak of Kilimanjaro, up among the undying snows. It was an easy spot to
defend, and a favorite for conferences.
His
gravcar slanted down through a night of needle-sharp stars, toward the high
turrets and glowing lanterns. Looking through the roof, he picked out the cold
sprawl of Scorpio. Antares flashed a red promise, and
he shook his fist at the suns between. "So! Monkey business with Van Rijn,
by damn., The whole Sagittarius clusters waiting to be
opened, and you in the way. This will cost you money, my friends, gut and
kipper me if it don't."
He
thought back to days when he had ridden a bucketing ruin of a ship through the
great hollow spaces, bargaining under green skies, and
in poisonous winds for jewels Earth had never seen before, and a moment's
wistfulness tugged at him. A long time now since he had been any farther than
the Moon . . . poor old fat man, chained to one miserable planet and unable to
turn an honest credit. The Antares route was more important than he dared
admit; if he lost it, he lost his chance at the Sagittarian developments to
corporations with offices on the other side of the Kossaluth. In today's
pitiless competition, you either went on expanding or you went under. And he
had made too many enemies, they were waiting for the
day of his weakness.
The car landed itself,
and the guards jumped out to flank him. He wheezed the thin chill air into
sooty lungs, drew his cloak of phosphorescent onthar skin tightly about him,
and scrunched across frosty paving to the house. There was a new maid at the
door, pretty little baggage . . . Venusian-French, was she? He tossed his
plumed hat at her as the buder said the Freemen were already here. He sat down
and told the chair
"Conference Room" and went along corridors darkly paneled in the wood
of a hundred planets.
There
were four colleagues around the table when he entered. Kraaknach of the
Martian Transport Company was glowing his yellow eyes
at a Frans Hals on the wall. Firmage of North American Engineering puffed an
impatient cigar. Mjambo, who owned Jo-Boy Technical Services—which supplied
indentured labor to colonial planets—was talking into his wristphone.
Gornas-Kiew happened to be on Earth and was authorized to speak for the
Centaurians; he sat quietly waiting, hunched into his shell, only the delicate antennae
moving.
Van
Rijn plumped himself into the armchair at the head of
the table. Waiters appeared with trays of drinks, smokes, and snacks. He took a
large bite from a ham sandwich and looked inquiringly at the others.
Kraaknach's
owl-face turned to him. "Well, Freeman host, I understand we are met on
account of this Borthudian brokna. Did
the spacemen make their ultimatum?"
"Ja." Van
Rijn picked up a cigar and rolled it between his fingers. "It grows
serious. They will not take ships through the Kossaluth, except to get revenge,
while this shanghai business goes on."
"So,
why not blast the Borthudian home planet?" asked Mjambo.
"Death and damnation!" Van Rijn tugged at his goatee. "I had a
little computation run off today. Assuming we lost no ships—and Borthu has good
defenses—but allowing for salaries, risk bonus, fuel, ammunition, maintenance,
depreciation, estimated loss due to lack of protection elsewhere, lawsuits by
governments afraid the Kossaluth may strike back, bribes, and loss of profits
to be had if the cost were invested peaceably—the bill for that little
operation would come to about thirty trillion credits. In a nutshell, we cannot
afford it. Simmons, a bowl of Brazils!"
"You will pardon my ignorance, good
sirs," clicked Gomas-Kiew's artificial vocalizer. "My main interests
lie elsewhere, and I have been only marginally aware of this trouble. Why are the Borthudians
impressing
our men?"
Van
Rijn cracked a nut between his teeth and reached for a glass of brandy.
"The gruntbrains have not enough of their own," he replied shortly.
"Perhaps
I can make it clear," said Kraaknach. Like most Martians of the Sirruch
Horde, he had a mind orderly to the point of boredom. He ran a clawlike hand
through his gray feathers and lit a rinn-tube. "Borthu is a backward
planet . . . terrestroid to eight points, with humanoid natives. They were in
the early stage of nuclear energy when explorers visited them seventy-eight
years ago, and their reaction to the presence of a superior culture was
paranoid. They soon learned how to make modern engines of all types, and then
set out to conquer themselves an empire. They now hold a volume of space about
forty light-years across, though they only occupy a few Soltype systems within
it. They want nothing to do with the outside universe, and are quite able to
supply all their needs within their own boundaries—with the one exception of
efficient spacemen."
"Hm-m-m,"
said Firmage. "Their commoners might see things differently, if we could
get a few trading ships in there. I've already suggested we use subversive
agents—get the Kossalu and his whole bloody government overthrown from
within."
"Of course, of course," said Van
Rijn. "But that takes more time than we have got, unless we want Spica and
Canopus to sew up the Sagittarius frontier while we are stopped dead
here."
"To continue," said Kraaknach,
"the Borthudians can produce as many spaceships as they want, which is a
great many since their economy is expanding. In fact, its structure-capitalism
not unlike ours—requires constant expansion if the whole society is not to
collapse. But they cannot produce trained crews fast enough. Pride, and a not
unjustified fear of our gradually taking them over, will not let them send
students to us any more, or hire from us, and they have only one understaffed
academy of their own."
"I
know," said Mjambo. "It'd be a hell of a good market for indentures
if we could change their minds for them."
"Accordingly,
they have in the past two years taken to waylaying our ships—in defiance of us
and of all interstellar law. They capture the men, hypnocondition them, and assign
them to their own merchant fleet. It takes two years to train a spaceman; we
are losing an important asset in this alone."
"Can't
we improve our evasive action?" wondered Firmage. "Interstellar space
is so big. Why can't we avoid their patrols
altogether?"
"Eighty-five percent of our ships do
precisely that," Van Rijn told him. "But the hyperdrive vibrations
can be detected a light-year away if you have sensitive instruments—
pseudogravitational pulses of infinite velocity. Then they close in, using
naval vessels, which are faster and more maneuverable than merchantmen. It will
not be possible to cut our losses much by evasion tactics. Satan and small poxl
You think maybe I have not considered it?"
"Well, then, how about
convoying our ships through?"
"At what cost? I have been with the
figures. It would mean operating the Antares run at a loss—quite apart from all
the extra naval units we would have to build."
"Then
how about our arming our merchantmen?"
"Bah!
A frigate-class ship needs twenty men for all the guns and instruments. A
merchant ship needs only four. Consider the salaries paid to spacemen. And
sixteen extra men on every ship would mean cutting down all our operations
elsewhere, for lack of crews. Same pestiferous result: we cannot afford it, we would lose money in big fat gobs. What is worse, the
Kossalu knows we would. He needs only wait, holding back his fig-plucking
patrols, till we were too broke to continue. Then he would be able to start
conquering systems like Antares."
Firmage
tapped the inlaid table with a restless finger. "Bribery, assassination,
war, political and economic pressure, all seem to be ruled out," he said.
"The meeting is now open to suggestions."
There was a silence, under
the radiant ceiling.
Gomas-Kiew broke it: "Just how is this
shanghaiing done? It is impossible to exchange shots while in hyperdrive."
"Well,
good sir, statistically impossible," amended Kraak-nach. "The shells
have to be hypered themselves, of course, or they would revert to sublight
velocity and be left behind as soon as they emerged from the drive field.
Furthermore, to make a hit, they would have to be precisely in phase with the
target. A good pilot can phase in on another ship, but the operation is too
complex, it involves too many factors, for any artificial brain of useful
size."
"I
tell you how," snarled Van Rijn. "The pest-bedamned Borthudian ships
detect the vibration-wake from afar. They compute the target course and
intercept. Coming close, they phase in and slap on a tractor beam. Then they
haul themselves up alongside, bum through the hull or the air lock, and board.
"Why,
the answer looks simple enough," said Mjambo. "Equip our boats with
pressor beams. Keep the enemy ships at arm's length."
"You
forget, esteemed colleague, that beams of either positive or negative sign are
powered from the engines," said Kraaknach. "And a naval ship has
larger engines than a merchantman."
"Well,
then, why not arm our crews? Give 'em heavy blasters and let 'em blow the
boarding parties to hell."
"The
illegitimate-offspring-of-interspecies-crosses Borthu-dians have just such
weapons already," snorted Van Rijn. "Sulfur and acidl Do you think
that four men can stand off twenty?"
"Mm-m-m . . . yes, I see your
point," agreed Firmage. "But look here, we can't do anything about
this without laying out some cash.
I'm not sure offhand what our margin of profit is—"
"On
the average, for all our combined Antarean voyages, about thirty per cent on
each voyage," said Van Rijn promptly.
Mjambo started. "How the devil do you
get the figures for my company?"
Van Rijn grinned and drew on his cigar.
"That gives us a margin to use,"
said Gomas-Kiew. "We can invest in fighting equipment to such an extent
that our profit is less—though I agree that there must still be a final result
in the black—for the duration of the emergency."
"fa," said Van Rijn, "only I have just told you we
have not the men available to handle such fighting equipment."
"It'd
be worth it," said Mjambo viciously. "I'd take a fair-sized loss just
to teach them a lesson."
"No,
no." Van Rijn lifted a hand which, after forty years of offices, was still
the broad muscular paw of a working spaceman. "Revenge and destruction are
un-Christian thoughts. Also, they will not pay very well, since it is hard to
sell anything to a corpse. The problem is to find some means within our
resources which will make it unprofitable for
Borthu to raid us. Not being stupid heads, they will then stop raiding and we
can maybe later do business."
"You're a cold-blooded
one," said Firmage.
Van
Rijn drooped his eyes and covered a shiver by pouring himself
another glass. He had suddenly had an idea.
He
let the others argue for a fruitless hour, then said:
"Freemen, this gets us nowhere, nie? Perhaps
we are not stimulated enough to think clear."
"What would you
suggest?" asked Mjambo wearily.
"Oh ... an agreement. A pool, or prize, or reward for whoever
solves this problem. For example, ten per cent of all the others' Antarean
profits for the next ten years."
"Hoy
there!" cried Firmage. "If I know you, you robber, you've just come
up with the answer."
"Oh, no, no, no. By good St. Dismas I swear it. I have some beginning thoughts, maybe,
but I am only a poor rough old space walloper without the fine education all
you Freemen had. I could so easy be wrong."
"What is your
idea?"
"Best
I not say just yet, until it is more clear in my thick
head. But please to note, he who tries solving this problem takes on all the risk, and it may well be some small expense. Also, without
his solution nobody has any more profits. Does not a little return on his
investment sound fair and proper?"
There was more argument. Van Rijn smiled with
infinite benevolence.
He
was satisfied with an agreement in principle, sworn to by mercantile honor, the
details to be computed later.
Beaming,
he clapped his hands. "Freemen, we have worked hard tonight and soon comes
much harder work. By damn, I think we deserve a little celebration. Simmons,
prepare an orgy."
Captain Torres was shocked. "Are you
seriously asking us to risk that?"
Van Rijn stared out through the office wall.
"In all secrecy," he answered. "I must have a crew I can
trust." "But-"
"We will not be stingy
with the bonuses."
Torres
shook his head. "Sir, I'm afraid it's impossible. The Brotherhood has
voted absolute refusal of any trips into the Kossaluth except punitive expeditions—which
this one is not. Under the constitution, we can't change that policy without
another vote, which would have to be a public matter."
"It
can be publicly voted on after we see if it works," urged Van Rijn.
"The first trip will have to be secret."
"Then the first trip
will have to do without a crew."
"Rot
and pestilence!" Van Rijn's fist crashed down on the desk and he surged to
his feet. "What sort of cowards do I deal with? In my day we were men! We
would have sailed through Hell's open gates if you paid us enough!"
Torres sucked hard on his cigarette.
"I'm stuck with the rules, sir," he declared. "Only a
Lodgemaster can . . . well, all right, let me say itl" His temper flared
up. "You're asking us to take an untried ship into enemy sky and cruise
around till we're attacked. If we succeed, we win a few measly kilo-credits of
bonus. If we lose, we're condemned to a lifetime of purgatory, locked up in our
own skulls and unable to will anything but obedience and knowing how our brains have been chained. Win, lose,
or draw for us, you sit back here plump and safe and rake in the money. No."
Van
Rijn sat quiet for a while. This was something he had not foreseen.
His eyes wandered forth again;- to the narrow sea. There was a yacht out
there, a lovely thing of white sails and gleaming brass. Really, he ought to
spend more time on his own ketch—money wasn't as important as all that. It was
not such a bad world, this Earth, even for a lonely old fat man, it was full of
blossoms and good wine, clean winds and beautiful women and fine books. In his
forebrain, he knew how much his memories of earlier-days were colored by
nostalgia—space is big and cruel, not meant for humankind. Let's face it, here
on Earth we belong.
He
turned around. "You say a Lodgemaster can legally come on such a trip
without telling anyone," he remarked quietly. "You think you can
raise two more like yourself, hah?"
"I
told you, we won't! And you're only making it worse. Asking an officer to serve
as a common crewhand is grounds for a duel."
"Even
if I myself am the skipper?"
The Mercury did
not, outwardly, look different after the engineers were finished with her. And
the cargo was the same as usual: cinnamon, ginger, pepper, cloves, tea,
whiskey, gin. If he was going to Antares, Van Rijn did not intend to waste the
voyage. Only wines were omitted from the list, for he doubted if they could
stand a trip as rough as this one was likely to be.
The
alteration was internal, extra hull bracing and a new and monstrously powerful
engine. The actuarial computers gave the cost of such an outfitting—averaged
over many ships and voyages—as equal to three times the total profit from all
the vessel's Antarean journeys during her estimated lifetime. Van Rijn had
winced, but ordered his shipyards to work.
It was, in all truth, a very slim margin he
had, and he had gambled more on it than he could afford. But if the Kossalu of
Borthu had statistical experts of his own—always assuming, of course, that the
idea worked in the first place-Well, if it didn't, Nicholas van Rijn would die
in battle or be executed as useless; or end his days as a brain-churned slave
on a filthy Borthudian freighter; or he held for a ruinous ransom. The
alternatives all looked equally bad.
He
installed hunself, the dark-haired and multiply curved Dorothea Mclntyre, and a
good supply of brandy, tobacco, and ripe cheese, in the captain's cabin. One
might as well be comfortable. Torres was his mate, Captains
Petrovich and Seichi his engineers. The Mercury lifted from Quito Spaceport without fanfare,
hung unpretentiously in orbit till clearance was given, and accelerated on
gravity beams away from the sun. At the required half-billion kilometers'
distance, she went on hyperdrive and outpaced light.
Van
Rijn sat back on the bridge and stuffed his churchwarden. "Now is a
month's voyage to Antares," he said piously. "Good St. Dismas watch
over us."
"I'll
stick by St. Nicholas," murmured Torres. "Even if
you do bear the same name."
Van Rijn looked hurt.
"Do you not respect my integrity?"
Torres
grinned. "I admire your courage—nobody can say you lack guts and you may
very well be able to pull this off. Set a pirate to catch a pirate."
"You
younger generations have a loud mouth and no courtesy." The merchant lit
his pipe and blew reeking clouds. "In my day we said 'sir' to the captain
even when we mutinied."
"I'm
worrying about one thing," said Torres. "I realize that the enemy
probably doesn't know about the strike yet, and so they won't be suspicious of
us—and I realize that by passing within one light-year of Borthu itself we're
certain to be attacked—but suppose half a dozen of them jump us at once?"
"On the basis of what we know about
their patrol patterns, the estimated probability of more than one ship finding
us is only ten per cent, plus or minus three." Van Rijn heaved his bulk
onto his feet. One good thing about spacefaring, you could set the artificial
gravity low and feel almost young again. "What you do not know so well
yet, my young friend, is that there are very few
certainties in life. Always we must go on probabilities. The secret of success
is to arrange things so the odds favor you—then in the long run you are sure to
come out ahead. It is your watch now, and I recommend to you a book on
statistical theory to pass the time. As for me, I will be in conference with
Freelady Mclntyre and a liter of brandy."
"I
wish I could arrange my own captain's chores the way you do," said Torres
mournfully.
Van
Rijn waved an expansive hand. "Why not, my boy, why not?
So long as you make money and no trouble for the Company, the Company does not
interfere with your private life. The trouble with you younger generations is
you lack initiative. When you are a poor old feeble fat man like me you will
look back and regret so many lost opportunities."
Even
in low-gee, the deck vibrated under his tread as he left.
Here there was darkness and cold and a
blazing glory of suns. The viewscreens held the spilling silver of the Milky
Way, the ruby spark of Antares among distorted constellations, the curling edge of a nebula limned by the blue glare of a
dwarf star. Brightest among the suns was Borthu's, yellow as minted gold.
The
ship drove on through night, pulsing in and out of four-dimensional reality and
filled with waiting.
Dorothea
sat on a wardroom couch, posing long legs and high prow with a care so
practiced as to be unconscious. She could not get her eyes from the screen.
"It's beautiful," she said in a
small voice. "And horrible."
Nicholas
van Rijn sprawled beside her, his majestic nose aimed at the ceiling.
"What is so bad, my little sinusoid?"
"Them
... lying out there to pounce on us
and— Why did I come? Why did I let you talk me into it?"
"I
believe there was mention of a tygron coat and Santori-an
flamedrop earrings."
"But
suppose they catch us?" Her fingers fell cold on his wrist. "What
will happen to me?"
"I
told you I have set up a ransom fund for you. I also warned you maybe they
would not bother to collect, and maybe we get broken to bits in this fight and
all die. Satan's horns and the devil who gave them to him! Be still, will
you?"
The intraship speaker burped and Torres'
voice said: "Wake of highpowered ship detected, approaching from direction
of Borthu."
"All hands to
posts!" roared Van Rijn.
Dorothea
screamed. He picked her up under one arm, carried her down the hall—collecting
a few scratches and bruises en route—tossed her into his cabin, and locked the
door. Puffing, he arrived on the bridge. The visual intercom showed Petrovich
and Seichi, radiation-armored, the engines gigantic behind them. Their faces
were drawn tight and glistening with sweat. Torres was gnawing his lip,
fingers shaking as he tuned in the hypervid.
"All
right," said van Rijn, "this is the thing we have come for. I hope
you each remember what you have to do, because if not we will soon be very
dead." He dropped into the main control chair and buckled on the harness.
His fingers tickled the keys, feeling the sensitive response of the ship. So
far they had been using only normal power, the great converter had been almost
idling; it was good to know how many wild horses he could call up.
The hypervid chimed. Torres pressed the Accept button and the screen came to life.
It was a Borthudian officer who looked-out at
them. Skintight garments were dead black on the cat-lithe frame. The face was
almost human, but hairless and tinged with blue; yellow eyes smoldered under
the narrow forehead. Behind him could be seen the bridge, a crouching gunnery
officer, and the usual six-armed bassalt idol.
"Terran
ship ahoy!" He ripped out crisp, fluent Anglic, only subtly accented by a
larynx and palate of different shape. "This is Captain Rentharik of the
Kossalu's frigate Gantok.
By the law, most sacred, of
the Kossaluth of Borthu, you are guilty of trespass on the dominions of His
Fright-fulness. Stand by to be boarded."
"By double-damn, you out-from-under-wet-logs-crawling
poppycock!"
Van Rijn flushed turkey red. "Not bad enough you
pirate my men and ships, with all their good expensive cargoes, but you have
the copperbound nerve to call it legal!"
Rentharik fingered the ceremonial dagger hung
about his neck. "Old man, the writ of the Kossalu runs through this entire
volume of space. You can save yourself punishment— nerve-pulsing, to be
exact—by surrendering peacefully and submitting to judgment."
"By
treaty, open space is free to ships of all planets," said Van Rijn.
"And it is understood by all civilized races
that treaties override any local law."
Rentharik
smiled bleakly. "Force is the basis of law, captain."
"Ja,
it is, and now you make the
mistake of using force on Van Rijnl I shall have a surprise for your strutting
little slime mold of a king."
Rentharik
turned to a recorder tube and spoke into it. "I have just made a note to
have you assigned to the Hyan run after conditioning. We have never found any
way to prevent seepage of the Ilyan air into the crewman's helmets; and it
holds chlorine."
Van
Rijn's face lit up. "That is a horrible waste of trained personnel,
captain. Now it so happens that on Earth we can make absolutely impervious air
systems, and I would gladly act as middleman if you wish to purchase them—at a
small fee, of course."
"There
has been enough discussion," said Rentharik. "You will now- be
grappled and boarded. There is a fixed scale of punishments for captured men,
depending on the extent of their resistance."
The screen blanked.
Torres licked sandy lips. Tuning the nearest
viewscreen, he got the phase of the Borthudian frigate. She was a black
shark-form, longer and slimmer than the dumpy merchantman, of only half the
tonnage but with armor and gun turrets etched against remote star-clouds. She came riding in along a curve that would have been impossible
without gravitic acceleration compensators, matching velocities in practiced
grace, until she loomed huge a bare kilometer away.
The intercom broke into a scream. Van Rijn
swore as he saw Dorothea having hysterics in the cabin. He cut her out of the
circuit and thought with anguish that she would probably smash all the
bottles—and Antares still eleven days off!
There
was a small, pulsing jar. The Gantok was
in phase and the gravity-fingers of a tractor beam had reached across to lay
hold of the Mercury.
"Torres,"
said Van Rijn. "You stand by, boy, and take over if anything happens to
me. I may want your help anyway, if it gets too rough. Petrovich, Seichi, you
got to maintain our beams and hold 'em tight, no matter what the enemy does. O.K.? We go!"
The
Gantok was pulling herself in, hulls almost touching
now. Petrovich kicked in the full power of his converter. Arcs blazed blue with
million-volt discharges, the engine bawled, and ozone was spat forth sharp and
smelling of thunder.
A
pressor beam lashed out, an invisible hammerblow of repulsion, five times the
strength of the enemy tractor. Van Rijn heard the Mercury's ribs groan with the stress. The Gantok shot away, turning end over end. Ten kilometers removed, she was lost
to vision among the stars.
"Ha,
ha!" bellowed van Rijn. "We spill all their apples, eh? By damn! Now
we show them some fun!"
The Borthudian hove back into sight. She
clamped on again, full strength attraction. Despite the pressor, the Mercury was yanked toward her with a brutal surge of
acceleration. Seichi cursed and threw in all the pressor power he had.
For a moment Van Rijn thought his ship would
burst open. He saw the deckplates buckle under his feet and heard steel shear.
Fifty million tons of force were not to be handled
lightly. The Gantok
was batted away as if by a
troll's fist.
"No so far! Not so far, you dumbhead!
Let me control the beams." Van Rijn's hands danced over the pilot board.
"We want to keep him for a souvenir!"
He
used a spurt of drive to overhaul the Gantok. His
right hand steered the Mercury
while his left wielded the
tractor and the pressor, seeking a balance. The engine thunder rolled and
boomed in his skull. The acceleration compensator could not handle all the fury
now loosed, and straps creaked as his weight was hurled against them. Torres,
Petrovich, and Seichi were forgotten, part of the machinery, implementing the
commands his fingers gave.
'Now
thoroughly scared, the Borthudian opened her drive to get away. Van Rijn
equalized positive and negative forces, in effect welding himself
to her hull by a three-kilometer bar. Grinning, he threw his superpowered
engine into reverse. The Gantok strained
to a halt and went backwards with him.
Lightning
cracked and crashed over his engineers' heads. The hull shuddered as the enemy
fought to break free. Her own drive was added to the frantic repulsion of her
pressors, and the gap widened. Van Rijn stepped down his own
pressors. When she was slammed to a dead stop, the blow echoed back at him.
"Ha,
like a fish we play himl Good St. Peter the Fisherman,
help us not let him get away!"
It
was a bleak and savage battle, nine and a half trillion empty kilometers from
anyone's home, with no one to watch but the stars. Rentharik was a good pilot, and a desperate one. He had less power and less mass
than the Mercury,
but he knew how to use
them, lunging, bucking, wheeling about in an attempt to ram. Live flesh could
only take so much, thought Van Rijn while the thunders clattered around him.
The question was, who would have to give up first?
Something
snapped, loud and tortured, and he felt a rush of stinging electrified air.
Petrovich cried it for him: "Burst plate—Section Four. Ill throw a patch
on, but someone's got to weld it back or we'll break in two."
Van
Rijn signaled curtly to Torres. "Can you play our fish? I think he is
getting tired. Where are the bedamned spacesuitsP"
He
reeled from his chair and across the pitching deck. The Gantok was making full-powered leaps, trying to stress the Mercury into ruin. By varying their own velocity and
beam-force, the humans could nullify most of the effect, but it took skill and
nerve. God, but it took nerve! Van Rijn felt his clothes drenched on his body.
He found the lockers and
climbed awkwardly into his specially built suit. Hadn't worn armor in a long
time—forgotten how it stank. Where was that beblistered torch, anyhow? When
he got out on the hull, surrounded by the blaze of all the
universe, fear was cold within him.
One
of those shocks that rolled and yawed the ship underfoot
could break the gravitic hold of his boots. Pitched out beyond the hyperdrive
field and reverting to normal state, he would be forever lost in a microsecond
as the craft flashed by at translight speeds. It would be a long fall through
eternity.
Electric
fire crawled over the hull. He saw the flash of the Gantok's guns—she was firing wildly, on the
one-in-a-billion chance that some shell would happen to be in phase with the Mercury. Good—let her use up her ammunition. Even so,
it was a heart-bumping eerie thing when a nuclear missile passed through Van
Rijn's own body. No, by damn, through the space where they coexisted with
different frequencies-must be precise—now here is that fit-for-damnation hull
plate. Clamp on the jack, bend it back toward shape. Ah, heave ho, even with
hydraulics it takes a strong man to do this, maybe some muscle remains under
all that goose grease. Slap down your glare filter, weld the plate, handle a
flame and remember the brave old days when you went hell-roaring halfway across
this arm of the galaxy. Whoops, that lunge nearly tossed him off into God's
great iceboxl
He
finished his job, reflected that there would have to be still heavier bracing
on. the next ship of this model, and crept back to the
air lock, trying to ignore the ache which was his body. As he entered, the
rolling and plunging and racketing stopped. For a moment he thought he had been
stricken deaf.
Then
Torres' face swam into the intercom, wet and haggard, and said hoarsely:
"They've quit. I don't think they expect their own boat can take any more
of this—"
Van
Rijn straightened his bruised back and whooped. "Excellent! Wonderful! But
pull us up alongside quick, you lardhead, before—"
There
was the twisting sensation of reversion to normal state, and the hyperdrive
noise spun into silence. Van Rijn lost his footing as the Mercury sprang forward and banged against the enemy.
It
had been an obvious tactic for Rentharik to use: Switching off his
interstellar drive, in the hope that the Terran ship would remain hyper and
flash so far away he could never be found again. The answer was equally
simple—a detector coupled to an automatic cutoff, so that the Mercury would instantly do likewise. And now the
League ship was immediately alongside the Gantok, snuggled beneath the very guns the frigate
could no longer bring to bear and held by a tractor force she could not break.
Van
Rijn struggled back to his feet and removed his helmet. The intercom blushed
at his language.
"Captain!" Petrovich yelped the realization. "They're going to board usl"
"Name
of Judas!" van Rijn's breastplate clashed on the deck. "Must I do all
your thinking for you? What use is our pressor if not to swat off unwelcome
guests?" He threw back his head and bellowed with laughter. "Let them
try, let them try! Our drive field envelops theirs, so
it does not matter whether they use their engines or not—and we are stronger, nie? We can drag them with us even if they fight it. All my life I have been
a deep-sea fisherman. And now, full speed ahead to Antares with this litde
minnow that thought it was a shark!"_
A hypervid call to Antares as soon as they
were in range brought a League carrier out to meet them. Van Rijn turned the Gantok over to her and let Torres pilot the battered Mercury in. Himself, he wanted only to sleep.
Not
that the Borthudians had tried any further stunts, after their boarding party
was so cold-bloodedly shoved into deep space. Rentharik was sensible enough to
know when he was beaten, and had passively let his ship be hauled away. But the
strain of waiting for any possible resistance had been considerable.
Torres
had wanted to communicate with the prisoned crew, but Van Rijn would not allow
it. "No, no, my boy, we demoralize them more by refusing the light of our
eyes. I want the good Captain Rentharik's fingernails chewed down to the elbow
when I see him."
That
was, in the governor's mansion, in Redsun City. Van Rijn had appropriated it
for his own use, complete with wine cellar and
concubines. Between banquets he had found time to check on local prices and
raise the tag on pepper a milli-credit per gram. The colonists would grumble,
but they could afford it; if it weren't for him, their meals would be drab
affairs, so didn't he deserve an honest profit?
After
three days of this, he decided it was time to see Rentharik. He lounged on the
governor's throne, pipe in one hand.
Rentharik
advanced across the parquet floor, gaunt and bitter under the guns of two
League gentlemen. He halted before the throne.
"Ah,
so there you are!" Van Rijn beamed and waved the botde. "I trust you
have had the pleasant stay? Redsun City jails are much recommended, I am
told."
"My
government will take measures," spat the Borthudian. "You will not
escape the consequences of this piracy."
"Your
maggoty little kinglet will do nothing of the sort," declared Van Rijn.
"If the civilized planets did not dare fight when he was playing
buccaneer, he will not when it is the other way around. He will accept the
facts and learn to love them."
"What do you plan to
do with us?"
"Well, now, it may be we can collect a
little ransom for you, perhaps, eh? If not, the local iron mines are always
short of labor. But out of the great goodness of my heart, I let you choose one
man who may go home freely and report what has happened. After that we
negotiate."
Rentharik narrowed his lids. "See here,
I know how your filthy trading system works. You won't do anything that doesn't
pay you. And to equip a vessel like yours—one able to capture a warship—costs
more than the vessel could ever hope to earn."
"Quite
so. It
costs just about three times as much."
"So . . . we'll ruin
the Antares route for youl Don't think we'll give up
our patrols in our own sovereign territory. We can outlast you, if you want a
struggle of attrition."
"Ahl" Van Rijn waggled his
pipestem. "That is what you cannot do, my friend. You can reduce our
profit considerably, but you cannot eliminate it; therefore, we can continue
the route indefinitely under present conditions. You see, each voyage nets a
thirty per- cent profit."
"And
it costs three hundred per cent of your profit to outfit a ship—"
"Indeed.
But we are only so equipping every fourth ship.
That means we operate on a smaller margin, yes, but a little arithmetic should
show you we can still scrape by in the black ink."
"Every
fourth—I" Rentharik shook his head, frankly puzzled. "But what will
you gain? Out of every four encounters, we will win three."
"Just so. And by those three victories,, you will
capture twelve slaves. The fourth time, we rope in twenty Borthudian spacemen.
Naturally, you will never know beforehand which ship is going to be the one
that can fight back. You will either have to give up your press gangs or see
them whittled away." Van Rijn rubbed his horny palms together. "So
you see, by damn, always I operate on the statistics, and always I load the
statistics. My friend, you have had it edgewise."
Rentharik
crouched where he stood and blazed at his captor: "I learned, here, that
your union will not travel through the Kossaluth. Do you think reducing the
number of impressed men by one fourth will change their minds?"
Van
Rijn grinned. "If I know my spacemen—why, of course.
Because if you do continue to raid us, you will soon reduce
yourselves to so few crews as to be helpless. Then you will have to deal with us, and our terms will include freeing of all the slaves,
deconditioning, and good fat indemnities. Any man worth his salt can stand a
couple years' service, even on your moldy rustbuckets, if he knows he will then
be freed and paid enough to retire on."
He
cleared his throat, buttered his tone, and went on: "So is it not wise
that you make terms at once? We will be very lenient if you do. You will have
to release and indemnify all your present captives, and stop raiding, but you
can send students to our academies at not much more than the usual fees. We
will want a few minor trade concessions as well, of course—"
"And in a hundred
years you'll own us!" It was a snarl.
"If
you do not agree, by damn, in three years we will own you. The choice is yours.
You must have a continuously expanding supply of spacemen or your economy
collapses. You can either let us train them in civilized
fashion, and give us a wedge by which we ruin you in three generations,
or you can impress them and be ruined inside this decade. Pick your man; we
will let him report to your king-pig. And never forget that I, Nicholas van
Rijn of the Polesotechnic League, do nothing without very good reason. Even the
name of my ship could have warned you."
"The name—?"
whispered Rentharik.
"Mercury,"
explained van Rijn,
"was the god of commerce, gambling—and thieves."
THE LIVE COWARD
THE LIVE COWARD
by Poul Anderson
The
fugitive ship
was pursued for ten light-years. Then, snapping in and out of subspace drive
with a reckless disregard of nearby suns and tracer-blocking dust clouds, it
shook the Patrol cruiser.
The
search that followed was not so frantic as the danger
might seem to warrant. Haste would have done no good; there are a million
planetary systems affiliated with the League, and their territory includes
several million more too backward for membership. Even a small planet is such a
wilderness of mountains, valleys, plains, forests, oceans, icefields, cities,
and loneliness—much of it often quite unexplored—that it was hopeless to
ransack them meter by meter for a single man. The Patrol knew that Varris' boat
had a range of three hundred parsecs, and in the course of months and man-years
of investigation it was pretty well established that he had not refueled at any
registered depot. But a sphere two thousand fight-years across can hold a lot
of stars.
The
Patrol offered a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest of
Samel Varris, human, from the planet Caldon (No. so-and-so in the Pilots'
Manual), wanted for the crime of inciting to war. It circulated its appeal as
widely as possible. It warned all agents to keep an eye or a feeler or a
telepathic organ out for a man potentially still capable of exploding a billion
living entities into radioactive gas. Then it waited.
A year went by.
Captain
Jakor Thymal of the trading ship Ganash, operating
out of Sireen in the primitive Spiral Cluster area, brought the news. He had
seen Varris, even spoken to the fellow. There was no doubt of it. Only one
hitch: Varris had taken
refuge with the king of Thunsba, a barbarous state
in the southern hemisphere of a world known to the Galactics— such few as had
ever heard of it—as Ryfin's Planet. He had gotten citizenship and taken the
oath of service as a royal guardsman. Loyalty between master and man was a
powerful element in Thunsban morality. The king would not give up Varris
without a fight.
Of
course, axes and arrows were of small use against flamers. Perhaps Varris could
not be taken alive, but the Patrol could kill him without whiffing very many
Thunsbans. Captain Thymal setded complacendy back to wait for
official confirmation of his report and the blood money. Nothing ever
occurred to him but that the elimination of Varris would be the simplest of
routine operations.
Like hell!
Wing
Alak eased his flitter close to the planet. It hung in cloudy splendor against
a curtain of hard, needle-sharp spatial stars, the Cluster sky. He sat gloomily
listening to the click and mutter of instruments as Drogs checked surface
conditions.
"Quite
terrestroid," said the Galmathian. His antennae lifted in puzzlement above
the round, snouted face and the small black eyes. "Why did you bother
testing? It's listed in the Manual."
"I
have a nasty suspicious mind," said Alak. "Also an
unhappy one." He was a thin, medium-tall
human with the very white skin that often goes with flaming red hair. His
Patrol uniform was as dandified as regulations allowed.
Drogs
hitched three meters of green, eight-legged body across the cabin. His burly
arms reached out to pick up the maps in three-fingered hands. "Yes . . .
here's the Thunsba. kingdom and the capital city . . .
what's it called? . . . Waina-bog. I suppose our
quarry is still there; Thymal swore he didn't alarm him." He sighed.
"Now I have to spend an hour at the telescope and identify which place is
what. And you can sit like my wife on an egg thinking beautiful thoughts!"
"The only beautiful concept I have right
now is that all of a sudden the Prime Directive was repealed."
"No
chance of that, I'm afraid . . . not till a less bloodthirsty race than yours
gets the leadership of the League."
"Less?
You mean more, don't you? 'Under no circumstances whatsoever may the Patrol or
any unit thereof kill any intelligent being.' If you do—" Alak made a
rather horrible gesture. "Is that blood-thirsty?"
"Quite.
Only a race with as gory a past as the Terrans would go to such extremes of
reaction. And only as naturally ferocious a species could think of making such
a commandment the Patrol's great top secret . . . and bluffing with threats of
planetwide slaughter, or using any kind of chicanery to achieve its ends. Now a
Galmathian will run down a farstak in his native woods and jump on its back and
make a nice lunch while it's still running . . . but he wouldn't be able to
imagine cold-bloodedly sterilizing an entire world, so he doesn't have to ban
himself from honest killing even in self-defense." Drogs' caterpillar body
hunched itself over the telescope.
"Get
thee behind me, Satan . . . and don't push!" Alak returned murkily to his
thoughts. His brain was hypnotically stuffed with all the information three
generations of traders had gathered about Thunsba. None of it looked hopeful.
The
king was—well, if not an absolute monarch, pretty close to being one, simply
because the law had set him over the commons. Like many warlike barbarians, the
Thunsbans had a quasi-religious reverence for the letter of the law, if not
always for its spirit. The Patrol had run head-on into two items of the code:
(a) the king would not yield up a loyal guardsman to an enemy, but would fight
to the death instead; (b) if the king fought, so would the whole male
population, unmoved by threats to themselves or their mates and cubs. Death
before dishonor! Their religion, which they seemed quite fervent about,
promised a roisterous heaven to all who fell in a good cause, and suitably
gruesome hell for oath-breakers.
Hm-m-m
. . . there was a powerful ecclesiastical organization, and piety had not
stopped a good deal of conflict between church and throne. Maybe he could work
through the priesthood somehow.
The outworld traders who came to swap various
manufactured articles for the furs and spices of Ryfin's Planet had not influenced
the local cultures much. Perhaps they had inspired a few wars and heresies, but
on the whole the autochthones were content to live in the ways of their
fathers. The main effect of trading had been a loss of superstitious awe—the
strangers were mighty, but they were known to be mortal. Alak doubted that even
the whole Patrol fleet could bullyrag them into yielding on so touchy a point
as Varris' surrender.
"What
I can't understand," said Drogs, "is why we
don't just swoop down and give the city a blanket of sleep-gas." This
mission had been ordered in such tearing haste that he had been given only the
most nominal briefing; and on the way here, he had followed his racial practice
of somnolence— his body could actually "store" many days' worth of
sleep.
His
free hand gestured around the flitter. It was not a large boat, but it was well
equipped, not only with weapons—for bluffing—but with its own machine shop and
laboratory.
"Metabolic
^difference," said Alak. "Every anaesthetic known to us is poisonous to
them, and their own knockout chemicals would kill Varris. Stun beams are just
as bad— supersonics will scramble a Ryfinnian's brain like an egg. I imagine
Varris picked this world for a bolthole just on that account."
"But
he didn't know we wouldn't simply come down and shoot up the den."
"He could make a pretty shrewd guess.
It's a secret that we never kill, but no secret that we're reluctant to hurt
innocent bystanders." Alak scowled. "There are still a hundred
million people' on Caldon who'd rise—bloodily—against the new government if he
came back to them. Whether he succeeded or not, it'd be a genocidal affair and
a big loss of face to the Patrol."
"Hm-m-m
... he can't get far from this world
without more fuel; his tanks must be nearly dry. So why don't we blockade this
planet and make sure he never has a chance to buy fuel?"
"Blockades
aren't that reliable," said Alak. Drogs had never been involved in naval
operations, only in surface work. "We could destroy his own boat easily
enough, but word that he's alive is bound to leak back to Caldon now. There'd
be attempt after attempt to run the blockade and get him out. Sooner or later,
one would succeed. We're badly handicapped by not being allowed to shoot to
hit. No, damn it, we've got to lift him, and fast!"
His
eyes traveled wistfully to the biochemical shelves. There was a potent drug
included, a nembutal derivative, hypnite. A small
intramuscular injection could knock Varris out; he would awaken into a
confused/ passive state and remain thus for hours, following any lead he was
given. Much useful information about his conspiracy could be extracted. Later,
this drug and other techniques would be used to rehabilitate his twisted
psyche, but that was a job for the specialists at Main Base.
Alak
felt more handcuffed than ever before in his pragmatist life. The blaster at
his waist could incinerate a squad of Thunsban knights—but their anachronistic
weapons weren't so ridiculous when he wasn't allowed to use the blaster.
"Hurry
it up," he said on a harsh note. "Let's get moving —and don't ask me
where!"
A
landing field had been made for the traders just outside the walls of Wainabog.
Those bulked thick and gray, studded with turrets and men-at-arms, over a blue
landscape of rolling fields and distant hills. Here and there Alak saw
thatch-roofed hamlets; two kilometers from the town was a smaller community,
also fortified, a single great tower in its middle crowned with a golden X. It
must be the place mentioned in the trader narratives. Grimmoch Abbey, was that
the name?
It
was not too bad a mistranslation to speak of abbeys, monks, knights, and kings.
Culturally and technologically, Thunsba was fairly close to medieval Europe.
Several
peasants and townsfolk stood gaping at the flitter as Alak emerged. Others were
on their way. He swept his gaze around the field and saw another spaceboat some
distance off—must be Varris', yes, he remembered the description now. A dozen
liveried halberdiers guarded it.
Carefully
ignoring the drab-clad commons, Alak waited for the official greeters. Those
came out in a rattle of plate armor, mounted on yellow-furred animals with
horns and shoulder humps. A band of crossbo.wmen trotted in their wake and a
herald wearing a scarlet robe blew his trumpet in their van. They pulled up
with streaming banners and thunderous hoofs; lances dipped courteously, but
eyes had a watchful stare behind the snouted visors of their helmets.
The
herald rode forth and looked down at Alak, who was clad in his brightest dress
uniform. "Greeting to you, stranger, from our lord
Morlach, King of all Thunsba and Defender of the West. Our lord Morlach
bids you come sup and sleep with him." The herald
drew a sword and extended it hilt first. Alak ran hastily through his lessons
and rubbed his forehead against the handle.
They
were quite humanoid on Ryfin's Planet—disturbingly so, if you hadn't seen as
many species as Alak. It was not the pale-blue skin or the violet hair or the
short tails which made the difference: always, in a case like this, the effect
was of a subtler wrongness. Noses a shade too long, faces a trifle too square,
knees and elbows held at a peculiar angle—they looked^ like cartoon figures
brought to life. And they had a scent of their own, a sharp mustardy odor. Alak
didn't mind, knowing full well that he looked and smelled as odd to them, but
he had seen young recruits get weird neuroses after a few months on a planet of
"humanoids to six points of classification."
He
replied gravely in the Thunsban tongue: "My lord Morlach has my thanks and
duty. I hight Wing Alak, and am not a trader but an envoy of the traders' king,
sent hither on a mission most delicate. I pray the right to see my lord Morlach
as soon as he grant."
There
was more ceremony, and a number of slaves were fetched to carry Alak's
impressive burden of gifts. Then he was offered a mount, but declined—the
traders had warned him of this little joke, where you put an outworlder on a
beast that goes frantic at alien smells. With proper haughtiness he demanded a
sedan chair, which was an uncomfortable and seasick thing to ride but had more
dignity. The knights of Wainabog enclosed him and he was borne through the
gates and the cobbled avenues to the fortresslike palace.
Inside, he did not find the rude splendor he
had expected, but a more subtle magnificence, really beautiful furnishings.
Thunsba might throw its garbage out in the streets, but had excellent artistic
taste. There were a hundred nobles in the royal audience chamber, a rainbow of
robes, moving about and talking with boisterous gestures. Servants scurried
around offering trays of food and liquor. A small orchestra was playing: the
saw-toothed music hurt Alak's ears. A number of monks, in gray robes and with
hoods across their faces, stood unspeaking along the walls, near the motionless
men-at-arms.
Alak advanced under gleaming pikes and knelt
before the king. Morlach was burly, middle-aged, and long-bearded, wearing a
coronet and holding a naked sword on his lap. At his left, the place of
honor—most of this species were left-handed—sat an older "man,"
clean-shaven, hook-nosed, bleak-faced, in yellow robe and a tall bejeweled hat
marked with a golden X.
"My duty to you, puissant lord Morlach. Far have I, unworthy Wing Alak of Terra,
come to behold your your majesty, before whom the nations tremble. From my king
unto you, I bear a message and these poor gifts."
The
poor gifts made quite a heap, all the way from clothes and ornaments of
lustrous synthetic to flash-lights and swords of manganese steel. Ryfin's
Planet couldn't legally be given modern tools and weapons—not at their present
social stage of war and feudalism—but there was no ban on lesser conveniences
which they couldn't reproduce anyhow.
"Well
met, Sir Wing Alak. Come, be seated at my right." Morlach's voice rose,
and the buzzing voices, already lowered in curiosity, stopped at once. "Be
it known to all men, Sir Wing Alak is in truth my guest, most holy and
inviolable, and all injuries to him, save in lawful
duel, are harms to me and my house which the Allshaper bids me avenge."
The
nobles crowded closer. It was not a very formal court, as such things go. One
of them came to the front as Alak mounted the high seat. The Patrolman felt a
tingle along his back and a primitive stirring in his scalp.
Samel Varris.
The
refugee war lord was dressed like the other aristocrats, a gaudy robe of puffed
and slashed velvet, hung with ropes of jewels. Alak guessed correctly that a
royal guardsman ranked very high indeed, possessing his own lands and retinue.
Varris was a big dark man with arrogant features and shrewd eyes. Recognition
kindled in him, and he strode forward and made an ironic bow.
"Ah,
Sir Wing Alak," he said in Thunsban. "I had not awaited the honor of
your calling on me yourself."
King
Morlach huffed and laid a ringed hand on his sword. "I knew not you twain
were acquainted."
Alak
covered an empty feeling with his smoothest manner. "Yes, my lord, Varris
and I have jousted erenow. Indeed, my mission hither concerns him."
"Came you to fetch him away?" It was a snarl, and the
nobility of Wainabog reached for their daggers.
"I know not what he
has told you, my lord—"
"He
came hither because foemen had overwhelmed his own kingdom and sought his life.
Noble gifts did he bring me, not least of them one of the flame-weapons your
folk are so niggardly with, and he gave wise redes by which we hurled back the
armies of Rachanstog and wrung tribute out of their ruler." Morlach glared
from lowered brows. "Know then, Sir Wing Alak, that though you are my
guest and I may not harm you, Sir Varris has taken oaths as my guardsman and
served right loyally. For this I have given him gold and a broad fief. The
honor of my house is sacred ... if
you demand he be returned to his foes, I must ask that you leave at once and
when next we meet it shall be the worse for you I"
Alak
pursed his lips to whistle, but thought better of it. Handing out a blaster—I
It was unimportant in itself, the firearm would be useless once its charge was
spent, but as a measure of Varris' contempt for Galactic law—
"My
lord," he said hastily, "I cannot deny I had such a request. But it
was never the intent of my king or myself to insult
your majesty. The request will not be made of you."
"Let
there be peace," said the high priest on Morlach's left. His tone was not
as unctuous as the words: here was a fighter, in his own way, more intelligent
and more dangerous than the brawling warriors around him. "In the name of
the Allshaper, we are met in fellowship. Let not black thoughts give to the
Evil an entering wedge."
Morlach swore.
"In
truth, my lord, I bear this envoy no ill will," smiled Varris. "I
vouch that he is knighdy, and wishes but to serve his king as well as I seek to
serve yourself. If my holy lord abott"—the title
was nearly equivalent—"calls peace on this hall, then I for one will abide
by it."
"Yes
... a sniveling shavechin to whine
peace when treachery rises," growled Morlach. "You have enough good
lands which should be mine, Abbot Gulmanan—keep your greasy fingers off my
soul, at least!"
"What
my lord says to me is of no consequence," answered the cleric thinly.
"But if he speaks against the Temple, he blasphemes the Allshaper."
"Hell
freeze you, I'm a pious man!"-roared Morlach. "I make the
sacrifices—for the Allshaper, though not for his fat-gutted Temple that would
push me off my own throne!"
Gulmanan
flushed purple, but checked himself a bit, narrow hps together and made a
bridge of his bony fingers. "This is not the time or place to question
where the ghostly and the worldly authorities have their proper bounds,"
he said. "I shall sacrifice for your soul, my lord, and pray you be led
out of error."
Morlach
snorted and called for a beaker of wine. Alak sat inconspicuously till the
king's temper had abated. Then he began to speak of increased trade
possibilities.
He had not the slightest power to make
treaties, but he wanted to be sure he wasn't kicked out of Wainabog yet.
Heavily
dosed with anti-allergen, Alak was able to eat enough of the king's food to
cement his status as guest. But Drogs brought him a case of iron rations when
the Galrriathian came to attend his "master" in the assigned palace
apartment.
The
human sat moodily by the window, looking out at the glorious night sky of
clotted stars and two moons. There was a fragrant garden beneath him, under the
bleak castle walls. Somewhere a drunken band of nobles was singing—he had left
the feast early and it was still carousing on. A few candles lit the tapestried
dankness of the room; they were perfumed, but not being a Ryfinnian he did not
enjoy the odor of mercaptan.
"If
we got several thousand husky Patrolmen," he said, "and put them in
armor, and equipped them with clubs, we might slug our way in and out of this
place. Right now I can't think of anything else."
"Well,
why don't we?" Drogs hunched over a burbling water pipe, cheerfully immune
to worry.
"It
lacks finesse. Nor is it guaranteed—these Thunsbans are pretty hefty too, they
might overpower our men. If we used tanks or something to make ourselves
invincible, it'd be just our luck to have some gallant fathead of a knight get
squashed under the treads. Finally, with the trouble at Sannanton going on, the
Patrol can't spare so large a force— and by the time they can, it might well be
too late. Those unprintable traders must have told half the League that Varris
has been found. We can look for a rescue attempt from Caldon within a week."
"Hm-m-m
. . . according to your account, the local church is at loggerheads with the
king. Maybe it can be persuaded to do our work for us. Nothing in the Prime
Directive forbids letting entities murder each other."
"No—I'm
afraid the Temple priests are only allowed to fight in self-defense, and these
people never break a law." Alak rubbed his chin. "You may have the
germ of an idea there, though. "I'll have
to—"
The gong outside the door was struck. Drogs
humped across the floor and opened.
Van-is
came in, at the head of half a dozen warriors. Their drawn blades gleamed
against flickering shadow.
Alak's
blaster snaked out. Varris grinned and lifted his hand. "Don't be so
impetuous," he advised. "These boys are only precautionary. I just
wanted to talk."
Alak
took out a cigarette and puffed it into lighting. "Go on, then," he
invited tonelessly.
"I'd
like to point out a few things, that's all."
Varris was speaking Terran; the guards waited stolidly, not understanding,
their eyes restless. "I wanted to say I'm a patient man, but there's a
limit to how much persecution I'll stand for."
"Persecution! Who ordered the massacres at New
Venus?"
Fanaticism
smoldered in Varris' eyes, but he answered quietly: "I was the
legitimately chosen' dictator. Under Caldonian law, I was within my rights. It
was the Patrol which engineered the revolution. It's the Patrol which now
maintains a hated colonialism over my planet."
"Yes—until
such time as those hellhounds you call people have had a little sense beaten into
them. If you hadn't been stopped, there'd be more than one totally dead world
by now." Alak's smile was wintry. "You'll comprehend that for
yourself, once we've normalized your psyche."
"You
can't cleanly execute a man." Varris paced tiger-fashion. "You have
to take and twist him till everything that was holy to him has become evil and
everything he despised is good. I'll not let that happen to me."
"You're
stuck here," said Alak. "I know your boat is almost out of fuel.
Incidentally, in case you get ideas, mine is quite thoroughly boobytrapped. All
I need do is holler for reinforcements. Why not surrender now and save me the
trouble?"
Varris grinned. "Nice try, friend, but
I'm not that stupid. If the Patrol could have sent more than you to arrest me,
it would have done so. I'm staying here and gambling that a rescue party from
Caldon will arrive before your ships get around to it. The odds' are in my
favor."
His finger stabbed out. "Look here! By
choice, I'd have my men cut you down where you stand—you and that slimy little
monster. I can't, because I have to live up to the local code of honor; they'd
throw me out if I broke the least of their silly laws. But I can maintain a large enough bodyguard to prevent you from kidnaping
me, as you've doubtless thought of doing."
"I
had given the matter some small consideration," nodded Alak.
"There's one other thing I can do, too.
I can fight a duel with you. A duel to the death—they haven't any other
kind." "Well, I'm a pretty good shot."
"They
won't allow modern weapons. The challenged party has the choice, but it's got
to be swords or axes or bows or —something provided for in their law."
Varris laughed. "I've spent a lot of time this past year, practicing with
just such arms. And I went in for fencing at home. How much training have you
had?"
Alak
shrugged. Not being even faintly a romantic, he had never taken much interest
in archaic sports.
"I'm
good at thinking, up nasty tricks," he said. "Suppose I chose to
fight you with clubs, only I had a switchblade concealed in mine."
"I've
seen that kind of thing pulled," said Varris calmly. "Poison is
illegal, but gimmicks of the kind you mention are accepted. However, the
weapons must be identical. You'd have to get me with your switchblade the first
try—and I don't think you could—or I'd see what was going on and do the same. I
assure you, the prospect doesn't frighten me at all.
"I'll
give you a few days here to see how hopeless your problem is. If you turn your
Sitter's guns on the city, or on me . . . well, I have
guns, too. If you aren't out of the kingdom in a week—or if you begin to act
suspiciously before that time —I'll duel you."
"I'm
a peaceable man," said Alak. "It takes two to make a duel."
"Not here, it doesn't. If I insult you before witnesses, and you don't challenge me, you lose
knightly rank and are whipped out of the country. It's a long walk to the
border, with a bull whip lashing you all the way. You wouldn't make it
alive."
"All right," sighed Alak. "What do you want of me?"
"I want to be let
alone."
"So
do the people you were going to make war on last year."
"Good
night." Varris turned and went out the door. His men followed him.
Alak stood for a while in silence. Beyond the
walls, he could hear the night wind of Ryfin's Planet. Somehow, it was a
foreign wind, it had another sound from the rushing
air of Terra. Blowing through different trees, across an unearthly land—
"Have you any plan at
all?" murmured Drogs.
"I
had one." Alak clasped nervous hands behind his back. "He doesn't know I won't bushwhack him, or summon a force of gunners, or something lethal
like that. I was figuring on a bluff—but it seems he has called me. He wants to
be sure of taking at least one Patrolman to hell with him."
"You
could study the local code
duello" suggested
Drogs. "You could let him kill you in a way which looked like a technical
foul. Then the king would boot him out and I could arrest him with the help of
a stun beam."
"Thanks,"
said Alak. "Your devotion to duty is really touching."
"I
remember a Terran proverb," said Drogs. Galmathian humor can be quite
heavy at times. " 'The craven dies a thousand
deaths, the hero dies but once.' "
"Yeh.
But you see, I'm a craven from way back. I much prefer
a thousand synthetic deaths to one genuine case. As far as I'm concerned, the
live coward has it all over the dead hero—" Alak stopped. His jaw fell
down and then snapped up again. He flopped into a chair and cocked his feet up
on the windowsill and ran a hand through his ruddy hair.
Drogs
returned to the water pipe and smoked impertur-bably. He knew the signs. If the
Patrol may not kill, it is allowed to do anything else—and sublimated murder
can be most fascinatingly fiendish.
In spite of his claims to ambassadorial rank,
Alak found himself rating low—his only retinue was one ugly nonhuman-oid. But
that could be useful. With their faindy contemptuous indifference, the nobles
of Wainabog didn't care where he was.
He went, the next
afternoon, to Grimmoch Abbey.
An
audience with Culmanan was quickly granted. Alak crossed a paved courtyard,
strolled by a temple where the hooded monks were holding an oddly impressive
service, and entered a room in the great central tower. It was a large room,
furnished with austere design but lavish materials, gold and silver and gems
and brocades. One wall was covered by bookshelves, illuminated folios, many of
them secular. The abbot sat stiffly on a carved throne of rare woods. Alak made
the required prostration and was invited to sit down.
The old eyes were thoughtful, watching him.
"What brought you here, my cub?"
"I
am a stranger, holy one," said the human. "I understand little of
your faith, and considered it shame that I did not know more."
"We
have not yet brought any outworlder to the Way," said the abbot gravely.
"Except, of course, Sir Varris, and I am afraid his devotions smack more
of expediency than conviction."
"Let
me at least hear what you believe," asked the Patrolman with all the
earnestness he could summon in daylight.
Culmanan
smiled, creasing his gaunt blue face. "I have a suspicion that you are not
merely seeking the Way," he replied. "Belike there is some more
temporal question in your mind."
"Well—"
They exchanged grins.. You couldn't run a corporation
as big as this abbey without considerable hard-headedness.
Nevertheless,
Alak persisted in his queries. It took an hour to learn what he wanted to know.
Thunsba
was monotheistic. The theology was subde and complex, the ritual emotionally
satisfying, the commandments flexible enough to accommodate ordinary fleshly
weaknesses. Nobody doubted the essential truth of the religion; but its Temple
was another matter.
As
in medieval Europe, the church was a powerful organization, international, the
guardian of learning and the gradual civilizer of a barbarous race. It had no
secular clergy—every priest was a monk of some degree, inhabiting a large or
small monastery. Each of these was ruled by one officer—Gulmanan in this
case—responsible to the central Council in Augnachar city; but distances being
great and communications slow, this supreme authority was mostly background.
The
clergy were celibate and utterly divorced from the civil regime, with their own
laws and courts and punishments. Each detail of their lives, down to dress and
diet, was minutely prescribed by an unbreakable code—there were no special
dispensations. Entering the church, if you were approved, was only a matter' of
taking vows; getting out was not so easy, requiring a Council decree. A monk
owned nothing; any property he might have had before entering reverted to his
heirs, any marriage he might have made was automatically annulled. Even
Gulmanan could not call the clothes he wore or the lands he ruled his own: it
all belonged to the corporation, the abbey. And the abbey was rich; for
centuries, tided Thunsbans had given it land or money.
Naturally,
there was conflict between church and king. Both sought power, both claimed
overlapping prerogatives, both insisted that theirs was the final authority.
Some kings had had abbots murdered or imprisoned, some had gone weakly to
Canossa. Morlach was in-between, snarling at the Temple but not quite daring to
lay violent hands on it.
"... I see." Alak bowed his head. "Thank you, holy one."
"I trust your questions are all answered?" The voice was dry.
"Well, now . . . there are some matters
of business—" Alak sat for a moment, weighing the other. Gulmanan seemed
thoroughly honest; a direct bribe would only be an insult. But honesty is more
malleable than one might think—
"Yes?
Speak without fear, my cub. No words of yours shall pass these walls."
Alak
plunged into it: "As you know, my task is to remove Sir Varris to his own
realm for punishment of many evil deeds."
"He
has claimed his cause was righteous." said Gulmanan noncommittally.
"And
so he believes. But in the name of that cause, he was prepared to slay more
folk than dwell on this entire world."
"I wondered about
that—"
Alak
drew a long breath and then spoke fast. "The Temple is eternal, is it not?
Of course. Then it must look centuries ahead. It must
not let one man, whose merits are doubtful at best, stand in the way of an
advancement which could mean saving thousands of souls."
"I am old," said Gulmanan in a
parched tone. "My life has not been as cloistered as I might have wished,
if you are proposing thatf you and I could work together to mutual advantage,
say so."
Alak
made a sketchy explanation. "And the lands would be yours," he
finished.
"Also
the trouble, my cub," said the abbot. "We already have enough clashes
with King Morlach."
"This
would not be a serious one. The law would be on our side."
"Nevertheless,
the honor of the Temple may not be compromised."
"In plain words, you want more than I've
offered." "Yes," said Gulmanan bluntly.
Alak waited. Sweat studded his body. What
could he do if an impossible demand was made?
The
seamed blue face grew wistful. "Your race knows much," said the
abbot. "Our peasants wear out their lives, struggling against a miserly
soil and seasonal insect hordes. Are there ways to better their lot?"
"Is
that all? Certainly there are. Helping folk progress when they
wish to is one of our chief policies. My . . . my king would be only too
glad to lend you some technicians— farmwrights?—and show you how."
"Also
... it is pure greed on my part. But
sometimes at night, looking up at the stars, trying to understand what the
traders have said—that this broad fair world of ours is but a mote spinning
through vastness beyond comprehension—it has been an anguish in me that I do
not know how that is." Now it was Gulmanan who leaned forward and
shivered. "Would it be possible to ...
to translate a few of your books on this science astronomic into
Thunsban?"
Alak
regarded himself as a case-hardened cynic. In the line of duty, he had often
and cheerfully broken the most solemn oaths with an audible snap. But this was
one promise he meant to keep though the sky fell down.
On
the way back, he stopped at his flitter, where Drogs was hiding from a
gape-mouthed citizenry, and put the Calmathian to work in the machine shop.
A human simply could not eat very much of
this planet's food; he would die in agony. Varris had taken care to have a
food-syhthesizer aboard his boat, and ate well that night of special dishes. He
did not invite Alak to join him, and the Patrolman munched gloomily on what his
service imagined to be an adequate, nutritious diet.
After
supper, the nobles repaired to a central hall, with a fireplace at either end
waging hopeless war on the evening chill, for serious drinking. Alak, ignored
by most, sauntered through the crowd till he got to Varris. The fugitive was
conversing with several barons; from his throne, King Mor-lach listened
interestedly. Varris was increasing his prestige by explaining some principles
of games theory which ought to guarantee success in the next war.
"... And thus, my gentles, it is not that one
must seek a certain victory, for there is no certainty in battle, but must so
distribute his forces as to have the greatest likelihood of winning—"
"Hogwashl" snapped Alak. The
Thunsban phrase he used was more pungent.
Varris raised his brows.
"Said you something?" he asked.
"I did." Alak slouched forward,
wearing his most insolent expression. "I said it is nonsense you
speak."
"You disagree, then,
sir?" inquired a native.
"Not
exactly," said the Patrolman. "It is not worth disagreeing with so
lunkheaded a swine as this baseborn Varris."
His
prey remained impassive. There was no tone in the voice: "I trust you will
retract your statement, sir."
"Yes,
perhaps I should," agreed Alak. "It was too mild. Actually, of
course, as is obvious from a single glance at his bloated face, Sir Varris is a
muckeating sack of lip-wagging flatulence whose habits I will not even try to
describe since they would make a barnyard blush."
Silence
hit the hall. The flames roared up the chimneys. King Morlach scowled and
breathed heavily, but could not legally interfere. His warriors dropped hands
to their knives.
"What's your
purpose?" muttered Varris in Terran.
"Naturally,"
said Alak in Thunsban, "if Sir Varris does not dispute my assertions,
there is no argument."
The
Caldonian sighed. "I will dispute them on your body tomorrow
morning," he answered.
Alak's
foxy face broke into a delighted grin. "Do I understand that I am being
challenged?" he asked.
"You do, sir. I invite
you to a duel."
"Very well." Alak looked around. Every eye in the place was welded to him. "My
lords, you bear witness that I have been summoned to fight Sir Varris. If I
mistake me not, the choice of weapons and ground is mine."
"Within the laws of single combat,"
rumbled Morlach venomously. "None of your outworld
sorceries."
"Indeed
not." Alak bowed. "I choose to fight with my own swords, which are
fighter than your claymores but, I assure you, quite deadly if one does not
wear armor. Sir Varris may, of course, have first
choice of the pair. The duel will take place just outside the main gate of
Grimmoch Abbey."
There
was nothing unusual about that. A badly wounded contestant could be taken into
the monks, who were also the local surgeons. In such a case, he was allowed to
recover after which a return engagement was fought. In the simple and logical
belief that enmities should not be permitted to fester, the Thunsban law said
that no duel was officially over till one party had been killed. It was the use
of fight swords that caused interest.
"Very
good," said Varris in a frosty voice. He was taking it well; only Alak
could guess what worries—what trap is being set?—-lay behind those eyes. "At dawn tomorrow,
then."
"Absolutely
not," said Alak firmly. He never got up before noon if he could help it.
"Am I to lose my good sleep on account of you? We will meet at the time of
Third Sacrifice." He bowed grandly. "Good night, my lord and gentles."
Back
in his apartment, he went through the window and, with the help of his small
antigrav unit, over the wall and out to his boat. Varris might try to
assassinate him as he slept.
Or
would the Caldonian simply rely on being a better swordsman? Alak knew that was
the case. This might be his last night alive.
A
midaftemoon sun threw long streamers of light across blue turf and the walls of
Grimmoch Abbey. There was a hundred-meter square cleared before the gate;
beyond that, a crowd of lords and ladies stood talking, drinking, and betting
on the outcome. King Morlach watched ominously from a portable throne—he would
not thank the man who did away with the useful Sir Varris. Just inside the
gateway, Abbot Gulmanan and a dozen monks waited like stone saints.
Trumpets blew, and Alak and Varris stepped
forth. Both wore light shirts and trousers, nothing else. An official frisked
them ceremoniously for concealed weapons and armor. The noble appointed Master
of Death trod out and recited the code. Then he took a cushion on which the
rapiers were laid, tested each, and extended them to Varris. ■
The outlaw smiled humorlessly and selected
one. Alak got the other. The Master of Death directed them to opposite comers
of the field.
Alak's blade felt light and supple in his
fingers. His vision and hearing were unnaturally clear,
it was as if every grass blade stood out sharp before him. Perhaps his brain
was storing data while it still could. Varris, one hundred forty meters off,
loomed like a giant.
"And now, let the
Allshaper defend the right!"
Another trumpet flourish. The duel was on.
Varris
walked out, not hurrying. Alak went to meet him. They crossed blades and stood
for a moment, eyes thrusting at eyes.
"Why
are you doing this?" asked the refugee in Terran. "If you have some
idiotic hope of killing me, you might as well forget it. I was a fencing
champion at home."
"These
shivs are gimmicked," said Alak with a rather forced grin. "I'll let
you figure out how."
"I
suppose you know the penalty for using poison is burning at the stake—"
For a moment, there was a querulous whine in the voice. "Why can't you
leave me alone? What business was it ever of yours?"
"Keeping
the peace is my business," said Alak. "That's what I get paid for,
anyhow."
Varris
snarled. His blade whipped out. Alak parried just in time. There was a thin steel ringing in the air.
Varris
danced gracefully, aggressively, a cold intent on his face. Alak made wild
slashes, handling his rapier like a broadsword. Contempt crossed Varris' mouth.
He parried a blow, riposted, and Alak felt pain sting his shoulder. The crowd
whooped.
Just
one cut! Just one cut before he gets me through the heart\ Alak felt his chest grow warm and wet. A
flesh wound, no more. He remembered that he'd forgotten to thumb the concealed
button in his hilt, and did so with a curse.
Varris'
weapon was a blur before his eyes. He felt another light stab. Varris was
playing with him! Coldly, he retreated, to the jeers of the audience, while he
rallied his wits.
The
thing to do . . . what the devil did you call it, riposte, slash, en avant? Varris came close as Alak halted. The
Patrolman thrust for his left arm. Varris blocked that one. Somehow, Alak
slewed his blade around and pinked the outlaw in the chest.
Now—God
help me, I have to survive the next few seconds!
The enemy steel lunged for
his throat. He slapped it down, clumsily, in bare time. His thigh was furrowed.
Varris sprang back to get room. Alak did the same.
Watching,
he saw the Caldonian's eyes begin helplessly rolling. The rapier wavered. Alak,
deciding he had to make this look good, ran up and skewered Varris in the
biceps—a harmless cut, but it bled with satisfactory enthusiasm. Varris dropped
his sword and tottered. Alak got out of the way just as the big body fell.
The
nobles were screaming. King Morlach roared. The Master of Death rushed out to
shove Alak aside. "It is not lawful to smite a fallen man," he said.
"I
. . . assure you ... no such
intention—" Alak sat down and let the planet revolve around him.
Abbot
Gulmanan and the monks stooped over Varris, examining with skilled fingers.
Presently the old priest looked up and said in a low voice that somehow cut
through the noise: "He is not badly hurt. He should be quite well
tomorrow. Perhaps he simply fainted."
"At
a few scratches like that?" bawled Morlach. "Master, check that
red-haired infidel's blade! I suspect
poison!"
Alak
pressed the retracting button and handed over his sword. While it was being
inspected, Varris was borne inside the abbey and its gate closed on him. The
Master of Death looked at both weapons, bowed to the king, and said puzzledly:
"There is no sign of poison, my lord.
And after all, Sir Varris had first choice of glaives . . . and these two are
identical, as far as I can see . . . and did not the holy one say he is not
really injured?"
Alak swayed erect. "Jussa better man,
tha's all," he mumbled. "I won fair an' square. Lemme go get m' hurts
dressed— I'll see y' all in the morning—"
He made it to his boat, and Drogs had a
bottle of Scotch ready.
It took will power to be at the palace when
the court convened—not that Alak was especially weakened, but the Thunsbans
started their day at a hideous hour. In this case, early rising was necessary,
because he didn't know when the climax of his plot would be on him.
He
got a mixed welcome, on the one hand respect for having overcome the great Sir
Varris—at least in the first round—on the other hand, a certain doubt as to
whether he had done it fairly. King Morlach gave him a surly greeting, but not
openly hostile; he must be waiting for the doctors' verdict.
Alak
found a congenial earl and spent his time swapping dirty jokes. It is always
astonishing how many of the classics are to be found among all mammalian
species. This is less an argument for the prehistoric Galactic Empire than for
the parallelism of great minds.
Shortly
before noon, Abbot Gulmanan entered. Several hooded monks followed him, bearing
weapons—most unusual —and surrounding one who was unarmed. The priest lifted
his hand to the king, and the room grew very quiet.
"Well," snapped
Morlach, "what brings you hither?"
"I thought it best to report personally
on the outcome of the duel, my lord," said Gulmanan. "It was . . .
surprising."
"Mean
you Sir Varris is dead?" Morlach's eyes flared.
He could not fight his own guest, but it would be easy enough to have one of
his guardsmen insult Wing Alak.
"No, my lord. He is in good health, his wounds are negligible. But—somehow the grace
of the Allshaper fell on him."" The abbot made a pious gesture; as he
saw Alak, one eyelid dropped.
"What
mean you?" Morlack dithered and clutched his sword.
"Only this. As he regained consciousness, I offered him ghostly counsel, as I
always do to hurt men. I spoke of the virtues of the Temple, of sancitity, of
the dedicated life. Half in jest, I mentioned the possibility that he might
wish to remounce this evil world and enter the Temple as a brother. My lord,
you can imagine my astonishment when he agreed . . . nay, he insisted on
deeding all his lands and treasure to the abbey and taking the vows at
once." Gulmanan rolled his eyes heavenward. "Indeed, a miracle!"
"What?" It was a shriek from the king.
The monk who was under guard suddenly tore
off his hood. Varris' face glared out. "Help!" he croaked.
"Help, my lordl I've been betrayed—"
"There
are a dozen brothers who witnessed your acts and will swear to them by the
mightiest oaths," said the abbot sternly. "Be still, Brother Varris.
H the Evil has reentered your soul, I shall
have to set you heavy penances."
"Witchcraft!" It whispered terribly down the long hall.
"All men know that witchcraft has no
power inside the walls of a sacred abbey," warned Gulmanan. "Speak no
heresies."
Varris looked wildly about at the spears and
axes that ringed him in. "I was drugged, my lord," he gasped. "I
remember what I did, yes, but I had no will of my own—I followed this old
devil's words—" He saw Alak and snarled. "Hypnite!"
The Patrolman stepped forth and bowed to the
king. "Your majesty," he said, "Sir Varris-that-was had first
choice of blades. But if you wish to inspect them again, I have them
here."
It
had been easy enough, after all: two swords with retractible hypodermic
needles, only they wouldn't do you any good unless you knew of them and knew
where to press. The Hitter's machine shop could turn one out in a couple of
hours.
Alak
handed them to the king from beneath his cloak. Morlach stared at the metal,
called for a pair of gauntlets, and broke the blades in his hands. The
mechanism lay blatant before him.
"Do
you see?" cried Varris. "Do you see the poisoned darts? Burn that
rogue alive!"
Morlach smiled grimly.
"It shall be done," he said.
Alak
grinned, and inwardly his muscles tightened. This was the tricky point. If he
couldn't carry it off, it meant a pretty agonizing death. "My Lord,"
he answered, "that were unjust. The weapons are identical, and Sir
Varris-that-was had first choice. It is permitted to use concealed extra parts,
and not to warn of them."
"Poison—" began
Morlach.
"But this was not poison. Does not
Varris stand hale before you all?"
"Yes—" Morlach scratched his head.
"But when the next engagement is fought, I shall provide the swords."
"A
monk," said Gulmanan, "may not have private
quarrels. This novice is to be returned to his cell for fasting and
prayer."
"A
monk may be released from his vows under certain conditions," argued
Morlach. "I shall see to it that he is."
"Now
hold!" shouted Wing Alak in his best Shakespearean manner. "My lord,
I have won the duel. It were unlawful to speak of
renewing it—for who can fight a dead man?"
"Won
it?" Varris wrestled
with the sturdy monks gripping his arms. "Here I stand, alive, ready to
take you on again any minute—"
"My lord king," said Alak, "I
crave leave to state my case." The royal brow knotted, but: "Do
so," clipped Morlach.
"Very well." Alak cleared his throat. "First, then, I fought lawfully. Granted,
there was a needle in each sword of which Sir Varris had not been warned, but
that is allowable under the code. It might be said that I poisoned him, but
that is a canard, for as you all see he stands here unharmed. The drug I used
has only a temporary effect and thus is not, by definition, a poison.
Therefore, it was a lawful and just combat."
Morlach
nodded reluctandy. "But not a completed batde," he said.
"Oh,
it was, my lord. What is the proper termination of a duel? Is it not that one
party die as the direct result of the other's craft and skill?"
"Yes ... of course—"
"Then
I say that Varris, though not poisoned, died as an immediate' consequence of my
wounding him. He is
now dead! For
mark you, he has taken vows as a monk—he did this because of the drug I
administered. Those oaths may not be wholly irrevocable, but they are binding
on him until such time as the Council releases him from them. And . . . a monk owns
no property. His wordly goods revert to his heirs. His wife becomes a widow. He
is beyond all civil jurisdiction. He is, in short, legally deadl" "But I stand here!" shouted Varris.
"The
law is sacred," declared Alak blandly. "I insist that the law be
obeyed. And by every legal definition, you are dead. You are no longer Sir
Varris of Wainabog, but Brother Varris of Grimmoch—a quite different person. If
this fact be not admitted, then the whole structure of Thunsban society must
topple, for it rests on the total separation of civil and ecclesiastical
law." Alak made a flourishing bow. "Accordingly, my lord, I am the
winner of the duel."
Morlach
sat for a long while. His mind must be writhing in his skull, hunting for a way
out of the impasse, but there was none.
"I
concede it," he said at last, thickly. "Sir Wing Alak, you are the
victor. You are also my guest, and I may not harm you . . . but you have till
sunset to be gone from Thunsba forever." His gaze shifted to Varris.
"Be not afraid. I shall send to the Council and have you absolved of your
vows."
"That
you may do, lord," said Gulmanan. "Of course, until that decree is
passed, Brother Varris must remain a monk, living as all monks do. The law does
not allow of exceptions."
"True,"
grumbled the king. "A few weeks only ...
be patient."
"Monks,"
said Gulmanan, "are not permitted to pamper themselves
with special food. You shall eat the good bread of Thunsba, Brother Varris, and
meditate on—"
"I'll die!"
gasped the outlaw.
"Quite
probably you will depart erelong for a better world," smiled the abbot.
"But I may not set the law aside— To be sure, I could send you on a special errand, if you are willing to go. An errand to the king of the Galactics, from whom I have requested certain
books. Sir Wing Alak will gladly transport you."
Morlach
sat unstirring. Nobody dared move in all the court. Then something slumped in
Varris. Mutely, he nodded. The armed brethren escorted him out toward the
spacefield.
Wing
Alak bade the king polite thanks for hospitality and followed them. Otherwise
he spoke no word until his prisoner was safely fettered and his boat safely
space-borne, with Drogs at the control panel and himself puffing on a good
cigar.
Then:
"Cheer up, old fellow," he urged. "It won't be so bad. You'll
feel a lot better once our psychiatrists have rubbed out those
kill-compulsions."
Varris
gave him a bloodshot glare. "I suppose you think you're a great
hero," he said.
"Lord deliver me, no!" Alak opened a cupboard
and took forth the bottle of Scotch. "I'm quite willing to let you have
that title. It was your big mistake, you realize. A hero should never tangle
with an intelligent coward."
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