Von Schlichten, in a fresh uniform, sat at the end of the table in
Sidney Harrington's office; Harrington and Eric Blount, the
Lieutenant-Governor, faced each other across it, over the three-foot
disc of an Ulleran chess-board. Harrington had the white, or center,
position. Blount, sandy-haired and considerably younger, was playing
black, and his pieces were closing in relentlessly from the outer rim.
"Well, then what?" Harrington asked.
Von Schlichten dropped ash from his cigarette into the tray that
served all three of them.
"Nothing much," he replied. "Keeluk bugged out as soon as he saw my
car let down. We picked up a few of his ragtag-and-bobtail, and
they're being questioned now, but I doubt if they'll tell us anything
we don't know already. The dog had been kept in a lean-to back of the
house; it had been removed, probably as soon as Keeluk called in his
goon-gang. At least one of the rabbits had been kept on the premises,
too, some time ago. No trace of the goat."
He watched Blount move one of his pieces and nodded approvingly. "The
riot's been put down," he continued, "but we're keeping two companies
of Kragans in the city, and about a dozen airjeeps patrolling the
section from Eightieth down to Sixty-fourth, and from the waterfront
back to Eighth Avenue. There is also the equivalent of a regiment of
King Jaikark's infantry--spearmen, crossbowmen, and a few
riflemen--and two of those outsize cavalry companies of his, helping
hold the lid down. They're making mass arrests, indiscriminately. More
slaves for Jaikark's court favorite, of course."
"Or else Gurgurk wants them to use for patronage," Blount added. "He's
been building quite a political organization, lately. Getting ready to
shove Jaikark off the throne, I'd say."
Harrington pushed one of his pieces out along a radial line toward the
rim. Blount promptly took a pawn, which, under Ulleran rules, entitled
him to a second move. He shifted another piece, a sort of combination
knight and bishop, to threaten the piece Harrington had moved.
"Oh, Gurgurk wouldn't dare try anything like that," the
Governor-General said. "He knows we wouldn't let him get away with it.
We have too much of an investment in King Jaikark."
"Then why's Gurgurk been supporting this damned Rakkeed?" Blount
wanted to know, hastily interposing a piece. "Gurgurk can follow one
of two lines of policy. He can undertake to heave Jaikark off the
throne and seize power, or he has to support Jaikark on the throne.
We're subsidizing Jaikark. Rakkeed has been preaching this crusade
against the Terrans, and against Jaikark, whom we control. Gurgurk has
been subsidizing Rakkeed...."
"You haven't any proof of that," Harrington protested.
"My Intelligence Section has," von Schlichten put in. "We can give
sums of money, and dates, and the names of the intermediaries through
whom they were paid to Rakkeed. Eric is absolutely correct in making
that statement."
"Personally, I think Gurgurk's plan is something like this: Rakkeed
will stir up anti-Terran sentiment here in Konkrook, and direct it
against our puppet, Jaikark, as well as against us," Blount said.
"When the outbreak comes, Jaikark will be killed, and then Gurgurk
will step in, seize the Palace, and use the Royal army to put down the
revolt that he's incited in the first place. That will put him in the
position of the friend of the Company, and most of his dupes will be
rounded up and sold as slaves, and King Gurgurk'll pocket the
proceeds. The only question is, will Rakkeed let himself be used that
way? I think Rakkeed's bigger than Gurgurk ever can be. And more of a
threat to the Company. Everywhere we turn, Rakkeed's at the bottom of
whatever happens to be wrong. This business, for instance; Keeluk's
one of Rakkeed's followers."
"Eric, you have Rakkeed on the brain!" Harrington exclaimed
impatiently, then moved the threatened piece counterclockwise on the
circle where he had placed it. "He's just a barbarian caravan-driver."
Eric Blount moved the piece that had taken Harrington's pawn.
"Your king's in danger," he warned. "And Hitler was just a
paper-hanger."
"Rakkeed has no following, except among the rabble." Harrington puffed
furiously at his pipe, trying to figure the best protection for his
king.
"You just think he hasn't," Blount retorted. "Here in Konkrook, he's
always entertained by one or another of the big ship-owning nobles.
They probably deprecate his table-manners, but they just love his
politics. And the same thing at Keegark, and at the Free Cities along
the Eastern Shore."
"The last time Rakkeed was in Konkrook, he was the guest of the
Keegarkan Ambassador," von Schlichten stated. "Intelligence got that
from a spy we'd planted among the embassy servants."
"You sure this spy wasn't just romancing?" Harrington asked. "You get
so confounded many wild stories about Rakkeed. Three days after he was
reported here at Konkrook, he was reported at Skilk, five thousand
miles away, said to be having an audience with King Firkked."
"No mystery to that," von Schlichten said. "He travels on our ships,
in disguise, coolie-class, on the geek-deck."
"Be a good idea if he could be caught at it, some time," Blount said,
making another move. "One of the lower-deck loading ports could be
left unlocked, by carelessness, and he could blunder overboard at
about five thousand feet." He watched Harrington make a deceptively
pointless-looking move. "Sid, this damn dog business worries me."
"Worries me, too. I'm fond of that mutt, and God only knows what sort
of stuff he's been getting to eat. And I hate to think of why those
geeks stole him, too."
"Well, at risk of seeming heartless, I'm not so much worried for
Stalin as I am about why Keeluk was hiding him, and why he was willing
to murder the only two Terrans in Konkrook who trust him, to prevent
our finding out that he had him."
"A Mr. Keeluk, a clergyman," von Schlichten quoted. He chain-lit
another cigarette and stubbed out the old one. "Maybe the Rev. Keeluk
wanted Stalin for sacramental purposes."
Blount looked up sharply. "Ritual killing?" he asked. "Or sympathetic
magic?"
Von Schlichten shrugged. "Take your choice. Maybe Rakkeed wanted the
dog, to kill before a congregation of his followers, killing us by
proxy, or in effigy. Or maybe they think we worship Stalin, and
getting control of him would give them power over us. I wish we knew a
little more about Ulleran psychology."
That wasn't the first time he'd made that wish. Even if sex weren't
the paramount psychological factor the ancient Freudians believed, it
was an extremely important one, and on Uller most of the fundamental
terms of Terran psychology were meaningless. At the same time, the
average Ulleran probably had complexes and neuroses that would have
had Freud talking to himself, and they certainly indulged in practices
that would have even stood Krafft-Ebing's hair on end.
"One thing," Blount said. "It doesn't take any Ulleran psychologist to
know that about eighty percent of them hate us poisonously."
"Oh, rubbish!" Harrington blew the exclamation out around his
pipe-stem with a gush of smoke. "A few fanatics hate us, and a few
merchants who lost money when we replaced this primitive barter
economy of theirs, but nine-tenths of them have benefited enormously
from us, and continue to benefit...."
"And hate us more deeply with each new benefit," Blount added. "They
resent everything we've done for them."
"Yes, this spaceport proposition of King Orgzild of Keegark looks like
it, now doesn't it?" Harrington retorted. "He hates and resents us so
much that he's offered us a spaceport at his city...."
"What's it going to cost him?" Blount asked. "He furnishes the
land--sequestered from the estate of some noble he executed for
treason--and the labor--all forced. We furnish the structural steel,
the machine-equipment, the engineering. We get a spaceport we don't
really need, and he gets all the business it'll bring to Keegark.
Considering the fact that Rakkeed is a welcome guest at his embassy
here, and at the Royal Palace at Keegark, I'm beginning to wonder if
he isn't fomenting trouble for us here at Konkrook to make us willing
to move our main base to his city."
He made a move. Instantly, Harrington slashed out from the middle of
the board with one of his heavy-duty, all-purpose pieces and took a
piece, then moved again.
"Now look whose king's threatened!" he crowed.
"Yes, I see." Blount brought a piece clockwise around the board and
took the threatening piece, then moved again. "I hope you see whose
king's threatened, now."
Harrington swore, reached out to move a piece, and then jerked his
hand back as though the piece were radioactive. For a while, he sat
puffing his pipe and staring at the board.
"In fact, Orgzild's so sure that we're going to accept his offer that
he's started building two new power-reactors, to handle the additional
power-demand that'll result from the increased business," Blount
continued.
"Where's he getting the plutonium?" von Schlichten asked.
"Where can he get it?" Harrington replied. "He just bought four tons
of it from us, off the _City of Pretoria_."
"That's a hell of a lot of plutonium," Blount said. "I wonder if he
mightn't have some idea of what else plutonium can be used for,
beside generating power."
"Oh, God, I hope not!" Harrington exclaimed. "You're going to get me
started seeing burglars under the bed, next...."
"Maybe there are burglars," Blount said, pointing with his
cigarette-holder to Harrington's threatened king. "Can't you do
something about that, Sid?" Then he turned to von Schlichten. "Before
we get off the subject, how about those letters the Rev. Keeluk gave
to the Quinton girl?"
"All addressed to Skilkans known to be Rakkeed disciples and rabidly
anti-Terran," von Schlichten replied. "We radioed the list to Skilk;
Colonel Cheng-Li, our intelligence man there, teleprinted us back a
lot of material on them that looks like the Newgate Calendar. We
turned the letters themselves over to Doc Petrie, the Ulleran
philology sharp, who is a pretty fair cryptanalyst. He couldn't find
any indications of cipher, but there was a lot of gossip about
Keeluk's friends and parishioners which might have arbitrary
code-meanings. I'm going to explain the situation to Miss Quinton, and
advise her to have nothing to do with any of the people Keeluk gave
her letters to."
Harrington had gotten his king temporarily out of danger, losing a
piece doing it.
"Think she'll listen to you?" he asked. "These Extraterrestrials'
Rights Association people are a lot of blasted fanatics, themselves.
We're a gang of bloody-handed, flint-hearted, imperialistic sons of
bitches in their book, and anything we say's sure to be a Hitler-sized
lie."
"Oh, they're not as bad as all that. I never met the girl before
today, but old Mohammed Ferriera's a decent bloke. And their
association's really done a lot of good. For one thing, they put an
end to the peonage system on Yggdrasill, and I know what conditions
were like, there, before they did."
A calculating look came into Harrington's eye. He puffed slowly at his
pipe and slid a piece from the center toward the sector of the board
nearest him. Blount whistled softly and made a quick re-arrangement.
"Carlos, did you say she told you she was going to Skilk, in the near
future?" Harrington asked. "Well, look here; you're going up that way,
yourself, with that battalion of Kragans, on the _Aldebaran_. Why
don't you invite her to make the trip with you? You can be quite
attractive to young ladies, when you try, and she'll be grateful for
that rescue this afternoon, which is always a good foundation. Maybe
you can plant a couple of ideas where they'll do the most good. She's
only been here for three months--since the _Canberra_ got in from
Niflheim. You know and I know and we all know that there are a lot of
things up there at the polar mines that would look like hell to
anybody who didn't understand local conditions...."
"Well, Miss Quinton's company won't be any particularly heavy cross
for me to bear," von Schlichten replied. "I won't guarantee anything,
of course...."
The intercom-speaker on the table whistled several times. Harrington
swore, laid down his pipe, and got up, brushing ashes from the front
of his coat. He flipped a switch and spoke into the box.
"Governor," a voice replied out of it, "there's a geek procession just
landed from a water-barge in front, and is coming up the roadway to
Company House. A platoon of Jaikark's Household Guards, with rifles;
the Spear of State; a royal litter; about thirty geek nobles, on foot;
a gift-litter; another platoon of riflemen, if you say the last
syllable quick enough."
"That'll be Gurgurk, coming to tell us how unhappy his Sodden and
Inebriated Geekship is about that fracas on Seventy-second Street,"
Harrington said. "The gift-litter will contain the customary
indemnity, at the current market quotation. Have Gurgurk and party
admitted, all but the rifle-platoons; give him an honor guard of our
Kragans, and keep his own gun-toters outside. Take them to the
Reception Hall, and hold them there till I signal from the Audience
Hall, and then herd them in."
He came back and made a move. Immediately, Blount took one of his
pieces, moved again, took another, and made the third move to which he
was entitled.
"I'll mate you in four moves," he predicted. "Want to play it out,
before we go down?"
"Sure; what's time to a geek? Gurgurk'd think we were worried about
something if we didn't keep him waiting.... Good Lord! You do have me
over a barrel, Eric!"