The last clatter of silverware and dishes ceased as the native
servants finished clearing the table. There was a remaining clatter of
cups and saucers; liqueur-glasses tinkled, and an occasional
cigarette-lighter clicked. At the head table, the voices seemed
louder.
"... don't like it a millisol's worth," Brigadier-General Barney
Mordkovitz, the Skilk military CO, was saying to the lady on his
right. "They're too confounded meek. Nowadays, nobody yells '_Znidd
suddabit!_' at you. Nobody sticks all four thumbs in his mouth and
waves his fingers. Nobody commits nuisance on the sidewalk in front of
you. They just stand and look at you like a farmer looking at a turkey
the week before Christmas, and that I don't like!"
"Oh, bosh!" Jules Keaveney, the Skilk Resident-Agent, at the head of
the table, exclaimed. "You soldiers are all alike--begging your
pardon, General von Schlichten," he nodded in the direction of the
guest of honor. "If they don't bow and scrape to you and get off the
sidewalk to let you pass, you say they're insolent and need a lesson.
If they do, you say they're plotting insurrection."
"What I said," Mordkovitz repeated, "was that I expect a certain
amount of disorder, and a certain minimum show of hostility toward us
from some of these geeks, to conform to what I know to be our
unpopularity with many of them. When I don't find it, I want to know
why."
"I'm inclined," von Schlichten came to his subordinate's support, "to
agree. This sudden absence of overt hostility is disquieting. Colonel
Cheng-Li," he called on the local Intelligence officer and
Constabulary chief. "This fellow Rakkeed was here, about a month ago.
Was there any noticeable disorder at that time? Anti-Terran
demonstrations, attacks on Company property or personnel, shooting at
aircars, that sort of thing?"
"No more than usual, general. In fact, it was when Rakkeed came here
that the condition General Mordkovitz was speaking of began to become
conspicuous. We did catch some of Rakkeed's disciples trying to get in
among the enlisted men of the Tenth N.U.N.I. and the Fifth Zirk
Cavalry and promote disaffection. That was reported at the time, sir."
"And acted upon, as far as the civil administration would permit," von
Schlichten replied. "And I might say that Lieutenant-Governor Blount
has reported from Keegark, where he is now, that the same unnatural
absence of hostility exists there."
"Well, of course, general," Keaveney said patronizingly. "King Orgzild
has things under pretty tight control at Keegark. He'd not allow a few
fanatics to do anything to prejudice these spaceport negotiations."
"I wonder if the idea back of that spaceport proposition isn't to get
us concentrated at Keegark, where Orgzild could wipe us all out in one
surprise blow," somebody down the table suggested.
"Oh, Orgzild wouldn't be crazy enough to try anything like that,"
Commander Dirk Prinsloo, of the _Aldebaran_, declared. "He'd get away
with it for just twelve months--the time it would take to get the
news to Terra and for a Federation Space Navy task-force to get here.
And then, there'd be little bits of radioactive geek floating around
this system as far out as the orbit of Beta Hydrae VII."
"That's quite true," von Schlichten agreed. "The point is, does
Orgzild know it? I doubt if he even believes there is a Terra."
"Then where in Space does he think we come from?" Keaveney demanded.
"I believe he thinks Niflheim is our home world," von Schlichten
replied. "Or, rather, the string of orbiters and artificial satellites
around Niflheim. Where he thinks Niflheim is, I wouldn't even try to
guess."
"Well, it takes six months for a ship to go between here and Nif,"
Prinsloo considered. "Because of the hyperdrive effects, the
experienced time of the voyage, inside the ship, is of the order of
three weeks. Taking that as the figure, he'd estimate the distance at
about a quarter-million miles, assuming the velocity as being the
speed of one of our contragravity-ships here on Uller. I'm assuming he
doesn't even know there is a hyperdrive."
"Yes. After he'd wiped us out, he might even consider the idea of an
invasion of Niflheim with captured contragravity ships," Hideyoshi
O'Leary chuckled. "That would be a big laugh--if any of us were alive,
then, to do any laughing."
"You don't really believe that, general?" Keaveney asked. His tone was
still derisive, but under the derision was uncertainty. After all, von
Schlichten had been on Uller for fifteen years, to his two.
"Any question of geek psychology is wide open as far as I'm concerned;
the longer I stay here, the less I understand it." Von Schlichten
finished his brandy and got out cigarette-case and lighter. "I have
an idea of the sort of garbled reports these spies of his who spend a
year on Niflheim as laborers bring back."
"You know the line Rakkeed's been taking, of course," Colonel Cheng-Li
put in. "He as much as says that Niflheim's our home, and that the
farms where we raise food here, and those evergreen plantings on Konk
Isthmus and between here and Grank are the beginning of an attempt to
drive all native life from this planet and make it over for
ourselves."
"And that savage didn't think an idea like that up for himself; he got
it from somebody like Orgzild," the black-bearded brigadier-general
added. "You know, the main base off Niflheim is practically
self-supporting, with hydroponic-gardens and animal-tissue culture
vats. And it's enough bigger than one of the _City_ ships to pass for
a little world. Yes, somebody like Orgzild, or King Firkked here,
could easily pick up the idea that that's our home planet."
"But King Kankad was talking about...." Paula Quinton began.
"We were speaking of geeks, not Kragans." Von Schlichten lit his
cigarette and held his lighter for hers. "You saw that big Beta Hydrae
orrery at Kankad's observatory. Well, there's quite a little story
about that. You know, it's generally realized by the natives here that
Uller is a globe. The North Zirks have ridden all the way around it,
on hipposaur-back, in the high latitudes, and the thalassic peoples at
the Equator have sailed all the five equatorial seas and portaged all
the isthmuses between. But, of course, Uller is the center of the
universe; the sun travels around it, on a rather complicated
double-spiral track. As a theory, it explains most of what they're
able to observe, and any minor effects that don't conform to it are
just ignored. They have a model, a most ingenious affair run by
clockwork, at the University of Konkrook, to show the apparent
movement and position of Beta Hydrae in the sky; it does so fairly
accurately.
"Well, some of our astronomers constructed this orrery, and exhibited
it to a gathering of the leading native scholars, who are also the
high-priests of the local religion. Sort of combined Academy of Arts
and Sciences and College of Cardinals. They almost were massacred. As
soon as the assembled pundits saw this thing and grasped its meaning,
they began geeking and skreeking and yorking and squawking and
brandishing knives--it was blasphemous, and sacrilegious, and
undermined the Faith, and invalidated the whole logic-system.
"I was brigadier-general, in command of Konkrook military district,
then--the post Them M'zangwe has now. When I got a riot-call from the
University, I hustled around with a company of Kragans, and we cleared
the hall with the bayonet and ran the reverend professors out onto the
campus, and after we got things in hand, the Kragans crowded around
the orrery, trying to set it up to show the existing position of the
planet relative to the primary and figure out the theory back of it.
They were very much interested; some of them must have sent word home
about it, because Kankad came in on the next ship, wanting to see it.
He was so much taken with it that Sid Harrington gave it to him. It's
one of his most cherished possessions, but the Konkrook pundits bite
all four thumbs and wave their fingers every time they think of it."
He warmed his coffee from a controlled-temperature pot. "You can't use
Kragan thinking on any subject as a criterion of what somebody like
Orgzild's opinions will be."
"I never could understand the admiration some of you military people
have for those cutthroats," Keaveney declared. "Oh, yes, I can. You
like them because they do your dirty work for you."
"He reads Stanley-Browne, too, I'll bet," Hideyoshi O'Leary said.
"Miss Quinton, how did you like your visit to Kankad's Town? Still
think the Kragans are cultural mongrels?"
"Why, they're wonderful! I never expected anything like it. They just
seem to have picked up everything they could from us, and then gone on
from there to develop a culture of their own with our techniques. For
instance, those big guns, the ones they call the Ridge Battery, that
they built for themselves. They aren't copies of Terran guns. They
don't look like our work, or give you the feel our work would. And
that telescope at the observatory," she continued. "Did they build
that, too?"
"Yes, all we furnished was a couple of textbooks on lens-grinding and
telescope-design, and a book on optics. You see, when we made that
deal with them, they realized that we weren't any better fighters than
they were; we just had better weapons. To have the same kind of
weapons, they'd have to learn to make them, and once they began
studying technology, they found that they had to study science.
Weapon-making was the entering-wedge; after that, they found that they
could use the same skills to make anything else they wanted. Give them
another century or so and they'll be one of the great races of the
galaxy."
"Yes, and it's a good thing they're our friends, too," Mordkovitz
added. "I'm only sorry there are so few of them, and so many of the
geeks."
"Yes, the Company ought to let us stockpile nuclear weapons here, just
to be on the safe side," another officer, farther down the table,
said.
"Well, I'm not exactly in favor of that," von Schlichten replied.
"It's the same principle as not allowing guards who have to go in
among the convicts to carry firearms. If somebody like Orgzild got
hold of a nuclear bomb, even a little old First-Century H-bomb, he
could use it for a model and construct a hundred like it, with all the
plutonium we've been handing out for power reactors. And there are too
few of us, and we're concentrated in too few places, to last long if
that happened. What this planet needs, though, is a visit by a
fifty-odd-ship task-force of the Space Navy, just to show the geeks
what we have back of us. After a show like that, there'd be a lot less
_znidd suddabit_ around here."
"General, I deplore that sort of talk," Keaveney said. "I hear too
much of this mailed-fist-and-rattling-saber stuff from some of the
junior officers here, without your giving countenance and
encouragement to it. We're here to earn dividends for the stockholders
of the Uller Company, and we can only do that by gaining the
friendship, respect and confidence of the natives...."
"Mr. Keaveney," Paula Quinton spoke up. "I doubt if even you would
seriously accuse the Extraterrestrials' Rights Association of favoring
what you call a mailed-fist-and-rattling-saber policy. We've done
everything in our power to help these people, and if anybody should
have their friendship, we should. Well, only five days ago, in
Konkrook, Mr. Mohammed Ferriera and I were attacked by a mob, our
native aircar driver was murdered, and if it hadn't been for General
von Schlichten and his soldiers, we'd have lost our own lives. Mr.
Ferriera is still hospitalized as a result of injuries he received. It
seems that General von Schlichten and his Kragans aren't trying to
get friendship and confidence; they're willing to settle for respect,
in the only way they can get it--by hitting harder and quicker than
the geeks can."
Somebody down the table--one of the military, of course--said, "Hear,
hear!" Von Schlichten came as close as a man wearing a monocle can to
winking at Paula. Good girl, he thought; she's started playing on the
Army team!
"Well, of course...." Keaveney began. Then he stopped, as a Terran
sergeant came up to the table and bent over Barney Mordkovitz'
shoulder, whispering urgently. The black-bearded brigadier rose
immediately, taking his belt from the back of his chair and putting it
on. Motioning the sergeant to accompany him, he spoke briefly to
Keaveney and then came around the table to where von Schlichten sat,
the Resident-Agent accompanying him.
"Message just came in from Konkrook, general," he said softly. "Sid
Harrington's dead."
It took von Schlichten all of a second to grasp what had been said.
"Good God! When? How?"
"Here's all we know, sir," the sergeant said, giving him a radioprint
slip. "Came in ten minutes ago."
It was an all-station priority telecast. Governor-General Harrington
had died suddenly, in his room, at 2210; there were no details. He
glanced at his watch; it was 2243. Konkrook and Skilk were in the same
time-zone; that was fast work. He handed the slip to Mordkovitz, who
gave it to Keaveney.
"You from the telecast station, sergeant?" he asked. "All right, let's
go."
"Wait a minute, general." Keaveney put out a hand to detain him as he
took his belt and put it on. "How about this?" He gestured nervously
with the radioprint slip.
"Get up and make an announcement, now," von Schlichten told him,
fastening the buckle and hitching his pistol and survival-kit into
place. "It'll be out all over the planet in half an hour. Never hold
news out unnecessarily." He stubbed out his cigarette. "Come on,
sergeant."
As he hurried from the banquet-room, he could hear Keaveney tapping on
his wine-glass.
"Everybody, please! Let me have your attention! There has just come in
a piece of the most tragic news...."