Bismillah! How Dumb Can We Get?
The lights had come on inside the semicircular and now open
storm-porch of Company House, but it was still daylight outside. The
sky above the mountain to the west was fading from crimson to
burnt-orange, and a couple of the brighter stars were winking into
visibility. Von Schlichten and the sergeant hurried a hundred yards
down the street between low, thick-walled office buildings to the
telecast station, next to the Administration Building.
A woman captain met him just inside the door of the big soundproofed
room.
"We have a wavelength open to Konkrook, general," she said. "In booth
three."
He nodded. "Thank you, captain.... We've all lost a true friend,
haven't we?"
Another girl, a tech-sergeant, was in the booth; on the screen was the
image of a third young woman, a lieutenant, at Konkrook station. The
sergeant rose and started to leave the booth.
"Stick around, sergeant," von Schlichten told her. "I'll want you to
take over when I'm through." He sat down in front of the combination
visiscreen and pickup. "Now, lieutenant, just what happened?" he
asked. "How did he die?"
"We think it was poison, general. General M'zangwe has ordered autopsy
and chemical analysis. If you can wait about ten minutes, he'll be
able to talk to you, himself."
"Call him. In the meantime, give me everything you know."
"Well, the governor decided to go to bed early; he was going hunting
in the morning. I suppose you know his usual routine?"
Von Schlichten nodded. Harrington would have taken a shower, put on
his dressing-gown, and then sat down at his desk, lighted his pipe,
poured a drink of Terran bourbon, and begun to write his diary.
"Well, at 2210, give or take a couple of minutes, the Kragan
guard-sergeant on that floor heard ten pistol-shots, as fast as they
could be fired semi-auto, in the governor's room. The door was locked,
but he shot it off with his own pistol and went in. He found Governor
Harrington on the floor, wearing only his gown, holding an empty
pistol. He was in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, in horrible
pain. Evidently he'd fired his pistol, which he kept on his desk, to
call help; all the bullets had gone into the ceiling. The sergeant
punched the emergency button, beside the bed, and reported, then tried
to help the governor, but it was too late. One of the medics got there
in five minutes, just as he was dying. He'd written his diary up to
noon of today, and broken off in the middle of a word. There was a
bottle and an overturned glass on his desk. The Constabulary got there
a few minutes later, and then Brigadier-General M'zangwe took charge.
A white rat, given fifteen drops from the whiskey-bottle, died with
the same symptoms in about ninety seconds."
"Who had access to the whiskey-bottle?"
"A geek servant, who takes care of the room. He was caught, an hour
earlier, trying to slip off the island without a pass; they were
holding him at the guardhouse when Governor Harrington died. He's now
being questioned by the Kragans." The girl's face was bleakly
remorseless. "I hope they do plenty to him!"
"I hope they don't kill him before he talks."
"Wait a moment, general; we have General M'zangwe, now," the girl
said. "I'll switch you over."
The screen broke into a kaleidoscopic jumble of color, then cleared;
the chocolate-brown face of Themistocles M'zangwe was looking out of
it.
"I heard what happened, how they found him, and about that geek
chamber-valet being arrested," von Schlichten said. "Did you get
anything out of him?"
"He's admitted putting poison in the bottle, but he claims it was his
own idea. But he's one of Father Keeluk's parishioners, so...."
"Keeluk! God damn, so that was it!" von Schlichten almost shouted.
"Now I know what he wanted with Stalin, and that goat, and those
rabbits!"
Five thousand miles away, in Konkrook, Themistocles M'zangwe whistled.
"_Bismillah_! How dumb can we get?" he cried. "Of course they'd need
terrestrial animals, to find out what would poison a Terran! Wait a
minute; I'll make a note of that, to spring on this geek, if the
Kragans haven't finished him by now." Von Schlichten watched M'zangwe
pick up a stenophone and whisper into it for a moment. "All right,
Carlos, what else?"
"Has Eric been notified?"
"We called Keegark, but he's in audience with King Orgzild, and we
can't reach him."
"Well, who's in charge at Konkrook, now?"
"Not much of anybody. Laviola, the Fiscal Secretary, and Hans
Meyerstein, the Banking Cartel's lawyer, and Howlett, the Personnel
Chief, and Buhrmann, the Commercial Secretary, have made up a sort of
quadrumvirate and are trying to run things. I don't know what would
happen if anything came up suddenly...." A blue-gray uniformed arm,
with a major's cuff-braid, came into the screen, handing a slip of
paper to M'zangwe; he took it, glanced at it, and swore. Von
Schlichten waited until he had read it through.
"Well, something has, all right," the African said. "We just got a
call from Jaikark's Palace--a revolt's broken out, presumably headed
by Gurgurk; Household Guards either mutinied or wiped out by the
mutineers, all but those twenty Kragan Rifles we loaned Jaikark. They,
and about a dozen of Jaikark's courtiers and their personal retainers,
are holding the approaches to the King's apartments. The
native-lieutenant in charge of the Kragans just radioed in; says the
situation is desperate."
"When a Kragan says that, he means damn near hopeless. Is this being
recorded?" When M'zangwe nodded, he continued: "All right. Use the
recording for your authority and take charge. I'm declaring martial
rule at Konkrook, as of now, 2253. Tell Eric Blount what's happened,
and what you've done, as soon as you can get in touch with him. I'm
leaving for Konkrook at once; I ought to get in by 0800.
"Now, as to the trouble at the Palace. Don't commit more than one
company of Kragans and ten airjeeps and four combat-cars, and tell
them to evacuate Jaikark and his followers and our Kragans to Gongonk
Island. And alert your whole force. These geek palace revolutions are
always synchronized with street-rioting, and this thing seems to have
been synchronized with Sid Harrington's death, too. Get our Kragans
out if you can't save anybody else from the Palace, but sacrificing
thirty or forty men to save twenty is no kind of business. And keep
sending reports; I can pick them up on my car radio as I come down."
He turned to the girl sergeant. "Keep on this; there'll be more coming
in."
He rose and left the booth. If we can pull Jaikark's bacon off the
fire, he was thinking, the Company can dictate its own terms to him
afterward; if Jaikark's killed, we'll have Gurgurk's head off for it,
and then take over Konkrook. In either case, it'll be a long step
toward getting rid of all these geek despots. And with Eric Blount as
Governor-General....
The girl captain in charge of the station met him as he came out.
"Poison," he told her. "A geek servant did the job, on orders from
Gurgurk and possibly Rakkeed. Gurgurk's started a putsch against King
Jaikark; I'm going to Konkrook at once. Call the military airport and
have my command-car brought to Company House."
Harry Quong and Hassan Bogdanoff had been at the banquet, too; on a
world of lizard-faced silicate-eaters, the social difference between a
human general and a human aircar-driver was almost infinitesimal. He'd
have to talk to Barney Mordkovitz, too; when word of events at
Konkrook got out among the local geeks, as it probably had already....
The inner door of the soundproofed telecast-room burst open, three men
hurried inside, and it slammed shut behind them. In the brief
interval, there had been firing audible from outside. One of the men
had a pistol in his right hand, and with his left arm he supported a
companion, whose shoulder was mangled and dripped blood. The third man
had a burp-gun in his hands. All were in civilian dress-shorts and
light jackets. The man with the pistol holstered it and helped his
injured companion into a chair. The burp-gunner advanced into the
room, looked around, saw von Schlichten, and addressed him.
"General! The geeks turned on us!" he cried. "The Tenth North Uller's
mutinied; they're running wild all over the place. They've taken their
barracks and supply-buildings, and the lorry-hangars and the
maintenance-yard; they're headed this way in a mob. Some of the Zirk
Cavalry's joined them."
"How about the Kragans?"
"The Eighteenth Rifles? They're with us. I saw a party of them firing
into the mob; I saw some of the Tenth N.U.N.I. tossing a dead Kragan
on their bayonets...."
"Have any ammo left for that burp-gun? Come on, then; let's see what
it's like at Company House," von Schlichten said. "Captain Malavez,
you know what to do about defending this station. Get busy doing it.
And have that girl in booth three tell Konkrook what's happened here,
and say that I won't be coming down, as planned, just yet."
He opened the door, and the rattle of shots outside became audible
again. The civilian with the burp-gun knew better than to let a
general go out first; elbowing von Schlichten out of the way, he
crouched over his weapon and dashed outside. Drawing his pistol, von
Schlichten followed, pulling the door shut after him.
Darkness had fallen, while he had been inside; now the whole Company
Reservation was ablaze with electric lights. Somebody at the
power-plant--either the regular staff, if they were still holding, or
the mutineers, if they had taken it--had thrown on the emergency
lights. There was a confused mass of gray-skinned figures in front of
Company House, reflected light twinkling on steel over them; from the
direction of the native-troops barracks more natives were coming on
the run. On the roof of a building across the street, two machine-guns
were already firing into the mob. A group of Terrans came running out
of a roadway between two buildings, from the direction of the
repair-shops; several of them paused to fire behind them with pistols.
They started toward Company House, saw what was going on there, and
veered, darting into the door of the building from which the
auto-weapons were firing. From up the street, a hundred-odd
saurian-faced native soldiers were coming at the double, bayonets
fixed and rifles at high port; with them ran several Terrans.
Motioning his companion to follow, von Schlichten ran to meet them,
falling in beside a Terran captain who ran in front.
"What's the score, captain?" he asked.
"Tenth North Uller and the Fifth Cavalry have mutinied; so have these
rag-tag Auxiliaries. That mob down there's part of them." He was
puffing under the double effort of running and talking. "Whole thing
blew up in seconds; no chance to communicate with anybody...."
A Terran woman, in black slacks and an orange sweater, ran across the
street in front of them, pursued by a group of enlisted "men" of the
Tenth North Uller Native Infantry, all shrieking "_Znidd suddabit!_"
The fugitive ran into a doorway across the street; before her pursuers
were aware of their danger, the Kragans had swept over them. There was
no shooting; the slim, cruel-bladed bayonets did the work. From behind
him, as he ran, von Schlichten could hear Kragan voices in a new cry:
"_Znidd geek! Znidd geek!_"
The mob were swarming up onto the steps and into the semi-rotunda of
the storm-porch. There was shooting, which told him that some of the
humans who had been at the banquet were still alive. He wondered,
half-sick, how many, and whether they could hold out till he could
clear the doorway, and, most of all, he found himself thinking of
Paula Quinton. Skidding to a stop within fifty yards of the mob, he
flung out his arms crucifix-wise to halt the Kragans. Behind, he could
hear the Terrans and native-officers shouting commands to form front.
"Give them one clip, reload, and then give them the bayonet!" he
ordered. "Shove them off the steps and then clear the porch!"
"One clip, fire, and reload, at will!" somebody passed it on in
Kragan.
The hundred rifles let go all at once, and for five seconds they
poured a deafening two thousand rounds into the mutineers. There was
some fire in reply; a Zirk corporal narrowly missed him with a pistol,
he saw the captain's head fly apart when an explosive rifle-bullet hit
him, and half a dozen Kragans went down.
"Reload! Set your safeties!" von Schlichten bellowed. "Charge!"
Under human officers, the North Uller Native Infantry would have stood
firm. Even under their native-officers and sergeants, they should not
have broken as they did, but the best of these had paid for their
loyalty to the Company with their lives, and the rest had destroyed
their authority by revolting against the source from which it was
derived. At that, the Skilkan peasantry who made up the Tenth Infantry
and the Zirk cavalrymen tried briefly to fight as individuals,
shrieking "_Znidd suddabit!_" until the Kragans were upon them,
stabbing and shooting. They drove the rioters from the steps or killed
them there, they wiped out those who had gotten into the semicircle of
the storm-porch. The inside doors, von Schlichten saw, were open, but
beyond them were Terrans and a dozen or so Kragans. Hideyoshi O'Leary
and Barney Mordkovitz seemed to be in command of these.
"We had about thirty seconds' warning," Mordkovitz reported, "and the
Kragans in the hall bought us another sixty seconds. Of course, we all
had our pistols...."
"Hey! These storm-doors are wedged!" somebody discovered. "Those
goddam geek servants ...!"
"Yeah, kill any of them you catch," somebody else advised. "If we
could have gotten these doors closed...."
The mob, driven from the steps, was trying to reform and renew the
attack. From up the street, the machine-guns, silent during the
bayonet-fight, began hammering again. The mob surged forward to get
out of their fire, and were met by a rifle-blast and a hedge of
bayonets at the steps; they surged back, and the machine-guns flailed
them again. They started to rush the building from whence the
automatic-fire came, and there was a fusillade and a shriek of "_Znidd
geek!_" from up the street. They turned and fled in the direction from
whence they had come, bullets scourging them from three directions at
once.
For a moment, von Schlichten and the three Terrans and eighty-odd
Kragans who had survived the fight stood on the steps, weapons poised,
seeking more enemies. The machine-guns up the street stuttered a few
short bursts and were silent. From behind, the beleaguered Terrans and
their Kragan guards were emerging. He saw Jules Keaveney and his wife,
Commander Prinsloo of the _Aldebaran_, Harry Quong and Bogdanoff. Ah,
there she was! He heaved a breath of relief and waved to her.
The Kragans were already setting about their after-battle chores.
About twenty of them spread out on guard; the others, by fours, went
into the street, one covering with his rifle while the other three
checked on their own casualties, used the short, leaf-shaped swords
they carried to slash off the heads of enemy wounded, and collected
weapons and ammunition. A couple of hundred more Kragans, led by
Native-Major Kormork, the co-parent of young with King Kankad, came up
at the double and stopped in front of Company House.
"We were in quarters, aboard the _Aldebaran_ and in the guesthouse at
the airport," Kormork reported. "We were attacked, fifteen minutes
ago, by a mob. We took ten minutes beating them off, and five more
getting here. I sent Native-Captain Zeerjeek and the rest of the force
to retake the supply-depot and the shops and lorry hangars, which had
been taken, and relieve the military airport, which is under attack."
There was still firing from the commercial airport and the smaller
military airfield. Once there was a string of heavy explosions that
sounded like 80-mm rockets.
"Good enough. I hope you didn't spread yourself out too thin. What's
the situation at the commercial airport?"
"The two ships, the _Aldebaran_ and the freighter _Northern Star_, are
both safe," Kormork replied. "I saw them go on contragravity and rise
to about a hundred feet."
"Whose crowd is that you have?" he asked the Terran lieutenant who had
taken over command of the first force of Kragans.
"Company 6, Eighteenth Rifles, sir. We were on duty at the guardhouse;
fighting broke out in the direction of the native barracks. A couple
of runners from Captain Retief of Company 4 came in with word that he
was being attacked by mutineers from the Tenth N.U.N.I. but that he
was holding them back. So Captain Charbonneau, who was killed a few
minutes ago, left a Terran lieutenant and a Kragan native-lieutenant
and a couple of native-sergeants and thirty Kragans to hold the
guardhouse, and brought the rest of us here."
Von Schlichten nodded. "You'd pass the military airport and the
power-plant, wouldn't you?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. The military airport's holding out, and I saw the
red-and-yellow danger-lights on the fence around the power-plant."
That meant the power-plant was, for the time, safe; somebody'd turned
twenty thousand volts into the fence.
"All right. I'm setting up my command post at the telecast station,
where the communication equipment is." He turned to the crowd that had
come out onto the porch from inside. "Where's Colonel Cheng-Li?"
"Here, general." The Intelligence and Constabulary officer pushed
through the crowd. "I was on the phone, talking to the military
airport, the commercial airport, ordnance depot, spaceport, ship-docks
and power-plant. All answer. I'm afraid Pop Goode, at the city
power-plant, is done for; nobody answers there, but the TV-pickup is
still on in the load-dispatcher's room, and the place is full of
geeks. Colonel Jarman's coming here with a lorry to get combat-car
crews; he's short-handed. Port-Captain Leavitt has all the native
labor at the airport and spaceport herded into a repair dock; he's
keeping them covered with the forward 90-mm gun of the _Northern
Star_. Lorry-hangars, repair-shops and maintenance-yards don't
answer."
"That's what I was going to ask you. Good enough. Harry Quong, Hassan
Bogdanoff!"
His command-car crew front-and-centered.
"I want you to take Colonel O'Leary up, as soon as my car's brought
here.... Hid, you go up and see what's going on. Drop flares where
there isn't any light. And take a look at the native-labor camp and
the equipment-park, south of the reservation.... Kormork, you take all
your gang, and half these soldiers from the Eighteenth, here, and help
clear the native-troops barracks. And don't bother taking any
prisoners; we can't spare personnel to guard them."
Kormork grinned. The taking of prisoners had always been one of those
irrational Terran customs which no Ulleran regarded with favor, or
even comprehension.