"Worries me, too," Harrington said. "I'm fond of that mutt, and God
only knows what sort of stuff he's been getting to eat."
"I'm a lot more worried about why Keeluk was hiding him, and why he
was willing to murder the only two Terrans on Konkrook who trust him,
to prevent our finding out he had Stalin," Blount struck in.
Von Schlichten chain-lit another cigarette and stubbed out the old
one. "Maybe Keeluk turned him over to Rakkeed to kill before a
congregation of his followers--killing us in effigy. Or maybe they
figure we worship Stalin, and getting him would give them power over
us. I wish I knew a little more about Ullran psychology."
"One thing," Blount said. "It doesn't take any Ullran psychologist to
know about eighty per cent 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, but nine-tenths of
them have benefitted enormously from us."
"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, doesn't it?" Harrington retorted. "He hates us so much he's
offered us a spaceport at his city...."
"At what cost?" Blount asked. "He takes the land from some noble he
executes for treason and gives it to us--together with forced labor.
We furnish everything else. We get a port we don't need, and he gets
all the business it'll bring. In fact, considering that Rakkeed is a
welcome guest there, I wonder if he isn't fomenting trouble here at
Konkrook to make us move our main base to Keegark. He's so sure we'll
accept already that he's started building two new power-reactors to
handle the additional demand from increased business."
"Where's he getting the plutonium?" von Schlichten asked,
suspiciously.
"He just bought four tons of it from us, off the _City of Pretoria_,"
Harrington replied.
"A hell of a lot of plutonium," Blount said. "I wonder if he has any
idea of what else plutonium can be used for?"
"Oh, God, I hope not!" Harrington exclaimed. "Bosh! What about those
letters Keeluk gave the Quinton girl?"
"All addressed to rabidly anti-Terran Rakkeed disciples," von
Schlichten replied. "We couldn't find any indication of a cipher, but
the gossip about Keeluk's friends might have had code-meanings. I'll
have to advise her to have nothing to do with any of the people
Keeluk gave her letters to."
"Think she'll listen to you? These Extraterrestrial Rights Association
people are a lot of blasted fanatics, themselves. They think we're a
gang of bloody-fisted, flint-hearted imperialists."
"Oh, they're not as bad as all that. Old Mohammed Ferriera's always
been decent enough. And the Association's really done a lot of good in
other places."
A calculating look came into Harrington's eye. "She was going to
Skilk, eh? And you're going there yourself, to investigate some of
this Rakkeed worry of Eric's. Why not invite her along, and maybe you
can plant a couple of ideas where they'll do the most good. We all
know there are a lot of things at the polar mines that would look bad
to anybody who didn't understand. And with all this trouble being
stirred up now...."
It was his first admission that there _was_ trouble, but von
Schlichten let it pass. "Her company wouldn't be any heavy cross to
bear," he replied. "I won't guarantee anything, of course...."
The intercom-speaker on the table whistled, and Harrington 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,
coming up the roadway to Company House. A platoon of Jaikark's
Household Guards with a royal litter, Spear of State, gift-litter,
nobles and such."
"Gurgurk with indemnity for the riot, eh? Let them in, give them an
honor guard of Kragans, but keep their own gun-toters outside. Take them
to Reception Hall until I signal from Audience Hall, then herd them in."
He flipped back the switch and turned back. "We'll have to let them wait
or they'll think we're worried. But you see--everything's going along
normal lines."
Blount nodded, but his face showed disbelief. And von Schlichten
grumbled unhappily to himself, without knowing why, until they finally
went out to the big Audience Hall to meet the delegation.
Governor-General Sidney Harrington, on the comfortably-upholstered
bench on the dais of the Audience Hall, didn't look particularly
regal. But then, to a Terran, any of the kings of Ullr would have
looked like a freak birth in a lizard-house at a zoo; it was hard to
guess what impression Harrington would make on the Ullran psychology.
He took the false palate and tongue-clicker, officially designated as
an "enunciator, Ullran" and, colloquially, as a geek-speaker, out of
his coat pocket and shoved it into his mouth. Von Schlichten and
Blount put in theirs, and Harrington pressed the floor-button with his
toe. After a brief interval, the wide doors at the other end of the
hall slid open, and the Konkrookan notables, attended by a dozen
Company native-officers and a guard of Kragan Rifles, entered. The
honor-guard advanced in two columns; between them marched an unclad
and heavily armed native carrying an ornate spear with a three-foot
blade upright in front of him with all four hands. It was the
Konkrookan Spear of State; it represented the proxy-presence of King
Jaikark. Behind it stalked Gurgurk, the Konkrookan equivalent of Prime
Minister or Grand Vizier; he wore a gold helmet and a thing like a
string-vest made of gold wire, and carried a long sword with a
two-hand grip, a pair of Terran automatics built for a hand with
six-four-knuckled fingers, and a pair of matched daggers. He was
considerably past the Ullran prime of life--seventy or eighty, to
judge from the worn appearance of his opal teeth, the color of his
skin, and the predominantly reddish tint of his quartz-speckles. The
retinue of nobles behind Gurgurk ran through the whole spectrum, from
a princeling who was almost oyster-gray to the Keegarkan Ambassador,
who was even blacker and more red-speckled than Gurgurk.
Four slaves brought up in the rear, carrying an ornately inlaid box on
poles. When the spear-bearer reached the exact middle of the hall, he
halted and grounded his regalia-weapon with a thump. Gurgurk came up
and halted a couple of paces behind and to the left of the spear, and
most of the other nobles drew up in two curved lines some ten paces to
the rear; the ambassador and another noble came up and planted
themselves beside Gurgurk.
* * * * *
The Governor-General rose slowly and descended from the dais,
advancing to within ten paces of the Spear, von Schlichten and Blount
accompanying him.
"Welcome, Gurgurk," Harrington gibbered through his false palate. "The
Company is honored by this visit."
"I come in the name of my royal master, His Sublime and Ineffable
Majesty, Jaikark the Seventeenth, King of Konkrook and of all the
lands of the Konk Isthmus," Gurgurk squeaked and clicked. "I have the
honor to bring with me the Lord Ambassador of King Orgzild of Keegark
to the court of my royal master."
"And I," the ambassador said, after being suitably welcomed, "am
honored to be accompanied by Prince Gorkrink, special envoy from my
master, His Royal and Imperial Majesty King Orgzild, who is in your
city to receive the shipment of power-metal my royal master has been
honored to be permitted to purchase from the Company."
More protocol about welcoming Gorkrink. Then Gurgurk cleared his
throat with a series of barking sounds.
"My royal master, His Sublime and Ineffable Majesty, is prostrated
with grief," he stated solemnly. "Were his sorrow not so overwhelming,
he would have come in His Own Sacred Person to express the pain and
shame which he feels that people of the Company should be set upon and
endangered in the streets of the royal city."
"The soldiers of His Sublime and Ineffable Majesty came most promptly
to the aid of the troops of the Company, did they not, General von
Schlichten?" Harrington asked, solemn-faced.
"Within minutes, Your Excellency," von Schlichten replied gravely.
"Their promptness, valor and efficiency were most exemplary."
* * * * *
Gurgurk spoke at length, expressing himself as delighted, on behalf of
his royal master, at hearing such high praise from so distinguished a
soldier. Eric Blount contributed a short speech, beseeching the gods
that the deep and beautiful friendship existing between the Chartered
Ullr Company and His Sublime etcetera would continue unimpaired. The
Keegarkan Ambassador spoke his piece, expressing on behalf of King
Orgzild the deepest regret that the people of the Company should be so
molested, and managing to hint that things like that simply didn't
happen at Keegark.
The Prince Gorkrink then spoke briefly, in sympathy. Von Schlichten
noticed that a few of his more recent quartz-specks were slightly
greenish in tinge, a sure sign that he had, not long ago, been exposed
to the fluorine-tainted air which men and geeks alike breathed on
Niflheim. When a geek prince hired out as a laborer for a year on
Niflheim, he did so for only one purpose--to learn Terran
technologies.
Gurgurk then announced that so enormous a crime against the friends of
His Sublime etcetera had not been allowed to go unpunished, signalling
behind him with one of his lower hands for the box to be brought
forward. The slaves carried it to the front, set it down, and opened
it, taking from it a rug which they spread on the floor. On this, from
the box, they placed twenty-four newly severed opal-grinning heads, in
four neat rows. They had all been freshly scrubbed and polished, but
they still smelled like crushed cockroaches.
The three Terrans looked at them gravely. A double-dozen heads was
standard payment for an attack in which no Terran had been killed.
Ostensibly, they were the heads of the ringleaders; in practice, they
were usually lopped from the first two-dozen prisoners or overage
slaves at hand, without regard for whether the victims had ever heard
of the crime they were expiating.
There was another long speech from Gurgurk, with the nobles behind him
murmuring antiphonal agreement--standard procedure, for which there
was a standard pun, geek chorus--and a speech of response from Sid
Harrington. Standing stiffly through the whole rigamarole, von
Schlichten waited for it to end, as, finally, it did.
They walked back from the door, whence they had escorted the
delegation, and stood looking down at the saurian heads on the rug.
Harrington raised his voice and called to a Kragan sergeant whose
chevrons were painted on all four arms.
"Take this carrion out and stuff it in the incinerator," he ordered.
* * * * *
"Wait a minute," von Schlichten told the sergeant. Then he disgorged
and pouched his geek-speaker. "See that head, there?" he asked,
rolling it over with his toe. "I killed that geek, myself, with my
pistol. And Hid O'Leary stuck a knife in that one." He walked around
the rug, turning heads over with his foot. "This was a cut-rate
head-payment; they just slashed off two-dozen heads at the scene of
the riot. Six months ago, Gurgurk wouldn't have tried to pull anything
like this. Now he's laughing up his non-existent sleeve at us."
"That's what I've been preaching, all along," Eric Blount took up
after him. "These geeks need having the fear of Terra thrown into
them."
"Oh, nonsense, Eric; you're just as bad as Carlos, here!" Harrington
tut-tuted. "Next, you'll be saying that we ought to depose Jaikark
and take control ourselves."
"Well, what's wrong with that, for an idea?" von Schlichten demanded.
"My God!" Harrington exploded. "Don't let me hear that kind of talk
again! We're not _conquistadores_: we're employees of a business
concern, here to make money honestly, by exchanging goods and services
with these people...."
* * * * *
He turned and walked away, out of the Audience Hall, leaving von
Schlichten and Blount to watch the removal of the geek-heads.
"You know, I went a little too far," von Schlichten confessed. "Or too
fast, rather."
"We can't go too slowly, though," Blount replied.
Von Schlichten nodded seriously. "Did you notice the green specks in
the hide of that Prince Gorkrink?" he asked. "He's just come back from
Niflheim. Probably on the _Canberra_, three months ago."
"And he's here to get that plutonium, and ship it to Keegark on the
_Oom Paul Kruger_," Blount considered. "I wonder just what he learned,
on Niflheim."
"I wonder just what's going on at Keegark," von Schlichten said.
"Orgzild's pulled down a regular First-Century-model iron curtain. You
know, four of our best native Intelligence operatives have been
murdered in Keegark in the last three months, and six more have just
vanished there."
"Well, I'm going there in a few days, myself, to talk to Orgzild about
this spaceport deal," Blount said. "I'll have a talk with Hendrik
Lemoyne and Colonel MacKinnon. And I'll see what I can find out for
myself."
"Well, let's go have a drink," von Schlichten suggested.
But he kept remembering the falsehood of Gurgurk's indemnity. When the
Ullrans started making a mockery of such things, it was no time for
Harrington's trusting policies. The smell of trouble was suddenly
stronger in his nostrils.