The stiff, black-shelled form, impaled on a spike beside the
trafficway, with gummy beads of blue blood glistening in the sun, told
the pretty little story much more graphically.
It hadn't been decapitated; Martians lack external heads.
Scat scanned the tableau, his scarred lean features impassive. "They
didn't mention this," he commented. "Do we still go in?"
"You ask questions like that just for the sake of the record, don't
you?" Click-Click replied, using his black pincers to produce code in a
way that explained his nickname. Though headless, Martians didn't lack
brains. Definitely.
Scat switched to the turbine for jetless surface-drive, and the utility
car crawled into Bronsco.
A hick town, Scat decided. A couple of 100-story skylons, a mainstreet
of glastic commercial buildings, and rows of distressingly similar
homes, all of them Paradise-37's or Eden-2's. But the skylons looked
dead; the glastic was dingy, and the shrubbery drooped. A few cars were
untidily parked by trafficway. Footpaths worn in the grass showed that
the slidewalks hadn't been strategically placed, and not all of them
seemed to be working.
Crummy.
But it was in burgs like this that the destiny of the Martians was
being decided. In the big metropolis, intellectuals talked "Martian
Question" all night. Here, things happened.
Click-Click sat up in plain view--not to see, but to be seen. Eyeless
perception gave him as good a picture as Scat's of the town--less
range, but a lot more three-dimensional.
His shiny black body and jointed arms brought some coldly unfavorable,
lingering stares, but nothing more; broad daylight didn't lend itself
to lynchings.
When they entered the offices of the _Bronsco Newsbeam_, old
Donnolan acted as if he had been betrayed. His scraggly eyebrows
gyrated contortedly above his pale, close-set eyes. "If I'd had any
idea that I was selling the _Newsbeam_ to a damn bug-lover...!" he
finally howled impotently.
"Get off my property," said Scat in a low voice.
"Jonas Scatterday the Liberator!" Donnolan's eyes became crooked blue
needles of bigotry. "Seems to me I recall you're a bug-smuggler, too.
Mixed up in the Underground Skyway to Antarctica...."
"Get off my property," Scat repeated.
As Donnolan sidled out, he uttered those famous last words which are as
old as wishful thinking--and blustering cowardice. "You can't do this
to me!"
In the transmission room, Scat explained the changed situation to the
_Newsbeam_ employees, with Click-Click standing beside him. A
grizzled old beam-doctor expressed their sentiments. "I guess we'll
stick with you, Mister. I won't say we like it, but it's our jobs."
Scat nodded unenthusiastically. He knew the arrangement wouldn't last
out the day, but as Click-Click had observed, there were a lot of
things he did for the sake of the record.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later they had the Missionary sizzling on the beam, after a
brief editorial statement of the new ownership and policy. Click-Click
had fetched the master tapes from the car.
Anachronistically speaking, the Missionary was dynamite. Scat switched
him in on the transmission room screen and sat down to listen,
unmindful of the guardedly resentful looks he got from the staff. As
he listened, his lanky frame relaxed and his stony features softened a
little.
The Missionary wasn't blind, but he had the spiritual look some blind
men get. He was cadaverous; his voice got under your ribs.
"Living machines! It is by virtue of that legal fiction that we have
denied the Martians even the humanitarian treatment we grant to
domestic animals, that we have revived an institution as vile as it is
old in order to exploit them, that we have spurned all communion with
their gentle minds. Living machines! The Earth's bad conscience is the
best testimony to the falsity of that fiction, though even the most
confirmed Martian-hater recognizes it. He says, succinctly, 'Bug'.
"But they're soulless, you claim. Inhuman. Without feelings. Well,
fellow free-citizens of the World Confederation, I went to preach the
Word to those living machines on their home planet. I had to fight
Outer Spaceways to get permission to do it; I had to live in a cramped
little pressure hut and wear a space-suit whenever I went among them; I
had to shiver under their meager sun because fuel supplies were somehow
always late in getting to me. But I was happy because I was going to
teach the Martians our religion.
"I soon found out, however, that it was they who ought to be teaching
me!"
A scene of Martian religious ceremonies followed, one of the few shots
that humans had been able to obtain. The speaker's voice continued.
[Illustration: It was one of the few shootings of Martian religious
ceremonies that humans had been able to take.]
"Lacking their perception and telepathy, it wasn't easy to get in
contact with their minds, but we discovered ways. I found out how they
live, what they believe in.
"I was going to teach them our Golden Rule. They taught me theirs--the
Golden Rule of a telepathic race. '_Do unto others as others would
have you do unto them_'."
Not many people watching in at this hour, but the Missionary's words
were being faithfully recorded in every home owning a _Bronsco
Newsbeam_ set. And during supper, when people switched on the news,
there'd be a lot of Martian-owning or Martian-supported fathers and
husbands who'd get indigestion and have to be restrained from busting
up the set. They'd flash a protest to the _Newsbeam_; they'd
record an indignant tape to the government.
More to the point, they'd squawk to Kemmerdygn. Which reminded Scat
that he had business. "While I'm gone, you take orders from him," he
told the staff, indicating Click-Click. "Any question you got, he'll
write you an answer."
* * * * *
He walked out without waiting for the reaction. A small boy was soaping
_Bugs_ on the glastic. _It begins_, thought Scat. He tossed
an old news-spool at the boy and hopped in the car.
He passed up the skylon housing the front offices of _Kemmerdygn
Mining Interests_ and headed straight for Ten Mile. If they were
going to give him the runaround, it might as well be on the spot.
Outside city limits, the trafficway skirted Bugtown. He parked to get
pix. Some shots of those miserable burrows and those apathetic black
forms--so spiritless in comparison with a healthy, psychically sound,
enlightened Martian like Click-Click--would fit nicely into an article
he was doing for the _Free Martian Monthly_. And maybe something
for the _Newsbeam Sunday Supplement_--if the new ownership lasted
that long.
Why, there were only two refrigerators for the whole community, and the
measly vacuum shack was inadequate even for mating purposes. But owners
didn't worry about the interminable process of Martian gestation and
maturation--not while Outer Spaceways was running the theoretically
illegal Bug Trade wide open.
With an almost savage flirt of his fingers, he switched in the
smell-getter. Might as well give the owners of sets with olfactory
reception a whiff of sick Martian while he was at it.
A rangy, loose-jawed man slouched out of the bushes on the other side
of the trafficway. A tarnished squirt gun was stuck conspicuously in
the belt of his smock. "What might you be doing, Mister?" he drawled.
"Admiring the scenery," Scat replied harshly. "Bronsco should be proud!"
And he gave him his jets.
2
At Ten Mile, his tape of introduction from World Mine Owners got Scat
admitted to a manager's office pronto.
He explained, "I've been commissioned to do an article on how you keep
the bugs happy in the world's deepest mine." He didn't say for what
publication.
"Of course, we have our standard news releases ... er, Mr. Martin," the
manager began tentatively. He was frowning at Scat, trying to place him.
"They're a bit stodgy, I'm afraid," Scat replied. "We wanted something
with more life to it--shots of the bugs working the radioactives in
the ten-mile drifts, and so on. Pictures of the bugs playing games and
going through their primitive ceremonials when Mars is in the sky. All
specially posed and rehearsed, of course."
"I see. Yes, there's something to what you say, all right." The manager
nodded wisely, pursing his little lips. "It could be made a lot more
convincing that way. Of course, we'd have to get an okay from Mr.
Kemmerdygn's secretarial offices, Mr. ... er...."
The faraway look that came into his eyes told Scat that the
whisper-transmitter behind his ear had gone into action. The manager's
expression didn't change very much, but his plump little hand crept
down out of sight and pressed something. Donnolan must have squawked
loud and fast--and to the right people, Scat decided regretfully.
A couple of barrel-chested men with "bug-boss" written all over them
ambled in. The manager came around the table and grabbed at Scat's
right arm. Scat evaded the movement, caught his hand, and squeezed; the
manager squealed. The bug-bosses moved forward, but Scat released him.
"Yes, the name's Scatterday," he said. "And duraplast's considerably
harder than flesh."
Everybody knew that Jonas Scatterday had lost his right arm from squirt
gun corrosive while standing off a raid on an eastern bugtown.
The manager nursed his hand. His puffy little white face was venomous.
He said, "We could have you in court for using a bogus tape of
introduction to try to sneak in and agitate among our bugs. But since
you've so conveniently put yourself in our hands, I don't believe it
will be necessary to call in the law."
Scat laughed. "Better check first with Kemmerdygn's secretarial
offices. With the situation as it is, and all those government
contracts that you're having to hump yourselves to fulfill, I don't
think they'd want anything to happen that would raise a stink. If
Jonas Scatterday should disappear at Ten Mile, I'm afraid the
government--regretfully of course--would have to take a hand."
As he walked out, the manager acted as if he were about to give the
bug-bosses an order. But he didn't.
* * * * *
Scat parked the utility car in front of the _Newsbeam_. A rock
clunked against the duraplast of the tail; he didn't turn around. There
were more signs soaped on the glastic, but a chunky little man with a
great shock of red hair was erasing them. Scat called "Hi, Len," and
walked in.
Donnolan was waiting for him with a couple of seedy-looking policemen.
He jumped up and waved a spool under Scat's nose. "Put that on your
pocket projector!" he chortled triumphantly. "It's an injunction
restraining you from publishing the _Newsbeam_, because fraud was
employed in its purchase."
Scat pushed past him, remarking casually, "The regional court has
attested the legality of the sale and has set aside any and all
injunctions against the present ownership of the _Newsbeam_
based on those grounds. The whole world doesn't take orders from
Kemmerdygn--quite!"
The light of triumph in Donnolan's watery blue eyes flickered. "The
regional court can't set aside an injunction that hasn't even been
issued yet," he protested; "it's not legal!"
Scat opened a drawer and tossed him a spool. "A stat of the regional
court's decision," he explained. "For you to keep. Read it and amplify
your knowledge of law."
As he walked into the transmission room, he added, "There's a projector
on the desk."
"Well, how did you and the staff get along together?" he asked
Click-Click. Audible speech wasn't strictly necessary, Martians being
telepathic, but it was generally easier to say a question than to think
it.
"Just fine," Click-Click coded back at him. "Some men are as bad as
unenlightened Martians; they'd take orders from anything. But after a
while the staff had callers and walked out in a body. Seems they'd all
been offered jobs with Kemmerdygn--and the promise that he'd eventually
make them his pensioners.
"They walked out while the beam was hot," Click-Click ticked on, "but
that didn't make any difference, because by that time Len and the boys
had arrived with the truck and they took over."
"The next injunction," remarked Scat, a little dreamily, "will be on
the grounds that we're employing Martians in semi-restricted jobs. But
it's the one after that I'm worrying about."
Len came in smiling. "All clean for the night," he announced. "Except
for one sign, which said, _Bugs inside_. I just changed it to
_Martians_ and left it."
After getting out the late news flashes, Click-Click and his three
compatriots retired to the refrigerated vacuum tank which had been
the truck's chief freight. Scat and Len were in the office having
a last smoke before their cat-nap. The lights outside made oddly
distorted patterns on the glastic, and the soaped sign Len had left was
silhouetted blackly.