"Mr. Harkway, I will be very blunt. Miss Burgess has already lost one
lover through no fault of her own, and the experience has not been
good for her. She is, as you say, exquisite--she has a beautiful, but
not a strong personality. Do you think it is fair for you to give her
another such experience, even if the attachment is not fully formed, by
allowing yourself to be killed this evening?"
Harkway leaned back in his chair. "Oh," he said, "that's it." He
grinned. "I thought you were going to point out that her father broke
off the last affair because of the man's politics. If you had, I was
going to tell you that Mr. Burgess looked me up this morning and
apologized for his attitude yesterday, and breaking down and so on.
He's very decent, you know. We're getting along very well."
He paused. "About this other matter," he said seriously, "I'm grateful
for your interest, but--I'm afraid I can't concede the validity of
your argument." He made an impatient gesture. "I'm not trying to sound
noble, but this business is more important than my personal life.
That's all, I'm afraid. I'm sorry."
Another fanatic, Cudyk thought. A liberal fanatic. I have seen all
kinds, now. He said, "I have one more argument to try. Has Seu
explained to you how precarious our position is here on Palumbar?"
"He spoke of it."
"The Niori accepted this one small colony with grave misgivings. Every
act of violence that occurs here weakens our position, because it
furnishes ammunition for a group which already wants to expel us. Do
you understand?"
There was pain in Harkway's eyes. "Mr. Cudyk, it's the same all over
the galaxy, wherever these pitifully tiny outgroups exist. My group is
trying to attack that problem on a galaxy-wide scale. I don't say we'll
succeed, and I grant you the right to doubt that our program is the
right one. But we've got to try. Among other things, we've got to clean
out the activists, for just the reason you mention. And--pardon me for
stressing the obvious--but it's Captain Rack who will be responsible
for this particular act of violence if it occurs, not myself."
"And you think that your death at his hands would be a stronger
argument than a peaceful meeting, is that it?"
Harkway shook his head ruefully. "I don't know that I have that much
courage, Mr. Cudyk. I'm hoping that nothing will happen to me. But I
know that the League's prestige here would be enormously hurt if I let
Rack bluff me down." He stood up. "You'll be at the meeting?"
"I'm afraid so." Cudyk stood and offered his hand. "The best of luck."
He watched the young man go, feeling very old and tired. He had known
it would be this way; he had only tried for Seu's sake. Now he was
involved; he had allowed himself to feel the tug of love and pity
toward still another lost soul. Such bonds were destructive--they
turned the heart brittle and weathered it away, bit by bit.
* * * * *
The assembly hall was well filled, although Harkway had made no special
effort to advertise the meeting. He had known, Cudyk thought, that
Rack's threat would be more than sufficient. The youngster was not
stupid.
There were no women or children. Ferguson was there, and a large
contingent of his employees--gamblers, pimps, waiters and strong-arm
men--as well as most of the Russian population. All but a few of the
Chinese had stayed away, as had Burgess. But a number of men whom Cudyk
knew to have M.P.L. leanings, and an even larger number of neutrals,
were there. The audience was about evenly divided, for and against
Harkway. If he somehow came through this alive, it was just possible
that he could swing the Quarter his way. A futile victory; but of
course Harkway did not believe that.
There was a murmur and a shuffle of feet as Rack entered with three
other men--Monk, the one called Spider, and young Tom De Grasse, who
had once been engaged to Kathy Burgess. The sound dropped almost to
stillness for a few moments after the four men took seats at the side
of the hall, then rose again to a steady rumble. Harkway and Seu had
not yet appeared.
Cudyk saw the man to his right getting up, moving away; he turned in
time to see Seu wedge himself through a gap in the line of chairs and
sit down in the vacated place.
The fat man's face was blandly expressionless, but Cudyk knew that
something had happened. "What is it?" he asked.
Seu's lips barely moved. He looked past Cudyk, inspecting the crowd
with polite interest. "I had him kidnapped," he said happily. "He's
tied up, in a safe place. There won't be any meeting today."
Seu had been seen. Someone a few rows ahead called, "Where's Harkway,
Mayor?"
"I don't know," Seu said blandly. "He told me he would meet me
here--said he had an errand to do. Probably he's on his way now."
Under cover of the ensuing murmur, he turned to Cudyk again. "I didn't
want to do it," he said. "It will mean trouble, sooner or later; maybe
almost as much trouble as if Harkway had been killed. But I had to make
a choice. Do you think I did the right thing, Laszlo?"
"Yes," said Cudyk, "except that I wish you had told me earlier."
Seu smiled, his heavy face becoming for that instant open and
confiding. "If I had, you wouldn't have been so sincere when you talked
to Harkway."
Cudyk smiled in spite of himself. He relaxed in his chair, savoring the
relief that had come when he'd learned that Harkway was not going to
die. The tension built up, day by day, almost imperceptibly, and it was
a rare, fleeting pleasure when something happened to lower it.
He saw the mayor looking at his watch. The crowd was growing restless:
in a few more minutes Seu would get up and announce that the meeting
was cancelled. Then it would be all over.
Seu was rising when a new wave of sound traveled over the audience. Out
of the corner of his eye Cudyk saw men turning, standing up to see
over the heads of their neighbors. Seu spoke a single, sharp word, and
his hand tightened on the back of his chair.
Cudyk stood. Someone was coming down the center aisle of the room, but
he couldn't see who it was.
Those who had stood earlier were sitting down now. Down the aisle,
looking straight ahead, with a bruised jaw and a bloody scratch running
from cheekbone to chin, came James Harkway.
He mounted the platform, rested both hands on the low speaker's stand,
and turned his glance across the audience, once, from side to side.
There was a collective scraping of chairs and clearing of throats, then
complete stillness. Harkway said:
"My friends--and enemies."
Subdued laughter rippled across the room.
"A few of my enemies didn't want me to hold this meeting," said
Harkway. "Some of my friends felt the same way. In fact, it seemed that
_nobody_ wanted this meeting to take place. But here you all are, just
the same. And here I am."
He straightened. "Why is that, I wonder? Perhaps because regardless of
our differences, we're all in the same boat--in a lifeboat." He nodded
gravely. "Yes, we're all in a lifeboat--all of us together, to live or
die, and we don't know which way to turn for the nearest land that will
give us harbor.
"Which way shall we turn to find a safe landing? To find peace
and honor for ourselves and our children? To find safety, to find
happiness?"
He spread his arms. "There are a million directions we could follow.
There are all the planets in the galaxy! But everywhere we turn, we
find alien soil, alien cultures, alien people. Everywhere except in one
direction only.
"Our ship--our own planet, Earth--is foundering, is sinking, that's
true. But _it hasn't--yet--sunk_. There's still a chance that we can
turn back, make Earth what it was, and then, from there--go on! Go on,
until we've made a greater Earth, a stronger, happier, more peaceful
Earth--till we can take our place with pride in the galaxy, and hold up
our heads with any other race that lives."
He had captured only half their attention, and he knew it. They were
watching him, listening to what he said, but the heads of the audience
were turned slightly, like the heads of plants under a solar tropism,
toward the side of the chamber where Rack and his men sat.
Harkway said, "We all know that the Earth's technical civilization is
smashed--broken like an eggshell. By ourselves, we could never put it
back together. And if we do nothing, no one else is going to put it
back together for us. But suppose we went to the other races in the
galaxy, and said--"
A baritone voice broke in quietly, "'_We'll sell our souls to you, if
you'll kindly give us a few machines!_'"
* * * * *
Rack stood up--tall, muscular, lean, with deep hollows under his
cheekbones, red-grey hair falling over his forehead under the visor of
his cap. His short leather jacket was thrown over his shoulders like
a cloak. His narrow features were grey and cold, the mouth a straight,
hard line. He said, "That's what you want us to tell the vermin, isn't
it, Mr. Harkway?"
Harkway seemed to settle himself like a boxer. He said clearly, "The
intelligent races of the galaxy are not devils and do not want our
souls, Mr. Rack."
Rack ignored the "Mr." He said, "But they'd want certain assurances
from us, in return for their help, wouldn't they, Mr. Harkway?"
"Certainly," said Harkway. "Assurances that no sane man would refuse
them. Assurances, for example, that there would be no repetition of
the Altair Incident--when a handful of maniacs in two ships murdered
thousands of peaceful galactic citizens without the slightest
provocation. Perhaps you remember that, Mr. Rack; perhaps you were
there."
"I was there," said Rack casually. "About five hundred thousand vermin
were squashed. We would have done a better job, but we ran out of
supplies. Some day we'll exterminate them all, and then there'll be
a universe fit for men to live in. Meanwhile--" he glanced at the
audience--"we're going to build. We're building now. Not with the
vermin's permission, under the vermin's eye. In secret. On a planet
they'll never find until our ships spurt out from it like milt from
a fish. And when that day comes, we'll squash them down to the last
tentacle and the last claw."
"Are you finished?" asked Harkway. He was quivering with controlled
rage.
"Yes, I'm finished," said Rack wearily. "So are you. You're a traitor,
Harkway, the most miserable kind of a crawling, dirt-eating traitor the
human race ever produced. Get down off the platform."
Harkway said to the audience, "I came here to try to persuade you to
my way of thinking--to ask you to consider the arguments and decide
for yourselves. This man wants to settle the question by prejudice
and force. Which of us is best entitled to the name 'human?' If you
listen to him, can you blame the Niori if they decide to end even this
tiny foothold they've given you on their planet? Would you live in a
universe drenched with blood?"