Complete Short Fiction, page 330
“If you think,” she said, “that I am the usual type of assassin, you are quite mistaken.”
Clane bowed ironically. “I am sure,” he said, “that all assassins are unusual.”
“I shot at you to attract your attention,” she said.
Clane thought back to the moment of the attack. The arrow as he remembered it, had swished by about a foot from his head. For a skilled archer it was a bad shot. The question was, how skillful was she? And how much had the darkness affected her aim. The woman spoke again.
“I belong to the Martian Generals’ Archery Club, and two weeks before Czinczar’s attack I was runner-up in the championship matches. That’s what decided me to take the risk. I was sure I could prove to you that I could have hit you.”
Clane said satirically, “Couldn’t you have chosen some other method of attracting my attention?”
“Not,” she flashed, “if I expected to hold it.”
Clane stiffened. This was verbal byplay, and he was not interested. “I’m afraid this is beyond me,” he said. “And I’m afraid, too, that we will have to follow a more orthodox method of questioning, and assume the usual reasons for the attack.” He paused, curious in spite of himself. “Just why did you want to attract my attention?”
“I want to marry you,” she said. Clane, who had been standing, walked to a chair and sat down. There was a long silence.
He stared at her with bright eyes that concealed more turmoil than he cared to admit even to himself. He hadn’t expected to have his hard crust of worldliness penetrated. He had the distinct and unhappy feeling that if he spoke his voice would tremble. And yet it was natural that he should have a strong reaction.
This young woman belonged to a part of Linn that he had considered forever beyond his reach. She was a part of the society that, except for a few men, had ignored the mutation member of the family of the late Lord Leader Linn. The fact that a girl of her station had decided to try to marry him merely proved that she saw him as a way to power for herself. If the night just passed was evidence, then that might be an error of judgment on her part. But her action was the first break in the dike of social opposition. Politically speaking, she could be very valuable to him.
Clane groaned inwardly as he realized that once more he was evaluating a situation in terms of its advantages to his purposes. He sighed, and made up his mind. lie called to the guards captain:
“You will assign an apartment to the Lady Madelina Corgay. She will be our guest until further notice. See to it that she is well protected.”
With that, he went to bed. He left instructions as to when he should he roused, and lay awake for a while turning over in his mind his plans for the day. Over and above everything else was the visit he wanted to make to the Central Palace to have another look at the monster that Czinczar had brought to Earth.
It would be important that somebody know something about the physical side of man’s deadly enemy.
IX.
Lord Clane awoke about midmorning to the sound of distant singing. It puzzled him for a moment, and then he remembered that today the Lord Adviser Calaj was arriving, and that a fete had been proclaimed.
He ate a hasty breakfast, and then set out for the Central Palace in a patrol boat. As they started to float down for a landing, the pilot sent back a message with one of the guards:
“Your excellency, the Square is filled with people.”
Clane ordered, “Land on a side street, and we’ll walk the rest of the way.”
They landed without incident, and wound their way among the dancers and the musicians. They passed swaying groups of singing men and women; and Clane, who had never failed to marvel at the antics of human beings, observed them in genuine wonder.
They were celebrating the accession to power of a youth whom they did not know. Sweet voices, raucous voices, good-natured yelling, women wiggling their hips coquettishly, men snatching at bare arms, kissing any pair of feminine lips that happened to be passing—it was in its own way a fascinating show. But in view of the danger that had been so narrowly averted, and of the impending invasion, it was a scene that had implications of disaster.
Physically grown men and women were acting like children, accepting as their ruler a boy whose only apparent qualification was that he was the son of the great Lord Jerrin. Here was so great a love of the childish things of life that all human life was imperiled.
His thought reached that point—and was violently interrupted. “It’s that dastardly little priest!” a voice shouted.
The words were flung back among the crowd. There were-angry cries of “Evil One!”
“Mutation!”
“Devil Priest!” The dancing in the near distance came to a stop, and there was a sullen surging of a mass of people to get nearer to him. Somebody yelled: “It’s Lord Clane, the man responsible for all our troubles.”
A furious murmur swept the throng. Beside Clane, the guards captain quietly motioned to the two dozen guards. The powerful men pressed forward, hands on swords and daggers. Clane, who had been watching the incident develop, stepped forward, a twisted smile on his lips. He raised his arm, and for just a moment received the silence he wanted. He called out in his most resonant voice:
“Long live the new Lord Adviser Calaj.”
With that, he reached into a pouch, which he had carried for years for just such a moment as this, and brought it out clutching a handful of silver coins. With a flick of his wrist he tossed the money up into air. The metal glinted in the sun, and came down over a wide area about twenty feet away. Even before it: landed another handful sparkled in the air in the opposite direction.
Once more, he called, more cynically this time, “Long live the Lord Adviser Calaj.”
The crowd wasn’t listening. There were shrieks as people stampeded after the money. Even after Clane’s party was clear of the danger, he could hear cries of, “Give it to me, it’s mine!”
“You wretch, you stepped on my hand!” Feet scuffled, fists smacked audibly on the morning air.
The incident made him bitter. Once again, he had been forced to rely on a technique for handling masses of people. Simple, effective, cunning, it was a part of the vast fund of information he had about the man in the street.
In spite of his tremendous desire to dissociate himself from such cheap trickeries, he couldn’t do it. He recalled what Czinczar had said. He shook his head. There must be some way of arousing people to-the fact that this was the eleventh hour of man’s destiny. And that for once all men must put aside personal ambition and act in unison against an enemy so ferocious that he refused even to communicate with human beings.
But how? What could he say or do that would strike the vital spark? He who was spending his time and energy studying the machines aboard the Riss battleship, a task so colossal and so important that all else paled into insignificance beside it?
Yet here he was, on his way to the palace to do personally what should have been a routine job for one or more subordinates. It wasn’t, of course. No one else was qualified for either of the two tasks that had to be done, the political and the scientific. A few years before, he had belatedly started an advanced school for science students; but he’d been too busy to give it proper attention. Politics. Wars. Intrigue. People to see. Spy reports to study. Property management. Exploration. Experiments. New ideas. Each twenty-four hours had gone by like a flash, leaving an ever accumulating variety of things to attend to. One man could do only so much. And now that the crisis was here, he felt the reality of that.
He was still thinking about it when he arrived at the palace gate. The time he noted with automatic attention to detail, was a few minutes before noon. The question in his mind was, would he be allowed inside?
It turned out not to be a problem at all. A distracted captain of the guard admitted him and his staff. Clane headed straight for the refrigeration room. He had no difficulty in finding the body of the dead Riss which Czinczar had brought with him from Europa.
The elongated body of the unhuman creature did not act kindly to the thawing. As the water began to drip from the brown-stained, leathery folds of its skin, an unwholesome stench rose from it. In the beginning, the odor was faint. But it grew stronger.
As the butchers, he had brought along, sawed it into sections, Clane took the pieces and dictated first to one, then to another of his two secretaries. When he was finished with a segment, he handed it to an artist, who drew a lifelike picture of it with sure, rapid strokes.
As the afternoon waned, the odor thickened until it seemed to permeate every crevice of the room. And still Clane examined and dictated, examined and dictated. Gas flames and test tubes were brought into action.
Juices from glands, liquid from the circulatory system of the thing, and fluid from the spinal column were tested with various chemicals, separated into their components, described, named and illustrated for future reference.
Once, when he put his fingers into a sticky goo and tasted it, one of the secretaries fainted. Another time he tried to feed a piece of it to a rat in a cage. The animal, purposely kept hungry, pounced on it—and died a few minutes later, convulsively.
Clane dictated: “The flesh, on examination, proved to be predominately a complex protein structure, so complex in fact that it seemed doubtful if it would be edible by any animal of Earth origin. Rat, to which it was fed, died in 3.08 minutes.”
Shortly after the dinner hour, he had the parts of the body returned to the box and put back into the ice room. The task completed, he hesitated. Because it was only the first of his two purposes. The other one required his knowledge of how to ride roughshod over another’s will.
Once again, he was back in the role he hated. And there was no alternative.
He sent his party home, and inquired the way to Calaj’s apartment. The official he spoke to recognized him, and put his hands to his head, as he said:
“Oh, your excellency, the confusion today is fantastic. We are all worn out.”
He quieted long enough to give Clane the directions he desired. There were guards at the entrance of Calaj’s apartment, but they sprang to attention when he said, “I am Lord Clane Linn, uncle of the Lord Adviser.”
“Shall we announce you, your excellency?” one asked doubtfully.
“No.” Clane was cool and positive. “I’ll just go in.”
He entered.
There was a little alcove, then a large outer room. As he glanced around him curiously, Clane saw Calaj standing on his head beside an open window. He was exhibiting his skill for the benefit of a Martian slave girl. The girl giggled, and then she turned away, and saw Clane. She froze.
She said something, and Calaj came tumbling down out of his upside down pose. He must have heard his mother express fears about Lord Clane, because he turned pale when he saw who it was.
“Uncle!” he said. And Clane did not miss the overtones of alarm in the voice. Calaj was hypnotized by his own anxiety.
In a sense the boy’s fears were justified. Clane had no time to waste. He had come to the palace with two objectives, and he had brought along his rod of energy for emergencies. One objective—the examination of the Riss—was accomplished. The other depended on Calaj.
Clane felt remorseless. According to the reports of his spies, this boy was abnormal. If that was so, then he could not be saved. Often in the past, Clane had taken children and grown-ups to a private asylum, and there with all his knowledge had tried to untangle their minds. In vain.
This was no time to hope for success, where so often he had failed before.
Calaj had to be sacrificed. And Lilidel. And all that group behind her.
Destroyed by the madman they had raised to power.
“My boy,” said Clane, “I have received instructions from the gods about you. They love you—but you must do their will.”
“They love me?” said Calaj. His eyes were wide.
“They love you,” said Clane firmly. “Why else do you think you were allowed to attain the height of power? Surely, you do not think that any human could have made you Lord Adviser without their permission.”
“Mo, no, of course not.”
“Listen, carefully,” said Clane, “here are their instructions for your future actions. Repeat them after me. You must rule in your own right.”
“I must rule in my own right.” His voice was dull.
“Let no one in the palace advise you on affairs of state. Whatever you decide will be as the decision of the gods.”
Calaj repeated the words with a rising inflection. And then he blinked. “Not even mother?” he asked, amazed.
“Especially not mother,” said Clane.
He went on, “You will need new people around you. Be careful for a while, but gradually appoint men of your own choice. Disregard those recommended by your mother and her friends. And now, I have a document here—”
Arrived at home, he wasted no time. “I am leaving at once,” he told the heads of the various departments of his household staff. “You will probably not hear from me for a long time. You will conduct yourselves and the estate as in the past.”
The guards captain said, “What about the assassin?”
Clane hesitated; then, “I suppose the men are expectant?”
“That they are, sir.”
Clane said steadily, “I regard this custom of turning a woman assassin over to the soldiery as a barbarous practice, and it will not take place. First, it would be very dangerous for us all since her family is friendly with the new Lord Adviser. You might stress that point to the men, and then say—”
He made his offer of compensation. It was so generous that there was no doubt of it being accepted.
He finished, “The offer holds for one year. And captain—”
“Yes, sir?”
Clane parted his lips to make his next announcement, then closed i hem. It was more than just another move in the complex game he was playing, and yet, the political color was there, too.
I’ve got to rise above all this pettiness, he told himself. In spite of what Czinczar had said, there was more to statesmanship than animal cunning. It all seemed so obvious;
so essential. Because if he also played only the game the others were playing, there would be no hope.
His very determination stiffened him. He said quietly: “You may pass the word along to the company officers that the Lady Madelina Corgay will in future be known as the Lady Madelina Linn. All ranks will treat her accordingly.”
“Yes, sir. Congratulations, your excellency.”
“The marriage will take place today,” Clane finished.
TO BE CONTINUED
WAR OF NERVES
The spaceship flashed through the void—and all at once there began a battle of wits to the death between the crew and a non-human race on a planet still light years away . . .
THE voyage of the Space Beagle—Man’s first expedition to the great galaxy, M33 in Andromeda—had produced some grisly incidents. Not once, but three times, deadly attacks by aliens had been made against the 900-odd scientists under Director Morton, and the 140 military personnel commanded by Captain Leeth—all this entirely aside from the. tensions that had developed among the men themselves. Hate, dislike, anxiety, ambition—of which Chief Chemist Kent’s desire to be Director was but one example—permeated every activity aboard.
Elliott Grosvenor, the only Nexialist on the ship, sometimes had the feeling that even one more danger would be too much for the physically weary and emotionally exhausted men, who were now on the long return journey to Earth.
The danger came.
Elliott Grosvenor had just said to Korita, the archeologist aboard the Space Beagle: “Your brief outline of cyclic history is what I’ve been looking for. I did have some knowledge of it, of course. It wasn’t taught at the Nexial Foundation, since it’s a form of philosophy. But a curious man picks up odds and ends of information.”
They had paused at the “glass” room on Grosvenor’s floor. It wasn’t glass, and it wasn’t, by strict definition, a room. It was an alcove of an outer wall corridor, and the “glass” was an enormous curving plate made from a crystallized form of one of the Resistance metals. It was so limpidly transparent as to give the illusion that nothing at all was there—beyond was the vacuum and darkness of space.
Korita half-turned away, then said, “I know what you mean by odds and ends. For instance, I’ve learned just enough about Nexialism to envy you the mind trainings you received.”
At that moment, it happened—Grosvenor had noticed absently that the ship was almost through the small star cluster it had been traversing. Only a score of suns were still visible of the approximately five thousand stars that made up the system. The cluster was one of a hundred star groups accompanying Earth’s galaxy through space.
Grosvenor parted his lips to say, “I’d certainly like to talk to you again, Mr. Korita.”—He didn’t say it. A slightly blurred double image of a woman wearing a feathered hat was taking form in the glass directly in front of him. The image flickered and shimmered. Grosvenor felt an unnormal tensing of the muscles of his eyes. For a moment, his mind went blank. That was followed rapidly by sounds, flashes of light, a sharp sensation of pain—hypnotic hallucinations! The awareness was like an electric shock. The recognition saved him. He whirled, stumbled over the unconscious body of Korita, and then he was racing along the corridor.
As he ran, he had to look ahead in order to see his way. And yet, he had to keep blinking to break the pattern of the light flashes that came at his eyes from other images on the walls. At first, it seemed to him that the images were everywhere. Then, he noticed that the woman-like shapes—some oddly double, some single—occupied transparent or translucent wall sections. There were hundreds of such reflecting areas, but at least it was a limitation. At least he knew where he had to run fastest, and where he could slow down.
