Fiction Complete, page 43
“Mr. Fuller, of the B.S.T., said—”
Ramsay wearily turned away, reaching back to point at the office behind him.
“Tell Mr. Plane all about it,” he pleaded. “I’m . . . it’s my watch off. I believe I’ll go lie down a little while—”
Just before he reached his quarters, he heard running footsteps behind him. One of the communications men caught up, waving a message memo.
“An alert from Delthig III, Mr. Ramsay.”
“What!”
“That high mucky-muck that was up here talked to them from his ship, and they sent a message saying they’re shooting some movies up here by mail rocket.”
“Oh,” said Ramsay. “That will come under Mr. Neuberg’s department. Take them to his ship when they land and let him figure out what to do with them. Er . . . just a minute!”
“Yes, Mr. Ramsay?”
“You techs . . . ah, generally have something stowed away for every emergency. Happen to have anything to . . . discourage a headache, if you see what I mean?”
The operator grinned and winked. “I’ll look around. Might be something in the files.”
The next morning, awakened again by the chiming of the intercom beside his bed, Ramsay found that he had a real headache. The motion of sitting up in bed caused him to clutch frantically at his temples.
The bing-bing-bing persisted. When he reached for the visor, he managed to knock a large but empty bottle to the floor. He fumbled at the set until he had the video cut off, then answered the call.
“Ramsay?” demanded Hanes’s voice. “Are you there?”
“Mostly. What’s up now?”
“We can’t quite tell,” said Hane, “but I think you had better get over to the office.”
Ramsay switched off, wondering if he could get to the shower without dropping his head. He scowled reproachfully at the empty bottle on the floor and stepped carefully around it.
When he reached his office, he found Hane and Marie waiting, with a pair of television operators loitering in the background. Hane waited for Ramsay to ease himself tenderly into his chair, then gestured for the pair to tell their story.
Ramsay listened with growing dismay to the account of an audio message just received from Delthig III.
“And it sounded like Puag Tukhi, you say? But you’re not sure?”
“No video, Mr. Ramsay,” the operator shrugged. “Besides, like I say, he sort of got off the track after saying something about you making trouble.”
“That,” explained Hane, “was where he lapsed into his own vernacular, so to speak. I listened to the transcription, and one would have to be well versed in Delthigan to understand it.”
“Why?” asked Ramsay. “Was he that excited?”
“I think he was cursing you!”
“What?”
“It was too fast for me to catch, and some of the words seemed very strange; but I judged mainly by his tone of voice.”
Ramsay absorbed this with a poker face, and dismissed the operators to monitor the Delthigan communication band. When they left, he rested his head in his hands a moment before asking, “Either of you got any idea what we’ve done this time?”
“Everything seemed fine,” said Marie blankly.
“We received another shipment of laborers,” said Hane thoughtfully. “Whatever happened must have done so since they left the planet. Then, too, the Delthigan films for Neuberg came in by radio-controlled rocket.”
“That was last night,” Marie told Ramsay. “You . . . er, had that ‘Don’t Disturb’ sign on your door, so we just took them over to Mr. Neuberg.”
“What were they about?” asked Ramsay absent-mindedly.
“I don’t know. He said he’d start! using them right away—after I, talked to him again, for a little while.”
“There might be one on now,” suggested Hane.
The girl walked over to where the cheap, one-channel set rested on a file cabinet. She turned it on, and in a few seconds Ramsay began to see what was happening.
By luck, they caught the end of a Delthigan propaganda film which Neuberg’s technicians had evidently managed to project and relay. The language was too fast for Hane, the only one of them who knew any Delthigan, but the general import of the speeches was clear.
Those shots of factories! Thought Ramsay. No real Workers ever looked that happy and dedicated to their jobs. And the farm scenes between ones of the old squid with the star-maps—looking at the stuff growing isn’t filling any Delthigan bellies, but the whole thing is obviously a shot in the arm to try to convince them they’re well off.
“I liked Mr. Neuberg’s pictures better,” Marie announced. “He actually had some made of all the things we’re sending down there—telescreens, the gold and silver braid for the generals, and even a piece of cloth being colored bright red with some of that dye from Fegash.”
Ramsay thought of the dingy gray loincloths of the laborers sent by Puag Tukhi, Even that official, he recalled, had worn a tunic of dull and sleazy goods.
What, a deadly parallel! he thought.
“And did he show any projectors?”
“No,” Marie told him, “there weren’t any pictures of those, but he did film a good one of the old scrap dumps out behind the domes. He wants the Delthigans to know they’re paying for all their imports.”
“Paying, all right.” murmured Ramsay, “but who down there is doing the receiving?”
“I saw some of them,” remarked Plane. “Ones about household gadgets and food. He even had our charming executive assistant nibble on a couple of ears of corn.”
“I don’t suppose,” commented Ramsay deliberately, “that anyone explained in the film that the cobs aren’t edible?”
They looked at him blankly. He tried to imagine how it would feel to be a starved, overworked Delthigan, in a steel mill, say, and to witness a blithe being from some fabulous world of plenty toss aside food that had apparently barely been sampled. He decided that it would drive him frantic.
Hane ran a hand distractedly through his sparse white hair, comprehension lighting his old eyes.
“No wonder they are . . . displeased,” he muttered.
“Displeased!” snorted Ramsay.
That Fuller and his outfit! he thought. “Bureau of Slick Tricks” they call it, huh? Well, he’s not as slick as I thought, but he sure got me in a hole!
He switched on his desk visor and demanded Neuberg. After, a slight delay, the pudgy, cheerful face appeared.
“Look here!” Ramsay said sternly. “I want you to cut it out!”
“I beg your pardon!”
“That mixing up Delthigan ‘educational films’ with corn on the cob! It makes their government look like chumps. Don’t you realize that’s bad for business?”
“Mr. Ramsay, am I to blame if they are a pack of chumps? I have my orders from Mr. Fuller, and—” Something in Ramsay finally snapped. Half rising behind the desk, he thrust his flushed face close to the scanner.
“Cut it out, I tell you!” he bellowed. “Or do you want me to come over there with a wrench and fix that chatterbox toy of yours so’s it won’t cast a picture past its own shadow?”
Neuberg’s dark eyes widened. Without a word, he faded from the screen.
“Hane!” snapped the spaceman. “Get hold of the foreman of that Delthigan labor gang! Have them start searching through the scrap for live shells and pull out a couple of old guns to match!”
“What are you going to do?” gasped Marie.
“If I were a general from that Planetary State down there,” said Ramsay, “I’d be on my way up here now to censor those telecasts. But being the cat’s-paw I am, I’m at least going to have the satisfaction of popping somebody before this place gets wiped off the face of Chika!”
Before Hane could reach the door, a siren somewhere in the dome wailed out in sudden urgency. The three in the office froze.
“That’s an air leak!” exclaimed Ramsay. “Where’s the spacesuit locker?”
He started for the door, but relaxed as the siren cut off. The visor on his desk emitted a series of bings.
“Yeah?” he barked, flipping the switch.
“Everything under control, Mr. Ramsay,” reported the communications operator who had found him the bottle “in the files” the previous night. “That telecasting ship took off without seeing that the connecting tube was sealed. Murphy’s got it air-tight again.”
Ramsay muttered something or other in reply and sprang to the window. He could not see the former position of Neuberg’s ship, but the expressions of several men outside looking at where it had been confirmed the report.
“Turn that gadget back on!” he told Marie.
The telecast was still going. It flickered and faded as they watched, but steadied again. Neuberg was carrying out his orders—where Ramsay could not interfere.
“Uh . . . I shall see about that ammunition,” said Hane after a moment during which the., air in the office seemed to vibrate silently.
He went out, looking grateful for the opportunity to escape Ramsay’s presence.
The latter realized that he had been scowling across the room for some time-when Marie spoke.
“Can I do something?” she asked timidly.
“Huh? Well, yeah. Go ride herd on those operators until they get a radio call through to the planet. If we can get hold of someone in authority, it might still be smoothed over.”
Alone, he paced up and down the office for a while. When that failed to help, he sat at his desk with his head cradled carefully between both hands. He realized with surprise that his headache had disappeared.
The advantage of a good fright, he reflected. I only wish I could see Fuller here too!
He punched viciously at the intercom switch. Marie answered from the communications room.
“Any luck?” he demanded.
“Not yet.”
“Then have them see if they can reach Fuller on Bormek V!”
Time passed. A report came back from Bormek to the effect that Mr. Fuller was expected there very soon.
Delthig III radio stations maintained an ominous silence.
Ramsay took presently to making short excursions around the outside of the building, peering through the plastic dome at the spacesuited figures of Hane and some Delthigans out at the heaps of scrap metal, or up into the dark sky.
Finally, Hane returned to report that two cannon had been loaded and put in charge of Terrains from among the spaceport personnel.
“The Delthigans seemed only too willing to help me,” he told Ramsay. “One wonders if they are not somewhat resentful toward their present masters.”
“One wonders what’s wrong with them if they’re not!” retorted the spaceman.
Bing-bing-bing-bing!
He switched his televisor on, and saw Marie’s pale face.
“The techs say they’ve picked up a ship approaching in a landing orbit,” she reported breathlessly.
“How many?” asked Ramsay, beckoning to lane.
“Only one, but it’s acting funny, not sticking to a smooth curve, they say.”
“Evasive action!” he guessed. “Hane, tell your men out there to be ready. Marie, you’d better get back here in case something happens.”
He switched off and ran to the window, but nothing was to be seen. After putting through a brief call, Hane joined him.
“Maybe we can stall a few hours,” said Ramsay. “When my four ships get in tonight, we can fold our domes and silently run away.”
Bing-bing-bing-bing!
“Now what?” he demanded of the operator whose image he found on the screen.
“We have Mr. Fuller for you now.”
“No!” exclaimed Ramsay with heavy sarcasm. “What did he stop flitting around for—to hear me make my will? Put him on!”
He agonized through several seconds of coalescing images as the various operators handling the interstellar call withdrew themselves. Then Fuller’s bland face looked out at him.
“Well, well!” said the B.S.T. agent heartily. “Heard you were trying to get me. I was rounding up a few things on the next planet. Everything going all right?”
Ramsay opened his mouth, closed it, and brought both fists down on the edge of his desk.
Where should I begin? he asked himself. Shall I tell him what a mess he’s made while I try to think up a good name, or shall I call him the first thing that occurs to me?
Fuller ran one hand over his golden, slightly wavy hair. Ramsay thought that he looked a little tired, as if he really had been hustling from one planet to another.
“One little detail seems to have gone wrong,” the spaceman said, biting off his words carefully. “Somehow, the Delthigans seem to have taken offense.”
“To what?” asked Fuller calmly. “To me in particular and Terrans in general. There is a ship maneuvering at us now. Don’t be surprised if this call is cut off suddenly. You sent a gentleman named Neuberg—” The door was flung open. Marie ran in.
“It landed!” she shrilled. “The Delthigan ship. Some of the men took the truck out to it while the others covered it with the cannon.”
“Hold on!” Ramsay grunted to Fuller.
He bounded across to the window, callously flipped Hane to one side and the girl to the other, and peered out. The pressurized truck was just coming out of the air lock. As he watched, five figures alighted. The trio of four-legged ones marched briskly toward the entrance of the building. They were dressed plainly, even for Delthigans.
“Those are no ambassadors,” said Ramsay. “Hatchet-men is more like it. Marie, Plane, get out of here!”
“No!” protested the girl.
“Go get help!” Ramsay rephrased it, which sent her running through the outer office and into the corridor.
“I’ll make sure those guns are ready,” said Hane with unusual verve. “If they make trouble, they’ll never take off!”
Left alone, Ramsay became aware of a plaintive demand for information emanating from his desk instrument. Fuller was close to betraying concern as he vainly attempted to see something besides the wall behind Ramsay’s chair.
The spaceman seized the visor and turned it around, treating Fuller to a clear view of the doorway as the three Delthigans churned through it.
They clumped to a halt. The one in the middle, a lean individual with a jagged scar climbing up over his crest from between his right and center eyes, stepped forward.
“Ramsay, the Terran?” he demanded, in an accent as bad as that of Puag Tukhi.
If it’s the last thing I do, Ramsay promised himself, I’m going to punch that middle eye right through the back of his skull! I’m fed up with these squids!
He moved forward, clenching his list. The Delthigan apparently misunderstood the gesture for one, of assent.
“I am Yil Khoff,” he said. “Ssent we are to discuss trade contract.” Ramsay heard Fuller murmur behind his back, “Find out what they want.” He unclenched his fist and waited.
“We haf decited not want all thingss comink. Ydu can ssend big shipss . . . big shiploadss grain foodss?”
“Tell him ‘yes,’ ” advised Fuller from Bormek V.
“It can be arranged,” said Ramsay warily. “What about the projectors?”
“Pro-jek-torss?”
“Powder-makers.”
“Not want; will gif back. But not ssend for mines more workerss.”
“But you are going to pay? We have an agreement!”
“Don’t worry about it,” said a small voice behind Ramsay.
The Delthigans twitched their flappy ears and eyed the spaceman askance. Yil Khoff laboriously attempted to explain.
“We not bound by promiss of former gufferment.”
“Former government!”
Ramsay stepped back to lean one hand on his desk.
“We know . . . iss hard to tell to persson like you. Will maybe not unterstand, but we haf by force new rulerss made.”
“A revolution!” breathed Ramsay.
He saw two wrench-bearing operators coming through Marie’s office, followed by Hane and the girl. He waved them inside.
“They had a revolution,” he announced, and his face felt queer to him until he realized that he was smiling.
“Not know word,” admitted Yil Khoff after a futile consultation with his companions.
“You threw out the old officials?” Ramsay prompted.
“Threw out?”
“Deposed . . . replaced—?”
“We shot them!” said Yil Khoff firmly. “Was very mad-makink how they from you got such wunderful thingss, but we still started. For what? For big promiss! Nothing more behind!”
Ramsay glanced at the desk visor beside his elbow. Fuller blandly returned his smile.
“Mr. Hane,” said Ramsay, “will you see that our friends have a comfortably dry room in which to rest until we can discuss new arrangements?”
“Gladly,” beamed Hane.
“Perhaps you might even scare up some of that frozen corn. I don’t, imagine all of it got through to Delthig III.”
One of the communications men winked. He and his friend slipped out hastily. Hane led the visitors in their wake as Ramsay turned to face Fuller.
“This is all very interesting,” said the B.S.T. man, “but it costs a lot of credits. You just don’t get someone in a face-to-face across two light-years and then casually tell them to hold on while you settle another matter.”
“Aw, the B.S.T. can afford it,” retorted Ramsay. “You’ll get it back in this system, if I know you!”
“We expect to,” said Fuller. “I should like to make sure of it, however, by having you and Hane handle the trading—at a good commission, of course.”
Ramsay, seeing his elderly assistant returning through the outer office, relayed the offer, remembering that he had profited enormously the last time he had assisted Fuller and the Bureau.
“I should say . . . ah, grab it!” replied Hane, nodding to the B.S.T. man. “Incidentally, Mr. Ramsay’s other executive assistant seems to be much admired on Delthig III.”
“Me?” asked Marie.
“Yil Khoff says every soul down there is talking about kitchen movies.”
