Fiction Complete, page 20
“Mixed up in what?” Bill and Jerry asked as one. “Couple of zaps showed up at the Admin hatch. One of ’em kept saying, ‘Will-o-bee, will-o-bee,’ and the other one’s line was, “Take me to your leader, take me to your leader,’ in zap. So they sent for us, and we brought the bugs down here. Willoughby’s in there with them. Now you know as much as we do.”
“Go on in,” Misner said. “I’ll wait here for you.”
Bill peeled down and stepped into the sauna, its steamy atmosphere feeling almost like home. At once he saw Willoughby, tastefully attired in a pink bath towel that went rather well with the purple of his complexion; and beyond him, Gort and a GLANSTROP member, both with mouth-shields firmly closed to indicate hostility.
“Gort!” Bill started eagerly forward.
“Is this Old Home Week?” Willoughby stopped him, all acid. “Save the joyful greetings for later. I want you to listen to this.”
There was a spool of wire on the recorder beside him, ready to go. As Bill pushed the button, Elphinstone’s voice issued from the machine, sounding considerably distraught.
“I apologize in advance for the confusion and lack of organization which may characterize this report, but I am making it under conditions of great physical and mental stress. I request, as a matter of form, that it be kept off the record and regarded as an emergency communique from the battlefield; which, alas, Irdra has apparently become. I must also disclaim responsibility for any apparent discrepancies, as I am in imminent danger of shuffling off this mortal coil, and the higher mental processes have unquestionably been affected. In case the resources of the station are not sufficient to extricate me from the perilous situation in which I now find myself, I wish to cover in this report at least the major events which have taken place in the last few days.
“My first knowledge of these events came in the form of a communication from Coordinator Zletz, informing me that the young Thygnan, William Judson, had been arrested on charges of subversion and of fomenting rebellion. As the only person in the station presently in contact with the Irdran Government, I went immediately to see Mr. Judson in the Administrative Burrow, where he was incarcerated. I found him in a drugged condition, unwilling or unable to communicate coherently.
“Since Coordinator Zletz had prepared a microwire containing the details of the charges against Mr. Judson, I decided to return to the station and submit this spool to the translator. I regret that I am unable to do so as I was forced to erase said wire and use it to make this report.
“In brief, the wire stated that several days previously, Mr. Judson had made his appearance among the natives and established residence with a certain Gort, a vot-picker of poor repute long opposed to Coordinator Zletz and his principles. It appears that Mr. Judson, with the cooperation of the aforementioned Gort, at once set about the creation of a subversive group whose avowed purpose was to overthrow the established Government of Irdra and install themselves in its place. The organization was christened “Patriotic Irdrans For Freedom League.’ The diabolical ingenuity of Mr. Judson was able to make the League’s propaganda so appealing to the slower-thinking citizens that PIFFL won large numbers of supporters to its malignant cause. Tracing several minor disturbances to this organization and its guiding light, Mr. Judson, Coordinator Zletz decided to have the latter arrested pending further investigation.
“Having received this information, I took the spool and returned to the Administrative Burrow to confront Mr. Judson with these charges. I hoped that during the interval the drugs he had apparently been taking would have worn off. When I informed Coordinator Zletz of my intention I was dismayed to learn that the situation had become worse. There had been an outbreak of rioting, and it would be impossible for me to proceed to the seat of government except under escort, which he would provide for me.
“Since the exit near Administration headquarters is so infrequently used, its existence is unsuspected by the natives, and I arranged to be met there. I was picked up and carried bodily by several members of GLANSTROP—a group formed by Coordinator Zletz to prepare individuals of the highest speed stratum for their employment as civil servants in the more complicated processes of government which will be required when Irdra joins the Galactic Union. Although they were as careful as possible under the circumstances, I fear that the serrated edges of their claws weakened the fabric of my heat-suit, or even punctured it, as I have noticed a definite loss of cooling and also a malfunction of the heat-exchange unit, which speaks poorly for the efficiency of Chief Misner and his subordinates.
“We were able to enter by a little-used trap door in the rear of the Administrative Burrow, relying on the greater speed and agility of my escort to outwit the attackers laying siege to government headquarters. Once inside, I discovered that the state of affairs was worse than I had anticipated. Had Coordinator Zletz advised me more fully as to the dangers of the situation before I left the station, I would not have undertaken so rash a venture. It is, however, a tribute to the general peacefulness of the inhabitants that they are so little accustomed to strife of this nature that their behavior is somewhat naive. As a prime example, Mr. Judson had been left unfettered during the night, and was able to escape with no discernible difficulty. His whereabouts at this moment are unknown to me, although I consider it possible that he may have returned to the station. Coordinator Zletz informs me that some of his confederates have turned against Mr. Judson and now seek to assassinate him. A plausible reason for this sudden reversal of attitude may lie in their belief that Mr. Judson has discovered an economic resource of considerable value, which he presumably intends to exploit for his personal advantage.
“At the present moment my own situation can only be described as desperate. My suit’s efficiency is deteriorating rapidly, and the heat-exchange unit has developed a hum which I cannot help but infer is the prelude to complete breakdown. In addition, the besiegers have increased to a point where the ordinary system of locking the doors appears to be insufficient, and extraordinary measures of barricading them have had to be instituted. The supply of fresh air has been considerably reduced, and suffocation seems a distinct possibility. Moreover, Coordinator Zletz refuses to consider opening either exit on the grounds that the attackers would seize it, effect entrance, and destroy all within, himself included. I suspect that his reluctance may be largely based on fears for his personal safety, as his subordinates show little concern on this score and are becoming somewhat restive under their enforced confinement. Furthermore, their supplies of food and drink cannot be replenished, and my own are nonexistent, aside from the few remaining drops of water in my suit-canteen.
“In view of the circumstances, may I urge you to take whatever measures you may find feasible to extricate me from this predicament with the utmost dispatch? I have rendered much valuable service to the Union in the past, and, in order to remain alive to continue my contribution in the future, I am in urgent need of immediate assistance?”
“Shut up!” Willoughby commanded, almost before Elphinstone’s speech had concluded. His tone was deadly. “Dr. Elphinstone’s report can’t be used in evidence against you, by his own statement at the beginning, but it certainly gives us enough to hang you on, even if you are Thyg-F-3’s favorite child, as a touchingly solicitous request I received a short time ago to have you call it direct by psionic transmitter suggests. You haven’t written home since you’ve been here, you naughty boy—and I can understand why, now. Where would you find the time? I said shut up, and stay shut until I tell you otherwise. . . . You will observe that there are two natives among us. One of them is the messenger who brought the spool, and the other is an emissary from the dissidents, as far as I can make out. I don’t speak their language, but apparently you handle it with disastrous fluency. I put the second one’s message through the translator, but it must have slipped up somewhere. Will you kindly find out what he wants?”
“Gort?” Bill asked, approaching his former roommate uncertainly. “You look mad. What’s the matter?”
Gort detached his canteen and held it out to Bill.
“Only a little,” Bill decided. “I can’t speed up too much, I have to talk to Willoughby, too.” He drank some vot-juice, waited for it to take effect. “Okay, only keep it slow, will you? I figure I should now be about halfway between the two of you. What’s the message?”
“We’ve reached a concensus,” Gort announced. “It’s this: you Glaxies are to get off our world and stay off. Take all your stuff with you, don’t leave any sign that you were ever here, and don’t come back, not in this generation, nor the next, nor for all generations to come. Why’d he have trouble understanding that? Didn’t his machine work?”
Bill was too surprised to react. He translated Gort’s speech to Willoughby, word for word.
“Strange,” the Administrator murmured, staring into space. “That’s what the translator said he said. . . . Who is this joker? On whose authority is he acting? Have the revolutionaries taken over already? Don’t give me your opinion; ask him.”
Bill did so.
Gort sent up a brief prayer for patience.
“Just tell him what I said about getting off our world. And tell him we mean it. If you don’t go voluntarily, we’ll destroy your buildings and Expose all of you.”
Unwilling to interpose himself in this exchange, Bill gave Willoughby this statement word for word, too. The baffled Administrator closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them to gaze at Bill in defeat.
“All right, I give up. I hate to have to do this, but can you tell me what’s going on?”
Bill did his best to explain, feeling the task hopeless even as he talked. Willoughby closed his eyes again and listened, his face expressionless.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” he said when Bill had finished. “And what’s more, I don’t care. Before you got here, everything in the garden was lovely. You arrive on the scene, you’re here less than a month, and look where we are now: our mission is being given the bum’s rush off the planet; the natives, the least warlike I’ve seen in years, are preparing to destroy the domes and kill us all; they’ve trapped their World Coordinator, Zletz, and Elphinstone, the head of SciCom, with intent to kill; you personally have started a revolution and overthrown their government; you’ve broken damned near every regulation in the Handbook, and you seem to be accepted as adviser and friend by the insurgents. . . . You were sent to this mission as a judgment on me, I know it. Only the vindictiveness of some supernatural entity can account for it. Out of all the worlds in the galaxy, all the millions of places you could have been sent, I got stuck with you. I’ll tell you something else: You got us into this mess, and you’re going to get us out. I’ll give you twenty-four hours to put everything back the way it was before you got here. If you haven’t succeeded, I’m going to tear you limb from limb and scatter the pieces among the vot-vines. You’d better start by getting Dr. Elphinstone safely back to the station. He seems to be in dire need of assistance.”
“But I can’t!” Bill wailed.
“Nonsense. Considering what you’ve already accomplished, it should be child’s play for you.”
“I’ll call F-3,” Bill decided, starting for the door. “It’ll know what to do.”
“You’re not going to call F-3,” Willoughby said softly but threateningly. “You’re not getting anywhere near that transmitter until and unless I give the word. I might just barely be able to devise a way to salvage the remnants of my career, and until things settle down and I am calm enough to decide what AMPAC should or should not be told, you are getting no opportunity to foul up on a galactic scale. A world’s worth of trouble should satisfy you for the time being.”
He stood up, draped the rosy folds of the towel around his gaunt middle, and strode majestically forth.
XXI
Bill flopped onto the bench, overwhelmed.
“I guess he’s right. The first thing is to rescue the Elf,” he mused. “He’s not my favorite person, but . . . how come he can’t get out? You got out,” he accused the GLANSTROP. “They must have opened the door long enough for that.”
“He’s too slow—and, besides, I didn’t go out the door,” the whizzer explained. “We used to go to the Assembly Burrow to play sometimes, before we were adults, and we found a way to get out through an old root-channel nobody knew was there. But you have to crawl through some places only a hatchling could fit into, practically. That’s why I got the job—I’m smaller than anybody else. I left a good deal of my hide behind, at that. Look at my paint.” He turned and, in fact, most of the red-and-black pattern had been sandpapered off. “Only reason I got here without being stopped, I bet. That GLANSTROP design shows up so strong, you can recognize it a mile off.”
“The Elf’d be all right for a while if he had a good heat-suit and some food and water,” Bill said. “I’ll make up a bundle and you can take it to him right away.”
“Not me” the whizzer stated. “I’m not going back in there. The only reason I volunteered to bring that thing to you was because I wanted out. It’s getting stuffy in there.” He clamped his mouth-shields tight as a vise and turned his back, indicating irrevocable decision.
“Can’t we arrange a truce or something?” Bill asked Gort.
Once he understood what a “truce” was, Gort twitched his antennae negatively.
“Those guys around the Assembly Burrow are PIFFLs. Most of ’em are runners and walkers. They want to get the GLANSTROPs out of the Assembly Burrow, Expose Zletz, and kill the Glaxies. They know there’s one in there, but they think it’s you. If they find out it’s the one who’s been coaching Zletz, I wouldn’t give a flyer’s tail for his chances. They’d only Expose you, but him—they’d shred him finer than a heap of used vot-cuttings. I don’t know but what I wouldn’t help them. He’s malevolent.”
“What about the vot-pickers and creepers and strollers? Couldn’t we persuade them to chase the PIFFLs away for a few minutes?”
“The PIFFLs may be a shade overexcited, but what they’re doing is in line with the concensus. Nobody’d stop them.”
“Hoo, boy! It looks like the Elf’s had it, if he’s as bad off as he claims. . . . Maybe Jerry can think of something. Come on, let’s ask him.”
He went out, the zaps close behind. The biotechs had left, but Misner was still waiting. As Bill walked forward he heard something crash behind him, and turned to see the GLANSTROP stretched out full length on the floor. Gort was still negotiating his limbs, although with difficulty, and got almost up to the stretchers before he collapsed, unconscious.
“Gee, I forgot,” Bill said, contrite. “They sure went out fast, didn’t they? Like putting ants in the refrigerator.”
“I’ll bet you’ve done it, too,” Misner grunted as they heaved the inert bodies onto the stretchers.
Bill hopped on one and turned the switch.
“Hey!” Misner said. “What is this, a nudist camp? First Willoughby struts off in nothing but a pink bath towel, and now you’re ready to go in less than that.”
“I guess Peerless Leader and I both have a lot on our minds,” Bill apologized, pulling on his loungers. “You know what he expects me to do?” He listed the miracles he had been ordered to perform as they drove the stretchers back to the storage area. “Could the zaps really destroy the domes?” he asked as an afterthought. “We’re safe enough in here, aren’t we?”
“The way they’re gathering out there, all they’d have to do would be climb on top of ’em and crush ’em with sheer weight,” Misner said. “And those claws of theirs—if they wanted to, they could slice that plastic into handkerchiefs, insulation and all. They can destroy the domes, all right. . . . Maybe we’d better move the emergency supplies outside. Load up the tractors and go up to the top of the world where it’s too cold for the zaps. And take enough stuff to keep us alive until somebody sends a raft for us.”
“That could take weeks,” Bill shuddered. “Imagine living in a heat-suit all that time!”
“We wouldn’t have to do that. We’ve got two- and four-man domes and camping equipment—all the comforts of home. Even air conditioning.”
“Air conditioning? How could you work that? Hook all the domes together?”
“No need to. We’ve got a couple hundred self-powered unit conditioners, real high-powered babies. One of those in a four-man dome could put icicles on your nose in two minutes at high noon even in this hot-box.”
Bill’s eyes saucered, and lie rammed his stretcher into the wall in his excitement.
“That’s it!” he shouted. “Jerry, we’ve got it!”
“You’ve got it,” the engineer corrected. “Is it catching?”
“The air conditioners! Look how fast that GLANSTROP passed out! If we could rig up a way to squirt the cold air where we want it, like with a hose—”
“The ducts for the new building!” Misner exclaimed, inspired by the idea. “That’s Flexiplast tubing—it would be a cinch!”
“Suppose we mount air conditioners in the backs of the tractors, chill the zaps around the domes so they can’t stop us, then sweep down like the wolf on the fold and get the Elf out! Here come the Space Cadets!”
Misner was fired with enthusiasm, then sank back, dampened by a sudden thought.
“What Space Cadets? You and me? And the time it would take to get a lot of gizmos rigged up . . . old Baggy Belly would be steamed in his suit like a clam long before we could get there.”
“Why only you and me? You’ve got six mechs—yeah, a whole six of ’em.” Bill slumped dejectedly for a minute, then sprang back. “The creepers! They’ve got experience with the tools and materials, and the job isn’t that complicated, and they’re much faster workers than the mechs! Why couldn’t we use them?”
“They’re out whooping it up with the rest of the boys, remember? Even if you could get them to cooperate, how could they work outside in that mob?”
“They wouldn’t have to. You can seal off the storage dome and reverse the heat-exchanger for it.”
