The Future Makers (v1.0), page 19
In the doorway he paused.
“Just tell me one tiny, weeny little state secret, governor,” he begged. “All that tale Allan Cunliffe told me about the Rosks really manoeuvring to get the microfilm in our hands—was that true or false?”
An odd expression—it might have been another smile—passed over the governor’s face and vanished.
“Cunliffe has been an excellent agent for a number of years,” he said, “and, though I grant you it does not necessarily follow, everything he told you was perfectly correct. The RPF wanted us to get the invasion plans. However, there was one minor point he missed, because he could not possibly have known it The invasion plans themselves are probably false.”
The rest of that day passed with intolerable slowness for Tyne.
He reflected, as the governor had urged him to do, on the grave issues behind the Rosk invasion plans. One issue at least stuck out a mile. There had been no proof as yet that Alpha ITs technology was far in advance of Earth’s in this last decade of the twenty-second century: even the construction of a gigantic interstellar ship was, in theory, at least, not beyond Earth’s resources. But an interstellar invasion implied many things. It implied, surely, some form of faster-than-light communication between Ap II Dowl’s force and Alpha II. It implied, too, a drive a good deal faster than the one professedly used to get the first ship here, for no invasion would be feasible between planets a two-generations* journey apart. It implied, undoubtedly, an integration of planetary resources vastly superior to anything Earth dreamed of, split as it was into numerous fractious nations. It implied, above all, an overwhelming confidence in success; as vast an undertaking as an interstellar invasion would never get under way unless the powers behind it considered it a foolproof scheme.
The picture was not, Tyne admitted to himself, anything but gloomy. The role he had played in it shrank into the mere prologue to a whole volume of catastrophe.
But if the plans were false?
What did that mean? Had the RPF been tricked, perhaps, into believing that the belligerent forces would do one thing, whereas actually they intended to do another? Tyne sitting hour after hour in his so comfortable, so commodious cell, could invent many such unhelpful questions to ask himself. Only the answers were beyond him.
If he disliked not knowing the answers, he disliked knowing the questions even more.
On the third day of Tyne’s imprisonment he was summoned again to the governor’s presence. He appeared in chastened mood before the old man.
“I’ve had no news,” he said. “What’s the general situation? Are the Rosks making a move?”
“The situation has changed very radically since we last met,” Purdoe said, his face crumpling into innumerable pleats as he smiled. “And may I say, Mr. Leslie, how glad I am that you no longer come into here clamouring for release. You have been thinking, I take it?”
Tyne sighed.
“I’m not really a man of action, governor, but that doesn’t mean you have to be avuncular with me. What have you brought me here for this time?”
“Take a mescahale, young man. The Governor-General of the U.N.C., Mr. Hjanderson, is here to see you; and I should advise you to watch your tongue for the occasion. Now please excuse me for a minute.”
He disappeared through a rear door with his sprightly old man’s gait. To kill time, Tyne stared at the linen-faced attendant who had brought him there; the attendant fingered his tie and coughed.
Hjanderson, when he appeared, was instantly recognizable: dapper, fifty-ish, a little like a wolf with an expense account, smelling agreeably of the most fashionable shaving soap. He shook hands briskly with Tyne and sat down facing him, palms pressed on knees.
“I promised to come and see you,” he said, “and I have kept that promise. I regret it has taken me so long to do so. These have been days of crisis. Very grave crisis.”
“I’m pleased if I have been of any service. Perhaps I can have my hand back now, sir.”
Hjanderson brushed most of this aside.
“Service? Yes, Leslie, I think you played your part as you saw it. You were never more than partially in the picture, you know. We have received a great deal of help from the Roskian girl, Benda Ittai, who you left for dead beside her crashed helicopter.”
With an effort, Tyne swallowed this blatant misrepresentation; his term with the U.N.C. had accustomed him to such gambits.
“Apart from the fact that I did not leave her for dead, how is she? Where is she?” he asked.
“She is radiant; she is here,” Purdoe said, interrupting, coming up from behind his desk. With his thin, veined hands Jie touched—for whatever privately submerged reason of his own—the arm of the fur coat Benda wore, as he ushered her through the rear doorway and into the office.
“Benda!” Tyne exclaimed. Forgetting the Governor-General of the U.N.C., he went over to her and took her hands. Hot; 105.1; alien; but beautiful, and smiling in most tender fashion. He couldn’t let her get away with it so easily.
“Haven’t seen you since you tried to shoot me,” he said affably.
“The situation has changed,” she said, still smiling. The tormented look she had worn when putting him ashore on the island had entirely gone now.
“Since you appear to have lost interest in the political situation,” Hjanderson said dryly, rising to his feet, “it remains for me only to tell you that you are now a free man, Mr. Leslie. Moreover, I think I can mention that it is possible you may eventually get some sort of decoration; the E.D.C.E., probably.”
“IH wear it all the time,” Tyne promised, “but before you go, please tell me about the invasion—what’s happening, what’s been done about it?”
“Miss Ittai can tell you the details,” Hjanderson said smiling and extending a sharp hand. “Now you must excuse me; I have a news conference to attend. I am, of course, delighted to have been able to see you. I wish you good luck for the future.”
“Of course,” Tyne murmured vaguely. He turned to Benda before Purdoe had shown the Governor-General out. “I’d prefer to ask you this over a restaurant table, but what’s been happening that I don’t know about?”
“Perhaps the table can be arranged later,” she said. “From now on—whether that is what I want or not—I am on your side of the fence. I cannot go back to my people. That is why I have told the Governor-General the truth as I have found it to be.
“The invasion plans, as I think you have heard, are false. And not they only. The RPF also was a spurious organization! Don’t mistake me—a lot of its members genuinely wished for peace between Rosk and Man as I did and still do myself. But Tawdell Co Barr is, and must always have been, a puppet of Ap II Dowl’s. No doubt we should all have been wiped out when we had served our purpose.”
“Budo Budda was out to kill you as it was,” Tyne said.
“Oh quite; I was merely expendable, I fear. Even Budda would not have known the RPF was a dummy front—otherwise he would not have been after Murray. Only Ap II and Tawdell Co Barr are supposed to know.”
“And how did you find out?”
She shrugged her shoulders, her face puckered as she recalled that horrible moment of revelation.
“For some time, small events in the Base had made me suspicious, but I really knew what was happening when we crashed near Sumatra Base and they neither opened fire on us nor sent a party out to pick us up. Their silence could mean only one thing: the plans were intended only for U.N.C. eyes. They were false, designed only to scare Earth.” ’They certainly did that,” Tyne agreed. “This clears up what this spool of microfilm was doing on Luna in the first place. Obviously it was planted there where its journey to your base would attract maximum attention.”
Benda Ittai began to look moist about the eyes, as the treachery of her fellow beings struck her afresh. Turning to Purdoe, who stood sympathetically by, Tyne asked, “What was Ap II Dowl’s idea in all this?”
With a barely perceptible gesture, Purdoe led Tyne to the other side of the room.
“This is all very sad for the young woman,” he said in an official voice. “You see the invasion scare was Dowl’s last bluff. When confronted in the Council with our knowledge of the plans, he would probably have said that he would call the attacking fleet off if we’d give him all Sumatra, or perhaps Africa as well, or half the globe, or whatever his megalomaniac mind conceived. He’s got nothing to back a real threat,
Leslie. This was pure bluff from start to finish. You were really ill-advised, if I may say so, to get mixed up in it.”
“We’ve all been chasing around risking our necks,” Tyne said testily, “just to serve Dowl’s purpose. But how are you so sure it’s all bluff?”
For answer, the governor pulled a message form from his pocket and unfolded it daintily. Tyne recognized the flimsy as a signal which had come through secret governmental channels.
“This arrived just before I summoned you,” Purdoe said, “Please read it You will find it enlightening.”
The message read: “Circulation: GovtLevelsA-C only and List 566 as specified. Text begins: Hoyle Observatory, Luna, confirms Alpha Centauri about to go nova. Increase to apparent magnitude Minus One expected by end of year. This temperature rise will be sufficient to render life on its planets untenable. Authoritative circles confirm that first signs of nova effect would have been observable locally three generations ago in sunspot and radio phenomena. Rosk ship may therefore be regarded as lifeboat; no doubt other lifeboats despatched to other nearby systems. Therefore chances of invasion now highly improbable, repeat highly improbable. Suggested course of action; summit announcement of text of this action, with warning to Ap‘II Dowl to settle down or move on. Text ends. 10/10/2193 Luna-Singa-Beam Y.”
Tyne put the flimsy down, slowly, blankly Round his head ran some lines from an historical solid, the name of which eluded him: “Thus enterprises of greath pith and moment, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.” Was it Shakespeare? He was confused; from the diplomatic point of view, this, of course, was a triumph. The Rosks stood revealed in all their weakness, and could now be squashed as Earth saw fit. Yet in Tyne’s head, the picture of oceans steaming, babies cooking slowly in cellars, planets gradually turning to ashes, seemed to him something less than a happy ending.
“I must say I have marked you down,” Governor Purdoe said, regarding Tyne coldly, “as rather a hard and impertinent young man. How typical of your generation that you should have no reaction to this great news!”
“Good heavens!” Tyne exclaimed. “I was just thinking—”
“Forgive me if I interrupt; no doubt you were thinking of your own personal glory; I can read you like a book. When Governor-General Hjanderson gave you your freedom, I hoped it meant you would leave here at once. Will you please do so now? And one thing—please take Miss Ittai with you. I understand she has formed an attachment for you; for me, that will always remain the ultimate proof of Roskian misguidedness.”
Tyne looked hard at the old man, so neat, so smiling. With unexpected self-control, he swallowed his anger* He wanted to say that it would be impossible to understand a Rosk as long as it was impossible to understand a man, but the words did not come. There were no words; he realized he could comprehend Purdoe no more than Purdoe comprehended him,
Frustratedly, he turned to Benda Ittai. Here at least was someone worth trying to comprehend.
He felt like spending a life at it.
“Let’s go and find that restaurant table I was telling you about,” he said, taking her arm.
She smiled at him. It was a very comprehensible smile.
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Unknown Author, The Future Makers (v1.0)
