John Brunner Read online

  And the finest integrated automatic system in the galaxy made no difference one way or the other to that basic truth.

  "Kynance!" Horst said harshly, and she started. While she had been wrapped in thought, the clock had reached the red line.

  She took a deep breath, and began to recite the necessary legal formulas. They seemed to take half of eternity, but they could not be skipped; "it is necessary not only that justice be done, but that it be seen to be done."

  Finally she ran out of words and breath at the same time. She could only give a nod to her companions, and they shot away like so many rising starships to tackle the jobs she had assigned them.

  With paint, with circuit-tracers, with meters and gauges and sheets of paper on which computer programs had been fair-copied after a dozen revisions, they set out to conquer Zygra.

  The boom of the starship at the edge of atmosphere reached them just as the job was finished. Dickery, paint on face and hands, was the last to join them in the observation dome, and they grinned at him and slapped each other on the back before turning to watch the ship make its landing.

  The impact of Dickery's work was all that could have been hoped for. The moment the drive died, and the viewports of the ship were opened to local air, a head appeared from what must have been the bridge compartment. It turned to survey the station, and was confronted with Dick-ery's handiwork: letters three feet high running along the side of the observation dome.

  They said ZYGRA MAIN SPACEPORT.

  Another head appeared. There was some shouting. A third head peered out—by the glitter on the shoulders below, it belonged to the captain. And then Shuster appeared.

  "All right then," Kynance said with uncharacteristic grimness. "I think it's time to go and welcome them, don't you?* She looked at Horst. He said suddenly, "Kynance, have I ever told you I think you're the most extraordinary person I've ever met?"

  "Just as well," Victor said. "The galaxy would fall apart if there were many more like her."

  Kynance flushed, gathered up the folder of documents she had prepared against this moment, and led the way onto the deck. In the shadow of the newly arrived starship, they formed a semicircle and waved cheerfully to the astonished crewmen peering out of the bridge.

  Another couple of minutes, and the nearst passenger lock shot open to disgorge Shuster and several others, including the second mate who had tried to remonstrate when Kynance had shown up to join the ship at Nefertiti. They were armed with laseguns, and she had to force herself not to step back in sheer panic.

  But she had rehearsed this moment mentally so many times that the necessary words sprang to her lips without conscious decision. She found herself saying, "Which of you is the senior representative of the company operating this vessel? You have not signified acceptance of the scale of harbor dues in force at this spaceport, and you are required to agree to the terms and furnish proof of ability to meet them before discharging or loading cargo."

  Shuster had gone as white as a comet's tail. He had recognized all of them as ex-supervisors of this private treasure-planet, and the shock of being confronted by four men and a woman he'd given up for dead was too much for him.

  He pulled the rags of his self-possession together and started to bluster.

  "What is all this nonsense? Put these pirates under arrest!"

  So it had penetrated his thick skull already—the central fact that he couldn't just order them burned down where they stood. Kynance acknowledged that that was a very fast deduction.

  She said aloud, "Are you the senior company official, then?"

  "You know damned well I am!" Shuster roared. "And I want to know the meaning of this—this slogan you've scrawled on my company's main station!" He shot out an arm at the huge white letters across the observation dome.

  "Not yours," Kynance said delicately.

  The second mate lowered his gun and gestured for his companions to do the same. With worried glances at Shuster they complied.

  "What nonsense are you spouting?" Shuster raged. "I—" "Is there somebody up there with a recorder?" Kynance called to the men leaning out of the bridge, ignoring Shuster's fury.

  "Ah—" A hasty whispered conference, and then a defiant cry to assure them there was, and everything was being recorded in full, "So that you damned pirates and claim-jumpers will get what's coming to you!"

  Kynance drew herself up to her full height, such as it was, and heard behind her a mutter of encouragement: "Give it to 'em, girl!" She thought it was Coberley's voice.

  "If there is any piracy going on around here, it looks as though it's on your side, landing a party of"—she counted rapidly—"nine armed men at this spaceport!"

  "Spaceport!" shouted Shuster. "This is the Zygra Company's main station!"

  "Correction," Kynance informed him. "This is Zygra Main Spaceport, under the control and direction of the Zygra Port Operations Company—keep that recorder pointed at me!" she added in a sudden bellow the force of which amazed her. "I want the whole story down for any legal investigation that may be needed to substantiate what I'm about to tell you!"

  The snout of the recorder wavered, but remained trained.

  "My name is Kynance Foy. I was engaged to act as supervisor of this planet on behalf of the Zygra Company, to conform with the legal requirement that a celestial body to which a claim of absolute sovereignty is laid must be occupied by at least one living person. My contract forbade me to signal or in any way communicate with a person not an employee of the company.

  "Within two days of the commencement of my tenure I was approached by four ex-incumbents of the post I now held, who had been inveigled into infringing their contracts—"

  "It's a slanderous lie!" screamed Shuster. Kynance disregarded him.

  "—and who consequently were no longer employees of the company. By waving to them, later by speaking to them, I invalidated my own contract and thereupon automatically ceased to be an employee of the Zygra Company.

  "Since that moment, the planet Zygra has reverted to the status of an unclaimed celestial body. It is well established that to maintain its claim of sovereignty a company must maintain representation on its behalf."

  "Oh, God," said the second mate in a barely audible voice.

  "But you can't claim Zygra—" Shuster began, and stopped dead.

  "I can," Kynance answered demurely, and wondered when he would start to squirm.

  "But—but just a second!" Grasping at a straw, Shuster stumbled over his own tongue. "That doesn't apply to property deposited upon a celestial body—"

  "You mean this thing here, the new Zygra Main Port?" Kynance permitted herself a faint smile. "Executive Shuster, are you familiar with the law of salvage?"

  "Salvage?" Shuster echoed. "What does that have to do with—?" Suddenly he stopped, seeming to choke as the relevance of it sank in.

  "I think you understand me," Kynance said. "Property cast away upon an unclaimed celestial body is subject to reclamation as salvage and sale by the recoverer after a period of one local or one Earthside standard year, whichever is the shorter. It just so happens that the Zygran year is four days and five hours longer than an Earthside year.

  "Approximately three hours ago this vessel—note, whether you call it a main station' or whatever other name you apply, it is legally of its nature a waterborne vessel, in other words a ship!—was reclaimed as salvage by the Zygra Salvage Company, who thereupon sold it to the present owners with warranty of title. If you wish to exercise a lapsed previous title you must purchase it back from the new owners at the currently accepted estimate of its value. Conservatively, I'd say it's worth a thousand million credits— wouldn't you agree?" She gave him a sunny smile.

  "Woman, you're crazy!" Shuster moaned. "Why, that's half the value of our pelts for a year!"

  "Your pelts?"Kynance said softly. "I'm sorry, but this was an unclaimed celestial body—had you forgotten already? The pelts are the property of the Zygra Pelt Exporting Company."


  "What?'

  "They were purchased from the Zygra Pelt Raising Company about—oh—forty minutes ago. The Pelt Raising Company is the new owner of the substations, monitors and coating-station, which they purchased about two and a half hours ago from the Zygra Salvage Company."

  Shuster clamped both palms against his temples as though afraid his brain would burst his skull. "What are all these companies you keep talking about?" he whimpered. "You—"

  "You forgot something, Executive Shuster," Kynance said. "Are you acquainted with the regulations governing the formation of a company desirous of operating interstellar trade? I am—I studied interstellar commerce in college, as a follow-up to my earlier courses in business law."

  "Oh," Shuster said in a dead voice.

  "Got there? Better late than never," Kynance told him sweetly. "The moment you allowed five people loose on the surface of this planet you dug your own grave. The law states that a company such as I've described requires five officers: president, chairman, managing director, treasurer and company secretary, of whom not fewer than three must be citizens of the planet where the company is registered. The holding of one office in any given company does not debar an individual from holding the same or another office in some other company. Am I correct?"

  Swaying a little on his feet, Shuster stared wildly from one to other of the group facing him, gulping enormous draughts of air.

  "Do you wish to inspect the documents relating to the four companies now operating on the planet Zygra?" Kynance asked him formally. "That is to say: the Pelt Raising Company, the Pelt Exporting Company, the—"

  "But you can't register a company here!" Shuster shrieked. "A company also has to be registered with a planetary government!"

  Kynance fused, dropped and exploded her last and greatest bombshell.

  She said, "We are a government."

  XIV

  AND THERE IT WAS. By grace and virtue of the fact that she had been compelled to break her contract less than one Zygran year but more than one Earthside standard year prior to its expiry.

  "Whichever is the shorter!" The words rang in her memory like a reprieve from death.

  Shuster was beyond speech. Giving him a puzzled glance, the second mate holstered his gun and stepped forward. He said, "I—I guess I don't understand what's gone on here."

  Once, long ago, Kynance had had a private dream involving a personable young space officer. This second mate could have fit quite nearly into the rôle she'd envisaged. But that was so far in the past she felt the whole thing had happened to someone else. She only remembered how he, and all his fellows, had shut their mouths when they must have known it was company policy that no supervisor should return from Zygra.

  She said clearly, for the benefit of the records, "Don't you? You must be either ignorant or stupid. Three conditions must be fulfilled before an independent government can be set up on any celestial body: first, the body must be fit for human habitation—as is evidenced by the fact that these ex-supervisors of the Zygra Company have survived without artificial aids for many years; second, it must be free of any claim of absolute sovereignty previously registered by an empowered company—and we've been all through that; third, it must be inhabited by members of both sexes. We comply in all respects with these conditions.

  "One Earthside standard year, plus one minute, after the abandonment of Zygra by any employee of the company formerly recognized as sovereign here, we became eligible to declare ourselves the legal government, and we did so. Our President, Hoist Lampeter!"

  Horst stepped forward, eyes a little narrowed against the sun, and scowled at Shuster. He said, "Remember me?"

  "Our Minister of Planetside Affairs: Dickery Evan!"

  Dickery swaggered forward alongside Horst.

  "Our Minister of Trade and Finance!"

  Victor joined the row, and Kynance fell in at his right. "I myself," she said, "am serving in the capacity of Minister of External Affairs, and our Minister of Justice is—"

  She gestured. Coberley tramped forward. This past year his fat had melted off him, letting the hard muscles of his youth show through, and he hunched menacingly as he approached Shuster, arms swinging loose from the shoulder as if he were prepared to pick the smaller man up bodily and hurl him over the side to drown among the gorgeous pelts gathering for the harvest.

  In that instant taut with menace, Shuster must have seen a vision of everything that had combined to threaten him: the dispossession of the company for which he had cheated and betrayed innocents and led them to their deaths, the inevitable investigations, the relentless exposure of all the subtle pitfalls by means of which he had ruined his victims. Beyond the mere financial collapse of the Zygra Company loomed other terrors. Once it was shown that he had deliberately tricked the supervisors into breaking their contracts and then abandoned them to their fate, no government in the galaxy would be able to refrain from ordering the payment of damages to those who had suffered, or to their surviving relatives. The Zygra Company had lost not only its monopoly on the pelts and the means of obtaining them, but its other assets too—its unsold stock, its interstellar freighters, its headquarters building and everything else. Kynance had done some calculations; assuming the fines were levied as a percentage of assets—the usual practice—and the damages as a percentage of the balance, she estimated that the company would have to sell everything in order to pay a month's salary in lieu of notice to its other employees.

  A very satisfactory outcome.

  Shuster put both hands over his face and began to cry.

  "But—but doesn't this mean that you're going to have to stay here indefinitely?" the second mate suggested nervously. Overhead, some sort of argument could be heard. Kynance let it proceed uninterrupted. Pretty soon the captain would turn up and the discussion could continue.' Meantime . . .

  "It sounds as if you've swallowed your company propaganda as willingly as Shuster did," she said. "He came to believe the big lie put out to discourage intruders here— that it required millions of credits' worth of life-support gear to keep a man alive on Zygra. Bunkum! It's perfectly possible to live off the native vegetation, provided you have the determination. How do you think these people managed, hm?"

  "But in that case—" the mate began, and stopped short.

  "In that case," Kynance confirmed, "Zygra is a greater prize than Loki, or Ge, or a score of other planets that could only be made habitable by importing Earthside plants, animals and bacteria! We are wide open for immigration —or we will be, as soon as we've disposed of our first crop of pelts."

  "How are you going to do that?" demanded the mate. "You

  don't own any ships!" ^

  "No, that's true," Kynance admitted. "But—well, you haven't seen the scale of port charges currently in force. For a ship of this class, they amount to—Victor?"

  "A hundred million credits per local day," Victor said with considerable satisfaction.

  "What?" the mate and his companions spoke as one.

  "Well, any underdeveloped planet needs to exploit its resources," Kynance said. "And currently we only have one— the pelts. Mind you, the rate applicable to the ships under charter to the planetary government of Zygra is substantially lower, and we're extremely interested in chartering a few vessels on a profit-sharing basis."

  "Do you mean shared among the crew?"

  "Well, this would involve the setting up of a common fund," Victor said judiciously. "But it's one of the schemes which we've worked out in some detail. If you're interested . . . ?"

  Interested! That was an understatement, Kynance told herself with cynical satisfaction. Her experience before taking off from Nefertiti to come here had shown beyond a doubt that these men were greedy. A share in the most profitable cargoes in the galaxy had looked like the quickest route to their loyalty, and apparently it was working like magic.

  "Here's the captain, I see," she murmured. "I wonder how hell feel about chartering the ship to us."

  It took
a whole day, but it worked out. Patiently, citing authority after authority with the assurance due to a solid Earth year of milking the legal data banks installed in the central computer of the main station, Kynance showed how it could be done. First came the question of ownership of the cargo: Philpot-Soames and Honegger versus the Transit Company of Loki, 2094, pointed out that it was illegal to transport cargo without the permission of the owners, and hence they could not load pelts without the Zygran government's say-so.

  The Zygra Company owned nothing on Zygra. They had sent the ship to bring away someone else's property, and this was piracy within the meaning of the precedent set by Balewa and Chatterji versus Earth-Luna Shuttle Corporation back in 1997. No company—vide Olaf Gunarson versus Phobos Metals, 2045—could compel any employee to engage in illegal undertakings; hence the captain and his entire crew were free to accept work with any other employer.

  And so forth, and so forth. When she had finished, Kynance was in a state like a waking dream, soaked in perspiration and hoarse with hours of non-stop explanations. But she knew she had done it. She had set precedents which would take years to filter through the successive courts of the galactic legal system, but they would complete the course as surely as the extract of blockweed would come out of the Zygra coating-station—changed, refined, fortified, but ultimately turned into a solid layer of nourishment for many years ahead, to be transmuted by the living pelt on which it was spread into something with far more meaning, far more importance, and almost infinitely greater value. Not price. Value.

  A sort of beauty.

  Kynance shivered.

  Loaded, chartered, under orders, the renamed vessel Kynance Foy dwindled towards the shredded clouds of Zy-gra's sky. Victor, Coberley and Evan were somewhere below in the supervisor's quarters, celebrating their elevation to ministerial rank in this youngest of planetary governments with the help of some Gean wine bought on credit from the ship's stores, but Kynance wanted to wait a while before joining them. She stood with hands shading her eyes, watching her namesake ship head for the stars.