New Writings in SF 10 - [Anthology] Read online

The Sabazian official did not press his advantage and made his position stronger by that. Leading through the concentric complex of rooms to the private office of the late Commissar, he revealed himself as His Excellency, the Metropolitan Governor in person, Hablum by name and all there was of power in Jasra and its environs for ten thousand square kilometres.

  Fletcher had put in some research on the Sabazian domestic scene in the crammed days of the flight and now remembered that the official bearing that title should also bear a different name.

  “You are well informed, Commissar. That excellent administrator was the holder of this office up to a few months ago. Then he disappeared. Just as your commissar did. A most unfortunate thing. You will, no doubt, wish to remain here. My guards will wait for you and conduct you where-ever you wish to go. You will find necessary items for your comfort in the apartments set aside for you. All movements of foreign persons come under my jurisdiction, so you will of course apply to me should you wish to leave Jasra itself.”

  * * * *

  Three

  It was clear enough that there would be nothing to find, and clear too that they would not get back to the ship without a showdown of force which was weighted against them.

  Alone in the circular room, Fletcher knew that anything they said would be monitored. It hardly mattered. He would be expected anyway to make some comment on the action so far. He said briefly, “There will be security check on anything we say here. Save it if it’s important. Check round for any line on what might have happened to Puzur-Sahan.”

  Massey said, “Pooh-Bah Hablum will have been through it with a fine tooth-comb.”

  “Perhaps not. The I.G.O. Commissar is not here by invitation and even a Metropolitan Governor would not search for something he already knew about.”

  Fletcher walked slowly round the circular room. Under heavier gravity and with an atmosphere putting up five per cent more pressure, he felt the enclosed space to be heavy and claustrophobic. This preoccupation with the concentric principle in architecture meant that the inner rooms were like the depths of a burrow. A retreat to the womb.

  One suicide’s natural, was ruled out. There was no high window for his leap into oblivion. It was said that he had been seen entering the room through its only door and then not again.

  Dag talked to the chief secretary, a small squat Venusian who instantly impressed them with his conviction that Puzur-Sahan had disappeared from inside.

  “I was here all that night in the outer office, Commander. The Commissar went in. That I know. He did not come out. That I know too. When I knocked, very late, to enquire whether I was to stay any longer, there was no reply. The door was not locked. I entered. He was not there.”

  “Did you leave the outer office at all during that time?”

  “No, Commander.”

  “Not even for a few minutes?”

  “No, Commander.”

  “But you would see the Commissar moving in and out a dozen times a day. It was a familiar thing. Could it be that it was so familiar that you simply did not notice it?”

  “No, Commander. For one thing, I required the Commissar’s signature on a report and I was particularly waiting to catch him.”

  “Very well, thank you. One more thing though. What about the other side of the coin; did any person go into the office?”

  “No, Commander ... at least...”

  “Well?”

  “I have forced myself to think over the events of that evening many times. I am left with a curious impression, which I cannot substantiate, that the Commissar himself went in a second time. I cannot sort this out even to myself. It must have been an illusion. A trick of the light. The lights flickered at that time. But this has been a usual occurrence now for many months.”

  The Venusian went out, impassive; a dour unimaginative man. His race were much in demand by I.G.O., because of high stability rating and almost infinite frustration tolerance. Ideally suited for administration work on inhospitable stations.

  Fletcher sat at the desk-console and played himself a selection from the pending file, selecting English from the robot-translator’s hundred standard choices. Puzur-Sahan had been a man of method. Only three routine items remained without the addition of his dictated commentary— delivered in a precise, clipped voice, just audible behind the cool patter of the interpreter.

  He ran back to the last item which had been cleared and cut out the translation. There was a tenuous link timewise, if the man had been seated here at work, between that last spoken word and what had happened.

  The item itself was unimportant; a memo on the replacement of a time-expired junior clerk, due for repatriation. Nothing there. He ran on to the next. A report on natural resources, confirming that no new mineral discoveries on Sabazius during the last twelve months made it necessary to alter the records held at I.G.O. Annual routine stuff. Requiring only signature consent.

  Had he read that? There was no comment at the end. A pause and a click. Dag ran on to the next. No comment. No click either. He ran back to earlier cleared items. Very faintly at the end of each spoken comment there was the click as he switched himself out of circuit.

  So on that last item, he had switched himself in. Made no comment and switched himself out. Dag ran back to the crucial point and turned up the volume until the last words of the recording clerk were a shout and Massey and Richardsen stopped looking about and came over to join him.

  The last shouted word died away. There was a pause and a whisper, so faint that even on full power it was no more than an etiolated sigh. Two words. Dag mimed for no comment and ran it again until he could take it down in phonetic script. Puzur-Sahan was, naturally enough, working in Cappodanian and the words meant nothing to him. He made a final check. Then he pushed the erase button and the Commissar’s last words were forever lost.

  It was all they were likely to get from that room. He made his comment loud and clear. “Well that’s it, then. Like the man said, it’s a blank sheet. I’ll make a call on the Cappodanian embassy and pay my respects for the loss of their distinguished countryman. We can do nothing, here.”

  Outside, waiting guards fell in behind them. Round, grey faces confident and insolent. Sure now that the men in white were no threat. Fletcher kept silent until they were in the car and it was moving off. Then he asked, “Where are we bound for now?”

  “The Cappodanian Embassy.”

  “Yes, of course, that is where I want to go.”

  It confirmed that there had been a listening watch and it was comforting proof that the rank and file were on the side of naivety.

  The Cappodanian representative on Sabazius was a worried man. He was glad to see an accredited I.G.O. official. He said, “I fear that there is a large-scale conspiracy going forward. Many good people have disappeared. Many. And all of the moderate party who accepted the I.G.O. charter. There is an extremist military group which is gradually taking over every important post in the administration. I believe Puzur-Sahan was ready to make a report. Indeed I think he had drafted it and was sending it out when he so tragically disappeared. Although I am his countryman, he was very exact in his official life, you understand, I am only putting two and two together; he did not confide in me.”

  Dag said, “You may be right. I came primarily because of the safety of my ship Interstellar Three-Four, but certainly I shall alert I.G.O. to this danger.”

  “Then you should do it quickly, before you also become a victim of this uncanny thing.”

  “Can you tell me what this means in your language?” Dag laid the phonetic transcript on the table between them. It was an abrupt change of subject, but the Cappodanian answered at once.

  “It is a mathematical term. Literally ‘additive inverse’— the reasonable proposition that one and minus one combine to make nothing.”

  “Can you think of any reason why Puzur-Sahan should be concerned about that?”

  “No. But I can tell you that he was a keen mathematician. It was a hobby
with him. Any phenomenon would present itself to him in mathematical terms.”

  Two days later, Dag Fletcher was still puzzling out the implications of the Commissar’s enigmatic, signing-off phrase. There was a certain anticlimax in the situation. He had not been allowed to move back to his ship; but he and his companions were being given V.I.P. treatment in a top-floor suite of rooms in a reception unit which lay on the perimeter of the port area and had a direct radio link with Interstellar X.

  Ray Mortimer said, “What goes on, Dag? Give the word and we’ll do some selective blasting round here. I have a close-grain scan of every installation on a fifty-kilometre diameter. Believe me, there isn’t much at that.”

  “It may come to it, but hold it for now.” Fletcher was certain that anything he said would go straight to Hablum. But there was no point in concealing what strength he had. In fact it was stalemate. Hablum knew that if he moved directly against his guests or Interstellar X there would be massive reprisals even from its unskilled crew.

  Mortimer went on, “Another thing, Dag. Since when have port controls wanted a complete dossier on ship construction and personnel? Banister tells me they’ve got enough data on Three-Four to build it from bedrock. I’ve provided profile data that nobody ever asked for in my experience. They’ve got you taped, down to your last birthmark. But ship detail I have not released. This is still on the classified list as an ex-military corvette.”

  “You did right. What precisely on the other details?”

  “Physiometrics, build, photographs, weight—the lot.”

  “That can do no harm.”

  “Perhaps not. Paula thinks it’s a commercial angle and they’re going to run her on a calendar series. She’s also as superstitious as they come and says its like stealing hair and nail-clippings to work a spell. She’s keeping her fingers crossed. So you should be all right.”

  The rooms they were in made a penthouse extension over the centre ring of the hotel unit. From an open quadrant of tiled roof, edged by a metre-high filigree rail, they could see a fair slice of Jasra spread out in its exact geometric patterns, between low-lying moors of the characteristic amethyst-blue lichen of Sabazius. Like a child’s doodling exercise with a compass, interweaving arcs and circles and adding the sweeping, connecting curves of the first-floor walkways which kept the few pedestrians out of the lichen.

  Almost central in the panorama was a building new to Fletcher. Not surprising in itself since it must have been all of twenty years since he had paid a brief visit to the planet. Strange for all that, because there was almost absolute architectural conservatism in Sabazius and the outlines of Jasra had not changed for centuries.

  In any other place, he might have identified it as some kind of transmitter. Concentric rings on diminishing diameters went up like a step pyramid to a tall gleaming cylinder of ebony-black.

  Neal Banister, in a brief, relayed transmission, said, “That’s an amazing place. It’s the headquarters of a neo-fascist organization. Sponsors your friend Hablum. Extremists, but not unpopular. In fact their philosophy seems to suit the morons in this place. When, if ever, do we pull out?”

  “Any day now. You’ll just have to be patient. Just keep looking in those mirrors to make sure you’re still there. There’s a devious situation developing.”

  Out on the open roof, with some chance of avoiding a beamed monitor, Dag wrote and mimed an instruction for Massey. “Don, back to the ship for you. Work at it with Mortimer and Railton. Get all the armament you can move and pinpoint that building with the black column. Annihilation drill. Round the clock watch with a finger on the button. Signal to blast it will be my personal call sign on the company net. Sent by this.” He offered a cigarette from a flat electrum case and thumbed over a flat plate, which revealed the wafer-thin, fixed-frequency transmitter. “Tonight we’ll go take a look at it.”

  Then he was calling Hablum on video in their day room. “I am sending one of my men back to the ship. Please instruct the guards here to do nothing foolish.”

  “Why, Commissar,” the rank which Dag had not claimed was now used as an insult. “Why should they do anything foolish ? Our rights as a sovereign state are guaranteed by your organization. Certainly your man can go back. In his place, I suggest you call out the woman, Brault—your communications executive. You must see that I cannot allow your ship to be fully operational until I am sure of your intentions.”

  Susan Brault arrived in some splendour. Having seen the male contingent turn out in full regalia, she dressed with particular flamboyance in the green and gold ceremonial tabard of the service. Raven-black hair in shining wings. Startlingly white skin. Eyes elaborately made up with obliquely slanted brows. Slim, graceful, moving like a dancer. Although not beautiful by the standard of the local aesthetic, which went in for bulbous opulence, she made an impact on the guards who followed her and brought a surge of welcome colour to the internment cage itself.

  They met her in the outer ring of the complex and walked back through the onion skins of its concentric layout to the central hall of elevator outlets and narrow spiral emergency stairways. A guard, making her white travelling-case appear toy-sized, pointed curtly to an elevator grille serving a different apartment and which was currently being swung back by a large, bulging, Sabazian woman in white overalls, with the unmistakable aura of nurse-wardress.

  Had Susan Brault been in any kind of deal with the Sabazian power it would have been easy for her to accept the separation and be easily accessible to any negotiator. But the look she gave him ended any possibility that she was a Sabazian agent. It held an amalgam of real terror, appeal for help and a simple emotional demand which he did not want to identify but which was unmistakable.

  She said, “Commander, I surely don’t have to be alone with them? Please make them let me come with you.”

  Dag said, “That’s all right, Susan. Of course you can come with us.” Then to the senior guard who was moving forward to sort out the hold-up, “The lieutenant will use one of our rooms. Put her case in this elevator.”

  Stony black eyes held his for a long considering stare. Fletcher made no move and his face was set in the mask that expected the answer yes. The man unhooked his carbine and brought it deliberately up to the aim on a line with Fletcher’s throat. He said, “You do not give orders. I give orders. The Earthwoman goes to a separate place.”

  Fletcher walked forward without haste until the muzzle of the carbine was touching the white cloth of his tunic. Casually erect. Resplendent against the drab cyclorama with the long bars of his many orders making an oblong blaze of colour. Even now, after all the years of experience and a sure knowledge that he no longer cared about that unjustifiable invasion of privacy which is death, he could not do it without an involuntary shrinking of the nerves and a small chill of fear.

  They saw him move both hands to the barrel of the gun, move it sharply down and left, so that when the guard decided to fire the heavy slugs tore into the parquet beside them. At the same time, he twisted it free and brought up the butt to smash home between the eyes of the round moon-face above him.

  It was so quickly done, that no other guard had unslung his carbine when the leader dropped clear and Fletcher was left questing round for a target. There was a digestive pause. Sabazian national character was to follow where led. There was no enthusiasm for self-sacrifice.

  Dag said evenly, “Put the lieutenant’s case in this elevator. I shall report this man for a serious breach of discipline.”

  When it was done, he lowered the carbine and motioned the others to go inside. Then he followed without haste.

  Two men, making it clear that they intended nothing but good went to pick up the sleeper. They carried him over to the nurse’s corner on the principle that such obvious talent should not run to waste and she took him off in her elevator looking, as far as could be judged, innocently pleased by the windfall.

  Susan Brault, brown eyes emotionally dark and shining bright put a light warm hand on
Fletcher’s arm as their cage lifted them out of sight of the busy hall. She said, “I’m sorry, I’ve made it worse for you. I should have gone with them. But honestly, they make my skin crawl. I can’t bear to be near them. What will happen now?”

  “Nothing will happen. Don’t worry. I’ll get on to Hablum straight away. He’s a realist with some long-term plan. It wouldn’t have suited him at all to have me shot like that. Don’t give it a thought. We’ll be all right.”

  She said in a small voice, “Thank you anyway.” Very near him in the small cage was Arne Richardsen working the clumsy switchgear which controlled the ride. Impulsively she stood on tiptoe and briefly brushed the side of his cheek with her lips. He felt the quick pneumatic pressure of firm breasts and a flat abdomen against him and was back in time to another elevator, going down, when a mission had ended and the girl’s hair had been shining red-gold.

  He said, “Whatever happens I am well repaid.” But she was not deceived and had known that his mind was off somewhere where she could not follow.