New Writings in SF 10 - [Anthology] Read online

  In the apartment, she opened her case for inspection, like a favourite aunt bringing presents for one and all. She said simply, “We thought you might need something other than ceremonial rig if you wanted to move about.”

  There were two dark blue, one-piece fatigue suits and a trim charcoal-grey pants and jersey set for herself. Some thin, unbreakable line; a vibrator; two service lasers, weapons on the restricted I.G.O. list, with the stopping power of a dozen carbines. Set to stun, rather than carry fatality they would damp out animal activity in a wide V on a ten-metre range.

  Arne Richardsen gave her a friendly pat where even the strict lines of the masculine tabard could not conceal a pleasant roundness.

  “Well done that lieutenant.”

  She said, “Your executive lieutenant, Richardsen. I’ll trouble you to keep your hamlike hands to yourself.” A proud spirit, she was not falling for any more acts of disinterested courtesy.

  Hablum, as Dag had expected, was not concerned about his damaged guard. He even dropped the ironical “Commissar” tag. “That was unfortunate, Commander. But I must ask you to take care. It could have ended badly for you. It would also embarrass me to have to report the death of a second I.G.O. representative in so short a time.”

  “Death?”

  “What else can we assume? In any event, we shall soon be able to come to some final arrangement.”

  Dag went out on to the roof and looked once more at the towering ziggurat with its black pinnacle. Hablum’s last communiqué suggested that matters were soon to be brought to a head. Meaning what? That something they were working at had reached the kind of readiness that no outside interference could upset ?

  No other incident broke the flat monotony of a hot, heavy day with hardly a breath of air stirring in Jasra. Dag had himself driven to the Earth Consulate and found empathy a non-starter.

  Purely a clearing house for a small trade exchange between Earth and Sabazius, there was a local staff and the consul himself—a fat, smiling, but ungenial Armenian named Victor Lamech. He was obviously more concerned with the business side of his post and would go to any length to avoid upsetting the Metropolitan Governor.

  “You must understand me, Commander. There is no gain in antagonizing Hablum. I.G.O. will send a new official in their own time. Meanwhile we keep our noses clean, yes? Commerce must go on. Business as usual, eh? I know these people. Be guided by me. Do nothing. Do not be put out by their abrupt ways. Bend like the reed and the storm passes. And the reed is still there. Is that not so? They are an industrious people and have no ambitions outside their own planet.”

  “That may well be, but they are making no effort to get to the bottom of the Commissar’s disappearance. Someone will have to answer for it. Eventually the peace enforcement patrol will put in at this port. No local force can argue with that.”

  “That is nothing to me. I run a trade post. That is all.”

  “For you everything has a price tag?”

  “I am not too proud, Commander, to call myself a trader. But do you imply something else by that?”

  “Let it go. But I warn you, Lamech, don’t sell me short. Any information you have, I want.”

  “One thing I know, Commander, that the small business connection we have here is very valuable to both planets. I repeat, I cannot help you.”

  * * * *

  The short Sabazian day slipped rapidly into its amethyst dusk, then into intense black night with jewelled, walnut-sized stars. Susan Brault, all dressed up in her charcoal-grey playsuit, found that she had nowhere to go. Briefed in a series of curtly-worded memos, she made only one small protest by writing, “Don’t overstrain the welcome.”

  Fletcher and Richardsen in their one-piece suits with lasers at their belts went silently on to the roof. Dag, moved by the appeal in her eyes, turned back and met her at the sliding transparent screen. Speech could be dangerous, but he wanted to reassure her. Words could have run in a number of non-loaded, vaguely comforting patterns.

  Instead, he put his hands on her shoulders and drew her near enough to kiss her cheek in a shorthand version of those missing assurances. His intention must, however, have been signalled ahead by extra-sensory radar, always a danger when dealing with a communications expert. She moved so that her lips were there, very warm and soft. A tactile fragment to shore against all possible ruins.

  * * * *

  Four

  Leaving their own section of roof was easy enough. Since all stairs and elevators led to the same hall, there had been no need to make physical barriers in the insurmountable class. A high party wall ran to the balustrade and projected in a decorative cusp which made a half-metre overhang.

  Despising himself for a momentary shrinking of his nerves, Dag swung out to the narrow ledge on the outside of the rail and reached up for the run-back of the curve.

  Arne Richardsen privately reckoned that he should have gone first; but was too tactful to suggest it, and resigned himself to the view that if the mission foundered on the Chairman’s vanity, the man had already paid for the privilege by his years of high endeavour. On this first pitch, however, he had to concede that he could not have done better himself.

  The patio over the wall was in semi-darkness with subdued light from the centre window. Assuming the Sabazian passion for symmetry to hold, the layout of the apartments would be identical with that they had left. Central lounge; sleeping rooms left with a shared bathroom between them; dining and cooking, far right. Only the lounge had access to the inner landing with its stairhead and elevator shaft, so it had to be through that way.

  Fletcher was already flat against the wall beside the window looking in on a peaceful domestic scene. The damaged guard and the out-of-work matron had an intricate set-up of blue and grey discs on a small table between them and were playing a local variant of strip poker.

  It was a frivolous side of the Sabazian character which was welcome on psychological, though not on aesthetic grounds, by the watching Earthman. He waved Richardsen over to the bedroom window and joined him there.

  There was no need for speech. Richardsen immediately began to cut out a section of glass with the vibrator needle feeling its way through the molecular structure like a hot knife in wax. A metre-square plate leaned back into their hands and was lifted aside. Richardsen went through as silent as a hunting puma.

  In the prevailing heat of Sabazius no one made a big thing about closing doors. Most buildings had none, internally; these apartments specially set up for eccentric foreigners had thin beaten-bronze leaves opening inwards. As it came silently back, there was what could pass for a giggle and the broad, grey back presented to the opening door was now as ruggedly bare as a Henry Moore reclining figure and made much the same statement of form.

  Peering out through a bandage-mask, the guard’s polygonal black eyes met Fletcher’s with incredulity changing to fury and then a glaze of indifference as a diffused beam sprayed out its message of instant calm. He fell across the table on to the scattered counters—a two-time loser. The lady in the case, bludgeoned in the act of leaning back, continued to move under gravity and fell into a lumpy grey composition with knees wide apart which any first-year art student would have labelled “Fecund Earth” without giving it another thought.

  Richardsen said, “Even here, it is Eros who makes the world go round. How long have we got?”

  “Two hours at the very least. Go down the stairway. I’ll take the elevator in one minute thirty seconds. Whoever is in the hall will naturally look to see the grille open. If I don’t get to him first you take him from behind.”

  Each apartment was separately served by circulation space. Richardsen went off taking the stairs in threes. Fletcher checked out the time and moved on the second. In the hall, a single guard was leaning against the solid wall between two elevator shafts. As it clicked into its magnetic lock, he twisted round to pass the time of day with its freight and had only a confused impression of a dark shadow dissolving into brilliant light.
He knew nothing of the shadow which moved behind him and dragged him into the empty cage to send him back to the penthouse suite.

  Dag said, “We’ll get the car. It’s faster than anything they have.”

  A direct corridor led through the complex, with swing-leaf doors at each intersection. There was no great folk migration under way. Only once a massive grey-faced figure, looking neither right nor left, crossed the passage ahead of them, moving from one quadrant to another.

  At the entrance, they came out on to a wide curving patio under brilliant light from oval ceiling ports. Facing into the open spread of the terminal they could see the control tower and reception unit lying like the shining boss of a wheel, half a kilometre distant. Richardsen said, “How do we get there without being seen by somebody?”

  “Surprisingly, their eyes are not good at long-range vision. Here, and near the rotunda is the danger. Otherwise we’ll meld into the lichen. Nobody moves about on foot. We won’t be noticed. Over you go.”

  Arne Richardsen was across on a count of four and dissolved in the blue background. Fletcher took five, moving seemingly without haste, and found the lichen thicker than he had expected.

  On Sabazius there was no use made of ground level. Pedestrians kept to first-floor walkways. Amethyst-blue lichen was calf deep, thick, fibrous; a springy mat. Very dusty so that they stirred up a powdery cloud like figures in a dream sequence.

  Ten minutes hard slog; conscious of the residual heat of the day and the gravity drag, brought them just outside the ring of light. They circled the round terminal complex, with the tall ships distant silhouettes behind them.

  “Here it is.”

  Arne Richardsen dropped full length and went slowly forward in choking dust to the open ends of the docking bays. Five in all. Three currently occupied. A long clumsy port tender, a small silver car from the Fingalnian ship and Interstellar X’s car in the end slot.

  Lichen took him with marginal cover to the floor of the bay itself and he stood up slowly against a smooth wall of basalt block. Five metres above his head was the rounded under-belly of the car and beside it the rim of the pit. Fletcher came up beside him and stood back to the wall miming for the younger man to climb up and over him.

  Three minutes later they were inside the car and it was ghosting out under zero thrust.

  “Take it from the top.”

  Richardsen fed in some power and the tiny car began a vertical rise like a free-standing elevator until its console flashed for maximum height at two hundred metres. He turned slowly to orientate on their objective and then they moved off; a faint streaking shadow.

  At that height, the squat buildings of the Sabazian capital were all well below. Even the black column of the target centre was ten metres under their keel. As they approached it, Richardsen said, “Instrumentation, Commander. It’s all to hell. I can hold it on manual, but there’s a strong jamming field.”

  “Take it down to that first terrace.”

  Out of the car, which had a degaussing capability, they were conscious of the strength of the field as a tangible force; as though they were molecules in a dielectric which was straining to the point of fracture. At this level there was neither window nor door and after a circuit of the maypole, Fletcher said, “Down one.”

  It was five metres to the next level and they found a line of niches and recessed hand grabs to take them down. Once again they made a circuit of blind walls. Richardsen crossed the roof from the point where the built-in ladder came down. He swung himself over an ornate bronze edging and then came back looking surprised, “It doesn’t carry on.”

  “Rope then, you can’t expect to be catered for all the way.”

  “But how would a man reach this section of ladder. It isn’t logical to start at this point.”

  Fletcher reflected that he must be getting slow; at one time he would have thought of that. “Good thinking. Somewhere between here and the edge then.”

  Finding a trap was one thing, opening it up, another. In the end Richardsen used the vibrator to undercut a deep V and pulled until muscles stood out like ropes. When the slab came away, they looked down a dark narrow well with bars set to cut off an arc and make grips leading down.

  The light of a small beam recessed in the vibrator’s head threw back a thousand-angled reflection of polished walls which made it difficult to assess distance. Either it came from ground level for this special purpose or it made service stops at each level.

  Five metres down, Dag found recessed grabs at his back to move a curved, sliding panel. He eased it back, a centimetre at a time and light spilled in through the gap. Their tube fitted into the interior design by being one in a series of roof supports in a curved colonnade which carried the roof above. Facing in, he was looking across ten metres of clear floor to the centre of the building which appeared to be an immense open well.

  As he watched, a massive central column of seemingly newly-forged, glowing metal reached the level they were on, coming by spontaneous creation from a central source way below. He shoved back the cover far enough to climb through and stand in brilliant light on a grey-tiled, solid floor which he had, humanly-speaking, to himself.

  Richardsen followed out and Dag said, “Close the door. It might be important to conceal the way we arrived. But for God’s sake remember which it is.”

  “By what?”

  The man had a point, symmetry in design could go no further. There was nothing to orientate by. He said, “Nick it low down with the vibrator.”

  By the time they had made a circuit of the floor, keeping well back from the centre well, they were glad of the mark to chalk up the score. The rod had extruded itself out of sight above. There was a slight vibration as though machinery under load was making a big effort. Then a small definitive click and the vibration cut out. Whatever the column was for it appeared to be all set to do it.

  Dag Fletcher crawled to the open edge of the well. Inching along on his side with one eye on the level above in case any observer should be looking down from there. But there was no one. He saw that the rod had locked home on the base of the black column. It looked as solid as though it had been there before the building was assembled round it.

  He looked down. Across the way on the floor below were rows of desks each with its busy worker. Women mainly, a kind of clerical assembly-line. They appeared to be checking out data from bulky folders and transferring the gleanings to a coded record.

  As he watched, one of them held up a massive grey arm, in a gesture which could have carried any number of possibilities, and in fact attracted a man in unfamiliar semi-military uniform, who came forward from a point of vision and took her offering of work done.

  Forward an inch and he could see a narrow arc of the floor further below. More people. Men this time. A puppet factory? On the ends of benches just in sight were scaled down models of Sabazian men, half a metre high. Wonderfully accurate. He risked a look down the well itself and what he saw held him there, with caution momentarily forgotten.

  The huge shining piston went down without lateral support for more than a hundred metres into a silo below ground level, a miracle of exact balance. Surrounding it, in the pit, a mass of control gear, too distant and too complex for identification. Rising slowly beside it, was a scale model of Interstellar Three-Four.

  Richardsen said, “I have a hunch about this. There is something in common with a primitive short-range communications system. This rod transmits very intense field fluctuation on a long wave.”

  “Transmits what, for God’s sake? Sabazius has highly developed cable linkage between its cities and doesn’t go in for fraternization on a stellar basis.”

  “Short range this. Very short with great power. Susan Brault would have the breakdown on it.”

  “Why the model?”

  Arne Richardsen felt all the difficulty of his position. He was the resident expert for the man who had no doubt been served on other missions by the best communications teams in the business. So
me comment he had to make. He said, “Commander, I can only make a guess, but I would think the aim was to project an intense image of that model somewhere fairly close.”

  The nudge of a sixth sense told Dag that his junior communications man had come up with something true. It still made no sense. But that was what it was all about.

  Work seemed to have stopped on all intervening floors and heads like so many bladders were leaning out to look down at developments below. The pay-off was clearly due.

  Fletcher suddenly drew back and tapped Richardsen’s arm. “Get to the car. Raise Three-Four. Get everybody out of her. Everybody. Top Priority. Seconds count. Get moving.”

  Richardsen earned himself an extra point on his confidential profile by asking no questions and being out of sight before Fletcher had returned to his watching brief.

  In the short interval, affairs below were building to a pattern reminiscent of a countdown. The shining model of Three-Four had moved on its rising piston parallel to the centre shaft and shared its central axis. Now it was stationary. Tension in the human audience was a palpable thing, the climax of the exercise was at hand.