“Sure you do. You were here before, in that CIA simulacrum. Our agent, our informant at CIA, told us every move you made.”
So there was a Hentman person at CIA. He had been right; the CIA had been infiltrated. That was just about par for it, too.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Hentman said. “They’ve got some nurt of theirs in here; don’t forget that. Unfortunately I could never make out who he is. Sometimes I think it’s Jerry Feld; other days I think it’s Dark. Anyhow it was through our man at CIA that we learned you had been suspended, and so naturally we let you go—what good were you to us if you couldn’t reach your wife here on Alpha III M2? I mean, let’s be reasonable.”
Chuck said, “And through their agent in your organization—”
“Yeah, the CIA knew within minutes that I’d canceled the script idea and dropped you so off they went, slamming—they thought—the door on me… as you read in the ‘papes. But of course through my agent with them I knew the blade was about to fall, so I got away. And their agent in my organization let them know I had left Terra, only he didn’t know where exactly I had gone. Only Cherigan and Feld knew that.” Philosophically Hentman said, “Maybe I’ll never find out who the CIA has in here. It’s not important, now. I kept most of my dealings with the Alphs top secret, even from members of my staff, because of course I knew we’d been infiltrated right from the start.” He shook his head. “What a mess.”
Chuck said, “Who’s your agent at CIA?”
“Jack Elwood.” Hentman grinned lopsidedly, gleeful at Chuck’s reaction. “How come do you suppose Elwood was willing to release that expensive pursuit ship to you? I told him to. I wanted you to get here. Why do you imagine Elwood urged you so strongly originally to take control of the Mageboom simulacrum? That was my strategy. From the start. Now, let’s hear your info about these clans here and which way they’ll jump.”
No wonder Hentman and his writers had been able to whip together the so-called “TV script” which they had dropped in his lap; through Elwood they had maneuvered at dead-center, just as Hentman was now admitting.
But that was not entirely true. Elwood could inform the Hentman organization of the existence of the Mageboom simulacrum, who operated it and where it was bound. But that was all. Elwood did not know the rest.
“Admittedly I was here before,” Chuck said. “And spent some time here, but at the Heeb settlement, which isn’t representative; the Heebs are at the bottom of the scale. I have no knowledge of either the Pares or the Manses and they’re the ones who run the affair, here.” He recalled Mary’s brilliant analysis of the situation, her account of the intricate caste system in operation on Alpha III M2. It had proved correct.
Hentman, his eyes intense, said, “Will you try it? I personally believe the whole bunch of them have something to gain; if I was them I’d take it. Their alternative is to go back into enforced hospitalization—and that’s it. Take it or leave it… put it that way to them. And I’ll tell you what you’ll get out of it.”
“By all means,” Chuck said. “Dilate on that aspect.”
“If you do this we’ll instruct Elwood to take you back into the CIA.”
Chuck remained silent.
“Kriminy,” Hentman said plaintively. “You don’t even bother to answer. Okay, you saw Patty here in the ship. We’ll instruct her to be nice to you. Know what I mean?” He winked a hasty, nervous twitch.
“No,” Chuck said emphatically. That had turned out too unpleasantly.
“All right, Rittersdorf.” Hentman sighed. “We’ll really up it. If you’ll do this for us we’ll toss you a big bone, something out of the class of what I’ve named.” He took a deep raucous breath. “We’ll guarantee to do the job of killing your wife for you. As painlessly and quickly as possible. And that’s very painless… and very quick.”
After what seemed like an endless time to both men Chuck said, “I can’t make out why you think I’d like Mary dead.” He was able to meet Hentman’s shrewd gaze, but the effort required was great.
Hentman said, “Like I said—I watched you two scrunched down taking potshots at each other like a couple of wild animals.”
“I was defending myself.”
“Sure,” Hentman said, nodding in a parody of compliance.
“Nothing you saw here on this moon involving me and Mary would have told you that. You must have come to Alpha III M2 with that knowledge. And you didn’t get it from Elwood because he couldn’t have known it either, so spare yourself the nuisance of telling me that Elwood—”
“Okay,” Hentman said brusquely. “Elwood retailed to us the part about the simulacrum, you and Mageboom; that’s how that got into the script. But I’m not telling you where I got the rest. And that’s it.”
Chuck said, “I won’t go before the council. That’s it, too.”
Glaring, Hentman said, “What does it matter how I found out? I know; let it rest at that. I didn’t ask for the info; we wrote it in as an afterthought because when she told me—” He stopped himself at once.
“Joan Trieste,” Chuck said. Working with the slime mold; it had to be that. So now it had emerged. However it hardly mattered at this point.
“Let’s not get sidetracked. Do you want your wife killed or not? Make up your mind.” Hentman waited impatiently.
“No,” Chuck said. He shook his head. There was no doubt in his mind. The solution lay at hand and he rejected it. And with finality.
Wincing, Hentman said, “You want to do it yourself.”
“No,” he said. That was not the case. “Your offer made me remember the slime mold and Cherigan’s killing it there in the hall of my conapt. I could see that happening again, only with Mary instead of Lord Running Clam.” And, he thought, that’s not what I want at all. Evidently I’ve been wrong. That terrible event told me something—and I can’t forget it. But what, then, do I want in regard to Mary? He did not know; it was obscure to him, and perhaps it would remain so forever.
Once more Hentman had gotten out his handkerchief to mop his forehead. “What a foul-up. You and your domestic life; it’s wrecking the plans of two inter-system empires, Terra’s and Alpha’s—did you ever think of it that way? I give up. Frankly I’m glad you said no, but we couldn’t seem to find any other inducement we could offer you; we thought that was what you wanted out of all this.”
“I thought so, too,” Chuck said. It must be that I’m still in love with her, he realized. A woman who murdered that Mans soldier as he tried to get back to his tank. But—at least in her own eyes—she had been trying to protect herself, and who could blame her for that?
Again there was a knock at the door. “Mr. Hentman?”
Bunny Hentman opened the door. Gerald Feld stepped rapidly inside.
“Mr. Hentman, we’ve picked up the telepathic thought-emanations of a Ganymedean slime mold. It’s somewhere nearby outside the ship. It wants to be allowed in so—” He glanced at Chuck. “So it can be with Rittersdorf, here; it says it wants to ‘share his fate.’” Feld grimaced. “It’s very concerned about him, obviously.” He looked disgusted.
“Let the damn thing in,” Hentman instructed. As Feld departed Hentman said to Chuck, “To be honest I don’t know what’s going to become of you, Rittersdorf; you seem to have managed to create a complete mess of your life in every direction. Your marriage, your job, taking your long trip here and then changing your mind… what do you have?”
“I think perhaps the Paraclete is back,” Chuck said. It would seem so, in view of the fact that he had declined, at the final moment, to take Hentman up on his offer regarding Mary.
“What’s this thing you’re talking about?”
“The Holy Spirit,” Chuck said. “It’s in every man. But hard to find.”
Hentman said, “Why don’t you fill the vacuum with something noble, like saving these nuts here on Alpha III M2 from mandatory hospitalization? At least you’d be getting back at the CIA. There are a couple of highly-priced Alphane mi
litary characters on the ship… in a matter of hours they can bring in official craft to take formal, legal possession of this moon. Of course Terran warships are hanging around here, too, but this just shows how carefully it has to be handled. You’re an ex-CIA man; you ought to be able to work something tricky like this out.”
“I wonder how it would feel,” Chuck said, “to spend the rest of my life on a moon populated solely by psychotics.”
“How the hell do you think you’ve been living? I’d call your inter-personal relationship with your wife psychotic. You’ll make out; you’ll find some fray to bed down with to replace Mary. As a matter of fact when our flare went off we got a reasonably good look—via the pics—of the one you were huddled with. She’s not so bad, is she?”
“Annette Golding,” Chuck said. “Polymorphous schizophrenia.”
“Yeah, but even so, won’t she do?”
After a pause Chuck said, “Possibly.” He was not a clinician, but Annette had not seemed very ill to him. Much less so, in fact, than Mary. But of course he knew Mary better. Still—
Once more there came a rap at the door; it opened and Gerald Feld said, “Mr. Hentman, we’ve discovered the identity of the individual attacking us. It’s the CIA simulacrum, Daniel Mageboom.” He explained, “The Ganymedean slime mold in gratitude for our letting it into the ship gave us that information. I have an idea.”
“The same idea,” Hentman said, “occurs to me. Or if it isn’t I don’t want to hear it.” He turned to Chuck. “Well contact Jack Elwood at the San Francisco office of the CIA; we’ll have him pull the operator off the simulacrum, whoever it is that’s operating it, probably Petri.” Obviously Hentman was completely familiar with the working of the CIA’s San Francisco office. “Then, Rittersdorf, we’ll have you take over operation of the simulacrum from here. As long as his radio contact is maintained you can do it, and we basically need only a handful of instructions for it; simply program it out of action and off the sidelines. Will you do that much?”
Chuck said, “Why should I?”
Blinking, Hentman said, “B-because it’s going to get our power supply and blow us up, using that damn laser beam as it is; that’s why.”
“You’ll be killed, too,” Feld pointed out to Chuck, “in that event. Both you and your Ganymedean slime mold.”
“If I go before the supreme council of this moon,” Chuck said to Hentman, “and ask them to seek Alphane protection, and they do—it may set off another major war between Alpha and Terra.”
“Oh hell no,” Hentman said emphatically. “Terra doesn’t care that much about this moon; Operation Fifty-minutes, that’s just a minor, minor afterthought, nothing of importance. Believe me, I’ve got lots of contacts; I know this. If Terra really cared that much they would have gone in here years ago. Right?”
“What he says is true,” Feld said. “Our man at TERPLAN verified this some time ago.”
Chuck said, “I think the idea is a good one.”
Both Hentman and Feld visibly sighed with relief.
“I’ll take it to Adolfville,” Chuck said, “and if I can get the clans to reconvene their supreme council I’ll put the idea before them. But I intend to do it in my own way.”
“What does that mean?” Hentman inquired nervously.
“I’m not a public speaker or a politician,” Chuck said. “My job has been programming material for simulacra. If I can get control of Mageboom I’ll have him appear before the council—I can feed him better lines to speak, better arguments, than I could possibly give my own self.” And also—but he did not say this aloud—he would be a great deal safer here in Hentman’s ship than in Adolfville. Because the Terran military could at any moment break the Manses’ shield, and one of their first acts would be to round up the inter-clan council. Someone before the council right then, proposing a switch of loyalties to the Alphane empire, would be unlikely to emerge. The proposal, coming from a Terran citizen—as he himself was—would be identified, and correctly, as an act of treason.
What I’m doing, Chuck realized with shock, is nothing less than throwing my lot in with Hentman’s.
The thoughts of the slime mold came to him, reassuringly. “You have made a wise choice, Mr. Rittersdorf. First your decision to permit your wife to live, and now this. If worst comes to worst we will all wind up subjects of the Alphanes. But under their rule I’m certain we can survive.”
Hentman, also hearing the thoughts, grinned. “Shall we shake on it?” he asked Chuck, holding out his hand.
They shook. The treasonable deal, for better or worse, had been made.
THIRTEEN
The bulky Mans tank, clanking and rattling, its headlights blazing, coasted up beside Gabriel Baines and Annette Golding and hiccoughed to a halt. The turret flew open and the Mans within stood up cautiously.
From the surrounding darkness there emerged no laser beam attack by Dr. Mary Rittersdorf. Perhaps, Gabriel Baines thought hopefully, Mrs. Rittersdorf had acceded to the request posted by the Holy Triumvirate, to the letters of fire in the sky. In any case this appeared to be his and Annette’s opportunity, as promised by Ignatz Ledebur.
In one swift motion he leaped up, tugged Annette to her feet, and with her scrambled up the side of the Mans tank. The driver helped them inside, banged the hatch shut after them; together the three of them sprawled within the cramped cab of the tank, panting sweatily.
We got away, Gabriel Baines informed himself. But he felt no joy. It did not seem important; in the great scheme it was a very little matter which they had accomplished. Still, it was something. Reaching out he put his arm around Annette.
The Man said, “You’re Golding and Baines? The council members?”
“Yes,” Annette said.
“Howard Straw ordered me to round you both up,” the Mans explained; he got behind the controls of his tank and started it into motion once more. “I’m supposed to take you to Adolfville; there’s a further meeting of the inter-clan council about to take place and Straw insists you have to be there.”
And so, Gabriel Baines reflected, because Howard Straw needs us for a vote, we survive; Mary Rittersdorf doesn’t get to pick us off in the first light of dawn. Ironic. But it demonstrated the importance of the bond linking the clans. The bonds were life-giving, and to all of them. Even to the lowly Heebs.
When they reached Adolfville the tank let them off at the large central stone building; Gabriel Baines and Annette made their way up the familiar stairs, neither of them speaking; weary and soiled from lying hour after hour out in the open at night they were in no mood to exchange trivialities.
What we need, Baines decided, is not a meeting but six hours’ sleep. He wondered what the purpose of this meeting was; hadn’t the moon already taken its course of action by fighting the Terran invaders the best it knew how? What more could be done?
At the antechamber of the council room Gabriel Baines paused. “I believe I’ll send my simulacrum in first,” he said to Annette. With his special key he unlocked the supply closet in which—by legal right—he kept his Mans-made simulacrum. “You never know,” And it would be a shame to lose one’s life at this point, after just now escaping from Mrs. Rittersdorf.
“You Pares,” Annette said with a trace of forlorn amusement.
The Gabriel Baines simulacrum wheezed into life as he activated its mechanism. “Good day, sir.” It then nodded to Annette. “Miss Golding. I shall go in now, sir.” Politely, it bowed its way past the two of them, started somewhat jerkily but briskly into the council room.
“Hasn’t all this taught you anything?” Annette asked Gabriel Baines as they waited for the simulacrum’s return and report.
“Like what?”
“That there is no perfect defense. There is no protection. Being alive means being exposed; it’s the nature of life to be hazardous—it’s the stuff of living.”
“Well,” Baines said astutely, “you can do the best you can by way of shielding yourself.” It never hurt
to try. That was part of life, too, and every living creature engaged itself perpetually in attempting it.
The Baines simulacrum now returned and made its formal report. “No deadly gas, no electrical discharge of a dangerous degree, no poison in the water pitcher, no sign of peep-holes for laser rifles, no concealed infernal machines. I would offer the suggestion that you can safely enter.” It ceased, then, having completed its task… but then, to Baines’ surprise, it all at once clacked back on again. “However,” it stated, “I would call your attention to the unusual fact that there is another simulacrum within the council room, other than myself. And I don’t like that one bit, not one bit.”
“Who?” Baines demanded, astounded. Only a Pare would be so concerned with his self-defense as to employ an expensive sim. And he was of course the sole Pare delegate.
“The person to address the council,” his Baines-simulacrum replied. “On whom the delegates wait; it is a simulacrum.”
Opening the door Gabriel Baines peeped in, saw the other delegates already assembled, and, standing before them, the companion of Mary Rittersdorf, the CIA man Daniel Mageboom, who, according to the slime mold, had been with her in the laser-beam attack on her husband, on the Mans tankman, himself and Annette Golding. What was Mageboom doing here? A lot of good his Baines-simulacrum had been, after all.
Against his better judgment, flying in the face of every instinct, Gabriel Baines slowly entered the council room, took his seat.
The next thing, he thought, is for Dr. Rittersdorf to gun us all down collectively from some concealed spot.
“Let me explain,” the Mageboom simulacrum said at once, as soon as Baines and Annette Golding were seated. “I am Chuck Rittersdorf, now operating this simulacrum from a nearby spot on Alpha III M2, from the inter-system ship of Bunny Hentman. You may have noticed it; it has a rabbit painted on its side.”
Howard Straw said keenly, “So the fact is you’re no longer an extension of the Terran intelligence service, the CIA.”
“Correct,” the Mageboom simulacrum agreed. “We have pre-empted, at least temporarily, the CIA control of this artifact. Here, as quickly as possible, is the proposal which we feel advances the best hope for Alpha III M2, for all the clans. You must formally, as the supreme governing body on the moon, at once request the Alphanes to come in and annex. They guarantee not to treat you as hospital patients but as legitimate settlers. This annexation can be accomplished through the agency of the Hentman ship, since two high-ranking Alphane officials at this moment are—”
Clans of the Alphane Moon Page 19