“And you can make them compensate for what they’ve done?”
“Yes, we can,” said Dr. Gordon. “The organization has very effective means of dealing with such criminals and those who benefit unethically by their crimes. We shall establish exactly how much time was diverted from you and by whom during the past years, and to the last particle this time will be drained from the guilty parties involved and restored. Not in a lump sum, so to speak. But you will have established a time credit with the organization, on which you can draw as your requirements or wishes dictate. In other words, if you should like to operate for a while on the basis of a fully usable forty-eight-hour working day, or even a hundred-hour day, you will be able to do it.”
George was silent a moment. “I hardly know how to thank the organization—and you, sir!” he said then. “There must be some way I can repay you.”
Dr. Gordon cleared his throat. “Well, as a matter of fact, it is customary to charge a fee. The fee goes not to me but to the organization. As I say, time is a commodity. We all can use it. Would a fee of say ten per cent of the time you will regain seem fair to you?”
“Eminently fair!” George declared.
He called John Carew next day to tell him of the outcome of the matter.
“Exactly as I thought!” Carew; said with evident satisfaction.
“So you knew all about this time drain stuff, eh?” said George.
“I should,” Carew’s voice told him. “Quite a long while ago I found myself in a pickle not unlike yours. Somebody steered me to the organization, and they adjusted the matter very satisfactorily. In fact, I’ll still put in an occasional fifty hours day, though I found, as I believe you will, that a fully available ordinary workday is quite enough in the long run.”
“I expect you’re right,” George agreed. “For a few months though I intend to really live it up on my time account!”
“Fine,” said John Carew. “In that case, I’ll look forward to getting a new novel from you within . . . oh, let’s say the next two weeks.”
And he got it. END
THE CUSTODIANS
The surgically altered alien looked passably human—his terrible danger was neatly camouflaged. He way not, however, alone in being a deadly, camouflaged warrior . . .
McNulty was a Rilf. He could pass for human if one didn’t see him undressed; but much of the human appearance of the broad, waxy-pale face and big hands was the result of skillful surgery. Since the Rilf surgeons had only a vague notion of what humans considered good looks, the face wasn’t pleasant, but it would do for business purposes. The other Rilf characteristic McNulty was obliged to disguise carefully was his odor—almost as disagreeable to human nostrils as the smell of humans was to him. Twice a day, therefore, he anointed himself with an effective deodorant. The human smells he put up with stoically.
Probably no sort of measures could have made him really attractive to humans. There was nothing too obviously wrong about his motions, but they weren’t quite right either. He had an excellent command of English and spoke four other human languages well enough to make himself understood, but always with an underlying watery gurgle which brought something like a giant bullfrog to mind. To some people McNulty was alarming; to others he was repulsive. Not that he cared very much about such reactions. The humans with whom he dealt professionally were not significantly influenced by them.
To Jake Hiskey, for example, captain and owner of the spaceship Prideful Sue McNulty looked, sounded, and smelled like a million dollars. Which was approximately what he would be worth, if Hiskey managed things carefully for the next few days. Hence the skipper was smiling bemusedly as he poked the door buzzer of McNulty’s cabin.
“Who is it?” the door speaker inquired in McNulty’s sloppy voice.
“Jake. I’ve got news—good news!”
The lock snicked and the door swung open for Hiskey. As he stepped through, he saw another door at the far end of the cabin close abruptly. Beyond it were the living quarters of the other Rilf currently on the Prideful Sue, who went by the name of Barnes and whose olfactory sense was more seriously affronted by humans than McNulty’s. Barnes might be second in command of McNulty’s tribe of Rilf mercenaries, or possibly a female and McNulty’s mate. Assuming that McNulty was male, which was by no means certain. Rilfs gave out very little information about themselves, and almost all that was known of their species was that it had a dilly of a natural weapon and a strong interest in acquiring human currency with which to purchase advanced products of human technology. Hence the weapon was hired out on a temporary basis to human groups who knew about it and could afford it.
“You will excuse Barnes,” McNulty said, looking over at Hiskey from a table where he sat before a tapeviewer. “He is indisposed.”
“Of course,” said Hiskey. He added curiously, “What are you studying up on now?” McNulty and Barnes never missed an opportunity to gather information pertinent to their profession.
“Recent Earthplanet history,” replied McNulty. “The past three years. I must say the overall situation looks most favorable!”
Hiskey grinned. “It sure does! For us . . .”
McNulty shut off the tapeviewer. “During the past two ship days,” he remarked, “I have recorded news reports of forty-two of these so-called miniwars on the planet. Several others evidently are impending. Is that normal?”
“Actually it sounds like a fairly quiet period,” Hiskey said. “But we might liven it up!” He pulled out a chair, sat down. “Of course I haven’t been near Earthsystem for around eight years, and I haven’t paid too much attention to what’s been going on here. But on the planet it’s obviously the same old stuff. It’s been almost a century since the world government fizzled out; and the city states, the rural territories, the sea cities, the domes, the subterranes and what-not have been batting each other around ever since. They’ll go on doing it for quite a while. Don’t worry about that.”
“I am not worrying,” McNulty said. “The employment possibilities here appear almost unlimited, as you assured us they would be. What is this good news of which you spoke, lake? Have your Earth contacts found a method of getting us down on the planet without further delay?”
“No,” said Hiskey. “It will be at least five days before they have everything arranged. They’re playing this very quietly. We don’t want to alert anybody before you and your boys are set up and ready to go into action.”
McNulty nodded. “I understand.”
“Now here’s what’s happened,” Hiskey went on. “This station we’ve stopped at is a branch of Space U. The navigator shuttled over to it half an hour ago to find out where he can get in touch with his sister. She’s connected with Space U—a student, I suppose—and, of course, he hasn’t seen her for the past eight years.”
“She is what is known as a graduate student,” said McNulty, who disliked vagueness. “Her name is Elisabeth and she is three Earth years younger than Gage. I heard him discuss the matter with you yesterday, and he mentioned those things specifically.”
“I guess he did, at that,” said Hiskey. “Anyway, he was told on the Space U station that she’s a guest on a private asteroid at present, and he contacted her there by transmitter. The asteroid people offered to pick him up so he could spend a few days with his sister as their guest. Gage called me and I told him to say we’d deliver him to the asteroid’s lock in the Prideful Sue, since we’ve got time to kill before we can get scheduled through the System check stations anyway. So that’s been arranged. And when we get there, I’ll see to it that I’m invited down to the asteroid with Gage.”
“That is the good news?” McNulty asked blankly.
Hiskey grinned. “There’s a little more to it than that. Did your tapes tell you anything about Earthsystem’s asteroid estates?”
“Yes. They were mentioned briefly twice,” McNulty said. “I gathered their inhabitants retain only tenuous connections with the planetary culture and do not engage in belliger
ent projects. I concluded that they were of no interest to us.”
“Well, start getting interested,” Hiskey told him. “Each of those asteroids is a little world to itself. They’re completely independent of both Earthplanet and Earthsystem. They got an arrangement with Earthsystem which guarantees their independent status as long as they meet certain conditions. From what Gage’s sister told him, the asteroid she’s on is a kind of deluxe spacegoing ranch. It belongs to a Professor Alston . . . a handful of people, some fancy livestock, plenty of supplies.”
“And what business could we have with such people?” inquired McNulty.
“I think they’ll be useful. I told you the one thing that might bug our plans right now is to have the System Police get too curious about the Prideful Sue while we’re hanging around here for the next five or six days.”
“So you did,” said McNulty. “And I now have a question about that. According to these tapes, Earthsystem has no jurisdiction over Earthplanet. Why then should the System Police attempt to control or investigate what Earth imports?”
Hiskey shrugged. “For my money they’re busybodies. The SP got kicked off Earth for good something like forty years ago, but it still acts like it’s responsible for what happens there. And it’s got muscle enough to control the space of the system. Earth doesn’t like that but can’t do much about it. If the System Police got an idea of why we’re bringing in a shipload of Rilfs to Earth, they’d never let us go down. As long as we do nothing to make them suspicious, they probably won’t bother us—but we can’t really count on it. However, if we move the Prideful Sue down beneath the force fields around Professor Alston’s asteroid, she’ll be out of sight and out of the SP’s jurisdiction. By Earthsystem’s own ruling, they can’t bother us even if they have reason to think we’re there.”
“You believe Professor Alston will permit you to land the ship?”
“No, I doubt he’d extend his hospitality that far. But it’ll be difficult for him to avoid inviting me down for an hour or so, as Harold Gage’s captain. When I mention we have a very interesting alien on board—first representative of his kind to reach Earthsystem, who has an intellectual curiosity about the human private asteroids—he’ll invite you down. Half the crew can crowd into the skiff with you then and stay hidden in it till we want them.”
McNulty gurgled interestedly. “You mentioned a handful of people—”
“From all I’ve heard, there’d be at most fifty even on a really big estate. Probably no more than half that. They don’t like to be crowded on the asteroids—one reason most of them got off Earth to start with was that they wanted privacy and one place they could still buy it, if they had money enough, was in space.”
“There should be then,” said McNulty, “a most efficient and compact system of controls.”
“You get the idea, McNulty. Those asteroids are set up like ships. That’s what they’ve been turned into—big ships. Mostly they coast on solar orbit, but they can maneuver to some extent on their own.”
“Then, as on a ship,” McNulty continued, “the main controls will be concentrated for maximum efficiency within a limited area. It should take us at most an hour or two to gain a practical understanding of their use and operation.”
“Might take you less than that,” said Hiskey. Perhaps because of a congenital deficiency in inventive imagination, Rilf technology was at a primitive level as compared with the human one. But there was nothing wrong with their ability to learn, and McNulty, like most of them, was intensely interested in human gadgetry and very quick to grasp its function and principles. There wasn’t much about the Prideful Sue’s working innards he didn’t know by now. “We needn’t make any final decisions before you and I have checked the situation,” Hiskey pointed out. “But it should be a cinch. We take over the control section, block the communication system, and we have the asteroid.”
“That part of it may well be easy,” McNulty agreed. “However, I would expect serious problems to follow.”
“What kind of problems?”
“These asteroid people obviously do not isolate themselves completely from Earthsystem. They converse by transmitter. They receive guests. If these activities suddenly stop and no response is obtained from the asteroid, the Systems Police certainly should grow suspicious. With or without jurisdiction, they will investigate.”
Hiskey shook his head. “No, they won’t, McNulty. That’s what makes this easy for us.”
“Please explain,” said McNulty.
“A private asteroid—any private asteroid—is expected to go out of communication from time to time. They’re one of Solar U’s science projects. They seal their force field locks, shut off their transmitters; and when they open up again is entirely up to them. I’ve heard some have stayed incommunicado for up to ten years, and the minimum shutoff period’s supposed to be not less than one month out of every year. What they’re out to prove I don’t know. But nobody’s going to be upset if they discover suddenly that they’re not able to get through to Professor Alston and his asteroid. They’ll just settle back to wait until he’s open to contact again.”
McNulty reflected for a considerable time. “That does indeed sound like a favorable situation,” he stated abruptly then. “Excuse us, Jake.” He went on, without shifting his eyes from Hiskey’s face, in the Rilf speech which sounded more like heavy sloshings of water than anything else. When he paused, Barnes’s voice responded in kind from a wall speaker. The exchange continued for a minute or two. Then McNulty nodded ponderously at Hiskey.
“Barnes agrees that your plan is an excellent one, Jake. The elimination of the humans now in possession of the asteroid should present no great difficulty.”
Hiskey looked startled. “I hadn’t planned on killing them unless they try to give us a fight.”
“Oh, but killing them is quite necessary,” McNulty said.
“Why? We’ll need the place only a few days.”
“Jake, consider! On the ship which has trailed yours to Earthsystem and is now stationed outside it beyond the patrol range of the System Police are fifty-five Rilfs and their equipment—our army. Four of them have been humanized in appearance as Barnes and I are. The ethers are obviously not human. The System Police must not be permitted to encounter them.”
“Of course not,” Hiskey agreed. “But if we’re prepared to whisk them down to Earth as soon as they move into the system, the SP isn’t going to have time to encounter them.”
“I understand,” McNulty said. “However, your plan gives us the opportunity to cover ourselves against any deceit or treachery which might be considered by our Earth employers. With perhaps a third of our army left waiting in space, prepared to act, nobody will attempt to renege on contracted payments. And where could a better concealed base be found for our reserve and their ship than such an asteroid, only a few hours from Earth? And we can’t afford to have prisoners on that base who would have to be constantly and closely guarded to make sure they cause no trouble. There is too much at stake.”
Hiskey said slowly, “Yeah. I guess I see your point.”
“Nor,” continued McNulty, “can we destroy some and spare others. A single surviving witness might become most inconvenient eventually. Therefore, we must also, kill Gage’s sister. Since Gage will make a great deal of money as a participant in our operation, he may not object too strongly to that.”
Hiskey stared at him for a moment.
“Some things you just don’t get, McNulty,” he remarked. “Harold Gage is going to object like hell to having his sister killed!”
“He will? Well, I must accept your opinion on the point,” said McNulty. “It follows then—”
“I know. We’d have had to get rid of Gage anyway. He wouldn’t go along with taking over the asteroid even if his sister weren’t there and it wasn’t a killing job. We were friends once, but he’s been giving me a lot of trouble like that. Now we’re in Earthsystem, we don’t need a navigator. He goes with the asteroid
people.”
“That will not cause trouble among your men?”
Hiskey shook his head. “He hasn’t had a friend on board for the past two years. We needed him, that’s all. If he’s eliminated, everybody gets that much better a split. There’ll be no trouble.”
“I’d gained the impression,” McNulty observed, “that he was a rather dangerous person.”
“He’s a bad boy to go up against with a gun,” Hiskey said. “But he won’t be wearing guns on a friendly visit to a private asteroid, will he? No, you needn’t worry about Gage.”
McNulty said he was glad to hear it. He added, “There is, incidentally, an additional advantage to disposing of the asteroid humans. Before I demonstrate the toziens to our prospective employers, they should be exercised. At present, after their long idleness on shipboard, they have become sluggish.”
Hiskey grimaced. “I thought those things were always ready to go.”
“No. Permit me.” McNulty reached into the front of his coat, paused with his hand just out of sight, made an abrupt shrugging motion. For an instant there was a glassy glittering in the opening of the coat. Then it was gone, and something moved with a hard droning sound along the walls of the cabin behind Hiskey. He sat very still, not breathing, feeling blood drain slowly from his face.
“Do not be disturbed, Jake,” said McNulty. “The drug I give you and your crew makes you as immune as a Rilf to the toziens’ killing reaction.” He lifted his hand. “Ah, now! It becomes conditioned. It adjusts! We no longer hear it.”
The drone was thinning to a whisper; and as McNulty stopped speaking, there was a sudden complete silence. But the unseen thing still moved about the cabin. Hiskey felt abrupt brief stirrings of air to right and left of his face, as if the tozien were inspecting him; and in spite of McNulty’s assurance he sat frozen and rigid.
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 199