“No,” Brooke said reluctantly. “He spotted that while we were talking and took it.”
“So it was Last Resort, eh?”
“Yes.”
Tracy grimaced. “Suspected it, by the way he looks.” She shook her head. “Well, Brooke—curare. You know the rules. You may have quite a bit of explaining to do.”
“I can explain it.”
“Yes? Start with me!” Tracy invited. “A sort of rehearsal. Let’s see how it will stand up.”
“You know who that is? Was, I guess.”
Tracy looked at Jeff again. “No. I should?”
“Jeff Clary.”
Tracy blinked. “Clary? The escaped convict they’re hunting for? You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” Brooke said. “They’ve been broadcasting his picture and I recognized him as soon as he turned up in the house. Anyway, he admitted it. He’s killed three people in the past twenty-four hours, and he had plans for you and me after you’d flown him across the border.”
“Now, that doesn’t start the explanation off too badly,” Tracy conceded. “Still—”
Brooke said, “He had to go anyway.”
“Probably. But not at your discretion. If you had to let him take your sleepy-bye kit, what about mine? You know where I keep it. The bag’s upstairs in my closet at present.”
“I thought of that,” Brooke said, “but I didn’t think I’d have time to hunt around for the bag. He had me gagged and tied to a chair, and he stayed right there in the room with me until you were almost driving in. Last Resort was quicker. I grabbed it.”
“Um!” Tracy tapped her nose tip reflectively. “Well, that really should do it! They can’t give you too much of an argument.” She smiled. “So the big bad convict ties you to a chair? Angelique the Eleven-Year-Old Escape Artist. Remember the howl you raised when they sent you off to the circus that summer?” She looked at the gun in her hand. “Might as well put this away, and we’ll start tidying up.”
“Hadn’t you better use the gun first?” Brooke said.
“Huh?” Tracy looked thoughtful. “Yes!” she said then. “Good thinking, Brooke! They should prefer to let Clary be found if the coroner doesn’t have reason to poke around too closely. We’ll take away the reason.”
She pointed the gun at a spot between Jeff’s eyebrows.
There had been assorted activities in the house in the latter part of the afternoon and the early part of the evening, but around ten o’clock things were quiet again. The rain, after holding off to the south most of the day, had moved in finally, and there was a gentle steady pattering against the closed windows in Tracy’s room. For the past half hour, Brooke and Tracy had been playing double slap solitaire at a small table. Neither was displaying her usual fierce concentration on the game.
Tracy lifted her head suddenly, glanced at Brooke. “I think the reporting committee’s coming!”
Brooke listened. Footsteps were audible in the passage. “Well, it’s a relief!” she muttered. “They’ve been discussing it long enough.”
She put down her card pack and went to the door.
“Here we are, George!” she called. “Tracy’s room.”
She came back and looked on as the tuxedoed committee filed in. George Cameron, president of Renfrew College and scholarly authority on the Punic Wars, entered first; then Ricardo Achtel, who handled Baldwin Gems, Imports and Exports, among other things. Finally came Jason Cameron, best known in some circles as big-game hunter and mountaineer. Three big guns of the family. All gave her reassuring smiles, which struck Brooke as a bad sign. She drew a deep breath.
“What’s the verdict?” she asked.
“Let’s not look on it as a verdict, Brooke,” said George Cameron. “Sit down; we’ll have to talk about it.” He glanced around, noted the absence of free chairs. “Mind if we use your bed, Tracy?”
“Not at all,” Tracy told him.
George and Jason sat down on the bed. Ricardo Achtel leaned against the wall, hands shoved into his trousers pockets. “There was a special news report some ten minutes ago,” George remarked. “I don’t believe you caught it?”
Brooke shook her head.
George said, “They’ve found the unfortunate Rainbow couple in their car. Each had been shot from behind almost at contact range—a deliberate execution. Clary afterward ran the damaged vehicle off the road, as he told you. A highway patrol happened to notice smashed bushes, investigated and discovered the wreck and the bodies in a ravine.”
“How far from where Clary was found?” Tracy asked.
“Less than four miles. We worked out his probable backtrail closely enough,” George said. “And that should wind it up. The theory that Clary tried to kidnap another motorist, who was lucky or alert enough to shoot first, and may have sufficient reason for not wanting to identify himself, is regarded as substantiated. Either of the two bullets found in Clary’s body should have caused almost instant death. Police will try to trace the gun. The usual thing.” There was a short pause. “All right, and now what about me?” Brooke asked. “I’ve flunked?”
“Not at all,” George said. “On the whole, you did very well. You were dealing with a killer and stalled him off until you could create an opportunity to end the threat to yourself and Tracy. Naturally, we approve.”
“Naturally,” Tracy agreed dryly. “However,” said Jason Cameron, “there was a rather serious breach of secrecy.”
“I’ve tried to explain that,” Brooke told him. “I had to do something to keep Clary working to outfigure me. I couldn’t think of a good enough set of lies on the spot. He didn’t seem exactly stupid. So I told him the truth, or mostly the truth, which made it easy.”
George scratched his jaw. “Yes, but there you are, Brooke! In doing it, you took a chance. Mind you, no one’s blaming you. If there’s any fault, it’s in those responsible for your progress—which certainly must include myself. But as far as you knew, there was a possibility, however slight, that the police would trace Clary to the house and take him alive. We could have handled the resulting problem, but some harm might have been done. Further, in being frank with Clary, you made killing him almost a necessity—thus reducing your options, which is never desirable.”
Jason nodded. “There’s a definite streak of candor in you, Brooke. It’s been noticed. Your immediate inclination is to tell the truth.”
“Not,” observed Ricardo Achtel, “that there’s anything essentially wrong with that.”
“No, of course not,” George agreed: “However, one can also argue in favor of facile dissimulation. Those who don’t seem born with the ability—I had a good deal of early difficulty in the area myself—must acquire it by practice. It’s felt you fall short on that point, Brooke.”
“In other words,” Brooke said, “I didn’t flunk out, but I didn’t get upgraded tonight either?”
“Not formally,” George told her. “We believe you need more time. The matter will be brought up again at your next birthday.”
“Seven months,” said Brooke. She looked discouraged.
“They’ll pass quickly enough for you,” George assured her.
“In a sense, you see,” Jason remarked, “circumstances did upgrade you today by presenting you with a difficult and serious problem, which you solved satisfactorily though in a less than optimum manner. It seems mainly a question of letting your experience catch up.”
George nodded. “Exactly! So you’ll continue your formal education at Renfrew, but you’ll also start going to drama school.”
“Drama school?” Brooke said, surprised.
“Ours. The training you receive there won’t precisely parallel that given other students, but you should find it interesting. Tracy went through the process a few years ago.”
Brooke looked over at Tracy.
“Uh-huh, so I did,” Tracy said slowly. She shook her head. “Poor Brooke!”
1974
ONE STEP AHEAD
If you can’t beat
them and you wont join them then what?
PROGRAMMED CORPS
LEAVING RIDZIN!
the newscast machines roared that morning. Many added grimly: SKANDER WAR IMMINENT!
To well-informed citizens of Ridzin it came as no surprise. For fifteen years, the Programmed Corps, the mightiest war-machine ever known, had been developing on their world, lending Ridzin a significance unique in the Terrestrial League. Second-rate in most respects, Ridzin had been a logical base for the formation of the Corps. No one doubted that the League Central Government on Great Xal would have preferred the Corps to be assembled under its. immediate supervision. But the jealousy of other powerful League worlds made it impossible—the Corps simply would not have come into being as a joint effort of the League if Great Xal had insisted on the point. On the other hand, the central government wouldn’t have permitted its establishment on worlds like Hannaret or Lorcia, for example, worlds not too inferior to Great Xal in military strength and perennially on the verge of open rebellion. The Programmed Corps—its awesome manpower and appalling technical equipment drawn from all fourteen League worlds—must bring about, it was agreed by those in the know, in one direction or another a decisive shift in the balance of power in the League.
As it would also bring about a decisive shift in the balance of power between the Terrestrial League and that despised, remote, alien race called the Skanders. That, as all League citizens understood—having been told it regularly during the past fifteen years—was the basic and vital reason for the Programmed Corps’ existence. And because its personnel were conditioned to absolute unquestioning obedience to whomever knew the commands by which to direct them, the Corps could be brought into being only on a world like Ridzin, a world which by no stretch of the imagination could be regarded as a menace to anyone else.
And now the Programmed Corps—completed only after fifteen years of sustained effort, armed, trained, single-minded, irresistable—was shipping out!
“THE FELLOW,” visiting Inspector General Mark Treffry of Great Xal remarked in a tone of absorbed interest as he peered through a window into the compound several stories below “is magnificent!”
Dexter Monte, Treffry’s Technical Advisor, standing a prudent dozen steps farther back in the room, cleared his throat.
“You really,” the Inspector General went on, “should come over here and watch him! What incredible reaction speed!”
“I prefer,” Dexter Monte said firmly, “not to expose myself at a window while a Programmed assassin is in the area. If I might suggest—”
Treffry chuckled.
“Don’t you trust your own precautions?” he inquired. “The shields, the fields, the what-not? They’ve functioned perfectly so far.”
“So far!” Monte repeated meaningfully.
Treffry grunted.
“Thinking of poor Ulbrand, I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, well,” said Treffry. “Ulbrand was no doubt a rather better than average Technical Advisor. But let’s face it, Monte . . . he simply was not in your class! I’m not surprised they got him—whoever it is doesn’t want us on Ridzin.” He paused, added smugly, “And we have pretty fair idea of who that is, don’t we?”
“Yes,” Monte said.
“Now as for you,” Treffry went on, “I have complete confidence in your devices. That fellow down there is in a trap. But he’s certainly handling himself well while we close it! On the average how many do we lose in these attacks?”
“Seventeen-point-two men.”
“Well, our present would-be assassin seems to have accounted for at least two dozen by now! And—good heavens!” Treffry went silent a moment, staring down through the window.
“What’s going on?” Dexter Monte inquired in an uneasy tone.
“I’m sure I don’t know!” Treffry told him. “There were some odd glitters of extremely bright light. Almost like the scintillation of a diamond as you turn it.”
“Ah!” Monte said. “The assassin was near it?”
“He was near it! He’s nowhere now! What was it?”
Joining Treffry at the window, Monte said in great relief, “An adaptation of the Welban Vortex. I wasn’t sure it would work on a Programmed mind.”
“It worked!” Treffry assured him. He gave the Advisor a sidelong glance full of admiration. “This is the sixteenth or seventeenth such attack we’ve undergone, isn’t it?”
“The twenty-first,” Monte said. “And always by Programmed Soldiery! They’re unbelievable! I’ll trust your traps while only one of them is involved. But when the entire Programmed Corps goes into action—!” The Inspector General shook his head.
“Yes,” Dexter Monte said slowly. “A fearful thought.”
“Clearly, somebody else—somebody not at all authorized—knows at least a few of the key commands to their minds,” Treffry said. “Well, we’ll be rid of these problems soon enough. When is the first carrier scheduled to lift?”
Dexter Monte glanced at his watch. “In sixteen hours, thirty-two minutes and ten seconds.”
He looked at Treffry, added, “If you want to hear Governor Vinocur’s official announcement of the Programmed Corps’ departure from the Planet of Ridzin—he’s about to go on the air.”
“By all means,” said Treffry. “I think I’ll really enjoy hearing our good and loyal friend Vinocur explain the situation to the public!” Planetary Governor Frank Vinocur was an old-time politician; while his speech, to which most of the adult population of Ridzin was tuned that morning, was a review of facts with which his listeners had been familiar for over a dozen years, he made them sound like news. There were friction points between the Terrestrial League and the alien Skanders. Though widely separated in space, they had overlapping spheres of influence—overlapping only slightly so far; but the situation was bound to become more serious as time went on. Unlike other spacefaring aliens men had encountered, the Skanders did not prudently withdraw when confronted by the mighty race of Terra—had, in fact, been known on occasion to attack first. They were savage and treacherous enemies, and showed, in addition, repulsively amebic physical characteristics.
Space, Governor Vinocur declared, was not large enough for the Terrestrial League and such as the Skanders! An eventual showdown with the creatures was inevitable . . . and, as all knew, it was for this showdown that the Programmed Corps had been created. Ridzin could proudly say in this hour of parting that it had earned its place in history as the home of the Corps. By the wise planning of the Central Government on Great Xal, the time to strike at the Skander vermin—strike first, strike hard!—had arrived. The Programmed Corps was prepared . . . and victory was certain!
The speech went over well—since Ridzin clearly would be remote from the battle zones. Throughout the day patriotic anti-Skander fervors grew in the population, reaching a high pitch when Governor Vinocur’s press attaches let it become known that at the official leave-taking banquet that evening the Governor would be publicly appointed a Programmed Corps General by the Inspector General from Great Xal, Mark Treffry, who had been on Ridzin for the past year to arrange for the Corps’ transfer. And when the last of the automatic transspace carriers lifted from the planet during the night hours, General Frank Vinocur would leave with it in the company of the Inspector General, to represent Ridzin and its people at the front in this stirring period of history.
That afternoon cheering crowds lined the routes along which the Programmed Corps convoys rolled toward the planet’s three Transspace Stations. They surrounded the stations themselves where giant carriers, all bearing the insignia of Great Xal, lay in dense rows like vast steel sausages. Into them marched the Programmed Corps. Eighteen thousand men with full equipment were assigned to each carrier; the men would lie in rigid, frozen sleep during the long spaceflight to Great Xal. One by one, the carriers were loaded and closed their locks . . .
Some of Ridzin’s citizens, noting that only the central government appeared to be involved in the
operation, speculated that they might be witnessing a dramatic new turn in the Terrestrial League’s internal politics. But no public mention was made of such possibilities and by the time the official banquet began the planet was in a festive mood—almost as if the war against the Skanders were already won. Governor Vinocur was duly appointed a General of the Programmed Corps while Ridzin followed the event on their tri-di screens; laudatory speeches were exchanged between him and the Inspector General; toasts and countertoasts were offered . . . Dexter Monte, the Inspector General’s Technical Advisor, created a minor diplomatic flurry when, in full view of the entire planet, he refused to empty his glass in Ridzin’s honor, explaining that he was not a drinking man, that alcohol had deleterious effects on his metabolism. However, he was quickly coaxed into it by Mark Treffry and Governor Vinocur, and thereafter drank dutifully, if sourly, to every toast proposed.
THEN the official rituals were over, except for the final scene on the steel loading dock within the maw of the last giant carrier left on the planet, where Governor Vinocur bade Ridzin farewell. Inspector General Treffry stood smiling at his side, Dexter Monte standing a few feet behind the two, belching every few seconds and generally showing the effects of having been forced into participating in the toasts. Vinocur spoke briefly into the tri-di cameras, concluded with a formal salute; then camera crews withdrew, glancing with silent awe at the huge bulkheads to either side of the dock behind which eighteen thousand men lay frozen in sleep. As the last of them left the carrier the loading locks slid shut with a heavy steel boom. The three men standing on the dock were alone. There was a dim humming in the air as the ship computers readied the engines for lift-off and the long flight during which there would be no waking human being to guide them. Treffry looked at his watch.
“Still half an hour,” he said. “But we might as well get to our tanks at once. Feeling any better, Monte?”
“No,” Dexter Monte muttered. “Worse! I’ll be more than happy to settle into that tank. I’m beginning to have some difficulty holding myself together, I can tell you!”
Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 258