THE DECEIVERS

by Alfred Bester

  “Meta nodules,” Tomas said, tapping a glow. “Matter of fact, this is where Meta was discovered two centuries ago. It was only a skinny tunnel then. We knew about the lava ice tunnels of course, twisty arteries fit only for rats and mice, and we weren’t much interested. At best they could only be tourist attractions, and we never want visitors on Triton.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “But a kid did some exploring in a termite passage that only a kid could squirm through and he saw a glow like one of these in the lava ice. He broke through with his wooden clog, reached in and pulled out a Meta nodule. He thought it was a tiny jewel.”

  “So did I when I first saw them. Tiny opals.”

  “Naturally he ran home with his prize, not even wondering why his hand was starting to burn like hot iron. And that’s how Meta was born.”

  “Was the kid rewarded?”

  “How could he be? He died; just slow-burned to death. Anyway, even if we’d wanted to reward him, we wouldn’t have known what for. It took our science types years to find out what that dumb kid’s buried treasure really was.”

  “And so the dumb kid just did a slow burn.”

  “Once Meta starts its energy transformation, there’s no stopping the nova.”

  “Short of amputation.”

  “You got it.”

  “Somehow I feel for the kid.”

  “That’s the hang-up with you inner barbs; you all suffer from schmaltz.”

  “Unlike you chosen Celestials. Why don’t you harvest these last numbers in here?”

  “We need all the strength we can get to support the roof. The weight is tremendous… even with our low gravity… sometimes too much for the support limit. Then we get lava rock flow’s which swell up and block the passages, and a freak hazard we call ‘shrapnel ice.’ Fragments are exploded out of the pillars like bullets. We lose more damn coolies that way.”

  “Ah-so,” Winter murmured and lapsed into another silence, but this one so pregnant that Tomas Young’s hypersensitive antenna alerted. He swung Winter around and tried to search his face in the fiery glow.

  “Wait a moment,” he said slowly. “Am I receiving your vibes, Rogue?”

  “What vibes?”

  “Another smuggling scam, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps. If they can smuggle out a pound in a hand, how much inside a bod? All they’d have to do would be fake a shrapnel accident, rip a man open, pack him and haul the sad victim out with weeping and wailing.”

  “Murder?”

  “You Jinks love killing for fun; why not killing for profit?”

  “And that’s how they get it out in quantity. Of course. The nova glow wouldn’t show for hours. Not a clue to the guards that the corpse is packed with forty, fifty pounds of Meta. That has to be the pros. The one-hand bit? Strictly for loners who want to get rich. But systematic murder? Strictly professional. Who d’you think they pick for their patsies, Rogue?”

  “Anyone they don’t like. A loudmouth. A woman who’s turned a guy down. Anyone who’s too cozy with your fuzz. A faker. A phony. A freeloader…”

  “Did your Mafia organize the scam?”

  “Probably. I don’t really know for sure. I may be the Maori king, but they don’t tell me everything.”

  “All the same I give you points again, Rogue.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I wish we didn’t have to kill you. I could use your synergy.” The Manchu sighed. “Seen enough?”

  “This can’t be the whole mother lode.”

  “God, no! You can’t see in the dark, but it goes on for miles. This is just the old worked-out section we use for display. Our visiting-dignitary show. The real thing is tunnels, stopes, beds and shafts crawling with coolies and cryo gear.” Tomas sighed again. “So come on, baby, let’s get your damn trial and execution over with. I won’t even try to talk you into turning traitor and joining us. I know you’re a born recusant.”

  Young had never relinquished his firm grip on Winter’s elbow. Now he led him back to the portal and code-knocked. It was opened and they came into the blinding light of the ready room just in time to see the last of twenty large packing cases lugged in through another portal by a coolie gang. Each case was stenciled with a crimson crescent and star.

  “Ah! A final treat,” Young smiled. “Just in time to see a payment from our Turkish friends. Ahmet Tröyj is my most favored nation. His shipments are never late, never have to be weighed, and his raw skag and horse are always top quality. Care for a few bongs to anesthetize your upcoming unpleasantness, Rogue baby? We’ll call it a mercy trip.”

  But as the coolies and guards ripped the cases open with happy anticipation, out of each sprang an armed Maori killer, and for a catastrophic minute the ready room echoed with the clash and screams of slaughter. Now it was Winter’s turn to take a firm grip on the stunned Manchu’s elbow.

  “This is the Trojan Horse, Tom baby,” he said pleasantly, steering the dazed man away from the butchering Slice Knives and the spreading blood. “I’d hoped for a rendezvous with our commandos, but wasn’t sure I could zig it. I have to give you points for making it so easy.”

  Chincha, the massive commando chief, rolled up to Winter, blotched and smeared with blood. “We take the mine now?” he asked. “Oparo and the soldiers are waiting for the word from you.”

  “What? Take? Our mine?” Ta-mo gasped. “You’re mad. All of you.” He pulled himself out of shock. “You’d best surrender now, Rogue. I will be merciful.”

  Chincha applied the point of his Slice Knife to Young’s throat unmercifully. “We are a hundred,” he said, “and the match for any of your thousand. We take the mine.”

  “Never!”

  “And then you do business with us on our terms.”

  “Never!”

  The knife pricked a small gout of blood from Ta-mo Yung-kung’s throat but it must be said that the Manchu never flinched. “You do business with us,” Chincha repeated, “or we turn Triton into a baby sun with your Meta. King R-og has so ordered.”

  “Are you insane, Rogue?” Young shouted. “You’ve ordered a doomsday, a Götterdämmerung for all of us?”

  “I ordered a hit,” Winter answered, “and the Maori Maffia is prepared to go all the way. But we won’t have to, Chincha,” he added.

  The commando chief gave Winter a hard, suspicious look.

  “At least not this time,” Winter grinned. “Triton’s top card has very kindly dealt himself into our hand. We’ve got the Manchu Duke of Death, and he outranks the King of the Mines and the Ace of Novas. He wins all pots for us. You get your Meta and I get my girl.”

  “You haven’t got me, you damned fool!”

  “No? Bring him along, chief. We’ll exit via the V.I.P. route through the center of the universe and link up with Oparo.”

  “You’ll never get me off Triton, Rogue.”

  “No? I’ll trouble you for your royal sash, please. It’s the passport out for me and my soldiers.”

  Young snorted. “Idiot! I’m Ta-mo Yung-kung. I’ll be recognized with or without the sash.”

  “Will you, now?”

  “One word from me at the main lock and your hundred will be broken on the wheel. Give up the heist, Rogue. You don’t stand a chance. I promise to be merciful and I’ll keep my word.”

  “Then we take the mine?” Chincha grunted.

  “No, we take the duke.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Triton Standoff

  When you meet your antagonist, do everything in a mild and agreeable manner. Let your courage be as keen, but at the same time as polished as your sword.

  —Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Oh, they got the Duke of Death through the Cathay main lock and off Triton without any trouble to speak of; in fact the Manchu couldn’t speak at all. In the first place he’d been stoned with GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid from Barb’s Garda service kit) which can make a Ganymede mammoth as manageable as putty. And in the second place we substituted h
im for the original Maori contortionist inside the Egyptian mummy wrappings. He could neither be seen nor heard, like a good little Duke of Death.

  But not so angelic when they unwrapped him enjet to Ganymede; GABA wears off after four or five hours and the stifled passions return redoubled. Space is beautifully silent, but Young entertained the jet with the furious battery of his feet against the walls of his cubicle, rather like a percussion solo in a concert.

  “We should of tooken his shoes off,” Winter said.

  “Better cool him before he starts banging his head,” Barb advised. “You’ll want him more or less compos mentis for the bargaining.”

  Winter nodded unhappily. He was faced with the most delicate and potentially explosive pattern he had ever tackled. How do you coax, charm, and/or threaten concessions from a formidable adversary who cannot be cowed by any known physical torture; an impregnable adversary who has commanded life and death for three quarters of a century?

  “Talk about immovable objects,” he muttered. “And I’m no irresistible force.”

  He knew what concessions he wanted from the Manchu; an ironclad Meta deal for his Maori Mafia—he’d promised that for Oparo’s cooperation—and a safe delivery of his Titanian girl—he’d sworn that for himself. The problem was how to synergize these out of a hostage who only burned for a return to the celestial status quo and a frightful punishment for the Inner Barbarians.

  “Use the Twelfth Commandment, baby, whatever the hell that may be,” he murmured, undogged the hatch and stepped into the cubicle.

  “Good morning, good morning, good morning, Mr. Young,” he caroled. “Cheers, cheers, cheers, and welcome, welcome aboard. My name is Winter—Twinky Winter, they call me—your cruise director, and it’s my happy job to make your excursion a happy trip on a happy ship. Now I’ve got you down to judge a beauty contest at lunch—ten lovely lovelies, and ties pay the judge, ha-ha—table tennis championship, a thé dansant, and—”

  Young snarled.

  “Feet hurt, Tom?”

  Young snarled.

  “Not funny, huh?”

  “Nowhere.”

  “Well, you can’t blame me for trying. The crew tells me you’re unhappy.”

  “That’s hardly the word.”

  “Figged off?”

  “That’s closer.”

  “Boiling mad?”

  “At two thousand centigrade.”

  “Swearing eternal horrors for me and mine?”

  “You got it.”

  “What’s your version of horror, Tom? Trample us to death with your footsies?”

  “Too much trouble.”

  “The noose?”

  “Too quick.”

  “The wheel?”

  “Not slow enough.”

  “The Man-Shoot?”

  “Too final.”

  “I’m running out of horrors.”

  “Don’t your Maori barbarians have any ideas of their own?”

  “That’s interesting, Tom. We’ve reverted to what you Celestials would consider simplistic. We don’t believe in kills with frills. Kill-kwik is the name of our game. You saw that down in the mine. Slice-slice and bye-bye.”

  “Then what are you saving me for?”

  “Who said anything about killing you?”

  “Then why the snatch?”

  “Do be sensible, Tom. We couldn’t have zigged off Triton without you.”

  “What? Wrapped like a mummy? I’d laugh if I weren’t drowning in gall.”

  “Yours or ours?”

  “Both.”

  “Ah, but your gall gave us ours. Sympathetic magic, eh? And your sash gave me clout. By the way, here it is, returned with thanks. My teenyzapper washed and ironed it for you. I think you may have inherited her from Ahmet Tröyj, Tom. Congratulations, but watch out for them scallops.”

  “Ha. Ha. Ha.”

  “Your gall laughing?”

  “Look, Rogue, what the hell do you want?”

  “As if you don’t know.”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  “Why, all we want is to be friends, Tom. The Mutual Marching and Chowder Society.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Maori and Jink.”

  “What’s your version of mutual?”

  “That sacred word, revered in song and story… Togetherness. It’s what makes the difference between marriage and divorce.”

  “Come on! Come on!”

  “Straight talk, Tom?”

  “When did you ever talk straight?”

  “Then pragmatic?”

  “Try.”

  “We want a Meta partnership.”

  “What!”

  “I’m dealing for the Maori, and to hell with the Solar. Gouge the rest of the Solar as you please, but not us. We want a Meta partnership with you. We work with you, and you’ll be in command, Tom. We get the Meta we want on an honest cost-plus basis, and your Jinks can keep the books. Straight, pragmatic business.”

  “Never.”

  “Just listen. How much of your market are we? Less than one percent. That’s all you’ll lose. And what do you get in return? Ten times that because we end the smuggling, and how much will that save you? I tell you, Tom, it’s a damn good deal for both of us.”

  “Never.”

  “Jigjeeze, you inscrutables are a race apart. Why never? Twice?”

  “Because you’ve shown me how to end the smuggling.”

  “Baby, baby, the Mafia can always come up with a new, improved scam.”

  “And your damned Mafia will rip us anyway.”

  “How?”

  “We supply Meta at cost-plus and they bootleg it to the Solar at how much profit?”

  “A point. A valid point well taken, but here’s the answer. Instead of the Mafia joining you, you join the Mafia and you can all thief together happily ever after.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “Why not? It’ll be just another ancillary role for you. Odessa Partridge—who sends her profound awe—told me all about your Soho Young caper and the decoy agent ring you were running. So now you can run the Mafia ring and pocket your cut.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe you’re giving yours away?”

  “Giving what away? I’m the Maori double-kill king, and even that’s too much for me. I certainly don’t want any part of the bootleg bit. It can be all yours.”

  “It can be all mine without any help from you.”

  “Not while you’re my guest.”

  “Release is part of the deal?”

  “Natürlich.”

  “What else?”

  “My girl back.”

  “Your girl?”

  “My Titanian. You offered to examine her pregnancy. Remember?”

  “We haven’t got her.”

  “I know that, but I’ve got a syntuition that your agents know where she is and can’t get at her. Fact? Level with me, Tom. There’s a hell of a lot at stake.”

  “What good will it do you?”

  “If I know where she is I’ll be able to get her back. You know where she’s holed up? Fact?”

  “Yes. Fact, and that’s my winning card.”

  “Maybe. Maybe. Business first.”

  “No.”

  “No what? Meta? Release? Girl?”

  “No cooperation with you in any sense, in any ever, and now what card will you play? Death?”

  “Out of the question, Tom. I need you as much as you need me.”

  “Torture?”

  “A possibility.”

  “Did Odessa Partridge also tell you how the Ganymede Zulus snared me when I was under another cover and gave me the jungle grill trying to roast information out of me? They couldn’t.”

  “I believe you.”

  “The torture hasn’t been invented that can break me, and I’ve gone through some savage ones.”

  “You are a challenge.”

  “You’ll get nothing from me except what I want.”

  “What do you
want, Tom? What’s your price?”

  “You have fireplaces in your Dome?”

  “Are you bargaining or chatting?”

  “Do you?”

  “Only the royal palace and the tribal chiefs; Oparo, Chincha, and so forth. Status symbol, that’s all.”

  “With polar bear rugs on the hearth? Whole head and white hide?”

  “Mammoth. Not very attractive.”

  “I’ve got a Delft tile fireplace. I want your head and hide for the hearth rug, and I want your head taken off your living skinned body last of all. Slow!”

  “With me screaming in B-flat minor? I have the funny feeling that you’re not fond of me, Tom.”

  “Or better still—What did that Garda woman shoot me with?”

  “A GABA derivative. Intelligence uses it to make rattlesnakes amiable enough to wait on table.”

  “Better still, I’m going to slug you with this GABA and use your living bod for a hearth rug.”

  “Be practical, Tom. I couldn’t just lie there under your hooves forever. I’d have to be fed and taken to the bathroom now and then.”

  “No way. When you piss and shit, your Maori pigs will lick it clean, and you’ll eat their raw flesh.”

  “Gee! That’s awful, Tom. I’ll be living on capital. Do me one favor, feed me the teenylaundress first; I’ve already tasted her tushy. You’d remember her—the sexy belly-dancer—if you weren’t such a fuckin’ faggot.”

  “Zag it, Rogue!”

  “Oh, it’s no secret, baby. I’ve always known. You’re my favorite closet queen, but alas, alas, cruelty, thy name is faggot. Apologies to W. Shakespeare. D’you think Hamlet was gay? That sick mamma hangup…”

  “By God, I’ll—”

  “And now that computers are half-organic—that tank of yours on Terra, the trick you’re having the love-hate affair with—it sucks, doesn’t it?”