Balant: A Beginning

by Sam Smith

  That, though, is the successful outcome. Many Emissaries are greeted with hostility and, by a people used to killing, their lives are quickly dispatched. So, to hear a thug such as Boss, who promoted and profited from war on that planet, likening himself to an Emissary galled me. And for him to call himself a pioneer was to make a travesty of such a romantic figure. Yet, for survival’s sake, I had to disguise my disgust. Instead I asked,

  “What use is all your wealth, if you can never return to civilisation?"

  "Wrong again,” Boss smirked at me. "It is exactly that wealth that will enable me to return to civilisation. For a price I will acquire a new identity. In a well-appointed apartment, opulent in its every trapping, I will live a prosperous and respectable existence. I will be a man so wealthy that I will be above suspicion. The universe, young Pandy, is not the simple place you'd like to believe."

  But I was learning, I was learning; and again I was left to ponder on degrees of guilt, buyer and bought.

  That that man, on the edge of civilisation, could kill, could use people as slaves, could foster war, depends on there being criminals as culpable within our civilisation. So began my lifetime's abhorrence of all crime, no matter how apparently petty that crime. In the smallest crime is the germ of corruption; because no crime is committed in isolation, all require an accomplice, an accessory, whether active or passive. So noble virtues, such as loyalty to a friend, will be so tainted by not betraying our friend’s crime to the police. And crime knows no limits. To protect that friend we will, of necessity, have to lie, to deceive, to become criminals ourselves. So does all crime escalate, end always and inexorably in murder.

  Meanwhile, though my chin I kept cleanshaven, my scalp grew dark with bristles; and the closer we came to Carthi the uneasier did Zapper become. Finally he voiced his misgivings about the whole enterprise. Not, though, from a moral standpoint:

  "Boss's being too clever for his good.”

  On their last trip, when they had been leaving the military hemisphere, Zapper had been trying to unjam the gun. In glancing back to the planet he was certain that he had espied a rocket being launched. Boss had told him that he must have imagined it: he had given the Carthians no information whereby they could have manufactured a rocket. Zapper had suggested that they might have developed it independently of Boss's contributions.

  "You know how these things go by leaps and bounds,” Zapper said to me. “Boss might not have given them the direct idea. But indirectly... who knows where they might have got?" Boss had dismissed the idea, scornful of the Carthian's ability to develop anything by themselves.

  "But they got as far as steam engines,” Zapper said, “and electricity, without any help from Boss. And what if someone else is playing the same game as Boss? Except that they've decided to help only the military?"

  Zapper's survival instincts were such that, listening to him repeatedly voicing his worries, I came to share his unease. But first we were to visit the monarchist’s hemisphere.

  I was in the command room when Carthi first came in sight. A sapphire globe, like all inhabitable planets, it had ice caps at its poles. Unlike Balant, this planet had one large sea which snaked in and around the land masses, some of which also had inland seas. I shall not bother you with a description of how the political divisions cut across the geography, suffice to say that when night came we landed well inside the western hemisphere.

  I had been told that the entire crew would accompany Boss to his meeting with the King's representatives. This was in accordance with a custom that Boss had established to prove himself trustworthy in both hemispheres — that no-one being aboard the ship it could pose no threat to the inhabitants. So, knowing that no-one that day was to be killed, when morning came it was with some innocent interest that I followed Zapper down the ramp to join the rest of the crew.

  Every step I took with those people, however, seemed to lead me deeper into depravity.

  We had landed on a large lawn, its green expanse spotted with isolated elegant trees sitting aslant their own shadows. About four hundred meters before us was a large ornate building — the only habitation within sight. (The monarchists’ fear of espionage, and Boss’s own devious intrigues, called for a secluded meeting place.)

  On the steps of the building, in a variety of gaudy costumes, the monarchists awaited us. All of the crew, including myself, were armed.

  So taken was I by my novel surroundings that I was the last to turn to see Boss coming down the ramp.

  What I saw first was that he had exchanged his everyday tunic for an enveloping iridescent garment. That I regarded cynically: the Boss’s vulgar taste in dress matched his choice of music, was on a par with his grandiose notions of himself. What shocked me, however, were the three valets who followed him down the ramp. Each valet wore a gun. To arm robots... to see robots carrying weapons... it was contrary to every tenet of space. If anything — though how does one measure degrees of outrage? — I was more horrified at the sight of them than I had been by the shuffling slaves. However, again, there was nothing to be done about it — save at the cost of my own life.

  Forming up into a loose column with the other crewmen, and the three armed valets, we followed Boss, a sinister clown in his glittering dress, across the lawns to the ornate building.

  Boss had a voice box on his chest. When we were about fifty paces from the steps Boss boomed out a greeting.

  Apart from their gaudy clothes the monarchists all had painted faces and foppish hairstyles. Men and women they were, I judged, taller than the Balantians, but shorter than the crew.

  As we had been instructed, the crew spread out in a line behind Boss; and we all of us, even the three valets, bowed as the monarchists, with many a flourish, bowed to us. The formalities dispensed with we then followed the monarchists into the building.

  We found ourselves in a large room with tall windows and ornamented mirrors. Tables were set for a meal. Save for the servants, all of the monarchists sat. While, of us, only Boss sat down at table; the crew and the valets forming a line at one end of the room.

  The meeting, being conducted in a Carthian tongue, was uninteresting. From what I observed, the conversation appeared to be, first, about the price the monarchists were prepared to pay for whatever new armament design Boss was this time selling them. The price agreed, Boss then removed some printout from within his shimmering robe, showed them the plans of their latest weapon.

  The talk that followed, various people being called over to examine the plans, consisted entirely of Boss explaining to them the manufacture of the armaments and answering their queries. Their curiosity satisfied the talk then apparently turned to other topics. At one point Boss laughed, and, switching off his voice box, addressed me.

  “You'll like this Pi. I asked what qualifications one of their technicians had. I was told he was the King’s cousin. I asked if that was all. He said," Boss gestured to a man across the table from him, “nepotism begins at home.” Good eh?" I dutifully smiled; and Boss switched his voice box back on. From the monarchists' glances over my person I assumed that Boss was telling them of me, and no doubt boasting.

  Before we left the meal was served; and, with it, came another horror. I had thought that nothing more could surprise me, could shock me now. Yet, for all the crimes Boss had committed, for all the men he had reputedly killed, for all the crimes he had engineered, what he did next was the one calumny which always springs immediately to my mind whenever I think of him.

  The meal that was placed with such ceremony on the tables consisted mostly of cooked animals. When the Carthians carved into and tore up the flesh of those animals and crammed it into their mouths, I did not flinch. Not even when Zapper nudged me and nodded to two Carthians sucking the eyes out of a creature — the eyes apparently being regarded as a great delicacy and a privilege of rank. And to this day I don't know why I should have expected Boss to decline the meat; but I did expect that of him. Instead be casually reached across the table,
took a piece of pink flesh and stuffed it into his mouth. With that one act he betrayed his birthright: he knew better.

  It was when I beheld the juices of that creature dribbling down his chin, that I vowed to kill Boss.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Plots and counter-plots, more horrors, a battle and escape.

  During the meal the Carthian technicians had gone to another room to study Boss’s plans. On the remains of the food being removed they returned to quiz Boss over details. His responses had the Carthians nodding and smiling at one another with comprehension. The price having been confirmed with their leader, we then all trooped out of the building.

  On the steps outside three Carthian servants awaited us. Two of the servants had trolleys loaded with clothwrapped ingots like those I had seen being loaded into the tube. On the third trolley was a cage of fat flightless birds, apparently a gift. The leave-taking was made with many smiles and courtesies; and then began our walk over the lawns back to the ship. It was on that long walk that I decided how and when I would escape.

  Zapper had let slip that, after we had visited the military hemisphere, we were bound for another mining planet.

  "More slaves?" I had asked him.

  "Straight trade,” Zapper had said. "He pays the inhabitants to mine it." Straight trade it may have been, it was still nevertheless illegal. Once we had loaded the ore we were to proceed to a rendezvous point in space and await a freighter. It was there that I would escape.

  The ship's stores contained many spacesuits. Just before the ore was to be transferred to the freighter I would appropriate a spacesuit and seal myself into the ship's hold with the ore. I had learnt from Zapper, satisfying my legitimate technician's curiosity, how the ore was to be transferred. A pipe would be laid from hold to hold through the tube. The freighter's hold would then be opened to space, a vacuum created, and when sealed again the pipe would be opened and the ore subsequently sucked from the ship's hold to the freighter's. I too, in my purloined spacesuit, would be sucked along that pipe.

  Once in the freighter's hold I would remain there until I deemed it safe, then creep out through the inspection door and find somewhere aboard the freighter to hide. If the Yilan was anything to go by, the freighter would own many out of the way nooks and corners. Then, when the freighter put into a supply station, I would secretly disembark, give myself up to the police and tell them all that I knew.

  On reaching the ship Boss had the three valets carry the ingots and caged birds up the ramp. Relieved of their burdens the Carthian servants scurried away. The crew traipsed after Boss up the ramp. The valets were awaiting us at the top. Boss looked down on the birds crouching in their cage.

  “You can have them," he told the crew, indicating the long room where I had first been incarcerated. Two of the crew took the caged birds from the valet. Boss then proceeded with the valets up to the command room. Zapper, with a sideways jerk of tie head, intimated that I should follow him.

  We went to the canteen. We were alone there.

  “What are they going to do with the birds?" I asked Zapper.

  "Target practise,” Zapper said, "They like shooting things that can't shoot back.”

  I felt sick, added it to my list of atrocities to tell to the police. Zapper's radio bleeped.

  “Boss wants you.”

  By the time I reached the command room we had risen above the clouds. Boss told me to wait. When we left the atmosphere I staggered as the ship switched gravities.

  "Think you can fix it?” Boss asked me.

  "I expect so," I replied. At that Boss laughed, and he began boasting of the deal that he had just pulled on the Carthians, telling me that he had told them that I was a genius.

  "Next time we go there we'll have to be careful they don't abduct you," he thought that funny. I knew there would be no next time.

  While he had been talking I had noticed that we were heading for the Carthian moon.

  “Are we going to land there?" I asked him. He was immediately suspicious: it was a feature of such men that they never knowingly volunteered any information.

  "Why?"

  "Because, if I'm to fix the gravity switch, I'll need to make my diagnosis in space."

  "No. We're going to stay behind it the night. So their telescopes can't spot us. Tomorrow morning we'll drop down on the military. Think you can fix it by then?"

  "Won't know until I find out what's wrong with it.”

  He dismissed me. I, however, had to remain in the command room to trace the switch circuitry; and it was not until we had reached our station behind the pitted moon that I discovered the physical location of the two gravity meters. One was on the ship’s exterior — that measured the ambient gravity and switched off the ship’s gravity when the ship entered a planet's atmosphere. The other meter was in the switching room above the ramp, a room I had often had to visit in the course of my repairs. The meter there measured the ship's internal gravity, switched to artificial gravity when the ship left a planet. That was the meter which was obviously at fault. However I said to Boss,

  “Looks like I might have to go outside the ship."

  "There's spacesuits in the stores," Boss said as he left for his quarters, "If you need a hand I'll get Zapper to help you.”

  "I'll check out the interior first," I said, pleased that he was the one who had suggested that I take a spacesuit. All, at that moment, augured well for my plan of escape.

  I left the command room immediately after Boss; and, once in the switching room, I locked the door, removed some panels and soon found the offending meter. One glance served to show me that the tripping mechanism was set too Iow. A simple adjustment was all that was required. I wanted time to think, though, so I sat myself before the open panels.

  I was not there long before Zapper knocked on the door, announced himself. I unlocked the door and he stepped past me into the room. It was one of our 'safe' rooms.

  “He won't listen," Zapper vented his frustration.

  He had come from attempting to convince Boss that he had indeed seen a rocket the last time they had left the military's hemisphere. Although the arguments he employed were the same as those I had heard in the previous weeks, never before had I seen him so agitated.

  "We'll be walking into trouble tomorrow. I know it,” he declared; and he paced back and forth across the room behind me.

  After letting him in I had resumed my seat before the open panels and, preoccupied with my plans for escape, I was paying him little attention. For my plan to succeed there were two measurements that I had to take — the girth of the spacesuit when pressurised and the diameter of the pipe. The spacesuit now presented no problem: I could inflate it in the storeroom, if I was discovered say that I was testing it prior to using it. But, at some time in the next six days, I had to find some pretext to visit the hold and measure the pipe aperture. I would have to assume that the pipe, it belonging to the freighter, would be of the same diameter as the aperture in the hold. Of the whole enterprise that was now the one gamble I would have to take.

  I became aware that Zapper was standing over me.

  "Can you fix that?" he nodded to the wall of multicoloured circuitry.

  "Yes.”

  "Tell Boss you can't. That it'll take time. That it's worse than it is. That you'd better stay aboard tomorrow and fix it."

  “Why?" I looked up at him. He was calm now that he had made a decision.

  "Because I'll feel safer knowing there's somebody aboard who can get us out fast if there's any trouble. Will you stay?"

  I know that I would as soon as he had ventured the proposal: here was my opportunity to explore at will the ship. However, to not appear too eager, I hedged, asked what would be the consequences if Boss found out that I had lied to him,

  "Who's going to tell him apart from me?" Zapper demanded of me.

  “What if Boss simply puts off landing for a day?"

  "He can’t. Too tight a schedule. He’s got to rendezvous with t
he freighter in six days. Even now he's cutting it fine."

  So, with feigned reluctance, I agreed to do as Zapper asked.

  Having established our story I rose to inform Boss immediately of the fictional difficulties I had encountered. Zapper asked me where I was going. I told him.

  "Leave it until later. Make it seem as if you've been working on it all evening." And he proceeded to tell me exactly what he intended for the morrow. He would hide a throat microphone in the neck of his tunic, wear a small earphone.

  “It'll just carry about enough range,” he said. He would get me a radio from the stores and we would hide it in the switching room overnight. In the morning, as soon as I heard the crew descend the ramp, I was to retrieve the radio from its hiding place and keep it on me until they returned from their meeting with the military.

  "Better get a minder in here too,” Zapper said. "Make it look worse than it is."

  While I fetched a minder, Zapper went to the stores for the radio. Back in the switching room we hid the radio behind one of the panels.

  "Better go up now," Zapper said. "Catch Boss before he goes to bed."

  Boss was in the command room, eyes closed listening to some music. I knew that he had noticed my entrance: with his crew of psychotics he could not afford to be caught unawares. The music was straining towards its climax: I respectfully waited. The music died on a crescendo. Cheap melodrama my mother would have called it; but Boss's contented sigh was of one who might have just undergone a spiritual transformation.

  He opened his eyes to me. I told him that the fault was far worse than I had initially anticipated, began a tale about how my predecessor had made adjustments to the artificial gravity (which he truly had, and for once perfectly properly), but which had, I now told Boss, produced some undesired side effects, inferring that the fault was much greater than a simple gravity switch.