Wasp

by Eric Frank Russell

  “No, of course not,” confirmed Mowry for the second time.

  The previous silence came back and remained until the train pulled into Radine. This being the terminus, everybody got out. Mowry padded along with the mob through the station exit but did not make a beeline for punishable windows and walls.

  Instead he followed Pigface.

  Shadowing presented no great difficulty. Pigface behaved as though the likelihood of being trailed would be the last thing ever to enter his mind. He went his way with the arrogant assurance of one who has the law in his pocket, all ordinary persons being less than the dust beneath his chariot wheel. In this respect his strength was his weakness, a fatal weakness as he had yet to discover.

  Immediately outside the station’s arched entrance Pigface turned right, plodded a hundred yards along the approach-road to the car-park at the farther end. Here he stopped by a long, green dynocar, felt in his pocket for keys.

  Lingering in the shadow of a projecting buttress, Mowry watched the quarry unlock the door and squeeze inside. He hustled across the road to a taxi-stand, climbed into the leading vehicle. The move was perfectly timed; he sank into the seat just as the green dynocar whined past.

  “Where to?” asked the taxi-driver.

  “Can’t tell you exactly,” said Mowry, evasively. “I’ve been here only once before and that was years ago. But I know the way. Just follow my instructions”

  The taxi’s dynamo set up a rising hum as the machine sped down the road while its passenger kept attention on the car ahead and gave curt orders from time to time. It would have been lots easier, he knew, to have pointed and said, “Follow that green car.” But that would have linked him in the driver’s mind with Pigface or at least with Pigface’s green dyno. The Kaitempi were experts at ferreting out such links and following them to the bitter end. As it was, the taxi-driver had no idea that he was shadowing anyone.

  Swiftly the chaser and the chased threaded their way through the centre of Radine until eventually the leader made a sharp turn to the left and rolled down a ramp into the basement of a large apartment building. Mowry let the taxi run a couple of hundred yards farther on before he called a halt.

  “This will do me.” He got out, felt for money. “Nice to have a good, dependable memory, isn’t it?”

  “Yar,” said the driver. “One guilder six-tenths.”

  Mowry gave him two guilders, watched him cruise away. Hastening back to the apartment building, he entered, took an inconspicuous seat in its huge foyer, lay back and pretended to be enjoying a semi-doze while waiting for someone. There were several others sitting around none of whom took the slightest notice of him.

  Sure enough he’d not been there half a minute when Pigface came into the other end of the foyer from a door leading to the basement garage. Without so much as a glance around he stepped into one of a bank of small automatic elevators. The door slid shut. The illuminated telltale on the lintel winked a succession of numbers, stopped at seven, held it awhile, then winked downward to zero. The door glided open, showing the box now empty.

  After another five minutes Mowry yawned, stretched, consulted his watch and went out. He paced along the street until he found a phone booth. From it he called the apartment building, got its switchboard operator.

  “I was supposed to meet somebody in your foyer nearly an hour ago,” he explained. “I can’t make it. If he’s still waiting I’d like him to be told I can’t get along.”

  “Who is he?” asked the operator. “A resident?”

  “Yes—but I’ve clean forgotten his name. Nobody is more stupid than me about names. He is plump, got heavy features, lives on the seventh floor. Major… major… what a soko of a memory I’ve got!”

  “That would be Major Sallana,” the operator said.

  “Correct,” agreed Mowry. “Major Sallana—I had it at the back of my mind all the time.”

  “Hold on. I’ll see if he’s still waiting.” There followed a minute’s silence before the operator returned with, “No, he isn’t. I’ve just called his apartment and there’s no reply. Do you wish to leave a message for him?”

  “It won’t be necessary-he must have given me up. It’s not of great importance, anyway. Live long!”

  “Live long!” said the operator.

  So there was no reply from the apartment. Looked as if Pigface had gone straight in and straight out again. Unless he was lying in his bath and not inclined to answer the phone. That didn’t seem likely; he’d hardly had time to fill a tub, undress and get into it. If he really was absent from his rooms it meant that opportunity had presented itself so far as Mowry was concerned and it was up to him to grab it while it was there.

  Despite an inward sense of urgency, Mowry paused long enough to cope with other work. He looked through the booth’s glass, found himself unobserved. Then he slapped a sticker on the facing window exactly where tireless talkers could contemplate it while holding the phone.

  It said: Power-lovers started this war. Dirac Angestun Gesept will end it—and them!

  Returning to the apartments he strolled with deceitful confidence across the foyer, stepped into an unoccupied lift. He turned to face the open front, became conscious of someone hurrying toward the bank, glanced that way and was aghast to find Pigface approaching.

  The fellow was wearing a ruminative scowl, hadn’t yet seen him but undoubtedly would do so unless he moved fast. At once Mowry slammed the door and prodded the third button on the panel. The elevator glided up to the third floor, stopped. He kept it there, the door still shut, until he heard the whine of an adjoining box passing him and going higher. Then he dropped back to ground-level, left the building. He felt thwarted and short-tempered and cursed his luck in a steady undertone.

  Between then and mid-evening he worked off his ire by running around like mad, decorating Radine with one hundred and twenty stickers and fourteen chalked walls. On no occasion did anyone catch him at it though, as usual, he had several narrow escapes.

  Deciding to call it a day for that kind of work, he dropped the remaining half-stick of crayon down a grid and thereby increased his safety margin to some degree. If stopped and searched they’d now find nothing on him immediately recognisable as subversive material.

  At the ten-time hour he champed through an overdue meal, having eaten nothing since breakfast. That finished, he looked up Sallana’s number, called it, got no reply. Now was the time. Repeating his earlier tactic, he went to the building, took a lift to the seventh floor, this time without mishap. He trod silently along the heavy carpet of the corridor, looking at doors until he found one bearing the name he sought.

  He knocked.

  No answer.

  He knocked again, a fraction louder but not loud enough to arouse others nearby.

  Silence answered him.

  This was where his hectic schooling came in. Taking from his pocket a bunch of keys that looked quite ordinary but weren’t, he set to work on the lock, had the door open within precisely thirty-five seconds. Speed was essential for that task—if anyone had chosen that time to enter the corridor he’d have been caught redhanded. Nobody did appear. He slipped through the door, carefully closed it behind him.

  His first act was to make swift survey of the rooms and assure himself that nobody was lying around asleep or drunk. There were four rooms, all vacant. Definitely Major Pigface Sallana was not at home.

  Returning to the first room, Mowry gave it a sharp examination, spotted a gun lying atop a small filing cabinet. He checked it, found it loaded, stuck it in his pocket.

  Next, with expert technique he cracked open a big, heavy desk and started raking through its drawers. The way he did it had the sure, superfast touch of the professional criminal but was in fact a tribute to his college training.

  The contents of the fourth drawer on the left made his hair stand on end. He had been seeking with the intention of confiscating whatever it was that made cops servile and even persuaded Kaitempi agents to stand
to attention. Jerking open the drawer, he found himself gazing at a neat stack of writing paper bearing official print across its head.

  This was more than he’d expected, more than he had hoped for in his most optimistic moments. To his mind it proved that despite his college lectures about caution, caution, everlasting caution, it pays to play hunches and take chances. What the paper’s caption said was:

  DIRAC KAIMINA TEMPITI.

  Leshun Radine.

  In other words: the Sirian Secret Police—District of Radine. No wonder those thugs on the train had made ready to grovel. Pigface was a Kaitempi brasshat and as such out-ranked an army brigadier or even a space navy fleet leader.

  This discovery upped the speed of his activity still further. From the pile of luggage in the back room he seized a small case, forced it open, tossed the clothing it contained onto the floor. He dumped all the Kaitempi writing paper into the case. A little later he found a small embossing machine, tested it, found that it impressed the letters DKT surmounted by a winged sword. That also went into the case.

  Finishing with the desk he started on the adjacent filing cabinet, his nostrils twitching with excitement as he worked at its top drawer. A faint sound came to his ears, he stopped, taut and listening. It was the scrape of a key in the door-lock. The key failed to turn at the first attempt, tried again.

  Mowry jumped toward the wall, flattened himself against it where he’d be concealed by the opening door. The key grated a second time, the lock responded, the door swung across his field of vision as Pigface lumbered in.

  Pigface took four paces into the room before his brain accepted what his eyes could see. He came to a full stop, stared incredulously and with mounting fury at the ransacked desk while behind him the door drifted around and clicked shut. Reaching a decision, he turned to go out and then saw the invader.

  “Good evening,” greeted Mowry, flat-voiced.

  “You?” Pigface glowered at him with outraged authority. “What are you doing here? What is the meaning of this?”

  “I’m here as a common thief. The meaning is that you’ve been robbed.”

  “Then let me tell you—”

  “When robbery is done,” Mowry went on, “somebody has to be the victim. This time it’s your turn. No reason why you should have all the luck all the time, is there?”

  Pigface took a step forward.

  “Sit down!” ordered Mowry, in sharp tones.

  The other stopped but did not sit. He stood firm upon the carpet, his small, crafty eyes taking on a stubborn glint, his complexion dark. He spoke in manner suggesting that at any moment he might go bang.

  “Put down that gun.”

  “Who?—me?” said Mowry.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing,” declared Pigface, conditioned by a lifetime of creating fear. “Because you don’t know who I am. But when you do you’ll wish.”

  “As happens, I do know who you are,” Mowry chipped in. “You’re one of the Kaitempi’s fat rats. A professional torturer, a paid strangler, a conscienceless soko who maims and kills for money and for the sadistic pleasure of it. Sit down when I tell you.”

  Still Pigface refused to sit. On the contrary, he refuted the popular belief that all bullies are cowards. Like many of his ilk he had brute courage. His eyes flared with hate, he took a heavy but swift step to one side while his hand dived into a pocket.

  But the eyes that so often had calmly watched the death-throes of others had now betrayed him to his own end. The step had hardly been taken, the hand only just reached the pocket, when Mowry’s gun went br-r-r-up!, not loudly but effectively. For five or six seconds Pigface stood wearing a stupid expression, then he teetered, fell backward with a thud that shook the room, rolled onto his side.

  Gently opening the door a few inches, Mowry gazed into the corridor, remained listening awhile. There came no rush of feet toward the apartment, nobody raced away yelling for help. If anyone had heard the muffled burst of shots they must have attributed the noise to the flow of traffic far below.

  Satisfied that the alarm had not been raised, he shut the door, bent over the body, had a close look at it. Pigface was as dead as he could be, the brief spray from the machine pistol having put seven slugs through his obese frame.

  It was a pity, in a way, because Mowry would much have liked to have hammered, kicked or otherwise got out of him the answers to some cogent questions. Whether he could have gained his purpose in this respect was highly doubtful but it would have been worth the trying. There were many things he wanted to know about the Kaitempi, in particular the identities of its current victims, their physical condition and where they were hidden. No wasp could find supporters more loyal and enthusiastic than genuine natives of the planet rescued from the strangler’s noose.

  But one cannot thump information from a corpse. That was his sole regret. In all other respects he had cause for gratification. For one thing, factual evidence of the methods of the Kaitempi was of such a revolting nature that to remove any one of them from the scheme of things was to do a favour to Sirians and Terrans alike. For another, such a daring, killing was an ideal touch in present circumstances: it lent murderous support to stickers and wall-scrawls.

  It was a broad hint to the powers-that-be that somebody was willing and able to do more than talk. The wasp had done plenty of buzzing around. Now it had demonstrated its sting.

  He searched the body and got what he had coveted from the moment that Pigface had basked in adulation upon the train. The ornate card set in thin plastic. It bore signs, seals and signatures, certified that the bearer held the rank of major in the Secret Police. Better still, it did not give the bearer’s name and personal description, contenting itself with using a code-number in lieu. The Secret Police, it seemed, could be warily secret even between themselves, a habit of which others could take full advantage.

  Mowry now returned attention to the filing cabinet. Most of the stuff within it proved to be worthless, revealing nothing not already known to Terran Intelligence. But there were three files containing case-histories of persons who had also been made to conform to the Kaitempi habit of hiding identities under code-numbers. Evidently Pigface had abstracted them from local headquarters and taken them home to study at leisure.

  He scanned these papers rapidly. It soon became clear that the three unknowns had earned the enmity of the government by nursing political ambitions. They were potential rivals of those already in power. The case-histories said nothing to indicate whether they were now living or dead. The implication was that they were still alive, with their fate yet to be decided, otherwise it seemed hardly likely that Pigface would waste time on such documents. Anyway, the disappearance of these vital papers would aggravate the powers-that-be and possibly scare a few of them.

  So he put the files in the case along with the rest of the loot. After that he made a swift hunt around for anything previously overlooked, searched spare suits in the bedroom, discovered, nothing more worth taking. The last chore was to remove from the apartment all clues capable of linking him with the existing situation.

  With the case in one hand and the gun in his pocket, he paused in the doorway, looked back at the body.

  “Live long!”

  Pigface did not deign to reply. He reposed in siience, his podgy right hand clasping a paper on which was inscribed:

  Executed by Dirac Angestun Gesept.

  Whoever found the body would be sure to pass that message on. It would be equally certain to go from hand to hand, up the ascending scale or rank, right to the top brackets. With any luck at all it would give a few of them the galloping gripes.

  CHAPTER IV

  Luck held. Mowry did not have to wait long for a train to Pertane. He was more than glad of this because the bored station police tended to become inquisitive about travellers who sat around too long. True, if accosted he could show his documents or, strictly as a last resort, arrogantly use the stolen Kaitempi card to browbeat his way out of a possible
trap: But it was better and safer not to become an object of attention in this place at this time.

  The train came in and he managed to get aboard without having been noticed by one of several restlessly roaming cops. After a short time it pulled out again, rumbled into pitch darkness. The lateness of the hour meant that passengers were few and the coach he had chosen had plenty of vacant seats. It was easy to select a place where he’d not be pestered by a garrulous neighbour or studied for the fall length of the journey by someone with sharp eyes and a long memory. He lolled back, tired and heavy-eyed, and hoped to heaven that if there should be another police check en route his papers, or the Kaitempi card, or his gun would get him out of a jam.

  One thing was certain: if Pigface’s body were found within the next three or four hours the resulting hullabaloo would spread fast enough and far enough to ensure a thorough end-to-end search of the train. The searchers would have no suspect’s description to go upon but they’d take a look into all luggage and recognise stolen property when they found it. Anyone of relatively low brain-power would have the sense to grab the owner of said luggage and disregard all protestations of innocence.

  He dozed uneasily to the hypnotic thrum-tiddy-thrum of the train. Every time a door slammed or a window rattled he awoke, nerves stretched, body tense. A couple of times he wondered whether a top priority radio-call was beating the train to its destination.

  “Halt and search all passengers and luggage on the 11.20 from Radine.”

  There was no check on the way. The train slowed, clanked through the points and switches of a large grid system, rolled into Pertane. Its passengers dismounted, all of them sleepy and a few looking half-dead as they straggled untidily toward the exit. Mowry timed himself to be in the rear of the bunch, lagging behind with half a dozen bandy-legged moochers. His full attention was directed straight ahead, watching for evidence of a grim-faced bunch waiting at the barrier.

  If they were really there, in ambush for him, there’d be only two courses open to him. He could drop the case and with it the valuable loot, shoot first and fastest, make a bolt and hope to get away in the ensuing confusion. As a tactic it would give him the advantage of surprise. But failure meant immediate death and even success might be dearly bought with a couple of bullets in the body.