Wasp

by Eric Frank Russell

  Round the corner, along the street and into an alley This took him by the back of his hotel and as he tore past he noted out the corner of one eye a window missing and a great ragged hole in the wall. Hurdling a pile of smashed bricks and splintered timber, he reached the alley’s end, shot across the next street.

  So that was it. Somehow they had smelled him out, possibly as a result of one of those infernal registration checks. They had searched his room and tried to open his bag with a metal master-key. Then had come the big bang. If the room had been crowded at the time the explosion would have enough force to kill at least a dozen of them. It would be a blow sufficient to get their blood up for a month. If ever they laid hands on him…

  He kept going as fast as he could make it, the gun in his grip, his ears straining for sounds of pursuit. Pretty soon the radio alarm would be going over the air, they’d close every exit from the town, blocking trains, buses, roads, everything. At all costs he must beat them to it by getting outside the cordon before it was formed-if it could be done.

  As far as possible he tried to race through lanes and alleys, avoiding main roads on which patrol-cars would be running to and fro loaded with guns and eyes. At this late hour there were few people about, no crowds in which to hide. The streets were almost empty with most folk abed and an armed man sprinting through the night was mighty conspicuous. But nothing could be done about that. To mooch with an air of innocence was to give time for the trap to close about him.

  Darkness was his only help, not counting his legs. He pounded through alley after alley, bolted across six streets, halted in deep shadow as he was about to jump the seventh. A car bulging with uniformed cops and plainclothes Kaitempi slid past, its windows full of faces trying to look everywhere at once.

  For a short time he stood silent and unmoving in the shadow, heart thumping, chest heaving, a trickle of sweat creeping down his spine. Immediately the hunters had gone he was across the street, into the opposite alley and racing onward. Five times he paused in concealment, mentally cursing the delay, while prowl-cars, snooped around.

  The sixth stop was different. He lurked in the alley’s corner as headlights came up the street. A mud-spattered dyno rolled into view, stopped within twenty yards of him. The next moment a solitary civilian got out, went to a nearby door and shoved a key into its lock. Mowry came out the alley like a. quick-moving cat.

  The door opened just as the car shot away with a shrill scream from its dynamo. Struck with surprise, the civilian wasted half a minute gaping after his vanishing property. Then he let go an oath, ran indoors and snatched up the telephone.

  Luck has got to be mixed decided Mowry as he gripped the wheel. There must be good to compensate for bad, a turn for the better to balance a change for the worse. Swinging the car into a broad, well-lit avenue, he slowed it to a more sedate pace.

  Two overloaded patrol-cars passed him going in the opposite direction, another overtook him and rocked ahead. They weren’t interested in a dirty dyno trundling home late; they were hunting a breathless fugitive assumed to be still galloping around on two feet. He estimated that it would be no more than another ten minutes before the radio made them change their minds. It might have been better if he had shot the car’s owner and thus gained himself extra valuable minutes. But he hadn’t. Too late to regret the omission now.

  After seven minutes he passed the last houses of Radine and headed into open country along an unfamiliar road. At once he hit up top speed to make maximum distance while the going was good. The car howled along, headlight beams dipping and swaying, the den-needle creeping close to its limit.

  Twenty more minutes and he shot like a rocket through a long, straggling village buried deep in slumber. One mile farther on he rounded a bend, got a brief glimpse of a white pole across the road, the glitter of buttons and shine of metal helmets grouped at each end. He set his teeth, aimed straight at the middle without reducing speed by a fraction. The car hit the pole, flung the broken halves aside and raced on. Something struck five sharp blows on the back, two neat holes appeared in the rear window, a third where the windshield. joined the roof.

  That showed the radio-alarm had been given, that forces had been alerted over a wide area. His crashing of the road-block was a giveaway. They now knew in which direction he was fleeing and could concentrate ahead of him. Just where he was going was more than he knew himself. He’d never been on this road before, the locale was strange and he had no map to consult. Worse, he had little money and no documents of any kind. The loss of his case had deprived him of everything save what was upon his person, plus a hot car and a stolen gun.

  Soon he reached a crossroad with a marker dimly visible on each corner. Braking violently, he jumped out, peered at the nearest one in the poor light of night. It said Radine-27 den. The opposite marker said Valapan-92 den. So that’s where he’d been heading-to Valapan. Doubtless the police there were out in full strength, a reception committee too well prepared to permit another crash-through.

  The marker on the left-hand road read Pertane-51 den. He clambered back into the car, turned left. Still no signs of close pursuit were visible but that meant nothing. Somebody with radio contact and a big map would be moving cars around to head him off as reports of his position filtered in. At the marker indicating 9 den he found another crossroad which he recognised. The sky-glow of Pertane now shone straight ahead while on his right was the road leading to the cave in the forest. He took an added risk of interception by driving the car a couple of miles nearer Pertane before abandoning it. When they found it there they’d probably jump to the conclusion that he’d sought refuge somewhere in the big city. It would be all to the good if they wasted time and manpower scouring Pertane from end to end.

  Walking back, he reached the forest and continued along its fringe. It took him two hours to arrive at the tree and the tombstone. During that period he dived into the woods eleven times and watched carloads of hunters whine past. Looked like he’d got a veritable army to chasing around in the night and that was a worthwhile result if Wolf was to be believed.

  Entering the forest, he made for the cave.

  At the cave he found everything intact, undisturbed. He arrived thankfully, feeling that he was as safe here as he could be anywhere upon a hostile world. It was hardly likely that the hunt would succeed in tracking him through twenty miles of virgin forest even if it occurred to them to try.

  For a short time he sat on a container and let his mind indulge a wrestling match between duty and desire, Orders were that on each visit to the cave he must use the transmitter and send an up-to-the-minute report. There was no need to guess what might happen if he were to do so this time. They’d order him to stay put and indulge no further activities. Later they’d send a ship, pick him up and dump him on some other Sirian planet where he could start all over again. On Jaimec they’d leave his successor.

  The idea of it riled him. All very well them talking about the tactical advantages of replacing a known operator with an unknown one. To the man who suffered replacement it smacked of incompetence and defeat. He flatly refused to consider himself either inefficient or beaten. Hell with ’em! Maybe the Kaitempi had gained a smell at his whiskers but that didn’t make him as good as theirs.

  Besides, he had carried out phase one and part of phase two. There was yet phase three, the build-up of pressure to the point where the foe would be so busy defending the back door that he’d be in no condition to hold the front one.

  Phase three involved strategic bombing both by himself and by anyone he could pay to do it. He had the necessary material for the former and the money for the latter. In yet unopened containers lay enough money to buy a dozen battleships and give every man of their crews a large box of cigars. Also forty different kinds of infernal machines, not one of them recognisable for what it was, and all guaranteed to go whump in the right place, at the right moment.

  He was not supposed to start offensive action of the phase three type until or
dered to do so because usually it preceded full-scale attack by Terran space-forces. But in the meantime he could work his way up to it by keeping Dirac Angestun Gesept in the public eye, arranging a few more executions and in general performing his proper function of being a pain in the neck.

  No, he would not signal them just yet. He would play around a bit longer, long enough to establish his right to re-main to the bitter end regardless of whether or not the Kaitempi had him taped. He’d been run out of Radine but he wasn’t going to be chased right off the planet. That would be too much for his self-esteem.

  Opening a couple of containers, he undressed, put on a wide belly-belt that made him corpulent with guilders. Then he donned ill-cut, heavy clothes typical of the Sirian farmer. A couple of cheek-pads widened and rounded his face. He plucked his eyebrows into slight raggedness, trimmed his hair to comply with the current agricultural fashion.

  With purple dye he gave his face the peculiar mottling of a bad complexion. The final touch was to give himself an injection alongside his right nostril; within two hours it would create that faint orange-coloured blemish occasionally seen on Sirian features.

  He was now a middle-aged, coarse looking and somewhat overfed Sirian farmer and again he had documents to match. This time he was Rathan Gusulkin, a grain-grower. His papers showed that he had emigrated from Diracta five years ago. This served to explain his Mashambi accent which was the only thing he could not successfully conceal.

  Before setting out in his new role he enjoyed another real Earth-meal and four hours of much-needed sleep. When two miles from the outskirts of Pertane he buried a package holding fifty thousand guilders at the base of the southernmost left-hand buttress of the bridge across the river. Not far from that point, beneath deep water, a typewriter lay in the mud.

  From the first booth in Pertane he called the Cafe Susun. The answer was prompt, the voice strange and curt, the distant scanner not operating.

  “That the Cafe Susun?” Mowry asked.

  “Yar.”

  “Skriva there?”

  A brief silence followed by, “He’s somewhere around. Upstairs or out back. Who wants him?”

  “His mother.”

  “Don’t give me that!” rasped the voice. “I can tell by your—”

  “What’s it got to do with you?” Mowry shouted. “Is Skriva there or not?”

  The voice became suddenly subdued and sounded completely out of character as it cajoled. “Hold on a piece. I’ll go find him for you.”

  “You needn’t bother. Is Gurd there?”

  “No, he hasn’t been in today. Hold on, I tell you. I’ll go find Skriva. He’s upstairs or—”

  “Listen!” ordered Mowry. He stuck his tongue between his lips and blew hard.

  Then he dropped the phone, scrambled out the booth and beat it at the fastest pace that would not attract attention. Nearby a bored shopkeeper lounged in his doorway and idly watched him go. So also did four people gossiping outside the shop. That meant five witnesses, five descriptions of the fellow who had just used the booth.

  “Hold on!’ the strange voice had urged, striving but failing to conceal its normal note of arrogant authority. It wasn’t the voice of the barkeep nor the careless, slangy tones of any frequenter of the Cafe Susun. It had the characteristic bossiness of a plainclothes cop or a Kaitempi agent. Yar, hold on, Stupid, while we trace the call and pick you up.

  Three hundred yards along the road he jumped a bus, looked backward, could not discern whether the shopkeeper and the gossips had noticed what he had done. The bus lumbered forward. A police car rocked past it and braked by the booth. The bus turned a corner. Mowry wondered just how close a close shave can be.

  The Cafe Susun was staked, no doubt of that. The cops’ prompt arrival at the booth proved it. How they had got a line on the place and what had induced them to raid it was a matter of sheer speculation. Perhaps they’d been led to it by their investigations of the bloody head in a sack.

  Or perhaps Gurd and Skriva had been nabbed while tramping heavy-footed all over a roof and waving cables across a street. He could readily imagine them fixing a mock telephone tap with a thumping noisiness fit to arouse the street. On a rooftop, blinded by easy money, they were liable to make themselves as conspicuous as a pair of drunken elephants.

  If they had been caught they’d talk, tough as they were. The Kaitempi would make them talk. When fingernails are peeled off one by one with a pair of pliers, or when intermittent voltage from a battery is applied to the corners of the eyeballs, the most granite-hard character becomes positively garrulous.

  Yes, they’d talk all right but they couldn’t say much. Only a weird tale about a crackpot with a Mashambi accent and an inexhaustible supply of guilders. Not a word about Dirac Angestun Gesept. Not a syllable about Terran intervention on Jaimec.

  But there were others who could talk and to better effect.

  “You see anyone leave this booth just now?”

  “Yar. A fat yokel. Seemed in a hurry”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Down the road. Got an a 42 bus.”

  “What did he look like? Describe him as accurately as you can. Come on, be quick about it!”

  “Medium height, middle-aged, round-faced, got a bad complexion. Quite a belly on him, too. Had a red falkin alongside his nose. Wearing a fur jacket, brown cord pants, heavy brown boots. Looked the farmer type if you get what I mean.”

  That’s enough for us. Jalek, let’s get after that bus. Where’s the mike—I’d better broadcast this description. We’ll nail him if we move fast”

  “He’s a cunning one. Didn’t take him long to smell a trap when Lathin answered his call. He blew a dirty noise and ran. Bet you the bus-jump is a blind-he’s got a car parked someplace.”

  “Save your breath and catch up with that bus. Two callers have escaped us already. We’ll have a lot of explaining to do if we lose a third.”

  “Yar, I know.”

  Mowry got off the bus before anyone had time to overtake it. He caught another one running on a transverse route. But he did not play tag all over the city as he had done in the past. Right now things were a lot livelier, the pursuers almost certainly had a description. of him and it looked like he’d got most of Jaimec on the hop.

  His third change put him on an express bus heading out of town. It dropped him a mile beyond the bridge where he had hidden fifty thousand guilders for the benefit of those who, for all he knew, might not have another fifty hours to live. Once again he was heading back to the forest and the cave.

  To retrace his steps to the bridge and try unearth the money would be stupid and dangerous. Police cars would be heading this way before long. The hunt for a pot-bellied farmer would not be confined to Pertane. Anytime now they’d start probing the rural areas immediately outside the city limits. So long as daylight remained the best thing for him to do was to get out of sight and stay out until such time as he could assume yet another new guise.

  Moving fast he reached the edge of the forest without being stopped and questioned. For a short time he continued to use the road, seeking shelter among the trees whenever a car approached. But traffic increased and vehicles appeared with such frequency that eventually he gave up hope of further progress before dark. He was pretty tired too, his eyelids were heavy, his feet had taken a beating.

  Penetrating farther into the woods he found a comfortable, well-concealed spot, lay on a thick bed of moss and let go a sigh of satisfaction. For a while he reposed in thoughtful silence while his eyes idly surveyed small patches of sky visible through leafy gaps.

  Wolf had asserted that one man could pin down an army. He wondered how large a number he’d fastened and what real good it had done, if any. The most frustrating thing about this solitary wasp-life was that he had no way of obtaining a glimpse behind the scenes, of looking into the enemy’s head-quarters and measuring his multiple reactions, of seeing for oneself how widespread and crippled they became.

 
; How many precious man-hours had his presence cost the foe? Thousands, tens of thousands, millions? To what forms of war service would those man-hours have been devoted if he had not compelled the enemy to waste them in other directions? Ah, in the answer to that hypothetical question lay the true measure of a wasp’s efficiency.

  Gradually he gave up these unprofitable musings and drifted into sleep. Night was upon him when he awoke refreshed and energetic. He was also less soured with events. Things could have been worse, lots worse. For example, he could have gone straight to the Cafe Susun and walked into the arms of the trappers like a prize chump. The Kaitempi wouldn’t know what they had grabbed but they’d hold him on general principles and in their own effective way they’d squeeze him of every item of information he possessed. Thinking it over, he doubted his ability to hold out once they really got to work on him. About the only captives from whom the Kaitempi had extracted nothing were those who had managed to commit suicide before questioning.

  As he trudged steadily through the dark toward the cave he blessed his luck, wisdom or intuition in making a phone call. Then his thoughts became occupied with Gurd and Skriva. H they had been caught, as seemed likely, it meant he’d been deprived of valuable allies and once again was strictly on his own. He’d have to find some way of replacing them and that wouldn’t be easy.

  But if, like himself, they had escaped the trap, how was he going to find them? The crummy cafe had been their only recognised point of contact. He didn’t know where they lived and it would be foolhardy to go around asking. They didn’t know his address, either. They’d want to meet him fully as much as he wanted to meet them. Both sides could waste weeks or months fumbling at random for each other in a city as big as Pertane. Somehow the problem had to be solved.

  Arriving at the cave as dawn was breaking, he took off his shoes, sat on the pebble beach and soaked his aching feet in the stream. Still his mind chewed unceasingly at the question of how to find Gurd and Skriva, if they were still free. Eventually the Kaitempi would remove the stakeout from the Cafe Susun either because they were satisfied that they had exploited it to the limit, or because their patience had run out, or because of pressure of other business. It would then be possible to visit the place and find someone able to give all the information he needed. But heaven alone knew when that would be; perhaps as far off as a year next Christmas.