Wasp

by Eric Frank Russell

  “It isn’t intended to,” Mowry assured. “What’s on your mind?”

  “I like money.”

  “That fact is more than apparent,” said Mowry.

  “I’m really fond of it,” Skriva went on, as if speaking in parables.

  “Who isn’t?”

  “Yar, who isn’t? Gurd loves it too. Most everybody does.”

  Skriva stopped, added, “In fact the chump who doesn’t love it is either daft or dead.”

  “If you’re leading up to something, say so,” Mowry urged. “Cut out the song and dance act. We’ve not got all day.”

  “I know a fellow who loves money.”

  “So what?”

  “He’s a jailer,” said Skriva pointedly.

  Twisting sidewise in his seat, Mowry eyed him carefully.

  “Let’s get down to brass tacks. What’s he willing to do and how much does he want?”

  “He says Gurd’s in a cell along with a couple of old pals of ours. So far none of them have been put through the mill though they’ll be worked over sooner or later. Fellows in clink usually are given plenty of time to think over what’s coming to them and let their imaginations operate. It helps them break down quicker.”

  “That’s the usual technique,” Mowry agreed. “Let them become nervous wrecks before making them physical wrecks.”

  “Yar, the stinking sokos.” Skriva spat out the window before he continued, “Whenever a prisoner’s number comes up the Kaitempi call at the jail, present an official demand for him and take him to their H.Q. for treatment. Sometimes they bring him back several days later, by which time he’s a cripple. Sometimes they don’t return him at all. In the latter event they file a death warrant to keep the prison records straight.”

  “Go on.”

  “This fellow who loves money will give me the number and location of Gurd’s cell. Also the timing of Kaitempi visits and full details of the routine they follow. Finally he’ll pro-vide a copy of the official form used for demanding release.” He let that sink in, finished, “He wants a hundred thousand.”

  Mowry pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “You think we should try get Gurd out?”

  “Yar.”

  “Didn’t know you were so fond of him.”

  “He could stay there and rot for all I care,” said Skriva.

  “He’s paying the price of his own stupidity. Why should I worry about him, hi?”

  “All right, let him stay and rot. We’ll save a hundred thousand that way.”

  “Yar,” Skriva approved. “But—”

  “But what?”

  “I could use the dope and the two with him. So could you if you’ve more work in mind. Furthermore, if Gurd’s kept in he’ll talk. They’ll make him talk—and he knows too much. But if he escapes they won’t be able to force him to say anything. And what’s a hundred thousand to you?”

  “Too much to throw away on a glib story.” Mowry told him bluntly. “Prize fool I’d be to hand you a huge, wad just because you say Gurd’s in the clink.”

  Skriva’s face darkened with anger. “You don’t believe me, hi?”

  “I’ve got to be shown,” said Mowry, undisturbed.

  “Maybe you’d like a specially conducted tour through the jail and have Gurd pointed out to you?”

  “The sarcasm is wasted. You seem to forget that while Gurd may be able to put the finger on you for fifty or more major crimes, he can do nothing whatsoever about me. He can talk himself black in the face without saying anything worth a hoot so far as I am concerned. No, when I spend money it’ll be my money and it’ll be spent for my reasons, not yours.”

  “So you won’t splurge a guilder on Gurd?” demanded Skriva, still thunderous.

  “I don’t say that. What I do say is that I won’t throw money away for nothing. But I’m willing to pay for full value received.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Tell this greedy screw that we’ll give him twenty thousand for a genuine Kaitempi requisition-form—after he has handed it over. Also that we’ll pay him a further eighty thousand after Gurd and his two companions have got away.”

  A mixture of expressions crossed Skriva’s unlovely features, surprise, gratification, doubt and puzzlement. “What if he refuses to play on these terms?”

  “He stays poor.”

  “Well, what if he agrees but refuses to believe I can find the money? How am I going to convince him?”

  “Don’t bother to try,” Mowry advised. “He has to speculate in order to accumulate, same as everyone else. If he won’t do it let him remain content with grinding poverty.”

  “Maybe he’d rather stay poor than take the risk.”

  “He won’t. He’s running no real risk and he knows it.

  There’s only one chance he could take and he’ll avoid it like the plague.”

  “Such as?”

  “Suppose we arrive to make the rescue and are jumped on before we can open our mouths or show the requisition-form, what will it prove? It’ll show that this fellow fooled you for the sake of the reward. The Kaitempi will pay him five thousand apiece for laying the trap and tipping them off. He’ll make an easy and legal ten thousand on top of the twenty thousand we’ve already paid him. Correct?”

  “Yar,” said Skriva, uneasily.

  ““But he’ll lose the eighty thousand yet to come. The difference is plenty big enough to ensure his absolute loyalty up to the moment he gets it in his hot little hands.”

  “Yar,” repeated Skriva, brightening considerably.

  “After that—zunk!” said Mowry. “Immediately he’s got his claws on the lot we’d better run like hell.”

  “Hell?” Skriva stared at him. “That’s a Spakum curse-word.”

  Mowry sweated a bit as he replied offhandedly, “Sure it is. One picks up all sorts of bad language in wartime, especially on Diracta.”

  “Ah, yes, on Diracta.” echoed Skriva, mollified. He got out the car. “I’ll go see this jailer. We’ll have to move fast. Phone me this time tomorrow, hi?”

  “All right.”

  Mowry remained where he was until the other’s dyno had gone from sight. Then he jockeyed his own off the verge and drove into Pertane.

  CHAPTER IX

  The next day’s work was the easiest to date though not devoid of danger. All he had to do was gossip to anyone willing to listen. This was in accordance with the step-by-step technique taught him by the college.

  “First of all you must establish the existence of an internal opposition. Doesn’t matter whether it is real or imaginary so long as the enemy becomes convinced of its actuality.”

  He had done that much.

  “Secondly, you must create fear of that opposition and provoke the enemy into striking back at it as best he can.”

  He’d done that too.

  “Thirdly, you must answer the enemy’s blows with enough defiance to force him into the open, to bring his reaction to public attention and to create the general impression that the opposition has confidence in its own power.”

  That also had been achieved.

  “The fourth move is ours and not yours. We’ll take enough military action to make hay of the enemy’s claims of invincibility. After that the morale of the public should be shaky.”

  One bomb on Shugruma had done the shaking.

  “You then take the fifth step by sowing rumours. Listeners will be ripe to absorb them and whisper them around—and the stories will lose nothing in the telling. A good rumour well planted and thoroughly disseminated can spread alarm and despondency over a wide area. But be careful in your choice of victims. If you pick on a fanatical patriot it may be the end of you!”

  In any city in any part of the cosmos the public park is a natural haunt of idlers and gossips. That is where Mowry went in the morning. The benches were occupied almost entirely by elderly people. Young folk tended to keep clear of such places lest inquisitive cops ask why they were not at work.

  Selecting a seat next
to a gloomy looking oldster with a perpetual sniff, Mowry contemplated a bed of tattered flowers until the other turned. toward him and said conversationally, “Two more gardeners have gone.”

  “So? Gone where?”

  “Into the armed forces. If they draft the rest of them I don’t know what will happen to this park. It needs someone to look after it.”

  “There’s a lot of work involved,” agreed Mowry. “But I sup-pose the war comes first”

  “Yar. Always the war comes first” Sniffy said it with cautious disapproval. “It should have been over by now. But it drags on and drags on. Sometimes I wonder when it will end.”

  “That’s the big question,” responded Mowry, making himself a fellow spirit.

  “Things can’t be going as well as they’re said to be,” continued Sniffy, morbidly. “Else the war would be over. It wouldn’t drag on the way it does.”

  “Personally, I think things are darned bad.” Mowry hesitated, went on confidingly, “In fact I know they are.”

  “You do? Why?”

  “Maybe I oughtn’t tell you-but it’s bound to come out sooner or later.”

  “What is?” insisted Sniffy, consumed with curiosity.

  “The terrible state of affairs at Shugruma. My brother came home this morning and told me.”

  “Go on-what did he say?”

  “He tried to go there for business reasons. but couldn’t get to the place. A ring of troops turned him back forty den from the town. Nobody except the military, or salvage and medical services, is being allowed to enter the area.”

  “That so?” said Sniffy.

  “My brother says he met a fellow who’d escaped the disaster with nothing but the clothes he was wearing. This fellow told him that Shugruma was practically wiped off the map. Not one stone left upon another. Three hundred thousand dead. The stench of bodies would turn your stomach. He said the scene is so awful that the news-sheets daren’t describe it, in fact they refuse to mention it.”

  Staring straight ahead, Sniffy said nothing but looked appalled.

  Mowry added a few more lurid touches, brooded with him for a short time, took his departure. All that he’d said would be repeated, he could be sure of that. Bad news travels fast. A little later and half a mile away he had another on the hook, a beady-eyed, mean-faced character only too willing to hear the worst.

  “Even the papers dare not talk about it,” Mowry ended. Beady-eyes swallowed hard. “If a Spakum ship can dive in and drop a big one so can a dozen others.”

  “Yar, that’s right”

  “In fact they could have dropped more than one while they were at it. Why didn’t they?”

  “Maybe they were making a test-run. Now they know how easy it is they’ll come along with a real load. If that happens there won’t be much left of Pertane.” He pulled his right ear and made a tzzk! sound between his teeth, that being the Sirian equivalent of showing thumbs down.

  “Somebody ought to do something about it,” declared Beady. unnerved.

  “I’m going to do something myself,” informed Mowry. “I’m going to dig me a deep hole way out in the fields.”

  He left the other half-paralysed with fright, took a short walk, picked on a cadaverous individual who looked like a mortician on vacation.

  “Close friend of mine—he’s a fieet leader in the space-navy—told me confidentially that a Spakum onslaught has made Gooma completely uninhabitable. He thinks the only reason why they’ve not given Jaimec the same treatment is because they’re planning to grab the place and naturally don’t want to rob themselves of the fruits of victory.”

  “Do you believe all that?” demanded the Embalmer.

  “One doesn’t know what to believe when the government tells you one thing and grim experience tells you another. It’s only his personal opinion anyway. But he’s in the space-navy and knows a few things that we don’t.”

  “It has been stated authoritatively that the Spakum fleets have been destroyed.”

  “Yar, they were still saying so when that bomb fell on Shugruma,” Mowry reminded.

  “True, true—I felt it land. In my own house two windows collapsed and a bottle of zith jumped off the table.”

  By mid-afternoon thirty people had been fed the tale of the Shugruma and Gooma disasters, plus allegedly first-hand warnings of bacteriological warfare and worse horrors to come. They could no more keep it to themselves than a man can keep a tornado to himself. By early evening a thousand would have the depressing news. At midnight ten thousand would be passing it around. In the morning a hundred thousand—and so on until the whole city was discussing it.

  At the arranged time he called Skriva. “What luck?”

  “I’ve got the form. Have you got the money?”

  “Yar.”

  “It’s to be paid before tomorrow. Shall we meet same place as last?”

  “No.” said Mowry. “It’s not wise to create a habit. Let’s make it someplace else.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a certain bridge where you collected once before. How about the fifth marker past it going south?”

  “That’s as good as anywhere. Can you go there at once!”

  “I’ve got to pick up my car. It’ll take a little time. You be there at the seven-time hour.”

  He reached the marker on time, found Skriva already waiting. Handing over the money, he took the requisition-form and examined it carefully. One good look told him that the thing was well-nigh impossible for him to copy. It was an ornate document as lavishly engraved as a banknote of high denomination. They could cope with it on Terra but it was beyond his ability to duplicate even with the help of various instruments of forgery lying in the cave.

  The form was a used one dated three weeks ago and obviously had been purloined from the jail’s filing system. It called for the release to the Kaitempi of one prisoner named Mabin Garud but had enough blank spaces for ten names. The date, the prisoner’s name and number had been typed. The authorizing signature was in ink.

  “Now we’ve got it,” prompted Skriva, “what are we going to do with it?”

  “We can’t imitate it,” Mowry informed. “The job is too tough and will take too long.”

  “You mean it’s no use to us?” He registered angry disappointment.

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Well, what do you say? Am I to give this stinker his twenty thousand or do I cram the form down his gullet?”

  “You can pay him.” Mowry studied the form again. “I think that if I work on it tonight I can erase the date, name and number. The signature can be left intact.”

  “That’s risky. It’s easy to spot erasures.”

  “Not the way I do them. I know how to gloss the surface afterward. The really difficult task will be that of restoring the broken lines of engraving.” He pondered a moment, went on, “But that may not be necessary. There’s a good chance the new typing will fill in the blanks. It’s hardly likely that they’ll put the form under a microscope.”

  “If they were that suspicious they’d grab us first,” 5kriva pointed out.

  “I need a typewriter. I’ll have to buy one in the morning.”

  “I can get you a typewriter for tonight,” offered Skriva.

  “You can? How soon?”

  “By the eight-time hour.”

  “Is it in good condition?”

  “Yar, it’s practically new.”

  Mowry eyed him and said, “I suppose it’s no business of mine but I can’t help wondering what use a typewriter is to you.”

  “I can sell it. I sell all sorts of things.”

  “Things you just happened to find lying in your hands?”

  “That’s right,” agreed Skriva, unabashed.

  “Oh well, who am I to quibble? You get it. Meet me here at eight.”

  Skriva pushed off. When he’d gone from sight Mowry followed into the city. He had a feed, drove back to the marker. Soon afterward Skriva reappeared, gave him the type
-writer.

  Mowry said, “I want Gurd’s full name and those of his two companions. Somehow or other you’ll have to discover their prison numbers too. Can you do that?”

  “I’ve got them already.” Taking a slip of paper from his pocket, Skriva read them out while the other made a note of them.

  “Did you also learn at what times the Kaitempi make their calls to collect?”

  “Yar. Always between the three and four-time hours. Never earlier, rarely later.”

  “Can you find out about noon tomorrow whether Gurd and the others are still in the jail? We’ve got to know that—we’ll get ourselves in a fix if we arrive and demand prisoners who were taken away this afternoon.”

  “I can check on it tomorrow,” Skriva assured. Then his face tautened. “Are you planning to get them away tomorrow?”

  “We’ve got to do it sometime or not at all. The longer we leave it the bigger the risk of the Kaitempi beating us to the draw. What’s wrong with tomorrow, hi?”

  “Nothing except that I wasn’t counting on it being so soon.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought it’d take longer to work things. out.”

  “There’s little to work out,” declared Mowry. “We’ve swiped a requisition-form. We alter it and use it to demand release of three prisoners. Either we get away with it or we don’t. If we do, well and good. If we don’t, we shoot first and run fast.”

  “You make it sound too easy,” Skriva objected. “All we’ve got is this form. It isn’t enough—”

  “It won’t be enough, I can tell you that now. Chances are ten to one they’ll expect familiar faces and be surprised by strange ones. We’ll have to compensate for that somehow.”

  “How?”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll cope. Can you dig up a couple more helpers? All they need do is sit in the cars, keep their traps shut and look tough. I’ll pay them five thousand apiece just for that”

  “Five thousand each? I could recruit a regiment for that money. Yar, I can find two. But I don’t know how good they’d be in a fight.”

  “Doesn’t matter so long as they can look like plug-uglies. By that I don’t mean the Cafe Susun kind of roughneck, see? They’ve got to resemble Kaitempi agents.” He gave the other an imperative nudge. “The same applies to you. When it’s time to start the job I want to see all three of you clean and tidy, with well-pressed suits and neatly knotted neck-scarves. I want to see you looking as if about to attend a wedding. If you let me down in that respect the deal is off so far as I’m concerned.