“Yes. After he’d wiped us out, he might even consider the idea of an invasion of Niflheim with captured contragravity ships,” Hideyoshi O’Leary chuckled. “That would be a big laugh—if any of us were alive, then, to do any laughing.”
“You don’t really believe that, general?” Keaveney asked. His tone was still derisive, but under the derision was uncertainty. After all, von Schlichten had been on Uller for fifteen years, to his two.
“Any question of geek psychology is wide open as far as I’m concerned; the longer I stay here, the less I understand it.” Von Schlichten finished his brandy and got out cigarette-case and lighter. “I have an idea of the sort of garbled reports these spies of his who spend a year on Niflheim as laborers bring back.”
“You know the line Rakkeed’s been taking, of course,” Colonel Cheng-Li put in. “He as much as says that Niflheim’s our home, and that the farms where we raise food here, and those evergreen plantings on Konk Isthmus and between here and Grank are the beginning of an attempt to drive all native life from this planet and make it over for ourselves.”
“And that savage didn’t think an idea like that up for himself; he got it from somebody like Orgzild,” the black-bearded brigadier-general added. “You know, the main base off Niflheim is practically self-supporting, with hydroponic-gardens and animal-tissue culture vats. And it’s enough bigger than one of the City ships to pass for a little world. Yes, somebody like Orgzild, or King Firkked here, could easily pick up the idea that that’s our home planet.”
“But King Kankad was talking about.…” Paula Quinton began.
“We were speaking of geeks, not Kragans.” Von Schlichten lit his cigarette and held his lighter for hers. “You saw that big Beta Hydrae orrery at Kankad’s observatory. Well, there’s quite a little story about that. You know, it’s generally realized by the natives here that Uller is a globe. The North Zirks have ridden all the way around it, on hipposaur-back, in the high latitudes, and the thalassic peoples at the Equator have sailed all the five equatorial seas and portaged all the isthmuses between. But, of course, Uller is the center of the universe; the sun travels around it, on a rather complicated double-spiral track. As a theory, it explains most of what they’re able to observe, and any minor effects that don’t conform to it are just ignored. They have a model, a most ingenious affair run by clockwork, at the University of Konkrook, to show the apparent movement and position of Beta Hydrae in the sky; it does so fairly accurately.
“Well, some of our astronomers constructed this orrery, and exhibited it to a gathering of the leading native scholars, who are also the high-priests of the local religion. Sort of combined Academy of Arts and Sciences and College of Cardinals. They almost were massacred. As soon as the assembled pundits saw this thing and grasped its meaning, they began geeking and skreeking and yorking and squawking and brandishing knives—it was blasphemous, and sacrilegious, and undermined the Faith, and invalidated the whole logic-system.
“I was brigadier-general, in command of Konkrook military district, then—the post Them M’zangwe has now. When I got a riot-call from the University, I hustled around with a company of Kragans, and we cleared the hall with the bayonet and ran the reverend professors out onto the campus, and after we got things in hand, the Kragans crowded around the orrery, trying to set it up to show the existing position of the planet relative to the primary and figure out the theory back of it. They were very much interested; some of them must have sent word home about it, because Kankad came in on the next ship, wanting to see it. He was so much taken with it that Sid Harrington gave it to him. It’s one of his most cherished possessions, but the Konkrook pundits bite all four thumbs and wave their fingers every time they think of it.” He warmed his coffee from a controlled-temperature pot. “You can’t use Kragan thinking on any subject as a criterion of what somebody like Orgzild’s opinions will be.”
“I never could understand the admiration some of you military people have for those cutthroats,” Keaveney declared. “Oh, yes, I can. You like them because they do your dirty work for you.”
“He reads Stanley-Browne, too, I’ll bet,” Hideyoshi O’Leary said. “Miss Quinton, how did you like your visit to Kankad’s Town? Still think the Kragans are cultural mongrels?”
“Why, they’re wonderful! I never expected anything like it. They just seem to have picked up everything they could from us, and then gone on from there to develop a culture of their own with our techniques. For instance, those big guns, the ones they call the Ridge Battery, that they built for themselves. They aren’t copies of Terran guns. They don’t look like our work, or give you the feel our work would. And that telescope at the observatory,” she continued. “Did they build that, too?”
“Yes, all we furnished was a couple of textbooks on lens-grinding and telescope-design, and a book on optics. You see, when we made that deal with them, they realized that we weren’t any better fighters than they were; we just had better weapons. To have the same kind of weapons, they’d have to learn to make them, and once they began studying technology, they found that they had to study science. Weapon-making was the entering-wedge; after that, they found that they could use the same skills to make anything else they wanted. Give them another century or so and they’ll be one of the great races of the galaxy.”
“Yes, and it’s a good thing they’re our friends, too,” Mordkovitz added. “I’m only sorry there are so few of them, and so many of the geeks.”
“Yes, the Company ought to let us stockpile nuclear weapons here, just to be on the safe side,” another officer, farther down the table, said.
“Well, I’m not exactly in favor of that,” von Schlichten replied. “It’s the same principle as not allowing guards who have to go in among the convicts to carry firearms. If somebody like Orgzild got hold of a nuclear bomb, even a little old First-Century H-bomb, he could use it for a model and construct a hundred like it, with all the plutonium we’ve been handing out for power reactors. And there are too few of us, and we’re concentrated in too few places, to last long if that happened. What this planet needs, though, is a visit by a fifty-odd-ship task-force of the Space Navy, just to show the geeks what we have back of us. After a show like that, there’d be a lot less znidd suddabit around here.”
“General, I deplore that sort of talk,” Keaveney said. “I hear too much of this mailed-fist-and-rattling-saber stuff from some of the junior officers here, without your giving countenance and encouragement to it. We’re here to earn dividends for the stockholders of the Uller Company, and we can only do that by gaining the friendship, respect and confidence of the natives.…”
“Mr. Keaveney,” Paula Quinton spoke up. “I doubt if even you would seriously accuse the Extraterrestrials’ Rights Association of favoring what you call a mailed-fist-and-rattling-saber policy. We’ve done everything in our power to help these people, and if anybody should have their friendship, we should. Well, only five days ago, in Konkrook, Mr. Mohammed Ferriera and I were attacked by a mob, our native aircar driver was murdered, and if it hadn’t been for General von Schlichten and his soldiers, we’d have lost our own lives. Mr. Ferriera is still hospitalized as a result of injuries he received. It seems that General von Schlichten and his Kragans aren’t trying to get friendship and confidence; they’re willing to settle for respect, in the only way they can get it—by hitting harder and quicker than the geeks can.”
Somebody down the table—one of the military, of course—said, “Hear, hear!” Von Schlichten came as close as a man wearing a monocle can to winking at Paula. Good girl, he thought; she’s started playing on the Army team!
“Well, of course.…” Keaveney began. Then he stopped, as a Terran sergeant came up to the table and bent over Barney Mordkovitz’ shoulder, whispering urgently. The black-bearded brigadier rose immediately, taking his belt from the back of his chair and putting it on. Motioning the sergeant to accompany him, he spoke briefly to Keaveney and then came around the table to where von Schlic
hten sat, the Resident-Agent accompanying him.
“Message just came in from Konkrook, general,” he said softly. “Sid Harrington’s dead.”
It took von Schlichten all of a second to grasp what had been said. “Good God! When? How?”
“Here’s all we know, sir,” the sergeant said, giving him a radioprint slip. “Came in ten minutes ago.”
It was an all-station priority telecast. Governor-General Harrington had died suddenly, in his room, at 2210; there were no details. He glanced at his watch; it was 2243. Konkrook and Skilk were in the same time-zone; that was fast work. He handed the slip to Mordkovitz, who gave it to Keaveney.
“You from the telecast station, sergeant?” he asked. “All right, let’s go.”
“Wait a minute, general.” Keaveney put out a hand to detain him as he took his belt and put it on. “How about this?” He gestured nervously with the radioprint slip.
“Get up and make an announcement, now,” von Schlichten told him, fastening the buckle and hitching his pistol and survival-kit into place. “It’ll be out all over the planet in half an hour. Never hold news out unnecessarily.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Come on, sergeant.”
As he hurried from the banquet-room, he could hear Keaveney tapping on his wine-glass.
“Everybody, please! Let me have your attention! There has just come in a piece of the most tragic news.…”
ULLER UPRISING (1952) — Part 2
VII.
Bismillah! How Dumb Can We Get?
The lights had come on inside the semicircular and now open storm-porch of Company House, but it was still daylight outside. The sky above the mountain to the west was fading from crimson to burnt-orange, and a couple of the brighter stars were winking into visibility. Von Schlichten and the sergeant hurried a hundred yards down the street between low, thick-walled office buildings to the telecast station, next to the Administration Building.
A woman captain met him just inside the door of the big soundproofed room.
“We have a wavelength open to Konkrook, general,” she said. “In booth three.”
He nodded. “Thank you, captain.… We’ve all lost a true friend, haven’t we?”
Another girl, a tech-sergeant, was in the booth; on the screen was the image of a third young woman, a lieutenant, at Konkrook station. The sergeant rose and started to leave the booth.
“Stick around, sergeant,” von Schlichten told her. “I’ll want you to take over when I’m through.” He sat down in front of the combination visiscreen and pickup. “Now, lieutenant, just what happened?” he asked. “How did he die?”
“We think it was poison, general. General M’zangwe has ordered autopsy and chemical analysis. If you can wait about ten minutes, he’ll be able to talk to you, himself.”
“Call him. In the meantime, give me everything you know.”
“Well, the governor decided to go to bed early; he was going hunting in the morning. I suppose you know his usual routine?”
Von Schlichten nodded. Harrington would have taken a shower, put on his dressing-gown, and then sat down at his desk, lighted his pipe, poured a drink of Terran bourbon, and begun to write his diary.
“Well, at 2210, give or take a couple of minutes, the Kragan guard-sergeant on that floor heard ten pistol-shots, as fast as they could be fired semi-auto, in the governor’s room. The door was locked, but he shot it off with his own pistol and went in. He found Governor Harrington on the floor, wearing only his gown, holding an empty pistol. He was in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, in horrible pain. Evidently he’d fired his pistol, which he kept on his desk, to call help; all the bullets had gone into the ceiling. The sergeant punched the emergency button, beside the bed, and reported, then tried to help the governor, but it was too late. One of the medics got there in five minutes, just as he was dying. He’d written his diary up to noon of today, and broken off in the middle of a word. There was a bottle and an overturned glass on his desk. The Constabulary got there a few minutes later, and then Brigadier-General M’zangwe took charge. A white rat, given fifteen drops from the whiskey-bottle, died with the same symptoms in about ninety seconds.”
“Who had access to the whiskey-bottle?”
“A geek servant, who takes care of the room. He was caught, an hour earlier, trying to slip off the island without a pass; they were holding him at the guardhouse when Governor Harrington died. He’s now being questioned by the Kragans.” The girl’s face was bleakly remorseless. “I hope they do plenty to him!”
“I hope they don’t kill him before he talks.”
“Wait a moment, general; we have General M’zangwe, now,” the girl said. “I’ll switch you over.”
The screen broke into a kaleidoscopic jumble of color, then cleared; the chocolate-brown face of Themistocles M’zangwe was looking out of it.
“I heard what happened, how they found him, and about that geek chamber-valet being arrested,” von Schlichten said. “Did you get anything out of him?”
“He’s admitted putting poison in the bottle, but he claims it was his own idea. But he’s one of Father Keeluk’s parishioners, so.…”
“Keeluk! God damn, so that was it!” von Schlichten almost shouted. “Now I know what he wanted with Stalin, and that goat, and those rabbits!”
Five thousand miles away, in Konkrook, Themistocles M’zangwe whistled.
“Bismillah! How dumb can we get?” he cried. “Of course they’d need terrestrial animals, to find out what would poison a Terran! Wait a minute; I’ll make a note of that, to spring on this geek, if the Kragans haven’t finished him by now.” Von Schlichten watched M’zangwe pick up a stenophone and whisper into it for a moment. “All right, Carlos, what else?”
“Has Eric been notified?”
“We called Keegark, but he’s in audience with King Orgzild, and we can’t reach him.”
“Well, who’s in charge at Konkrook, now?”
“Not much of anybody. Laviola, the Fiscal Secretary, and Hans Meyerstein, the Banking Cartel’s lawyer, and Howlett, the Personnel Chief, and Buhrmann, the Commercial Secretary, have made up a sort of quadrumvirate and are trying to run things. I don’t know what would happen if anything came up suddenly.…” A blue-gray uniformed arm, with a major’s cuff-braid, came into the screen, handing a slip of paper to M’zangwe; he took it, glanced at it, and swore. Von Schlichten waited until he had read it through.
“Well, something has, all right,” the African said. “We just got a call from Jaikark’s Palace—a revolt’s broken out, presumably headed by Gurgurk; Household Guards either mutinied or wiped out by the mutineers, all but those twenty Kragan Rifles we loaned Jaikark. They, and about a dozen of Jaikark’s courtiers and their personal retainers, are holding the approaches to the King’s apartments. The native-lieutenant in charge of the Kragans just radioed in; says the situation is desperate.”
“When a Kragan says that, he means damn near hopeless. Is this being recorded?” When M’zangwe nodded, he continued: “All right. Use the recording for your authority and take charge. I’m declaring martial rule at Konkrook, as of now, 2253. Tell Eric Blount what’s happened, and what you’ve done, as soon as you can get in touch with him. I’m leaving for Konkrook at once; I ought to get in by 0800.
“Now, as to the trouble at the Palace. Don’t commit more than one company of Kragans and ten airjeeps and four combat-cars, and tell them to evacuate Jaikark and his followers and our Kragans to Gongonk Island. And alert your whole force. These geek palace revolutions are always synchronized with street-rioting, and this thing seems to have been synchronized with Sid Harrington’s death, too. Get our Kragans out if you can’t save anybody else from the Palace, but sacrificing thirty or forty men to save twenty is no kind of business. And keep sending reports; I can pick them up on my car radio as I come down.” He turned to the girl sergeant. “Keep on this; there’ll be more coming in.”
He rose and left the booth. If we can pull Jaikark’s bacon off the fire, h
e was thinking, the Company can dictate its own terms to him afterward; if Jaikark’s killed, we’ll have Gurgurk’s head off for it, and then take over Konkrook. In either case, it’ll be a long step toward getting rid of all these geek despots. And with Eric Blount as Governor-General.…
The girl captain in charge of the station met him as he came out.
“Poison,” he told her. “A geek servant did the job, on orders from Gurgurk and possibly Rakkeed. Gurgurk’s started a putsch against King Jaikark; I’m going to Konkrook at once. Call the military airport and have my command-car brought to Company House.”
Harry Quong and Hassan Bogdanoff had been at the banquet, too; on a world of lizard-faced silicate-eaters, the social difference between a human general and a human aircar-driver was almost infinitesimal. He’d have to talk to Barney Mordkovitz, too; when word of events at Konkrook got out among the local geeks, as it probably had already.…
The inner door of the soundproofed telecast-room burst open, three men hurried inside, and it slammed shut behind them. In the brief interval, there had been firing audible from outside. One of the men had a pistol in his right hand, and with his left arm he supported a companion, whose shoulder was mangled and dripped blood. The third man had a burp-gun in his hands. All were in civilian dress-shorts and light jackets. The man with the pistol holstered it and helped his injured companion into a chair. The burp-gunner advanced into the room, looked around, saw von Schlichten, and addressed him.
“General! The geeks turned on us!” he cried. “The Tenth North Uller’s mutinied; they’re running wild all over the place. They’ve taken their barracks and supply-buildings, and the lorry-hangars and the maintenance-yard; they’re headed this way in a mob. Some of the Zirk Cavalry’s joined them.”
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