by John Brunner
He could so easily have let slip without realizing some information that would put the Pags on the same track!
And yet, of course, the knowledge he now had was also a distinct disadvantage. He had always discounted the Pags’ extreme claims about the origins of Waystation, and had welcomed the nonconformist reactions of the rare scholars like Usri who seemed to be genuinely anxious to free themselves from prejudice and begin a scientific study of the subject. Now, of course, it was dismaying to know that this same trend among the Pags which he had welcomed might lead to his own people losing a valuable lead over their rivals.
He disliked Ferenc’s brand of aggressive nationalism, but he regarded himself as thoroughly patriotic—as witness his strong reaction to Vykor’s accusations of injustices by Cathrodynes on Majkosi. He found himself now tom between his patriotism and his scientific interests—and with the conflict he had grown tense and irritable.
“What in space has got into you, Ligmer?” snapped Usri, slapping down a sheaf of papers on the table at which they sat—in the City, as usual, since it was impossible for Usri to enter Cathrodyne territory or for Ligmer to visit her in Pag domains. The tourist circuit provided the only neutral place where they could meet and argue.
Feeling anger well up inside him, and welcoming it as a relief to an intolerable strain, Ligmer snapped back, “What do you mean, what’s got into me? You seem to have a fit of real obstinacy today!”
“Of all the—I Look, I’m only trying to clear away prejudice from this problem, and bring proper scientific detachment to bear on it. I say what any fool could see with one eye and half a brain—that we must assume the Glaithes are hiding facts about the structure of the station from us! And the only way we can get at them is indirectly. Much more obstruction from you on the matter, and I’ll be driven to conclude that when Raige turned down our application to use the memory banks she did it because you’d told her to!”
“Rubbish!" retorted Ligmer. “Gas clouds! You heard yourself why she refused, and I’m as annoyed about it as you are.”
“Well, then, stop acting as though it was my fault the application was refused!”
They stared at each other bitterly. But neither of them said anything further for some moments. In the interval of silence, a figure came from between the thick clumps of bushes flanking the paths through the park, and stepped into their I'learing. It was Ferenc; he seemed tense.
“Ah, Ligmer!” he said with obvious relief. “Good, I’m glad I managed to find you. ‘Day, Usri. Do you mind if I have a
word with Ligmer on his own?” It obviously cost Ferenc a lot to make the request a polite one.
“Frankly,” said Usri in a disgusted voice, rattling together the documents she had before her and reaching to pick up the file in which she carried them around, “frankly, I don’t give a yard of a comet’s tail if I never see the face of him again. Go ahead!”
Ferenc frowned, and gave Ligmer a reproving glare. "Something’s upset you,” he said to Usri.
The Pag gave a short laugh. “Nothing more than I should have expected,” she said cuttingly. “It was too good to hope that a Cathrodyne should keep his head clear of preconceptions for more than a day or two at a time.”
“Now see here—” began Ligmer. Ferenc gave him a scowl this time, took a deep breath, and went on placatingly.
“I resent that, Usri . . . but maybe you’d better tell me what it was about.”
“What’s the good?” Usri answered, and then gave in, putting her documents back on the table. “Oh, all right, I guess it might conceivably help. The trouble’s easy enough to explain. It’s—”
There was laughter and the sound of heavy footfalls among the bushes, and loud contralto voices raised with Pag accents. Usri stopped short; Ferenc swung round to look in the direction from which the noise came, and he heard Ligmer give a gasp that verged on a groan. His own heart sank.
Two brawny Pags were emerging into the clearing. They both wore casual clothing similar to Usri’s, but one of them had her head shaved, revealing that she was of military caste. It was the arrival of this one that so dismayed him—for it was the same Pag officer whom he had quarreled with during his trip out here. She must be working off a few days of her accumulated leave at Waystation.
She came into the clearing arm-in-arm with her companion; in her free hand she held a large mug of fuming liquor, and a small moustache of the purple froth on top of it disfigured her upper lip.
"Well, well, well!” she said, and a smile curled back the purple moustache over her sinister filed teeth. She shook her
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arm free from her companion, looking Ferenc slowly up and down and shaking her head.
Covertly, Ligmer turned aside his knees under the table, so that if necessary he could get up in a hurry.
At length the Pag officer finished her contemptuous survey, and glanced at Usri. “Is this big-mouthed Cathrodyne bothering you, dearie?” she asked.
“No, Officer Toehr,” was the answer. “For one of them, he’s passably tolerable.”
“You don’t say,” Toehr commented musingly. “You don’t say! Well, that’s a far cry from the way he was acting on the trip out here—isn’t it?” she finished with sudden venom, stabbing a fist through the air toward Ferenc’s face with one finger extended accusingly.
Reflexively, Ferenc took a step backwards, and Toehr gave a sarcastic chuckle. “So that’s the size of it! You’re tough enough when you’re aboard one of your own poky little ships—but when you’re off your own ground you tremble at shadows!”
She turned to face Usri, so suddenly that some of the liquor splashed over and trickled slowly down the side of her mug. Drops of purple went on detaching themselves from the bottom for some moments afterwards, making little blots of color on the ground and fading away like jellyfish melting in hot sunlight.
“You should have heard this blowhard during the trip!” she said. “To listen to him, you’d have said he thought Pags weren’t fit to share the same universe with him, let alone a comer of it like the Arm! He’s climbed down since then, has he?”
Usri stared at Ferenc. “Are you sure you’re talking about the same person?” she demanded of Toehr.
"Changed his tune that much, has he?” Toehr grinned savagely. “No, dearie, it’s definitely the same man. He said he’d like to do something to me that you wouldn’t forget in a hurry—and nor have I forgotten it. How about you, loudmouth?” she barked suddenly at Ferenc. “You’ve forgotten it, sounds like!”
Ferenc licked his lips. “I don’t remember what it was that you said,” he retorted. “I never knew a Pag to have anything
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to say worth remembering. But I recall what I said, and if you want me to repeat it now, you can hear it again.”
For a moment the Pag officer stood frozen with astonishment. Then she gave a yell of pure rage and hurled the mug she held directly at Ferenc’s face, following it herself in a whirlwind of fists and feet.
Ferenc managed to avoid the mug itself; such was the force with which Toehr had thrown it that it would at least have broken his nose and might have knocked out his front teeth. But the spray of liquor from it sowed a purple stain across his face, some running into his eyes and making them fill with tears. At first, then, he could only strike out blindly at the savage fury who had attacked him.
Ligmer started to his feet, and felt a grip like a vice close on his arm. He glanced down, trying to pull free, and met Usri’s granite eyes.
"No,” she said meaningly, and shook her head once.
Toehr’s companion, who had said nothing since coming into the clearing, took her eyes off the developing struggle long enough to give Usri an approving nod, and then yelled an encouragement to her friend, who had succeeded in getting a lock on Ferenc’s right arm and was attempting to dislocate it with her knees braced against her opponent’s back.
Ferenc’s face was covered with a mixture of liquor, sweat, tears from his swolle
n eyes and dust from the ground. He looked like a primitive warrior with his warpaint on, and was trying to behave like one. He struggled to free his arm, failed, and brought his free hand round to catch at Toehr’s feet.
His jaw muscles knotting with pain and effort, he secured a grip on one of Toehr’s big toes and jerked it sharply sideways.
The pain startled Toehr into releasing her grip for an instant, and Ferenc seized his chance to roll free and scramble to his feet. Panting, Toehr copied him, and they stood half- crouched, facing each other from a distance of a few paces, each debating between attacking or waiting for an attack.
“All right—stop it there.”
The cool voice scythed through the clearing, and their eyes switched to see where it had come from. In the mouth of each of the paths leading into the clearing stood Glaithe men-at-arms, coming no higher than Toehr s elbow but armed with paralysis guns which they kept alertly swinging from one to another of the group before them. They numbered at least a dozen altogether.
Their leader strode forward and gave the two combatants a glare. “Officer Indie,” he said, jerking his thumb at his own chest. “What’s it about this time?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” said Toehr, looking as though she would dearly like to pick him up and throw him away among the bushes. She could have done it with one hand.
“It’s a matter of honor, something you Glaithes aren’t acquainted with.”
“We have better ways of looking after our honor than by scrapping on the ground like animals,” Indie retorted. “All right—you've got one minute to leave the tourist circuit and return to your own sections. Both of you! Fast!”
“Like hell I will,” said Ferenc. “I should be thrown out of neutral territory because a Pag with more muscles than sense chooses to throw a mug of liquor at me—”
Toehr’s face contorted in a snarl, and she hurled herself at him again. Indie gestured, and there was the soft plop of a paralysis gun.
The tiny capsule of drugs which it released was a potent weapon; Ferenc had barely adopted a stance to defend himself before Toehr had thrown up her arms and fallen headlong, in a total stupor.
“Right; that’ll do,” said Indie. “Were you with her?” he added, turning to Toehr’s companion, who nodded. “Okay, you can get her back to her own section.”
“I’m going too,” said Usri, standing up. “This whole business revolts me. I’ll give you a hand,” she added, and bent to grab Toehr’s legs.
“If you’re involved in another case of this kind,” Indie said to Ferenc, “you get put under paralysis and shoved straight aboard one of your own ships. And you won’t be allowed back on Waystation. Clear?” He swung round to Usri. “And the same goes for that hellion you’re dragging away; tell her when she wakes up!”
He gathered his men-at-arms with a gesture and walked away into the bushes, leaving Ferenc staring after him with a sour expression and rubbing the arm Toehr had almost tom away from his shoulder.
“Are you all right?” Ligmer asked inanely. “I tried to give you a hand, but Usri held me back and I couldn’t break loose.”
“Oh, you’d have been more of J. hindrance than a help,” said Ferenc shortly. “I wish that Glaithe hadn’t butted in— I’ve been itching to paste that Pag since before I arrived. Hell ... no matter. At least she’s more likely to steer clear of me from now on.”
He wiped the dirt from his face with a kerchief from his belt pouch, and looked at Ligmer. “Now that’s over, maybe I can tell you what I came here to say. They found Lang. He’s in our section now, under restraint, and because you said he seemed to know more than he should about the origins of Waystation Temmis ordered me to get you to help with the interrogation. Come on, pick up those papers and move.”
XVII
After he and Raige had separated—Raige hurrying back to the Glaithe administrative section to consult with her colleagues and settle what was to be done about the Cathrodynes’ arrogant seizing of Lang—Vykor returned slowly to his own Majko section.
And discovered chaos.
His first intimation came as he headed down the long corridor that led into the section from the entrance to Chute Number Silver—currently that chute was providing the shortest cut to the Majko section from the tourist circuit.
There was blood on the floor of the passage.
It had been partly hidden with a handful of dust, so that his feet were slipping in it before he realized that it was wet.
He dropped to one knee and touched it; the tip of his finger was red when he lifted it up.
Uncertainly, he looked about him. There was neither sound nor movement in the corridor. He stood up and went forward again.
The slightest hiss of plastic on metal alerted him as he passed one of the doors set in the bulkhead on either side; he had time to utter a choking gasp, but not to look round, as he felt a hood thrust over his head and his arms pinioned to his sides. A horrible sinking sensation overcame him as he recognized the technique the Cathrodynes had used to capture Lang. Had they decided to take him, Vykor, as well, to make him repent his hasty words at leisure?
“All right, he’s one of ours—turn him loose.”
The familiar voice of Larwik, uttering these words, brought a gush of relief, and he felt the hood being raised from his face. Larwik was standing before him, his face serious, his attitude taut and expectant.
“While you’ve been mucking around the Caves amusing yourself, we’ve been having trouble down here,” he said acidly.
“What?” said Vykor confusedly, and then lifted his finger so that the redness on its tip pointed toward Larwik.
“That’s right. Violent trouble,” said the other shortly.
Vykor glanced around to see who else was present; a girl with a determined look stood at his right, holding the hood she had taken off his head, and a man whom Vykor knew by sight but not by name was on his left.
“What happened?”
The girl spoke up. “Some Cathrodynes walked into our section and started putting their noses where they weren’t welcome. We thought they were looking for Larwik, or someone in touch with the dreamweed trade—”
“They were looking for Lang,” interrupted Vykor. “What’s more, they found him, just a few minutes back, near the Caves.”
“We heard that later. It’s immaterial,” snapped Larwik. “What mattered was that they came walking into our section as though they owned Waystation and us too, and refused to get the hell out when they were told to. So we threw them
out, and one of them got pretty badly hurt in the process. That’s his blood you have on your hand.”
“We’ve been waiting for them to come back,” said the girl. “That’s why we slapped the hood over your head—in case you were either a Cathrodyne or one of the Glaithe staff coming to interfere.”
“Well, it wasn’t!” said the man Vykor knew only by sight. “And it hasn’t been for a hell of a long time, either! I say we oughtn’t to skulk around here waiting for them meekly; we ought to set the record straight and walk into the Cathro- dyne section. Then we’ll see how they like having their privacy messed about with.”
Larwik checked the time, glancing at a wall chronometer. “It’s a hell of a time since they left,” he agreed. He held a short length of metal bar in his right hand; he was slapping it meditatively into the palm of his left as he stood reflecting the matter.
“All right,” he said at length, and dropped his arms to his sides. “I’d like to waggle this little stick of mine under the nose of that overweening fool, Temmis. But we can’t just go in a group of half a dozen or so. Vykor! Go through A Quarter of the section and rout out everyone who can walk. I’ll get them out of B Quarter—you others take C and D, and drag in anyone you come across in the public sections. And don’t be slow about it, either.”
Sudden happiness filled Vykor as he moved through the station in company with the assembled band of Majkos. To be walking together with others of his own people, bo
und on a single united mission, was tremendously inspiriting. They walked with a swagger all of a sudden, moving as though they felt—and did not merely claim—that they were the equal of anyone else, their Cathrodyne masters included. Daringly, someone started to chant a song which had not been sung in public on Majkosi since before the great Cathrodyne armadas dropped from the sky and disgorged the armies which had made aliens rulers of their home planet.
They passed through the tourist circuit as the most direct path between their own section and that of the Cathrodynes. As they strode through the City, Majkos working as waiters in the cafes, gigolos on the dancing floors, entertainers in the cabarets, called out, “Where are you going?”
“Come with us!” was the answer they received. They hesitated—but they came, so that by the time the party reached the entrance of the Cathrodyne section it was more than two hundred strong.
Normally, there would have been guards at the head of the chute leading from the tourist circuit into Cathrodyne territory. There was no one, and when Larwik and Vykor, at the head of the improvised army, came out into the corridors they found a peculiar, unprecedented silence.
Cautiously, to begin with, then with increasing confidence they progressed into the section. At length they were boldly flinging back doors and looking into cabins that proved to be empty, or used for storage. There was no sign of the residents.
“They must have heard we were coming!" yelled someone, and gave a hoarse laugh of relief. Hearing it, Vykor realized just how deep was the fear that had been masked by the sense of comradeship the advance of the party had inspired.
“Don’t relax your vigilance!” Larwik called back. “It may still be a trap!”
He threw open another door, and jumped back in case someone was waiting beyond. Nothing happened. He stepped circumspectly inside, and gave a startled exclamation.
Vykor followed him in. Sitting half sprawled across a desk, there was a Cathrodyne officer sunk in a complete stupor, which had overtaken him so swiftly that a stylus he had been using to write a report had traced a curved line from the tail of the last word he had written to the point where his hand now lay limp.