The Men in the Jungle
Norman Spinrad
CHAPTER ONE
Bart Fraden sat loosely on the edge of the desk, a strange mixture of tension and repose, like a hunting cat at rest. What the hell, he thought, biting off another savory piece of pheasant leg, you can’t expect to ride the same gravy train forever.
He dropped the pheasant leg casually back onto the tooled silver tray which rested on the heavily waxed walnut desk top, picked up the half-fall bottle of chilled Rhine wine, and washed down the bit of fowl with a small swallow. The wine was good, it was damned good—and it had better be, considering that each bottle of the stuff set the Belt Free State back thirty Confedollars.
The pheasant, on the other hand, was kind of dry and overdone. But after all, Fraden thought indulgently, Ah Ming must be having a hard time concentrating on his cooking with the good old Belt Free State falling in around our ears.
Ah Ming, after all, as personal chef to the President of the B.F.S., had a nice little thing going here on Ceres, and, Fraden knew, strictly from outside observation, the average cat pretty much goes ape when the bird in his hand suddenly begins to take wing.
It was an attitude that Bart Fraden found utterly alien. After all, a cat with a given talent just had to stick his nose in the tar and sniff out the proper arena for his particular line of evil. When one flower runs dry on nectar, the bee goes on to the next A chef as good as Ah Ming could carve himself out a nice little niche anywhere from Earth to Antares, He could do something superlatively that most men couldn’t do at all. That, after all, was the only security any man, chef or politician, could ever really have.
Fraden reached across his desk and took a big Havana cigar out of the hand-carved ivory desk-humidor. He sniffed at it appreciatively for a moment, then stuck it in his mouth and lit it. He sucked rich smoke and stared for one wistful moment around the office—at the teak-paneled walls, the red wool wall-to-wall carpeting, the Picasso, the Calder, the Mallinstein, the wall bar stocked with the best booze, every drop of it imported all the way from Earth, the constant-humitemp closet filled with cases of cigars…
Quite a layout for the Asteroid Belt, This room alone must’ve cost something like ten thousand Belt Dollars. There was nothing like the Presidential. Dome this side of Mars—wood, food, cigars, whiskey… And every bit of it imported directly from Earth at enormous expense to the B.F.S. treasury. The first and last President of the Belt Free State lived in high style.
Fraden sighed wistfully, but the wistfulness did nothing to soften his hard, angular face, handsome in its own stark way. Fraden’s face was all flat planes, sharp angles, and hard shadows playing up his deep-set dark brown eyes and sharp though well-proportioned nose. With his hard, live face, his large-boned but wiry body, his thick crest of black hair, Fraden looked every inch the predator that he was.
Bart Fraden caught his own moment of wistfulness and forced a sharp, mocking laugh. “Hey, man,” he said aloud, perhaps trying to convince himself, “the Asteroid Belt ain’t the only catfish in the sea! Easy come, easy go!”
He turned to the communicator on the stand next to his desk. It was really time to make sure things were ready to go; in fact, it was about time to split, if only that damned Valdez would show up already. If the Confederal blockade kept him from getting through…
That was an eventuality that Bart Fraden did not care to consider. Things were bad enough as they were, without ringing in theoretical disasters. The so-called rebels—actually nothing more than regular troops of the newly organized Confederated States of Terra in drag—already held just about every rock in what had been the Belt Free State except the capital worldlet of Ceres and a few surrounding asteroids. Most important, they had already captured every last one of the Uranium Bodies, those chunks of nearly pure pitchblende which were the real reason for the so-called revolution in the first place. Sure, the official flack was that the Oppressed People of the Asteroids were rebelling against the despot Fraden so that they could join with their Terrestrial comrades in the newly formed C.S.T., et cetera, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. But the truth of course, as every microcephalic idiot in the solar system over the age of two knew, was that the new amalgam of the Atlantic Union, the Greater Soviet Union and Great China was feeling its collective cheerios and had decided that it was tired of paying Bart Fraden good hard cash for the Belt’s uranium and that grabbing the Belt for its very own would be cheaper in the long run. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Fraden pressed one of the large cluster of buttons and spoke into the communicator, “Ling? Fraden here. The starship, I trust, is loaded and ready? Good. Keep it primed for lift-off. Remember, Captain, my Swisstate bank has orders to transfer a hundred thousand Confedollars to your numbered account the moment we’re safely beyond Pluto. Spotted Valdez’s ship yet? Well, call me the moment you do. And transfer the cargo pronto, the moment he lands. Right. Out.”
Fraden sighed and puffed on his cigar for comfort. Anyway, he thought, no one can say that Bart Fraden can’t read the handwriting on the wall.
Said handwriting had been clearly visible to Bart Fraden for the better part of two years. The first letters had appeared when the G.S.U., the A.U., and Great China, scared witless by a near-miss at a three-way thermonuclear war over some trifle that was already an obscure footnote to history, had banded together in mutual terror to form the Confederated States of Terra. To anyone smart enough to come In out of the rain, the message was all too clear. With the system’s Big Boys at last banded together into one clutching cabal, the days of the system’s myriad little independent states—the Martian Commonwealth, the Jovian Hegemony, the Trans-Saturnian Dominion, the Belt Free State, and all the rest—were numbered. The only questions were who would be grabbed first and how soon.
Fortunately, the Confederation had been nice enough to tip its hand by doubling its purchases of uranium from the B.F.S. Clearly it was stockpiling the stuff, which meant that it expected the supply to be temporarily interrupted, which was a dead giveaway that the B.F.S. was first on its Christmas shopping list.
So even before the phony revolution started, Fraden had reached deep into his large Swisstate numbered bank account and bought himself a small but by no means cheap starship. Once a behemoth like the Confederation had eyes for the Belt, there was nothing to be done about it but to prepare an exit, an exit to the stars, where there were still scores of independent planets, at least one of which should have the proper revolutionary potential for a man who knew where it was at to knock over and set himself up a planetary government that would keep him in goodies for centuries, or at least for the rest of his life. With skill, and cunning, and a little insurance.
If only the damned blockade didn’t stop that insurance, all one hundred million Confedollars worth, from coming through.
Fraden shrugged. Might as well hear the latest disaster report, he thought Nothing else to do tiff Valdez shows.
“Have General Vanderling come to my office pronto,” he said into the communicator.
Willem Vanderling, a squat, bald bullet of a man, bustled through the corridor connecting the main Ceres Dome with Fraden’s self-contained little mansion, scowling and shaking his head.
The military situation was, to be conservative about it, hopeless. Ceres was already enclosed in all but the Plutoward direction, and it was only a matter of time before the Con-men completed the englobement. And not a hell of a lot of time at that, Vanderling thought. Bart’ll have to give up his cozy little nest in less than a standard day if he expects to get off with a whole skin. The thought gave Vanderling a certain grim satisfaction.
Thing was, Bart seemed more bugged at the way Ah Ming’s cooking had deteriorated than at the prospect of losing
the Belt Free State. The bastard always acted as if he had four aces hidden up his goddamned hand-tailored sleeve. Even now, with the B.F.S. being chewed to bits around him.
The hell of it was that Bart Fraden always did seem to end up pulling an ace or two out of his sleeve. The man was always five steps ahead of every political and economic bump in the road—even the ones that Vanderling didn’t feel when he went over ’em. Damn good thing Bart doesn’t know a lasecannon from a snipgun. If he knew as much as I do about running a war, I’d be out on my ear in the vacuum, Vanderling thought. This way, at least, neither of us knows word one about the other’s line of evil. No chance of a double cross either way—we need each other, we’re a team.
Fraden and Vanderling had risen from a mutual gutter to rule the Belt Free State together. Fraden had hit the Belt more or less fleeing Earth after his first and only term as governor of Great New York Province in the Atlantic Union, a term distinguished by a record for graft and corruption impressive even for that infamous den of political backscratching and bakering. Vanderling had been born in the Belt, of grandparents who had made the New Vortrek and was the leader of a nice-sized band of hijackers that stayed one step ahead of the New South African militia only by dint of his inborn tactical genius.
Apart, they were a small-time pirate and a has-been politician grubbing among the Asteroids, then ruled by the New Vortrekkers as New South Africa. But when they came together in the catalytic atmosphere of the fetid dictatorship that was New South Africa, they were suddenly transformed into a revolutionary force, and they had replaced New South Africa with their own Belt Free State In two intensive years of high-powered demagogy and low-key guerrilla warfare.
Of course, as Fraden had contended from the first, it was true that New South Africa was more than overripe for revolution. The Asteroids had been originally settled by Boer refugees from the Great African Pogrom who hoped to establish a new Boer state in the Asteroids, with their rumored mineral wealth. Two years after the founding of New South Africa, the Uranium Bodies were discovered, and the Great Uranium Rush began as thousands upon thousands of hopefuls from Earth’s poorer areas hocked their worldly goods to buy one-way passage to the Belt, confident of striking it rich.
But of course when they got there, the Geiger Guys found that the Boer government had staked out each and every Body for itself and that they were back on the bottom of the heap without a ladder. Since most of the flood of Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans had arrived stone broke, history repeated itself with a vengeance, and New South Africa became the new South Africa indeed, with a Boer oligarchy lording it over darker-skinned masses all over again.
In short, as Fraden had quickly convinced Vanderling, an ideal pushover for a good guerrilla leader and a smart politician who knew which end was up.
“Easy come, easy go,” Vanderling muttered to himself, trying to draw some reflected solace from Fraden’s easy indifference and not at all succeeding. Fleeing the Solar System for parts and planets unknown was not exactly Vanderling’s vision of the Good Life.
When Vanderling stormed through Fraden’s outer office and into the inner sanctum, unannounced as was his prerogative, he saw that Sophia O’Hara was sitting in the big chair, with Fraden leaning against the desk.
This is all I need to make my day complete, Vanderling thought sourly.
Sophia was a girl who had attached herself to Fraden somewhere near the end of the revolution. She was short, lithe, well-stacked, dark-skinned, fine-featured with deep green eyes; flaming red hair fell down to her shoulders, and she oozed sex appeal. Vanderling hated her guts, and the feeling was quite mutual.
Sophia smiled at him with sweet sarcasm and said, “Here’s our bullethead come to tell us, no doubt, that he’s saved the day, surrounded the Con-men, and we’ll all live happily ever after. You can tell by the cheery smile on his noble Neanderthal puss.”
Vanderling, as usual, totally ignored her. “It’s bad, Bart,” he said. “It’s very bad. They’re about twelve hours from completing the englobement, which means with luck we can hold Ceres for another thirty hours. Maybe. If we’re gonna get out at all, we damn well better get out now.”
“Cigar, Willem?” Fraden said, with an infuriating smile. Damn him, he enjoyed watching that chick of his bad-mouth people. But in spite of his irritation, Vanderling took a cigar from the proffered ivory humidor, lit it with Fraden’s gold table lighter, and inhaled the rich Havana smoke. Fraden’s taste in tobacco was as good as his taste in women was lousy. You had to give him that.
“How soon is ‘now’?” Fraden asked, lighting himself a fresh cigar.
“How long will it take to get the ship loaded and ready?” Vanderling said.
“Except for one small item, we could leave now,” Fraden said.
“Then I suggest that you and me and Little Miss Sunshine get aboard right now and get the hell out of here. Thirty hours is the optimistic figure, it might well be under a standard day. And once they’ve englobed Ceres a Martian sandflea couldn’t sneak past the blockade on his hands and knees.”
“We can’t leave yet,” Fraden insisted.
“What the hell’s the matter with you?” Vanderling snapped. “The ship’s loaded and ready to go, the Con-men are practically knocking on the door, and you can’t leave yet! What in blazes are you waiting for, a brass band to drum you out of the System playing ‘Hearts and Flowers’?”
“The small item we’re waiting for,” Fraden said, “is one of those big things that come in little packages. Valdez is running it through the blockade all the way from Earth, and I’m shelling out a hundred thousand Confedollars for the service. We’ve got to wait for it as long as we possibly can. It’s our insurance.”
Here it comes, Vanderling thought with a mixture of annoyance and admiration. “What kind of insurance?” he said dully.
“Use that naked head of yours,” Fraden said, “We board the ship and split the Solar System for some outback planet with no money, and the Confederation anxious for a little chat. So what happens then?”
“So you tell me, genius,” Vanderling said wearily.
“We’re grabbed and held for Confederal extradition, that’s what happens. No two-bit planetary government out there is about to play footsie with the Confederation for the sake of three paupers.”
“Paupers?” shouted Vanderling, “You flipped? We’ve got better than a hundred million Confedollars in the Swisstate account!”
“Which,” said Fraden, “anywhere outside the Solar System, we might as well use to line garbage cans. You’re forgetting that there’s no galactic monetary system. Each planet prints its own paper, and no other planet considers it money. That goes in spades for Confedollars. Only a few things are valuable everywhere—radioactives, manufactured stuff, Earthside gourmet food, tobacco, and booze. And we’d need a whole fleet of ships to carry a hundred million worth of any of ’em.”
“So?”
“So,” said Fraden, “I’ve used our little clandestine bank account to buy a hundred million Confedollars worth of commodities which are universally valuable, which do have small enough mass to be carried in the ship, and which will be worth ten times what they’re worth on Earth in the outback. That’s what Valdez’s ship is carrying, and that’s why we’ve got to take the chance and wait for it.”
Vanderling snorted. “And just what in the blue blazes is this—?” The buzz of the communicator cut him off. Fraden turned the volume up and Vanderling could hear a voice, that he recognized as that of Captain Ling, the officer in charge of the main port facilities.
“… Valdez is coming in now, but he’s being chased by three Confederal cruisers…”
“Well, cover him, man! Give him cover!” Fraden shouted. “Fifty thousand to every man on the gun crews if Valdez lands safely. And get that cargo transferred the moment he touches down.”
Already halfway to the door, Fraden said over his shoulder, “Come on! This is it! Whether he makes it or not, we leave imme
diately, one way or the other.”
With Sophia and Vanderling trailing behind him, Fraden burst through the safety lock and into the Port Control Dome. For a vertiginous moment, he had the sensation of standing under the naked stars—for the dome was clear plexsteel and the sharp bright stars of Ceres’ black sky were all around him, seemed close enough to touch…
But this was hardly the time to enjoy the view. As he half-ran to the control console in the center of the small dome, where Ling and several other officers were tracking the incoming ships on the screens, he noted that the four lasecannon turrets which bracketed the concrete-floored landing area outside the dome were already sweeping their deadly red beams in intricate patterns among the multicolored stars.
Reaching the control console, Fraden stared up along the beams, trying to spot the four moving points of light that were Valdez and the three blockade ships, among the unwinking stars of the Belt firmament.
“Over there, sir…” said Ling, a slight, balding half-oriental. He pointed low on the horizon, well below the angle of the lasecannon pattern, “We’re trying to get the beams between Valdez and the blockade ships. I think he’s gotten the idea; he’s dropping fast.”
Fraden sighted along Ling’s finger and saw a tiny dot of light dropping toward the jagged, and nearby Cerean horizon. Above it, three similar dots were following it down, but now the deadly red pencils of laser light interposed themselves above Valdez’s ship, a grid-work of red death between the Confederal ships and Valdez.
Valdez’s ship waxed as he watched it; now it was a clearly visible silver needle, streaking low, almost parallel to the jagged surface, headed straight for the landing field. Above, leery of the lasecannon at this range, the Confederal ships were veering off, giving up.
He’s making it! Fraden thought. By damn, he’s get it made! Valdez’s ship was over the field now, nosing up and settling to the concrete surface on a thick orange tail of retrorocket fire…
“Look! Look!” Vanderling suddenly shouted, grabbing his arm and pointing wildly with his free hand. “We’ve got one of the buggers!”
The Men in the Jungle Page 1