by Chris Bunch
Cumbrian spy network?
Of course Kerman, and Yoshitaro assumed everyone else in the household, was reporting to Celidon and then Redruth. No matter. He didn’t talk in his sleep, nor did he carry anything that’d give his mission away, except those four com chips he still had hidden.
He was in the middle of investigating the kitchens and bar areas when Kerman came to him again.
“Leiter Yohns, some possible candidates for your private quarters have arrived, and wish to know if you’d be interested in interviewing them.”
“Private quarters?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How’re these people different from you, or the maids, cooks, bakers, and laundry people I’ve already got?”
“If you’d care to accompany me, sir?”
There were half a dozen women, two blondes, two brunettes, two redheads. All were most attractive, seemed intelligent, and very interested in him. Yoshitaro took Kerman aside.
“I think I’ve got it. These women are applying for the job of my bed partner?”
“But of course, sir. We use the term companion. There are also men who serve similar functions, if you wish.”
Yoshitaro said he wasn’t interested in boys this week, then called one woman out of the room, a sultry-eyed brunette named Brythe.
“You want to become my … companion?”
“But of course.”
“Why?”
Brythe blinked. “Because that’s what I’ve been trained for.”
“What pressure, sorry, what encouragement did they put on you to become what you are?”
“Pressure, sir? I worked very hard in my training to be selected as a potential companion for someone of high rank, as did the other women in there.” She smiled. “I must say, sir, that I think I’ve got particular talents they might not have.”
“If I choose you, what happens?”
“Whatever you wish, whenever you wish.”
“No, I meant, what benefits do you get?”
“Well, I’d be permitted to live here, if you wished, which is much nicer than my own place, which is only a couple of rooms. Or I can merely come when you wish whatever services you want from me. Of course I get an increase in my living and clothing allowances. I’ll be able to shop in special stores, which are only open for high-ranking members of the government and their immediate staffs, and when I go to the stadiums sit in special sections. My parents also would be raised in status.”
“Um.” Yoshitaro had an idea. “Brythe, what would happen if I chose more than one of you?”
“Why, you’d be no more than a normal man. And, to be frank,” and she licked her lips, “some of the … pressure, to use your word, might be taken off me.”
Yoshitaro covered his reaction. Redruth’s regime programmed the citizens in more than one way.
“Very well. Come with me.”
He went back into the room, pointed to two blondes, a redhead.
“You three, and you, Brythe, can stay, if you choose. As for the rest of you, thanks for letting me meet you.”
The other two didn’t seem disappointed, but twittered about how gracious and noble the Leiter was, and perhaps they’d meet at another time, and were gone.
“Is there anyone else that’s going to get added to my retinue?” Yoshitaro asked Kerman.
“Only your personal bodyguards, sir.”
“Good. I’ll let you choose them. Get me big hulks. Male. Quiet ones. They ought to have military experience, and it wouldn’t hurt for them to be missing an ear or maybe be scalped.”
“Sir?” Kerman sounded shocked.
“I want any social misfit who’s thinking of harming me to know I’m well guarded,” Yoshitaro said. “Guys with scars are a good advertisement.”
“Yes, sir. I understand, sir.”
Yoshitaro yawned obviously. “Now, I think I’d like to … evaluate … my chambers. I assume the four women I chose will have their own bedrooms?”
“They will, sir, although not until I relocate two of the maids. The Leiters I’ve served normally only require one, sometimes two, companions.”
“Show them to their quarters, then ask Brythe and … what’s the redhead’s name?”
“Pyder, sir.”
“Ask them if they wish to come visiting.”
“As you wish, sir.”
If he played the part of a sex-besotted fool, Yoshitaro might be taken less seriously by Celidon and Redruth. Njangu hoped he was a clever devil, and not rationalizing being a drooling lech.
• • •
The next morning, feeling strangely refreshed, he met his bodyguards, who were just as big, silent, and nasty as he’d ordered, and hopefully as dumb as he wanted. He asked about their training, found out they were both rough-and-tumble experts, no more. Or so they claimed.
One said they’d be more than willing to help Njangu add to his security element. Yoshitaro said he thought he’d already taken care of that.
“Most Leiters,” the man said, “think it’s important to have other men and women … generally picked from the military … who can take care of the small things we won’t have time for. Also, in uniform, they make a better display to the populace.”
“What are the little things?” Njangu asked.
“Checking engine drives for bombs, clearing the way for your entrance at social events, generally ensuring that people you encounter are aware of your importance.”
“I’ll wait to make sure I get the right personnel,” Njangu lied, thinking it was going to be hard enough being a spy on this unknown world without carrying a full entourage around. He’d do with what he had.
With his personal requirements taken care of, it was time to get to work, both for himself and for Redruth.
• • •
“Your job is?” Njangu asked.
“Door guard, sir.”
“Sorry for the dumb question, but the businesses in this block don’t seem to need guarding. None of them are government that I can see.”
“Nossir, they’re not. But I’m to watch for social misfits, keep track of how many people go in and out, report anything suspicious.”
“You like your job?”
The thickset man looked around, was reassured by Yoshitaro’s smile.
“It’s all right, sir.”
“You seem to have a little bit of an accent.”
“Yessir, I mean, I guess so, sir. I’m from Kura. If you don’t mind me being bold, sir, my accent’s no worse’n yours.”
Yoshitaro’s bodyguards frowned, then blanked their faces, seeing Njangu’s grin. “Kura, hmm. I haven’t been there yet, but I hear it’s mostly country. Farms and jungles.”
“Yessir.”
“Must’ve been a change, coming to a planet that’s got as many cities as Larix does.”
“Yessir, it was.”
“Ever want to go back?”
The man looked horrified. “To Kura? Gods no, sir. Begging your pardon.”
“Why? Is life that hard there?”
“Nossir. It’s not at all like Larix. Small villages, and not many cities. Big families so everybody knows everybody else, and tries to help if there’s any problems. But …”
“Go on, man,” Yoshitaro said.
“For one thing, Kura’s haunted.”
“Come on! By what?”
“Sorry, sir,” the man said. “Didn’t mean to say that, even if it’s what … what everybody believes. I know it’s not really true, the Womblies are long gone, and prob’ly they never were.”
Yoshitaro wanted to ask what the hell a Wombly was, but decided it might be better to find out privately.
“The reason I don’t want to go back, sir,” the man went on, “is Larix is where everything is, and if you can make it here, especially here in Agur, you know you’re the best, sir.”
• • •
“You’re a block warden?”
“Yes, sir,” the woman said, clearly impressed by being talked to by
such a high-ranking Leiter. “Been one for six, seven years.”
“What happened to the person you replaced?”
“Dunno, sir. Heard he didn’t pay close enough attention to what people said.”
“But you do.”
“Sure do, sir. I don’t mean to boast, sir, but I think it’s people like me who keep Protector Redruth, bless his name, safe, especially from the Cumbrian infiltrators.”
“There’s no question about that,” Njangu said.
• • •
“So these reports come in from the block wardens to you, then?” Njangu asked.
“Yessir,” the thin man said. He pointed around his spotless cubicle. “Notice, there’s no paperwork left undone here. I read the reports, and report on up to the next level within the day, generally within a few hours.
“Then, if my supervisor tells me somebody needs talking to or … or worse, I go out with the watch and help them pick him up, if that’s what’s been ordered. I make sure everybody else in the block knows what happens, too, and give the block warden who first reported the misfit to me a reward.”
• • •
“All these district reports are collated,” the brisk man, “then an abstract is made, which goes directly to …” He broke off.
“You can use the word,” Njangu said.
“To the Protector’s intelligence service, and they make estimates from them.”
“Suppose there’s been twice as many complaints of, I guess you’d call it social misbehavior. Sorry, but I’m still learning your terminology. What happens then?” Njangu asked.
“Then the entire district is punished, by cutting supplemental rations or even refusing permission for them to spend their summer leaves at recreational areas.
“Sometimes we even reduce their sports-viewing or -attendance privileges. This is a particularly important district, as I’m sure you’re aware, with our shipyards working at full speed, so we keep a very close watch on trends.”
“ ‘Kay,” Yoshitaro said. “Now, suppose a district has less than normal complaints?”
“Possibly minor benefits are increased,” the bureaucrat said. “Or, more likely, a congratulatory message from Protector Redruth will be ‘cast on their vids. We keep several varieties on record.”
Son of a bitch, Yoshitaro thought. These bastards all seem to like narking each other off, and playing pissant tyrant, level by level It’s like a disease, and every goddamned one of them’s running a frigging fever.
• • •
“Several of the people I’ve interviewed mentioned Cumbrian infiltrators,” Njangu asked Celidon. They were in Celidon’s apartments, as spare as his shipboard compartment.
Celidon smiled. “What about them?”
“To the best of my knowledge, the Cumbrians didn’t start infiltrating Larix until recently,” Yoshitaro said. “Where did these spies I never heard of come from?”
“Protector Redruth has an uncanny ability to define and sniff out moles from another system,” Celidon said. “He’s been discovering Cumbrian spy rings for about two or three years now.
“Before that, we were woefully troubled with anarchists from Confederate worlds spreading their poison. Fortunately, the Protector discovered and wiped them all out.”
“I think I see,” Yoshitaro said.
“Traitors tend to appear when Protector Redruth is developing an interest in a certain area, so it’s only natural that the prospective enemy does inimical things, thus proving the Protector’s concerns to be justified.”
“And obviously,” Njangu said, “you’re quite certain the Protector doesn’t have these rooms wired.”
“I assume nothing,” Celidon said. “Being a dedicated servant of the Protector’s, I have nothing to fear.”
• • •
“Oh dear,” the blonde whispered. “Not again?”
“You want me to stop, Enide?”
“Oh no. I’m just … worn-out keeping up with you. I’m not even twenty and you’re, what, almost thirty?”
“A bit older, m’love.”
“You don’t ever seem to get tired.”
“It’s my clean living, and sanctity.”
Enide giggled. “My foot seems to have worked loose. Would you tie it up again?”
Yoshitaro hoped Enide was just being stupid, and not trying pillow talk to get Yoshitaro to slip on his cover story. He’d rather deal with a dumb agent than dumb control. The last thing he wanted was getting his fingernails pulled out from some misunderstanding.
“Should I use the belt again?”
“Yes, please.”
• • •
“Of course I like sports,” Njangu lied to one of his bodyguards, whom he’d dubbed Goon Alpha. “What sort do you play here on Larix?”
“Well,” the big man said, “now it’s fall, an’ so we play Challenge. That’s like old-timey army games, with blunted spears, and bows and arrows, and fencing and things like that.”
“Which I like,” Goon Beta said. “I did real well in the barefist division, back when I was a gosling.”
“You want to fight, join the army,” the first bodyguard said. “That ain’t my sport. It’s bigger on Kura, where all those bastards do is chase each other around the hills with clubs. Anyway, after Challenge’ll come Rattes.”
That was a team game played inside stadiums, with long netted hurlers and a ball with a variable center of gravity.
“Not bad,” Goon Beta said. “Considering it’s winter. But in spring, we get harnhuns. I like that.”
“It’s pretty good,” the first guard allowed. “Get a man running, bunch of people go after him. They catch him … it’s all up for his ass.”
Harnhuns set district against district, town against town, until a final champion survived.
“Best of all’s mobbal, when summer comes,” Alpha said, and Beta nodded vigorously. “I was pretty good at that, almost good enough to be a pro. Whole planet stops for the finals.”
It took several hours to explain the rules to Njangu, or its lack of them. It was played with a ball, outdoors. At a district or suburb level, it’d be played in a local park, with goals at each end. The number of people on a side could be set by agreement, or played by as many as wanted. The object was to move a ball past a goal, using any means possible short, Njangu learned, of knives or nuclear devices.
At a more organized level, professional teams from cities, then provinces, then worlds, played. There were frequent riots when favorites lost, or umpires made “bad” rulings, riots that sometimes required the army.
Njangu made another mental note: If people aren’t allowed any political say, and the boot’s kept firmly against their neck, let them work it out with sports. Make the sports violent, and make the games a good testing ground for potential soldiers.
He was starting to admire Redruth’s cleverness. Redruth or, more likely, his predecessor question mark predecessors.
Njangu tried finding out more about the history of the system. There was almost nothing, other than that the original colonists of the two systems had been fleeing something or someone when they arrived, some hundreds of years ago. How they’d built up Larix so quickly wasn’t recorded. And the four or five … the records weren’t certain … men or women who’d preceded Redruth weren’t given much in the way of space, either.
One file in the Planetary Encyclopedia did give him something:
Womblies: Term given to the original inhabitants of the Kura system, who were instinctively inimical to humans, and opposed our necessary colonization of their disused lands. Little is known about them, since they were wiped out by the cleverness and leadership of the First Protector, and physical descriptions vary so widely there is no point in cluttering a scholarly work with them. Many legendary traits are ascribed to them: invisibility, the ability to sense man’s presence and even his intent, and retaliate in horrifyingly unpleasant ways. Folklorists aver there are tales on Kura that the Womblies were not completely des
troyed, but linger on in remote areas they held sacred, and attack lone travelers when they can. Such nonsense should not be allowed to be repeated, and a conscientious citizen hearing such tales should report the teller to the authorities.
“Well, humpty, humpty, humpty, and aren’t you the little tattler,” he muttered, and probed a little further into other areas, without a great deal of success.
The next day, Njangu got a call from Celidon’s adjutant, who said Celidon “suggested he find other areas of inquiry that’d be more profitable.”
So history was decidedly off-limits, even to a Leiter.
• • •
The ululation of sirens woke Njangu from a happy dream of visiting one of his bank vaults. He was fully alert, but had trained himself years ago to appear to wake blearily, slowly. Karig, the fourth of his companions, was already on her feet, pulling on a robe.
“Come on! We’ve got to go down to the shelter!”
“F’what?”
“Maybe it’s a drill, but maybe the Cumbrians are attacking! Come on! The block warden takes roll on things like this.”
Njangu slid into a pair of pants, shirt, bathroom slippers.
Attacking Cumbrians, huh? Let’s hope.
Indeed, an officious man was bustling about the building’s basement, checking off names. Yoshitaro sat in a corner, surrounded by companions, staff, and bodyguards. Everyone was beginning to relax when, dimly, came the distant roar of missiles launching, and then an explosion.
Pyder whimpered. “They’re really here.”
Another explosion came, then silence for three hours. Finally the all-clear siren shrilled, and they were allowed out of the shelter.
Njangu, not sleepy at all, went up to his roof garden and saw searchlights still sweeping the night. He wondered what the hell had actually happened, and hoped it was part of the Force’s plan. He thought of waking up one or another of his companions, but decided he had paperwork that was more important.
An hour later, Kerman came to his office. “Sir. The Protector requires your attendance at once.”