by Isaac Asimov
He was right. Twice the Squire launched into rapid monolog and twice Abel said, “My dear Squire! Surely serious conversation is unpleasant on an empty stomach.” He smiled gently and ordered dinner.
Over the wine, the Squire tried again. He said, “You’ll want to know why I have left Steen Continent.”
“I cannot conceive of any reason,” admitted Abel, “for the Squire of Steen ever to have fled from Sarkite vessels.”
Steen watched them carefully. His slight figure and thin, pale face were tense with calculation. His long hair was bound into carefully arranged tufts held by tiny clips that rubbed against one another with a rustling sound whenever he moved his head, as though to call attention to his disregard for the current Sarkite clipped-hair fashion. A faint fragrance came from his skin and clothing.
Abel, who did not miss the slight tightening of Junz’s lips and the quick way in which the Spatio-analyst patted his own short, woolly hair, thought how amusing Junz’s reaction might have been if Steen had appeared more typically, with rouged cheeks and coppered fingernails.
Steen said, “There was an intercontinental conference today.”
“Really?” said Abel.
Abel listened to the tale of the conference without a quiver of countenance.
“And we have twenty-four hours,” Steen said indignantly. “It’s sixteen hours now. Really!”
“And you’re X,” cried Junz, who had been growing increasingly restless during the recitation. “You’re X. You’ve come here because he’s caught you. Well now, that’s fine. Abel, here’s our proof as to the identity of the Spatio-analyst. We can use him to force a surrender of the man.”
Steen’s thin voice had difficulty making itself heard over Junz’s staunch baritone.
“Now really. I say, now really. You’re mad. Stop it! Let me speak, I tell you …. Your Excellency, I can’t remember this man’s name.”
“Dr. Selim Junz, Squire.”
“Well then, Dr. Selim Junz, I have never in my life seen this idiot or Spatio-analyst or whatever in the world he may be. Really! I never heard such nonsense. I am certainly not X. Really! I’ll thank you not even to use the silly letter. Imagine believing Fife’s ridiculous melodrama! Really!”
Junz clung to his notion. “Why did you run then?”
“Good Sark, isn’t it clear? Oh, I could choke. Really! Look here, don’t you see what Fife was doing?”
Abel interrupted quietly. “If you’ll explain, Squire, there will be no interruptions.”
“Well, thank you at least.” He continued, with an air of wounded dignity. “The others don’t think much of me because I don’t see the point of bothering with documents and statistics and all those boring details. But, really, what is the Civil Service for, I’d like to know? If a Great Squire can’t be a Great Squire?
“Still that doesn’t mean I’m a ninny, you know, just because I like my comfort. Really! Maybe the others are blind, but I can see that Fife doesn’t give a darn for the Spatio-analyst. I don’t even think he exists. Fife just got the idea a year ago and he’s been manipulating it ever since.
“He’s been playing us for fools and idiots. Really! And so the others are. Disgusting fools! He’s arranged all this perfectly awful nonsense about idiots and Spatio-analysis. I wouldn’t be surprised if the native who’s supposed to be killing patrollers by the dozen isn’t just one of Fife’s spies in a red wig. Or if he’s a real native, I suppose Fife has hired him.
“I wouldn’t put it past Fife. Really! He would use natives against his own kind. That’s how low he is.
“Anyway, it’s obvious that he’s using it just as an excuse to ruin the rest of us and to make himself dictator of Sark. Isn’t it obvious to you?
“There isn’t any X at all, but tomorrow, unless he’s stopped, he’ll spread the sub-etherics full of conspiracies and declarations of emergencies and he’ll have himself declared Leader. We haven’t had a Leader on Sark in five hundred years but that won’t stop Fife. He’d just let the constitution go hang. Really!
“Only I mean to stop him. That’s why I had to leave. If I were still in Steen, I’d be under house arrest.
“As soon as the conference was over I had my own personal port checked, and, you know, his men had taken over. It was in clear disregard of continental autonomy. It was the act of a cad. Really! But nasty as he is, he isn’t so bright. He thought some of us might try to leave the planet so he had the spaceports watched, but” — here he smiled in vulpine fashion and emitted the ghost of a giggle —” it didn’t occur to him to watch the gyro-ports.
“Probably he thought there wasn’t a place on the planet that would be safe for us. But I thought of the Trantorian Embassy. It’s more than the others did. They make me tired. Especially Bort. Do you know Bort? He’s terribly uncouth. Actually dirty. Talks at me as though there were something wrong with being clean and smelling pleasant.”
He put his finger tips to his nose and inhaled gently.
Abel put a light hand on Junz’s wrist as the latter moved restlessly in his seat. Abel said, “You have left a family behind. Have you thought that Fife can still hold a weapon over you?”
“I couldn’t very well pile all my pretty ones in my gyroplane.” He reddened a trifle. “Fife wouldn’t dare touch them. Besides, I’ll be back in Steen tomorrow.”
“How?” asked Abel.
Steen looked at him in astonishment. His thin lips parted. “I’m offering alliance, Your Excellency. You can’t pretend Trantor isn’t interested in Sark. Surely you’ll tell Fife that any attempt to change Sark’s constitution would necessitate Trantor’s intervention.”
“I scarcely see how that can be done, even if I felt my government would back me,” said Abel.
“How can it not be done?” asked Steen indignantly. “If he controls the entire kyrt trade he’ll raise the price, ask concessions for rapid delivery and all sorts of things.”
“Don’t the five of you control the price as is?”
Steen threw himself back in the seat. “Well, really! I don’t know all the details. Next you’ll be asking me for figures. Goodness, you’re as bad as Bort.” Then he recovered and giggled. “I’m just teasing, of course. What I mean is that, with Fife out of the way, Trantor might make an arrangement with the rest of us. In return for your help, it would only be right that Trantor get preferential treatment, or even maybe a small interest in the trade.”
“And how would we keep intervention from developing into a Galaxy-wide war?”
“Oh, but really, don’t you see? It’s plain as day. You wouldn’t be aggressors. You would just be preventing civil war to keep the kyrt trade from disruption. I’d announce that I’d appealed to you for help. It would be worlds removed from aggression. The whole Galaxy would be on your side. Of course, if Trantor benefits from it afterward, why, that’s nobody’s business at all. Really!”
Abel put his gnarled fingers together and regarded them. “I can’t believe you really mean to join forces with Trantor.”
An intense look of hatred passed momentarily over Steen’s weakly smiling face. He said, “Rather Trantor than Fife.”
Abel said, “I don’t like threatening force. Can’t we wait and let matters develop a bit —”
“No, no,” cried Steen. “Not a day. Really! If you’re not firm now, right now, it will be too late. Once the deadline is past, he’ll have gone too far to retreat without losing face. If you’ll help me now, the people of Steen will back me, the other Great Squires will join me. If you wait even a day, Fife’s propaganda mill will begin to grind. I’ll be smeared as a renegade. Really! I! I! A renegade! He’ll use all the anti-Trantor prejudice he can whip up and you know, meaning no offense, that’s quite a bit.”
“Suppose we ask him to allow us to interview the Spatio-analyst?”
“What good will that do? He’ll play both ends. He’ll tell us the Florinian idiot is a Spatio-analyst, but he’ll tell you the Spatio-analyst is a Florinian idiot. You don
’t know the man. He’s awful!”
Abel considered that. He hummed to himself, his forefinger keeping gentle time. Then he said, “We have the Townman, you know.”
“What Townman?”
“The one who killed the patrollers and the Sarkite.”
“Oh! Well, really! Do you suppose Fife will care about that if it’s a question of taking all Sark?”
“I think so. You see, it isn’t that we have the Townman. It’s the circumstances of his capture. I think, Squire, that Fife will listen to me and listen very humbly, too.”
For the first time in his acquaintance with Abel, Junz sensed a lessening of coolness in the old man’s voice, a substitution for it of satisfaction, almost of triumph.
Fifteen: The Captive
IT WAS NOT very usual for the Lady Samia of Fife to feel frustrated. It was unprecedented, even inconceivable, that she had felt frustrated for hours now.
The commander of the spaceport was Captain Racety all over again. He was polite, almost obsequious, looked unhappy, expressed his regrets, denied the least willingness to contradict her, and stood like iron against her plainly stated wishes.
She was finally forced from stating her desires to demanding her rights as though she were a common Sarkite. She said, “I suppose that as a citizen I have the right to meet any incoming vessel if I wish.”
She was poisonous about it.
The commander cleared his throat and the expression of pain on his lined face grew, if anything, clearer and more definite. Finally he said, “As a matter of fact, my Lady, we have no wish at all to exclude you. It is only that we have received specific orders from the Squire, your father, to forbid your meeting the ship.”
Samia said frozenly, “Are you ordering me to leave the port, then?”
“No, my Lady.” The commander was glad to compromise. “We were not ordered to exclude you from the port. If you wish to remain here you may do so. But, with all due respect, we will have to stop you from approaching closer to the pits.”
He was gone and Samia sat in the futile luxury of her private ground-car, a hundred feet inside the outermost entrance of the port. They had been waiting and watching for her. They would probably keep on watching her. If she as much as rolled a wheel onward, she thought indignantly, they would probably cut her power-drive.
She gritted her teeth. It was unfair of her father to do this. It was all of a piece. They always treated her as though she understood nothing. Yet she had thought he understood.
He had risen from his seat to greet her, a thing he never did for anyone else now that Mother was dead. He had clasped her, squeezed her tightly, abandoned all his work for her. He had even sent his secretary out of the room because he knew she was repelled by the native’s still, white countenance.
It was almost like the old days before Grandfather died when Father had not yet become Great Squire.
He said, “Mia, child, I’ve counted the hours. I never knew it was such a long way from Florina. When I heard that those natives had hidden on your ship, the one I had sent just to insure your safety, I was nearly wild.”
“Daddy! There was nothing to worry about.”
“Wasn’t there? I almost sent out the entire fleet to take you off and bring you in with full military security.”
They laughed together at the thought. Minutes passed before Samia could bring the conversation back to the subject that filled her.
She said casually, “What are you going to do with the stowaways, Dad?”
“Why do you want to know, Mia?”
“You don’t think they’ve plans to assassinate you, or anything like that?”
Fife smiled. “You shouldn’t think morbid thoughts.”
“You don’t think so, do you?” she insisted.
“Of course not.”
“Good! Because I’ve talked to them, Dad, and I just don’t believe they’re anything more than poor harmless people. I don’t care what Captain Racety says.”
“They’ve broken a considerable number of laws for ‘poor harmless people,’ Mia.”
“You can’t treat them as common criminals, Dad.” Her voice rose in alarm.
“How else?”
“The man isn’t a native. He’s from a planet called Earth and he’s been psycho-probed and he’s not responsible.”
“Well then, dear, Depsec will realize that. Suppose you leave it to them.”
“No, it’s too important to just leave to them. They won’t understand. Nobody understands. Except me!”
“Only you in the whole world, Mia?” he asked indulgently, and put out a finger to stroke a lock of hair that had fallen over her forehead.
Samia said with energy, “Only I! Only I! Everyone else is going to think he’s crazy, but I’m sure he isn’t. He says there is some great danger to Florina and to all the Galaxy. He’s a Spatio-analyst and you know they specialize in cosmogony. He would know!”
“How do you know he’s a Spatio-analyst, Mia?”
“He says so.”
“And what are the details of the danger?”
“He doesn’t know. He’s been psycho-probed. Don’t you see that that’s the best evidence of all? He knew too much. Someone was interested in keeping it dark.” Her voice instinctively fell and grew huskily confidential. She restrained an impulse to look over her shoulder. She said, “If his theories were false, don’t you see, there wouldn’t have been any need to psycho-probe him.”
“Why didn’t they kill him, if that’s the case?” asked Fife and instantly regretted the question. There was no use in teasing the girl.
Samia thought awhile, fruitlessly, then said, “If you’ll order Depsec to let me speak to him, I’ll find out. He trusts me. I know he does. I’ll get more out of him than Depsec can. Please tell Depsec to let me see him, Dad. It’s very important.”
Fife squeezed her clenched fists gently and smiled at her. “Not yet, Mia. Not yet. In a few hours we’ll have the third person in our hands. After that, perhaps.”
“The third person? The native who did all the killings?”
“Exactly. The ship carrying him will land in about an hour.”
“And you won’t do anything with the native girl and the Spatio-analyst till then?”
“Not a thing.”
“Good! I’ll meet the ship.” She rose.
“Where are you going, Mia?”
“To the port, Father. I have a great deal to ask of this other native.” She laughed. “I’ll show you that your daughter can be quite a detective.”
But Fife did not respond to her laughter. He said, “I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s essential that there be nothing out of the way about this man’s arrival. You’d be too conspicuous at the port.”
“What of it?”
“I can’t explain statecraft to you, Mia.”
“Statecraft, pooh.” She leaned toward him, pecked a quick kiss at the center of his forehead and was gone.
Now she sat helplessly car-bound in the port while far overhead there was a growing speck in the sky, dark against the brightness of the late afternoon.
She pressed the button that opened the utility compartment and took out her polo-glasses. Ordinarily they were used to follow the gyrating antics of the one-man speedsters which took part in stratospheric polo. They could be put to more serious use too. She put them to her eyes and the descending dot became a ship in miniature, the ruddy glow of its stern drive plainly visible.
She would at least see the men as they left, learn as much as she could by the one sense of sight, arrange an interview somehow, somehow thereafter.
Sark filled the visiplate. A continent and half an ocean, obscured in part by the dead cotton-white of clouds, lay below.
Genro said, his words a trifle uneven as the only indication that the better part of his mind was perforce on the controls before him, “The spaceport will not be heavily guarded. That was at my suggestion too. I said that any unu
sual treatment of the arrival of the ship might warn Trantor that something was up. I said that success depended upon Trantor being at no time aware of the true state of affairs until it was too late. Well, never mind that.”
Terens shrugged his shoulders glumly. “What’s the difference?”
“Plenty, to you. I will use the landing pit nearest the East Gate. You will get out the safety exit in the rear as soon as I land. Walk quickly but not too quickly toward that gate. I have some papers that may get you through without trouble and may not. I’ll leave it to you to take necessary action if there is trouble. From past history, I judge I can trust you that far. Outside the gate there will be a car waiting to take you to the embassy. That’s all.”
“What about you?”
Slowly Sark was changing from a huge featureless sphere of blinding browns and greens and blues and cloud-white into something more alive, into a surface broken by rivers and wrinkled by mountains.
Genro’s smile was cool and humorless. “Your worries may end with yourself. When they find you gone, I may be shot as a traitor. If they find me completely helpless and physically unable to stop you, they may merely demote me as a fool. The latter, I suppose, is preferable, so I will ask you, before you leave, to use a neuronic whip on me.”
The Townman said, “Do you know what a neuronic whip is like?”
“Quite.” There were small drops of perspiration at his temples.
“How do you know I won’t kill you afterward? I’m a Squire-killer, you know.”
“I know. But killing me won’t help you. It will just waste your time. I’ve taken worse chances.”
The surface of Sark as viewed in the visiplate was expanding, its edges rushed out past the border of visibility, its center grew and the new edges rushed out in turn. Something like the rainbow of a Sarkite city could be made out.
“I hope,” said Genro, “you have no ideas of striking out on your own. Sark is no place for that. It’s either Trantor or the Squires. Remember.”
The view was definitely that of a city now and a green-brown patch on its outskirts expanded and became a spaceport below them. It floated up toward them at a slowing pace.