To Build a World

by Poul Anderson

  He led the way down a corridor wainscoted in genuine oak, where eerily carved staffs hung as ornaments, to a shady willed with books. “Sit down.” He waved at a deep antique armchair. For himself he took a seat behind a desk cluttered with papers and library apparatus, lit a cigarette without offering one, leaned back and watched Sevigny through a blue cloud.

  “So proceed with your story,” he directed.

  As the Cytherean stumbled through it, Volhontseff began to show animation again. Now and then he nodded, a few times he interrupted with tightly perceptive questions. At the end he sat for some while before stating, with a scowl:

  “This puts me in an awkward position. I am not an American national, you realize, and do not wish to have my residence permit revoked. The climate here is too good for aging bones that grew under Martian gravity. And my references, my collections—no, moving them would be quite unfeasible. So I must not exceed my legal prerogatives; and those are limited.”

  Sevigny slammed a fist on the desk top. “What the devil do you mean?” he exploded. “You’re the Martian consul! You have extraterritorial jurisdiction.”

  “Only over Martians, and that only because it is manifestly impossible to apply human legal concepts to them. Cythereans—hm, they are supposed to lack special privilege except for what was granted by the Treaty of Toronto. On the other hand, perhaps one could argue that my authority extends to everyone whom I represent, regardless of affiliation. I do not know, and in fact I do not know if the question has ever arisen in court.”

  Hope hatched in Sevigny and chirped. “Well,” he said, “that’s a talking point. You can refuse to hand me over till you get a top-level decision. What we need is delay and publicity. The enemy can’t survive that.”

  Volhontseff gave him a narrow look. “Young man,” he murmured, “for a colonial you are developing a remarkable shrewdness. Very well. I must have the support, or at least the involvement, of an important organization. But I can get in direct touch with the Martian ambassador—”

  “Which one?”

  “What?”

  “All of them? Might be best.” Volhontseff stubbed out his cigarette and made a production of igniting the next. “I must think about that,” he said. “Intersocietal relations on Mars are complicated. They don’t have wars, but rivalries aren’t the less real for being subtle.”

  “Oh, well, something else is equally important,” Sevigny said. “To get a message to my boss on Luna, Bruno Norris at Port Kepler. He’ll have reliable contracts in the Commonwealth hierarchy.” He showed teeth in a dog’s grin. “Those poor, bought Feds won’t know what blasted them!”

  Volhontseff drummed nervously on his desk. “They do raise a problem, however,” he said. “Whether or not they acted lawfully, they were still officers and you are guilty of resisting them. If I do not notify them at once of your presence, then I will have been harboring a fugitive from justice. Yet if I do notify them, they may forcibly remove you before the influences on our side can be brought to bear, and tell me to appeal to the courts.”

  And what can a dead man, “shot in a second attempt to escape,” prove? Sevigny thought grimly. Volhontseff here has nothing but my unsupported word to go on. The Buffalo can try to raise a stink, and maybe in time he’ll get the Safety Corps interested. But meanwhile the antilunar faction will have been alerted, will have had a chance to cover its tracks, to cry that it’s being smeared by the dirty opposition—yes. I’m afraid that if the police arrest me now I won’t see another Moonrise.

  “So they’re not going to,” he said aloud.

  “Eh?” Volhontseff said. His air of calculation had gone, as mercurially as his previous moods; he looked very much an old professor, helpless against the savageries that lived outside his books.

  “You’ll postpone telling the locals I’m here until you’ve raised every possible ally and they’ve had time to act,” Sevigny informed him.

  “But—”

  Sevigny rose, loomed over the small shape before him, lifted one fist and said: “I’m threatening you, understand? I’m bigger than you. I smooth talked my way into this house, and now you have no choice but to do as I want. That clears you legally, correct?”

  “Well—well—”

  The Cytherean tapped the phone on the desk. “Start calling, friend.”

  Volhontseff looked away and gradually, as he sat rubbing his chin, Sevigny saw decision crystallize. How much like R’ku he is, the engineer thought; and that returned him for a minute to Luna and his work; and Oscar’s wistful ghost was there. He blinked away tears and barked, “You heard me.”

  “Yes. I was thinking.” The mask came down on Volhontseff’s countenance. “About certain difficulties. Calls can be monitored. And we don’t know how many spies the enemy has planted in key positions. If a call from the Moon was never sent, how can you be sure that one will ever be received?”

  Sevigny teetered back on his heels. “That’s right. But damn the universe, we can’t do nothing.”

  “No. I have an idea. Let me simply get in touch with the K’nean Embassy. The hour must be about noon in Paris, the office is open and that circuit includes a scrambler. I will give them the facts and request them to transmit messages elsewhere. You are quite correct about Mars’ vital interest in the terraforming work. And on so high a level, they can make direct contact with the others.”

  “Hm.” Sevigny pondered. It sounded good. “Okay. But what about me?”

  Volhontseff made a parched chuckle. “You stay here and do not allow me outside. I am in your power, remember.”

  His fingers danced across the lock on a drawer. It opened and he took out a notebook and riffled through the pages. “Here we are. The unlisted number of the ambassador’s private office.” At once he closed the book and started dialing. Sevigny moved around the desk to stand at his back.

  The screen brightened with the image of a room strangely furnished. A long, squatting figure swung luminous eyes toward the phone. Volhontseff unhooked a vocalizer attachment and began talking.

  Sevigny jerked it from his hand. “None of that. I don’t understand any Martian language.

  “You must trust me,” Volhontseff said.

  “As far as necessary. No further. Sorry.”

  Impassive, the ambassador waited.

  Volhontseff’s narrow shoulders lifted and fell. “No difference, I suppose. Ah . . . Nyo, we shall use English, if you please. The matter is urgent and critical. Kindly record. I have here an employee of the Luna Corporation with a rather unusual story to relate.”

  “Proceed,” said the transformed voice.

  Once again Sevigny went through his narration. At the end, Volhontseff said, “This must be transmitted to the following persons in strictest confidence: the head of the World Safety Corps, the president of the Corporation, the Cytherean ambassador and Mr. Bruno Norris, operations manager in Port Kepler.”

  The chitinous Martian visage had not stirred. It could not. “Yes,” Nyo said, “I grasp your meaning.”

  Volhontseff hunched forward and said in the most intense tone Sevigny had yet heard from him: “You realize that no time can be lost. My guest and I will remain here, but the situation is obviously unstable. Can you dispatch a diplomatic flier for him? You must have a pair of reliable humans available to man it and fetch him to safety.”

  Nyo reflected for a while, during which Sevigny’s pulse grew loud. “Yes,” the Martian said, “I believe that can be done. We will assign someone near you if possible, exempli gratia from the San Francisco consulate, so that they can land at your house before dawn. Stand by.”

  The screen blanked.

  Volhontseff put another cigarette between his yellowed fingers. I just hope he gets his cancer shots regularly, Sevigny thought.

  “Excellent,” the small man said. “I expect you need not wait long. Two or three hours, perhaps. Ah . . . do you suppose that my part in this affair can be—hushed down, is that the idiom? It would simplify matters. But let
me prepare a bed for you.”

  Sevigny shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m strung too tight. Besides, I don’t dare sleep.”

  “As you wish.”

  “If you want to rack out, though—”

  “Not in the least. Come, we shall have breakfast.” Volhontseff got to his feet and tugged at Sevigny’s arm.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I am. You shall watch me eat and possibly gain appetite. Afterward you will no doubt be interested to see some of my Martian relics.”

  “Take my mind off my troubles, anyway.” Sevigny’s gaze traveled around the room and lighted on a piece of sculptured crystal on a bookshelf. “What’s that?”

  “From Illach. Nothing of great value.”

  “But lovely.” The engineer went over to have a closer look.

  “Come, I say!” Volhontseff jittered near the door.

  Sevigny turned around. A tingle went along his spine. “You’re mighty anxious to get me out of here,” he said low.

  “I am hungry, I told you.”

  “Well, go eat . . . Why’d you call the K’neans in particular?”

  “I did most of my field work in their area, as you can find out from my publications. I know them best. They are to be trusted.”

  “I think,” Sevigny said experimentally, through a tightened gullet, “we ought to buzz the Cytherean Embassy ourselves, just to make sure.”

  Volhontseff became waspish. “Ridiculous. That is not only unnecessary now, it is unsafe. I have no scrambler connection to them.”

  “Why should any of your calls be tapped?” Sevigny retorted. “If the cops suspect I’m here, they’ll come in person.” He took a pair of giant steps back to the desk. “What are you up to?”

  “Get away from my private papers!” Volhontseff yelled. He darted at the engineer, who shoved him staggering back.

  “Retro yourself, jim,” Sevigny said. “If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize. But a hunted man can’t take chances.”

  He picked up the notebook. Volhontseff snatched at it. Sevigny warded him off without effort. The consul turned and ran. Sevigny beat him to the door, closed it and growled, “Were you after a gun?”

  Volhontseff recoiled. His chest rose and fell with breathing. Sevigny flipped through the pages. Names, addresses, phone numbers, in Cyrillic script but he knew Russian—

  Ercole Baccioco leaped at him, and an Earthwide list of residences. One was the apartment building where he had been a prisoner.

  VIII

  “So.” He stared at the little man’s rigid figure. Sweat rolled from beneath his arms. Swiftly, then, he searched, and found Gupta entered. A local hotel had been pencilled under the Benares address.

  He stuck the book in his pocket. “All right, Volhontseff,” he said. The words fell like iron weights through the night silence. “You belong to the enemy too. And so must that Martian. Tell me about it.”

  Volhontseff retreated. Sevigny sprang, grabbed a skinny wrist and twisted until the other fell to his knees. “You bully!” Volhontseff squalled.

  “Not so loud,” Sevigny said between his teeth. “Your saboteurs have killed men on Luna. One of them was under my command. I’ve also lost another friend tonight, and my own life is on the block. Do you expect me to play pattycake with you?”

  Volhontseff squirmed and tried to bite. Sevigny cuffed him so that the bald head rocked. “Hold still and talk . . . quietly!”

  A curse answered. Sevigny hesitated. Even now he didn’t want to—His mind cometed through darkness, toward understanding.

  “The outlines are obvious,” he said, word by word, reasoning as he went on. “These different antilunar factions have gotten together. Certain members of them, that is. Probably not many, or men as big as Baccioco and Gupta needn’t have dirtied their personal hands with me. The ordinary antilunar person doesn’t know about the gang, of course, and’d be shocked if he learned. But religious nuts; those who want, fanatically, to reclaim the last open parts of Earth so as to fill them too with miserable trapped people; those who want contracts for that reclamation; and now K’nea.

  “You’re an agent of K’nea. They’re slipping you money under the counter, so you can sit close to Pacific Spacedrome and watch events and exert your influence and help direct any foul play that seems indicated. K’nea is wealthy, one of the first-rank Martian societies. I wouldn’t be surprised but what they’re financing most of the gang’s operations.

  “And then there must be someone in the American government, so powerful he can order Federal police to arrest me on a trumped-up charge the moment his good friend Baccioco told him I’d gotten away. Who can probably arrange for me to be killed, or at least have my memory wiped. Who . . . yes, who must have gotten a warrant issued in the first place, to have my force unit removed. It had to look official, that removing, or there’d’ve been too much ruckus. But ‘reasons of state’ has always been the only excuse an overlord needed to order anything, as long as most people believe in the Holy State. Who is he?”

  “Let me loose!” Volhontseff cried.

  “With what I’ve now got to go on, my side can find out the answer. You might as well tell me. The President himself?”

  “Nyet—”

  “Who, then? Or we’ll assume it is Edwards, and what’ll that do in the election?”

  Volhontseff crumpled. Sevigny had to hold him up. “Gilman,” he whispered. “Secretary of Resources. Appointed by Edwards, yes, but . . . I swear he acts for himself!”

  “Why? What motive? Same as Gupta? The United States has its problems, but I don’t believe they’re near as bad as India’s . . .Ah! If the Lunar project is discontinued, there’ll be more funds to spend at home. Gilman’s bureaucracy will grow. He’ll become even bigger than he is. Right?”

  “I do not understand these Earthside motives.” Volhontseff began to sob. “You are wild beasts, you humans! I only took the pay so I could finish my work. And K’nean policy is not evil, not evil.”

  “What does K’nea want?” Sevigny snapped the fingers of his free hand. “Never mind. I see for myself. The greatest hurdle the antilunars have to face is the investment already made in the Moon. No matter how much trouble and discredit they heap on us, Earth can scarcely afford to stop. But if K’nea suddenly offered to pay off the shareholders of a failing enterprise, lease the whole satellite and do what little more is necessary to make it over into a new Mars—sure! And that would make K’nea the most powerful society on the home planet by a light-year. They’d dominate their entire species.”

  “They must protect their philosophy,” Volhontseff wept. “The Confederation and the Illachi are more alien to them than you can ever c-c-comprehend.”

  “Well, Mars will have to solve its own problems,” Sevigny said coldly. He let Volhontseff slide to the floor and lie huddled while he paced, back and forth in the cage of the office.

  His temples throbbed. Now, more than he had imagined, the information he had was beyond price. And it would be scrubbed out of his brain, by drugs and electric potentials or by death, before sunrise. Nyo’s men were plainly supposed to land soon and invite him, unsuspicious, to board their flier. He wouldn’t fall for that stunt. But they they need only tell the Federals where he was.

  Volhontseff, trembling at his feet, must have a car. That offered escape. He could bind the consul and lay him on the floor with a rug thrown on top.

  But a ground vehicle wouldn’t get him off Oahu, and as soon as the pursuit grasped what had happened they would check the registry and throw out their nets.

  Shame hit him in midstride. He halted with an oath. What was he doing, a Woodman, worried about his own precious neck when he had contracted out his loyalty to the Corporation?

  I’m no hero—Judas, I’m scared! But there’d be no returning home if I went coward. I can at least try to keep them from murdering my story.

  Besides, I’ve got anyway a couple of hours before the flier arrives.

  He flung himself into the chair
at the desk and searched Volhontseff’s private directory. En route, he was aware of surprise when his glance fell on Maura Soemantri’s name. He’d assumed she was imported to beguile him and had used a pseudonym; but no, there she was with a town address. Well, the organization probably kept girls like her on the payroll in most major cities, to use on local politicians and such . . . The Cytherean Embassy wasn’t noted. Why should it be, at that? The clans were apart from this power grapple. By the same token, though, their diplomatic office must be free of double agents.

  He dialed Paris, got the number, and put the call through. An Earthified young man regarded him with shock. I must look like a derailed hamburger, Sevigny realized. Dirty, bristly, unkempt, red-eyed, and not even the memory of a binge to show for it. Curtly, he identified himself.

  “Samuel Craik, Clan Duneland of Duneland,” the young man said with elaborate formality. “At your service.”

  “Who’s the highest ranking person I can talk to at once?” Craik looked pained. “Really, clansman, when you aren’t even in proper garb—”

  “All right,” Sevigny sighed. “You record my message. I warn you right off that you won’t believe a word. But play it for your superiors. Have them check with the Luna Corporation office on the Moon. That’s the main thing I ask you: pass the tape on to Bruno Norris in Port Kepler, and make bloody damn sure that he himself gets it.” He drew a long breath and intoned: “This I lay on you for the right and honor of the clans of Venus.” Craik looked still more unhappy. Oh, Lord, I’ll bet that top thinks the Word is a quaint barbarian custom, Sevigny groaned to himself. He launched into the account.

  “Clansman!” Craik protested after a few minutes. “Do you feel well?”

  “I told you you wouldn’t be-

  lieve me,” Sevigny gritted. “Now hold still and let me finish.”

  The violence that churned in him suddenly spouted forth an idea. He gasped. Somehow he managed to keep talking while he thought with more and more excitement about it.