by Hogan, James
"It would take too long to explain now," Zambendorf said. "But we have to tell
them. It's important. Come on, Otto." Without waiting for an answer, he turned
and marched back in the direction of the gate. Abaquaan started after him with
the transmogrifier.
"Wait," Mackeson called over the radio. They stopped and looked back. "Trying to
communicate it all to the Taloids through just that box would be a hell of a
tedious business," Mackeson said. He waved an arm to indicate an open extension
built onto the end of the administration building just ahead. "That annex is our
meeting room for Taloid talks, and communications equipment is installed there.
We'd get along a lot faster if we brought Arthur and his friends inside where we
can show them some pictures too."
"That sounds good," Zambendorf agreed. Abaquaan nodded, and they started walking
back again.
Mackeson switched his suit radio to another channel. "Mackeson to Captain Mason
at the gate. Bring the Taloids there inside, would you, and have them escorted
to the admin block annex. Also put a call through to the duty controller and
have the lights switched on in the annex and a couple of communications techs
suited up and sent out. It looks as if we're going to have an impromptu
conference."
Fifteen minutes later, Zambendorf was standing in the center of a mixed group of
Terrans and Taloids inside the annex, staring wide-eyed and speechless at the
scene being transmitted from a NASO reconnaissance drone hovering over Padua
city. It was a telescopic view of an evidently wild procession that stretched
from one end of the city to the other. Thousands of Taloids were involved,
festively dressed, singing, dancing, waving pennants, bearing banners, and
playing musical instruments. The ecstasy and rejoicing could be felt from the
pictures.
But most astonishing was the shape that seemed to be the centerpiece of the
whole celebration, which was being pulled along on a large, elaborately
decorated and draped, mobile platform by several dozen Taloids fanned out ahead
and hauling lines. As best Zambendorf could estimate from the size of the
Taloids moving alongside, it stood about ten feet high and seemed to be
fashioned from some metal that gave it a reddish hue. There could be no
mistaking what it represented: It was a wrench—an immense, painstakingly
rendered, replica of a standard toolbox wrench. And immediately behind the
platform bearing the Sacred Wrench, a huge banner was being carried on which
were written crudely but recognizably the mystic symbols U.S. GOVERNMENT.
"Good heavens! Did we do that?" Zambendorf said disbelievingly.
"Those are the guys that Arthur was so worried about?" Joe Fellburg asked in a
weak voice. "He doesn't have any problems now. It's all over down there."
Abaquaan shook his head dazedly. "I'm not seeing this. Somebody tell me it isn't
real."
"Well, Caspar Lang told Karl way back that he wanted him to sell Moses in
Padua," Drew West reminded everybody. He shrugged and tossed out his hands. "So
he got what he wanted—Moses went over real big. Is it our fault if Caspar
miscalculated the effects?"
"That sure was some act, Karl," Vernon complimented. "You know, I don't think
even Gerry could top that one."
Clarissa looked at the screen again and wrinkled her nose. "And before anyone
tells the president, the answer's positively no," she told everybody. "There's
no way I'm gonna try a repeat performance over Moscow—just no way!"
Thirg, Kleippur, and Groork exchanged awed looks. "Do I understand this news
correctly?" Kleippur said. "The Wearer is not to be imprisoned? Already word of
the injustices of the Great Ship's king have reached the mightier kings of
Lumia, and they have sent orders by which he and his lieutenants have been
dismissed?"
Thirg nodded slowly. "Now, methinks, we see the Wearer's plan unfolding in its
entirety," he said. "Carthogia saved and free from further threat of
molestation; Eskenderom and Frennelech undone; Kroaxia pacified and reduced to
harmlessness within a single bright; . . . and now within the Lumian house
itself, the would-be architects of havoc exposed and vanquished. Indeed these
are powerful champions that good fortune hath appointed as our allies."
"Carthogia shall be free to pursue its quest for knowledge, and its borders
shall be always open to true inquirers from all nations," Kleippur declared.
"Thus shall the works of all be concerted, our resources directed to enterprises
of constructiveness, and one day robeings shall, through their own dilligence
and inventiveness, find Lumia and the other shining worlds beyond the sky."
"And the nations like Kroaxia, whose collective understanding will require time
yet before it is mature, have been provided with a harmless distraction which
will predispose them meanwhile in thought and deed toward reasonableness and
tolerance," Groork said. "We must be careful to ensure that our acquiring of
Lumian knowledge is paralleled by the cultivation of a comparable measure of
such Lumian wisdom."
"So it shall be," Kleippur assured him.
Eventually the two groups repeated their farewells, this time amid a lighter,
more exuberant mood than had prevailed previously. The Terrans entered the
airlock at the rear of the annex, and Zambendorf turned in the outer door to
send a last wave back to the Taloids before passing through into the
administration building proper, where the first thing everybody did was get out
of their EV suits in the lock antechamber. Then, feeling reborn, they moved out
through the far door to return to the wonderful world of bright, airy corridors,
people in shirt-sleeves and slacks, the smell of canteen food and the clatter of
cutlery, the sounds of shoes on metal stairways, and piped music in the
restrooms.
"Just think of it," Abaquaan said to Zambendorf as they followed Mackeson and
one of his officers to be officially checked into the base. "A hot bath, clean
sheets, and as much uninterrupted sleep as you want. What more could anyone ask
for? Who'd have ever thought we'd find a NASO base on Titan the last word in
luxury? You know, Karl, I've got a feeling that the place at Malibu might never
seem the same again."
Zambendorf blinked. "Malibu? Why, I can't even imagine it any more. In fact I
can't imagine anything beyond getting back up to the Orion. That's the last word
in luxury as far as I'm concerned, Otto, the Orion—pure, blissful, unashamed
luxury."
Meanwhile Thirg was looking out of the presidential carriage at the head of the
stately cavalcade proceeding through the outskirts of Menassim along the
picturesque and colorful Avenue of Independence. The crowds lining the way to
watch the carriages and the soldiers pass seemed buoyant and joyful, as if they
could somehow sense or read in the faces in the carriages the good tidings that
would affect the whole land. Thirg had never seen the city looking quite so
beautiful, with the fading light of bright's-end softening the hues of the trees
along the avenue and painting a delicate blue haze over the rolling forests
outside the city and the mountains rising distantly behind. Ahead, he could see
the tall, clean lines of the new buildings of the central city rising proudly
above the intervening suburbs as if in anticipation of the new era about to be
born.
A gentle breeze was blowing from the east, carrying the fragrant scents of
distilled tar-sands and fumace-gas ventings, and a family of dome-backed
concrete-pourers was laying out filter beds on the far bank of the bend where
the river flanked the avenue, downstream from the ingot-soaking pits. From
somewhere off in the distance he could hear the muted strains of a power hammer
thudding contentedly while nearer to the road a flock of raucous coilspring
winders was playing counterpoint with the warbling of a high-pressure relief
valve, and on all sides the undergrowth chirped happily with piezoelectric
whines and whistles. He had a true brother now, a home again, and a patron, and
the soldiers and priests of Kroaxia would trouble him no more.
Yes indeed, Thirg, Asker-of-Questions-No-Longer-Forbidden, thought to himself as
he gazed out at the scene in contentment, it was a beautiful world.
Epilogue
GEROLD MASSEY STRETCHED HIMSELF BACK IN AN ARMCHAIR IN one comer of the team's
lounge in Globe II, finished his scotch and soda, and set the glass down on a
utility ledge built into the side of the communications console at which Drew
West was sitting with the chair reversed to face the room. Thelma was with
Fellburg and Clarissa on a couch folded down from the opposite wall; Zambendorf
was sprawled in another armchair near Vernon, who was perched on a stool with
his back to the shelf being used as a bar; and Abaquaan was leaning by the door.
They had been back aboard the Orion for almost a week.
"I don't think there can be much doubt that the Taloids' future is assured now,"
Massey said. "The rest of the Paduan alliance is falling apart. The Venetians
threw their king out yesterday, and the last I heard the one in Milan had
decided to climb down gracefully and sent Moses an invitation to visit the city.
He's probably hoping to salvage what he can by proposing some system of joint
management."
"So there's no chance of Titan's being turned into some kind of colony?" Vernon
said.
Massey shook his head. "No way that I can see. Any possibility of that has been
scuttled permanently. The Taloids will never accept second-class status now.
They're the chosen ones. Their God has spoken to them and told them they're as
good as anyone. Anybody who tries to tell them differently can go jump in a
methlake. They'll trade with you, sure—their kind of know how for your kind of
know-how, but only as equal partners. If you've got any ideas of exploitation or
screwing anyone on the deal, forget it."
Zambendorf swirled his sherry round in his glass and watched it for a second,
then looked up and nodded. "And the Western world is going to have to play it
that way because if it doesn't Asia will. And what's more, it won't be much
longer before the Soviets arrive. Then everybody will be competing against
everybody to give the Taloids a better deal."
The Orion would be leaving Titan in ten days since many of the mission
personnel—Massey and Vernon, for example—had pressing affairs to attend to back
home. All remaining material and equipment would be shipped to the surface and
used to expand Genoa Base One into a permanent installation, where a skeleton
crew of scientific researchers, Taloidologists, and other specialists would
remain behind under the command of Vantz's deputy, Commander Craig, until the
arrival of the Japanese ship in five month's time. They would probably rotate to
Earth at some later date with the Japanese, by which time the Orion would be
returning with more people and equipment. With the completion of the Soviet
vessel and the others that would come after it, a regular two-way traffic would
eventually evolve.
Massey picked up his glass again and passed it to Vernon for a refill. "I don't
often say things like this, but I think we can all congratulate ourselves on a
job that worked out pretty well," he said, looking about the room. "I have to
say that I'll miss you all after we get back. It's strange how things sometimes
work out, isn't it—I came aboard determined to run you out of business, and here
I am coming out of it with a whole bunch of new friends."
"Well, I'll drink to a long continuation of it, Gerry," Vernon said. "I'm amazed
at how everything turned out too."
Massey accepted his glass and cast an eye curiously round the cabin again at the
others, who were being unusually quiet. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that
I'll stay off your backs from now on," he told them. "I don't suppose we'll ever
see quite eye to eye on some things, but I have to admit I've been forced to
reevaluate a lot of what I thought I was sure of. So it's live and let live,
huh?" Despite the gallant face that he was doing his best to maintain, there was
an undertone of disappointment that he couldn't quite conceal. He spread his
hands and concluded, with a grin and a sigh, "I just thought you'd like to
know."
Nobody responded immediately. Zambendorf raised his head and looked from one to
another of his colleagues. "You don't seem exactly overenthralled," he remarked.
"We can speak freely in front of Gerry and Vernon now. Aren't you looking
forward to going home again? Think of the TV spectaculars we'll be able to put
together after this— with a much stronger science flavor than ever before which
will appeal to younger people . . . maybe a world tour. We could establish an
Institute of Astral Parapsychology, possibly, with Osmond as the
founder—there'll be other backers besides GSEC. We might even be able to
straighten things out with Ramelson again. Who knows?"
The atmosphere remained wet-weekendish. "It's a living, I guess," Abaquaan
agreed vapidly from the doorway. In his mind he was copiloting the flyer again,
and comparing it to the prospect of hanging around hotel lobbies and theater
foyers, collecting snippets of gossip about gullible, witless people who had
nothing to offer him and who didn't interest him. He had several ideas on
improving the transmogrifier that he would have liked to discuss with Dave
Crookes, who would be among the party staying behind. But besides all that, he
realized that he cared what happened to Arthur's Taloids; they were among the
few people he'd met outside of Zambendorf's team whom he had not simply
dismissed as suckers. They valued their minds and were willing to rely on
themselves without need of magical powers or supernatural revelations as
substitutes for thinking. In Abaquaan's book that made them worth the effort of
seeing that the feeling was mutual.
Clarissa hadn't had so much fun for years and was feeling a little nostalgic. As
the base at Genoa was expanded and more Terran installations began to appear
across the surface, there would be more demand for pilots than pilots available
to meet them, she reflected ruefully. She could think of more attractive
propositions than having to deal with jerks
like Herman Thoring again, who
thought the world stopped revolving for five minutes every time he went to the
bathroom. Publicity management, she had decided, was the manufacture of
make-believe news out of trivia when nothing newsworthy was to be said. On Titan
she had cultivated too much of an appetite for the real thing to want any part
of an imitation again. "How wonderful," she said in a flat voice. "Maybe we
could make some extra bucks by doing TV commercials for psychic-proof spoons."
Drew West thought back to the world of booking fees and box-office takes, and
then to the world of the Taloids, ice mountains, methane oceans, vegetable
cities, and mechanical jungles. He had always had a penchant for enriching his
life through frequent changes of scenery and atmosphere and spicing it with
dashes of the unusual and the exciting whenever possible. That was what had
drawn him out of the domain of more orthodox, humdrum, show-business affairs and
resulted eventually in his gravitating into Zambendorf's team, where he had
remained for far longer than had been the case with any of his previous
positions. But his restlessness for something new had been making itself felt
again for some time before leaving Earth, and he had contemplated moving on even
before the sudden prospect of the Orion mission to Mars had caused him to
postpone any decision. What had happened on Titan would make the old life seem
that much more uninspiring. Although he had no firm plans or prospects, in
principle the decision was made. He raised his glass, took a long sip of his
drink, and said nothing.
"I guess for me it's been kinda like the old days," Joe Fellburg said. "You know
what I mean—I feel like I was back in the service out of retirement, except on
reflection maybe I'd retired too early in the first place." He frowned, as if
not satisfied that the words conveyed what he had meant to say, then shook his
head with a sigh and resigned himself to the fact that it didn't make much
difference anyway. "I dunno . . . Anyhow, we'll get used to it again in the end,
probably." He had enjoyed having military people around him again and the
feeling of being involved in something that mattered again instead of just
playing games. It was his rapport with the team that had held him, not the