At the Narrow Passage

by Richard Meredith

  "The name sounds familiar. I'm not sure."

  "Surely, if you're really from Victoria, you've heard of George Carter."

  "I'm not sure. I've been away from home for a long time."

  "Really now, Captain Mathers. George Carter served as mayor twice; then he was arrested for high treason in '64 or '65. It was a very big thing at the time. It must have been in the papers all over the Empire."

  "Mike Trimble was mayor in '64," I told her. That was true.

  "He was mayor before Mike Trimble."

  "I thought Joe -- ah -- Joe Knight was." I was on shaky ground now.

  "No, George Carter."

  I wondered. I wasn't sure. The tapes hadn't been that detailed. Maybe a George Carter had been mayor of Victoria once.

  "Don't you remember?" she asked, still smiling a sinister little smile. "He escaped from the provincial prison in Buffalo in '69. They've been searching for him ever since.

  "No," I said flatly, deciding that she was inventing the whole thing to trap me into an admission. I was going to play the game all the way.

  "Okay," she said, the smile fading. "I made it up. But I still don't believe you."

  "Well, if I'm not an American, what am I?"

  "That's what I want you to tell me."

  "Okay," I said, giving her a smile of my own. "I'm a part of an invasion team from Mars. We're going to take over your planet next Tuesday."

  "Do you really want it?" she asked, somehow returning my smile.

  "It's better than Mars." And that was true, too. I've been there.

  "You don't look like a Martian."

  I can't say that I could really understand this apparent change of personality in her. Now she was talking to me on an almost-friendly basis, carrying on this joke. But then I wasn't too concerned about it either. A girl like Sally is nicer to be friends with than enemies.

  "I'm in disguise," I told her. "Really I'm twelve feet tall with eight eyes and a dozen tentacles."

  "I almost believe you."

  "You might as well."

  Von Heinen stirred, seemed for a moment as if he would awaken, then settled back, returned to the twilight state of unconsciousness.

  "How bad is he?" Sally asked.

  "Bad. A few more hours like this, and no one will be able to help him."

  "You want to keep him alive, don't you?"

  "That's my job."

  "Were you calling for help just then?"

  "Yes."

  "Who?"

  "My fellow Martians. They'll be landing in a flying saucer in the meadow out there in a few minutes."

  "Flying saucer?"

  "Forget it."

  "I wish I could forget all of this."

  "Maybe you will."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Nothing. You don't seem overly concerned about your husband."

  "Should I be?"

  "It's customary."

  "He's a pig," Sally said slowly, bitterly. "But I don't want to see him die. We need him." She smiled a bitter smile. "Anyway, I suppose he's yours now."

  "We'll give him back."

  "Will you?"

  "Yes."

  "When?"

  "When we're finished."

  "Finished with what?"

  "We want to ask him some questions."

  "About the bomb?"

  I nodded. Sally knew that we knew about the Baltic plant, so she was making no effort to hide it from me. How much more did she know? I was beginning to understand why Kar-hinter wanted her too.

  "He doesn't know anything," she said.

  "We'll find out."

  "Your pleasure. But why me? You didn't kidnap me just because I happened to be there. You could have left me tied up as you did Fran¸oise."

  "Fran¸oise?"

  "Albert's bedmate."

  "The dark-haired girl with the big . . . ?"

  Sally nodded, so I didn't say anything more about Francoise's very obvious physical attributes.

  "I would have taken her along if I could have," I said, imitating a leer.

  "Albert told me she was good," Sally said. "A better piece than me, he told me once."

  "Is that why you hate him?"

  "Because of her? Her kind's a shilling a dozen."

  "Then why?"

  "I'll hate people for whatever reasons I want. Why did you take me?"

  "You're Archer Beall's daughter."

  "Oh," Sally said, "you're also trying to find out just how closely the ARA is working with the Holy Romans?"

  I nodded, though I wasn't really sure what Kar-hinter did want to learn from her.

  "You don't have to force that out of me," she said. "Closer than I want, but not as close as the count and his friends would like."

  "That, doesn't tell me much, except that you don't like the Imperials."

  "You didn't have to kidnap me to find that out."

  "I think I get this much of the picture," I said. "You don't much like having the Imperials as allies, but they're the best available."

  "They've got the only game in town," Sally said. "The Nippons don't give a damn about what happens in the Western world, and Spain doesn't have what it takes to try to buck Britain."

  "What happens when the war's over, if the Germans win?"

  "That doesn't worry me too much."

  "Shouldn't it?"

  "No," she said flatly.

  "You mean to say that you think the ARA can defeat them whereas it can't beat the British?"

  "The war's not over yet, one way or the other."

  "No, it's not," I agreed. "But it seems to me that a world ruled by Britain would be preferable to one ruled by the Imperials."

  She laughed very bitterly. "The only thing worse than an Imperial pig is a British pig. I'd shoot myself before I'd side with them."

  "You really hate the British that much?"

  "I really hate the British -- and anyone who works with them. Even Martians or whatever you are."

  "I'm sorry."

  "Like hell you are."

  "I am."

  "Shit!" From her the word was startling.

  She turned away, and we were both silent for a long while. I guess I'd blown that one.

  Early afternoon was slowly changing into late afternoon, and shadows were lengthening across the meadow below. The warmth of the day was passing suddenly.

  I got up, built a fire in the crumbling fireplace that filled the room with smoke, carefully moved Von Heinen closer to the fire, and checked his pulse again.

  "He's still alive at least," I said.

  "Good." There was little conviction in her voice.

  I picked up her robe and held it out for her. "You want this?"

  She looked at me for a moment, then rose, took the robe from my hands, threw it across her shoulders, sat back down and muttered, "Thanks."

  I went back to the radio, slipped the phone into my ear, and said into the mike in Shangalis, "Red mobile to red leader."

  "Red leader station here," came an immediate reply, but the voice was not Kar-hinter's.

  "Anything new?" I asked.

  "Not yet. We have your position, but no skudder is available yet. Please be patient."

  "I'll do my best, but I can't guarantee how long Von Heinen's going to live."

  "I'll pass that on to Kar-hinter when he returns,"

  "You do that."

  "Red leader station out."

  "Red mobile out," I said with disgust and then added in English, "Screw you, Jack."

  "You sound unhappy," Sally said as I pulled the phone out of my ear.

  "Just getting impatient." I looked at her for a moment, decided that she was ready to talk again. "I don't suppose you happened to bring a box lunch with you?"

  "No one told me it was going to be a picnic."

  "Sorry. An oversight on my part."

  I fished my last cigarette from my pocket, lit it with an ember from the fire, and felt very annoyed with everything.

  "I'm tired and I'm
hungry and my side hurts like hell and I'm on my last cigarette and I think one of my patients is going to die on me," I said slowly, "so, Countess von Heinen, I do wish you'd give me some straight answers."

  "About what?"

  "For example, who were those men?"

  "What men?" The innocence on her face was thin, transparent. She knew exactly who they were.

  "You know who I mean. The ones who tried to rescue you and the count."

  "I have no idea."

  "You're lying."

  "Are you going to beat it out of me?"

  "If I get annoyed enough, I just might."

  "I wouldn't like that."

  "I wouldn't either."

  "You'd probably rather try to rape it out of me."

  "Is that an invitation?"

  "I thought those were standard tactics."

  "Rape? What do you mean?"

  She shrugged.

  "Just tell me," I said.

  "You know," she answered slowly, "my father was called a traitor all his life, and I've been called that more times than I can remember, but so help me God, Captain Mathers, I'm an amateur at the game of treason compared to you."

  "Now what are you talking about?"

  "You and your kind." She paused. "I've fought against the rule of a foreign nation imposed on my land, and I'm called a traitor for it. But you -- you and your kind are selling out the whole human race. What do they call that?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about. Wait -- you don't believe what I said about Martians?"

  "No, not Martians, something infinitely worse."

  Did she know about the Kriths? Was that what she meant? It didn't seem possible. That was the most carefully guarded secret on this planet. But then . . .

  "I'll be glad when they get you into interrogation," I said. "Then maybe I'll find out whether you're really crazy.

  "I doubt that you'll ever find out very much that way, Captain Mathers. And I strongly suggest that you keep your hand away from both your weapons."

  "Stay right where you are," a masculine voice said slowly in English, and it was a voice that wasn't Von Heinen's. "Don't turn around."

  Then I heard a swishing in the air -- and the universe exploded in the back of my head. The last thing I remember was the look of triumph on Sally's face as I slumped forward and lost consciousness.

  12

  Captive

  Mostly there was redness and flickering lights and pain from the back of my head, and the universe had an unpleasant, nauseating tendency to spin. Somewhere a long, long way off I heard a voice speaking.

  " . . . got the radio on the air it wasn't much trouble to find you."

  "I was wondering if you'd ever come," replied a voice that I recognized as Sally's. The other voice I tentatively identified as that of the man who had slugged me.

  "I'm sorry it took so long." His voice spoke Sally's English with an odd, almost intangible accent that wasn't German. Like me, English wasn't his native tongue, but I couldn't tell what was.

  "That's okay. What about Albert?" Sally asked.

  "Mica says he stands a good chance of living if we can get the bullet out soon."

  "Where are we going?"

  "Staunton."

  "Here?"

  There was an odd accenting to the way she said the word, as if she were referring, to some special kind of "here."

  "We'll stay in this Paratime," the man said. "We won't shift Von Heinen unless his condition gets worse. But Mica believes that Sol-Jodala can fix him up in Staunton."

  "I hope so," Sally said.

  "I thought you hated him."

  "We still need him."

  "I suppose we do."

  By this time I had worked up the courage to open my eyes. I was lying on a floor -- or deck -- of some kind of craft, behind a row of seats. Metal walls extended up about waist-high, then fused into a transparent roof that formed a dome above. Through the dome all I could see was a reddish evening sky, and though I had the sensation of motion, I could not be certain that we were actually moving.

  My feet and hands were tied, and the rope that bound my hands was in turn lashed to a cargo ring set into the metal deck on which I lay. I could move, but not much.

  By lifting my head up as far as the pain would allow, I could see the tops of two heads above the seats in front of me. One was Sally's blondness, the other dark. The man, I assumed.

  I could not see what was behind me, but I had the feeling that I was near the rear end of the craft -- and I assumed that the craft was the egg-shaped alien skudder that I had seen before.

  Where was Von Heinen? I wondered. Were Sally and the man the only other people in the machine? But then, I supposed they could have been traveling in more than one.

  "What are you going to do with Mathers?" Sally asked after a long silence.

  "I don't know yet," the man answered. "Take him to Staunton with us now. We'll let Mica decide what to do with him then."

  "You don't expect to get any information out of him, do you?"

  "Him? No, not really. I've seen his kind often enough before. He's tough enough to stand up under just about any physical torture and the sort of mind blocks the Kriths put on their hired hands are impossible to break without killing the subject. No, if he tells us anything -- if he even knows anything we don't -- he'll only give it to us because he wants to."

  "Do you expect him to want to?" Sally asked.

  "Not really. But you can never tell. Some of them will listen to reason, but not many."

  "And if he doesn't cooperate?"

  "I suppose we'll kill him," the man said matter-of-factly.

  "I hope you don't have to," Sally said~

  "For God's sake why? He shot Von Heinen and kidnapped you."

  "He wasn't unnecessarily brutal about it. He just talked mean.

  "You're getting soft, girL Is that what love does to you?"

  "Love?" Sally asked.

  "Yes, you and Mica . . ." The man let his voice fade away as if he were realizing that he was making some kind of mistake that he really didn't understand.

  The craft lurched slightly as if hit by a gust of wind, and then I was sure that we were in motion, physical motion. We weren't skudding, I was sure of that. You don't mistake that flickering for anything but what it is.

  "No," Sally was saying, going on as if the man hadn't made his last comment. "I don't think he knows what he's doing. I mean, I believe he's sincere."

  "Most of them are," the man said, "but the Kriths have them so brainwashed that they'll never come around. I'm sorry if you've taken a liking to him, Sally, but we'll probably have to kill him."

  "Okay, old top," I said to myself, "you've just made yourself a dyed-in-the-wool convert to whatever brand of the One True God you're selling. I'll play your games if that's what it takes to keep me alive." And I meant to stay alive long enough to find out what the hell was going on.

  "Do you think I'd better check on him?" Sally asked.

  Where had all the hatred gone? I wondered. Was she one of those people who hates the enemy with a purple passion until he's beaten and then knocks herself out being kind to him when they've got him down? Okay, that would be all the better.

  "No," the man was answering. "He'll be fine. I didn't hit him that hard. Just enough to keep him dazed for a while. Let him be. You'll have plenty of time to nurse his wounds when we get to Staunton, if that's what you want."

  "Okay," Sally said.

  "You just sit here and keep me company. We've got a long flight ahead of us. Care for some coffee? There's a flask and some sandwiches in the hamper there."

  "Thanks," Sally answered. "I'm starving."