An attendant in an anteroom bowed low and issued four suits. They were coveralls, masked and hooded, of a transparent flexiplast which fitted comfortably enough, though Warouw must leave off his robe. Gloves, boots, and snouted respirators completed the ensemble.
“Germs in there?” asked Flandry.
“Germs on us.” For a moment, the nightmare of a dozen generations looked out of Warouw’s eyes. He made a sign against evil. “We dare not risk contaminating the vats.”
“Of course,” suggested Flandry, “you could produce a big enough reserve supply of antitoxin to carry you through any such emergency.”
Warouw’s worldliness returned. “Now, Captain,” he laughed, “would that be practical politics?”
“No,” admitted Flandry. “It could easily lead to Biocontrol having to work for a living.”
“You never gave the impression of possessing any such peasantish ideal.”
“Fate forbid! My chromosomes always intended me for a butterfly, useful primarily as an inspiration to others. However, you must admit a distinction between butterflies and leeches.”
Since Flandry had used the name of equivalent native insects, Warouw scowled. “Please, Captain!”
The Terran swept eyes across one horrified attendant and two indignant Guards. “Ah, yes,” he said, “Little Eva and the Sunshine Twins. Sorry, I forgot about them. Far be it from me to do away with anyone’s intellectual maidenhead.”
Warouw put his hands to a scanner. The inner door opened for his party and they entered a sterilizing chamber. Beyond its UV and ultrasonics, another door led them into a sort of lobby. A few earnest young shavepates hurried here and there with technical apparatus. They gave the sense of a task forever plagued by clumsy equipment and clumsier organization. Which was to be expected, of course. Biocontrol was not about to modernize its plant. And, like all hierarchies not pruned by incessant competition, Biocontrol had proliferated its departments, regulations, chains of command, protocols, office rivakies, and every other fungus Flandry knew so well on Terra.
A creaky old slideramp bore Warouw’s group up several floors. Two purely ornamental Guards lounged on blast rifles outside a gilded door of vast proportions. Several men cooled their heels in the room beyond, waiting for admission to the main office. Warouw brushed past them, through a small auxiliary sterilizing chamber and so into the sanctum.
Solu Bandang himself sat among many cushions. He had removed his flexisuitbut not donned a robe again. His belly sagged majestically over his kilt. He looked up, heavy-lidded, and whined, “Now what is the meaning of this? What do you mean? I gave no appointment to-Oh. You.”
“Greeting, Tuan,” said Warouw casually. “I had not expected to find you on duty.”
“Yes, it is my turn, my turn again. Even the highest office, ah, in the… the world, this world… does not excuse a man from a tour of-Necessary to keep one’s finger on the pulse, Captain Flandry,” said Bandang. “Very essential. Oh, yes, indeed.”
The desk didn’t look much used. Flandry supposed that the constant presence of some member of the governing board was a survival of earlier days when Biocontrol’s stranglehold wasn’t quite so firm.
“I trust, ah, you have been made to… see the error of your ways, Captain?” Bandang reached for a piece of candied ginger. “Your attitude has, I hope, become-realistic?”
“I am still arguing with our guest, Tuan,” said Warouw.
“Oh, come now!” said Bandang. “Come now! Really, Colleague, this is deplorable, ah, dilatoriness on your part. Explain to the Captain,
Warouw, that we have methods to persuade recalcitrants. Yes, methods. If necessary, apply those methods. But don’t come in here disturbing me! He’s not in my department. Not my department at all.”
“In that case, Tuan,” said Warouw, his exasperation hardly curbed, “I beg you to let me proceed with my work in my own fashion. I should like to show the Captain one of our vats, I think it might prove convincing. But of course, we need your presence to get into that section.”
“What? What? See here, Warouw, I am a busy man. Busy, do you hear? I have, er, obligations. It is not my duty to—”
“Perhaps,” snapped Warouw, “the Tuan feels he can take care of the situation single-handed, when the outworlders arrive?”
“What?” Bandang sat up straight, so fast that his jowls quivered. The color drained from them. “What’s that? Do you mean there are out-worlders? Other, that is, than the Betelgeuseans-uncontrolled outworlders, is that, ah, is that—”
“That is what I have to find out, Tuan. I beg you for your kind assistance.”
“Oh. Oh, yes. Yes, at once. Immediately!” Bandang rolled to his feet and fumbled at his hung-up flexisuit. The two Guards hastened to assist him in donning it.
Warouw checked an electronic bulletin board. “I see Genseng is on watch at Vat Four,” he said. “We’ll go there. You must meet Colleague Genseng, Flandry.”
The Terran made no answer. He was considering what he had seen. Bandang was a fat fool, but without too many illusions. His horror at the idea of out-planet visitors proved he knew very well what Flandry had already deduced:
God, what an overripe plum. If only the pills could come from somewhere else, this Biocontrol boobocracy and its comic opera Guards wouldn’t last a week.
If any adventurers do learn the truth, they’ll swarm here from a score of planets. Unan Besar is rich. I don’t know how much of that wealth is locked in Biocontrol vaults, but it must be plenty. Enough to make the fortune of an experienced fighting man (like me who’d serve as a revolutionary officer for a share in the loot.
Unless the revolution happens too fast to import filibusters. I suspect that would be the actual case. The people of Unan Besar would rip their overlords apart bare-handed. And, of course, the real money to be made here is not from plundering, but from selling cheap antitoxin without restrictions… Which is less my line of work than a spot of piracy would be. But I’d still like to get that juicy commission from Mitsuko Laboratories.
The lightness faded in him, less because he remembered his immediate problems than because of certain other recollections. The man who screamed and died in a cage where the stone gods danced. Swamp Town, and humans turned wolf to survive. Hungry men chipping a mountainside by hand, women and children in rice paddies. Ojuanda, with nothing left him but pride, leaping off the wall. Luang’s eyes, seen across the room where she sat bound. The Guard who struck her with a club.
Flandry had no patience with crusaders, but there are limits to any man’s endurance.
“Come, then,” puffed Bandang. “Yes, Captain, you really must see our production facilities. A, ah, an achievement. A most glorious achievement, as I am sure you will agree, of our, ah, pioneering ancestors. May their, their work… ever remain sacred and undefiled, their blood remain, er, pure.”
Behind the plump back, Warouw winked at Flandry.
Passing through the office sterilizer, and the waiting technicians who bowed to Bandang, the conducted tour took a slideway down corridors where faded murals depicted the heroic founders of Biocontrol in action. At the slideway’s end, a glassed-in catwalk ran above a series of chambers.
They were immense. Up here near the ceilings, Flandry saw technicians down on the floor scuttle like bugs. Each room centered on a gleaming alloy vat, ten meters high and thirty in diameter. With the pipes that ran from it like stiff tentacles, with the pumps and stirrers and testers and control units and meters clustered around, it could have been some heathen god squatting amidst attendant demons. And on more than one face, among the men who went up and down the catwalks, Flandry thought he recognized adoration.
Warouw said in a detached tone: “As you may know, the process of antitoxin manufacture is biological. A yeast-like native organism was mutated to produce, during fermentation, that inhibitor which prevents the bacterial formation of acetylcholine. The bacteria themselves are destroyed within a few days by normal human antibodies. So, if
you left this planet, you would need one final pill to flush out the infection. Thereafter you would be free of it. But as long as you are on Unan Besar-each breath you take, each bite you eat or drop you drink, maintains an equilibrium concentration of germs in your system.
“Unfortunately, these omnipresent germs kill the yeast itself. So it is critically important to keep this place sterile. Even a slight contamination would spread like fire in dry grass. The room where it occurred would have to be sealed off, everything dismantled and individually sterilized. It would take a year to get back in operation. And we would be lucky to have only one vat idled.”
“A molecular synthesizing plant could turn out a year’s biological production in a day, and sneer at germs,” said Flandry.
“No doubt. No doubt, Captain,” said Bandang. “You are very clever in the Empire. But cleverness isn’t all, you know. Not by any means. There are other virtues. Ah… Warouw, I think you should not have called the circumstance of, urn, easy contamination… unfortunate. On the contrary, I would call it most fortunate. A, ah, a divine dispensation, bringing about and protecting the, er, social order most suitable for this world.”
“A social order which recognizes that worthiness is heritable, and allows every blood line to find its natural status under the benevolent guardianship of a truly scientific organization whose primary mission has always been to preserve the genetic and cultural heritage of Unan Besar from degradation and exploitation by basically inferior outsiders,” droned Flandry.
Bandang looked surprised. “Why, Captain, have you come to so good an understanding already?”
“Here is Vat Four,” said Warouw.
In each chamber, a stairway, also glassed, led down from the catwalk. Flandry was taken along this one. It ended at a platform several meters above the floor, where a semi-circular board flashed with lights and quivered with dials. Flandry realized the instruments must report on every aspect of the vat’s functioning. Underneath them was a bank of master controls for emergency use. At the far left projected a long double-pole switch, painted dead black. A light at its end glowed like a red eye.
The man who stood motionless before the board would have been impressive in his white robe. Seen kilted through a flexisuit, he was much too thin. Every rib and vertebra could be counted. When he turned around, his face was a skull in sagging skin. But the eyes lived; and, in an eerie way, the glowing golden brand.
“You dare-” he whispered. Recognizing Bandang: “Oh. Your pardon, Tuan.” His scorn was hardly veiled. “I thought it must be some fool of a novice who dared interrupt a duty officer.”
Bandang stepped back. “Ah… really, Genseng,” he huffed. “You go too far. Indeed you do. I, ah, I demand respect. Yes.”
The eyes smoldered at them. “I am duty officer here until my relief arrives.” The murmur of pumps came more loudly through the glass cage than Genseng’s voice. “You know the Law.”
“Yes. Yes, indeed. Of course. But—”
“The duty officer is supreme at his station, Tuan. My decisions may not be questioned. I could kill you for a whim, and the Law would uphold me. Holy is the Law.”
“Indeed. Indeed.” Bandang wiped his countenance. “I too… after all. I too have my watches to stand—”
“In an office,” sneered Genseng.
Warouw trod cockily to the fore. “Do you remember our guest, Colleague?” he asked.
“Yes.” Genseng brooded at Flandry. “The one who came from the stars and leaped out the window. When does he go in the cage?”
“Perhaps never,” said Warouw. “I think he might be induced to cooperate with us.”
“He is unclean,” mumbled Genseng. The hairless skull turned back toward the dance of instruments, as if beauty dwelt there alone.
“I thought you might wish to demonstrate the controls to him.”
“S-s-s-so.” Genseng’s eyes filmed over. He stood a long while, moving his lips without sound. At last: “Yes, I see.”
Suddenly his gaze flamed at the Terran. “Look out there,” the parchment voice ordered. “Watch those men serving the vat. If any of them makes an error-if any of a hundred possible errors are made, or a thousand possible misfunctions of equipment occur-the batch now brewing will spoil and a million people will die. Could you bear such a burden?”
“No,” said Flandry, as softly as if he walked on fulminate.
Genseng swept one chalky hand at the panel. “It is for me to see the error or the failure on these dials, and correct it in time with these master controls. I have kept track. Three hundred and twenty-seven times since I first became a duty officer, I have saved a batch from spoiling. Three hundred and twenty-seven million human lives are owed me. Can you claim as much, out-worlder?”
“No.”
“They owe more than their lives, though,” said Genseng somberly. “What use is life, if all that life is for should be lost? Better return the borrowed force at once, unstained, to the most high gods, than dirty it with wretchedness like your own, outworlder. Unan Besar owes its purity to me and those like me. The lives we have given, we can take again, to save that purity.”
Flandry pointed to the black switch and asked very low, “What does that connect to?”
“There is a nuclear bomb buried in the foundations of this castle,” Genseng breathed. “Any duty officer can detonate it from his station. All are sworn to do so, if the holy mission should ever fail.”
Flandry risked cynicism: “Though of course a reserve stock of medicine, and enough spaceships for Biocontrol to escape in, are kept available.”
“There are those who would do such a thing,” sighed Genseng. “Even here the soul-infection lingers. But let them desert, then, to their own damnation. I can at least save most of my people.”
He turned back to his panel with a harsh movement. “Go!” he yelled.
Bandang actually ran back up the stairs.
Warouw came last, smiling. Bandang mopped his face, which poured sweat. “Really!” puffed the governor. “Really! I do think… honorable retirement… Colleague Genseng does appear to, ah, feel his years—”
“You know the Law, Tuan,” said Warouw unctuously. “No one who wears the Brand may be deposed, except by vote of his peers. You couldnt get enough votes to do it, and you would anger the whole extremist faction.” He turned to Flandry. “Genseng is a somewhat violent case, I admit. But there are enough others who feel like him, to guarantee that this building would go sky-high if Biocontrol ever seemed seriously threatened.” . Flandry nodded. He’d been a bit skeptical of such claims before. Now he wasn’t.
“I don’t know what good this has done,” said Bandang softly.
“Perhaps the Captain and I might best discuss that,” bowed Warouw.
“Perhaps. Good day, then, Captain.” Bandang raised one fat hand in a patronizing gesture. “I trust we shall meet again… ah… elsewhere than the cage? Of course, of course! Good day!” He wobbled quickly down the catwalk.
Warouw conducted Flandry at a slower pace. They didn’t speak for minutes, until they had turned back their flexisuits and were again in the garden and the blessed sane sunlight.
“What do you actually want to convince me of, Warouw?” asked the Terran then.
“Of the truth,” said the other man. Banter had dropped from him; he looked straight ahead, and his mouth was drawn downward.
“Which is short-sighted self-interest utilizing fanaticism to perpetuate itself… and fanaticism running away with self-interest,” said Flandry in a sharp tone.
Warouw shrugged. “You take the viewpoint of a different culture.”
“And of most of your own people. You know that as well as I. Warouw, what have you to gain by the status quo? Are your money, your fancy lodging, your servants, that important to you? You’re an able chap. You could gain all you now have, and a lot more besides, in the modern galactic society.”
Warouw glanced back at the two Guards and answered softly: “What would I be there, an
other little politician making dirty little compromises-or Nias Warouw whom all men fear?”
He jumped at once to a discourse on willow cultivation, pointing out with expert knowledge the local evolution of the original imported stock; until they were again at Flandry’s room.
The door opened. “Go in and rest a while,” said Warouw. “Then think whether to cooperate freely or not.”
“You’ve been harping for some time on the need for my cooperation,” said Flandry. “But you’ve not made it clear what you want of me.”
“First, I want to know for certain why you came here,” Warouw met his eyes unblinkingly. “If you do not resist it, a light hypnoprobing will get that out of you quite easily. Then you must help me prepare false evidence of your own accidental death, and head off any Terran investigation. Thereafter you will be appointed my special assistant-for life. You will advise me on how to modernize the Guard Corps and perpetuate this world’s isolation.” He smiled with something like shyness. “I think we might both enjoy working together. We are not so unlike, you and I.”
“Suppose I don’t cooperate,” said Flandry.
Warouw flushed and snapped: “Then I must undertake a deep hypnoprobing and drag your information out of you. I confess I have had very little practice with the instrument since acquiring it. Even in skilled hands, you know, the hypno-probe at full strength is apt to destroy large areas of cerebral cortex. In unskilled hands-But I will at least get some information out of you before your mind evaporates!”
He bowed. “I shall expect your decision tomorrow. Good rest.”
The door closed behind him.
Flandry paced in silence. He would have traded a year of life for a pack of Terran cigarets, but he hadn’t even been supplied with locals. It was like a final nail driven into his coffin.
What to do?
Cooperate? Yield to the probe? But that meant allowing his mind to ramble in free association, under the stimulus of the machine. Warouw would hear everything Flandry knew about the Empire in general and Naval Intelligence in particular. Which was one devil of a lot.
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