[Jan Darzek 05] - The Whirligig of Time

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

  Miss Schlupe said disgustedly, "We moved his disappearance up one year. I suppose they're telling the truth."

  "I think so. They probably lose more recruits than they're willing to admit. Their religion is based on a worship of pure science, but it functions as a commercial enterprise. Talented young scientists wanting to devote their lives to research and the discovery of the secrets of the universe find themselves designing nuclear flowerpots or some such absurdity, which must be disillusioning. Qwasrolk probably got frustrated and bored, and finally he walked out."

  "And found someone who was interested in pure research - like how to turn a planet into a sun?"

  "Maybe. I've sent for UrsNollf."

  Miss Schlupe looked up from her knitting. "What do you need him for? He's just another dogmatist, and he's also a bureaucrat."

  "True. But he'll know how to describe the Zarstan experiments to Supreme, after which Supreme might be able to provide some information about turning planets into suns. Which may or may not be helpful. Knowing how it's done doesn't necessarily mean that we could stop it."

  Miss Schlupe's knitting needles clicked. "Dratted yarn," she muttered. "I haven't been able to find any decent stuff since I left Earth."

  "Only Earth has sheep."

  "Maybe I should import a flock. Is there a rule against it?"

  "Probably."

  "Is there a rule against making miniature suns?" "There may be after UrsNollf reports to Supreme."

  "Did Qwasrolk have anything to do with making the Zarstans' miniature sun?"

  "No. The technique must be almost as old as the Order. But he may have learned how it was done."

  Miss Schlupe's needles clicked again. "I think you need more than UrsNollf and Raf Lolln keeping an eye on the Zarstans. For fanatics, religion can justify anything, and this lot is both slippery and mercenary. A few fat chunks of blackmail would finance the expansion of their religion across the galaxy. Also, they've got the solvency reserves to conduct scientific research on a large scale, they've got their own world for secret experiments - what'll you bet the Skarnaf proctors didn't find half the tunnels in that place? - and they certainly have plenty of capable scientists. I'd say that makes them the leading suspect."

  "The situation is a lot worse than that," Darzek said. "At the moment, they're the only suspect."

  A government messenger presented himself at the Trans-Star office to ask if it would be convenient for the distinguished Gul Darr to receive a visit from the Mas of Science and Technology. Darzek had taken some pains to make certain that neither Forlan nor anyone else whose services weren't needed was informed about the Zarstan raid, and he wondered who had talked. He affected the weary posture of an overworked trader, reflected for a moment, and decided that he could spare a few minutes for an interview if the mas arrived promptly.

  A few minutes later Naz Forlan stepped through the transmitter.

  Darzek greeted him warmly and led him to his private quarters, and Forlan, without comment, handed over a letter.

  Darzek recognized the woven material at once. The inditing, too, was precisely the same as that of the earlier message. Unlike it, this one consisted of several pages. Darzek waved Forlan to a chair and sat down himself and began to read.

  The writer had wasted no time in coming to the point. If Vezpro wished to continue to exist as a world instead of as a sun, the following requirements must be met: First, payment of a billion billion solvency units. The detailed procedure for handling the certificates was so complicated that Darzek skipped it. Second, the transfer of a modern spaceship, capacity at least one thousand cargo compartments, to be left in orbit around an unspecified uninhabited planet and equipped with supply and passenger compartments for an unlimited cruise with three hundred passengers plus crew. Third, the spaceship must contain, each in her own passenger compartment, two hundred young females from the world of Vezpro, aged fourteen to seventeen. Further details would be supplied later. Signed, CODE XRT.

  Darzek felt delighted and said so. At long last, a ransom note! Forlan regarded him perplexedly, his green complexion deepening.

  "It's a list of impossibilities!" he protested. "It cannot possibly be met. I'm not an expert in solvency, but even I can see that a billion billion units are a ridiculous demand, even for such a wealthy world as Vezpro. I suppose the ship is a relatively minor problem, but the two hundred females - you seem pleased!"

  "We had very few clues," Darzek said. "This letter gives us several. The two hundred females, for example. That's a suggestive request."

  "Suggestive in what way?" Forlan asked.

  "It suggests that our villain is a native Vezpronian - or that he has a large staff of cohorts who are Vezpronians. Only a Vezpronian would want Vezpronian females." •

  Forlan's perplexity - and greenness - deepened. "Has it occurred to you that we're dealing with some kind of perverted genius? If he can do what he threatens, he may be the most brilliant scientist in the galaxy. If he can't, he has a different sort of genius."

  "That has occurred to me," Darzek acknowledged.

  "Then we must be exceedingly cautious in any deductions we make about him. Such a genius would be quite capable of demanding Vezpronian females just to create the illusion that he's Vezpronian and send us chasing after a nonexistent native scientist."

  Darzek had reached the same conclusion the moment he read the letter, but he hadn't expected such reasoning from Forlan. He said with a grin, "If he's as devious as that, he might be a Vezpronian asking for Vezpronian females because he knows we will reason that he is too brilliant to give himself away in such a simple fashion and therefore we'll conclude that he must be an alien."

  Forlan gestured bewilderedly. "I'm a scientist. The psychology of the perverted genius is beyond me. So are solvency dealings in amounts larger than my salary. I have consulted our Mas of Finance, and he thinks it possible to create an illusion of solvency where in fact none exists. This seems like a risky thing to do, but if the solvency isn't available I suppose we have no choice. The fact that further details are to be supplied later suggests that there will be negotiations, or discussions, and someone must be placed in charge of them. If you have no objection, my choice will be Eld Wolndur. His association with you makes him better qualified than anyone else, and I'm sure your assistance and advice will be invaluable to him and to Vezpro."

  Darzek sat back and regarded the mas calculatingly. The time had come, he thought, to be blunt. First Wolndur had been handed a scientific problem far beyond his capacity. Now, with no experience of any kind, he was being expected to take charge of a problem that would make the most experienced diplomat flinch. "I'll be glad to assist him in any way I can," Darzek said. "He's a personable youngster, and no doubt he has a promising future as a scientist. But isn't it foolish to entrust the handling of any aspect of a problem of this complexity, scientific or otherwise, to one whose experience is so limited? I shouldn't have to remind you that the fate of a world may be involved."

  It was the mas's turn to regard Darzek calculatingly. Then he smiled. "Please understand - I, too, am capable of subtleties. This secret is known only to those concerned with it, and I ask you to tell it to no one. When the first letter arrived, I assembled a special committee of scientists from a dozen worlds. They are the most competent available in five sectors, and they have been at work on the scientific problem ever since. They are attempting to determine whether it really is possible to turn Vezpro into a sun; and, even if they decide that it is not, as a precautionary measure they are considering all of the ways in which it might be done if it were possible - the equipment needed, the necessary installations, and how they could be detected. While this committee works in secret, Eld Wolndur is the person officially in charge of investigating the scientific threat and handling the demands made in this letter. Do you think I am wrong in assuming that the writer of the letter may be in a position to know what is happening on Vezpro?"

  "I thin
k you'd be foolish if you didn't," Darzek said.

  "Only I - and now you - know that my committee is supporting Wolndur scientifically. You will be supporting him in the negotiations or discussions. But the fact that he has only a youth to deal with just might make the letter writer overconfident. If you'd like to meet with my committee -"

  "It would waste their time and mine," Darzek said. "They couldn't explain what they're doing in terms simple enough for me to understand. I'm a trader, not a scientist. I'll be glad to assist Wolndur."

  He did not think it necessary to add that Wolndur's problem was one that he understood far better than Forlan could have imagined. From his detective experience on Earth, there was little that he didn't know about ransom drops. That was the moment when the criminal was the most vulnerable. If this perverted genius thought they would timidly accede to his demands and leave a spaceship parked somewhere in orbit for the taking, he was singularly naive.

  So Darzek would assist Wolndur, with pleasure. He also would make some private arrangements of his own.

  "I didn't think he'd be stupid enough to ask for anything like that," Miss Schlupe announced, when Darzek told her about the letter. "We've got him."

  "That was my first reaction," Darzek said. "Now I'm not so sure.

  How do you inconspicuously stake out a planet?"

  "A ship on the opposite side?"

  "If he approaches cautiously, as he certainly would, he couldn't help detecting it. The stake-out ship would have to be in orbit, too."

  "A ship on the planet?"

  "A deep-space ship that lands and takes off from a planet doesn't exist. When cargo and passengers can be transmitted to and from the surface, it isn't necessary. Spaceships are built in space and stay there. We'd have to have a special ship designed and constructed, and even if there was time for that, I doubt that a ship could take off from a planet and catch one that's already in space. One jump, and it'd be lost."

  "Park the ship in orbit and disable it," Miss Schlupe suggested. "I've thought of that, too. No doubt it will be taken care of in those details that are to follow. We can't really start planning until we receive them."

  "Then there's only one answer," Miss Schlupe said. "Hide an army on board."

  "That'll be taken care of, too, unless our mad genius is a complete fool."

  Miss Schlupe snapped her fingers. "The females. They can be our own agents. I'll pick them out myself and start training them now."

  Darzek nodded. "My thought exactly. We'll work out a plan for them to take over the ship. Of course we'll also try all the other things we think we can get away with."

  Eld Wolndur notified Darzek that the government had received a letter labeled FIRST SUPPLEMENTARY INSTRUCTIONS, the implication being that there would be others to follow. He brought it to Darzek.

  It consisted of a single line, an order to contact a trader named Kernopplix.

  "Know him?" Darzek asked.

  "No. No governmental department has ever done business with him"

  Darzak sent for Gud Baxak, but he~ never heard of a trader named Kernopplix.

  The letter contained a transmitter address. "Will you accompany me?" Wolndur asked Darzek.

  "I'll do better than that," Darzek said. "I'll go see him myself." Wolndur protested that the responsibility was his, and Darzek asked, "Why would a government official - especially one whose function had nothing to do with acquisitions - be calling on an obscure trader? Probably this Kernopplix is newly arrived and unknown to the trading community, and a whisper that the government is interested in him, for any reason, will cause comment. Whereas I, a trader, can make a courtesy call with the utmost propriety, and anyone learning of it will assume that I went there to find out whether he is able to supply anything I can use."

  Wolndur brightened. "I understand. It also would arouse curiosity if I called on him frequently and bought nothing, but you are free to associate with a fellow trader as much as you like. You can tell this Kernopplix that you've been secretly appointed to handle all of the demands that involve trade."

  "Very good. I'll have to be appropriately greedy and insist on my commission regardless of what arrangements he thinks he's empowered to make. He'll be suspicious if I don't. He'll certainly have things arranged so he can extract his own commission."

  Wolndur went his way happily, and Darzek, punching the transmitter address supplied in the letter, went to see Kernopplix.

  The mysterious trader had established himself in cramped, shabby quarters that only charitably could have been called a hole-in-thewall office, and he seemed to be waiting for an official visit. A call by a trader named Gul Darr momentarily disconcerted him until Darzek explained his secret status.

  "A very proper thought," Kernopplix observed. "We can deal as one trader with another, and there will be no hint of governmental involvement. That is well thought of. My instructions are to behave as a normal trader, and of course a trader of my standing would have no government contacts. I've been wondering how to cope with that problem."

  His voice had a sleek, oily quality that made Darzek think of the more obnoxious type of salesman one occasionally encountered on Earth. He was a spiderlike individual, and he already had adopted clothing in one of the revolting combinations of colors affected by the Vezpronians. Darzek counted thirteen limbs that apparently functioned either as arms or legs, but these were no more disconcerting than the headless body with organs of sight and speech and hearing appended to the stubby termination almost as an afterthought. He introduced himself as a native of the planet Bbran, which Darzek had never heard of, and he announced cheerfully, "As long as the solvency is forthcoming on schedule, it doesn't matter to me who transfers it."

  Darzek responded to Kernopplix's offer of a sitting bench by helping himself to a more comfortable-looking chair on the opposite side of the room. He did so only because he deduced that this was Kernopplix's chair, and he knew that walls of moral ascendency could be built with very small bricks. Kernopplix stood looking disconcertedly at Darzek, and then he perched himself on the bench. Except for these two pieces of furniture, the office was a tiny, bare cubicle. What the adjacent living quarters contained, Darzek was not prepared to guess, but he deduced that the Bbranian trader was a marginal operator, the type who would be perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy and willing to do anything for a smidgen of solvency. In this operation he would merely be a messenger, with no authority except to carry out orders precisely and ask for instructions when any problem arose that the orders did not cover.

  Kernopplix immediately confirmed Darzek's deduction. "I'll be brief," he said. "I have instructions. I intend to follow them as exactly as I can. First, I am to assure you that I know nothing whatsoever about the reason the Vezpronian government is entering into this transaction. I desire to know nothing about it. It has been made clear to me that it is in the best interests of all parties, including myself, if I continue to know nothing about it, so I shall ask for no confidences and refuse to hear any that are offered. Your position may be the same, but that is no concern of mine.

  "My role is simply that of a transfer agent. I am to see that a certain spaceship is purchased by the Vezpronian government. The ship has been selected and an option has been taken on it. I will close the option and have the ship brought to Vezpro the moment solvency for it is transferred to me. I am to have the usual trader's commission on the purchase.

  "I then have specific instructions concerning the outfitting of the ship - the compartments, their furnishings, the ship's supplies, and so on. I will arrange this as soon as the ship arrives and sufficient solvency is made available.

  "Once the ship is outfitted according to my instructions, I have further instructions concerning its passengers. Two hundred Vezpronian females, ages fourteen to seventeen, are to be examined and certified healthy by doctors of my choice in my presence and personally conducted by me to compartments in the spaceship. Each compartment transmitter is
to be disengaged by me personally once the occupant is placed there. In the meantime, I will hire two crews and charter a second spaceship - for which Vezpro will furnish the necessary solvency. The crews of both ships will be handed sealed orders, to be opened only after they have reached their first destination - which I will tell them only at the moment they are ready to depart. I do not now have those sealed orders. They will be supplied to me after the preparations are completed, along with any additional instructions my employer may have. I myself will not know what the sealed orders consist of. I will never know, because I am to travel on the chartered ship and leave it at the first destination.

  "Finally, I have been asked to assure you that I have never seen my employer and have no notion of who or what he may be." He paused. "I believe that covers it. Except that of course I am to receive the usual trader's commission on the solvency expended in outfitting the ship, and I am to arrange all purchases myself. However, because I am a trader, I don't believe in forcing a fellow trader to work for nothing. All traders are entitled to their fair commission. Because the Vezpronian government gave you the task of working with me, you probably expect to collect a commission yourself, and I don't see why you shouldn't. I suggest that I add your commission to the invoices you submit to the government. You can then remit net solvency, and both of us will have a handsome profit."