The Neutral Stars
Page 17
A moment later the announcers voice again: "And now, friends, we bring you a special report on the agricultural prospects of the Dergan Two colony, which has been forging ahead in so..."
The sound and picture died as Fong flipped the switch.
"Now, Commander, I believe you had some questions you wished to ask me?" he said blandly.
"Mr. President, I just don't understand," Bruce said. "You yourself have deliberately made no statement about the Orphelin massacre, and yet you allow Niebohr, who, I am ninety percent sure, was responsible for the whole thing, to blanket the entire system with this elaborate structure of hypocritical lies."
"Ninety percent certain on the evidence, or because of your own prejudice against Niebohr?"
"Mr. President—" began Bruce angrily, but the other cut him short.
"All right, Tom—I know you're sincere in your convictions," he said soothingly. "But those are the kinds of questions you would have to face if the matter were ever brought to trial, make no mistake about that. Niebohr would have the finest and the dirtiest-punching legal talent in the profession working for him, and it would be a no-holds-barred contest. He would make sure that even if he lost there would be sufficient mud thrown around to ruin everybody involved—particularly yourself."
"Is that an argument for letting him get away with this monstrous thing?" Bruce said.
"It's one of them," Fong said. "Just think for a moment. If he were found guilty and convicted, what punishment could possibly fit such a crime? If we resorted to the barbarity of capital punishment, could even. that be considered a fair price—one life for those of five million people?"
"And the alternative?"
"The Space Corps Appropriations Bill comes up next week in the Senate," said Fong. "As you know, Detweiler and his isolationist hangers-on have been giving us a tough time all through the debating stages. Until this evening there was a real chance that they might succeed in killing the bill and pressing their amendments, which call for a drastic cut-back in Corps spending. However, after Niebohr's broadcast I doubt whether even Detweiler will be able to convince himself—and certainly not the people he represents—that United Earth can afford to economize in anything connected with the defense of our people against Kilroy attacks."
"Even though you and I know that there was no Kilroy attack oh Orphelin Three?"
"My dear Tom, from the political point of view that makes no difference," Fong said mildly. "Nothing will bring those slaughtered people back to life—but if that vote goes through they will not have died entirely in vain."
"And Robert Prince?"
"Will remain a long-remembered hero—a symbol of self-sacrifice and bravery."
"Even though he probably died with a knife in his back."
Fong spread his pale hands. "And would it do any good to say so? To say that he died like a dog rather than that he went out in a blaze of heroic glory? Mankind has always needed its heroes in the past— and it will again in the future, make no mistake about that."
"And Niebohr?" . "You heard yourself the new position he has adopted with regard to the Corps. The weight of his influence can be a great power for good , in such matters," said Fong.- "As for his reasons for destroying the Orphelin Three colony—if he was indeed responsible—we may never know what they were unless he chooses to tell us."
Bruce shook his head. "I'm sorry, Mr. President, but to me the whole thing seems cynical and immoral."
"Which is precisely why you are a good Corpsman, and I am a good politician," Fong said.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The greater the gravity of the crime, the more it will tend to punish the innermost soul of the criminal.
The Wit and Wisdom of Henry Fong (p. 184)
If only she were here now the moment would be perfect, reflected Elkan Niebohr. He was standing by the glass wall of his office at the top of the Excelsior Building, the only illumination in the room behind him a single desk lamp. Below him stretched the lights of Lake Cities, and above, the stars. Out there, on half a hundred planets colonists were working and building, producing wealth and power for the Excelsior Colonization Corporation—for him, and for the one who would come after him.
The decision to cut his losses on the Orphelin Three deal had not been easy, but he was sure that it had in the long run been the right one. Power, and the continuity of power, had to be preserved at all costs. Beside the protection of power, any petty considerations of sentimentality or personal preference were unimportant. People were, after all, expendable. There were so many of them.. Kill off five million on one planet and within less than a week the birth-rate of the home planets alone would replace that number. People en masse were like ants. It seemed to him that only in a few special individuals who had fought their way to, or been born to, power was there something truly different and superior about human beings. ..
The sound of the elevator broke in on his thoughts and he turned to face the door of the outer office as Elsa entered the room. She was wearing a figure-hugging white trouser suit trimmed with gold, with a large shoulder bag of the same color. Her dark hair was swept up away from a face that had the lines of a solemn, beautiful mask.
"Babyl" he said. I'm so pleased you came. Did you watch the show?"
"Yes, Poppa—I saw your performance," she said, moving silently across the carpet towards him.
There was something about the tone of her voice that warned him even before he saw the gun.
"Baby—what are you doing?" He stared at her in astonishment.
"I could have sold you out, Poppa," she said quietly. "This afternoon, when Tom Bruce came to me with his version of what happened in the Orphelin system, it would have been so easy for me to have told him the one thing he wanted to know. . . But I didn't. . . Maybe because I couldn't believe that even you would be so obsessed by your paranoid drive for power as to forget something I'd told you a hundred times and more."
"Baby, I don't understand." He raised one large hand in a curiously ineffectual gesture.
"No, Poppa, you don't and you never will, because in the long run people, any people, just don't count," she said. "You destroyed my mother. Admittedly she was a weak, spoiled woman, but if she hadn't become involved with a monster like you she might have lived a reasonably happy and useful life. As for my brothers, you taught the older to hate everything you stand for, and the younger how to destroy himself. You're a moral leper, contaminating everything you touch."
"For you, baby. I've tried to do everything, to give you everything you wanted and hoped for—"
"But you never listened—so how could you know?" she said harshly. "I told you that I wanted—that I needed Bob Prince."
"That's ridiculous I" he protested. "You must have had more men than the Whore of Babylon. What could one matter to you?"
"You really don't know, do you?" She was just over a meter away now. The mask was transformed into one of savage wide-eyed anger as she stared at him. "I warned you, and still you couldn't see it—because nothing could pierce the shell of your paranoia. You never cared for anyone or anybody but yourself, and so you had Bob Prince killed. . ." She raised the weapon.
"No, baby, you don't understand."
She shook her head contemptuously. "Yes I do— there's too much of you, God help me, inside my head for me not to know just how you work, to know just the kind of corruption that makes you run, and makes you completely incapable of comprehending the way I felt about Bob Prince. He was the one good, clean thing in my life, and you destroyed him. Now I'm going to destroy you."
It came to him at last that against all reason she was determined. He launched himself forward, grabbing desperately for the wrist of the hand that held the gun, but his movements were too ponderous and clumsy.
She twisted lithely away from his grasp and retreated across the heavy carpet. She raised the gun, taking steady, sure aim.
"No, baby!" he cried, "no, I don't believe it! You can't do this!"
She fired
, the gun making a tiny noise, less, it seemed, than a cork popping. A needle whipped past him, splintering the panelling less than ten centimeters from his head.
Niebohr recoiled, suddenly afraid.
"Elsa, you don't know what you're doing! Listen, I had no option. You must see that. We've always understood each other; we're two^of a land, two. . ."
"That shot missed because I meant it to," she said. "The next is the one with your name on it."
"Your name too, remember!"
"Yes, this is Niebohr talking to Niebohr, Poppa. And I say that you've made the unforgivable mistake. You've no line of retreat, and—" she raised her voice in sharp but controlled anger "—and you've been found out. You didn't listen. You didn't ever listen, and you took what was mine. Now I take what is yours."
The needle struck Elkan Niebohr in the middle of his broad forehead. He swayed for a moment, unseeing eyes wide in the great, beaked face; then stiff as a felled tree he toppled forward to the carpet.
Elsa surveyed her handiwork, aware of a certain sense of anti-climax. It had been too easy, and too quick. . . She had not killed before, and she doubted if she would do so again. In the future there would be others to do such work for her. But this once, at least, she had expected to feel something. . .
She wiped the gun and placed it in the still-warm grasp of her victim. Then she moved to the desk and pressed the call button of the vid.
"Get me President Fong. Yes, the President Fong... I don't care what time it is, or where he is—get him!"
Waiting, she relaxed back in the big chair—her chair now, because now she was the Excelsior Corporation, not he. And she was so much better armed in many ways than he had been. Henry Fong might be privately sceptical about the story of her father's suicide, but he was far too practical a man to reject her offer of cooperation in the future. Everything would be arranged. She glanced out of the window at the stars, the only witnesses of what had really happened on this night For the time being, at least, they remained neutral.
End
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
End