by Anthology
As Isobel screamed, Abe countered the attack. He reached forward in a jujitsu maneuver, grabbed a coat sleeve and a handful of suit coat. He twisted quickly, threw the other man over one hip and to the floor.
But Homer Crawford was already expertly rolling with the fall, rolling out to get a fresh start.
Abe Baker knew that in the long go, in spite of his somewhat greater heft, he wouldn't be able to take his former chief in the other man's own field. Now he threw himself on the other, on the floor. Legs and arms tangled in half realized, quickly defeated holds and maneuvers.
Abe called, "Quick, Isobel, the gun. Get the gun and cover him."
She shook her head, desperately. "Oh no. No!"
Abe bit out, his teeth grinding under the punishment he was taking, "That's an order, Comrade Cunningham! Get the gun!"
"No. No, I can't!" She turned and fled the room.
Abe muttered an obscenity, bridged and crabbed out of the desperate position he was in. And now his fingers were but a few inches from the weapon. He stretched.
Homer Crawford, heavy veins in his own forehead from his exertions, panted, "Abe, I can't let you get that gun. Call it quits."
"Can't, Homer," Abe gritted. His fingers were a few fractions of an inch from the weapon.
Crawford panted, "Abe, there's just one thing I can do. A karate blow. I can chop your windpipe with the side of my hand. Abe, if I do, only immediate surgery could save your--"
Abe's fingers closed about the gun and Crawford, calling on his last resources, lashed out. He could feel the cartilage collapse, a sound of air, for a moment, almost like a shriek filled the room.
The gun was meaningless now. Homer Crawford, his face agonized, was on his knees beside the other who was threshing on the floor. "Abe," he groaned. "You made me."
Abe Baker's face was quickly going ashen in his impossible quest for oxygen. For a last second there was a gleam in his eyes and his lips moved. Crawford bent down. He wasn't sure, but he thought that somehow the other found enough air to get out a last, "Crazy man."
When it was over, Homer Crawford stood again, and looked down at the body, his face expressionless.
From behind him a voice said, "So I got here too late."
Crawford turned. It was Elmer Allen, gun in hand.
Homer Crawford said dully, "What are you doing here?"
Elmer looked at the body, then back at his chief. "Bey figured out what must have happened at the mosque there in Timbuktu. We didn't know what might be motivating Abe, but we got here as quick as we could."
"He was a commie," Crawford said dully. "Evidently, the Party decided I stood in its way. Where are the others?"
"Scouring the town to find you."
Crawford said wearily, "Find the others and bring them here. We've got to get rid of poor Abe, there, and then I've got something to tell you."
"Very well, chief," Elmer said, holstering his gun. "Oh, just one thing before I go. You know that chap Rex Donaldson? Well, we had some discussion after you left. This'll probably surprise you Homer, but--hold onto your hat, as you Americans say--Donaldson thinks you ought to become El Hassan. And Bey, Kenny and I agree."
Crawford said, "We'll talk about it later, Elmer."
* * * * *
He knocked at her door and a moment later she came. She saw who it was, opened for him and returned to the room beyond. She had obviously been crying.
Homer Crawford said, but with no reproach in his voice, "You should have helped me, to be consistent."
"I knew you'd win."
"Nevertheless, once you'd switched sides, you should have attempted to help me. If you had, maybe Abe would still be alive."
She took a quick agonized breath, and sat down in one of the two chairs, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She said, "I ... I've known Abe since my early teens."
He said nothing.
"In college, he was the cell leader. He enlisted me into the Party."
Crawford still didn't speak.
She said defiantly, "He was an idealist, Homer."
"I know that," Crawford said. "And along with it, he's saved my life, on at least three different occasions in the past few years. He was a good man."
It was her turn to hold silence.
Homer hit the palm of his left hand with the fist of his right. "That's what so many don't realize. They think this is all a kind of cowboys and Indians affair. The good guys and the bad guys fighting it out. And, of course, all the good guys are on our side and their side is composed of bad guys. They don't realize that many, even most, of the enemy are fighting for an ideal, too--and are willing to die for it, or do things sometimes even harder than dying."
He paced the floor for an agonized moment, before adding. "The fact that the ideal is a false one--or so, at least, is my opinion--is beside the point."
He suddenly dropped it and switched subjects. "This isn't as much a surprise to me as you possibly think, Isobel. There was only one way that episode in Timbuktu could have taken place. Abe was waiting for me to pass that mosque. But I had to pass. I had to be fingered as the old gangster expression had it. And you led me into the ambush."
He looked down at her. "But what changed his mind? Why did he offer, tonight, to let me take over the El Hassan leadership?"
Isobel said, her voice low. "In Timbuktu, when Abe saw the way things were going, he realized you'd have to be liquidated, otherwise El Hassan would be a leader the Party couldn't control. He tried to eliminate you, and then tried again with the cognac. Last night, however, he checked with local party leaders and they decided that he'd acted too precipitately. They suggested you be given the opportunity to line up with the Party."
"And if I didn't?" Homer said.
"Then you were to be liquidated."
"So the finger is still on me, eh?"
"Yes, you'll have to be careful."
He looked full into her face. "How do you stand now?"
She returned his frank look. "I'm the first follower to dedicate her services to El Hassan."
"So you want to come along?"
"Yes," she said simply.
"And you remember what Abe said? That in the end the Hero invariably gets clobbered? Sooner or later, North Africa will outgrow the need for a Hero to follow and then ... then El Hassan and his closest followers have a good chance of winding up before a firing squad."
"Yes, I know that."
Homer Crawford ran his hand back over his short hair, wearily. "O.K., Isobel. Your first instructions are to contact those two friends of yours, Jake Armstrong and Cliff Jackson. Try to convert them."
"What are you going to be doing ... El Hassan?"
"I'm going over to the Reunited Nations to resign from the African Development Project. I have a sneaking suspicion that in the future they will not always be seeing eye to eye with El Hassan. Nor will the other organizations currently helping to advance Africa--whilst still at the same time keeping their own irons in the fire. Possibly the commies won't be the only ones in favor of liquidating El Hassan's assets."
* * *
Contents
LEGACY
By James H. Schmitz
1
It was the time of sunrise in Ceyce, the White City, placidly beautiful capital of Maccadon, the University World of the Hub.
In the Colonial School's sprawling five-mile complex of buildings and tropical parks, the second student shift was headed for breakfast, while a larger part of the fourth shift moved at a more leisurely rate toward their bunks. The school's organized activities were not much affected by the hour, but the big exercise quadrangle was almost deserted for once. Behind the railing of the firing range a young woman stood by herself, gun in hand, waiting for the automatic range monitor to select a new string of targets for release.
She was around twenty-four, slim and trim in the school's comfortable hiking outfit. Tan shirt and knee-length shorts, knee stockings, soft-soled shoes. Her sun hat hung on the railing, and the dawn win
d whipped strands of shoulder-length, modishly white-silver hair along her cheeks. She held a small, beautifully worked handgun loosely beside her--the twin-barrelled sporting Denton which gunwise citizens of the Hub rated as a weapon for the precisionist and expert only. In institutions like the Colonial School it wasn't often seen.
At the exact instant the monitor released its new flight of targets, she became aware of the aircar gliding down toward her from the administration buildings on the right. Startled, she glanced sideways long enough to identify the car's two occupants, shifted her attention back to the cluster of targets speeding toward her, studied the flight pattern for another unhurried half-second, finally raised the Denton. The little gun spat its noiseless, invisible needle of destruction eight times. Six small puffs of crimson smoke hung in the air. The two remaining targets swerved up in a mocking curve and shot back to their discharge huts.
The girl bit her lip in moderate annoyance, safetied and holstered the gun and waved her hand left-right at the range attendant to indicate she was finished. Then she turned to face the aircar as it settled slowly to the ground twenty feet away. Her gray eyes studied its occupants critically.
"Fine example you set the students!" she remarked. "Flying right into a hot gun range!"
Doctor Plemponi, principal of the Colonial School, smiled soothingly. "Eight years ago, your father bawled me out for the very same thing, Trigger! Much more abusively, I must say. You know that was my first meeting with old Runser Argee, and I--"
"Plemp!" Mihul, Chief of Physical Conditioning, Women's Division, cautioned sharply from the seat behind him. "Watch what you're doing, you ass!"
Confused, Doctor Plemponi turned to look at her. The aircar dropped the last four feet to a jolting landing. Mihul groaned. Plemponi apologized. Trigger walked over to them.
"Does he do that often?" she asked interestedly.
"Every other time!" Mihul asserted. She was a tall, lean, muscular slab of a woman, around forty. She gave Trigger a wink behind Plemponi's back. "We keep the chiropractors on stand-by duty when we go riding with Plemp."
"Now then! Now then!" Doctor Plemponi said. "You distracted my attention for a moment, that's all. Now, Trigger, the reason we're here is that Mihul told me at our prebreakfast conference you weren't entirely happy at the good old Colonial School. So climb in, if you don't have much else to do, and we'll run up to the office and discuss it." He opened the door for her.
"Much else to do!" Trigger gave him a look. "All right, Doctor. We'll run up and discuss it."
She went back for her sun hat, climbed in, closed the door and sat down beside him, shoving the holstered Denton forward on her thigh.
Plemponi eyed the gun dubiously. "Brushing up in case there's another grabber raid?" he inquired. He reached out for the guide stick.
Trigger shook her head. "Just working off hostility, I guess." She waited till he had lifted the car off the ground in a reckless swoop. "That business yesterday--it really was a grabber raid?"
"We're almost sure it was," Mihul said behind her, "though I did hear some talk they might have been after those two top-secret plasmoids in your Project."
"That's not very likely," Trigger remarked. "The raiders were a half mile away from where they should have come down if the plasmoids were what they wanted. And from what I saw of them, they weren't nearly a big enough gang for a job of that kind."
"I thought so, too," Mihul said. "They were topflight professionals, in any case. I got a glimpse of some of their equipment. Knockout guns--foggers--and that was a fast car!"
"Very fast car," Trigger agreed. "It's what made me suspicious when I first saw them come in."
"They also," said Mihul, "had a high-speed interplanetary hopper waiting for them in the hills. Two more men in it. The cops caught them, too." She added, "They were grabbers, all right!"
"Anything to indicate whom they were after?" Trigger asked.
"No," Mihul said. "Too many possibilities. Twenty or more of the students in that area at the time had important enough connections to class as grabber bait. The cops won't talk except to admit they were tipped off about the raid. Which was obvious. The way they popped up out of nowhere and closed in on those boys was a beautiful sight to see!"
"I," Trigger admitted, "didn't see it. When that car homed in, I yelled a warning to the nearest bunch of students and dropped flat behind a rock. By the time I risked a look, the cops had them."
"You showed very good sense," Plemponi told her earnestly. "I hope they burn those thugs! Grabbing's a filthy business."
"That large object coming straight at you," Mihul observed calmly, "is another aircar. In this lane it has the right of way. You do not have the right of way. Got all that, Plemp?"
"Are you sure?" Doctor Plemponi asked her bewilderedly. "Confound it! I shall blow my siren."
He did. Trigger winced. "There!" Plemponi said triumphantly as the other driver veered off in fright.
Trigger told herself to relax. Aircars were so nearly accident-proof that even Plemponi couldn't do more than snarl up traffic in one. "Have there been other raids in the school area since I left?" she asked, as he shot up out of the quadrangle and turned toward the balcony of his office.
"That was just under four years ago, wasn't it?" Mihul said. "No, you were still with us when we had the last one.... Six years back. Remember?"
Trigger did. Two students had been picked up on that occasion--sons of some Federation official. The grabbers had made a clean getaway, and it had been several months later before she heard the boys had been redeemed safely.
Plemponi descended to a teetery but gentle landing on the office balcony. He gave Trigger a self-satisfied look. "See?" he said tersely. "Let's go in, ladies. Had breakfast yet, Trigger?"
Trigger had finished breakfast a half-hour earlier, but she accepted a cup of coffee. Mihul, all athlete, declined. She went over to Plemponi's desk and stood leaning against it, arms folded across her chest, calm blue eyes fixed thoughtfully on Trigger. With her lithe length of body, Mihul sometimes reminded Trigger of a ferret, but the tanned face was a pleasant one and there was humor around the mouth. Even in Trigger's pregraduate days, she and Mihul had been good friends.
Doctor Plemponi removed a crammed breakfast tray from a wall chef, took a chair across from Trigger, sat down with the tray on his knees, excused himself, and began to eat and talk simultaneously.
"Before we go into that very reasonable complaint you made to Mihul yesterday," he said, "I wish you'd let me point out a few things."
Trigger nodded. "Please do."
"You, Trigger," Plemponi told her, "are an honored guest here at the Colonial School. You're the daughter of our late friend and colleague Runser Argee. You were one of our star pupils--not just as a small-arms medallist either. And now you're the secretary and assistant of the famous Precolonial Commissioner Holati Tate--which makes you almost a participant in what may well turn out to be the greatest scientific event of the century.... I'm referring, of course," Plemponi added, "to Tate's discovery of the Old Galactic plasmoids."
"Of course," agreed Trigger. "And what is all this leading up to, Plemp?"
He waved a piece of toast at her. "No. Don't interrupt! I still have to point out that because of the exceptional managerial abilities you revealed under Tate, you've been sent here on detached duty for the Precolonial Department to aid the Commissioner and Professor Mantelish in the University League's Plasmoid Project. That means you're a pretty important person, Trigger! Mantelish, for all his idiosyncrasies, is undoubtedly the greatest living biologist in the League. And the Plasmoid Project here at the school is without question the League's most important current undertaking."
"So I've been told," said Trigger. "That's why I want to find out what's gone haywire with it."
"In a moment," Plemponi said. "In a moment." He located his napkin, wiped his lips carefully. "Now I've mentioned all this simply to make it very, very clear that we'll do anything we can to keep you
satisfied. We're delighted to have you with us. We are honored!" He beamed at her. "Right?"
Trigger smiled. "If you say so. And thanks very much for all the lovely compliments, Doctor. But now let's get down to business."
Plemponi glanced over at Mihul and looked evasive. "That being?" he asked.
"You know," Trigger said. "But I'll put it into specific questions if you like. Where's Commissioner Tate?"
"I don't know."
"Where is Mantelish?"
He shook his head. "I don't know that either." He began to look unhappy.
"Oh?" said Trigger. "Who does know then?"
"I'm not allowed to tell you," Doctor Plemponi said firmly.
Trigger raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"
"Federation security," Plemponi said, frowning. He added, "I wasn't supposed to tell you that either, but what could I do?"
"Federation security? Because of the plasmoids?"
"Yes.... Well.... I'd--I don't know."
Trigger sighed. "Is it just me you're not supposed to tell these things to?"
"No, no, no," Plemponi said hastily. "Nobody. I'm not supposed to admit to anyone that I know anything of the whereabouts of Holati Tate or Professor Mantelish."
"Fibber!" Trigger said quietly. "So you know!"
Plemponi looked appealingly at Mihul. She was grinning. "My lips are sealed, Trigger! I can't help it. Please believe me."
"Let me sum it up then," Trigger said, tapping the arm of her chair with a finger tip. "Eight weeks ago I get pulled off my job in the Manon System and sent here to arrange the organizational details of this Plasmoid Project. The only reason I took on the job, as a temporary assignment, was that Commissioner Tate convinced me it was important to him to have me do it. I even let him talk me into doing it under the assumed name of Ruya Farn and"--she reached up and touched the side of her head--"and to dye my hair. For no sane reason that I could discover! He said the U-League had requested it."
Doctor Plemponi coughed. "Well, you know, Trigger, how sensitive the League is to personal notoriety."