“You say my proposal is unbearably inhuman. You are right. War is. It makes little difference how you draft its plans.
“Are there any further questions?”
There were none.
“Very well. I will call for a confidence vote, with the chair’s permission.”
“Permission granted.”
The Congressman from the south was very white. And very silent.
CHAPTER VIII
DOT’S face was tense as she watched him. Doug held the delicate phone device to his ear with pressure that made his flesh white around it. He was oblivious to the wonder-like comforts of the beautiful home now, cursing it subconsciously as though it had been built for the sole purpose of trapping him, imprisoning him here.
The high-pitched signal in the receiver repeated evenly and he forced himself to wait. His fingers drummed an uneven tattoo on the low table, vibrated the dismantled parts of the tele-radio set that he’d examined earlier. The open pages of the catalogue from the Science Council library trembled in his left hand.
“Electrosupply, Federal Service Division,” the voice said suddenly.
“Hail, this is Senior Quadrate Blair again.”
“Hail, sir. Is there something unsatisfactory? The equipment you ordered should have arrived at your home—”
“It has, it is satisfactory. However I find that I neglected to request a high speed bl—correction, high-kempage power pack.” He tried to steady the pages. The closely printed alphabetized lines kept running together.
“High-kempage power pack? Your, reference, sir?”
“Reference?” The veins on his throat stood out, but his voice was not a sudden bellow from indignation. “You forget my position! How soon may I expect the unit?”
“As soon as possible, sir.”
He hung up. “Damn,” he said. “Damn it to hell anyway!”
“Doug, can I do anything?”
“No, honey, no. We’ve just got to sweat it out until that pack gets here. It’ll be all right.” He forced a smile, sank to a chair, put his head in his hands. She knelt beside him. “The film-strips, that you saw—they must have been—horrible.”
He looked up. “Horrible isn’t the word. God, what people. And at first they seemed so—What a cold-blooded, ruthless—”
“Easy, mister.” She came closer to him and he felt himself relax slowly at the warmth of her touch.
“What a system . . . I guess I read over those reports a dozen times. They know there is no possible way to tell how long such an awful mental shock will stay—even in the impressionable mind of a half-grown child. Yet they accept it as full-blown conditioning process—they believe in it! They believe in everything around here—they worship the government, the Prelate General, the Director—even me! And because there’s no war and hasn’t been since the first Prelatinate, they keep right on believing that from the day you fight in the games—if you survive—til the day you die, you’re thoroughly conditioned against physical violence—” He let the sentence taper off into silence.
“Just rest awhile, darling,” she murmured.
He smiled. “Thanks, Dot. But I’ve got to get that mess downstairs cleaned up. I’ll be all right.”
The equipment—the neat sorted rows of resistors, condensers, vacuum tubes and the rest of it glittered on the long, wide expanse of the workbench he’d installed. At one end was a half-completed framework, and at the other—was the blackened ruin of what had been a transformer.
The burnt-out unit had cooled, but the stench of overheated oil and melted insulation still hung in the air trapped in the blue haze of smoke.
“Can any of the rest be assembled in the meantime, Doug? I’ll help . . .”
HE busied himself with the blackened junk. “It could, but it’s not worth the chance. It’s got to be so damn perfect. I’ve got to know exactly what I’m going to be able to get out of the pack. Got to have at least 1,000 Volts—or should I say Kemps—anyway. Damn the DC . . .”
He hadn’t found out about the utility power in the house until he’d blown up the transformer. It was a little thing, direct current rather than alternating current, but it meant time, and there wasn’t much time. He knew there’d be no chance of his getting through the games undetected, even if he found a way somehow to stomach such a horror.
There was a gentle chiming sound.
“The front door, Doug!”
“Guess I really threw a scare into ’em! You go up first, I’ll douse the lights.”
There were two of them, and their uniforms were white. Their helicopter idled on the front lawn. They saluted.
“Quadrate Blair, if you’ll accompany us please.”
They stood there, their faces impassive, their tones matter-of-fact as though they had asked him to pass the salt.
“Accompany you? I understood that you were going to deliver—”
“S-Council, Department of Security, sir. You appreciate our position. We have our orders. The Prelatinate-Attorney suggests an interview immediately, sir. If you will accompany us, please.”
“You may tell the—the Prelatinate-Attorney that I’m quite busy, but that I shall be glad to make an appointment for him later tomorrow.”
They stood there. There was a questioning look on Dot’s face, and he had no answer for it. Somehow, they’d gotten onto something, Jane. No. Tayne again—
“We are sorry, sir.”
“I’m afraid I fail to understand. You make it sound actually as though I’m to have no choice in the matter. Who issued your orders?”
“Office of the Director, sir. And actually, sir, you have no choice. If you will please accompany us.”
They stood, immobile, waiting. There were only two of them. But he knew that in minutes there could be two hundred.
He went with them.
HE judged the pneumatic elevator tube had descended at least 20 levels below the surface before it came to a softly-whispering halt on a resilient cushion of compressed air. They left the tube, and the same miracle of lighting that kept the city in eternal daylight was gently suffused through the entire length of the wide, silent corridors.
They did not walk far. Doug forced his mind into what order he could. If this were some adventure fantasy from the pages of fiction there would somehow be an escape, some thing he could suddenly do and the tables would be turned. But it was not. It was fantastic, but it was as real as the day the first atomic bomb was dropped.
The sliding panel admitted them to a round, low-ceilinged room similar in most respects to his own office, even to the intertelecon screen inset in the curving wall to the left of the large metal desk. The man behind the desk was thin-faced and slight, but there was an intelligence behind the high forehead that seemed to put a snap in his wide-spaced eyes as well as in his voice. But it was the eyes that made Doug’s nerves feel that they must break like an overdrawn violin string at any moment; the voice was smooth, controlled.
The orderlies saluted and were dismissed. The panel slid closed.
“Sorry to have to call you down here like this, Doug. But damn it, it’s my job, and besides that you’ve done something this time for which there’d be hell to pay if the PG ever found out and you know it as well as I do.”
He gestured Doug to a chair. The Prelatinate-Attorney’s tone was relaxed, but Doug wondered how it might have sounded to a man of lesser rank than himself.
One thing was certain; it was time to go back into the act. “I suppose this all is leading up to threats of the S-Coundl—”
“Doug, when the DO buzzed me and said they’d been notified by Electrosupply that you’d refused to give a reference for a piece of equipment you ordered, there was nothing else for me to do but to get you down here on the spot. You can imagine where I’d be if I didn’t.”
“It was Tayne I suppose.”
There was a quick flick of the attorney’s eyes, but his face didn’t change. “Personalities don’t matter, Doug.”
Doug waited for
it. Behind the nonchalance, the employer-to-faithful-but-errant-employee tone, there was something of hard spring steel, coiled, waiting to be sprung.
“I’m not sure I like your tone,” Doug bluffed. “I have some degree of position you know—”
“Yes, I know—you seldom let anybody forget it. I understand you’ve even reminded the Director on occasion . . .”
Doug shrugged. “Suppose we get down to it. Just what is there this time that has the DO so upset?”
THE Attorney stiffened visibly. “What is there? You mean you don’t realize that you’ve come about as close as anyone can come to committing a capital heresy? Did you actually suppose you could order a thing like that without a triple-endorsed Science Council reference? You know as well as I do how strict the law is about possession of restricted equipment of any kind by anyone except members of the Science Council itself. Even the Director has to go through channels! Where d’you think we’d be, anyway, if just anybody and everybody could read any books, tinker with any kind of paraphernalia they wanted to? Damn it, man, if every Tom, Dick and Harry went fooling around with the knowledge that wasn’t food for them the whole damn planet would be in the S-chambers!”
“What do you mean, restricted—?”
“And we can’t have any exceptions! Except, that is, for the special training such as picked men as yourself received at the Quadrature Academy. But when it comes, to personal possession of restricted stuff, without the required reference, you might just as well be caught with a copy of Freud in your library!”
The pack. That had to be what he meant—he’d been phoning for the pack, and they’d asked for a reference . . . Somehow, he had to—the catalogue! The closely printed lines that got tangled up because he couldn’t hold it steady! “You’re accusing me of ordering restricted—”
“Now look, Doug. You’d better tell me—I don’t want it on the record that I had to use Right of Office to get an answer. You ordered a high-kempage power-pack. Now what for?”
“High-kempage power pack? You can’t be serious!”
“I’ve warned you, Doug.”
“Warn and be damned! You sit there and repeatedly accuse me of ordering restricted equipment—without reference, and you haven’t even got your facts straight! Did Electrosupply tell you that?”
A peculiar look was on the Attorney’s face.
“DO said so.”
“Well you could’ve saved us a good hour’s time if you’d have called me to see what I had to say first before dragging me over here as if I were a common criminal! I think an apology will be in order!” If only Barnum had been right! “What I ordered, just in the event you’re as interested as you say you are, was a high-speed blower-rack!”
“A—what?”
Reel him in!
“A high-speed blower-rack. So happens I’m having trouble with the electronic units of my vento-conditioner at home, and I’m doing the work myself more or less as a project in a vocational therapy—”
“Now it is you who can’t be serious. How great a fool do you think—”
“Damn it, whose word are you going to take in this?” Doug stood up. “Some Electrosupply technician’s, who can’t hear any better than you can reason, or mine?”
There was a second’s silence.
“All right, Doug. You’re a fool, you know. You are, and so am I . . . It was a high-speed blower-rack. I’ll make sure it’s set straight.”
“Well, thank you.”
“Just be careful, Doug.”
“That’s good advice—don’t wear it out!”
He turned quickly, made his exit before the panel had widened halfway.
CHAPTER IX
THE ugly, black building stood out like a shapeless smudge of soot against the milk-white sky, but it was by sheer accident that Terry and Mike discovered it, built as it was at the water’s edge where the high blue grass had been neither trampled nor trimmed, and at a distance further from the training areas than they had ever ventured.
“We’d better go back, Terry. Well get in trouble.” Mike’s young body glistened with perspiration as he stood on the knoll with his brother, eyes still fastened to the low black structure as he spoke. His equipment belt was heavy and he tugged again at it to change the distribution of its weight. The broadsword swung loosely at his left side, not quite counterbalancing the mace which hung by its thong to his right.
“They said there were a couple of hours before the next class, didn’t they? The guy in the sharp uniform said we could amuse ourselves any way we wanted.”
“Sure, but this isn’t the way the others are doing it. They all went out and started practicing with the swords again. We oughtta.”
“You rather do that than go exploring?”
Mike touched the half-healed flesh-wound on his right shoulder. He remembered how the short, dark-haired kid had laughed when it had started to bleed, and then how mad he got when he found he couldn’t use the sword well enough to cut him back.
“I’d like to get that guy.”
“Don’t be a dope. It’s only a dream—you didn’t really get hurt. Come on let’s see what that place is. Nobody’s around . . .”
“Maybe it is only a dream, but he made me mad. Boy I’ll cut his ears off if I—”
“Aw, come on.”
They had barely started down the opposite side of the knoll when Jon Tayne’s voice hailed them. “Hey, you two! Where d’you think you’re going, anyway?” They waited for him. There was a cross look on his face which Mike immediately resented.
“Over there.” He pointed toward the black building. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing to me, but it’ll be double duty to you if you don’t get back to the recreation area right away.”
“There’s a lot of time yet. He said we could amuse ourselves, didn’t he?”
“That doesn’t mean walking around wherever you please. It means just what it says—giving your weapons a work-out. I was called away from a good match just to come and find you two. Come on.”
They turned, fell in at either side of him.
“We didn’t mean anything wrong,” Terry said.
“They’ll let it go this time because you’re new, and because you are who you are. But you guys had better be more careful. That’s restricted back there.”
“What’s that? Restricted?”
“You should know that!”
“What is it?”
“Your father never told you anything, did he?”
“Sure—course he did. Lots of things. But there’s no way he’d know what that place is.”
JON stopped in mid-stride. “No way he’d know? You crazy?”
“Who’s crazy?” Terry clenched his fists, stuck his chin out.
“Look here—you want a fight or something?” Jon’s hand went to the hilt of his sword. Terry unhooked his mace. Mike had his sword half free of its wide scabbard.
Jon let his arms drop to his sides.
“Come on, wise guy, who’s crazy?” Terry glared at him.
“You know what’ll happen to you if you do anything to a section leader?”
“We didn’t ask to be here,” Mike said. “And we didn’t ask to be pushed around, either, or told where we could go and couldn’t go. Or be called crazy, either. The whole thing is dumb.”
“After the games, if you’re still alive, I’ll report you for that,” Jon said.
“Still alive? Who you kidding? You talk like there was going to be a war. Grown-ups do that, kids don’t.”
“What do you think you’re being trained to use your weapons for?”
“That’s easy,” Terry said. “So we’ll know how to use ’em when we’re grown ups. It’s called UMT or something.”
“You guys are or—ah, don’t be funny. The games start in three days, then you’ll know if you’re in a war or not. And frankly, I hope you both end up back there.” He turned, started walking.
Terry and Mike let their hands fall from their weap
ons, followed after him.
“Nobody’s being funny,” Mike said. “Suppose we do end up back in that place? So what?”
“Listen the hero,” Jon said. “You planning on taking on the whole First Quadrant single-handed or something? They sure don’t bring you back to life back there, if that’s what you think. They just make you a little deader.”
“Deader?”
“Well I’d rather be buried if I get killed than burned into a little pile of ashes and sent home in a jar. And that’s what they do. There’s not enough land on Venus to bury everybody every year, and they sure aren’t going to go to the trouble of hauling a bunch of corpses out into the ocean just to dump ’em. Not when they can burn ’em up, anyway, right here.”
“Burn ’em up?” Mike said, feeling funny in his stomach. “Alive?”
“Not often, I guess. Only when there’s a mistake and they don’t notice it in time. Or if there haven’t been enough guys killed to make the year’s quota. Then they take unconscious ones. That’s what my father told me once, anyway.”
“Suppose—suppose you’re just hurt bad? Do they—”
“Not if they’ve made the quota. If you end up hurt they take you to the other land mass—there’s a big hospital there. I’ve never seen it, but my father says it’s the biggest single building ever made.”
“How long are you kept there?”
“Until you’re recovered, of course. The longest case on their records was my cousin’s. He got a broken neck when he was hit in the face by a mace, and lost both eyes. They repaired the cut nerves, gave him two new eyes, and fixed his neck in about a month. They can do anything, so you don’t have to worry. I got a broken back myself last year—I was out walking in two weeks.”
THE recreation area was almost in view. Already they were able to hear the clash of metal on metal, as though a great tangled mass of scythes was being shaken by some huge, clumsy, hand which could not break them apart.
“Jon . . .”
Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 25