Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Fox B. Holden

  A message to him through his office, but it must be contrived somehow so that they could not suspect that she was telling him he must return immediately. She could simply say something like “as per your instructions, am informing you of arrival of the last item for which you phoned. Am sure it is exactly what you wanted. Good luck, Lisa.”

  That should work—

  But the telecall signal sounded before she could pick the slender unit from its cradle.

  “Yes?”

  “Madame Blair?” It was a woman’s voice.

  “Why yes, speaking.”

  “This is Madame—Doe. We missed you at the culture lecture yesterday afternoon my dear, and just wanted to make sure that everything was—all right, you know.”

  “The lecture—oh, yes of course. Why I’m sorry—”

  “But everything is—all right? You’re not ill?”

  “Oh, no., It just must have been one of my usual oversights,” Dot bluffed. And she knew there was something missing. In the woman’s voice. Something . . . “Oversights?”

  “Why, yes—I’m afraid so. Dreadfully sorry. But of course I’ll try not to forget next time.”

  “But Madame Blair—” and then suddenly the tone changed. “Yes, I know how it is—we all have those days, don’t we? Well, there’s something you really should know, so don’t forget our next little get-together, will you?” An enchanting little giggle was attached, but there had been no giggle in the first three words. “No, I won’t forget,” Dot said. “ ‘Til next time, then. Goodbye.”

  Dot hung up, and the room seemed suddenly to have become cold. Intuition was one thing—she wouldn’t be a woman if she didn’t trust that. But imagination was of course quite another. It had been simply an unexpected halfminute phone-call. Short, almost too short, if she were any judge of the ladies’ society type. Nonsense.

  She sat down. And the chair was cold.

  Nerves, girl, that’s all. Like the night you saw the man in the shadows outside the house and Doug wasn’t home from the banquet yet, and it turned out to be the neighborhood cop waiting for his beat relief . . .

  She had to forget it, get the message to Doug. What would she say, now? “As per your instructions—”

  But Madame Blair—!

  Damn! This was ridiculous—pure imagination—since when was a culture society a thing to get goose-pimples over? That was all it was of course. Just the knowledge of the crate downstairs . . . God the house was quiet.

  She reached for the phone.

  And again, the door-signal chimed.

  She half-walked, half-ran to answer it; tripped, caught herself. It chimed again.

  Then somehow she had the door open, and there were four men in white uniforms standing before it.

  “Madame Blair, if you will please come with us.”

  “No, I’m sorry,—I can’t. Why, what are you here for?”

  “You received a telecall several minutes ago, did you not, Madame?” He phrased it as a question, but she knew that it was a statement.

  “Why, yes I did. A social call—”

  “We know that it was not, Madame Blair. If you will accompany us please.” They stood there, unmoving.

  “I—I don’t understand. My culture society, if it is important for some reason that you know.”

  “Precisely. We’ve known for some time about the society, madame. We are sorry that we have at length linked you with it. Now if you will accompany us please.” There was no choice. She did not want to think of what might happen if she ran.

  CHAPTER XIII

  “INSIDE Venus compensation limit, sir. They’ve taken over. Inversion in three minutes; jet-down at NMHQ in twelve. Secondary check please, sergeant.” Space had been monotonous. After the first thrill of watching Earth grow smaller and smaller until it was nothing more than another planet in the heavens, after the realization that the studded blackness to each side was real, and not some gigantic planetarium show, the trip had been a seemingly motionless thing, like high flight in a light plane at less than cruising speed. They had licked the problem of weightlessness by an artificial gravity set-up which functioned, as far as he was able to find out from the captain, on a complex system of gyroscopes—but not even they furnished so much as a tremor to the deck plates, and he might as well have been planted firmly on Earth for all the sensation there was of movement. Even when inversion began, the gyro system automatically compensated for its inertia effects, and he would have been unaware of it had it not been for the series of oral checks between sergeant and captain, captain and the base on Venus.

  Then suddenly, the second planet loomed large and white—it blotted out the blackness, and then there was no more blackness, and the telescreen seemed to be swimming in pea-soup fog.

  “Six minutes, sir.”

  The syrupy whiteness seemed limitless and for a moment Doug felt little pangs of panic, of fear that they must be falling into a great pit to which there was no bottom, only the eternity of the falling itself. Then suddenly it was above them like a diffuse, infinite ceiling, receding quickly at first, then more slowly, more slowly . . .

  There was a gentle pressure beneath his feet. The gyros had compensated to their limit and had automatically cut out, and true gravity and inertia once more were settling their grip about the sleek ship.

  “Switch the screen aft, captain.”

  “As she blasts, sir.”

  Blue. Great, incredible expanses of blue in every shade of color, every intensity of pastel, forced to the bending curve of a horizon that seemed like some great arching bulwark against the heavy, stifling whiteness that was the sky. For moments he was not able to distinguish land from ocean, but then he discerned it as the midnight blue, near-black mass that undulated slowly, in long, even swells—and it was the vari-shaded, lighter area, smaller in size than the state of Connecticut—that was the northern land mass. And it was toward that which they descended. Their formation had already split and far to starboard, he saw two long darts of silver pair off to land on the planet’s southwestern mass.

  He drew the cloak about his shoulders, secured the decorative dress sword at his waist.

  Down. As silently as had been the long drift through Space, save for the nearly inaudible rumble of the great engine as it had checked in for deceleration. The descent was so perfectly controlled that if there was the heavy whine of atmosphere about their hull from too-great downward speed, he could not hear it. Down.

  He drew on the gauntlets.

  There was a gentle jar.

  THEIR escort formed at once midway between his ship and Tayne’s. They marched abreast, flanked by echelons of cadre officers and Quadrature Academy cadets. They marched silently toward a great, shining building that commanded the entire edge of the landing plaza. Its size alone made Doug catch his breath, yet it was dwarfed by a frozen human sea of tan-bodied pygmies, amassed before it in wave after spreading wave of superbly formed divisions. To realize at once that they were not formations of some stunted denizens of the planet, but children of Earth not yet eleven years old, was almost impossible for him although he had known, had seen the terrifying figures . . . But here were the statistics, immobile, at rigid attention, not in black and white, but in the hue of living flesh, with red blood still coursing through them. Here were what tomorrow would be the numbers—small still things, cold, impersonal, and dead. Here was the stability factor of a people which had forged a device for peace. Here was the monument to their stupidity, the warrant for their ultimate place in infamy.

  They faced the building in a long arc at the far edge of the plaza, an arc that Doug judged over a mile in length, easily 300 yards in depth. In it were the children of two full quadrants, his and Tayne’s—perhaps a half-million—and the number would be matched on the southwestern mass, where Klauss and Vladkow had landed later, the survivors of their commands would be shipped here, and there would be the last battle. It had been planned that way for key psychological reasons.

  Afte
r the first taste of battle, then the indeterminate time of waiting . . . And suddenly the waiting would cease, the sea-going troops at last would land, and swarm from their swift ships, clanging in droves to the attack. And the small, still dead things would mount again. Until margin was reached. Then they would stop.

  Midway the length of the arc, where it was cleft by a distance of about a quarter-mile, the escort halted. It faced left. Doug and Tayne followed suit. The escort fqll back to each side, once again forming the impressive flying wedge with the two Quadrates at its point. Then, facing the fantastically pretentious edifice looming silently before them, the great assemblage waited, the mute silence broken only by the rustling sound of a half-million sword-sheaths as they swung gently in the warm gentle breeze.

  Gradually, then, the sound grew. A rumble like far-off thunder was above them, and it mounted slowly to a vibrant roar. The milk-white sky suddenly swirled as if in indecision, then was ripped asunder, and torn tendrils of it groped to fill the gaping rent in it as a great, silver shape plunged through, descended on a seething pillar of flame.

  It landed atop the building itself. It was like a towering, silver spire there, as though to become an integral fixture to transform the sprawling Colossus from administrative nerve-center to the temple of empire. Doug’s own ship beside it would have been as a sloop to a battleship. He knew that in a moment the main port of the flagship would open, and through it would be escorted the Prelate General himself.

  A half-million pairs of ears were tuned sharply to hear the voice of their God. And when it had thrown them into conflict here, the mighty ship would rise and vanish as it had come, to bear its high priest to the southwest, where the lesson would be read for the second, and final time.

  DOUG tensed, knowing as he did from sleepless study what was to come. Suddenly, from well-concealed amplifiers through which the Prelate General’s voice would soon sound, there were the first thunderous strains of The Battle Hymn To Peace. Doug whirled, faced Tayne.

  “Quadrants to salute!”

  Tayne pivoted.

  “Division leaders, give your divisions present arms!”

  A hundred cadets about-faced in turn, bawled in unison “Regimental sachem, give your regiments present arms!”

  And the command was passed in swelling unison from regiment to battalion, battalion to company, and the timing had been perfect. As the surging hymn of hysteria struck its climaxing strain, a cacophony of two thousand young voices swelled hysterically above it—” . . . PRE-SENT—ARMS!” There was a piercing shriek of sound as 500,000 broadswords whipped from their scabbards, glittered like the teeth of some Hell-spawned, pulsating monster as they flashed in salute.

  And Doug sickened. For he had seen it before, and only the sound had been different. There had been the resounding slap of taut rifle-slings against the wood of polished stocks . . .

  The terrible music ended on a measure of rolling drums, and the command was relayed for order arms. There was the crash of a half-million blades slammed home in their scabbards as one, and then the silence fell as though some great impenetrable curtain had fallen.

  The Prelatinate General, borne in a highly-polished sedan chair of lightweight metal on the shoulders of the colorfully-uniformed members of the Inner Prelatinate, appeared in the pocket-like balcony which was dwarfed only by the immensity of the building itself. Visible only as a jewel-encrusted shadow behind the transparent metal enclosure in which he was ensconced, he began his speech. The two quadrants stood again as statues.

  “Once again, for the glory of the highest order of life and with the blessing of the Prelatinate Saints, we unite to do battle for the salvation of Man. May our mission be one of success.”

  A great rolling murmur of sound swelled from the throats of the half-million, subsided . . . The word was undistinguishable, but Doug knew what it was. They had said “Amen”

  “Our sacred duty to the One World, to the Universal State is before us, and handed down to us by the will of the people as they worship in their countless community senates, we shall discharge it without fear, and for the love of our way of life. Sobeit.

  “It behooves us all, as children of a mighty government, to believe without contest in the inviolate concepts upon which our all-powerful way of living and thought is built. There have been those who were unbelievers; there have been those who would profess to debase government and political philosophy to the level of mere intellectual function and enterprise of policy, yet even those were heard to admit before paying the terrible price for their heresies that, because their beliefs were different, they must have of course been wrong.

  “For those of us who aspire and pray that we may one day hold a seat in the great Quorum of the Perfectly Governed, let there be no doubt, let there be no threat to the mightiness of the glorious order which we foster . . .

  “As it is to be found in the immortal words of the Constitutional Commandments, and I read from Four Chapter 18, Book of Sections, Section 932: ‘There shall be great honor to those who give of their blood that the One World shall live, and great reverence for the glorious memories of those who give of their lives that the One World shall not perish.’ Sobeit.” Once again the rolling murmur of a half-million voices. “Amen . . .”

  “It is then to you that I command, go forth, and perform the duties of your great faith; go forth, for the dead shall inherit the living!” And as at a signal, the air was rent with a deafening surge of voices strained to their topmost in a savage cheer.

  SLOWLY then, it subsided, and the Prelatinate General raised his left hand as though in halfsalute, half-benediction. And again, there was silence, and the living things that were statues had lost their shape and form, and had become row upon row of symmetrically-hewn markers dotting a large graveyard on Sunday afternoon in July.

  “And now, let us join minds as we listen to the ancient tongue voicing the Prelatinate’s Creed which has taught us to believe . . .”

  And the sounds were strange, their meaning neither having been taught nor studied for the century and a half that English had been decreed by law as the universal tongue. Doug knew that only he, of all the half-million, understood the sounds. With difficulty at first, then with increasing facility, he translated the Latin. The Latin which the others heard and obeyed. And which they had never, nor ever would understand.

  “. . . believe in the purchase of everlasting peace with the blood of the young; in eternal adherence to the regime of the Prelatinate because it is the sole existing concept in which to adhere; in sacrifice of thought upon the omnipotent altar of Belief to Government Almighty, and in the everlasting spirit of the Founders, to whom we daily pray for the strength to forever remain unchanged, unchangeable, despite the temptations of knowledge, progress, and human feeling: Sobeit. I believe in the infinite divinity of the two parties, and in the concept of truth as they shall dictate, rather than as it may seem to exist through exercise of mere reason; in the . . .”

  The sing-song tones droned with heavy monotony through the hidden speakers, as though weaving some hypnotic spell to insure the captivity of the young myrmidons upon whose ears they fell, unintelligible, but Law.

  The sea of young heads was bowed and a million eyes were focused unmoving on the ground, for to view the heavens and to think upon their unbounded freedom, with which they sought to lure the mind away from the patterns which had been decreed for it, would be tantamount to heresy.

  And then suddenly the drone had ceased. There was movement in the balcony. Two of the Inner Prelatinate, cloaks swaying heavily with the weight of the precious metals with which they were gaudily embroidered, took posts as though sentinels at each side of the Prelate General’s shoulder-borne sedan. The naked broadswords in their hands swung upward slowly until their lips touched directly above it. And the Latin came again, in low, swift cadences.

  “. . . You who are about to die, go forth . . .”

  And as the words were intoned, the broadswords were brought l
evel, were swung slowly, in wide, horizontal half-arcs above the high-held heads of the regimented multitude.

  “God . . .” Doug thought, “God! A blessing!”

  Then the ceremony was over, and the strains of the hymn again burst forth, and Doug caught himself almost too late. He whirled.

  “Troops pass in review!”

  Tayne returned the salute, relayed the order until within seconds it was a surging, shrieking thing, the more frightening for its perfect unison. Hysteria, Doug thought, by the numbers!

  He knew the plan. The ranks that formed the long arc of formations would face right, and then, at simultaneous commands, would step off to the beat of the terrible hymn, preserving the curvature of the arc so that the actual line of march would be a perfect circle nearly a file and a half at its inner diameter, with the great building as its precise center. And the ranks would be kept in perfect dress as they fanned out in 300 yard-lengths, and the cover of each endless column would be of such precision that at a command, the inner columns of each quadrate would march to the rear, and the spectacle would be one of four immense, counter-marching arcs. As they met at the opposite pole of the great diameter, the perfection of their circle would be proven.

  He took his station near the edge of the inner circumference. Tayne took his, nearly a half-mile to Doug’s rear. The cadre officers and Quadrature Academy cadets took posts of command at equally spaced intervals for the entire length of the arc, marching to them along invisible radii as the thousands of young section and squad leaders shrilled their commands.

  DOUG drew his sword then, held it high over his head, then swept it in flashing salute to the ground. And together, he and Tayne gave the first order. “Troops march forward!”

  The cadremen and cadets repeated it.

  “For-ward—”

  And like an echo bounding its way into infinity, the word magnified into an undistinguishable roar.

  “MARCH!”

  The throbbing hymn was again at its climax, and the volume of sound was so great about him that the tiny shrill note which his ear had singled out for the briefest instant could only have been in his subconscious. Yet for a split-second, it had been by itself, for it had been out of timing with the rest. And it had been near him.