Complete Short Fiction (Jerry eBooks) Page 12

  “It’s too early to say definitely, but even without any help from us they’d be pretty satisfactory. The Ceetal business isn’t for public consumption, of course—the boys made a clean sweep of that bunch a few hours back, by the way!—but there’ve always been plenty of idiots building U-1 up into a glamorous figure. The Mysterious Great Bandit of the Spaceways and that sickening kind of stuff! They’ll whoop it up just as happily now for the Champion of Vegan Justice who sent the old monster on his way, to wit—the Lannai Pagadan! It won’t hurt either that she’s really beautiful. And through her, of course, the glamour reflects back on her people, our nonhuman allies.”

  Iliff said thoughtfully: “Think they’ll stay fashionable long enough to cinch the alliance?”

  The Co-ordinator looked rather smug. “I believe that part of it can be safely left to me! Especially,” he added deliberately, “since most of the organized resistance to said alliance has already collapsed!”

  Iliff waited and made no comment, because when the old boy got as confidential as all that, he was certainly leading up to something. And he did not usually bother to lead up to things without some good reason—which almost always spelled a lot of trouble for somebody else.

  There was nobody else around at all, except Iliff.

  “I had an unexpected visit three days ago,” the Co-ordinator continued, “from my colleague, the Sixteenth Co-ordinator, Department of Cultures! He’d been conducting, he said, a personal investigation of Lannai culture and psychology and had found himself forced to the conclusion there was no reasonable objection to having them join us as full members of the Confederacy. ‘A people of extraordinary refinement . . . high moral standards—’ Hinted we’d have no further trouble with the Traditionalists either. Remarkable change of heart, eh?”

  “Remarkable!” Iliff agreed, watchfully.

  “But can you imagine,” inquired the Co-ordinator, “what brought Sixteen—between us, mind you, Iliff, as pig-headed and hidebound an obstructionist as the Council has been hampered by in centuries—to this state of uncharacteristic enlightenment?”

  “No,” Iliff said, “I can’t.”

  “Wait till you hear this then! After we’d congratulated each other and so on, he brought the subject back to various Lannai with whom he’d become acquainted. It developed presently he was interested in the whereabouts of one particular Lannai he’d met ill a social way right here on Jeltad a few weeks before. He understood she was doing some work—”

  “All right,” Iliff interrupted. “It was Pagadan.”

  The Co-ordinator appeared disappointed. “Yes, it was. She told you she’d met him, did she?”

  “She admitted to some circulating in our upper social levels,” Iliff said. “What did you tell him?”

  “That she was engaged in highly confidential work for the Department at present, but that we expected to hear from her within a few days—I had my fingers crossed there!—and that I’d see to it she heard he’d been inquiring about her. Afterwards, after he’d gone, I sat down and sweated blood until I got her message from the destroyer!”

  “You don’t suspect, I suppose, that she might have psychoed him?”

  “Nonsense, Iliff!” the Co-ordinator smiled blandly. “If I had the slightest suspicion of that, it would be my duty to investigate immediately. Wouldn’t it? But now, there’s one point—your robot, of course, made every effort to keep Pagadan from realizing there was no human crew manning the ship. However, she told me frankly she’d caught on to our little Department secret and suggested that the best way to keep it there would be to have her transferred from Interstellar to Galactic. As a manner of fact, she’s requested Zone Agent training! Think she’d qualify?”

  “Oh, she’ll qualify!” Iliff said dryly. “At that, it might be a good idea to get her into the Department, where we can try to keep an eye on her. It would be too bad if we found out, ten years from now, that a few million Lannai were running the Confederacy!”

  For an instant, the Co-ordinator looked startled. “Hm-m-m,” he said reflectively. “Well, that’s hardly likely. However, I think I’ll take your advice! I might send her over to your Zone in a week or so, and—”

  “Oh, no,” Iliff said quietly. “Oh, no, you don’t! I’ve been waiting right along for the catch, and this is one job Headquarters is going to swing without me!”

  “Now, Iliff—”

  “It’s never happened before,” Iliff added, “but right now the Department is very close to its first case of Zone Agent mutiny!”

  “Now, Iliff, take it easy!” The Co-ordinator paused. “I must disapprove of your attitude, of course, but frankly I admire your common sense. Well, forget the suggestion—I’ll find some other sucker.”

  He became pleasantly official.

  “I suppose you’re on your way back to your Zone at present?”

  “I am. In fact, we’re almost exactly in the position we’d reached when you buzzed me the last time. Now, there wouldn’t happen to be some little job I could knock off for you on the way?”

  “Well—” the Co-ordinator began, off guard. For the shortest fraction of a second, he had the air of a man consulting an overstuffed mental file.

  Then he started and blinked.

  “In your condition? Nonsense, Iliff! It’s out of the question!”

  On the last word, Iliff’s thought and image flickered out of his mind. But the Third Co-ordinator sat motionless for another moment or so before he turned off the telepath transmitter. There was a look of mild surprise on his face.

  Of course, there had been no change of expression possible in that immobilized and anaesthetized embryonic figure—not so much as the twitch of an eyelid! But in that instant, while he was hesitating, there had seemed to flash from it a blast of such cold and ferocious malignity that he was almost startled into flipping up his shields.

  “Better lay off the little devil for a while!” he decided. “Let him just stick to his routine. I’ll swear, for a moment there I saw smoke pour out of his ears.”

  He reached out and tapped a switch.

  “Psych-tester? What do you think?”

  “The Agent requires no deconditioning,” the Psych-tester’s mechanical voice stated promptly. “As I predicted at the time, his decision to board U-1’s ship was in itself sufficient to dissolve both the original failure-shock and the artificial conditioning later connected with it. The difficulties he experienced, between the decision and his actual entry of the ship, were merely symptoms of that process and have had no further effect on his mental health.”

  The Co-ordinator rubbed his chin reflectively.

  “Well, that sounds all right. Does he realize I . . . uh . . . had anything to do—?”

  “The Agent is strongly of the opinion that you suspected Tahmey of being U-1 when you were first informed of the Interstellar operative’s unusual report, and further, that you assigned him to the mission for this reason. While approving of the choice as such, he shows traces of a sub-level reflection that your tendency towards secretiveness will lead you to . . . out-fox . . . yourself so badly some day that he may not be able to help you.”

  “Why—”

  “He has also begun to suspect,” the Psych-tester continued, undisturbed, “that he was fear-conditioned over a period of years to the effect that any crisis involving U-1 would automatically create the highest degree of defensive tensions compatible with his type of mentality.”

  The Co-ordinator whistled softly.

  “He’s caught on to that, eh?” He reflected. “Well, after all,” he pointed out, almost apologetically, “it wasn’t such a bad idea in itself! The boy does have this tendency to bull his way through, on some short-cut or other, to a rather dangerous degree! And there was no way of foreseeing the complications introduced by the Ceetal threat and his sense of responsibility towards the Lannai, which made it impossible for him to obey that urgent mental pressure to be careful in whatever he did about U-1!”

  He paused inv
itingly, but the Psych-tester made no comment.

  “It’s hard to guess right every time!” the Co-ordinator concluded defensively.

  He shook his head and sighed, but then forgot Iliff entirely as he turned to the next problem.

  THE END

  THE WITCHES OF KARRES

  This is true science fiction about three real witches who cast curses and perform, magic. And it’s a delightful little yarn!

  I.

  It was around the hub of the evening on the planet of Porlumma that Captain Pausert, commercial traveler from the Republic of Nikkeldepain, met the first of the witches of Karres.

  It was just plain fate, so far as he could see.

  He was feeling pretty good as he left a high-priced bar on a cobbly street near the spaceport, with the intention of returning straight to his ship. There hadn’t been an argument, exactly. But someone grinned broadly, as usual, when the captain pronounced the name of his native system; and the captain had pointed out then, with considerable wit, how much more ridiculous it was to call a planet Porlumma, for instance, than to call it Nikkeldepain.

  He proceeded to collect a gradually increasing number of pained stares by a detailed comparison of the varied, interesting and occasionally brilliant role Nikkeldepain had played in history with Porlumma’s obviously dull and dumpy status as a sixth-rate Empire outpost.

  In conclusion, he admitted frankly that he wouldn’t care to be found dead on Porlumma.

  Somebody muttered loudly in Imperial Universum that in that case it might be better if he didn’t hang around Porlumma too long. But the captain only smiled politely, paid for his two drinks and left.

  There was no point in getting into a rhubarb on one of these border planets. Their citizens still had an innocent notion that they ought to act like frontiersmen—but then the Law always showed up at once.

  He felt pretty good. Up to the last four months of his young life, he had never looked on himself as being particularly patriotic. But compared to most of the Empire’s worlds, Nikkeldepain was downright attractive in its stuffy way. Besides, he was returning there solvent—would they ever be surprised!

  And awaiting him, fondly and eagerly, was Illyla, the Miss Onswud, fair daughter of the mighty Councilor Onswud, and the captain’s secretly affianced for almost a year. She alone had believed in him!

  The captain smiled and checked at a dark cross-street to get his bearings on the spaceport beacon. Less than half a mile away—He set off again. In about six hours, he’d be beyond the Empire’s space borders and headed straight for Illyla.

  Yes, she alone had believed! After the prompt collapse of the captain’s first commercial venture—a miffel-fur farm, largely on capital borrowed from Councilor Onswud—the future had looked very black. It had even included a probable ten-year stretch of penal servitude for “willful and negligent abuse of intrusted monies”. The laws of Nikkeldepain were rough on debtors.

  “But you’ve always been looking for someone to take out the old Venture and get her back into trade!” Illyla reminded her father tearfully.

  “Hm-m-m, yes! But it’s in the blood, my dear! His great-uncle Threbus went the same way! It would be far better to let the law take its course,” Councilor Onswud said, glaring at Pausert who remained sulkily silent. He had tried to explain that the mysterious epidemic which suddenly wiped out most of the stock of miffels wasn’t his fault. In fact, he more than suspected the tricky hand of young Councilor Rapport who had been wagging futilely around Illyla for the last couple of years!

  “The Venture, now—!” Councilor Onswud mused, stroking his long, craggy chin. “Pausert can handle a ship, at: least,” he admitted.

  That was how it happened. Were they ever going to be surprised! For even the captain realized that Councilor Onswud was unloading all the dead fish that had gathered the dust of his warehouses for the past fifty years on hint and the Venture, in a last, faint hope of getting some return on those half-forgotten investments. A value of eighty-two thousand maels was placed on the cargo; but if he’d brought even three-quarters of it back in cash, all would have been well.

  Instead—well, if started with that lucky bet on a legal point with an Imperial Official at the Imperial capitol itself. Then came a six-hour race fairly won against a small, fast private yacht—the old Venture 7333 had been a pirate-chaser in the last century and could still produce twice as much speed as her looks suggested. From there on, the captain was socially accepted as a sporting man and was in on a long string of jovial parties and meets.

  Jovial and profitable—the wealthier Imperials just couldn’t resist a gamble; and the penalty the captain always insisted on was that they had to buy!

  He got rid of the stuff right and left! Inside of twelve weeks, nothing remained of the original cargo except two score bundles of expensively-built but useless tinklewood fishing poles and one dozen gross bales of useful but unattractive all weather cloaks. Even on a bet, nobody would take them! But the captain had a strong, hunch those items had been hopefully added to the cargo from his own. stocks by Councilor Rapport; so his failure to sell them didn’t break his heart.

  He was a neat twenty percent net ahead, at that point—

  And finally came this last-minute rush-delivery of medical supplies to Porlumma on the return route. That haul alone would have repaid the miffel-farm losses three times over!

  The captain grinned broadly into the darkness. Yes, they’d he surprised—but just where was he now?

  He checked, again in the narrow street searching for the port-beacon In the sky. There it was—off to his left and a. little behind him. He’d got turned around somehow!

  He set off carefully down an excessively dark little alley. It was one of those towns where everybody locked their front doors at night and retired to lit-up, inclosed courtyards at the hacks of the houses. There were, voices and the rattling of dishes nearby, and occasional whoops of laughter and singing all around him; but it was all beyond high walls which let little or no light into the alley.

  It ended abruptly in a cross-alley and another walk. After a moment’s debate, the captain turned to his left again. Light spilled out on his new route a few hundred yards ahead, where, a courtyard was opened pa the alley. From it, as he approached, came the sound of doors being violently slammed, and then a sudden, loud mingling of voices.

  “Yeeee-eep!” shrilled a high, childish voice. It could have been mortal agony, terror, or even hysterical laughter. The captain broke into an apprehensive trot.

  “Yes, I see you up there!” a man shouted excitedly in Universum. “I caught you now—you get down from those boxes! I’ll skin you alive! Fifty-two customers sick of the stomachache—YOW!”

  The last exclamation was accompanied by a sound as of a small, loosely-built wooden house collapsing, and was followed by a succession of squeals and an angry bellowing, in which the only distinguishable words were: “. . . threw the boxes on me!” Then more sounds of splintering wood.

  “Hey!” yelled the captain indignantly from the corner of the alley.

  All action ceased. The narrow courtyard, brightly illuminated under its single overhead bulb, was half covered with a tumbled litter of what appeared to be empty wooden boxes. Standing with his foot temporarily caught in one of them was a very large, fat man dressed all in white and waving a stick. Momentarily cornered between the wall and two of the boxes, over one of which she was trying to climb, was a small-ish, fair-haired girl dressed in a smock of some kind, which was also white. She might be about fourteen, the captain thought—a helpless kid, anyway.

  “What you want?” grunted the fat man, pointing the stick with some dignity at the captain.

  “Lay. off the kid!” rumbled the captain, edging into the courtyard.

  “Mind your own business!” shouted the fat man, waving his stick like a club. “I’ll take care of her! She—”

  “I never did!” squealed the girl. She burst into tears.

  “Try it, Fat and Ugly!”
the captain warned. “I’ll ram the stick down your throat!”

  He was very close now. With a sound of grunting exasperation, the fat man pulled his foot free of the box, wheeled suddenly and brought the end of the stick down on the top of the captain’s cap. The captain hit him furiously in the middle of the stomach.

  There was a short flurry of activity, somewhat hampered by shattering boxes everywhere. Then the captain stood up, scowling and breathing hard. The fat man remained sitting on the ground, gasping about “. . . the law!”

  Somewhat to his surprise, the captain discovered the girl standing just behind him. She caught his eye and smiled.

  “My name’s Maleen,” she offered. She pointed at the fat man. “Is he hurt bad?”

  “Huh—no!” panted the captain. “But maybe we’d better—”

  It was too late! A loud, self-assured voice became audible now at the opening to the alley:

  “Here, here, here, here, here!” it said in the reproachful, situation-under-control tone that always seemed the same to the captain, on whatever world and in whichever language he heard it.

  “What’s all this about?” it inquired rhetorically.

  “You’ll all have to come along!” it replied.

  Police Court on Porlumma appeared to be a business conducted on a very efficient, around-the-clock basis. They were the next case up.

  Nikkeldepain was an odd name, wasn’t it, the judge smiled. He then listened attentively to the various charges, countercharges, and denials.

  Bruth the Baker was charged with having struck a citizen of a foreign government on the head with a potentially lethal instrument—produced in evidence. Said citizen had admittedly attempted to interfere as Bruth was attempting to punish his slave Maleen—also produced in evidence—whom he suspected of having added something to a batch of cakes she was working on that afternoon, resulting in illness and complaints from fifty-two of Bruth’s customers.

  Said foreign citizen had also used insulting language—the captain admitted under pressure to “Fat and Ugly.”