Skylark DuQuesne s-4

by Edward E Smith

  “I told you, I’m Ky-El Mokak. I am — was, rather — a Class Twelve Fellow of the Institute of Mining Engineers. Recognize the ring?” Seaton went to the desk and placed his left hand flat on its surface.

  Prenk studied the massive ornament. It had been fabricated, in strict external accord with the Brain’s visualization of what it should have been, from synthesized meteoric metal — metal that had actually never been in open space, to say nothing of ever having been anywhere near the gray-lichened walls of the revered Institute that Seaton had never seen.

  Having examined the ring minutely, Prenk looked up and nodded; his whole manner changed. “I recognize the ring and I can read the symbols. A Twelve! It’s a shame to register and brand you. If you say so I’ll let it drop.”

  “I’ll say so. I’m not committing myself that deep yet.”

  “All right, but why did you come in? Or is it true that whatever undergrounds spring up are smashed flat in a week?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t find any. Not one, and I searched every square mile for a thousand miles north, east, south, and west of here. And I didn’t find anybody who wasn’t too dangerous to travel with, and I’m gregarious. Also, I don’t like caves and I don’t like camp cooking and I don’t like living off the land — and I do like music and books and art and educated people and so on — in other words, I found out that I can’t revert to savagery. And, not least, I like women and there aren’t any out there. What few ever make it up there die fast.”

  “I’m beginning to believe you.” A little of the worry and harassment left His Honor’s face.

  “One more question. Why, knowing the jam we’re in, did you come here instead of going somewhere where you’d be safe?”

  “Because, on the basis of stuff I picked up here and there, you and I together can make it safe here. I can fix your mining machinery easily enough so you can make quota every week with no sweat; so the town won’t get slagged down; not right away, anyway.

  You aren’t a quisling, and my best guess is that most of the spies and storm troopers have sneaked out or have been pulled out because of what’s supposed to be about to happen here,” Seaton said.

  Prenk stared thoughtfully at Seaton. “You don’t appear to be the suicidal type. But you know as well as I do that just making quota won’t be enough for very long. What have you really got in mind, Ky-El Mokak?”

  Seaton thought for a moment. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he dug down into his baggy breeches and brought out two closely folded headsets.

  “Put one of these on. It isn’t a player or a recorder; just a kind of super-telephone. A fast way of exchanging information.”

  Prenk wore it for a couple of minutes, then took it off, staring suspiciously in turn at it and at Seaton. “Why didn’t I ever hear of anything like that before?” he demanded.

  Seaton didn’t answer the question and Prenk went on, “Oh; secret. Okay. But what makes you think you can set up an underground right out here in the open?”

  “There’s no reason in the world why we can’t,” Seaton declared. “Especially since we’d just be reviving one that everybody, including the Premier and you yourself, thinks is smashed flat and is about to be liquidated.”

  This was the second really severe test Seaton had made of the Brain’s visualizations, and it too stood solidly up. All Prenk said was, “You’re doing the talking; keep it up,” but his hands, clenching tightly into fists, showed that Seaton’s shot had struck the mark.

  “I’ve talked enough,” Seaton said then. “From here on it’d be just guessing. It’s your turn to talk.”

  “All right. It’s too late now, I’m afraid, for anything to make any difference. Yes, I was the leader of a faction that believed in decent, humane, civilized government, but we weren’t here then, we were in the capital. Our coup failed. And those of us who were caught were exiled here and arrangements were made for us to be the next wipe-out.”

  “Some of your party survived, then. Could you interest them again, do you think?”

  “Without arms and equipment, no. That was why we failed.”

  “Equipment would be no problem.”

  “It wouldn’t?” Prenk’s eyes began to light up.

  “No.” Seaton did not elaborate, but went on, “The problem is people and morale. I can’t supply people and we have to start here, not over in the capital. Self-preservation.

  We’ve got to make quota. Your people have been hammered down so flat that they don’t give a whoop whether they live or die. As I said, I can fix the machinery, but that of itself won’t be enough. We’ll have to give ’em a shot in the arm of hope.”

  “Okay, and thanks.”

  And no one in the outer office, not even the secretary, so much as looked up as the two men, talking busily, walked out.

  DuQuesne, en route to Earth, knew just what a madhouse Earth was, and in just what respects. He knew just how nearly impossible it was to buy machine tools of any kind.

  He also knew just what an immense job it was going to be to build a duplicate of the Skylark of Valeron. Or, rather, to build the tools that would build the machines that would in turn build the planetoid. With his high-order constructors he could build most of those primary machine tools himself; perhaps all of them in time; but time was exactly what he did not have. Time was decidedly of the essence.

  DuQuesne’s ex-employer, The World Steel Corporation, had billions of dollars’ worth of exactly the kind of tooling he had to have. They not only used it, they manufactured it and sold it. And what of it they did not manufacture they could buy. How they could buy!

  As a result of many years of intensive, highly organized, and well directed snooping, Brookings of Steel had over a thousand very effective handles upon over a thousand very important men.

  And he, DuQuesne, had a perfect handle on Brookings. He was much harder and more ruthless than Brookings was, and Brookings knew it. He could make Brookings buy his primary tooling for him — enough of it to stuff the Capital D to her outer skin. And he would do just that.

  Wherefore, as soon as he got within working range of Earth, he launched his projection directly into Brookings’ private office. This time, the tycoon was neither calm nor quiet.

  Standing behind his desk, chair lying on its side behind him, he was leaning forward with his left hand flat on the top of his desk. He was clutching a half-smoked, half chewed cigar in his right hand and brandishing it furiously in the air. He was yelling at his terrified secretary; who, partly standing in front of her chair and partly crouching into it, was trying to muster up courage to run.

  When DuQuesne’s projection appeared Brookings fell silent for a moment and goggled.

  Then he screamed. “Get out of here, you!” at the girl, who scuttled frantically away. He hurled what was left of his cigar into his big bronze ashtray, where it disintegrated into a shower of sparks and a slathery mess of soggy, sticky brown leaves. And finally, exerting everything he had of self-control, he picked his chair up, sat down in it and glared at DuQuesne.

  “Careful of your apoplexy, Fat,” DuQuesne sneered then. “I’ve told you — you’ll rupture your aorta some day and that will just about break my heart.”

  Brookings’ reply to that was unprintable; after which he went on, even more bitterly, “This is all it lacks to make this a perfect day.”

  “Yeah,” DuQuesne agreed, callously. “Some days you can’t lay up a cent. I suppose you’ve been eager to know why I didn’t return your goons to you.”

  “There’s nothing in the world I’m less interested in.”

  “I’ll tell you anyway, for the record.” DuQuesne did not know what had actually happened, but Brookings was never to know that. “They each got one free shot, as I said they would. But they missed!”

  “Skip that, Doctor,” Brookings said, brusquely. “You didn’t come here for that. What do you want this time?”

  DuQuesne reached over, took a ball-point out of Brookings’ pocket, tore the top
sheet off of the memorandum pad on Brookings’ desk, and wrote out an order for one hundred twenty-five million dollars, payable to the World Steel Corporation, on a numbered account in a Swiss bank. He slid the order across the glass top of the desk and said:

  “You needn’t worry about whether it’s good or not. It is. I want machine tools and fast deliveries.”

  Brookings glanced at the paper, but did not touch it. His every muscle tensed, but he did not quite blow up again. “Machine tools,” he grated. “You know damn well money’s no good on them.”

  “Money alone, no,” DuQuesne agreed equably. “That’s why I’m having you apply pressure. You’ll get the details — orders, specs, times and places of delivery, and so forth by registered mail tomorrow morning. Shall I spell out the ‘or else’ for you?”

  Brookings was quivering with rage, but there wasn’t a thing in the world he could do about the situation and he knew it. “Not for me,” he managed finally, “but I’d better record it for certain people who will have to know.”

  “Okay. Any mistake in any detail of the transaction or one second more than twenty-four hours’ delay in any specified time of delivery will mean a one-hundred-kiloton superatomic on North Africa Number Eleven. Good-by.”

  And DuQuesne cut his projection. To Brookings, he seemed to vanish; to DuQuesne himself, he simply was back in his own Capital D, far out in space; and DuQuesne allowed himself to smile.

  Things were going rather well, he thought. Seaton was tangled up with whoever the new enemy had turned out to be; might well be dead; at any rate, was not a factor he, DuQuesne, needed currently to take into his calculations. By the time Seaton was back in circulation DuQuesne should have his new ship and be ready to handle him. And from then on…

  From then on, thought DuQuesne, it was only a short step to his rightful, inevitable destiny: His universe. No one able to contest his mastery.-So thought DuQuesne, who at that point in time knew nearly every factor that bore upon his plans, and had carefully and correctly evaluated them all. He knew about the Llurdi and the Jelmi; he knew that Seaton and the Chlorans were, from his point of view, keeping each other neutralized; he knew that the Norlaminians, even, were unlikely to cause him any trouble.

  DuQuesne really knew all the relevant facts but one — or, you might say, two. These two facts were a very long distance away. One was a young girl. The other was her mother.

  Two individuals out of a universe! Why, even if DuQuesne had known of their existence, he might have discounted their importance completely. In which he would have been — completely — wrong.

  18. HUMANITY TRIUMPHANT, NOT INC

  SINCE Seaton as Ky-El Mokak was not the least bit fussy, he accepted the first house that Prenk showed him. His honor offered also — with a more than somewhat suggestive expression — to send him a housekeeper, but Seaton declined the offer with thanks; explaining that that could wait until he got himself organized and could do a little looking around for himself.

  Prenk gave Seaton a handful of currency and a ground car — one of Prenk’s own, this; a beautifully streamlined, beautifully kept little three-wheeled jewel of a ground-car — told him where the shopping-centers were, and went back to City Hall.

  Seaton bought a haircut and a shave, a couple of outfits of clothing, and some household supplies, which he took out to his new home and stowed away.

  By that time it was the local equivalent of half-past three, and the shifts changed at four o’clock; wherefore he drove his spectacular little speedster six miles up-canyon to the uraninite mine that was the sole reason for the town’s existence. Since he did not want to be shot out of hand, he did not dare to be late or to do anything unusual, either during the five-mile train-ride along the main tunnel or during the skip-ride down to the eighty-four-hundred-foot level where he was to work.

  Once in the stope itself, however, he stopped — exactly thirteen feet short of the stiffly erect young overseer — and stood still while his shift mates picked up their tools and started for the banging wall — the something-more-than-vertical face of the cavernous stope — to begin their day’s work.

  The overseer-was a well-fed young man, and the second native Seaton had seen who looked more than half alive. His jacket, breeches and boots were as glossily black as his crash-helmet was glossily white. He was a very proud young man, and arrogant. His side-arm hung proudly at his hip. His bull-whip coiled arrogantly ready for instant use.

  This wight stared haughtily at Seaton for a moment, and began to swell up like a pouter pigeon. Then, as Seaton made an unmistakable gesture at him, he went into smoothly violent action.

  “Oh, you’re the wilder!” he snarled, and swung the heavy blacksnake with practiced ease.

  But Seaton had known exactly what to expect and he was ready for it. He ducked and sidestepped with the speed and control of the trained gymnast that he was; he handled the short, thick club that had been in his sleeve as though it were the wand of the highly skilled prestidigitator that he was. Thus, in the instant that the end of the lash curled savagely around the hickory he swung it like a home-run hitter swings a bat — and caught the blacksnake’s heavy, shot-loaded butt on the fly in his right hand.

  The minion went for his gun, of course, but Seaton’s right arm was already swinging around and back, and as gun cleared holster the bull-whip’s vicious tip snapped around both gun and hand with a pistol-sharp report. The trooper stared, for an instant stunned, at the blood spurting from his paralyzed right hand; and that instant was enough.

  Seaton stepped up to him and put his left fist deep into his midsection. Then, as the half-conscious man began to double over, he sent his right fist against its preselected target. Not the jaw, he didn’t want to break his hand or the throat. Nor did he hit him hard; he didn’t want to kill the guy, or even damage him permanently.

  As the man fell to the hard-rock floor — writhing in agony, groaning, strangling and gasping horribly for breath — the men and women and teen-agers looking on burst as one into clamor. “Stomp ’im!” they shrieked and yelled. “Give ’im the boots! Stomp ’im! Kill ’im! Stomp ’is head clean off! Stomp ’im right down into the rock!”

  “Hold it!” Seaton rasped, and the miners fell silent; but they did not relapse into their former apathy.

  Seaton stood by, waiting coldly for his victim to be able to draw a breath. He picked the overseer’s pistol-like weapon up and looked it over. He had never seen anything like it before, and casual inspection didn’t tell him much about how it worked, but that could wait. He didn’t intend to use it. In fact, he wasn’t really interested in it at all.

  When the overseer had partially recovered his senses, Seaton jammed a headset onto his head and thought viciously at him; as much to give him a taste of real punishment as to find out what he knew and to impress upon his mind exactly what he had to do if he hoped to keep on living. Then Seaton made what was for him a speech. First, to the now completely deflated officer:

  “You — you slimy traitor, you quisling! Know now that a new regime has taken over. Maybe I’ll let you live and maybe I’ll turn you over to these boys and girls here — you know what they’d do to you. That depends on how exactly you stick to what I just told you.

  One thought of a squeal — if you ever get one mili-meter out of line, and you’ll be under surveillance every second of every day — you’ll die a long, slow, tough death. And I mean tough!”

  He turned to the miners; studied them narrowly. His “shot in the arm” had done them a lot of good. Excitement was still high; none of them had relapsed into the apathy that had affected them all such a short time before. In fact, one close-clustered group of men was eyeing Seaton and the overseer in a fashion that made it perfectly clear that, had it not been for Seaton’s mien and the gun and the whip, there would have been a lynching then and there.

  “Take it easy, people,” Seaton told them. “I know you all want to tear this ape apart, but what good would it do? None. Not a bit. So I won’t
let you do it, if I have to use the whip and even the gun to keep you from it. But I don’t intend to use either whip or gun and I don’t think I’ll have to, because this is the first bite of a fresh kettle of fish for every civilized human being of this world. I won’t go into much detail, but I represent a group of human beings, as human as yourselves, called HUMANITY TRIUMPHANT. I’m a fore-runner. I’m here to bring you a message; to tell you that humanity has never been conquered permanently and never will be so conquered. Humanity has triumphed and will continue to triumph over all the vermin infesting all the planets of all the solar systems of all the galaxies of all surveyed space.

  “HUMANITY TRIUMPHANT’s plans have been made in full and are being put out into effect. Humanity will win here, and in not too long a time. Every Chloran in every solar system in this region of space will die. That’s a promise.

  “Nor do we need your help. All we ask you is that you produce the full quota of ore every week, so that no Chloran warship will come here too soon. And that production will be no problem very shortly, since I can repair your machinery and will have it all back in working order by one week from today. So in a very few weeks you women can go back to keeping house for your families; you youngsters can go back to school; and half of you men will be able to make quota in half a shift and spend the other half of it playing penny-ante. And you, Brother Rat—” he turned back to the deposed overseer—

  “you can peel that pretty uniform. You’re going to work, right now. You and I are going to be partners — and if you so much as begin to drag your feet I’ll slap your face clear around onto the back of your neck. Let’s go!”

  They went. They picked up a drill — which weighed all of three hundred pounds — and lugged it across the rough rock floor to the foot of the face; which, translated from the vernacular, means the lower edge of the expanse of high-grade ore that was being worked.

  It was a beautiful thing, that face; a startlingly high and wide expanse of the glossly, lustrous, submetallic pitch black of uraninite; slashed and spattered and shot through at random with the characteristic violent yellows of autunite and carnotite and the variant greens of torbernite.