IX
The submarine docked at an indescribably lovely bay in the south ofIreland. Orsino asked Grinnel whether the Irish didn't object to this,and was met with a blank stare. It developed that the Irish consisted ofa few hundred wild men in the woods--maybe a few thousand. The stupidshore-bound personnel couldn't seem to clean them out. Grinnel didn'tknow anything about them, and he cared less.
Ireland appeared to be the naval base. The government proper was locatedon Iceland, vernal again after a long, climatic swing. The Canaries andAscencion were outposts.
Orsino had learned enough on the voyage to recognize the Government forwhat it was. It had happened before in history; Uncle Frank had pointedit out. Big-time Caribbean piracy had grown from very respectableorigins. Gentlemen-skippers had been granted letters of marque andreprisal by warring governments, which made them a sort of contractnavy. Periods of peace had found these privateers unwilling to give uptheir hard earned complicated profession and their investments in it.When they could no longer hoist the flag of England or France or Spain,they simply hoisted the Jolly Roger and went it alone.
Confusing? Hell, yes! The famous Captain Kidd thought he was a gallantprivateer and sailed trustingly into New York. Somewhere he had failedto touch third base; they shipped him to London for trial and hanged himas a pirate. The famous Henry Morgan had never been anything but apirate and a super-pirate; as admiral of a private fleet he executed abrilliant amphibious operation and sacked the city of Panama. He wasknighted, made governor of a fair-sized English island in the WestIndies and died loved and respected by all.
Charles Orsino found himself a member of a pirate band that calleditself the North American Government.
More difficult to learn were the ins and outs of pirate politics, whichwere hampered with an archaic, structurally-inappropriate nomenclatureand body of tradition. Commander Grinnel was a Sociocrat, which meantthat he was in the same gang as President Loman. The late sub commanderhad been a Constitutionist, which meant that he was allied with thecurrently-out "southern bloc." The southern bloc did not consist ofsoutherners at this stage of the North American Government's history butof a clique that tended to include the engineers and maintenance men ofthe Government. That had been the reason for the sub commander'serasure.
The Constitutionists traditionally commanded pigboats and aircraft whilesurface vessels and the shore establishments were in the hands of theSociocrats--the fruit of some long-forgotten compromise.
Commander Grinnel cheerfully explained to Charles that there was acrypto-Sociocrat naval officer primed and waiting to be appointed to thecommand of the sub. The Constitutionist gang would back him to the hiltand the Sociocrats would growl and finally assent. If, thereafter, theConstitutionists ever counted on the sub in a coup, they would bequickly disillusioned.
There wasn't much voting. Forty years before there had been a baddeadlock following the death by natural causes of President Powell afterseventeen years in office. An ad hoc bipartisan conference called asession of the Senate and the Senate elected a new president.
It was little information to be equipped with when you walked out intothe brawling streets of New Portsmouth on shore leave.
* * * * *
The town had an improvised look which was strange to Orsino. There was asanitation reactor every hundred yards or so, but he mistrusted the lookof the ground-level mains that led to it from, the houses. There werehouse flies from which he shied violently. Every other shack on thewaterfront was a bar or a notch joint. He sampled the goods at one ofthe former and was shocked by the quality and price. He rolled out, hisears still ringing from the belt of raw booze; as half a dozen sweateredGuards rolled in, singing some esoteric song about their high morale andeven higher venereal rate. A couple of them looked at him appraisingly,as though they wondered what kind of a noise he'd make if they jumped onhis stomach real hard, and he hurried away from them.
The other entertainment facilities of the waterfront were flatly ruledout by a quick inspection of the wares. He didn't know what to make ofthem. Joints back in Syndic Territory if you were a man, made sense. Youwent to learn the ropes, or because you were afraid of getting mixed upin something intense when you didn't want to, or because you wanted achange, or because you were too busy, lazy or shy to chase skirts onyour own. If you were a woman and not too particular, a couple of yearsin a joint left you with a considerable amount of money and someinteresting memories which you were under no obligation to discuss withyour husbands or husband.
But the sloppy beasts who called to him from the windows of the jointshere on the waterfront, left him puzzled and disgusted. He reflected,strolling up Washington Street with eyes straight ahead, that women mustbe in short supply if they could make a living--or that the malecitizens of the Government had no taste.
A whiff from one of those questionable sewer mains sent him reeling. Heducked into another saloon in self-defense and leaned groggily againstthe bar. A pretty brunette demanded: "What'll you have?"
"Gin, please." He peeled a ten off the roll Grinnel had given him. Whenthe girl poured his gin he looked at her and found her fair. In allinnocence, he asked her a question, as he might have asked a barmaidback home. She could have answered, "Yes," "No," "Maybe," or "What's init for me?"
Instead she called him a lousy bastard, picked up a beer mug and wasabout to shatter it on his head when a hand caught her and a voicewarned: "Hold it, Mabel! This guy's off my ship.
"He's just out of the States; he doesn't know any better. You know whatit's like over there."
Mabel snarled: "You better wise him up, then, friend. He can't go aroundtalking like that to decent women." She slapped down another glass,poured gin and flounced down the bar.
Charles gulped his gin and turned shakily to his deliverer, a littlereactor specialist he had seen on the sub once or twice. "Thanks," hesaid feeling inadequate. "Maybe you better wise me up. All I said was,'Darling, do you--'"
The reactor man held up his hand. "That's enough," he said. "You don'ttalk that way over here unless you want your scalp parted."
Charles, buzzing a little with the gin, protested hotly: "But what's theharm? All she had to say was no; I wasn't going to throw her down on thefloor!"
It was all very confusing.
A shrug. "I heard about things in the States--Wyman, isn't it? I guess Ididn't really believe it. You mean I could go up to any woman and justask her how's about it?"
"Within reason, yes."
"And _do_ they?"
"Some do, some don't--like here."
"Like hell, like here! Last liberty--" and the reactor man told him along, confusing story about how he had picked up this pig, how she haddangled it in front of him for one solid week while he managed to spendthree hundred and eighty-six dollars on her, and how finally she hadbawled that she couldn't, she just hated herself but she couldn't doanything like _that_ and bang went the door in his face, leaving him tofinish out the evening in a notch joint.
"Good God!" Charles said, appalled. "Was she out of her mind?"
"No," the reactor man said glumly, "but I must have been. I should ofgot her drunk and raped her the first night."
Charles was fully conscious that values were different here. Chokingdown something like nausea, he asked carefully: "Is there much rape?"
The little man signalled for another gin and downed it. "I guess so.Once when I was a kid a dame gave me this line about her cousin rapedher when she was little so she was frigid. I had more ambition then, soI said: 'Then this won't be anything new to you, baby,' I popped her onthe button--"
"I've got to go now," Charles said, walking straight out of the saloon.He was beginning to understand the sloppy beasts in the windows of thenotch joint and why men could bring themselves to settle for nothingbetter. He was also overwhelmed by a great wave of home sickness.
The ugly pattern was beginning to emerge. Prudery, rape, frigidity,intrigue for power--and assassination? Beyond the on
e hint, Grinnel hadsaid nothing that affected Syndic Territory.
But nothing would be more logical than for this band of brigands to lustafter the riches of the continent.
Back of the waterfront were shipfitting shops and living quarters. Workwas being done by a puzzling combination of mechanization andmusclepower. In one open shed he saw a lathe-hand turning a gunbarrelout of a forging; the lathe was driven by one of those standard 18-inchehrenhaft rotors Max Wyman knew so well. But a vertical drillpress nextto it--Orsino blinked. Two men, sweating and panting, were turning astubborn vertical drum as tall as they were, and a belt drive from thedrum whirled the drill bit as it sank into a hunk of bronze. The menwere in rags, dirty rags. And it came to Orsino with a stunning shockwhen he realized what the dull, clanking things were that swung fromtheir wrists. They were chained to the handles of the wheel.
He walked on, almost dazed, comprehending now some cryptic remarks thathad been passed aboard the sub.
"No Frog has staying power. Give a Limey his beef once a day and he'lloutsweat a Frog."
"Yeah, but you can't whip a Limey. They just go bad when you whip aLimey."
"They just get sullen for awhile. But let me tell you, friend, don'tever whip a Spig. You whip a Spig, he'll wait twenty years if he has tobut he'll _get_ you, right between the ribs."
"If a Spig wants to be boiled, I should worry."
It had been broken up in laughter.
_Boiled!_ Could such things be?
Sixteen ragged, filth-crusted sub-humans were creeping down the road,each straining at a rope. An inch at a time, they were dragging a skidloaded with one huge turbine gear whose tiny herringbone teeth caughtthe afternoon sun.
The Government had reactors, the Government had vehicles--why this? Heslowly realized that the Government's metal and machinery and atomicpower went into its warships; that there was none left over forconsumers, and the uses of peace. The Government had degenerated into adawn-age monster, specialized all to teeth and claws and muscles todrive them with. The Government was now, whatever it had been, agraceless, humorless incarnate ferocity. Whatever lightness or joysurvived was the meaningless vestigial twitching of an obsolete organ.
Somewhere a child began to bawl and Charles was surprised to feel aprofound pity welling up in him. Like a sedentary man who after aworkout aches in muscles he never knew he owned, Charles was discoveringthat he had emotions which had never been poignantly evoked by the blandpassage of the hours in Syndic Territory.
Poor little bastard, he thought, growing up in this hellhole. I don'tknow what having slaves to kick around will do to you, but I don't seehow you can grow up a human being. I don't know what fear of love willdo to you--make you a cheat? Or a graceful rutting animal with a choiceonly between graceless rutting violence and a stinking scuffle with aflabby and abstracted stranger in a strange unloved room? We have ourguns to play with and they're good toys, but I don't know what kind ofmonster you'll become when they give you a gun to live with and violencefor a god.
_Reiner was right_, he thought unhappily. _We've got to do somethingabout this mess._
A man and a woman were struggling in an alley as he passed. Old habitalmost made him walk on, but this wasn't the playful business of rippingclothes as practiced during hilarious moments in Mob Territory. It was agrim and silent struggle--
The man wore the sweater of the Guards. Nevertheless, Charles walkedinto the alley and tore him away from the woman; or rather, he yanked atthe man's rock-like arm and the man, in surprise, let go of the womanand spun to face him.
"Beat it," Charles said to the woman, not looking around. He saw fromthe corner of his eye that she was staying right there.
The man's hand was on his sheath knife. He told Charles: "Get lost. Now.You don't mess with the Guards."
Charles felt his knees quivering, which was good. He knew from many achukker of polo that it meant that he was strung to the breaking point,ready to explode into action. "Pull that knife," he said, "and the nextthing you know you'll be eating it."
The man's face went dead calm and he pulled the knife and came in low,very fast. The knife was supposed to catch Charles in the middle. IfCharles stepped inside it, the man would grab him in a bear hug andknife him in the back.
There was only one answer.
He caught the thick wrist from above with his left hand as the knifeflashed toward his middle and shoved out. He felt the point catch andslice his cuff. The Guardsman tried a furious and ill-advised kick athis crotch; with his grip on the knife-hand, Charles toppled him intothe filthy alley as he stood one-legged and off balance. He fell on hisback, floundering, and for a black moment, Charles thought his weightwas about to tear the wrist loose from his grip. The moment passed, andCharles put his right foot in the socket of the Guardsman's elbow,reinforced his tiring left hand with his right and leaned, doubling theman's forearm over the fulcrum of his boot. The man roared and droppedthe knife. It had taken perhaps five seconds.
Charles said, panting: "I don't want to break your arm or kick your headin or anything like that. I just want you to go away and leave the womanalone." He was conscious of her, vaguely hovering in the background. Hethought angrily: _She might at least get his knife._
The Guardsman said thickly: "You give me the boot and I swear to GodI'll find you and cut you to ribbons if it takes me the rest of mylife."
_Good_, Charles thought. _Now he can tell himself he scared me. Good._He let go of the forearm, straightened and took his foot from the man'selbow, stepping back. The Guardsman got up stiffly, flexing his arm, andstooped to pick up and sheath his knife without taking his eyes offCharles. Then he spat in the dust at Charles' feet. "Yellow crud," hesaid. "If the goddam crow was worth it, I'd cut your heart out." Hewalked off down the alley and Charles followed him with his eyes untilhe turned the corner into the street.
Then he turned, irritated that the woman had not spoken.
She was Lee Falcaro.
"Lee!" he said, thunderstruck. "What are you doing here?" It was thesame face, feature for feature, and between her brows appeared the samedouble groove he had seen before. But she didn't know him.
"You know me?" she asked blankly. "Is that why you pulled that ape offme? I ought to thank you. But I can't place you at all. I don't knowmany people here. I've been ill, you know."
There was a difference apparent now. The voice was a little querulous.And Charles would have staked his life that never could Lee Falcarohave said in that slightly smug, slightly proprietary, slightlyaren't-I-interesting tone: "I've been ill, you know."
"But what are you _doing_ here? Damn it, don't you know me? I'm CharlesOrsino!"
He realized then that he had made a horrible mistake.
"Orsino," she said. And then she spat: "_Orsino!_ Of the _Syndic_!"There was black hatred in her eyes.
She turned and raced down the alley. He stood there stupidly, for almosta minute, and then ran after her, as far as the alley's mouth. She wasgone. You could run almost anywhere in New Portsmouth in almost aminute.
A weedy little seaman wearing crossed quills on his cap was loungingagainst a building. He snickered at Charles. "Don't chase that one,sailor," he said. "She is the property of O.N.I."
"You know who she is?"
The yeoman happily spilled his inside dope to the fleet gob: "LeeBennet. Smuggled over here couple months ago by D.A.R. The hottest thingthat ever hit Naval Intelligence. Very small potato in the Syndic--knowsall the families, who does what, who's a figurehead and who's a worker.Terrific! Inside stuff! Hates the Syndic. A gang of big-timers did herdirt."
"Thanks," Charles said, and wandered off down the street.
It wasn't surprising. He should have _expected_ it.
_Noblesse oblige._
Pride of the Falcaro line. She wouldn't send anybody into deadly perilunless she were ready to go herself.
Only somehow the trigger that would have snapped neurotic, synthetic LeeBennet into Lee Falcaro hadn't worked.
He wa
ndered on aimlessly, wondering whether it would be minutes or hoursbefore he'd be picked up and executed as a spy.
PART II
The Syndic Page 9
