The Syndic

by C. M. Kornbluth

  XII

  Commander Grinnel, after reporting formally, had gone straight to ajoint. It wasn't until midnight that he got The Word, from a friendlyO.N.I. lieutenant who had dropped into the house.

  "What?" Grinnel roared. "Who is this woman? Where is she? Take me to herat once!"

  "Commander!" the lieutenant said aghast. "I just got here!"

  "You heard me, mister! At once!"

  While Grinnel dressed he demanded particulars. The lieutenant dutifullyscoured his memory. "Brought in on some cloak-and-dagger deal,Commander. The kind you usually run. Lieutenant-Commander Jacobi was inSyndic Territory on a recruiting, sabotage and reconnaissance missionand one of the D.A.R. passed the girl on him. A real Syndic member.Priceless. And, as I said, she identified this fellow as Charles Orsino,another Syndic. Why are you so interested, if I may ask?"

  The Commander dearly wanted to give him a grim: "You may not," butdidn't dare. Now was the time to be frank and open. One hint that he hadanything to hide or cover up would put his throat to the knife. "Theman's my baby, lieutenant," he said. "Either your girl's mistaken or VanDellen and his polygraph tech and I were taken in by a brand-newtechnique." _That_ was nice work, he congratulated himself. Got in VanDellen and the tech.... Maybe, come to think of it, the tech _was_crooked? No; there was the way Wyman had responded perfectly under scop.

  O.N.I.'s building was two stories and an attic, wood-framed, beginningto rot already in the eternal Irish damp.

  "We've got her on the third floor, Commander," the lieutenant said. "Youget there by a ladder."

  "In God's name, why?" They walked past the Charge of Quarters, whosnapped to a guilty and belated attention, and through the desertedoffices of the first and second floors.

  "Frankly, we've had a little trouble hanging on to her."

  "She runs away?"

  "No, nothing like that--not yet, at least. Marine G-2 and GuardIntelligence School have both tried to snatch her from us. First withrequisitions, then with muscle. We hope to keep her until the word getsto Iceland. Then, naturally, _we'll_ be out in the cold."

  The lieutenant laughed. Grinnel, puffing up the ladder, did not.

  The door and lock on Lee Bennet's quarters were impressive. Thelieutenant rapped. "Are you awake, Lee? There's an officer here whowants to talk to you."

  "Come in," she said.

  The lieutenant's hands flew over the lock and the door sprang open. Thegirl was sitting in the dark.

  "I'm Commander Grinnel, my dear," he said. After eight hours in thejoint, he could feel authentically fatherly to her. "If the time isn'tquite convenient--"

  "It's all right," she said listlessly. "What do you want to know?"

  "The man you identify as Orsino--it was quite a shock to me. CommanderVan Dellen, who died a hero's death only days ago accepted him asauthentic and so, I must admit, did I. He passed both scop andpolygraph."

  "I can't help that," she said. "He came right up to me and told me whohe was. I recognized him, of course. He's a polo player. I've seen himplay on Long Island often enough, the damned snob. He's not much in theSyndic, but he's close to F. W. Taylor. Orsino's an orphan. I don't knowwhether Taylor's actually adopted him or not. I think not."

  "No--possible--mistake?"

  "No possible mistake." She began to tremble. "My God, CommanderWhoever-You-Are, do you think I could forget one of those damnedsneering faces. Or what those people did to me? Get the lie detectoragain! Strap me into the lie detector! I insist on it! I won't be calleda liar! Do you hear me? Get the lie detector!"

  "Please," the Commander soothed. "I do believe you, my dear. Nobodycould doubt your sincerity. Thank you for helping us, and good night."He backed out of the room with the lieutenant. As the door closed hesnapped at him: "Well, mister?"

  The lieutenant shrugged. "The lie detector always bears her out. We'vestopped using it on her. We're convinced that she's on our side. Almostdeserving of citizenship."

  "Come, now," the Commander said. "You know better than that."

  Behind the locked door, Lee Bennet had thrown herself on the bed,dry-eyed. She wished she could cry, but tears never came. Not sincethose three roistering drunkards had demonstrated their virility asmales and their immunity as Syndics on her ... she couldn't cry anymore.

  Charles Orsino--another one of them. She hoped they caught him andkilled him, slowly. She knew all this was true. Then why did she feellike a murderess? Why did she think incessantly of suicide? Why, why,why?

  * * * * *

  Dawn came imperceptibly. First Charles could discern the outline oftreetops against the sky and then a little of the terrain before him andat last two twisted shadows that slowly became sprawling half-nakedbodies. One of them was a woman's, mangled by fifty-caliber slugs. Theother was the body of a bearded giant--the one with whom they hadstruggled in the dark.

  Charles crawled out stiffly. The woman was--had been--a stringy, whitehaired crone. Some animal's skull was tied to her pate with sinews as ahead-dress, and she was tattooed with blue crescents. The jaygee joinedhim standing over her and said: "One of their witches. Part of thereligion, if you can call it that."

  "A brand-new religion?" Charles asked dubiously. "Made up out of wholecloth?"

  "No," the jaygee said. "I understand it's an _old_religion--pre-Christian. It kept going underground until the Troubles.Then it flared up again all over Europe. A filthy business. Animalsacrifices every new moon. Human sacrifices twice a year. What can youexpect from people like that?"

  Charles reminded himself that the jaygee's fellow-citizens boiledrecalcitrant slaves. "I'll see what I can do about the jeep," he said.

  The jaygee sat down on the wet grass. "What the hell's the use?" hemumbled wearily. "Even if you get it running again. Even if we get backto the base. They'll be gunning for you. Maybe they'll be gunning for meif they killed my father." He tried to smile. "You got any aces in thehole, gangster?"

  "Maybe," Orsino said slowly. "What do you know about a woman namedLee--Bennet? Works with O.N.I.?"

  "Smuggled over here by the D.A.R. A goldmine of information. She's alittle nuts, too. What have you got on her?"

  "Does she swing any weight? _Is she a citizen?_"

  "No weight. They're just using her over at Intelligence to fill out thepicture of the Syndic. And she couldn't be a citizen. A woman has tomarry a citizen to be naturalized. What have you got to do with her, forGod's sake? Did you know her on the other side? She's death to theSyndic; she can't do anything for you."

  Charles barely heard him. That had to be it. The trigger on LeeFalcaro's conditioning had to be the oath of citizenship as it was forhis. And it hadn't been tripped because this pirate gang didn'tparticularly want or need women as first-class, all-privileges citizens.A small part of the Government's cultural complex--but one that couldtrap Lee Falcaro forever in the shell of her synthetic substitute for apersonality. Lie-tests, yes. Scopolamine, yes. But for a woman, nosubsequent oath.

  "I ran into her in New Portsmouth. She knew me from the other side. Sheturned me in...." He knelt at a puddle and drank thirstily; the watereased hunger cramps a little. "I'll see what I can do with the jeep."

  He lifted the hood and stole a look at the jaygee. Van Dellen wasdropping off to sleep on the wet grass. Charles pried a shear pin fromthe jeep's winch, punched out the shear pin that had given way in thetransmission and replaced it. It involved some hammering. Cracked block,he thought contemptuously. An officer and he couldn't tell whether theblock was cracked or not. If I ever get out of this we'll sweep themfrom the face of the earth--or more likely just get rid of theirtom-fool Sociocrats and Constitutionists. The rest are probably allright. Except maybe for those bastards of Guardsmen. A bad lot. Let'shope they get killed in the fighting.

  The small of his back tickled; he reached around to scratch it and feltcold metal.

  "Turn slowly or you'll be spitted like a pig," a bass voice growled.

  He turned slowly. The cold metal now at
his chest, was the leaf-shapedblade of a spear. It was wielded by a red-haired, red-bearded,barrel-chested giant whose blue-green eyes were as cold as death.

  "Tie that one," somebody said. Another half-naked man jerked his wristsbehind him and lashed them together with cords.

  "Hobble his feet." It was a woman's voice. A length of cord or sinew wasknotted to his ankles with a foot or two of play. He could walk but notrun. The giant lowered his spear and stepped aside.

  The first thing Charles saw was that Lieutenant (j.g.) Van Dellen of theNorth American Navy had escaped forever from his doubts and confusions.They had skewered him to the turf while he slept. Charles hoped he hadnot felt the blow.

  The second thing he saw was a supple and coltish girl of perhaps 20tenderly removing the animal skull from the head of the slain witch andknotting it to her own red-tressed head. Even to Orsino's numbedunderstanding, it was clearly an act of the highest significance. Itsubtly changed the composition of the six-men group in the little glade.They had been a small mob until she put on the skull, but the moment shedid they moved instinctively--one a step or two, the other merelyturning a bit, perhaps--to orient on her. There was no doubt that shewas in charge.

  A witch, Orsino thought. "It kept going underground until the Troubles.""A filthy business--human sacrifices twice a year."

  She approached him and, like the shifting of a kaleidoscope, the groupfell into a new pattern of which she was still the focus. Charlesthought he had never seen a face so humorlessly conscious of power. Thepetty ruler of a few barbarians, she carried herself as though she wereempress of the universe. Nor did a large gray louse that crawled fromher hairline across her forehead and back again affect her in theslightest. She wore a greasy animal hide as though it were royal purple.It added up to either insanity or a limitless pretension to religiousauthority. And her eyes were not mad.

  "You," she said coldly. "What about the jeep and the guns? Do they go?"

  He laughed suddenly and idiotically at these words from the mouth of astone-age goddess. A raised spear sobered him instantly. "Yes," he said.

  "Show my men how," she said, and squatted regally on the turf.

  "Please," he said, "could I have something to eat first?"

  She nodded indifferently and one of the men loped off into the brush.

  * * * * *

  His hands untied and his face greasy with venison fat, Charles spent thedaylight hours instructing six savages in the nomenclature, maintenanceand operation of the jeep and the twin-fifty machine gun.

  They absorbed it with utter lack of curiosity. They more or less learnedto start and steer and stop the jeep. They more or less learned to load,point and fire the gun.

  Through the lessons the girl sat absolutely motionless, first in shadow,then in noon and afternoon sun and then in shadow again. But she hadbeen listening. She said at last: "You are telling them nothing new now.Is there no more?"

  Charles noted that a spear was poised at his ribs. "A great deal more,"he said hastily. "It takes months."

  "They can work them now. What more is there to learn?"

  "Well, what to do if something goes wrong."

  She said, as though speaking from vast experience: "When something goeswrong, you start over again. That is all you can do. When I makedeath-wine for the spear blades and the death-wine does not kill, it isbecause something went wrong--a word or a sign or picking a plant at thewrong time. The only thing to do is make the poison again. As you growin experience you make fewer mistakes. That is how it will be with mymen when they work the jeep and the guns."

  She nodded ever so slightly at one of the men and he took a firmer gripon his spear.

  Death swooped low.

  "No!" Charles exploded. "You don't understand! This isn't like anythingyou do at all!" He was sweating, even in the late afternoon chill."You've got to have somebody who knows how to repair the jeep and thegun. If they're busted they're busted and no amount of starting overagain will make them work!"

  She nodded and said: "Tie his hands. We'll take him with us." Charleswas torn between relief and wonder at the way she spoke. He realizedthat he had never, literally _never_, seen any person concede a point inquite that fashion. There had been no hesitation, there had been noreluctance in the voice, not a flicker of displeasure in the face.Simply, without forcing, she had said: "We'll take him with us." It wasas though--as though she had re-made the immediate past, un-making heropposition to the idea, nullifying it. She was a person who was not atwar with herself in any respect whatever, a person who knew exactly whoshe was and what she was--

  The girl rose in a single flowing motion, startling after her day spentin immobility. She led the way, flanked by two of the spearmen. Theother four followed in the jeep, at a crawl. Last of all came Charles,and nobody had to urge him. In his portable trap his hours would benumbered if he got separated from his captors.

  Stick with them, he told himself, stumbling through the brush. Just stayalive and you can outsmart these savages. He fell, cursed, pickedhimself up, stumbled on after the growl of the jeep.

  Dawn brought them to a collection of mud-and-wattle huts, a corralenclosing a few dozen head of wretched diseased cattle, a few adults anda few children. The girl was still clear-eyed and supple in hermovements. Her spearmen yawned and stretched stiffly. Charles was awalking dead man, battered by countless trees and stumbles on the longtrek. With red and swollen eyes he watched while half-naked bratsswarmed over the jeep and grownups made obeisances to the girl--all butone.

  This was an evil-faced harridan who said to her with cool insolence: "Isee you claim the power of the goddess now, my dear. Has somethinghappened to my sister?"

  "The guns killed a certain person. I put on the skull. You know what Iam; do not say 'claim to be.' I warn you once."

  "Liar!" shrieked the harridan. "You killed her and stole the skull! St.Patrick and St. Bridget shrivel your guts! Abaddon and Lucifer pierceyour eyes!"

  An arena formed about them as the girl said coldly: "I warn you thesecond time."

  The harridan made signs with her fingers, glaring at her; there was amoan from the watchers; some turned aside and a half-grown girl fainteddead away.

  The girl with the skull on her pate said, as though speaking from amillion years and a million miles away: "This is the third warning;there are no more. Now the worm is in your backbone gnawing. Now themaggots are at your eyes, devouring them. Your bowels turn to water;your heart pounds like the heart of a bird; soon it will not beat atall." As the eerie, space-filling whisper drilled on the watchers brokeand ran, holding their hands over their ears, white-faced, but theharridan stood as if rooted to the earth. Charles listened dully as thecurse was droned, nor was he surprised when the harridan fell, blastedby it. Another sorceress, aided it is true by pentothal, had months agodone the same to him.

  The people trickled back, muttering and abject.

  Just stay alive and you can outsmart these savages, he repeatedironically to himself. It had dawned on him that these savages lived byan obscure and complicated code harder to master than the intricacies ofthe Syndic or the Government.

  A kick roused him to his feet. One of the spearmen grunted: "I'm puttingyou with Kennedy."

  "All right," Charles groaned. "You take these cords off me?"

  "Later." He prodded Charles to a minute, ugly block house of logs fromwhich came smoke and an irregular metallic clanging. He cut the cords,rolled great boulders away from a crawl-hole and shoved him through.

  The place was about six by nine feet, hemmed in by ten-inch logs. Thelight was very bad and the smell was too. A few loopholes let in someair. There was a latrine pit and an open stone hearth and a naked brownman with wild hair and a beard.

  Rubbing his wrists, Charles asked uncertainly: "Are you Kennedy?"

  The man looked up and croaked: "Are you from the Government?"

  "Yes," Charles said, hope rekindling. "Thank God they put us together.There's a jeep. Also a
twin-fifty. If we play this right the two of uscan bust out--"

  He stopped, disconcerted. Kennedy had turned to the hearth and thesmall, fierce fire glowing on it and began to pound a red-hot lump ofmetal. There were spear heads and arrow heads about in various stagesof completion, as well as files and a hone.

  "What's the matter?" he demanded. "Aren't you interested?"

  "Of course I'm interested," Kennedy said. "But we've got to begin at thebeginning. You're too _general_." His voice was mild, but reproving.

  "You're right," Charles said. "I guess you've made a try or twoyourself. But now that there are two of us, what do you suggest? Can youdrive a jeep? Can you fire a twin-fifty?"

  The man poked the lump of metal into the heart of the fire again, pickedup a black-scaled spear head and began to file an edge into it. "Let'sget down to essentials," he suggested apologetically. "What is escape?Getting from an undesirable place to a desirable place, opposing andneutralizing things or persons adverse to the change of state in theprocess. But I'm not being specific, am I? Let's say, then, escape isgetting _us_ from a relatively undesirable place to a relativelydesirable place, opposing and neutralizing the aborigines." He put asidethe file and reached for the hone, sleeking it along the bright metalribbon of the new edge. He looked up with a pleased smile and asked:"How's that for a plan?"

  "Fine," Charles muttered. Kennedy beamed proudly as he repeated: "Fine,fine," and sank to the ground, born down by the almost physical weightof his depression. His hoped-for ally was stark mad.