L. Neil Smith - North American Confederacy 02

by Nagasaki Vector

  I nodded toward Wilbur, Orville, an’ Frank Lloyd: “How about it, fellas, can y’keep up with Jim Thorpe, here?” “When have we ever failed you, O Lord?” Spin—identifiable by the semiheaied crack in his carapace—answered sarcastically. Less worshipful they got, the better I liked ’em. Guess I’m just contrary, myself.

  “Ah, how soon they forget.” I sighed. “Okay, you’re on your own—but be careful.”

  Win put the tiny Com capsule to his ear again, waited.

  “Now!” he whispered harshly, makin’ a choppin’ motion with his hand. I woulda felt better about it if it hadn’t been fulla Smith & Wesson an’ pointed more or less in my direction.

  I drew my Colt an’ snicked off the safety.

  We ran, crouchin’ low, toward the farmhouse. I’d wanted t’go right for the bam but’d allowed myself t’be persuaded that the big guns’d be needed elsewhere. Fran, with her plasma-burner for breakin’ an’ enterin’, was supposed t’get to Georgie while we were securin’ everything else.

  Open yard was past, an’ I was on the whitewashed porch, kickin' in the door an’ gettin’ myself tangled up in the screenin’.

  Howell leaped aheada me an’ through the kitchen, outa sight. Win was right behind me. I crossed the kitchen in one giant step, slammed my shoulder-blades against the woodwork ’round the next door, an’ levered around, just like in the movies, my pistol lookin’ for a target.

  A short hallway with a braided Early American rug— wondered what kinda farm they grew those on.

  Growlin’ cornin’ from somewhere up ahead.

  i could feel Win breathin’ on my neck, an’ stepped forward, zipped across the hall an’ against the wall, front sight tryin’ t’be everywhere at once. Along the wall like I was glued to it, an’ out into the parlor.

  They were gathered around the table: hadda be Bird-flower an’ Tree. Someone else, facin’ away. I aimed at the broad, black, shaggy back.

  “Freeze, you motherjumpers! Where’s my flyin’ saucer?”

  The figure set its teacup down daintily. “See, I told you they’d show up, didn’t I?”

  It turned slowly. “Why Bemie, is that any way to come calling? And just at suppertime, too!”

  Koko Featherstone-Haugh reached down an’ scratched G. Howell Nahuatl between the shoulder-blades. His hind foot rattled on the hardwood floor.

  “I appreciate your exasperation, my dear. Some of my best friends are human, too.”

  18 Background Music

  “I’M SORRY, BERNIE, GEORGIE ISN'T HERE.” KOKO’S STATEMENT WAS BELIED, IN THAT INCREASIN’LY FAMILIAR SURREALISTIC WAY, BY THE SPARKLIN’ IMAGE OF MY GORGEOUS BLONDE ON BIRDFLOWER’S LIVIN’-ROOM SCREEN. THE GORILLA SPEARED HERSELF ANOTHER HOT-DOG, SLAPPED IT IN A BUN, SQUIRTED MUSTARD ALONG ITS LENGTH. “IF YOU’D BEEN A HALF-HOUR LATER— I TRIED TO CALL, BUT ONLY GOT GEORGIE HERE, APPARENTLY AFTER YOU’D LEFT THE EARS AT THE FENCE.” CROMNEY HAD HAD GEORGIE MOVED RIGHT AFTER EDNA AND DENNY LEFT FOR WIN’S PLACE. EVEN IF HE’D BEEN AWAKE, THAT SELF-MADE LOSER, KENT, COULDN’TA TOLD US ANYTHING USEFUL.

  Win shook his head. “Six years I’ve been taking a ribbing about having the only pocket-pager in the Confederacy. By god, I’ll carry it with me from now on!”

  I turned down a fourth foot-longer. Tree got a hurt look in her eyes, probably the same expression if I’d been declinin’ my fourteenth. “Well, I reckon we’re back t’square one,” I said t’Georgie. “You locked up somewhere an’ us havin no more idea—”

  “Not quite no idea, Captain Gruenblum,” Birdflower offered. “At least Tree and I finally know what’s going on— got confusing after Cromney Telecommed Norrit Grega:-mer.”

  Griswold’s turned out to be the same dead end for me (said Koko) that it proved to be for your friend Mr. Bear. By the way, I’m glad to meet you. Uncle Olongo talksabout you all the time.

  All right, then, Win.

  I saw the “coverage” of your arrest when I got back to Laporte, but I figured (a) that you didn’t need another helpful friend underfoot, and (b) that, all the same, you did need help. Besides, it gave me a great excuse to cut classes.

  I tried everything with Griswold’s: Uncle Olongo’s name and influence, not to mention the fact that he’s a major stockholder—he seems to be a stockholder in practically everything these days! After Denny Kent skipped out on them, they were willing enough to cooperate, but they couldn’t tell me what they didn’t know. I even ran down a few of their people, who were changing shifts while he was in the office, in hopes they could remember and describe his car.

  Why thank you, Georgie. I was sort of proud of that myself.

  Anyway, I’m afraid the rest wasn’t very inspired. Remembering the two- or-three-hundred kilometer range Ber-nie mentioned for the Emergency Escape Drive—and I had to look up “kilometer” in the Encyclopedia: it’s an obsolete eighteenth-century utopian system of measurement that never caught on—I drew a circle on a map display.

  Then, given the Hamiltonian inclination to underhandedness and violence, I keyed my Com to look for strange, unusual, or criminal events within that radius. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for—gee, I wasn’t even sure when I had found it—but it was the one thing I could see that was out of the ordinary at all.

  What was it? Nothing much, just a little note in the local news about someone finally renting a giant 100-foot flatbed hovertruck that had been gathering oxidation for a decade. What made it newsworthy is that the thing had been built ‘hat long ago and there’d never been much of a practical use for it. Too big for the Green way, and besides, freight-dirigibles are more effcient. It had changed hands several times in the last few years.

  Yes, of course I noticed right away that it was just the perfect size for moving an inert flying saucer.

  But the story, interesting as it was, wasn’t good enough to get out onto the net. If I hadn’t subscribed to everything within that circle on the map, I’d have missed it. I used up all of next month’s allowance, but I figured there might be a pretty good reward for a lost time machine. That’s not too mercenary, is it?

  The more I checked, the stranger the story got. The truck turned out to have been rented by, of all people, a college professor of Alternative Moral Philosophy in Cheyenne. Several hours after he rented it, he reported it stolen. Naturally, the truck’s owners were-ecstatic—they’d finally gotten their investment back from the insurance!

  The professor had specified two destinations and drove it himself. The final location, according to the lease he signed, was the University of Chicago extension in downtown Cheyenne. He never made it that far. He was at a truck-stop on a back road wide enough to take the thing, having a cup of chocolatl, when person-or-persons unknown made off with the vehicle, supposedly full of cultured hardwood school desks.

  The first stop he’d listed, obviously, was this farm.

  Win leaned back in his chair, grinning from ear to ear. “That was some pretty fair detectiving, Koko! Look me up when you finish school—or if you want a part-time job before that. I could use an apprentice to do that kind of legwork.”

  “But he sure didn’t take any furniture, that Gregamer!” protested Birdflower vehemently. “They loaded Bemie’s machine on that big truck—it had a crane for that—and smashed a whole lot more of my rocking chairs. He gave me this trash in return!”

  The gorilloid contemptuously threw a half-dozen coinlike discs on the table. One side was a blank expanse with a number in the center: 1789; the obverse, a symbol I’d seen before, though not nearly often enough, printed on the backa the number-one best-sellin’ literature on the North American Continent I’d been brought up on. Shucks, it was the very same logo the Academy uses.

  The Eye-in-the-Pyramid.

  Seemed t’upset Win. Made a note t’ask him about it. The gold-platin’ was already wearin’ off the high spots, exposin’ a browny bronze. If writin’ a bad check’d get y’plastered all over the Corn-net, I wondered about passin’ phony coins.

  B
irdflower shook his head sadly. “Gregamer said they’d be redeemed one day. I sure hope—”

  “Don’t hope too hard,” Win interrupted. “That wasn’t an economic promise he was making, but a political one. Imagine what Georgie could do, used as a weapon. Cromney might wind up with a society to rule, after all!”

  Which brought a certain sombemess to the occasion.

  “I wouldn’t cooperate!” insisted the blonde vision on the screen; then more meekly: “At least I’d try not to...”

  “All right,” I said with more determination than I felt. “They still gotta get the field-density frammis, an’ it’s locked up tight. Failin’ that, they gotta build another, an’ I give Heplar as much chance of doin’ that as crankin’ Shakespeare plays outa ten million typewriters operated by ten million ... er, uh... you get my meanin’, anyway.”

  Win got his grin back. “It’s pretty obvious what’s happened. Georgie’s parked in some warehouse nearby, probably still sitting on that flatbed. Hunting Gregamer down won’t do us a lot of good; he’ll just deny—”

  “In any case, it won’t be necessary!" a voice said behind me.

  “Nobody knocks anymore!” Birdflower complained. “Nobody knocks!”

  “Dear me!” the voice said with sarcastic concern. Its owner rapped lightly on the frame of the kitchen door and walked into the parlor.

  Norrit Gregamer stood perhaps five feet eight an’ looked damn near as simian as Birdflower. But he wasn’t. He was a short, squat, swarthy individual, almost more reptilian than human or simian, with black eyes set deeply in dark sockets. He wore mutton-chops down to the jaw-line either side of his broad face, an’ perched atop his shaggy head— beard an’ hair were dark, as well—one of those caps y’see in photographs of nineteenth-century workingmen.

  He glanced at the Telecom, reached behind him for a straight-backed chair, swung it around in front of him, an’ set down on it backwards, restin’ his hairy forearms on the back rail. His voice was practically a raspy whisper.

  “How nice to see all of you together. Birdflower, Tree, I hope you’re getting along all right. Professor Cromney sends his greetings. Now let me see: you would be Captain Gruenblum, wouldn’t you? And these... these must be Color, Charm, and Spin, of whom I heard on the Telecom. Edward William Bear: I believe you’re going to regret getting involved in this affair, sir. We Hamiltonians already owe you a certain retribution over the Madison incident. Captain Sanders, ladies, and, if I am not mistaken, Koko Feather-stone-Haugh.”

  “Thanks for callin’ the roll, Gregamer,” I said. “Reckon y’get a lotta practice doin’ that in the classroom.”

  “No, no, I do not. I’m afraid the most elementary notion of discipline is entirely missing in this benighted society we live in. Naturally, I hope to change that in the not-too-distant future.”

  Win finally took his hand off his gun butt an’ asked, “So what brings you out from under your rock this fine evening, Professor?”

  Gregamer bit back a retort but colored slightly under his tan. “To the point, then: we want that device you took from Cromney, Gruenblum. We want it now."

  I shook my head. “Seems like I had a right t’take it— on accounta it was mine t’begin with!”

  “Scarcely. It belonged to your Academy. Now it has been expropriated for a higher cause, one which you have no moral right to resist. The device is ours, sir, and you will deliver it forthwith!”

  I laughed. “An’ what’ll you do if I don’t?”

  The Hamiltonian blinked slowly, lookin’ a whole lot like a homed toad. ‘“Property is theft,’ Captain. By withholding it, you’re committing an act of violence, of initiated force— which is precisely what this hypocritical culture is supposed to stand against.”

  There was a small female snort from across the room.

  Mary-Beth said, “It’s interesting to hear a Hamiltonian distortion of Gallatinist philosophy. Would you mind tilling me precisely what act of violence Captain Gruenblum is committing—precisely, now—and against whom?” Gregamer slowly turned his head until he could see Mary-Beth. From the look on Sanders’ face, he’d better watch what he said.

  “Exactly what I’d expect from a paid mouthpiece of the established privileged class. There is no such thing as property. All things for all men is the proper order of things in this world, and by depriving your fellow man of the use of anything, you’re committing an act of moral violence. But enough of this: Gruenblum”—he turned t’me again—“you seem to have some regard for your ship. If you fail to deliver that device to me this instant, I will see that she is blown to microscopic fragments before this night is over!”

  “Deprivin’ your fellow man—namely me—of the use of her? How unethical. Telly a what, Gregamer...” Inwardly, I gulped as I said it. "... if you can convince Cromney an’ the rest, y’got my blessin’s t’blow her up.”

  He sneered. “Cromney will do as he is told, as will the rest of his ilk. The device, Gruenblum, now!" He reached a hand across the backa his chair, palm upward.

  “Sorry, mate, it’s locked up nice an’ safe.”

  “Ail the same,” said Win, “it’s an ill wind—there!" The detective had reached out himself and in one swift motion had snapped his handcuffs around Gregamer’s wrist. He ratcheted the other bracelet to the chair the Hamiltonian was occupyin’.

  “You’re under arrest, Norrit Gregamer, for...” He looked at me suddenly, realizin’ that he couldn’t say kidnappin’, not while Cromney still had Georgie an’ Heplar could push the buttons that’d execute her.

  “How about for willful destruction of crops—and coun terfeiting?” offered Birdflower.

  “How about it, Gregamer?” Win asked. “I knew there was a reason I never threw my old handcuffs away—they’re probably the only pair in all of Greater Laporte!”

  “Yes!” the apelike Hamiltonian snarled. “And by tomorrow I’ll have them and everything else you own! Let me go! You’re wrongly depriving me of my liberty!”

  I laughed as he jerked at the cuffs. “How d’ya figger that, Gregamer? Lookit these pot-metal trinkets of yours— you deny givin’ ’em t’Birdflower here for wreckin’ his chair-garden?”

  Gregamer calmed down, an evil sneer slowly bloomin’ on his puss. “Why no. They’re nothing more than tokens, and I said as much, vowing to redeem them as I could. There seemed little objection at the time.”

  “When i thought they were gold,” Birdflower retorted. “Am I responsible for your gullibility? Did I ever say they were gold, you miserable creature? But—look in my vest here. I have come to redeem them, and the proof is in my pocket.”

  Win searched carefully through the Hamiltonian’s clothing, expressing amazement at the professor’s gun, an odd, long-barreled number apparently powered by nothin’ more’n compressed air, but of a large caliber, unlike a kid’s air-pistol. Rang a bell in my head somewhere, but there wasn’t anybody home t’answer it.

  The search also produced several dullish silvery-colored coins.

  “Take them!” Gregamer snarled. “They’re platinum. I guarantee it. More than enough to pay for any alleged damages. And now release me—I demand it!”

  Win looked to Mary-Beth. “Isn’t there anything we can hold him on?”

  “What about my... flyin’ saucer?”

  ‘‘What flying saucer?” said Gregamer nastily before the ethicist could reply. “In the first place, no disinterested party can testify that I ever saw or heard of it. Where is it? Where’s the evidence of your rectitude to match that which I have just produced? In the second place, who says this hypothetical vehicle is yours? I know at least four other people, immigrants, just like yourself, with as solid a claim to the machine as you have. And in the last place, by this time tomorrow, there won’t be any flying saucer to squabble over!”

  Reluctantly, Win turned the tiny, funny-shaped key in the handcuffs. Gregamer rubbed his wrist angrily. “You’ll all pay for this indignity,” he warned, “and for now, we appear to be at an
impasse. You can’t touch me legally, nor can I get the device I want. I propose that you think of something to do about it.”

  “Up your aesthetic, Mr. Philosopher,” I shouted. I looked at my friends: “Okay, we can’t arrest him, that’s out. How about we just shoot him?”

  This produced a mixture of sentiments, rangin’ from bloodthirsty enthusiasm on Fran Sanders’ part to reluctant negativisim on Mary-Beth’s. The consensus was that it’d be unethical.

  “That’s what I love about this civilization,” Gregamer said almost civilly. “It binds itself by beliefs and codes it won’t enforce on those who don’t accept them. I, on the other hand, am not bound in this manner.”

  “We’ll take that as a warning, Professor,” Birdflower said levelly. “Now get out of my house, and if you ever come back again, I’ll shoot you down like the lizard you are. You may take that as a warning, too!”

  The trouble with real life is that there isn’t any background music. What I mean is, that way nobody’d ever sneak up on you—you’d hear the sneakin’ up music, right? An’ you’d always know the moment that you met your one, true love—hell, you can probably whistle that theme. Right now it woulda been nice t’have appropriate scorin’ to accompany the boos an’ hisses we were ail thinkin’ at Gregamer as he made his exit.

  “I’ll give you all twenty-four hours to reconsider. After that, Gruenblum’s stranded here, and his ship will be incandescent dust!”

  The front porch screen door slammed, an’ that was that. “Funny,” I got t’thinkin’, “he shouldn’ta been able t’do that.”

  “Do what?” said Fran, watchin’ t’make sure Gregamer was really gone.

  “Well, I was thinkin’ a thought about how there oughta be background music in real life, an’—aw, skip it, it’s too complicated. What I want t’know is, how’d he sneak in the back door without at least Howell hearin’ or smellin’ him? And for that matter, where is the little cuss?”

  Fran’s eyes got big, an’ she practically flew out the front door. I got up to follow, bumpin’ shoulders with everybody else in the room ’ceptin’ the Freenies, on accounta they don’t have shoulders, but by the time we all got protocol sorted out an’ were startin’ after the little blonde, she was back.