Satan's World

by Poul Anderson

  “Exactly as I expected,” Edward Garver said with satisfaction, “and right about at the moment I expected, too.” He thrust out his jaw. “Go ahead, then, switch him to me.”

  He was a short man with thinning hair above a pugdog face; but within a severe gray tunic, his shoulders were uncommonly wide. The secretarial machines did not merely surround him as they would an ordinary executive or bureaucrat; somehow they gave the impression of standing guard. His desk bore no personal items—he had never married—but the walls held numerous pictures, which he often animated, of himself shaking hands with successive Premiers of the Solar Commonwealth, Presidents of the Lunar Federation, and other dignitaries.

  His words went via wire to a computer, which heard and obeyed. A signal flashed through electronic stages, became a maser beam, and leaped from a transmitter perched above Selenopolis on the ringwall of Copernicus. It struck a satellite of Earth’s natural satellite and was relayed north, above barren sun-beaten ruggedness, until it entered a receiver at Plato. Coded for destination, it was shunted to another computer, which closed the appropriate connections. Because this moon is a busy place with heavy demands on its communication lines, the entire process took several milliseconds.

  A broad countenance, moustached and goateed, framed in the ringleted mane that had been fashionable a generation ago, popped into Garver’s phone screen. Little jet eyes, close set to an enormous crag of a nose, widened. “Pox and pestilence!” exclaimed Nicholas van Rijn. “I want Hernando Mendez, police chief for Lunograd. What you doing here, you? Not enough busybodying in the capital for keeping you happy?”

  “I am in the capital . . . still,” Garver said. “I ordered any call from you to him passed directly on to me.”

  Van Rijn turned puce. “You the gobblehead told them my man Adzel should be arrested?”

  “Your monster Adzel,” Garver retorted.

  “Who you for calling anybody monsters?” van Rijn sputtered. “Adzel got more milk of human kindness, ja, with plenty butterfat, too, than what thin, blue, sour yechwater ever oozes from you, by damn!”

  The director of the Federal Centrum of Security and Law Enforcement checked his temper. “Watch your language,” he said. “You’re in bad trouble.”

  “We was getting out of trouble, us. Self-defense. And besides, was a local donnerblitz, no business of yours.” Van Rijn tried to look pious. “We come back, landed in my yacht, Adzel and me, after he finished. We was going straight like arrows with crow feathers to Chief Mendez and file complaints. But what happened? He was busted! Marched off the spacefield below guard! By whose commandments?”

  “Mine,” Garver said. “And I’d have given a lot to include you, Freeman.” He paused. “Though I think I’ll get what I need for that very shortly. I’m coming to Lunograd and take personal charge of investigating this affair. Consider yourself warned. If you leave Federation territory, I’ll take it as prima facie evidence of guilt. Maybe I won’t be able to extradite you from Earth, or wherever you go, on a Commonwealth warrant—though I’ll try—but I’ll slap a hold on everything your Solar Spice & Liquors Company owns here, right down to the last liter of vodka. And your Adzel will serve a mighty long term of correction, whatever you do, van Rijn. Likewise his accomplices, if they dare come back in reach.”

  He leaned forward. “I’ve been waiting for this chance,” he continued stacatto. “For years I’ve waited. I’ve watched you and your fellow plutocrats in your Polesotechnic League make a mockery of government—intrigue, bribe, compel, corrupt, ignore every inconvenient law, make your private deals, set up your private economic systems, fight your private battles, act like barons of an empire that has no legal existence but that presumes to deal with whole civilizations, make vassals of whole worlds—bring back the rawest kind of feudalism and capitalism! This ‘freedom’ you boast about, that your influence has gotten written into our very Constitution, it’s nothing but license. License to sin, gamble, indulge in vice . . . and the League supplies the means, at a whopping profit!

  “I can’t do much about your antics outside the Commonwealth. Not much about them any place, I admit, except on Luna. But that’s a beginning. If I can curb the League here in the Federation, I’ll die glad. I’ll have laid the foundation of a decent society everywhere. And you, van Rijn, are the beginning of the beginning. You have finally gone too far. I believe I’ve got you!”

  He sat back, breathing hard.

  The merchant had turned impassive. He took his time about opening a snuffbox, inhaling, sneezing, and dribbling a bit on the lace of his shirtfront. Finally, mild as the mid-oceanic swell of a tsunami, he rumbled: “Hokay. You tell me what you think I done wrong. Scripture says sinful man is prone to error. Maybe we can find out whose error.”

  Garver had gathered calm. “All right,” he said. “No reason why I should not have the pleasure of telling you personally what you could find out for yourself.

  “I’ve always had League activities watched, of course, with standing orders that I’m to be told about anything unusual. Slightly less than a week ago, Adzel and the other xeno teamed with him—yes, Chee Lan of Cynthia—applied for a warrant against the information brokers, Serendipity, Inc. They said their captain, David Falkayn, was being held prisoner under brainscrub drugs in that Alpine castle the SI partners keep for a residence. Naturally, the warrant was refused. It’s true the SI people are rather mysterious. But what the flame, you capitalists are the very ones who make a fetish of privacy and the right to keep business details confidential. And SI is the only member of the League that nothing can be said against. All it does, peacefully and lawfully, is act as a clearinghouse for data and a source of advice.

  “But the attempt did alert me. Knowing what you freebooters are like, I thought violence might very well follow. I warned the partners and suggested they call me directly at the first sign of trouble. I offered them guards, but they said they had ample defenses.” Garver’s mouth tightened. “That’s another evil thing you Leaguers have brought. Self-defense, you call it! But since the law does say a man may keep and use arms on his own property—” He sighed. “I must admit SI has never abused the privilege.”

  “Did they tell you their story about Falkayn?” van Rijn asked.

  “Yes. In fact, I talked to him myself on the phone. He explained he wanted to marry Freelady Beldaniel and join her outfit. Oh, yes, he could have been drugged. I don’t know his normal behavior pattern. Nor do I care to. Because it was infinitely more plausible that you simply wanted him snatched away before he let his new friends in on your dirtier secrets.

  “So.” Garver bridged his fingers and grinned. “Today, about three hours ago, I got a call from Freeman Kim at the SI offices. Freelady Beldaniel had just called him. A space-armored Wodenite, obviously Adzel, had appeared at the castle and demanded to see Falkayn. When this was denied him, he blasted his way in, and was rampaging loose at that moment.

  “I instructed Chief Mendez to send out a riot detachment. He said he was already preoccupied with a riot—a brawl, at least—among men of yours, van Rijn, at a warehouse of yours. Don’t tell me that was coincidence!”

  “But it was,” van Rijn said. “Ask them. They was bad boys. I will scold them.”

  “And slip them a fat bonus after they get out of jail.”

  “Well, maybe for consoling them. Thirty days on britches of the peace charges makes them so sad my old gray heart is touched . . . But go on, Director. What did you do?”

  Garver turned livid. “The next thing I had to do was get an utterly baseless injunction quashed. One of your kept judges? Never mind now; another thing to look into. The proceedings cost me a whole hour. After that, I could dispatch some men from my Lunograd division. They arrived too late. Adzel had already gotten Falkayn. The damage was done.”

  Again he curbed his wrath and said with bitter control: “Shall I list the different kinds of damage? Si’s private, but legitimate, patrollers had been approaching the tower where Adzel was, in
their gravboats. Then a spaceship came down. Must have been a spaceship, fully armed, acting in closely planned coordination with him. It wiped out the boats, broke apart the tower, and fled. Falkayn is missing. So is his one-time partner Chee Lan. So is the vessel they habitually used—cleared from Lunograd spaceport several standard days ago. Die inference is obvious, don’t you agree? But somehow, Adzel didn’t escape. He must have radioed you to pick him up, because you did, and brought him back. This indicates that you have also been in direct collusion, van Rijn. I know what a swarm of lawyers you keep, so I want a little more evidence before arresting you yourself. But I’ll get it. I’ll do it.”

  “On what charges?” the other man asked tonelessly.

  “For openers, those brought by the Serendipity partners, with eyewitness corroboration from Freelady Beldaniel and the castle staff. Threat. Mayhem. Invasion of privacy. Malicious mischief. Extensive destruction of property. Kidnapping. Murder.”

  “Whoa, horsey! Adzel told me, maybe he banged up those servants and guards a little, but he’s a Buddhist and was careful not to kill anybody. That gun tower he shot out, getting in, was a standard remote-control type.”

  “Those patrol boats were not. Half a dozen one-seaters, smashed by energy beams. O.K., the pilots, like the rest of the castle staff, were nonhuman, non-citizen hirelings. But they were sophonts. Killing them in the course of an illegal invasion was murder. Accessories are equally guilty. This brings up the charge of conspiracy and—”

  “Never mind,” van Rijn said. “I get a notion somehow you don’t like us much. When you coming?”

  “I leave as soon as I can set matters in order here. A few hours.” Garver peeled lips up from his teeth again. “Unless you care to record a confession at once. You’d save us trouble and might receive a lighter sentence.”

  “No, no. I got nothings to confess. This is such a terrible mistake. You got the situation all arsey-free versey. Adzel is gentle like a baby, except for some babies I know what are frightening ferocious. And me, I am a poor lonely old fat man only wanting a tiny bit profit so he does not end up like a burden on the welfare.”

  “Stow it,” Garver said, and moved to break the connection.

  “Wait!” van Rijn cried. “I tell you, everything is upwhirled. I got to unkink things, I see, because I try hard for being a good Christian that loves his fellow man and not let you fall on your ugly flat face and get laughed at like you deserve. I go talk with Adzel, and with Serendipity, too, before you come, and maybe we straighten out this soup you have so stupid-like brewed.”

  A muscle jumped at the corner of Garver’s mouth. “I warn you,” he said, “if you attempt any threat, bribery, blackmail—”

  “You call me names,” van Rijn huffed. “You implicate my morals. I don’t got to listen at your ungentlemanly language. Good day for you, Gorgonzola brain.” The screen blanked.

  Luna being a focal point for outsystem traffic, the jails of the Federation’s member cities are adjustable to the needs of a wide variety of species. Adzel’s meticulous fairness compelled him to admit that with respect to illumination, temperature, humidity, pressure, and weight, he was more at home in his cell than under Earth conditions. But he didn’t mind the latter. And he did mind the food here, a glutinous swill put together according to what some fink of a handbook said was biologically correct for Wodenites. Still more did he suffer from being too cramped to stretch his tail, let alone exercise.

  The trouble was, individuals of his race were seldom met off their planet. Most were primitive hunters. When he was brought in, by an understandably nervous squad of policemen, the warden had choked.

  “Ullah akhbar! We must house this cross between a centaur and a crocodile? And every elephant-size unit already filled because of that cursed science-fiction convention—”

  Thus it was with relief, hours later, that Adzel greeted the sergeant in the phonescreen who said, “Your, uh, legal representative is here. Wants a conference. Are you willing?”

  “Certainly. High time! No reflection on you, officer,” the prisoner hastened to add. “Your organization has treated me with correctness, and I realize you are bound to your duty as to the Wheel of Karma.” The sergeant in his turn made haste to switch over.

  Van Rijn’s image squinted against a glare too faithfully reproduced. Adzel was surprised. “But . . . but I expected a lawyer,” he said.

  “Got no time for logic choppers,” his boss replied. “We chop our own logics, ja, and split and stack them. I mainly should tell you, keep your turnip hatch dogged tight. Don’t say one pip. Don’t even claim you is innocent. You are not legally requisitioned to tell anybody anything. They want the time of day, let them send out their flatfeetsers and investigate.”

  “But what am I doing in this kennel?” Adzel protested.

  “Sitting. Loafing. Drawing fat pay off me. Meanwhiles I run around sweating my tired old legs down to the knees. Do you know,” van Rijn said pathetically, “for more than an hour I have had absolute no drink? And it looks like I might miss lunch, that today was going to be Limfjord oysters and stuffed Pacific crab a la—”

  Adzel started. His scales crashed against unyielding walls. “But I don’t belong here!” he cried. “My evidence—”

  Van Rijn achieved the amazing feat for a human of outshouting him. “Quiet! I said upshut you! Silence!” He dropped his tone. “I know this is supposed to be a sealed circuit, but I do not put past that Garver he plugs one of his trained seals in the circuit. We keep what trumps we hold a while yet, play them last like Gabriel. Last trump—Gabriel—you understood me? Ha, ha!”

  “Ha,” said Adzel hollowly, “ha.”

  “You got privacy for meditating, plenty chances to practice asceticisms. I envy you. I wish I could find a chance for sainthood like you got there. You sit patient. I go talk with the people at Serendipity. Toodle oodle.” Van Rijn’s features vanished.

  Adzel crouched motionless for a long while.

  But I had the proof! he thought, stunned. I took those photographs, those body-fluid samples, from David in the castle . . . exactly as I’d been told to . . . proof that he was, indeed, under brainscrub. I handed the material over to Old Nick when he asked for it, before we landed. I assumed he’d know best how to use it. For certainly that would justify my breaking in. This civilization has a horror of personality violations.

  But he—the leader I trusted—he hasn’t mentioned it!

  When Chee Lan and a cured Falkayn returned they could testify, of course. Without the physical evidence Adzel had obtained, their testimony might be discounted, even if given torporifically. There were too many ways of lying under those drugs and electropulses that interrogators were permitted to use on volunteers: immunization or verbal conditioning, for instance.

  At best, the situation would remain difficult. How could you blink the fact that intelligent beings had been killed by unauthorized raiders? (Though Adzel had more compunctions about fighting than the average roamer of today’s turbulent frontiers, he regretted this particular incident only mildly in principle. A private war remained a war, a type of conflict that was occasionally justifiable. The rescue of a shipmate from an especially vile fate took priority over hard-boiled professional weapon wielders who defended the captors of that shipmate. The trouble was, however, Commonwealth law did not recognize private wars.) But there was a fair chance the authorities would be sufficiently convinced that they would release, or convict and then pardon, the raiders.

  If the proof of brainscrubbing was laid before them. And if Chee and Falkayn came back to tell their story. They might not. The unknowns for whom Serendipity had been an espionage front might find them and slay them before they could learn the truth. Why did van Rijn not let me go, too? Adzel chafed. Why, why, why?

  Alone, the exhibits would at least get him out on bail. For they would show that his attack, however illegal, was no wanton banditry. It would also destroy Serendipity by destroying the trust on which that organization depe
nded—overnight.

  Instead, van Rijn was withholding the proof. He was actually off to dicker with Falkayn’s kidnappers.

  The walls seemed to close in. Adzel was born to a race of rangers. A spaceship might be cramped, but outside burned the stars. Here was nothing other than walls.

  Oh, the wide prairies of Zatlakh, earthquake hoofbeats, wind whooping off mountains ghost-blue above the great horizon! After dark, fires beneath a shaken aurora; the old songs, the old dances, the old kinship that runs deeper than blood itself. Home is freedom. Ships, outfarings, planets and laughter. Freedom is home. Am I to be sold for a slave in his bargain?

  Shall I let him sell me?

  IX

  Puffing like an ancient steam locomotive, Nicholas van Rijn entered the central office. He had had previous dealings with Serendipity, in person as well as through subordinates. But he had never been in this particular room before, nor did he know anyone besides the owners who had.

  Not that it differed much from the consultation cubicles, except for being larger. It was furnished with the same expensive materials in the same cheerlessly functional style, and the same strong white light spilled from its fluoropanels. Instead of a desk there was a large table around which several beings could sit; but this was equipped with a full battery of secretarial machines. Weight was set at Earth standard, atmosphere a little warmer.

  Those partners who remained on Luna awaited him in a row behind the table. Kim Yoon-Kun was at the middle, slight, stiff, and impassive. The same wary expressionlessness marked Anastasia Herrera and Eve Latimer, who flanked him. Thea Beldaniel showed a human touch of weariness and shakenness—eyes dark-shadowed, the fine lines deepened in her face, hands not quite steady—but less than was normal for a woman who, a few hours ago, had seen her castle stormed by a dragon.

  Van Rijn halted. His glance flickered to the pair of great gray-furred four-armed tailed bipeds, clad alike in traditional mail and armed alike with modern blasters, who stood against the rear wall. Their yellow eyes, set beneath bony prominences that looked like horns, glowered back out of the coarse faces. “You did not need to bring your Gorzuni goons,” he said. His cloak swirled as he spread his hands wide, then slapped them along his tight plum-colored culottes. “I got no arsenal, me, and I come alone, sweet and innocent like a pigeon of peace. You know how pigeons behave.”