“Naturally. What else could I do?”
“Then who set up the radar target on the mountain?”
“What?”
Why yes. We sent up our radars on the ends of the baseline yesterday, and the target showed clearly on the scopes.”
“I don’t understand,” said Quinlan.
“Neither do I, but we’ll soon find out. Amigo,” he said to the sergeant Martins, “tell the aviation group to get the helicopter ready to fly to Mount Ertma at once.”
###
When the pilot homed in on the radar target, he came out of the clouds to see a kitelike polygonal structure gleaming with a dull gray aluminum finish on top of a pole on the highest peak of Mount Ertma. Beside the pole were two human beings sitting on a rock and three tethered zebras munching the herbage.
The human beings leaped to their feet and waved wildly. The pilot brought his aircraft around, tensely guiding it through gusts that threatened to dash it against the rocks, and let the rope ladder uncoil through the trapdoor. The man leaped this way and that, like a fish jumping for a fly, as the ladder whipped about him. Finally he caught it.
Just then a group of Dzlieri came out of the trees. They pointed and jabbered and ran towards the people whipping out javelins.
The smaller of the two figures was several rungs up the ladder when the larger one, who had just begun his ascent, screamed up over the whirr of the rotorblades and the roar of the wind:
“Straight up! Quick!”
More Dzlieri appeared—scores of them—and somewhere a rifle barked. The pilot (just as glad it was not he dangling from an aircraft bucking through a turbulent overcast) canted his blades and rose until the clouds closed in below.
The human beings presently popped into the cabin, gasping from their climb. They were a small dark young woman and a tall man with a centimeter of butter-colored beard matted with dried blood. Both were nearly naked save for tattered canvas boots and a rag or two elsewhere, and were splashed with half-dried mud. The pilot recognized Adrian Frome, the surveyor.
“Home, Jayme,” said Frome.
###
Frome, cleaned, shaved and looking his normal self once more except for a notch in his left ear, sat down across the desk from Silva, who said: “I cannot understand why you ask for a transfer to Ganesha now of all times. You’re the hero of Bembom. I can get you a permanent P-5 appointment; perhaps even a P-6. Quinlan will be taken to Krishna for trial, Hayataka is retiring on his pension, and I shall be hard up for surveyors. So why must you leave?”
Frome smiled a wry, embarrassed smile. “You’ll manage, chefe. You still have Van der Gracht and Mehtalal, both good men. But I’m quite determined, and I’ll tell you why. When Elena and I got to the top of that mountain we were in a pretty emotional state, and what with one thing and another, and not having seen another human female for weeks, I asked her to marry me and she accepted.”
Silva’s eyebrows rose. “Indeed! My heartiest congratulations! But what has that to do with—”
“Wait till you hear the rest! At first everything was right as rain. She claimed it was the first time she’d been kissed, and speaking as a man of some experience I suppose it was. However, she soon began telling me her ideas. In the first place this was to be a purely spiritual marriage, the purpose of which was to put my feet on the sevenfold path of enlightenment so I could be something better than a mere civil engineer in my next incarnation—a Cosmotheist missionary, for example. Now I ask you!
“Well, at first I thought that was just a crochet I’d get her over in time; after all we don’t let our women walk over us the way the Americans do. But then she started preaching Cosmotheism to me. And during the two and a half days we were up there, I’ll swear she didn’t stop talking five minutes except when she was asleep. The damnedest rot you ever heard—rays and cosmic love and vibrations and astral planes and so on. I was never so bored in my life.”
“I know,” said Silva. He too had suffered.
“So,” concluded Frome, “about that time I began wishing I could give her back to Sirat Mongkut. I was even sorry I’d killed the blighter. Although he’d have caused no end of trouble if he’d lived, he was a likeable sort of scoundrel at that. So here I am with one unwanted fiancée, and I just can’t explain the facts of life to her. She once said as a joke that I’d be better off on Ganesha, and damned if I don’t think she was right. Now if you’ll just endorse that application . . . Ah, muito obrigado, Senhor Augusto! If I hurry I can just catch the ship to Krishna. Cheerio!”
A.D. 2120
The Animal-Cracker Plot
The chief pilot of the ship that had just landed at Bembom on Vishnu handed Luther Beck his cargo manifest, fuel check, flight permit, passenger list, radio transcript, and log. He said: “Only one passenger this time, Luther.”
“Who?” said Beck, fumbling through the papers with pudgy fingers.
“Darius Koshay.”
“What!”
“Yeah. You know the guy, don’t—hey, where you going?”
Beck, not stopping to reply, ran down the corridor and burst into the Comandante’s office without knocking. “Chefe!” he yelled, “Koshay’s back!”
“Realmente?” said Silva, raising frosty eyebrows. “Tamates, that’ll complicate life, though I wouldn’t shout so that Senhor Darius can hear us from here. What’s he brought this time?”
“I haven’t examined—”
“Then you’d better do so. We shall then know better what he’s up to.”
Beck shrugged. “Of course. I just thought you’d want to know imediatamente.”
“Obrigado; I do. Be sure you give him the works. With a microscope.”
The plump little customs agent of the Viagens Interplanetarias found Darius Koshay awaiting him in the customs shed, slim, dark, and looking like Hollywood’s gift to the frustrated female. The entrepreneur had already stripped down to the costume of Earthmen on Vishnu and was sweating like a team of percherons.
“Alô, Senhor Luther,” said Koshay. “As you see, I couldn’t have anything up my sleeve. And if you’ll turn on your tube, I’ll prove I haven’t swallowed anything either.”
Beck, rushing Koshay through the X-ray examination, said: “What’s all that junk?”
“Por favor, my good man, don’t call my factory junk!”
“A factory to make what? Looks like a bunch of old stoves and things to me.”
“Crackers.”
“Crackers?”
“Crackers.”
“Are you nuts?”
“Not at all. I learned last time that both the Romeli and the Dzlieri are crazy mad about sweet crackers. Since it wouldn’t pay to import them over a distance of several light-years, I propose to make my own.”
“Where?” said Beck, rummaging through the cooking equipment.
“On that little plot I leased from old Kamatobden. My lease should still be good, even though I left last time—all—a little more suddenly than I expected.”
“Where will you get the stuff to make them?”
“Easy. I’ll use Vishnuvan wheat for flour, buy my salt, sugar, and spices from the natives, and import my shortening, syrup, and powdered milk from Novorecife.”
There must be a catch, thought Beck. Either that or Darius Koshay must have reformed—a less likely supposition. These ovens and pots looked harmless enough; no secret compartments for contraband weapons or drugs.
After some mental calculations he asked: “Did you bring all this stuff from Earth? The freight must have been something astronomical.”
“No, most of it’s surplus I picked up at Novorecife and repaired myself.”
“Still, you’ll have to sell your crackers for their weight in natural diamonds to get your money back.”
Koshay lit up. “Naturally, I expect to be paid well, or I wouldn’t let myself in for a year of tea and salt tablets. My kidneys must be so tanned now you could use ’em for shoe leather. When you finish snooping, here are the perm
its and visas and doings.”
Luther Beck did not want to finish snooping, being still unconvinced that all was kosher. However, the equipment was nothing but a lot of metal sheets fastened together in simple forms. He even held a couple of the pots in front of the fluoroscope, finding nothing suspicious.
He gave up finally and went through Koshay’s personal luggage. The trader, who seemed to be getting a quiet boot out of all this, said: “Really, Inspector, you’ll find everything in order. I’m shoving off as soon as I visit Gwen.”
“How are you going to get this stuff through the jungle?”
“I’ll hire a couple of the tame Dzlieri as pack horses. Are there any in Bembom now?”
“They’ll be drifting in now that the rutting season’s over.”
“Still angling for that scholarship, my learned friend?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You know,” said Koshay, blowing a ring, “I could have one of those long-haired jobs without any stupid courses. I know more about extra-terrestrial life than most professional xenologists. But I could never stand the red tape you civil service guys have to put up with.”
Beck grunted. “I know. You’re the strong, adventurous type, impatient of the restraints of civilization.” He finished his examination and checked Koshay’s papers. Try as he might he could find no discrepancies and was forced to sign the man out.
With his usual luck, Koshay hired a pair of Dzlieri the same day; they wandered in out of the wilds with pleas for packing jobs. When the man even persuaded them to fetch a mare of their kind to carry him personally, Beck thought, the rascal’s a wizard with them; the most exasperating thing about his bragging is that it’s mostly true. Beck saw him disappear into the steaming drizzle perched impudently on the back of the female, while the two stallions, waving their hands and gabbling, swayed behind under their loads.
###
After the ship took off for Novorecife on Krishna, life at Bembom settled into its usual round. Beck was busy for some days checking the cargo that had come in. An entrepreneur came out of the jungle, deposited his goods, drew supplies, and vanished into the woods again. A member of the Viagens ground crew took sick and died of some mysterious disease, and all held their breaths waiting to see if an epidemic would develop. Sparks quarreled with Slops over the doxy and both had to be psyched by Sawbones to straighten them out . . .
Then one day, a battered Romeli crawled into the station and croaked a request for first aid. Stamps saw him first and called Sawbones, who patched the native’s slaty skin and assured him that his middle eye was not seriously hurt. Meanwhile Stamps told the Comandante, who fetched the sergeant and Beck for the interview. Sergeant Martins was wanted as the person most concerned in case of shooting trouble with the Vishnuvans, while Beck was interested as ranking peace officer.
The interview was halting, since the Romeli knew only a few words of Portuguese, and of the three men only the sergeant was fluent in Romeli. The aborigine lay on his back twiddling his twenty-four fingers and toes while the sargento translated.
The commandant asked: “What was the fight about?”
The Romeli replied via interpreter: “I would not agree with the new war plan, so they drove me out.”
“What war plan?”
“The plan of Mogzaurma against the Dzlieri.” (Beck knew Mogzaurma as the high priest of the neighboring tribe of the Romeli species, and a slippery customer.)
“What plan is that?” continued Silva.
“The plan of Mogzaurma—”
“Não, I mean what are the details?”
“Magic.”
“What magic?”
“The great Senhor Augusto knows what magic is.”
Silva earned his salary by keeping calm and courteous no matter how irritating his Vishnuvan visitors proved themselves. He said quietly: “There are times when I miss the good old Earth, and this is one. Ask him about this spell or whatever it is.”
“The spell,” said the Romeli, “calls for the destruction of the Dzlieri.”
“Yes, but how?”
The Romeli scratched his bandage with his right middle limb. “I know little of magic. That is for the priests.”
“What do you know of this particular spell?”
“I—I think it has something to do with destroying effigies of the Dzlieri.”
“What sort of effigies?”
“That’s all I know.”
Silva said: “If the Romeli and Dzlieri want to make a lot of silly spells against each other, it’s none of our business. They’ve always fought, and I suppose they always will. That’s what comes of having two species of intelligent life on the same planet. I don’t think another planet has that condition. Tell him—”
“Wait, chefe,” said Beck. “I still have a feeling Koshay’s mixed up in this. Let me question him a while. Maybe I can find something. Mteli, how are these effigies to be destroyed?”
“I told you I don’t know,” grumbled Mteli.
“Were they to be—eaten?”
“You seem to know all about it, so why ask me?”
“Were they?”
“It’s none of your business how we deal with our enemies.”
“Oh yes it is, since you asked us for help. How’d you like us to rip those bandages off and drive you out of Bembom? Huh?”
“You wouldn’t do that. You’re supposed to be kind to us. I know about the Viagens policy too.”
“That’s all right; we didn’t have to admit you in the first place and we’d be just back where we started. Now, will you answer my questions like a good fellow? Were they to be eaten?”
“Unh, yes.”
“That’s better. Were they to be little biscuits?”
“Yes.”
“And what led you to disagree with this plan?”
“I thought these little biscuits would be too dangerous to spread around among the tribe. We might start using them on each other. Daatskhuna has always been afraid of an outbreak of witchcraft among us.”
“Were you to buy them from Darius Koshay?”
“I shouldn’t tell you that—”
“We’ll find out anyway. You know our mysterious ways.”
“I suppose so. All right, we were.”
“There you are,” said Beck. “I told you he was up to something. Koshay makes sweet crackers all right—animal crackers in the form of Dzlieri, so the Romeli can eat them to kill their enemies by sympathetic magic. How were you going to pay him, Mteli?”
The Romeli answered: “He says his people back on Earth have a magical rite they call dancing, which they do to music. He says they are mad about dancing to our tribal songs, so they will pay him mountains of money for them. According to the contract, therefore, he gives us the crackers and we let him copy down the songs, with little marks to show the notes.”
“Now,” said Silva, “I’ve seen everything. I’ve heard of ingenious ways of getting around the freight charges to Earth, but this one takes the bolo. It’s true the people home in Rio were absolutely crazy about some of these Romeli tunes which a xenologist had brought back, the last time I was there. However, I still don’t know whether we ought to try to interfere.”
The sergeant said: “Comandante, we can’t allow a major outbreak among these damned Vishnuvans just when we’ve gotten the trade routes stabilized. Also, they’ll murder our entrepreneurs in the general excitement.”
“Would there be an outbreak?” said Silva. “Or would they just stay home and eat their crackers.”
“I’ll ask,” said the sergeant. “Mteli, were your people going to attack the Dzlieri physically after they had whittled ’em down with their magic?”
“Naturally. How could we seize their property otherwise?”
“Still,” said Silva cautiously, “I don’t see what law Koshay has broken.”
“He’s sold arms to the Vishnuvans,” said Beck.
“How can you call animal crackers arms? Come, Senhor Inspector, you’re not su
perstitious; you don’t believe Koshay’s little crackers work that way, whatever these poor deluded ones think about them!”
“They do so work!” cried the Romeli, who seemed to have caught the gist of the statement. “And we’re not poor deluded anything. I’ve seen it done. Mogzaurma brought in a captive Dzlieri and worked the rite on him, and he died at once.”
“Maybe he was already sick or wounded,” said Silva.
“No! No!”
“Maybe he was scared to death,” said the sergeant. “You know how natives are.”
“Don’t you call me a native!” said Mteli, struggling up.
“Well, aren’t you?” said the sergeant.
“Please, calma,” said Silva. “Sergeant Martins meant no insult, my dear friend. I have heard of primitives on Earth who died when they heard the local witch doctor had put a hex on them. But that’s not the law; I can’t help it if beings get frightened over nothing.”
Beck shook his head. “If I scare you to death on purpose, I’ve killed you just as if I’d conked you with a blunt instrument. And as the sergeant says, we can’t let them knock off our entrepreneurs, who are human beings even if they are freelancers. I’d stretch a point.”
“How?”
“Go to Koshay’s plot and pinch him.”
“You’re mad, my young friend,” said Silva.
“Listen to the eager beaver,” said the sergeant. “Sonny, don’t you know how easy it is to disappear in that muck?”
“I know all about it,” said Beck. “I’ve travelled all over that country and never had any trouble. If I can yank Koshay out quickly, the source of all this disturbance will be gone.”
Silva explained: “Senhor Luther wants a scholarship to study to be a xenologist, and figures that a few coups like this will get it for him.”
“Why not?” said Beck. “If I show I can deal with extra-terrestrials—”
“There’s one sure way to do that” said the sergeant, slapping his holster. “What we need is a reconnaissance in force to put the fear of God into them. No schoolboys—”
The Continent Makers and Other Tales of the Viagens Page 10
