Sixth Column

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Calhoun turned abruptly and left.

  Ardmore called his Chief of Intelligence to him. “Thomas,” he said, “I want a close, but discreet, check kept on Colonel Calhoun’s movements.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The last of the scout cars are in, sir.”

  “Good. How does the tally stand now?” Ardmore asked.

  “Just a moment, sir. It was running about six raids to a ship—with this last one that makes a total of…uh…nine and two makes eleven—seventy-one prisoners in sixty-eight raids. Some of them doubled up.”

  “Any casualties?”

  “Only to the PanAsians—”

  “Damn it, that’s what I meant! No, I mean to our men, of course.”

  “None, Major. One man got a broken arm when he fell down a staircase in the dark.”

  “I guess we can stand that. We should get some reports on the local demonstrations—at least from the East coast cities—before long. Let me know.”

  “I will.”

  “Would you mind telling my orderly to step in as you leave? I want to send for some caffeine tablets—better have one yourself; this is going to be a big day.”

  “A good notion, Major.” The communications aide went out.

  In sixty-eight cities throughout the land, preparations were in progress for the demonstrations that constituted Phase 2 of Disorganization Plan IV. The priest of the temple in Oklahoma City had delegated part of his local task to two men, Patrick Minkowski, taxi driver, and John W. (Jack) Smyth, retail merchant. They were engaged in fitting leg irons to the ankles of the Voice of the Hand, PanAsian administrator of Oklahoma City. The limp, naked body of the Oriental lay on a long table in a workshop down under the temple.

  “There,” announced Minkowski, “that’s the best job of riveting I can do without heating tools. It’ll take him a while to get it off, anyway. Where’s that stencil?”

  “By your elbow. Captain Isaacs said he’d weld those joints with his staff after we finished; I wouldn’t worry about them. Say, it seems odd to call the priest Captain Isaacs, doesn’t it? Do you think we’re really in the army—legally, I mean?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that—and as long as it gives me a chance to take a crack at those flat-faced apes, I don’t care. I suppose we are, though—if you admit that Isaacs is an army officer, I guess he can take recruits. Look—do we put this stencil on his back or on his stomach?”

  “I’d say to put it on both sides. It does seem funny, though, about this army business, I mean. One day you’re going to church; the next you’re told it’s a military outfit, and they swear you in.”

  “Personally, I like it,” commented Minkowski. “Sergeant Minkowski—it sounds good. They wouldn’t take me before on account o’ my heart. As for the church part, I never took any stock in this great God Mota business, anyhow; I came for the free food and the chance to breathe in peace.” He removed the stencil from the back of the Asiatic; Smyth commenced filling in the traced design of an ideograph with quick-drying indelible paint. “I wonder what that heathen writing means?”

  “Didn’t you hear?” asked Smyth, and told him.

  A delighted grin came over Minkowski’s face. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. “If anybody called me that, it wouldn’t do him no good to smile when he said it. You wouldn’t kid me?”

  “No, indeed. I was in the communications office when they were getting the design from the Mother Temple—I mean general headquarters. Here’s another funny thing, too. I saw the chap in the screen who was passing out the design, and he was Asiatic as this monkey”—Smyth indicated the unconscious voice of the Hand—“but they called him Captain Downer and treated him like one of us. What do you make of that?”

  “Couldn’t say. He must be on our side, or else he wouldn’t be loose in headquarters. What’ll we do with the rest of the paint?”

  Between them they found something to do with it, which Captain Isaacs noticed at once when he came in to see how they were progressing. He suppressed a smile. “I see you have elaborated on your instructions a bit,” he commented, trying to keep his voice soberly official.

  “It seemed a pity to waste the paint,” Minkowski explained ingenuously. “Besides, he looked so naked the way he was.”

  “That’s a matter of opinion. Personally, I would say that he looks nakeder now. We’ll drop the point; hurry up and get his head shaved. I want to leave any time now.”

  Minkowski and Smyth waited at the door of the temple five minutes later, the Voice of the Hand rolled in a blanket on the floor between them. They saw a sleek duocycle station wagon come shooting up to the curb in front of the temple and brake to a sudden stop. Its bell sounded, and Captain Isaacs’ face appeared in the window of the driver’s compartment. Minkowski threw down the butt of a cigarette and grabbed the shoulders of the muffled figure at their feet; Smyth took the legs and they trotted clumsily and heavily out to the car.

  “Dump him in the back,” ordered Captain Isaacs.

  That done, Minkowski took the wheel while Isaacs and Smyth crouched in the back with the subject of the pending demonstration.

  “I want you to find a considerable gathering of PanAsians almost anywhere,” directed the captain. “If there are Americans present, too, so much the better. Drive fast and pay no attention to anyone. I’ll take care of any difficulties with my staff.” He settled himself to watch the street over Minkowski’s shoulder.

  “Right, Captain! Say, this is a sweet little buggy,” he added as the car shot forward. “How did you pick it up so fast?”

  “I knocked out a few of our Oriental friends;” answered Isaacs briefly. “Watch that signal!”

  “Got it!” The car dewed around and dodged under the nose of oncoming cross traffic. A PanAsian policeman was left futilely waving at them.

  A few seconds later Minkowski demanded, “How about that spot up ahead, Captain?” and hooked his chin in the indicated direction. It was the square of the civic center.

  “O.K.” He bent over the silent figure on the floor of the car, busy with his staff.

  The Asiatic began to struggle. Smyth fell on him and pinned the blanket more firmly about the head and shoulders of their victim. “Pick your spot. When you stop, we’ll be ready.”

  The car lurched to a stomach-twisting halt. Smyth slammed open the rear door; he and Isaacs grabbed corners of the blanket and rolled the now-conscious official into the street. “Take it away, Pat!”

  The car jumped forward, leaving startled and scandalized Asiatics to deal with an utterly disgraceful situation as best they might. Twenty minutes later a brief but explicit account of their exploit was handed to Ardmore in his office at the Citadel. He glanced over it and passed it to Thomas. “Here’s a crew with imagination, Jeff.”

  Thomas took the report and read it, then nodded agreement. “I hope they all do as well. Perhaps we should have given more detailed instructions.”

  “I don’t think so. Detailed instructions are the death of initiative. This way we have them all striving to think up some particularly annoying way to get under the skins of our slant-eyed lords. I expect some very amusing and ingenious results.”

  By nine a.m., headquarters time, each one of the seventy-odd PanAsian major officials had been returned alive, but permanently, unbearably disgraced, to his racial brethren. In all cases, so far as the data at hand went, there had been no cause given to the Asiatics to associate their latest trouble directly with the cult of Mota. It was simply catastrophe, psychological catastrophe of the worst sort, which had struck in the night without warning and without trace.

  “You have not set the time for Phase 3 as yet, Major,” Thomas reminded Ardmore when all reports were in.

  “I know it. I don’t expect it to be more than two hours from now at the outside. We’ve got to give them a little time to appreciate what has happened to them. The force of demoralization will be many times as great when they have had time to compare notes around the country and realiz
e that all of their top men have been publicly humiliated. That, combined with the fact that we crippled their continental headquarters almost to the limit, should produce as sweet a case of mass hysteria as one could wish: But we’ll have to give it time to spread. Is Downer on deck?”

  “He’s standing by in the communications watch office.”

  “Tell them to cut in a relay circuit from him to my office. I want to listen to what he picks up here.”

  Thomas dialed with the interoffice communicator and spoke briefly. Very shortly Downer’s pseudo-Asiatic countenance showed on the screen above Ardmore’s desk. Ardmore spoke to him. Downer slipped an earphone off one ear and gave him an inquiring look.

  “I said, ‘Are you getting anything yet?’” repeated Ardmore.

  “Some. They’re in quite an uproar. What I’ve been able to translate is being canned.” He flicked a thumb toward the microphone which hung in front of his face. A preoccupied, listening look came into his eyes, and he added, “San Francisco is trying to raise the palace—”

  “Don’t let me interrupt you,” said Ardmore, and closed his own transmitter.

  “—the Emperor’s Hand there is reported dead. San Francisco wants some sort of authorization—Wait a minute; the comm office wants me to try another wave length. There it comes—they’re using the Prince Royal’s signal, but it’s in the provincial governor’s frequency. I can’t get what they’re saying; it’s either coded or in a dialect I don’t know. Watch officer, try another wave band—I’m just wasting time on that one… That’s better.” Downer’s face became intent, then suddenly lit up. “Chief, get this: Somebody is saying that the Governor of the gulf province has lost his mind and asks permission to supersede him! Here’s another—wants to know what’s wrong with the palace circuits and how to reach the palace—wants to report an uprising—”

  Ardmore cut back in. “Where?”

  “Couldn’t catch it. Every frequency is jammed with traffic, and about half of it is incoherent. They don’t give each other time to clear—send right through another message.”

  There was a gentle knock at the outer door of Ardmore’s office. It opened a few inches and Dr. Brooks’ head appeared. “May I come in?”

  “Oh—certainly, Doctor. Come in. We are listening to what Captain Downer can pick up from the radio.”

  “Too bad we haven’t a dozen of him—translators, I mean.”

  “Yes, but there doesn’t seem to be much to pick up but a general impression.” They listened to what Downer could pick up for the better part of an hour, mostly disjointed or partial messages, but it was made increasingly evident that the sabotage of the palace organization, plus the terrific emotional impact of the disgrace of key administrators, had played hob with the normal, smooth functioning of the PanAsian government. Finally Downer said, “Here’s a general order going out—Wait a minute—It orders a radio silence on all clear-speech messages; everything has to be coded.”

  Ardmore glanced at Thomas. “I guess that is about the right point, Jeff. Somebody with horse sense and poise is trying to whip them back into shape—probably our old pal, the Prince. Time to stymie him.” He rang the communications office. “O.K., Steeves,” he said to the face of the watch officer, “give them power!”

  “Jam ’em?”

  “That’s right. Warn all temples through Circuit A, and let them all do it at once.”

  “They are standing by now, sir. Execute?”

  “Very well—execute!”

  Wilkie had developed a simple little device whereby the tremendous power of the temple projectors could be rectified, if desired, to undifferentiated electromagnetic radiation in the radio frequencies—static. Now they cut loose like sunspots, electrical storms, and aurora, all hooked up together.

  Downer was seen to snatch the headphones from his ears. “For the love o’—Why didn’t somebody warn me?” He reapproached one receiver cautiously to an ear, and shook his head. “Dead. I’ll bet we’ve burned out every receiver in the country.”

  “Maybe so,” observed Ardmore to those in his office, “but we’ll keep jamming them just the same.” At that moment, in all the United States, there remained no general communication system but the pararadio of the cult of Mota. The Asiatic rulers could not even fall back on wired telephony; the obsolete ground lines had long since been salvaged for their copper.

  “How much longer, Chief?” asked Thomas.

  “Not very long. We let ’em talk long enough for them to know something hellacious is happening all over the country. Now we’ve cut ’em off. That should produce a feeling of panic. I want to let that panic have time to ripen and spread to every PanAsian in the country. When I figure they are ripe, we’ll sock it to ’em!”

  “How will you tell?”

  “I can’t. It will be on hunch, between ourselves. We’ll let the little darlings run around in circles for a while, not over an hour, then give ’em the works.”

  Dr. Brooks nervously attempted to make conversation. “It certainly will be a relief to have this entire matter settled once and for always. It’s been very trying at times—” His voice trailed off.

  Ardmore turned on him. “Don’t ever think we can settle things ‘once and for always.’”

  “But surely—if we defeat the PanAsians decisively—”

  “That’s where you are wrong about it.” The nervous strain he was under showed in his brusque manner. “We got into this jam by thinking we could settle things once and for always. We met the Asiatic threat by the Nonintercourse Act and by big West Coast defenses—so they came at us over the north pole!

  “We should have known better; there were plenty of lessons in history. The old French Republic tried to freeze events to one pattern with the Versailles Treaty. When that didn’t work they built the Maginot Line and went to sleep behind it. What did it get them? Final blackout!

  “Life is a dynamic process and can’t be made static. ‘—and they all lived happily ever after’ is fairy-tale stu—” He was interrupted by the jangling of a bell and the red flashing of the emergency transparency.

  The face of the communications watch officer snapped into view on the reflectophone screen. “Major Ardmore!”

  It was gone and replaced by the features of Frank Mitsui, contorted with apprehension. “Major!” he burst out. “Colonel Calhoun—he’s gone crazy!”

  “Easy, man, easy! What’s happened?”

  “He gave me the slip—he’s gone up the temple. He thinks he’s the god Mota!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Ardmore cut Frank off by switching to the communications watch officer. “Get me the control board in the great altar—move!”

  He got it, but it was not the operator on watch that Ardmore saw. Instead it was Calhoun, bending over the console of controls. The operator was collapsed in his chair, head lolled to the right. Ardmore cut the connection at once and dived for the door.

  Thomas and Brooks competed for second place, leaving the orderly a hopelessly outdistanced fourth. The three swept up the gravity chute to the temple level at maximum acceleration, and slammed out onto the temple floor. The altar lay before them, a hundred feet away.

  “I assigned Frank to watch him,” Thomas was trying to say when Calhoun stuck his head over the upper rail of the altar.

  “Stand fast!”

  They stood. Brooks whispered, “He’s got the heavy projector trained on us. Careful, Major!”

  “I know it,” Ardmore acknowledged, letting the words slip out of one side of his mouth. He cleared his throat. “Colonel Calhoun!”

  “I am the great Lord Mota. Careful how you speak to me!”

  “Yes, certainly, Lord Mota. But tell thy servant something—isn’t Colonel Calhoun one of your attributes?”

  Calhoun considered this. “Sometimes,” he finally answered, “sometimes I think that he is. Yes, he is.”

  “Then I wish to speak to Colonel Calhoun.” Ardmore eased forward a few steps.

  “Stand s
till!” Calhoun crouched rigid over the projector. “My lightnings are set for white men—take care!”

  “Watch it, Chief,” whispered Thomas, “he can blast the whole damn place with that thing.”

  “Don’t I know it!” Ardmore answered voicelessly, and started to resume the verbal tight-rope walk. But something had diverted Calhoun’s attention. They saw him turn his head, then hastily swing the heavy projector around and depress its controls with both hands. He raised his head almost immediately, seemed to make some readjustment of the projector, and depressed the controls again. Almost simultaneously some heavy body struck him; he fell from sight behind the rail.

  On the floor of the altar platform they found Calhoun struggling. But his arms were held, his legs pinioned by the limbs of a short stocky brown man—Frank Mitsui. Frank’s eyes were lifeless china, his muscles rigid.

  It took four men to force Calhoun into an improvised straitjacket and to carry him down to sick bay. “As I figure it,” said Thomas, watching the work party remove their psychotic burden, “Dr. Calhoun had the projector set to kill white men. The first blast didn’t harm Frank, and he had to stop to reset the controls. That saved us.”

  “Yes—but not Frank.”

  “Well—you know his story. That second blast must have hit him while he was actually in the air—full power. Did you feel his arms? Coagulated instantaneously—like a hard-boiled egg.”

  But they had no time to dwell on the end of little Mitsui’s tragic life; more minutes had passed. Ardmore and company hurried back to his office, where he found Kendig, his Chief of Staff, calmly handling the traffic of dispatches. Ardmore demanded a quick verbal résumé.

  “One change, Major—they tried to A-bomb the temple in Nashville. A near miss, but it wrecked the city district south of it. Have you set the zero hour? Several dioceses have inquired.”

  “Not yet, but very soon. Unless you have some more data for me, I’ll give them their final instructions right away on Circuit A.”

  “No, sir, you might as well go ahead.”

  When Circuit A was reported back as ready, Ardmore cleared his throat. He felt suddenly nervous. “Action in twenty minutes, gentlemen,” he started in. “I want to review the main points of the plan.” He ran over it; the twelve scout cars were assigned one each to the twelve largest cities, or, rather, what was almost the same list, the twelve heaviest concentrations of PanAsian military power. The attack of the scout cars would be the signal to attack on the ground in those areas.