“If I ever see anything like that again,” he said, “you'll spend the rest of the revolution locked in a back room of the warehouse. I will not tolerate murder!”
Broohnin's voice trembled with rage as he replied in kind. “If you ever touch me again, I'll kill you!”
Peter LaNague did what he then considered the bravest act of his life. He turned his back on Broohnin and walked away.
After all the unconscious crewmen had been stretched out in Ship Two, the hatches were closed and locked, but not before a steel-tipped longbow arrow, with “Greetings from Robin Hood” emblazoned on the shaft, had been driven into the cushion on the pilot's seat. The Merry Men then hurriedly boarded the two functional transports and took to the air. After entering a preprogrammed flight code into the control console, the new pilot of each ship sat back and watched the instruments.
The two Treasury Transports took separate courses, one to the northeast, another to the southeast. The flight routes, which had been carefully programmed meter by meter the previous week, would keep the ships moving as low and as fast as possible, each taking a divergent path to Primus. They could be traced and located, but not with any great ease or accuracy. And no one would be expecting them to head for Primus, the very seat of the planet's major police and militia garrisons.
“All right,” LaNague said, now that Ship One was underway, “let's get to work.”
Most of the men had turned their holosuits off by now; all leaped to the task of tearing open the crates of orange currency slips and dumping the contents onto the floor of the cargo hold. The flattened, empty crates were passed to a man at the boarding hatch who threw them out toward the darkened grasslands not far below. To the north on Ship Three, Broohnin, Kanya, and Josef were directing a similar task.
When all the currency had been dumped into a huge pile in the center of the hold, the men stood back and surveyed the mass of wealth.
“How much do you think?” someone said in an awed voice to anyone who was listening.
“About thirty million marks,” LaNague replied. “And about the same amount in the other ship.” He bent and lifted one of the sacks that had been loaded earlier. “Time to add the calling cards.”
The men each grabbed a sack and emptied the thousands of tiny white slips of paper within onto the pile of marks, creating a mound of orange cake with white icing. Then they began kicking at the mount and throwing handfuls of it into the air until currency and calling cards were evenly mixed.
LaNague looked at the time. “Sayers ought to have his remote crew just about ready to move out now.” The first dump was designated for the neighborhood outside the vid studio. He hoped Sayers had been able to stall long enough.
Eternities passed before the ship began to rise and the control panel buzzed warning that the flight was coming to its end. They were at Primus City limits, and the pilot took manual control.
“Open the loading hatch,” LaNague said.
Slowly, the rear wall of the cargo bay began to rise. When the opening was a meter high, LaNague called a stop and it held that aperture. A cool wind began to whirl through the hold as the men awaited word from the pilot.
Then it came:
“First target below!”
Reluctantly at first, and then with mounting enthusiasm, they began kicking piles of mark notes mixed with their own private calling cards out the opening.
It began to rain orange and white.
HIS FIRST THOUGHT was that he had finally cracked…the boredom had finally worn away his sanity until he was now beginning to hallucinate.
Well, why not? Vincen Stafford thought uneasily. After all, here I am in the dead of night, standing in the middle of my vegetable patch.
The little garden had become an important part of Stafford's life lately. He had been getting fewer and fewer assignments on the grain runs, and had actually been bumped off the last one. Two small orders had been consolidated into one and he had been left hanging due to lack of seniority. The runs seemed to be coming fewer and farther between…hard to believe, but that was the way it was.
At least he had the house. After navigating six consecutive runs, he had applied to a bank for a mortgage and had been approved. The single-level cottage on a synthestone slab behind him was the result. Not much, but it was a place to start, and it was home.
Then the runs had slowed up. Good thing his wife had that part-time night job, or things really would have been tight. He hadn't wanted Salli to take it at first, but she'd said she needed something to do while he was shuttling between the stars. She didn't want to sit home alone. But look who was staying home alone now! Very alone, since he had yet to make any fast friends in the neighborhood. That was why the garden had become so important. The loneliness and the boredom of waiting for an assignment had driven him to try his hand at growing a few vegetables, especially with produce prices being what they were. He had planted a few legumes and tubers last week and they had just started to sprout.
So here he was, out in the dark, standing over his newborn vegetable plants like an overprotective parent. But the garden gave him peace, eased that empty gnawing feeling that followed him around like a shadow. It sounded crazy, so he kept it to himself. Just as he would have to keep this hallucination to himself…he could swear it was raining mark notes.
He turned around. By the light pouring from the rear windows of his house he could see that there was money all over the back yard. He bent over to see if it just might be real…if it could be touched. It could. It was real-old bills, new bills, ones, fives, ten-mark notes were spilling from the sky. And something else.
He reached down and picked up one of the small white slips of paper that fell with the currency.
YOUR TAX REFUND-
AS PROMISED.
ROBIN HOOD AND HIS MERRY MEN
Stafford looked up and saw nothing. The rain of money had stopped. He had never heard of Robin Hood…or had he? Wasn't there an old story about someone with that name? He'd have to ask Salli when she got home.
As he walked about the yard, picking up what later totaled one hundred and fifty-six marks, he idly wondered if it might be stolen money. They weren't in any dire financial trouble, but the extra cash would certainly come in handy, especially with a new house to care for.
Even if he never spent it, Stafford thanked Robin Hood, whoever he might be, for brightening up a dull evening.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Pity the poor, diseased politician. Imagine: to spend your days and expend your efforts making rules for others to live by, thinking up ways to run other lives. Actually to strive for the opportunity to do so! What a hideous affliction!
from THE SECOND BOOK OF KYFHO
How many times are they going to show that sequence?” Metep VII catapulted himself out of his seat as he spoke and stalked about the small, darkened room, irritation evident in every move.
Daro Haworth's reply was languid, distracted. “As long as they can get an audience for it.” His eyes were intent on the large, sharply focused vid globe in the center of the room. “Don't forget, they have an exclusive on this: they were the only ones on the street with a remote crew when the rains came.”
“Which is just a little too pat, don't you think?”
“We had security look into it. There's a logical explanation. They monitor the official frequencies just like the other two vid services, and heard the hijack alarm along with everybody else. But they've got a small budget with no remote crew on stand-by, so they were way behind their competition in getting to the scene. It so happened they were just about to take to the air when the money started to fall. A good example of how inefficiency can pay off once in a while.”
Radmon Sayers’ familiar face filled the vid globe. Orange mark notes fluttered all around him, interspersed occasionally with flashes of white, all so real and seemingly solid that a viewer with a large holo set would be tempted to reach out and grab a handful. Sayers’ expression was a mixture of ecstatic deligh
t and barely suppressed jubilation.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said from within the globe, “if someone had told me about this, I'd have called him a liar. But here I am in the street outside our studio, and it's raining money! No, this is not a stunt and it's not a joke. There's money falling from the sky!”
The camera panned up the side of a building to the dark sky yielding orange and white slips of paper out of its otherwise featureless blackness, then jumped to a wider angle on Sayers. He was holding one of the white slips. Behind and around him, people could be seen scurrying about, snatching up money from the street.
“Do you remember those crazy little flyers we've been seeing around town for the past half-year or so? The Robin Hood Reader? One of the early ones promised a tax refund-‘Look to the skies,’ it said, if I remember correctly. Well…I think I may be standing in the middle of that tax refund right now.”
He held up the white piece of paper and the camera angle closed in on it, virtually thrusting his magnified hand into the room. The printing on the slip was clear: Your tax rebate as promised. Robin Hood and his Merry Men. For those who could not read or whose reception might be poor, Sayers read the inscription.
“So it looks like this Robin Hood fellow kept his promise,” he said as the rain of paper tapered off to nothing. “There was an unconfirmed report of one of the Imperial Treasury convoys being hijacked this evening. If that's true, and this is the stolen money, then I fear Mr. Hood and his Merry Men are in big trouble.”
The camera angle widened to a full-length shot of Sayers and the street. People could be seen standing here and there around him, faces upward, expectantly watching the sky, wads of bills clutched tightly in their hands. He went over to a middle-aged woman and put his arm around her shoulder. She obviously recognized him and smiled at the camera.
“Let's ask this woman what she thinks of this whole affair.”
“Oh, I think it's just wonderful!” she cooed. “I don't know who this Robin Hood fellow is, but he's welcome in my neighborhood any time!”
“But the money may be stolen.”
Her smile faltered. “From who?”
“From the government, perhaps.”
“Oh, that would be too bad. Too bad.”
“What if the government confirmed that it was the same money that was hijacked from the Imperial Treasury ships and asked that all good citizens turn in the money they had picked up tonight…would you comply?”
“You mean would I give it back?”
“Yes.”
“Of course I would!” Her expression was utterly deadpan as she spoke; then she smiled; then she began to giggle.
“Of course.” Sayers, too, allowed a smile to play about his lips. He stepped away from the woman and faced the camera. “Well, it looks as if the monetary monsoon is over. This is Radmon Sayers saying good night from a scene that neither these people around me nor the Imperial Treasury officials are likely to forget for a long time. By the way, it might not be a bad idea to take a look outside your own window. Perhaps Robin Hood is delivering your tax refund right now.”
The globe faded to gray and then the head of another vidcaster appeared. Haworth touched a groove in the arm of his chair and the globe went dark.
“We all look like fools!” Metep said, still wandering the room. “We'll have to make a real example of these do-gooders when we catch them!”
“That won't be too easy, I'm afraid.”
“And why not?”
“Because they didn't leave a single clue to their identities behind.”
A SWEEP OF THOSE SHIPS turned up countless sets of fingerprints-all identical, all unregistered, all obviously phony-but not a single epidermis cell other than the crews’. And of course their use of holosuits during the entire affair precludes visual identification.”
“Identifying them shouldn't be the problem!” Metep shouted. “We should have them in custody!”
“Well, we don't, and there's no use ranting and raving about it. They pulled some very tricky maneuvers last night, the trickiest being the finale when they had everyone pursuing empty transports halfway back to the west coast.”
“Idiots! We all look like idiots!”
“Yes, I'm afraid we do,” Haworth said, rising to his feet and rubbing both hands up over his eyes and through the stark white of his hair. “But not as idiotic as we're going to look when the results of Krager's programs for voluntary return of the money are in. A ‘patriotic gesture,’ he called it! The old fool.”
“Why? I think it's a good idea. We may even get a few million back.”
“We'll get nothing back except a few token marks, and then we'll really look like idiots!”
“I think you're wrong.”
“Really? What would you do if you just found a tax-free bonus lying in your back yard, and knew it was stolen from the same people who had recently taken a sizable piece of your income in taxes? How would you respond when those people asked for their money back, and they didn't know exactly who had it? What would you do?”
Metep considered this. “I see what you mean. What'll we do?”
“Lie. What else? We'll announce that more than 90 per cent of the money had been returned and that only a greedy, disloyal few have failed to return the money that rightfully belongs to their fellow citizens.”
“Sounds good. A little guilt is always good for the common man.”
Haworth's smile was sardonic. “Assuming they'll feel guilty.” The smile faded. “But there's a lot about this Robin Hood character-if he's actually an individual at all-that bothers me. What's he up to? He doesn't call for your death or violent overthrow of the Imperium. He just talks about money. There's no heated rhetoric, no obvious ideology. Just money.”
“That bothers you? Not me! I prefer what he's doing to threatening my life. After all, he could have robbed a military base and been dropping neutrons on us.”
“It bothers me because I don't know where he's heading. And I sense there's method to his madness. He's got a goal in mind and I can't see what it is. Perhaps he'll let us know in his newsletter.”
“Which we've already outlawed, naturally. Anyone caught in possession of a Robin Hood Reader from now on will be arrested and interrogated.”
“And that's another thing that bothers me. We lend Robin Hood a certain mystique by officially declaring him and his silly little flyers illegal.”
“But we have no choice. He's committed armed robbery. We can't ignore that!”
Haworth didn't appear to be listening. He had walked to the wall and turned it to maximum transparency. The northern half of Primus City lay spread out before him.
“How many people do you think got a handful or two of money last night?” he asked Metep.
“Well, with two ships and sixty million marks…has to be thousands. Many thousands.”
“And only a tiny fraction of those giving the money back.” He turned to Metep VII. “Do you know what that means, Jek? Do you know what he's done?”
Metep could only shrug. “He's robbed us.”
“Robbed us?” Haworth's expression could not disguise his contempt for his superior's obtuseness. “He's turned thousands of those people out there into accomplices.”
“MY COMPLIMENTS TO YOU, SIR!” Doc Zack said, raising a glass of iced grain alcohol toward LaNague as they sat alone in one of the small offices that lined the rear of the Angus Black warehouse. “You have not only thumbed your nose at the Imperium, you've also succeeded in extracting joyful complicity from the public. A master stroke. Long live Robin Hood!”
LaNague raised his own glass in response. “I'll drink to that!” But he only sipped lightly, finding the native Throne liquors harsh and bitter. He preferred Tolive's dry white wines, but importing them in quantity would be a foolish extravagance. He didn't need any ethanol now anyway. He was already high. He had done it! He had actually done it! The first overt act of sedition had come off flawlessly, without a single casualty on either side. Ev
eryone was intact and free.
There had been a few tense moments, especially after they had made the money drops over the various sectors of Primus City and the Imperial Guard cruisers were closing in. Dropping down to street level, the pilots had run a zigzag course toward the city limits. At a pre-determined point, the transports were halted in the dolee section of the city, all the crew poised at the cargo and boarding hatches. With touch-down, everyone jumped out and scattered. The pilots were the last to leave, having been assigned the duty of plugging in a final flight cassette designed to take the pursuing cruisers on a merry chase. LaNague's pilot must have been delayed inside, because Ship One was a full three meters off the ground before he appeared at the boarding hatch. But without a second's hesitation, he leaped into the air and hit the street running. Everyone melted away-into alleys, into doorways, into waiting ground cars. Within the space of a few heartbeats, the hijacked transports had arrived, discharged their human cargo, and departed, leaving the streets as they had been before, with no trace of their passing.
And now all were safe. Yes, he had done it. It was an exhilarating feeling. And an immense relief.
“But what happens to Broohnin now that Robin Hood has arrived?”
“He remains a part of the revolution,” LaNague replied. “I promised him that.”
“You always keep your promises?”
“Always. I promised Broohnin a front row seat at the Imperium's demise if he would turn over his Throne contacts to me, and if he didn't interfere in my plans. I intend to keep that promise.”
“Den is a sick man, I'm afraid.”
“Then why were you a member of his group?”
Doc Zack laughed. “A member of his group? Please, sir, you insult me! He contacted me after a few of my critical remarks about the Imperium's shortsighted policies reached the public. We met a few times and had a few disjointed conversations. It was refreshing to talk to someone who was as anti-Imperium as myself-the halls of academe on Throne are filled with yea-sayers who fear for their positions, and who thus follow the safest course by mouthing the proper attitudes and platitudes. But I could see that violence was just a hair's breadth away from Broohnin's surface and so I kept my distance.”
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