He stopped.
“OK,” I said. “We know the rest.”
There was a gap of some several minutes while he replayed all the things he’s said to us through his mind. I didn’t have to be a mind reader to know he was doing that. Any more than he had to be a mind reader to know what people thought when they passed him on the street or told him to get out of sight. Maybe he’d missed reading one or two words of pity, maybe a little sympathy here and there, certainly a lot of indifference. But one could hardly say that what he’d picked up was completely false and imagined. He didn’t have to read minds. He knew all right.
I turned to Eve. “It’s all a tragic mistake,” I told her. “It’s a misunderstanding. Difficulties in translation. The Gallacellans didn’t want to know about humans—they never wanted to know. Only a handful, like Ecdyon, knew anything about us. And they’re under obligation, you see—Ecdyon works for Stylaster. Stylaster regards him as an extra leg, or a sense-organ, or something. What Ecdyon knows, Stylaster knows. But it couldn’t possibly occur to another Gallacellan to come to Ecdyon or to anyone like him and ask him about humans. Status, you see. The Gallacellans just didn’t understand.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“This whole crazy affair. Can’t you see what’s been happening? Stylaster wants to raise the Varsovien. He has to use our ship, but using us is exactly what he tries to do. It would no more occur to him to give away one extra fact than it would occur to the Caradoc Company to finance the Library at New Alexandria. Stylaster uses Charlot. Some other Gallacellan wants to let sleeping dogs lie, wants to let the Varsovien stay exactly where she is. How does he go about doing it? Does he go to Charlot? Of course not. Automatic Gallacellan policy is to go to the man of higher status.”
“But Charlot has no superiors,” she said.
“Exactly. But do they know that? What do they know about Charlot? Nothing. Or next to nothing. What can they find out about him? Without violating status, next to nothing. They know he’s a big man in the Library. Obviously, they want to contact the top man in the Library. But they don’t know the difference between New Alexandria and the tinpot data collation agency on Pallant. They send the message to Ferrier—one of the most absurd cases of mistaken identity on record, but given the Gallacellan methods, quite plausible. Ferrier, of course, thinks it’s a joke. He reads it out to his office staff. There’s some phrase about destroying moons—maybe the message isn’t so very good English—and Ferrier shows off how erudite and witty he is by making that crack about the Fenris device. But Maslax is eavesdropping, and he doesn’t see the joke. Minutes later, the joke turns sour. And here we are. Dead meat, the lot of us. All because of a bloody silly mistake.”
“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” said Maslax.
“No,” I said, with tired sarcasm, “you were reading the letter through Ferrier’s eyes by sheer power of mind. Great stuff. But if you read my mind now you’ll find that I’ve had just about enough. Why don’t you give me the gun and the bomb-trigger and let’s all pack it in and go home?”
He wasn’t impressed. He was still determined to send the entire population of Pallant to keep Ferrier and his girlfriend company in the fires of Hell.
“Mr. Grainger,” said Ecdyon, interrupting. “There’s a ship trying to contact us.”
“The Cicindel?”
“I think it’s the ship from Pallant. The Gray Goose.”
“You’d better...,” I began. But all this going over Maslax’s head seemed to have upset him a little.
“I’ll talk to them,” he said. “You just keep quiet. Grainger, if you open your mouth I’ll blast you. Now just keep quiet. You—let’s hear what they want to say.”
Ecdyon fiddled with the controls, and then stepped back. As he moved, he staggered slightly.
There was a moment’s silence. Then we heard the man on the Gray Goose begin a standard call signal. He addressed us as “the ship out of Leucifer V” and reeled off his identification codes. Then he paused and waited. I heard a muffled sound as he said something to one of his fellows—he was probably wondering if we could hear him.
“Can you hear me?” said Maslax, tentatively.
“Hello?” said the other. “Hello? Are you aboard the vessel from Leucifer V? Please identify yourself.”
“This is Maslax,” said Maslax. He had a keen sense of melodrama but no sense of propriety.
“Who is in command of this vessel?” asked the policeman.
“I’m in command,” said Maslax. “This vessel is under my orders.” He sounded oddly calm and proud. He knew that only his voice was reaching the police ship. They couldn’t see him. They had only his voice and what he said by which to judge him. If his voice was calm and strong and proud, then so was he as his voice went out on the circuit into space. This was his moment, and he knew it.
“What ship are you?” asked the policeman. “Identify yourself.”
“This is the Varsovien,” said Maslax. The statement had a majestic simplicity that authorized identification procedure seems to lack.
“You are ordered to surrender yourself and your ship,” said the other, after a brief pause for a whispered consultation. “You are under arrest. We intend to board you.”
Just at that moment, the deep note of the Varsovien’s drive changed. It was a very subtle change, and only a pilot would have noticed it. I did. Eve did. We exchanged a glance. We were building up to tachyonic transfer. We were going to go transcee.
“If you come any closer,” said Maslax, who was still relishing his role as Captain Blood, “then we shall open fire and destroy you.”
There was another muttered consultation aboard the Gray Goose.
“What do you intend to do?” asked the policeman. I had been hoping that he wouldn’t ask that. He wasn’t going to like the answer.
“The Varsovien is bound for Pallant,” said Maslax, which was a blatant lie, because we didn’t even know which direction we were headed. “We intend to annihilate all human life on the planet.”
The whispered conversation seemed to get heated.
They had to make a decision on the spur of the moment. It was a tough decision. I hoped against hope that they weren’t going to be silly, but I was hoping against the odds. Cops are cops.
“Our instruments show that you will make transfer in about one and a half minutes,” said the policeman. “We’ll give you just one minute. If you don’t slow down within that time and acknowledge that we may board you, then we will fire on you.”
Maslax looked at Ecdyon.
“Destroy that ship,” he ordered.
“No,” said Ecdyon.
“I order you to fire on that ship,” Maslax repeated, tight-tipped. He was still playing his role.
“No,” said Ecdyon.
“He’s a Gallacellan, Maslax,” I said. “He could no more fire on that ship than you could destroy it by spitting at it. It’s just not in him to do it.”
Seconds were ticking by.
Maslax turned his attention to me, but he pointed the gun at Eve.
“Then you do it,” he said.
“I don’t know how,” I told him.
“The alien will tell you how. You will fire on that ship.”
I shook my head. “No I won’t,” I said.
“You’ll fire,” he repeated. “Quickly. If you don’t, I’ll kill the woman.”
I just kept shaking my head. “I’m not going to do it,” I said. “You have the gun, you’ve had it all along the line. You’ve always been able to shoot. You still can. But it won’t do you any good at all. I’m not going to fire on....”
We heard—but did not feel—the impact of a missile somewhere in the bowels of the ship. I heard the distant sound of bells, and the muffled grating of machinery coming into operation. The note of the drive changed again. The automatics had changed their mind about transfer. We were decelerating again.
“...that ship,” I finished.
We all looke
d around a little furtively, as if unsure that we had a right to be still alive. But of course we were still alive. The Gray Goose was an ant and we were a whale. We hardly felt the bite. It was a nuisance, an inconvenience, but it wasn’t going to do any substantial damage.
“I don’t think they should have done that,” I remarked.
Meanwhile, aboard the Gray Goose, they had noticed our deceleration. They took it as a sign of our capitulation.
“Calling Varsovien,” said the voice. “We are approaching. Don’t try anything or we’ll blast you again. We intend to board you and we advise you to surrender.”
“Shut it off,” said Maslax to Ecdyon. The Gallacellan made no move, and Maslax repeated the command, his voice getting nastier. Ecdyon complied.
The dwarf returned his attention to me. “Destroy that ship,” he said, yet again.
“No,” I said, patiently and firmly.
“If you don’t destroy the Gray Goose,” he said, “then I’m going to destroy the Hooded Swan. He raised his left arm. The half-empty gauntlet on the end dangled its fingers in the most absurd manner.
I’d known, of course, that it had to come to this eventually. I’d already made up my mind what to do—not that there was any real question about it. There was no threat in the world could make me fire on the Gray Goose or anyone else.
“Maslax,” I said levelly, “you have already destroyed the Hooded Swan. When you activated this ship and lifted from Mormyr, you destroyed the Hooded Swan as surely as if you had triggered that bomb. There’s only you and us, Maslax, that’s all. You have the gun. But I’m not going to fire on that ship, nor is Eve, nor is Ecdyon. Nor are we going to tell you how. Any destruction you have thoughts of carrying out is going to take place right here in this room. No one is going to shoot down the Gray Goose, much less is anyone going to fire a shot at Pallant. There’s nothing you can do, Maslax. Nothing at all. Except shoot the three of us, with that one little gun. And even then, you might not get us all. You’ve nothing left, Maslax, nothing at all.”
I almost wished for a moment that he could really read minds. Because then he’d know that I meant it.
Maslax hesitated.
“We’re changing course,” said Ecdyon, anxious to take some of the tension out of the showdown.
“Why?” I asked, keen to help him. Maslax was still wavering.
“I think we’re turning away from the groove that the Gray Goose is coming in on,” he said.
Presumably we were programmed to take evasive action after having been fired upon.
“Better hear what the Gray Goose thinks about that,” I said. Ecdyon turned the call circuit back on.
We just had time to hear them threatening to fire before Maslax howled “No!” and hurled himself on Ecdyon. Ecdyon towered above the tiny man, but the impetus of Maslax’s leap knocked him sideways against the panel and obviously brought a wave of pain from his wound. Ecdyon crumpled up and Maslax ran his hand randomly over the switches. The policeman’s voice cut out abruptly.
I went to help Ecdyon, while Maslax leaned against the instruments, uncertain where to point the gun, uncertain whether to shoot and who to shoot at if he did. He was angry, and frustrated, but be was scared as well. He had lost control of the situation, his fantasies of a colossal revenge had been dissolved. He was helpless, despite the fact that he still had the gun and the bomb. He just didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t anything he could do, except take, it out on us. He wasn’t going to do that, because we were all the audience he had. We were all the people there were who had seen that Maslax wasn’t just a crawling insect, wasn’t just a butt for everyone’s laughter, a repository for all their spare hatred. We were the only people who could testify to his real power and his real existence.
I knew he wouldn’t kill us then. Not all of us at once. He needed company more than he needed corpses. When it came to the last act—the final corner—well, that was a different matter. Then he’d shoot. He’d shoot, and he’d keep on shooting till they got him. But not yet. We had time, if nothing else.
There was the dull sound of another impact, and I guessed that the Gray Goose had opened fire again. If in doubt, shoot it out. Stupid bastard cops, I thought. I helped Ecdyon rise to his feet again. He was weak; I had to take a lot of his weight. He was hurt badly. The lips of his foremouth were writhing helplessly, and I could see the rows of teeth inside—grinding teeth, not sharp, cutting teeth.
There were long minutes when he didn’t look at the instruments, when Maslax came away from the wall and backed up toward the door as Eve moved in to see if she could help. For those few moments, Ecdyon was occupied solely with himself.
When he looked back again at the panel where he’d been attending to the call circuit and following the course of events he made a sudden, sharp noise like a cat coughing, and then a sibilant whisper that sounded like a groan. I thought it was his injuries, but I was wrong.
“The...ship...,” he said painfully.
We waited.
“The...other ship,” he said. “It’s gone.”
“What do you mean—gone?” I asked him, though I knew very well what “gone” meant.
“It’s not there,” he said. “There’s not even the dust. Not an atom. Gone completely, disintegrated. There’s a sphere surrounding the ship. A sphere in which nothing exists. Its radius is nearly five hundred thousand miles. We’re still moving. Even the dust—it’s just disappearing.
“The Fenris device...it’s on.”
CHAPTER TEN
“The switches,” said Eve. “When he hit the switches with his fist and the caller cut out. He must have switched it on then.”
“No,” said Ecdyon. “There is no such switch. Not there. All he did was switch off the call circuit. The sphere had nothing to do with that.”
“It must have come on automatically,” I said. “When the second missile hit us. The first teed it up. The second set it off. It’s independently programmed, just like everything else aboard this damned ship.”
Maslax was only just coming around to realizing what had happened.
“The Gray Goose,” he said. “It’s dead?”
“Not an atom left,” I said, feeling quite sick at the thought.
“I did it,” he said. “I did it. I killed them. I showed them what I can do, didn’t I? They’ll be sorry they ever....”
“They’ll be sorry, all right,” I cut him off. “But there’s nothing left of them to show it. You didn’t do it, you stupid little bastard. It was the ship.”
It was risky, I suppose, calling him names like that. But I felt like it.
“I did it,” said Maslax.
“If he wants to think he did it,” Eve said to me, “you’d better let him think he did it. No point in provoking him.”
“He didn’t have anything against them,” I said. “What did they ever do to him?”
“They shot at us,” said. Eve.
“Honi soit qui mal y pense,” I quoted, with savage sarcasm. I still remembered what happened to the last ships that shot at me. Their own missiles had set in process a reaction which destroyed them. I hadn’t been sorry then—not in the least. But this didn’t seem quite the same, somehow. Just an ant stinging a whale.
“I cannot tell,” said Ecdyon, “but I think that there is nothing in our path, and we are traveling quite slowly.”
“We aren’t going to swallow any moons, then?” I asked.
“No moons,” he said. Then: “Wait. The Cicindel—the other ship—it is behind us, coming on—they do not know—they cannot be aware....”
He reached out for the switches that operated the call circuits, but Maslax jumped forward across the room and brought the butt of his gun hard down on the stretching fingers.
Ecdyon yelped, and I sagged under his weight as he swayed and transferred it from the console to my shoulder.
“No!” said Maslax. “Let them come!”
“Those are Gallacellans,” I said. “That’s the Ci
cindel—the ship which brought the message that sent you off on this crazy stunt. That’s not a ship out of Pallant—the men on board it aren’t even human. They’re Gallacellans, damn it! You can’t possibly have anything against them. They never hated you. They couldn’t hate you. Your crazy ideas have nothing to do with them. You can’t want them to be killed.”
“Leave those switches alone,” said Maslax.
“We have to warn that ship,” I said. “They don’t know what happened. They must think we fired on the Gray Goose. They’re coming to investigate. They must know that this ship isn’t in Gallacellan hands. They didn’t want it brought up from Mormyr in the first place. You must let us tell them not to come any closer.”
“No,” he said. “You wouldn’t blow up the Gray Goose for me. I won’t save the Cicindel for you.”
“I’m going to do it,” I said. “You can shoot me if you like.” I reached for the switches, realizing as I did so that I didn’t know what to do, and turning my head toward Ecdyon, who had swayed back against the wall by now. While my head was turned, Maslax slammed the gun-butt down on my fingers just as he had on Ecdyon’s.
The Fenris Device Page 10
