To Build a World

by Poul Anderson

  “Lieutenant—” Kealoha began.

  “Shut up,” MacEwen said. His voice was quiet but edged. Turning to Sevigny: “This is as odd a case as I ever heard about. You mustn’t blame us for being careful.”

  “Too damn careful!” A little life returned to the Cytherean. He sat straight. “I don’t know anything about police methods, but what are you idling here for? That force unit is important evidence of . . . sabotage, murder, conspiracy. Why haven’t you got a crew, a squad, whatever you call ’em, at the Hotel Goldwater this minute, finding out how the devil those men got in with their truck and loaded a piece of goods registered to me?”

  “Don’t worry, clansman,” MacEwen said. “There’ve been calls burning the lines throughout Honolulu.” He hesitated. “And beyond. But don’t you see, this is an international case. If your story is true, some mighty important foreigners are involved. It may be too big for us, may need the Safety Corps.”

  “So call them. They must have a local office.”

  “Please, clansman. I promise you we’ve gotten things under way. You’ll have to be patient. While you wait for . . . for the judge, suppose you report what happened to you.”

  “I already have. Twice.”

  “That must’ve been pretty brief, though. You were in a hurry. We’ll need to know everything you can recall. Best to put it on tape now, while it’s fresh in your mind.” MacEwen went back to a shelf for a recorder. “Sergeant Kealoha, how about getting us some coffee?”

  “You’re not even going to put him in an interrogation room?” the policeman asked incredulously.

  “Get. That. Coffee. Sergeant.”

  Kealoha went out. He looked defeated. MacEwen started the recorder. “Go ahead, clansman,” he invited. “Start as far back as possible.”

  Sevigny yielded. “That would be on the Moon,” he sighed. “I was in charge of a deeptap gang—

  “—so we went to dinner and talked. Not about anything significant.” It hurt even to tell this much. “Suddenly—

  “—a needle gun. I passed out.” Kealoha, who had been standing close by, refilled Sevigny’s cup. “—he claimed—”

  The door opened. Two men in unobtrusive clothes entered. They were both young and hard-featured. “Excuse me,” MacEwen blurted, jumping to his feet. The fifth successive cigarette smoldered between his fingers. “Are you the Federals?”

  “Yes.” One of them flashed a badge. The other nodded at Sevigny, who crouched forward in his chair. “That him?”

  “Right.” MacEwen stepped aside. There was awe in his expression.

  The two men walked quickly over to the engineer. “Donald Sevigny,” one said, not a question but a statement which didn’t wait for reply. “We’re from the Federal Police Agency of the United States.”

  “So?” Sevigny rose, balanced on the ends of his feet. He sensed a wrongness; his skin prickled. Oscar poised humpbacked on his shoulder, tail flicking from side to side. Kealoha, MacEwen and the desk sergeant grew altogether motionless. Bradford grinned afresh where he sat. For a space the silence was broken only by the remote drone of a freightcraft lumbering overhead.

  “You are under arrest, Come along.”

  “What?” In spite of every premonition, the words struck like lightning. Sevigny took a backward step. His right hand grabbed for the gun that was no longer there, his left lifted as if to plead. “Are you all crazy on Earth?”

  “Come along, I said.” A needier seemed to appear from nowhere in the first man’s fingers.

  “Wait a minute!” Kealoha bellowed.

  “Be quiet, sergeant,” MacEwen ordered.

  Huge and blue in his uniform, the policeman stood his ground. “You’ve already took too much advantage of him being ignorant! He’s got a right to know the charge. I can’t let you make an improper arrest.”

  “Conspiracy to violate the sovereignty retained by the United States government under the Commonwealth,” clipped the second man.

  “Nothing doing.” Kealoha shook his head. “Too vague. I know that much law. What’s he supposed to have done?”

  “Go to quarters, sergeant, or I’ll bust you,” MacEwen said. “Damn it, these are Federal officers f Take him away, gentlemen.”

  Conspiracy indeed, it tolled through the thudding in Sevigny’s skull. Baccioco and Company got on the phone the minute I left. They must have partners in Washington. The President himself is antilunar. Word went back, the city police were to keep me for these—

  The second agent took a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. “You Cythereans have a reputation for violence,” he said. “Hold out your wrists.”

  “God damn you, no!” Three generations of pride sent Sevigny recoiling. “Not on a clansman!”

  The first man aimed his needier.

  Oscar the dirrel knew only that his boss was threatened. He shrieked and launched himself. The anesthetic dart flew wide. Oscar swarmed up the agent’s blouse and went after the eyes. The other man whipped his handcuffs across the animal’s nose, got hold of the tail and hurled him to the floor. Bradford left his chair, pistol out. It coughed twice. Blood violently spurted.

  “K-ti,” said the ragged thing which had once been Oscar, and died.

  There was no time for thought, caution, anything but revenge. Sevigny leaped. His right fist buried itself in the solar plexus of the first Federal. He could feel the shock, distantly and impersonally, in his shoulderblade. The agent sank to his knees, retching. Sevigny twirled. The other one’s needier was out. Sevigny’s foot lashed. The weapon arced across the room. Sevigny moved in, grabbed collar and belt, and threw the man against Bradford. Both went down as their bodies convulsively met.

  “Stop!” Kealoha shouted. His own gun barked. A star rayed out in the wall where the bullet smote.

  “Shoot to hit, you idiot!” Bradford rolled free and scrabbled for his pistol.

  Sevigny went out the door. He was a dead man if he stayed. Kealoha was not far behind. The officer’s shots whanged right and left. He stopped in the entrance, blocking it.

  “Get out of the way!” Bradford screamed.

  Kealoha stood where he was and fired at the night. Sevigny ran into the street. Lamps glared everywhere—No, that building across from him, surrounded by garden, tall stands of bamboo, and he was a hunter from the Shaws—He fled toward darkness.

  VI

  Flat on the ground beneath a rose hedge that raked at him, he watched two policemen go a meter past his nose. Their footfalls vibrated through the damp grass and their flashlights made bobbing spears in the murk. When they were beyond him, he started to crawl.

  The grounds opened on another street. He peered from the shadow shelter of a hedge. Cars whirred by against shimmering store fronts, but he saw no pedestrians. He had to get out of this district fast, before a cordon was established. In spite of having spent a year under Lunar gravity, he could doubtless outrun any urbanite: but he could not outrun a needle or a bullet.

  A vacant taxi came cruising by. He sprang out and waved. For a ghastly moment he thought its scanner had missed him. It stopped and he tumbled inside. The robot voice of a central monitor asked, “Where do you wish to go?”

  “Head for the harbor,” he panted. That area should be safely distant from here, though the safety wouldn’t last. The machine purred into motion. A police car wailed and Sevigny huddled low. But they didn’t think to stop his vehicle for a search. That would soon occur to them. His one lonely asset was a habit of swift action.

  The avenues, seen on the edge of vision, took on a flickering quality as the taxi gained speed. He had already used this kind of transportation, from the dock to his hotel—God of time, scarcely twelve hours ago!—and knew how it worked. He fed money to the phone and punched for information on automats. Comparison of addresses with the posted city map give him the location of one near the waterfront. He told the monitor to send him there, sat back and tried to rest.

  The first rage and grief were • past. Poor loyal Oscar had come
a long way to die; but it was up to him to use the dirrel’s last gift. He wondered, briefly, if he could have escaped without that stimulus of berserkergang. Consciousness might never have gotten so reckless. But now the fighting man’s reflexes had taken him as far as they could; only brain would keep him free.

  There was no use arguing with himself whether he should have done what he did. His act probably was right. The more he considered the behavior of the Federals, the less aboveboard it looked. Once in custody, he would most likely not have been taken to a nice public jail and allowed to call for legal help. He didn’t relish guessing what would have happened instead. But no difference that. The fact was, he had resisted arrest, assaulted law officers and made himself a fugitive who could be shot on sight by the most honest of constables.

  He stared out at the city. It was so gigantic, so inhuman, that he must choke down panic. What to do now, where to hide, whom to trust, anywhere on the turning planet?

  One step at a time, he scolded. That reminded him, in his friendlessness, of his old drill-master in war school; of parade grounds dusty in the hot gray light of day, enchanted through Venus’ long, aurora-lit night; horseplay in barracks, the clean oil smell of weapons, maneuvers and marches and companionship in bivouac; and he calmed himself with the chant that had gone over so many kilometers, Left, right! Left, right! It’s seventeen marches to water, it’s twenty-eight further to beer. But when we come toddling to Helltown, the hellgirls will see us and cheer. Left, right! Left, right—

  The taxi stopped. He gave it thirty dollars, took his change and went quickly out when the door unlocked for him. He’d need transportation again soon, but

  best not use this one. Though his image was wiped by the monitor as soon as it ascertained everything was in order, the record would remain that a fare had been picked up close in space-time to the escape episode. The cab droned off to seek other trade, leaving him alone in a satisfactorily asleep neighborhood.

  A depressing one, though. The darkened tenements that lifted around him, blocking off world and all but a string of sky, were not tumbledown like many he had seen pictures of. This was no slum, must in fact be a lower middle class district. But they were uglier and less personal than Lunar domes, the spacing of windows bespoke the crampedness of apartments, and there hung a faint stench in the air of too many bodies to close together.

  Yes . . . Earth needed a living Moon.

  As Sevigny had hoped, there was no watchman in the automat—everything must be equipped with alarms that went directly to the nearest police station—and no other customer at this hour. Compared to the one in Port Kepler, the place was stupefying. He zigzagged around for minutes before locating the tailor booth. Once inside, he took off his clothes and activated the measurers. From the fabric samples he chose something cheap and dark blue, from the styles the one which seemed most conservative. The price appeared on a screen, he stuffed in money, machines hummed, a door opened in the wall and a parcel slid forth. He doned the new outfit, wrapped his clan garments and—not without a sense of guilt—pitched them down the first waste chute he came upon.

  Now I won’t be quite so easy to find.

  He wasn’t hungry, but he felt the beginnings of weakness and his hands trembled. A drug vendor displayed more brands of pills than he had known existed. Its battered appearance suggested that it saw a lot of use. He chose a stimulant combined with a mild euphoriac, and tapped himself a cup of coffee at the lunch dispenser to play with while the pill took effect.

  And while he groped for a plan.

  Once beyond American territory, I should be safe. If the Federals then want me on their damned charges, they’ll have to apply to the World Safety Corps. And they aren’t likely to do that; it’d provoke too many questions. So I shouldn’t have anything to fear except assassins. Scornfully: If what I’ve met is a fair sample,

  that’s nothing to fret a clansman.

  Worry returned. How am I going to get away, though? I haven’t got the price of a flier, even if I dared try to buy one. Every outgoing common carrier will be under surveillance. Give a robot at headquarters my description, hook a motion analyzer into the circuit to watch for characteristics like walk and gesture which’ve been well documented by the socio-anthropologists, then feed in continuous data from scanners at every ticket office and embarkation point—l can’t possibly disguise myself well enough.

  He could try to reach the local Corps office . . . No. If it had not itself been corrupted, it would be staked out in anticipation of just such an attempt. At least, he had better not assume otherwise. Suppose he phoned and asked for an escort there—That was out too. The Commonwealth’s peace officers had, he remembered from reading, no authority to keep a man wanted on a strictly local warrant. And it would take too long to convince them that this was an international problem. The most he could hope to do was get them interested, and an eventual investigation started. Meanwhile he would have been taken off by the Federals, who served desperate masters.

  The same argument applied even more strongly to the Luna Corporation’s Honolulu agents.

  The whole planet wasn’t hunting him. He must hang onto that fact, must remember powerful men like Norris and humble ones like Kealoha. If he could get in touch with those who were influential, there would be lawyers, publicity, political and financial pressure on his behalf. Only, who? It had to be someone in town to begin with, and he didn’t know anyone. Besides, you didn’t simply buzz a vip, you hacked your way through an abatis of underlings. And during that time the police closed in.

  The Buffalo was easily accessible to him, and could perhaps tell him where to take cover, but he hadn’t the cash for a message to the Moon over a pay phone.

  Sanctuary, breathing space, a man of some importance who could act for him—

  Wait!

  Sevigny’s breath quickened. He dashed to a call booth, punched for the directory and spelled out CONSULATES.

  So few of their people visited Earth that the Cytherean clans kept nothing more than a joint embassy in Paris. But Mars did a considerable amount of trade, especially since the Lunar project began, and the Great Confederation of Y had long agreed, for a fee, that its local representatives would look after any Cytherean problems that arose. Also, the Martians had extraterritoriality!

  There was only one outplanet listing. “Mars.” Sevigny scratched his head in wonder. Every major society maintained its own diplomats, he knew, not only an ambassador to the Commonwealth but a minister to each important nation . . . Well, evidently a mere city consulate was different. Y and Illach and Hs’ach and the rest could save money there by employing a single person together.

  Sevigny consulted Public Data and learned that in this case the person wasn’t even Martian by race. Again, though, it made sense. Why build an expensive dome and supply expensive sealed cars and antiweight drugs for an agent who doubtless worked part time and on largely routine business?

  The Who’s Who file informed him that Oleg N. Volhontseff had been born fifty-eight years ago in the Ga’ea’m region of K’nea, child of a biologist in the scientific colony; had received his elementary education there, taken degrees at Moscow and Brasilia, returned to Mars as a xenologist and only in the last few years retired to work on his books. An impressive catalogue of scholarly publications marched over the phone screen . . . why, wait, Volhontseff was the man who had translated the T’hu-Rayi. He must think as much like a Martian as was possible for a human brain, no wonder he’d never married!

  “Better and better,” Sevigny exulted, sent for a cab and left. He didn’t think the pill alone had put bounce back into his stride.

  VII

  Volhontseff’s office was at home, in the hills above the university. The neighborhood was lawns, bowers, individual houses of some architectural distinction. To a Cytherean it felt crowded; nevertheless, on today’s Earth this must be a wealthy district. Half-time consular pay couldn’t be much, nor the royalties from monographs on things like Illachi fosterb
irth practices. Had the man inherited a private fortune?

  Sevigny glided from the cab into the darkness under a tree and stood for a while straining his senses. Nothing moved but leaves in the breeze, under a velvety dark sky embroidered with constellations. A window spilled yellow light onto Volhontseff’s yard. Good, I was afraid I’d have to wake him. Sevigny walked up a graveled path, that scrunched louder than he liked, to the front door. As he mounted the porch, he heard the bell peal. For the benefit of the viewer screen he tried to look harmless.

  The door opened. A small man in a brown robe glared at him from disconcertingly bright green eyes, set in a nutcracker face beneath a high hairless skull. “Well, sir?” Volhontseff crackled.

  “I’m sorry to bother you so late—” Sevigny began.

  “I should hope so! I always do my writing at night. Had half a mind not to answer. Who are you and what do you want?”

  “May I come in?”

  “Not without stating your business.”

  “I’m Donald Sevigny of Clan Woodman on Venus—”

  “Yes, yes, your accent in obvious. No one but a Shawdweller treats English diphthongs thus. Why are you not in national costume?”

  “Well, I—Oh, hell. I claim sanctuary. Frisk me for weapons if you like.”

  Volhontseff didn’t so much as blink. “Sanctuary from whom?”

  “Enemies of the Luna Corporation,” Sevigny snapped, exasperated. “and you know how important that’s become to the Martian economy. This is your affair as well as mine.”

  “Indeed? The project has enabled Martians to earn outplanet exchange for their societies, and of course, once Lunar mining starts in earnest, they will be able to buy minerals cheaper there than from the asteroids. But otherwise—well.” Volhontseff’s irritation seemed to vanish. Suddenly he had no expression, and his voice was robotic, “Come in and let us discuss the matter.”