Divide and Rule

by L. Sprague De Camp

  "Same thing happened to me, exactly," said Juniper-Hallett. He explained why he was sure the Crosleys had not stolen the dormouse. Lane-Walsh scratched his head, getting black hair dye on his fingertips, but he could not see a hole in Juniper-Hallett's reasoning.

  Juniper-Hallett went on: "Matter of fact I had an idea, when I saw you, that we'd do better together than working against one another. Why not? We're both outcasts."

  "Well," said Lane-Walsh hesitantly, "suppose we find the dormouse; which of us—or which of our two companies—gets him?"

  "We could fight it out," said Juniper-Hallett. He was sure he could handle Lane-Walsh, despite the latter's size.

  "Can't. The doc told me I couldn't fight any more duels for a year, on account of what you did to my skull last time. Are there any other honorable methods?"

  "We'll have to flip a coin or something." Juniper-Hallett dismissed the disposal of the dormouse with an airy wave. Lane-Walsh, still doubtful, gave in.

  Juniper-Hallett said: "I don't guess there's much point in prowling around our companies' buildings any more. What we want is a lead to the Hawaiians or the Ayesmies."

  "Do you know any Hawaiians?"

  "No. Do you?" asked Juniper-Hallett.

  "I've never even seen one. I understand they have brown skins and flat faces, sort of like Mongolians."

  "Well, if we don't know any Hawaiians, how are we going to find their secret headquarters? If they've got a secret headquarters."

  Lane-Walsh shrugged. "I suppose we'll have to go after the Ayesmies then. But I don't know any Ayesmies, either."

  "We both know some engineers, though. And any engineer might be an Ayesmy."

  Lane-Walsh opened his eyes as if this was great revelation. "That's so! There's one engineer around our building I don't like. He ought to be an Ayesmy."

  So evening found the amateur Sherlocks lurking in the shrubbery—literally—in front of the Stromberg building.

  "That's him," said Justin Lane-Walsh. A portly man had just come out of the front entrance. "He walks home every night at this time."

  They rose and followed the engineer Lane-Walsh didn't like.

  They followed him to the restaurant where he ate his dinner. Lane-Walsh whispered to Juniper-Hallett: "That's one of the things that made me suspect him. What's his idea of sneaking off to eat by himself? They serve good grub in the Engineers' Mess in our building."

  Juniper-Hallett replied: "Let's order something, but not too much. We don't want to be in the middle of our meal when he finishes."

  Juniper-Hallett had a tuna-fish sandwich and a glass of wine. Lane-Walsh had a glass of milk. The milk got in his beard, which was held on with a water-soluble adhesive. He had to hold the object in place with one hand. He muttered: "What's this about your getting married to the Old Man's daughter?"

  Juniper-Hallett told him.

  "I'll be damned," said Lane-Walsh. "That's another reason for knocking your head off, when we have our duel after I get well. Janet's a good kid, though. If I were sap enough to marry anybody she'd do very nicely. Reminds me of a Spanish girl I met at a party last week. She was shaped like this and like this." He gestured. "And when I woke up—"

  Just then the stout engineer whom Lane-Walsh didn't like got up. His pursuers got up, too, and followed him out.

  As they mounted the stairs to the sidewalk, the engineer was there waiting for them. He came right to the point. "What the devil are you two following me for?"

  "We aren't," said Juniper-Hallett.

  "We were just waiting for an airplane, sir," said Lane-Walsh.

  "Bunk!" roared the engineer Lane-Walsh didn't like. "Get out of here. Right now, or I'll call a cop!"

  They went.

  6

  Sleeper's Crypt, colloquially known as Dormouse Crypt, occupied the southern corner of Griffith Park, at Western and Los Feliz. From this elevation the Crypt commanded a fine view of the capital city, which its permanent residents were in no condition to appreciate. The Crypt itself was a big mausoleumlike building, streamlined. "Streamlined," in the language of the time, meant, not shaped so as to pass through a fluid with the least resistance, but covered with useless ornamentation. The word got this meaning as a result of its misuse by twentieth-century manufacturers, who took to calling boilers, refrigerators, and other normally stationary objects "streamlined" when they merely meant that they had dressed their products up in sheet-metal housings and bright paint. Hence "streamlined" came to mean dressed up or ornamented, with no reference to aerodynamics.

  At the entrance to the Crypt was a cluster of watchmen. At sixteen o'clock, the line of sightseers entering the Crypt contained Justin Lane-Walsh and Horace Juniper-Hallet, conspicuous in their sober proletarian off-hour costume among the gaudy colors of the great companies.

  As they entered, Lane-Walsh remarked: "They've got about twice as many watchmen as usual here today."

  "I guess they're not taking any more chances of having another dormouse stolen," said Juniper-Hallett. Just then they passed through a turnstile; one of a pair, one for incomers and the other for outgoers.

  Like all visitors to the Crypt, they lowered their voices. It was that kind of place. There was hall after hall, each with its rows of glass-topped caskets. In each casket was a sleeper. There was a little light above the head of the sleeper, which a visitor could flash on by a button if he wished to examine the sleeper's face. At the foot of the casket was a plate with the sleeper's name and other pertinent information, including the estimated date of his awakening.

  Lane-Walsh switched on one of these lights. The sleeper was a girl.

  "Some babe," said Lane-Walsh. "If she was ready to wake up, now—"

  "Wouldn't do you much-good," said Juniper-Hallett, reading the plate. "She isn't due to wake for fifty years. And you won't be up to much then."

  " 'Sall right, I'll be up to more at seventy-five than you are right now, shrimp. Say, I always wondered if they called 'em dormice because the top of the coffin comes up like a door when they wake up and pull the switch."

  "Nope. Matter of fact they're named after some kind of mouse they have in Europe. It goes into a very deep sleep when it hibernates. Oh-oh, here's a new one. I didn't know they were still taking them in."

  "Sure," said Lane-Walsh with much worldly wisdom. "You can get hibernine easy if you got the right connections."

  Another of Juniper-Hallett's youthful illusions popped. He concealed his feeling of shock, and led the way to the hall that had contained the torpid body of Arnold Ryan. There was quite a crowd around the empty Ryan casket. When Juniper-Hallett and Lane-Walsh wormed their way in close, they bent over and examined the object eagerly. This was what they had come for: having run out of all other ideas, they thought there might possibly be a clue in or around the Ryan casket.

  But the casket was exactly the same as all the others in the Crypt, except that the padding and the electrical connections had been removed from the interior. There remained nothing but a big plastic box, without even a scratch to hint at the destination of the victim.

  Disappointed, they strolled off, snapping casket lights on at random. Juniper-Hallett said: "All these folks, I understand, took a hibernine pill because they hoped they'd wake up in a better world than the one they were in. I wonder how many of 'em will really like it better."

  Lane-Walsh laughed harshly, "Whaddya mean, better? We've got a properly organized set-up, haven't we, with a place for everybody and everybody in his place? What more could they want?"

  "I was just wondering—"

  "That's the trouble with you, shrimp. You'd almost be a man if you weren't always wondering and thinking. Hell, what does anybody want to think for? We hire the engineers to do that. Hey, what—"

  Juniper-Hallett was bending over behind one of the caskets. He said softly: "They ought to polish this floor up better." He waved Lane-Walsh to silence as the latter opened his mouth to speak. Lane-Walsh, for all his bluster, took orders docilely enough in the
presence of anything he did not understand.

  "See," said Juniper-Hallett. There were a lot of parallel scratches running from the casket to the wall. "Somebody's been shoving this box back and forth. Now if we could stick around here after the guards chase the rest out at seventeen— Oh-oh!"

  "What's up, sister?" asked Lane-Walsh.

  "You wouldn't understand, lame brain. It occurs to me that there's a comptometer hitched to each of those turnstiles, so the guards can tell after they close the place whether as many people came out as went in. Got it?"

  "Oh. I get it. What'll we do then?"

  "If you'll shut up and let a man with a brain think, maybe I can figure a way." Juniper-Hallett fell silent. Then he gave his friendly enemy instructions.

  They started out the front door, Lane-Walsh leading. Lane-Walsh passed through the outgoing turnstile and halted a couple of steps beyond it to light a cigarette. He remarked to the nearest guard: "So this is your wonderful Los Angeles climate, huh? I've been here just a week, and it's rained the whole time."

  The guard grinned. "You oughta be here in summer, mister. Say would you move out of the way a little? People want to get by you."

  "People" in this case meant Horace Juniper-Hallett. He had gone through the turnstile behind Lane-Walsh. When Lane-Walsh had stopped, he had stopped, too. While concealed from the doormen by Lane-Walsh's broad shoulders, he reached back and gave the turnstile a couple of quick yanks.

  They strolled off into the drizzle while Lane-Walsh finished his cigarette. Juniper-Hallett explained: "I turned the out turnstile a couple of extra quadrants, so it reads two visitors too many."

  "So what? If the out stile reads two more than the in, they'll know something's wrong—"

  "Dimwit! When we go back in we'll raise the reading on the in stile by two, so they'll balance after everybody but us has been cleared out."

  "Oh," said Lane-Walsh. "I get it. We better hurry back, or they'll wonder why we're coming in just before closing time."

  "Almost human intelligence," said Juniper-Hallett. "It'll be too bad to spoil what little wits you have by cracking your skill again, when we have our duel."

  At seventeen the guards blew their whistles and herded everybody out. Juniper-Hallett and Lane-Walsh, by a bit of adroit dodging, hid from the guards, and were left in the empty Crypt. Most of the lights went out. There was no sound but the occasional, very faint, honk of an automobile horn wafted in from outside.

  Juniper-Hallett took out a sandwich and divided it with Lane-Walsh, who had not thought to bring one. Between bites Juniper-Hallett pointed to a bit of incomplete electrical wiring along the wall. He whispered: "I guess they're putting in a fancy burglar-alarm system. Good thing we got here before they finished it."

  "Say," said Lane-Walsh, "wouldn't it be something if all the dormice woke up at once and came out of their coffins?"

  "It would scare me silly," said Juniper-Hallett.

  "Me, too," said Lane-Walsh.

  They fell silent for a long time, huddling behind a pair of caskets and listening to their own breathing. Even the breathing stopped when a night watchman passed through the hall on his rounds, his keys jingling faintly.

  An hour later, when the watchman was due to pass again, Juniper-Hallett took off his shoes. When the watchman passed, Juniper-Hallett followed him, flitting from casket to casket like an apprehensive ghost.

  He came back in a few minutes. He explained: "I wanted to find what route he takes. The last station he keys into is in the next hall; after he works the dingus there he goes down to the basement and smokes his pipe."

  "So what?" whispered Lane-Walsh. "If you make me sit on this floor all night just to watch the watchman make his rounds, I'll—"

  "You suggested looking into this place!"

  "Sure I did, but staying here all night was your—"

  "Sh!"

  Two more hours passed, marked by the watchman's plod past.

  Then the watchers heard another step; a quicker one. They did not have to see the man to know that he was not the watchman. He walked straight down the passage between the rows of caskets, and stopped at the casket that Juniper-Hallett thought had been moved.

  The two outcasts peeked around the corners of their respective caskets. The stranger was pressing the button that lit up the inside of the casket, making a series of short and long flashes. When he had finished, the casket rumbled back toward the wall, exposing a hole in the floor. Light illuminated the stranger's face from below, giving him a satanic look. He climbed down into the hole, and the casket slid back into place.

  Juniper-Hallett whispered: "That was Hogarth-Weems, one of the Arsiay engineers!"

  "Does that mean the Arsiays are back of all this?"

  "Don't know yet."

  They started to crawl toward the movable casket; then snapped back into their original positions as more footsteps approached. Another man walked in, flashed the light as the first one had done, and descended out of sight. Then came another, and another. Lane-Walsh recognized this one as a Stromberg engineer; so was the next one. Then followed a couple that neither knew; then a Crosley engineer.

  Juniper-Hallett speculated: "It must be an Ayesmy meeting."

  "Because they have engineers from all the different companies?"

  "Right."

  "Boy!" breathed Lane-Walsh. "What wouldn't Bickham-Smith give to know where their hide-out is! He hates 'em like poison, and so do I. Even worse than the Crosleys."

  "What's so terrible about them?" asked Juniper-Hallett, more to be contrary than because he wished to defend the secret brotherhood.

  "They don't know their place, that's what. They've got a lot of wild revolutionary ideas about abolishing compulsory technician's contracts, and letting engineers decide for themselves which company they'd like to work for. If their ideas were put through, it would gum up the whole machinery of our Corporate State. They—"

  "Sh!"

  They waited a while longer, but no more men came in. Eleven had entered the hole in the floor. Juniper-Hallett and Lane-Walsh crawled over to the movable casket. They put their heads down next to the floor and next to various parts of the casket. From one place it was possible to hear a faint murmur of voices, but no words could be distinguished.

  Juniper-Hallett said: "The watchmen must be in on it."

  Lane-Walsh nodded. They went back to their hiding places and waited for something to happen.

  It did, in the form of another visit by the night watchman. Juniper-Hallett rose and followed him in stocking feet, beckoning to Lane-Walsh.

  The watchman had just turned the key in the last signal station on his route, when Lane-Walsh's big hands shut off his windpipe. He struggled and tried to yell, but nothing came out but a faint gurgle. Presently he was unconscious. Lane-Walsh relieved him of his pistol.

  Juniper-Hallett looked doubtful at this. "You know what the law and the Convention say about carrying a firearm," he said.

  Lane-Walsh sneered silently. "Bunk! A lot of the upper execs and extrepreneurs carry 'em. I know."

  Juniper-Hallett subsided, and helped to tie up and gag the watchman. For anybody other than an authorized person, such as a watchman or soldier, to have a firearm in his possession was a serious violation of the statutes, and was an even worse violation of the Convention than hitting an engineer over the head with a wrecking bar. Young company members were allowed to settle their differences with duelling sticks instead, whose use seldom resulted in fatal injuries.

  Juniper-Hallett admitted that Lane-Walsh probably knew what he was talking about. On the other hand it irritated him that the man should be so violently in favor of the legal and social scheme under which he lived, and at the same time be so cynically tolerant of violations of its laws and mores, at least by members of his own group. Juniper-Hallett was one of those serious-minded persons who can never understand wide discrepancies between theory and practice in human affairs.

  They went back to the hall containing the mov
able casket. Lane-Walsh wanted to flash the light in the movable casket and, when the casket moved, to jump down and hold up the whole meeting. Juniper-Hallett refused.

  They waited three hours more. Then the casket rumbled back. The eleven men climbed out one by one, five minutes apart, and disappeared.

  "Now," said Juniper-Hallett.

  "But, you damn fool, they're all gone! There won't be anybody in the hole!"

  "Somebody let the first bird in," said Juniper-Hallett. "And unless he's gone out another exit he's there yet." He put his shoes on, went over to the movable casket, and pressed the light switch in the sequence of flashes used by the engineers.

  The casket rumbled back. Light flooded up out of the hole.

  Lane-Walsh, pistol ready, tumbled down the steep steps. Juniper-Hallett followed.

  They were in a room, four or five meters square, with a door leading into another room. Two men were in the room. One was emptying ash-trays into a wastebasket. The other was gathering up empty coffee cups.

  They stared at the intruders and at the intruders' gun. They slowly raised their hands.

  One of them was the square man with the monocle, Duke-Holmquist. A patch of his scalp was shaven and covered with adhesive tape, where the wrecking bar had landed. The other man Juniper-Hallett did not know; he was a dark-skinned man with stiff gray hair and a smooth-contoured, slightly Mongoloid face.

  "That's him. The dormouse," said Lane-Walsh, referring evidently to the dark man.

  "Arnold Ryan to you, mister," said the dark man. "I'm tired of having people talk as if I were a rodent."

  "All right, Arnold Ryan," said Lane-Walsh, "what's this all about? What are you doing here?"

  "Looking for four-leafed clovers, sir," said Arnold Ryan.

  "Come on, come on, no funny stuff. You see this gun?"

  "I say, is that a gun? I thought it was a grand piano."

  Lane-Walsh got red in the face. "When I ask you something I want an answer!" he roared.

  "You got one. Two, to be exact."