Divide and Rule

by L. Sprague De Camp

  Janet punched Justin Lane-Walsh in the nose.

  Horace Juniper-Hallett kicked one of the Strombergs in the shin, violating Paragraph 9a, Section D, Rule 5 of the Convention. Then he wrenched the stick out of the man's hands and hit him over the head with it.

  The two engineers went into action likewise. Juniper-Hallett never could remember just what happened next. He did remember boosting Janet up the steps by main force, the engineers behind him, and slamming and locking the basement door just as the pistol roared and a bullet tore through the plastic.

  "Mmglph," said a bundle of ropes on the floor. It was Miles Carey-West. They cut him loose. Another bullet crashed through the door, they all ducked.

  "What do we do now?" asked Juniper-Hallett.

  The two engineers had been whispering. Duke-Holmquist said: "Follow me."

  They sprinted out of the house. Carey-West panted after them, crying: "Can I come, too? I'm sunk anyway once it comes out that you used my house."

  Duke-Holmquist nodded curtly and walked swiftly to Wilshire Boulevard. There he hailed a cab and piled his whole party into it. "The Dormouse Crypt," he told the driver.

  "Where are we going?" asked Juniper-Hallett.

  "Hawaii," said Duke-Holmquist.

  "What?" Juniper-Hallett turned his puzzled frown to Ryan.

  Ryan, instead of explaining how one got to Hawaii via the Crypt, said: "He's convinced finally that his strike plan's fallen through. We'll have to skip. You'd better come along."

  Duke-Holmquist nodded gloomily. "If I'd had a couple more years to prepare—"

  They zipped up the steep hill at the north end of Western Avenue.

  Janet said: "But I'm not sure I want to go to Hawaii—"

  "Sh, sweetheart," said Juniper-Hallett. "We're in this up to our necks, and we might as well stick with them." He turned to Ryan. "I can't understand why Lane-Walsh, if he was going to double-cross me, didn't do it last night while I was asleep and he had the gun."

  Ryan shrugged. "He probably didn't make up his mind to do so until after he left Carey-West's house. He's not terribly bright, from what I hear."

  They stopped and got out. Duke-Holmquist told the driver to wait, and strode up to the front entrance of the Crypt. He whispered to the doorman.

  The doorman stepped inside and shouted: "All visitors out, please! There's a time bomb in the Crypt, and it may go off any minute. All out, please! There's a time bomb, and these experts have come to take it away. All—"

  He jumped aside as the first of the visitors to realize what he was saying went through the turnstile with his overcoat fluttering behind him. The others followed in record time. It did not take long, for it was still morning, and the Crypt was not yet full of visitors.

  The engineers went straight to the movable casket, put their shoulders to it, and rolled it back, Juniper-Hallett and his bride followed them down into the underground room.

  They did not take the time to pull the rope that slid the casket back over the hole. They went straight to a wall cupboard, opened it, and took out a simple electrical apparatus which Juniper-Hallett did not recognize.

  A couple of wires led from the apparatus back into the cabinet. The apparatus had a brass arm with a circular pad on the end of it. Duke-Holmquist began depressing and releasing this arm, so that it went tick-tick-tick, tick, tick-tick, and so on. Juniper-Hallett was mystified. Then he remembered that one of the pioneers in electrical communication, centuries before, had invented a system of sending words over wires by having intermittent impulses represent the letters. The man's name had been—Morris? Marcy? No matter. Duke-Holmquist was sending a message of some kind. And now and then he paused while the machine ticked back at him.

  One of the Crypt guards put his head down the hole. "Mr. Duke-Holmquist, sir!" he said. "They've come!"

  "The Strombergs?"

  "Yes, sir. Automobiles full of them."

  8

  Duke-Holmquist finished his ticking and stood up. He asked: "Have any of you boys guns?"

  "No, sir. Toomey-Johnson, the night watchman, is the only one of us allowed to have one, and his was taken off him the other night."

  The burly engineer cursed softly. Then he bounded up the steep steps. The others followed. About fifteen Strombergs stood around the entrance, hefting their sticks. Their way was barred by three guards with billies. Justin Lane-Walsh, among them, yelled in: "You might as well send 'em out, or we'll come in and get 'em!"

  Juniper-Hallett asked Duke-Holmquist: "What are the cops doing?"

  "We don't want to call in the police, and neither do they." The engineer turned to the guard who had called them: "How about the rear entrance?"

  "They got some men there, too, sir; all around."

  "Looks as though we were stuck," said Duke-Holmquist somberly.

  Juniper-Hallett fingered the stick he had taken from the Stromberg. "Our cab's still out there."

  "Yes, but we haven't got a chance of getting to it."

  "I don't know," said Juniper-Hallett. "I can run pretty fast."

  "You've got an idea, Juniper-Hallett?"

  "Yep. I'll draw 'em off, and you make a run for the cab."

  "Horace!" said Janet. "You must not take such a risk—"

  "That's all right, darling." He kissed her and trotted off to the rear entrance.

  Two guards inside it faced three Strombergs outside. Juniper-Hallett pushed between the guards and leaped at the nearest Stromberg. Whack! Whack! The Stromberg dropped his stick with a howl. The others closed in on Juniper-Hallett; one of them landed a blow on his shoulder. Then Juniper-Hallett wasn't there any more. He dodged past them and raced around the big building over the smooth lawn. He hit one of the front-door Strombergs and kept on running, pausing just long enough to thumb his nose at the rest as they turned startled faces toward him.

  Yapping like a pack of hounds, they streamed away after him. He ran down the long hill, breathing easily. This was fun. He could outrun the whole lot—

  He took another glance back, and ran into a fire hydrant. He went sprawling, fiery pain shooting through his right leg. The yells rose as they pounded down to seize him.

  The cab squealed to a stop just beside him. He had barely the strength and presence of mind to reach a hand up; a hand from the cab caught it and pulled him in. That is, it pulled him part way in; a Stromberg got a hand on his ankle.

  "Ow!" yelled Juniper-Hallett.

  The tug-of-war was decided by the cab driver, who spun his rheostat. Off they went. The would-be captor was dragged a few steps, and then let go.

  "I think my leg's broken," said Juniper-Hallett. Ryan felt the leg and decided it was just bruised.

  Janet, looking out the rear window, said: "They're coming in their cars."

  "Can't you go any faster?" Duke-Holmquist asked the driver.

  "Governor's on," was the reply. "Can't do over sixty k's."

  "Damn," said Duke-Holmquist.

  "What's that?" asked Ryan. "Cars have governors nowadays?"

  "Yes. They go on automatically when you enter a built-up area. But if we can't do over sixty, neither can they."

  They purred sedately down Western Avenue at sixty kilometers per hour, and the Stromberg force purred after them. Now and then one party would gain when the other was held up by traffic. But on the whole they maintained the same interval.

  Duke-Holmquist asked the driver: "When does it go off?"

  "Slauson Avenue."

  "When it does go off," said Juniper-Hallett, "they'll be able to catch us. They've got big, fast cars. Where are we headed for, anyway?"

  "San Pedro," said Duke-Holmquist.

  "Are we taking a seaplane?"

  "No. The navy could catch us easily."

  "Submarine?"

  "No. There hasn't been time for the Hawaiians to send us one."

  "What, then?"

  "You'll see."

  "But—" Just then they reached the southern limit of the governor zone, and Juniper-Hallett'
s question was choked off by the cab's spurt. The driver kept his hand on the horn button. They gained several blocks on the pursuers before the latter reached the edge of the zone and accelerated.

  "They're gaining," said Janet.

  "Oh, dear," said Carey-West. The little oldster was trembling.

  They squealed around a corner and raced over to Main Street, then took another corner.

  "They're still coming," said Janet. A little while later she said: "They're gaining again."

  Duke-Holmquist and Ryan looked at each other. "Maybe we could figure the point where they'll catch us by differentials," said the former.

  "Maybe," said Ryan, "we could tell 'em we're not us, but a family on its way to a polo game."

  Juniper-Hallett looked to the right of the car into the open cut in which the Pacific Electric's interurban line ran. "Hey!" he said, "look down there!"

  Half a mile ahead of them they could see the tapering stern of a car pulling into the North Compton station.

  "Change to a streetcar?" said Duke-Holmquist.

  "Right. Hey, driver!"

  They skidded into the station. They were scrambling aboard a few seconds later when the Stromberg cars pulled up.

  The streetcar was a thirty-meter torpedo that ran on two rails, one below it and the other overhead. The motorman's compartment was a closed-off section in the nose. The four men and the girl marched up to the front of the car, threw open the door, and crowded into the compartment. The legitimate passengers looked at one another. They had never seen that happen before. But then these people had seemed to know what they were doing, so they didn't feel called upon to interfere. The car started, a bit jerkily. It accelerated up to its normal two hundred kilometers per hour. It kept on accelerating. The passengers began to mutter and look to their safety belts.

  Inside the compartment, the motorman, who was being firmly sat upon by Duke-Holmquist and Ryan, protested: "You'll pass Gardena station! This is a local! You gotta stop at Gardena!"

  "Hell with Gardena," said Juniper-Hallett over his shoulder. He was at the controls.

  "How fast is she going?" asked Ryan.

  "Three hundred and thirty-six k's."

  "You'll burn out the fuel batteries!" wailed the motorman.

  Juniper-Hallett said soothingly: "The P.E. can sue us, then. Say, maybe you'd better tell me how to stop this thing, motorman old sock!"

  "What?" shrieked the motorman. "You don't even know?"

  Somebody knocked on the door. The committee ignored the knock. Somebody tried the door, but they had locked it in advance.

  The motorman told Juniper-Hallett how to stop the car. He also asked where they were.

  "I'm not sure," said Juniper-Hallett, "everything goes by in such a blur. Matter of fact, I think we're near Anaheim Road."

  "Then stop it! Stop it!" yelled the motorman. "Or we'll go right off the end of the track into the drink!"

  "Oh, my!" said Carey-West.

  Juniper-Hallett applied the brake. The landscape continued to flash past; they had come out of the cut onto an embankment. Juniper-Hallett applied more brake. Wilmington rushed at them. The deceleration squashed them all against the front of the car. They were through Wilmington and screeching down the end of the line. The bumpers grew at them as the landscape finally slowed down. They hit the bumpers with a bang, and tumbled backward.

  They raced out through a car full of jade-faced passengers. Duke-Holmquist led them a couple of blocks to the waterfront.

  "Damaso!" yelled Duke-Holmquist.

  A swarthy man stuck his face up over the edge of the nearest pier. "Hiya, boss!" he said.

  "Everything ready?"

  "Sure is, sir."

  They tumbled breathlessly down steps and into an outboard boat. Before they had recovered their breath, Damaso had cast off and purred out to a dirty-white yawl anchored among a flock of motorboats, sailboats, and tuna clippers.

  "Are we going in that?" gasped Juniper-Hallett.

  "Uh-huh. Climb aboard."

  "But you're crazy! They'll catch us in a police launch or something in ten minutes!"

  "Do as you're told," snapped Duke-Holmquist.

  Juniper-Hallett, half convinced that he was accompanying a party of lunatics, hopped aboard the yawl and helped Janet up. Damaso was already casting off from the buoy. The yawl had a little coke-gas auxiliary that sputtered into feeble life. Juniper-Hallett was sure the engineers were crazy; starting for Hawaii—with half the Stromberg Co., and the Los Angeles Harbor Police, not to mention the Imperial American Navy, likely to be after them any time—in a little cockleshell designed for taking people out for a day's fishing. The boat did stink of fish, at that, and the low afternoon sun glinted on a silvery scale here and there.

  They vibrated out of the long channel with maddening slowness. Juniper-Hallett squeezed Janet's hand until she complained he was hurting her.

  "Take it easy," said Ryan. "Duke-Holmquist knows what he's doing."

  "I hope he does," said Carey-West. "Oh, dear, why did I get mixed up in this? "

  "Don't worry about the police," said Duke-Holmquist, his monocle reflecting the sun as he stood at the wheel. "Lieutenant More-Love is one of our sympathizers. The P.E. will try to set them after us, but he'll see that they look every place except the right one."

  "How about the Strombergs?" asked Juniper-Hallett.

  "I think one of those young nobles owns a seaplane. If they come after us, there may be trouble. We'll worry about that when the time comes."

  They were out of the channel. In the outer harbor sat part of the Navy; a seaplane mother ship, three hundred meters long, with five of her birds around her; flying-boats with a one hundred and fifty-meter wingspread, each of which carried launches and dinghies larger than the fishing-yawl.

  Juniper-Hallett looked at Duke-Holmquist, jerked his thumb toward the flying-boats, and raised his eyebrows.

  Duke-Holmquist said: "I think the Strombergs will do everything they can to catch us themselves first, before they call in the Board of Control. If they take us, it probably won't be alive."

  "You're the head of the Ayesmy, aren't you, sir?"

  Duke-Holmquist permitted himself a wry smile. "You're right, youngster. Or I was until I had to run away."

  They were rising and falling in the Pacific swells now. Juniper-Hallett said: "I wish they'd come if they're going to. I don't like this waiting."

  "The longer the wait, the better our chances," said Ryan imperturbably.

  Juniper-Hallett asked: "What was the Ayesmy up to?"

  Duke-Holmquist replied: "We were going to pull a strike of all engineers, to have the compulsory contract system abolished. We were going to force a lot of other reforms, too, to break down the compartmentation of the Corporate State and give everybody a hand in the government. But it was terribly slow work operating by means of an illegal organization. If we tried to take in all the technicians, there'd bound to be a leak. And if we didn't, we couldn't count on the nonmembers when the time came."

  "The truth is," said Ryan, "that they'd never have gotten sufficient co-operation from the profession anyway. Your average engineer is too much enamored of respectability and dignity to go in for revolutionary conspiracy. For the privilege of rating salutes from the whitecollars, they'll put up with their state of gilded peonage indefinitely."

  "That's not fair, Arnold," protested Duke-Holmquist. "You know those—"

  "We've argued this before," said Ryan, "and we've never gotten anywhere. I say, isn't that our friends?" He pointed north at a silvery speck in the sky.

  Janet said: "Justin kept his plane at Redondo Beach."

  "That's what took them so long," said Duke-Holmquist. "Damaso! Get the things out." He grinned at the company, once again self-confident at the prospect of violent action. "Stand by to repel boarders!"

  The seaplane grew, soared overhead, turned, and came down with a smack on the waves. It taxied up astern of the yawl.

  As it approached, they
could see Justin Lane-Walsh climbing out on the left wing. His mouth opened and moved, but they could not hear him against the wind and the whir of the propeller. The seaplane swung to one side and came up abreast of them to windward. The other Strombergs climbed out, too. Lane-Walsh yelled, this time audibly: "Heave to, you!"

  Duke-Holmquist said: "Do you see that pistol anywhere?"

  "No," said everybody after looking.

  Ryan added: "Maybe they lost it, or emptied it breaking the lock of that door."

  "Fine," said Duke Holmquist. He put his hands to his mouth and bellowed: "Keep off or we'll sink you!"

  "Haw haw," roared the Strombergs.

  The yawl pounded ahead through the swells, and the breeze blew the seaplane astern of them again. The pilot gave the motor more juice, and the machine crept up alongside once more.

  Duke-Holmquist called: "Let 'em have it, Damaso!"

  Damaso, standing on the forward deck with his feet spread, was doing a curious thing. He was whirling around his head a length of rope to the end of which was tied a block of wood. He gave a fast whirl and let fly. The block flew toward the plane, the rope snaking after it.

  The Strombergs saw it coming, and evidently thought those in the yawl were throwing them a rope to make fast. A couple braced themselves and spread their hands as if to catch it. But such was not Damaso's intention. The block hit the propeller with a terrific clank; splinters flew; the propeller stopped turning with a jar that shook the seaplane. The propeller was seen to have one blade sharply bent, and to have meters of rope tangled around its hub.

  The Strombergs set up a howl of rage. Some of them climbed out on the left wing as if ready to jump down into the yawl, toward which the wind was swiftly blowing them. The seaplane tipped alarmingly. The pilot yelled. A couple of Strombergs crawled out on the other wing to balance the craft.

  Damaso hurried aft with a boathook.

  Duke-Holmquist said: "Get ready to jab a hole in their float at the water line."

  Damaso poised himself. The Strombergs, yelling threats, clustered at the end of the wing. At the tip was Justin Lane-Walsh.