“What’s wrong?” she asked gently.
“Nothing.” He drank. “I was reminded of an accident we had recently. Rather not talk about that.”
There was a slight bustle as a pair of men were shown to a table close by. Sevigny couldn’t help gawking. They were in ordinary clothes, but if the pictures in his school anthropology text hadn’t lied, one was an Arab and one from India…He recollected his manners. Besides, Maura was prettier.
“I hear rumors about your having trouble,” she was saying. “That could get many people angry, the ones who claim the project has already cost more than it’s worth.”
“I can’t understand that attitude,” he said, and congratulated himself on how neatly he could dodge the question of accident rates. “Seems to me a whole new world is worth a billion times any conceivable price you’ll have to pay.”
“How many people will get any use out of that world? That’s becoming a political issue too. They say only the rich will be able to live there.”
“Pure demagoguery, my lady. The corporation charter”—Sevigny was glad now that his chief had made him read it before departure—“says that one fourth of the Moon is reserved for recreational purposes, and that there’s to be adequate housing at decent prices for all residents. Who’ll make a sizable number, you realize. The Moon has rich mineral resources. Once it’s habitable, those will really be exploited.”
He began to plagiarize other literature that had been given him: “Also, the project develops sciences and technologies which’ll be useful elsewhere. As an example of international cooperation, it strengthens the Commonwealth. The fact that a great deal of the Moon will be left in woods and meadows is important; Earth has very little greenscape any more. And…not altogether pleasant to think about… but nuclear weapons do exist and times of trouble may come back again. The more worlds colonized, the better the race’s chances of lasting.”
“You’ve convinced me,” she said merrily, “and here comes the soup. So let’s talk about other things. Like yourself.”
“You’re a more interesting subject…Maura.”
“Very well, we’ll take turns.”
Clan culture discouraged individual boasting, but Sevigny found it remarkably easy to glamorize himself. He didn’t need to embroider his reminiscences much. She had never hunted, camped in a forest or a desert, trucked fish to a new ocean, built a dam, fought a battle…And he found that he had never gone submarining or seen an opera or been to a happy-pill party or-
’Tki!”
The wine glass dropped from his hand and shattered.
“Don,” Maura cried low, “what’s the matter?”
He snatched the vibrating little box from his pocket and laid it to his ear. “R-r-rik-ik-ik, tki, tki, ch!”
Oscar the dirrel had no words for a great concrete chamber five levels below ground, or a ramp leading out, or a truck with a hoist. But it had to be that. Men come, four men come, machine, fright, chase Oscar, thing-Oscar-watch go, Don, come, tki, ki, ki!
Sevigny was half out of the room before Maura screamed.
The headwaiter, a blurred shape, a hand to shake off, “Can I help you, sir?”
“No! Emergency!” The engineer burst from among the tables and plunged to the elevator.
It wasn’t there. He stabbed the button again and again, while Oscar chittered fear and rage from the overhead pipes where he crouched.
Maura reached him. He saw her across an immenseness, hardly felt her hands drag at him. The tears didn’t register either. “Don, Don, what’s wrong? Are you banzai? Please come back-”
The elevator door opened. He shoved her aside. “I may be back in a while,” he got out.
Another shape brushed past her. The man was slender, chocolate-skinned, full lips curved very slightly upward. “May I?” he said, and entered the cage.
Sevigny recognized the Indian from the table near his. He tried to thrust him out, and grasped air. The man had dodged like a bird. “Emergency,” Sevigny snarled once more.
“Perhaps I can help,” said the Indian blandly.
No time to waste on him. Sevigny punched for subfive. The door closed on Maura. Her face had lost its strickenness.
Weight decreased. “May I suggest notifying the hotel detective?” the Indian said.
Jarred from his haste, Sevigny made himself think about that. It hadn’t occurred to him; the clans took care of their own. “Will you do so?” he asked. “And the, uh, city police. There’s a theft being committed in sub-Five Oh One.” He took his gun from the holster. “I’ll get out and see what I can do. You go straight back to the lobby and holler for troops.”
“Is the matter worth such a risk to yourself?”
A man of Clan Woodman was entrusted with that crate. “Yes.”
“As you will. If you wonder, sir, why I left my own dinner to accompany you, may I present myself as a physician.” The narrow dark head bent in a slight bow. “Dr. Krishnamurti Lai Gupta of Benares, at your service. I was afraid you might have been taken ill.”
Rik-ik-chik-ri-ch, Don, come, fast come, screamed the box that Sevigny held.
He stuck it back into his pocket. The elevator slowed. Sub-five flashed into the indicator panel. “Stand by to, raise her,” Sevigny said. The door glided open. He sprang into a bare, gray, coldly lit corridor.
Something stung him between the shoulders. He whirled with a curse. Gupta stood in the cage, a tiny flat pistol in one hand. He was still smiling. Sevigny’s world dissolved in surf and darkness. He tried to raise his gun and couldn’t. Its clatter when it hit the floor reached him as a remote and tiny thud. His knees gave way and he fell on top of it. He ceased to be.
Awareness was first of the same countenance, hovering above him with the same friendly expression. He struggled to sit up apd Gupta stepped back. This time he held a hypodermic needle.
Crazily through the fog, Sevigny remembered Aarons bent over Leong while the volcano drowned Decker. Because someone had bombarded the keystone of a machine with X rays…Rage rose in him, so strong that it had a taste. Adrenalin joined the counterdrug in his bloodstream. Strength and senses rushed forth. He bounded to his feet.
“Stop right there,” said a man across the room. He was the Arab who had been with Gupta. His eyes were the most intent that Sevigny had ever seen. The gun in his hand reined the Cytherean to a halt.
“That’s better,” said the third man. He was sumptuously clad, in gold and scarlet that contrasted with Gupta’s white simplicity and the gunman’s somberness; at the end of middle age, he was bald, wattled, and pot-gutted. But his jaw was like a ram and he spoke in a young voice. “Mama mia! When did a person come out from under a sleepy jolt this fast, Kreesho?”
“Rarely, Mr. Baccioco,” said Gupta. “But he is both strong and excited. Please relax, Clansman. We have no intention of harming you.”
A door opened. Maura came through. Sevigny paid more immediate attention to Oscar, who zoomed past her, went up his tunic in one streak, hugged him around the neck and unburdened his own soul so noisily that nothing else could be heard.
Sevigny got the dirrel quieted down at length, with much stroking and reassuring. Most of him, meanwhile, studied the surroundings. He was in a rich man’s room, which seemed to be part of a suite. He couldn’t identify the pictures that glowed from the walls, but they were likeliest repertoires of medieval European masters. The windows were blanked out, and no sound penetrated from beyond. A clock said 2345.
Maura had settled into a relaxer. Her gown was changed for slacks and blouse. The effect remained explosive. She smoked a cigarette in short hard puffs and did not return his look.
Gupta sat at ease on a couch upholstered in what Sevigny thought must be genuine leather; cheap on Venus, but he’d been told that an Earthman might go through life without seeing any. The older man, Baccioco, prowled back and forth, hands tightly clasped behind his back. The Arab waited in a comer, weapon now pointed at the floor but eyes never leaving Sevigny.
“Well, are his fears allayed, the little fellow?” Gupta said. “Fine, fine. You will, I hope, Clansman Sevigny, take his presence as earnest of our good intentions. When you were brought unconscious into the storeroom and laid in the truck—what else could we do?—your pet stormed down from his hiding place and fell upon you. I was forced to anesthetize him too, his distress was so noisy, but had not the heart to leave him behind.”
“Thanks for that,” Sevigny said curtly.
“Please do not be too discomfited at your present situation—”
“Mainly I’m disgusted. With myself.” Sevigny stared so long at Maura that she had to turn her face to him. “I walked right into the oldest trap in the universe, didn’t I?” He spat at her feet.
“Maròn!” Baccioco gestured indignantly. “Is that a decent way to behave? Watch yourself!”
“We must make allowances, sir,” Gupta soothed him.
Maura bit her lip. “We never meant to hurt you, Don,” she said in a flat voice. “I was only supposed to keep you busy till the thing had been removed. And as long afterward as possible. I wish it had gone that way. I was honestly enjoying your company.”
“How did you learn?” the Arab demanded.
“Shut up, Rashid,” Baccioco said.
“Well, it is a question we meant to ask,” Gupta said. “Do you mind telling us, Clansman?”
They don’t know Oscar can—That might be a hole card. Barely might. Sevigny held his face rigid and shrugged. “I put a scanner among the overhead pipes, connected to a microcaster. You doubtless found the receiver in my tunic.”
Baccioco studied him. Silence grew, under the white fluorescents, among the thick red drapes, until the slither when Rashid shuffled his feet was startlingly loud. A whiff of Mauras cigarette drifted to Sevigny, acrid when he remembered the perfume of earlier. Without his gun he felt naked, lopsided; and Oscar’s warm weight on his shoulder was not much comradeship.
“Well,” Baccioco said, “that sounds reasonable. I will have a man search for your scanner tomorrow, to make quite certain. As for now, though, here we are, no? You don’t want to be here and we don’t want to have you here. What to do?”
“I suggest we all begin by reducing our tensions,”
Gupta said in his mild fashion. “Maura, would you be so good as to fetch coffee? Or would anyone prefer something stronger?”
Nobody replied. The girl rose and left the room. Her head drooped a little.
“Do be seated, gentlemen,” Gupta went on. Baccioco snorted but threw himself into an armchair. After a moment, Sevigny took another. Rashid remained standing in his comer.
“We should show our guest the courtesy of further identifying ourselves,” Gupta said. “Signor Baccioco is—”
“No!” the Italian broke in.
“Yes!” Gupta responded. “Please consider. If Clansman Sevigny remembers your name at all, or even your appearance, he need only ask the first alert person he meets in order to be told that Ercole Baccioco is chairman of the board of Eureclam S.A. You must not be so modest about your reputation, sir…Having inevitably revealed that much, I trust I can do no harm in describing our friend Rashid Gamal ibn Ayith as a representative, in our organization, of the Fatimite Brotherhood. As for myself, I am actually a physician, but may have gained a small prominence through my activity in the Conservationist Party of my native land.”
A corporation head, a politician, and some kind of religious fanatic. The girl, I suppose, a hireling, like those workers who removed the force unit What are they doing together, tonight? As Sevigny s muscles tautened, Oscar bristled on his lap. He stroked the dirrel into calm. Oscar had to remain very, very inconspicuous.
“The matter must be important, to bring people like you here,” he said slowly.
“Critical indeed,” Gupta nodded. “It was essential for us to obtain possession of that engine.” Then they knew I was bringing it to Earth. So there s a spy in the Buffalo’s top staff. He could have sent a coded radiogram without attracting notice; that’s common enough. Still, if we get a chance to check the Comcenter records. …“Through various connections, we arranged that you would be delayed in Honolulu overnight.” Thunder and fury, how many tentacles have they got? “But believe me, I beg you, there was no idea of involving you otherwise. That was pure misfortune.”
“Why did you want the unit?” Sevigny asked.
No one replied. Maura came in with cups on a tray. She went among the men, lingering briefly by Sevigny. He took his cup without regarding her. Rashid refused his. She sat down again.
“This is ridiculous,” Baccioco grumbled. “Far past my bedtime, and here I sit talking with a…an outplanet savage.”
“Not the least ridiculous, sir,” Gupta said, “and in many respects the Cytherean culture is preferable to any on modem Earth.” He took an appreciative sip. “Ah! Do notice the coffee, Clansman. Hawaiian kona is one of the glories of this planet… Information for information. If you will tell us what you know and surmise, we shall reciprocate. Gladly. We want you to understand that our motives are altruistic. Who knows, you may even enlist in our cause.”
“Can you believe him?” Rashid growled.
“What do you have against me?” Sevigny flung at him.
The gun lifted a few centimeters. “You defile God’s work.”
“As you may readily learn by watching a few newscasts, the Fatimite Brotherhood takes a fundamentalistic view of terraforming,” Gupta said. “A change in the appearance of the moon is especially distressing. Little can be done to reverse the process, but it should not be allowed to go any farther.”
“And you?” Sevigny inquired.
Gupta uttered a short laugh. “Now, now. Pray do not look for vast, complicated motivations. Such things occur only on the TriV. The Conservationist Party of India, like its counterparts in numerous other countries, maintains quite openly that the Luna Corporation is wasting enormous, badly needed resources on a utopian scheme that, if it can be realized at all, will not make any difference to Earth for decades to come.”
“Isn’t your own government a major stockholder?”
“True. The Vishnuists unfortunately command a parliamentary majority.” Lightness left the voice and the big dark eyes turned incandescent. “City dwellers! They have not been out in the hinterlands, have not watched children starve because soil is exhausted and water tables are emptied and raw materials too costly for chemosynthesis. There is the place to begin reclamation!” He finished his cup in one draught. His hand shook.
“And…hum.” Sevigny rested his gaze on Baccioco. “Eureclam S.A. chartered and equipped, no doubt, for work on Earth only. There’ll be plenty of fat contracts to make the deserts fertile and so forth, if the Moon job is abandoned. Hey?”
Baccioco reddened. “The question is not of money but of sound policy.”
“So you say. But look, you must realize that in the long run the Moon’ll pay off ten times what Earth can.”
“Too long a run,” Gupta said. “It will dehumanize us to plan in such terms.”
“I told you, Don, a political fight is going on.” Maura could barely be heard.
“Which your side is losing,” Sevigny pounced.
“What makes you think so?” Baccioco retorted angrily.
“Otherwise you wouldn’t have to resort to sabotage.”
“That is a most serious accusation,” Gupta said.
“Why else did you steal that force unit?” Sevigny challenged. “You couldn’t afford to let me bring evidence of your work to the Safety Corps. An investigation would blow your gang open.”
Gupta spread his hands. “I cannot tell you everything,” he said, “and hence cannot at this moment refute your statement, however false it be. I will swear by anything you wish that you would not have missed your engine, had all gone well. But come, now, I offered information for information. Your turn, Clansman.”
“What the devil have I got to tell you? I was only an errand boy.�
��
“You had numerous confidential talks with Mr. Bruno Norris. How much hard data does he possess? How much does he surmise?”
Sevigny leaned back and grinned at them. Inside, hatred made a cold lump in his stomach. Erich Decker, a man under command of a Woodman, had been murdered by agents of these.
Rashid took a step forward. “You will talk,” he said. “There are ways.”
“Please.” Gupta lifted a palm. “Nothing violent. Means have a sorry habit of affecting ends.”
“There has been too much kitten play,” Baccioco declared. “He will most certainly talk.”
Okay, we might as well bring it out in the open. “I’m bound to talk when you let me go, am I not?“ Sevigny said. The hatred left scant room for fear, but the blood thrummed in his veins. “That fairly well proves you won’t let me go, alive at any rate. So what have I to gain by helping you?”
In the return of the stillness, where Baccioco’s breath rattled with rheum, he thought: Maybe they always intended to kidnap me. The theft of my evidence would itself be evidence—No, wait. If I’d not burst in on them, they could have substituted another force unit, also damaged but in a way that’d look like ordinary failure, that’d give no clues to the Safety Corps labs… . . That must be it. So Gupta wasn’t lying when he said “I’d never have missed my engine.
But now I can tell what’s happened, under truth drug, and an investigation will start regardless.
If I can get away whole, that is.
Maura lit another cigarette. Her free hand clenched.
Gupta leaned forward, elbows on knees, fingers bridged, and peered amiably at Sevigny. “Clansman,” he said, “we serve a humane cause. But we are determined that it shall prevail. No one will wonder at your disappearance for days. The message to Corps headquarters in Paris, that you were coming, never left the Moon. Mr. Norris will not expect to hear from you until you have something definite to report. Meanwhile, as you doubtless know, there are certain potent psychopharmaceuticals which will elicit information even from unwilling subjects. There is also a treatment to remove memories. And…I am a medical man.”
Seven Conquests Page 22
