Seven Conquests

by Poul Anderson

  Sevigny teetered back on his heels. “That’s right. But damn the universe, we can’t do nothing.”

  “No. I have an idea. Let me simply get in touch with the K’nean Embassy. The hour must be about noon in Paris, the office is open, and that circuit includes a scrambler. I will give them the facts and request them to transmit messages elsewhere. You are quite correct about Mars’ vital interest in the terraforming work. And so high a level, they can make direct contact with the others.”

  “Hm.” Sevigny pondered. It sounded good. “Okay But what about me?”

  Volhontseff made a parched chuckle. “You stay here and do not allow me outside. I am in your power, remember.”

  His fingers danced across the lock on a drawer. It opened and he took out a notebook and riffled through the pages. “Here we are. The unlisted number of the ambassador’s private office.” At once he closed the book and started dialing. Sevigny moved around the desk to stand at his back.

  The screen brightened with the image of a room strangely furnished. A long, squatting figure swung luminous eyes toward the phone. Volhontseff unhooked a vocalizer attachment and began talking.

  Sevigny jerked it from his hand. “None of that. I don’t understand any Martian language.”

  “You must trust me,” Volhontseff said.

  “As far as necessary. No further. Sorry.”

  Impassive, the ambassador waited.

  Volhontseff’s narrow shoulders lifted and fell. “No difference, I suppose. Ah…Nyo, we shall use English, if you please. The matter is urgent and critical. Kindly record. I have here an employee of the Luna Corporation with a rather unusual story to relate.”

  “Proceed,” said the transformed voice.

  Once again Sevigny went through his narration. At the end, Volhontseff said, “This must be transmitted to the following persons in strictest confidence: the head of the World Safety Corps, the president of the Corporation, the Cytherean ambassador, and Mr. Bruno Norris, operations manager in Port Kepler.”

  The chitinous Martian visage had not stirred. It could not. “Yes,” Nyo said, “I grasp your meaning.”

  Volhontseff hunched forward and said in the most intense tone Sevigny had yet heard from him: “You realize that no time can be lost. My guest and I will remain here, but the situation is obviously unstable.

  Can you dispatch a diplomatic flier for him? You must have a pair of reliable humans available to man it and fetch him to safety.”

  Nyo reflected for a while, during which Sevigny’s pulse grew loud. “Yes,” the Martian said, “I believe that can be done. We will assign someone near you if possible, exempli gratia from the San Francisco consulate, so that they can land at your house before dawn. Stand by.”

  The screen blanked.

  Volhontseff put another cigarette between his yellowed fingers. I just hope he gets his cancer shots regularly, Sevigny thought. “Excellent,” the small man said. “I expect you need not wait long. Two or three hours, perhaps. Ah…do you suppose that my part in this affair can be…hushed down, is that the idiom? It would simplify matters. But let me prepare a bed for you.”

  Sevigny shook his head. “No, thanks. I’m strung too tight. Besides, I don’t dare sleep.”

  “As you wish.”

  “If you want to rack out, though-”

  “Not in the least. Come, we shall have breakfast.” Volhontseff got to his feet and tugged at Sevigny’s arm.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I am. You shall watch me eat and possibly gain appetite. Afterward you will no doubt be interested to see some of my Martian relics.”

  “Take my mind off my troubles, anyway.” Sevigny’s gaze traveled around the room and lighted on a piece of sculptured crystal on a bookshelf. “What’s that?”

  “From Illach. Nothing of great value.”

  “But lovely.” The engineer went over to have a closer look.

  “Come, I say!” Volhontseff jittered near the door.

  Sevigny turned around. A tingle went along his spine. “You’re mighty anxious to get me out of here,“ he said low.

  “I am hungry, I told you.”

  “Well, go eat…Why’d you call the K’neans in particular?”

  “I did most of my field work in their area, as you can find out from my publications. I know them best. They are to be trusted.”

  . “I think,” Sevigny said experimentally, through a tightened gullet, “we ought to buzz the Cytherean Embassy ourselves, just to make sure.”

  Volhontseff became waspish. “Ridiculous. That is not only unnecessary now, it is unsafe. I have no scrambler connection to them.”

  “Why should any of your calls be tapped?” Sevigny retorted. “If the cops suspect I’m here, they’ll come in person.” He took a pair of giant steps back to the desk. “What are you trying to do, anyhow?”

  “Get away from my private papers!” Volhontseff yelled. He darted at the engineer, who shoved him staggering back.

  “Retro yourself, jim,” Sevigny said. “If I’m wrong, I’ll apologize. But a hunted man can’t take chances.”

  He picked up the notebook. Volhontseff snatched at it. Sevigny warded him off without effort. The counsul turned and ran. Sevigny beat him to the door, closed it, and growled, “Were you after a gun?”

  Volhontseff recoiled- His chest rose and fell with breathing. Sevigny flipped through the pages. Names, addresses, phone numbers, in Cyrillic script but he knew Russian…

  Ercole Baccioco leaped at him, and an Earthwide list of residences. One was the apartment building where he had been a prisoner.

  “So.” He stared at the little man’s rigid figure. Sweat rolled from beneath his arms. Swiftly, then, he searched, and found Gupta entered. A local hotel had been penciled under the Benares address.

  He stuck the book in his pocket. “All right, Volhontseff,” he said. The words fell like iron weights through the night silence. “You belong to the enemy, too. And so must that Martian. Tell me about it.”

  Volhontseff retreated. Sevigny sprang, grabbed a skinny wrist and twisted until the other fell to his knees. “You bully!” Volhontseff squalled.

  “Not so loud,” Sevigny said between his teeth. “Your saboteurs have killed men on Luna. One of them was under my command. I’ve also lost another friend tonight, and my own life is on the block. Do you expect me to play pattycake with you?”

  Volhontseff squirmed and tried to bite. Sevigny cuffed him so that the bald head rocked. “Hold still and talk…quietly!”

  A curse answered. Sevigny hesitated. Even now he didn’t want to—His mind cometed through darkness, toward understanding.

  “The outlines are obvious,” he said, word by word, reasoning as he went on. “These different anti-Lunar factions have gotten together. Certain members of them, that is. Probably not many, or men as big as Baccioco and Gupta needn’t have dirtied their personal hands with me. The ordinary anti-Lunar person doesn’t know about the gang, of course, and’d be shocked if he learned. But religious nuts; those who want, fanatically, to reclaim the last open parts of Earth so as to fill them too with miserable trapped people; those who want contracts for that reclamation; and now K’nea.

  “You’re an agent of K’nea. They’re slipping you money under the counter, so you can sit close to Pacific Spacedrome and watch events and exert your influence and help direct any foul play that seems indicated. K’nea is wealthy, one of the first-rank Martian societies. I wouldn’t be surprised but what they’re financing most of the gang’s operations.

  “And then there must be someone in the American government, so powerful he can order Federal police to arrest me on a trumped-up charge the moment his good friend Baccioco told him I’d gotten away. Who can probably arrange for me to be killed, or at least have my memory wiped. Who… yes, who must have gotten a warrant issued in the first place, to have my force unit removed. It had to look official, that removing, or there’d’ve been too much ruckus. But ’reasons of state’ has always been t
he only excuse an overlord needed to order anything, as long as most people believe in the Holy State. Who is he?”

  “Let me loose!” Volhontseff cried.

  “With what I’ve now got to go on, my side can find out the answer. You might as well tell me. The President himself?”

  “Nyet—

  “Who, then? Or we’ll assume it is Edwards, and what’ll that do in the election?”

  Volhontseff crumpled. Sevigny had to hold him up. “Gilman,” he whispered. “Secretary of Resources. Appointed by Edwards, yes, but…I swear he acts for himself.”

  “Why? What motive? Same as Gupta? The United States has its problems, but I don’t believe they’re near as bad as India’s…Ah! If the Lunar project is discontinued, there’ll be more funds to spend at home. Gilman’s bureaucracy will grow. He’ll become even bigger than he is. Right?”

  “I do not understand these Earthside motives.” Volhontseff began to sob. “You are wild beasts, you humans. I only took the pay so I could finish my work. And K’nean policy is not evil, not evil.”

  “What does K’nea want?” Sevigny snapped the fingers of his free hand. “Never mind. I see for myself. The greatest hurdle the anti-lunars have to face is the investment already made in the Moon. No matter how much trouble and discredit they heap on us, Earth can scarcely afford to stop. But if K’nea suddenly offered to pay off the shareholders of a failing enterprise, lease the whole satellite, and do what little more is necessary to make it over into a new Mars…Sure! And that would make K’nea the most powerful society on the home planet by a light-year. They’d dominate their entire species.”

  “They must protect their philosophy.” Volhontseff wept. “The Confederation and the Illachi are more alien to them than you can c-c-comprehend.”

  “Well, Mars will have to solve its own problems,” Sevigny said coldly. He let Volhontseff slide to the floor and lie huddled while he paced, back and forth in the cage of the office.

  His temples throbbed. Now, more than he had imagined, the information he had was beyond price. And it would be scrubbed out of his brain, by drugs and electric potentials or by death, before sunrise. Nyo’s men were plainly supposed to land soon and invite him, unsuspicious, to board their flier. He wouldn’t fall for that stunt. But then they need only tell the Federals where he was.

  Volhontseff, trembling at his feet, must have a car. That offered escape. He could bind the consul and lay him on the floor with a rug thrown on top.

  But a ground vehicle wouldn’t get him off Oahu, and as soon as the pursuit grasped what had happened they would check the registry and throw out their nets.

  Shame hit him in midstride. He halted with an oath. What was he doing, a Woodman, worried about his own precious neck when he had contracted out his loyalty to the Corporation?

  I’m no hero—Judas, I’m scared—but there d be no returning home if I went coward. I can at least try to keep them from murdering my story.

  Besides, Vve got anyway a couple of hours before the flier arrives.…

  He flung himself into the chair at the desk and searched Volhontseffs private directory. En route, he was aware of surprise when his glance fell on Maura Sumantri’s name. He’d assumed she was imported to beguile him and had used a pseudonym; but no, there she was with a town address. Well, the organization probably kept girls like her on the payroll in most major cities, to use on local politicians and such…The Cytherean Embassy wasn’t noted. Why should it be, at that? The clans were apart from this power grapple. By the same token, though, their diplomatic office must be free of double agents.

  He dialed Paris, got the number, and put the call through. An Earthified young man regarded him with shock. I must look like a derailed hamburger, Sevigny realized. Dirty, bristly, unkempt, red-eyed, and not even the memory of a binge to show for it. Curtly, he identified himself.

  “Samuel Craik, Clan Duneland of Duneland,” the young man said with elaborate formality. “At your service.”

  “Who’s the highest ranking person I can talk to at once?”

  Craik looked pained. “Really, Clansman, when you aren’t even in proper garb—”

  “All right,” Sevigny sighed. “You record my message. I warn you right off that you won’t believe a word. But play it for your superiors. Have them check with the Luna Corporation office on the Moon. That’s the main thing I ask you: pass the tape on to Bruno Norris in Port Kepler, and make bloody damn sure that he himself gets it.” He drew a long breath and intoned: “This I lay on you for the right and honor of the clans of Venus.”

  Craik looked still more unhappy. Oh, Lord, I’ll bet that fop thinks the Word is a quaint barbarian custom, Sevigny groaned to himself. He launched into the account.

  “Clansman!” Craik protested after a few minutes. “Do you feel well?”

  “I told you you wouldn’t believe me,” Sevigny gritted. “Now hold still and let me finish.”

  The violence that churned in him suddenly spouted forth an idea. He gasped. Somehow he managed to keep talking while he thought with more and more excitement about it.

  Why not? Secure Volhontseff out of sight and tell ‘em he had to go on an errand. If there isn’t a gun in the house, there must be some of those beautiful Martian dart knives. Nyo’s agents won’t know that I know their purpose. I can board the flier with them. Its diplomatic registry will pass it through national checkpoints without inspection. Once were aloft, them not yet ready to take me and not expecting any trouble …

  Laughter coughed silent in him. A good honest fight, a clear track to Paris, and won’t brother Craik be surprised when I walk in on him!

  “…changed clothes,” his tongue formed, “and got to the consulate here…”

  The door clicked shut again.

  Sevigny was halfway there before he realized what had happened. Volhontseff! The withered little devil had crawled out when he wasn’t looking!

  The door was locked. He palmed the plate and it swung open with Inquisition slowness. The moment he could, he squeezed through; and tumbled flat on his belly. Volhontseff had laid half a dozen Martian staffs there for him to trip on.

  The tiny shape was at the front entrance. “Stop!” Sevigny bawled. The door began to gape. Sevigny grabbed a staff and threw it like a spear. It shattered where Volhontseff had been a half second before. He scampered from sight, yammering louder than seemed possible.

  No use chasing him. He must already have awakened his neighbors. The police would arrive in minutes.

  Sevigny hurried back to the phone. “What’s gone wrong now?” Craik asked superciliously.

  “Record this!” Sevigny overran him. “I know these are conspiring—Nyo, the K’nean ambassador; Ercole Baccioco of Eureclam; Krishnamurti Lai Gupta of Benares and the Indian Conservationist Party; Gilman, the United States Secretary of Resources; the Fatimite Brotherhood. They want…” He outlined the scheme. “In the name of God and honor, get them investigated.”

  He snapped off the set and ran back through the house. Maybe his message would spread. And maybe it wouldn’t. He had to stay free and make sure. Besides, he himself was the most important piece of evidence there was. Once repeated under truth drug, in the presence of so many Safety Corps officers that nearly all were bound to be honest, his accusations were certain to start their machine.

  First, though, I’ve got to start a different machine. If time allows.

  A rear door led directly into the garage. Volhontseff’s car was impressive to see. But Sevigny was interested only in getting at the prime circuit. No chance of finding the key before the cops showed. However, any Cytherean must have mechanical skills, and there were tools on a wall rack. He flung back the hood and fairly ripped the cover off the pilot. Hotwire here? No. Here? The engine awoke. He sat down behind the wheel and eased in power. The garage door opened.

  He was steering manually now, and that was illegal in town. Any prowl car that passed near would fail to register an active pilot and take off after him. So he couldn
’t go many kilometers.

  But away!

  He backed out into the street precisely as a police vehicle rounded the comer. “Okay/1 he spat, “want to race?” The motor roared with energies.

  Downhill he went in a shriek of wind and of pursuing siren, squealed around a comer, zigzagged up another twisting way as fast as he had once taken a gun car up a mountainside at the Battle of Jerry’s Landing, swooped among the trees of a small park on his airblast…It was unfair to pit a lifetime driver on pavements against a Cytherean. In minutes Sevigny moved alone, slowly and quietly, through the nighted tangletown.

  But the ether was a-crackle with calls, he knew, and every road would soon be blocked.

  What about these mountains, humping high in the north against a sky that had begun ever so faintly to pale? Honolulu had sprawled far into them, but there should be brush-grown empty areas yet, where a man might skulk…No. He’d never make it. His auto had to be abandoned fast. In any event, whatever wild section remained couldn’t be so large that a determined search with modem manhunting equipment wouldn’t soon flush him out. Nor would he have any way of knowing what went on in the world.

  Left, right! Left, right! drummed senselessly through his head. Good soldiers can always find cover when enemies menace their life. Our lovable sergeant has said it. Take cover, my lads, with his wife. Left, right! Left, right! I know you re a man of Clan Woodman, I know you are gallant and true. So don’t turn your back in our army; they’ll give you the royalest.…

  Sevigny snapped the Halt switch. He had half unconsciously been looking from side to side. When he saw what he wanted, dim in starlight, he recognized what it was. A garage stood open and empty. Some night owl was going to be surprised when he got home. With luck, that wouldn’t be for hours; and meanwhile the hounds would cast about in vain for this car.

  He slid it inside. For a space he slumped, and a tide of exhaustion rose in him. Venus, he thought, morning star, even the fennecs of your desert have a place to lair. But you are forty million kilometers away. Goodbye, Venus.