[Jan Darzek 02] - Watchers of the Dark

by Lloyd Biggle, Jr.

“Everywhere.”

  “Should the traders be encouraged to organize a resistance?”

  “Negative.”

  Suddenly Darzek realized that he was not alone. A native stood near the door, waiting respectfully.

  “What do you want?” Darzek demanded.

  “I am ursGwalus. Supreme has appointed me to assist you. You are to report to Supreme through me.”

  Darzek regarded him coldly. “Why?”

  “Supreme prefers indited reports.”

  “I see. Would you kindly inform Supreme that I prefer a non-native as an assistant?”

  “Non-native?” ursGwalus repeated bewilderedly.

  “Someone from another solar system.”

  “There is no such person available.”

  “Not even one?”

  “Not among the servants of Supreme.”

  “The situation is worse than I thought.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Kindly inform Supreme that in the absence of precise instructions I shall carry on along the same lines, as I see fit.”

  ursGwalus tapped out the message and read the reply. “Affirmative.”

  “May I have a private consultation with Supreme whenever I deem it necessary?” Darzek asked.

  “If Supreme consents.”

  “Then I have nothing more to say. Kindly show me the way out of this place.”

  “I don’t like it,” Miss Schlupe announced.

  “Neither do I. Supreme insists that Primores is not in danger. Supreme must exist in a dream world. How many agents do you have?”

  “Twenty-eight.”

  “I wish it was ten times that many. The traders would help, but what I have in mind requires natives.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Action. For once I’m going to act before the Dark does.”

  Chapter 16

  The crowd was the largest that Darzek had seen. At least fifty natives had gathered at a convergence of park paths, and as the first arrivals drifted away others took their places. They came, they listened impassively, they moved on.

  ursDwad hung back at the rear of the crowd, waiting for a signal. Darzek gave it to him and watched what followed as tensely as a playwright enjoying an opening night performance.

  ursDwad edged forward, waited until the agitator paused for breath, and then brushed past him. Darzek was too far away to hear what was said, but he had rehearsed the lines a hundred times, and he mouthed them himself as ursDwad spoke. Something important has happened. I must talk with you at once.

  ursDwad walked away quickly without a backward glance. The agitator delivered a final, screaming rant, and hurried after him.

  ursDwad spoke over his shoulder. We’re being watched. Go on ahead, and wait for me at the end of the park. They separated, and met again at the park transmitting station. ursDwad touched out a destination. You first. Hurry! The agitator stepped through, to a wholly unexpected reception. ursDwad turned away with something remarkably akin to a smirk of triumph on his ugly face.

  “Will you come into my parlor said the spider to the fly,” Darzek murmured. “It’s a smash hit. Let’s take it on the road.”

  “ursDwad should have followed him,” Miss Schlupe said. “And he’d better stage his next performance in some other park.”

  “I agree. Speak to him about it. He also should try to do something about that smirk. But it works. Now I want to see if our ex-agitator has anything constructive to say.”

  But the agitator, when he got over being incoherently bewildered, would say nothing at all. By then ursDwad had brought in three more agitators, and the remainder of Miss Schlupe’s detective squad was moving into action. In three days Darzek had a thousand prisoners on his hands, none of whom would speak except to recite, parrotlike, the all-too-familiar cant against foreigners.

  Concentration camp facilities were difficult to come by on Primores. Just as the operation seemed about to break down because there was no accommodation for more prisoners, and no one to guard them if accommodation should be found, Gud Baxak arrived. He had purchased a hundred more spaceships, and Darzek ordered one of these fitted for passengers, and shipped the agitators off to a Dark world whose populace was properly grateful for Darzek’s ministrations and in no mood to tolerate any nonsense from those who had been spreading the gospel of the Dark.

  Gud Baxak brought a distressing report on the activities of agitators on surrounding worlds. Even if Primores were defended successfully, it seemed likely that it would become an island completely surrounded by the Dark.

  “But there’s nothing I can do about that,” Darzek told himself. “One world at a time is as much as I can handle.”

  They were five days in accumulating another thousand prisoners, and the third thousand required ten days of intense work. Every abduction came off smoothly, but there had been a sharp falling off in the number of agitators available. Darzek shipped out the last thousand and went with Miss Schlupe on a tour of the parks.

  “I’d like it better if some of them would talk,” Miss Schlupe said.

  “I doubt if any of them know anything. The first agitators had to be recruited by foreigners, but after that the natives would do their own recruiting. Probably none of our three thousand has had any contact with the persons behind this.”

  “Then your smash hit is a flop. All they have to do is recruit more agitators.”

  “Not at all. At the very least we’ve upset their time schedule, and they can’t recruit them anything like as fast as we can pick them up. From now on I want your detectives to work in teams—one to do the abducting, and the others to watch carefully for a foreigner who seems unduly interested in the proceedings. He might even try to interfere. He’s the one we want.”

  “Right. It’s high time they started getting curious about what’s happening to their agitators. These foreigners won’t come willingly, so there’ll have to be enough muscle to stuff them into the transmitters. I’ll set up four teams of seven.”

  “That should do it.”

  Darzek patiently made his rounds. He went first to E-Wusk, who had submerged himself in statistics relating to the Dark’s next move. E-Wusk said bewilderedly, “Everything is proceeding according to pattern except here on Primores. The parks should be full of agitators; instead, they’ve almost disappeared.”

  “Fancy that,” Darzek murmured.

  He found Gul Meszk in the throes of despondency. Having recruited an army, he didn’t know what to do with it. Worse, the housing shortage had forced him to scatter his recruits through all of the worlds of the Primores system, and he had no better than a vague idea of where his army was.

  “Isn’t anyone in charge?” Darzek asked.

  Meszk gestured despairingly. He had been too busy recruiting to look after the recruits he already had. Gul Ceyh had heroically accepted the task, but he had accomplished nothing. Gul Kaln was acting as his assistant, but he was kept busy trying to persuade the recruits not to give up and go home. Gul Isc had accepted the task of locating Supreme. He had not done so. Gul Halvr was trading again, doing a brisk business importing food to Primores. (Darzek winced, remembering E-Wusk’s prediction of an increased consumption of food when the Dark threatened.) Gul Rhinzl also was trading again, but was helping as much as he could whenever anyone could think of anything for him to do. The efa, despite their ignominious Yorlq behavior, were posturing as military commanders and seeking to oust Gul Ceyh—who was perfectly willing to be ousted. Gul Azfel had become disgusted with the whole business. Dark or no Dark, he wasn’t forgetting that he had daughters to marry off, and he was planning a symposium.

  Meszk said pleadingly, “Come with me to see Gul Rhinzl.”

  Darzek went without protest, and from the murky depths of an impromptu
dark room Rhinzl greeted him enthusiastically. “Gul Isc just left,” he said. “He has two hundred people making inquiries, and for all they’ve been able to find out, Supreme might be located at the end of the galaxy. Either end.” He paused. “Gul Darr, the fate of an individual becomes unimportant when the fate of an entire galaxy is at stake. I sympathize with your desire to find a refuge from the Dark, but if the Dark takes Supreme there will be no refuge anywhere. I ask you in the name of all of the traders: Help us.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Join us. Take command of the defense. You seem to understand such things. The rest of us don’t, but we do understand the need for action. We are willing to do anything, to make any sacrifice, if only someone in whom we have confidence will tell us what must be done.”

  “If I could be certain that all of the traders agreed with you—”

  “They do,” Meszk said quickly. “I’ve asked them.”

  “I see. I know the time is short, but I must think about this before I decide.”

  Alone in the small room he called an office, he attempted to sort out his jumbled impressions. He had never completely abandoned his notion that one of the traders was an agent of the Dark; but the Dark’s area of conquest was so vast, its conquered worlds so numerous, that no one trader could be contributing more than local assistance. He rejected emphatically the notion that the Dark was a conspiracy on the part of many traders. No group of traders would participate in a plot that was ruinous to trade.

  “The more I learn,” Darzek muttered, “the less I know.”

  The Dark’s weapon, for example. The idea of a force that twisted minds was absurd, and yet—surely the natives of so many worlds should not have succumbed to the agitators’ crude lies. There had to be something that aroused them to frenzies of hatred.

  Darzek opened the door and summoned ursGwalus into the room. The servant of Supreme had taken his appointment as Darzek’s assistant as a license to haunt him. He camped out in Darzek’s apartment, waiting expectantly for the reports to Supreme that Darzek had no intention of entrusting to him.

  “Have you ever heard the word, ‘Grilf’?” Darzek asked him.

  “Grilf, grilf, grilf,” ursGwalus ruminated. “No, I do not think so.”

  “Ask Supreme about it. I’d like a report on its etymology.”

  ursGwalus departed happily, and Darzek resumed his pacing.

  Later that day ursQwor, one of Miss Schlupe’s younger detectives, came with a strange tale to tell. “I was resting at home during the tompl—” he began.

  Darzek nodded. Among the natives, the tompl was the time of day’s end relaxation and casual visiting.

  “A stranger called and invited me to attend a sef.”

  “What’s a sef?” Darzek asked.

  “I don’t know. That is, I didn’t know then, and I’m not sure that I know now. He was very friendly about it. He assured me that I’d find it interesting and enjoyable, so I went with him. He led me to an apartment. There were thirty-seven people present when we arrived.”

  Darzek whistled, and ursQwor added apologetically, “I counted them.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Seventeen more arrived shortly.”

  Darzek whistled again. “Where did they put them?”

  “In all of the rooms. Then we were spoken to—the way the agitators speak in the parks. When it was over I reported to ursDwad, my team leader, and he went with the others of my team and took possession of the place and the three who were in charge of it. They were already starting another sef.”

  “Is this the first you’ve heard of these sefs?”

  “It’s the first that any of us have heard of them.”

  “I see. You’ve done a good job of work. Congratulations.”

  ursQwor demurely murmured his thanks.

  “Have you told Gula Schlu about this?”

  “She was out, and ursDwad thought the matter sufficiently important for your attention.”

  “Quite right. Tell ursDwad to call everyone in. There’ll have to be a general briefing on this.”

  Miss Schlupe returned, took one glance at Darzek’s face, and asked, “What’s the matter now?”

  “We have a crisis on our hands. The Dark has gone underground on us. While we were concentrating on the parks, it subjected the entire population of Primores to an indoor lecture course.”

  Miss Schlupe chased her detectives into action, and when finally they reported back they’d been unable to find a single citizen of Primores who hadn’t attended several sefs. Some had attended a dozen or more.

  “So why haven’t we heard about them?” Darzek demanded.

  “I’ve been working my detectives too hard. Today was the first time in ages that any of them have been free when these sefs were going on.”

  Darzek regarded her stonily. “The Dark isn’t very inventive, but it certainly is ingenious about adapting its techniques to local conditions.”

  “If only these Primorians weren’t so confoundedly polite,” she wailed. “When they’re invited somewhere, etiquette demands that they accept. What can we do? We can’t police every private dwelling and apartment on the planet.”

  “Raid the sefs just as fast as you can locate them.”

  She threw up her hands despairingly.

  “We’re too late to stop it anyway,” Darzek said. “The entire native population has already been exposed. But we have to try, and there’s always a chance that we might stumble onto a really important agent.”

  “We should have thought of something like this. Maybe the Dark’s mental weapon is working on us.”

  “I’d like to blame the Dark, but I’d have to admit that it would be a strange kind of weapon that could induce stupidity. But carry on. The only thing left for me to do is take charge of the traders’ army and try to protect Supreme.”

  The traders’ purportedly vast army had dwindled to a mere ten thousand potentially active traders and undertraders. Gul Meszk was humiliated, but Darzek said grimly, “We haven’t the time to train half that many. Let’s get on with it.”

  He chose ten competent leaders, told each of them to select a hundred of the youngest, sturdiest and most agile types available, and moved the whole contingent to Meszk’s Primore II Plantation. He ordered Gud Baxak to keep a ship standing by, just in case—as he expected—he needed emergency transportation back to Primores O.

  Rhinzl located a stock of light but sturdy metal piping, and Darzek had this cut into suitable lengths for weapons and trained his troops as he had the shock troops on Yorlq. The promise of action worked wonders for their morale, and they drilled tirelessly.

  Darzek added another thousand troops as quickly as Gul Kaln could obtain housing for them, and then a third thousand. He drove them mercilessly during the day, held a night school for his officers, and tried to convince himself that at last he was doing the right thing. Rhinzl put together two companies of nocturnals and trained them himself, and several dozen times each night disturbed everyone’s sleep with his screeching order, “Charge!”

  They had been at it for ten days when Miss Schlupe came to look on. She watched two battalions stage a sham battle, and announced cheerfully, “They look good!”

  “Better than on Yorlq,” Darzek agreed. “We had a better selection of troops, and we’ve had more time to train them.”

  “Then why are you so gloomy?”

  “I still don’t know what to do with them. If there was one vital area to defend, I think I could do it. But Supreme is everywhere. It said so itself.”

  “If you can’t find a vital area to defend, maybe the natives won’t be able to find one to attack.”

  “No.” Darzek shook his head emphatically. “That won’t do. Who charges Supreme’s batteries and po
lishes its transistors? There have to be natives who know all about Supreme—thousands, probably, but if even one knows, Supreme is doomed.”

  “Tsk. Any moment, now, you’ll have me believing in that mental weapon. Cheer up. Things are going well, or at least no worse than they were. I have a packet of news for you.”

  “Let’s have it.”

  “Your ursGwalus is still haunting the place, waiting for you to report to Supreme. He says Supreme knows nothing about the word ‘Grilf’ except that it appears in reports on the Dark.”

  “Supreme knows only what it’s told, and no one has been able to tell it much about the Dark.”

  “The Chief of Proctors is haunting me,” Miss Schlupe went on. “Someone tipped him off that I’m responsible for the sef raids, and he’s against them.”

  “Did you tell him the sefs were threatening the public safety?”

  “Not in those words, but I tried to get the idea across. He wouldn’t believe me. It seems that I’m violating a whole list of unwritten regulations. He ordered me to turn everyone loose and not do it any more.”

  “Refer him to me.”

  “I did. I told him I was following your orders, and you were working directly for Supreme. He retired to think it over. Probably he’ll ask Supreme about it.”

  Darzek shrugged. “What about the sefs?”

  “We’re raiding them as fast as we can locate them. Gud Baxak’s shipped off another thousand agitators. He’s complaining again about our tying up his ships.”

  “Tell him to buy more ships.”

  “I did. E-Wusk wants to see you. He keeps sending messages.”

  “I’ll go back with you, and see him and have another heart-to-heart talk with Supreme. What else?”

  “Did you know that the Dark was running a courier service? It is. One of Gud Baxak’s captains intercepted it. The person in charge—this will slay you—claimed he was working for Supreme.”