by Keith Laumer
* * * *
“My boy, I’m delighted,” Ambassador Sternwheeler boomed. “A highly professional piece of work. A stirring testimonial to the value of the skilled negotiator!”
“You’re too kind, Mr. Ambassador.” Retief said, glancing at his watch.
“And Magnan tells me that not only will the Mission be welcomed, and my job secure for another year—that is, I shall have an opportunity to serve—but a technical mission has been requested as well. I shall look forward to meeting General Sozier. He sounds a most reasonable chap.”
“Oh, you’ll like him, Mr. Ambassador. A true democrat, willing to share all you have.”
Counsellor of Embassy Magnan tapped and entered the office.
“Forgive the intrusion, Mr. Ambassador,” he said breathlessly, “but I must—”
“Well, what is it, man? The deal hasn’t gone sour?”
“Oh, far from it! I’ve been exploring General Sozier’s economic situation with him via scope, and it seems he’ll require a loan.”
“Yes, yes? How much?”
Magnan inhaled proudly. “Twenty. Million. Credits.”
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Magnificent! Good lord, Magnan, you’re a genius! This will mean promotions all around. Why, the administrative load alone—”
“I can’t wait to make planetfall, Mr. Ambassador. I’m all a-bubble with plans. I hope they manage to get the docking facilities back in operation soon.”
“Help is on the way, my dear Magnan. I’m assured the Environmental Control installations will be coming back in operation again within a year or two.”
“My, didn’t those ice-caps form quickly. And in the open sea.”
“Mere scum ice. As my Counsellor for Technical Affairs, you’ll be in charge of the ice-breaking operation once we’re settled in. I imagine you’ll want to spend considerable time in the field. I’ll be expecting a record of how every credit is spent.”
“I’m more the executive type,” Magnan said. “Possibly Retief—”
A desk speaker hummed. “Mr. Corasol’s lighter has arrived to ferry Mr. Retief across to the Company ship….”
“Sorry you won’t be with us, Retief,” Sternwheeler said heartily. He turned to Magnan. “Manager-General Corasol has extended Retief an exequatur as Consul General to Las Palmas.”
* * * *
Retief nodded. “Much as I’d like to be out in that open boat with you, breaking ice, I’m afraid duty calls elsewhere.”
“Your own post? I’m not sure he’s experienced enough, Mr. Ambassador. Now, I—”
“He was requested by name, Magnan. It seems the Manager-General’s children took a fancy to him.”
“Eh? How curious. I never thought you were particularly interested in infant care, Retief.”
“Perhaps I haven’t been, Mr. Magnan.” Retief draped his short blue cape over his left arm and turned to the door. “But remember the diplomat’s motto: be adaptable….”
THE KING OF THE CITY
Originally published in Galaxy Magazine, August 1961.
I stood in the shadows and looked across at the rundown lot with the windblown trash packed against the wire mesh barrier fence and the yellow glare panel that said HAUG ESCORT. There was a row of city-scarred hacks parked on the cracked ramp. They hadn’t suffered the indignity of a wash-job for a long time. And the two-story frame building behind them—that had once been somebody’s country house—now showed no paint except the foot-high yellow letters over the office door.
Inside the office a short broad man with small eyes and yesterday’s beard gnawed a cigar and looked at me.
“Portal-to-portal escort cost you two thousand C’s,” he said. “Guaranteed.”
“Guaranteed how?” I asked.
He waved the cigar. “Guaranteed you get into the city and back out again in one piece.” He studied his cigar. “If somebody don’t plug you first,” he added.
“How about a one-way trip?”
“My boy got to come back out, ain’t he?”
I had spent my last brass ten-dollar piece on a cup of coffee eight hours before, but I had to get into the city. This was the only idea I had left.
“You’ve got me wrong,” I said. “I’m not a customer. I want a job.”
“Yeah?” He looked at me again, with a different expression, like a guy whose new-found girl friend has just mentioned a price.
“You know Gra’nyauk?”
“Sure,” I said. “I grew up here.”
He asked me a few more questions, then thumbed a button centered in a ring of grime on the wall behind him. A chair scraped beyond the door; it opened and a tall bony fellow with thick wrists and an adams apple set among heavy neck tendons came in.
The man behind the desk pointed at me with his chin.
“Throw him out, Lefty.”
Lefty gave me a resentful look, came around the desk and reached for my collar. I leaned to the right and threw a hard left jab to the chin. He rocked back and sat down.
“I get the idea,” I said. “I can make it out under my own power.” I turned to the door.
“Stick around, mister. Lefty’s just kind of a like a test for separating the men from the boys.”
“You mean I’m hired?”
He sighed. “You come at a good time. I’m short of good boys.”
I helped Lefty up, then dusted off a chair and listened to a half-hour briefing on conditions in the city. They weren’t good. Then I went upstairs to the chart room to wait for a call.
* * * *
It was almost ten o’clock when Lefty came into the room where I was looking over the maps of the city. He jerked his head.
“Hey, you.”
A weasel-faced man who had been blowing smoke in my face slid off his stool, dropped his cigarette and smeared it under his shoe.
“You,” Lefty said. “The new guy.”
I belted my coat and followed him down the dark stairway, and out across the littered tarmac, glistening wet under the polyarcs, to where Haug stood talking to another man I hadn’t seen before.
Haug flicked a beady glance my way, then turned to the stranger. He was a short man of about fifty with a mild expressionless face and expensive clothes.
“Mr. Stenn, this is Smith. He’s your escort. You do like he tells you and he’ll get you into the city and see your party and back out again in one piece.”
The customer looked at me. “Considering the fee I’m paying, I sincerely hope so,” he murmured.
“Smith, you and Mr. Stenn take number 16 here.” Haug patted a hinge-sprung hood, painted a bilious yellow and scabbed with license medallions issued by half a dozen competing city governments.
Haug must have noticed something in Stenn’s expression.
“It ain’t a fancy-looking hack, but she’s got full armor, heavy-duty gyros, crash-shocks, two-way music and panic gear. I ain’t got a better hack in the place.”
Stenn nodded, popped the hatch and got in. I climbed in the front and adjusted the seat and controls to give me a little room. When I kicked over the turbos they sounded good.
“Better tie in, Mr. Stenn,” I said. “We’ll take the Canada turnpike in. You can brief me on the way.”
I wheeled 16 around and out under the glare-sign that read “HAUG ESCORT.” In the eastbound linkway I boosted her up to 90. From the way the old bus stepped off, she had at least a megahorse under the hood. Maybe Haug wasn’t lying, I thought. I pressed an elbow against the power pistol strapped to my side.
I liked the feel of it there. Maybe between it and old 16 I could get there and back after all.
* * * *
“My destination,” Stenn said, “is the Manhattan section.”
That suited me perfectly. In fact, it was the first luck I’d had since I burned the uniform. I looked in the rear viewer at Stenn’s face. He still wore no expression. He seemed like a mild little man to be wanting into the cage with the tigers.
&nbs
p; “That’s pretty rough territory, Mr. Stenn,” I said. He didn’t answer.
“Not many tourists go there,” I went on. I wanted to pry a little information from him.
“I’m a businessman,” Stenn said.
I let it go at that. Maybe he knew what he was doing. For me, there was no choice. I had one slim lead, and I had to play it out to the end. I swung through the banked curves of the intermix and onto the turnpike and opened up to full throttle.
It was fifteen minutes before I saw the warning red lights ahead. Haug had told me about this. I slowed.
“Here’s our first roadblock, Mr. Stenn,” I said. “This is an operator named Joe Naples. All he’s after is his toll. I’ll handle him; you sit tight in the hack. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything, no matter what happens. Understand?”
“I understand,” Stenn said mildly.
I pulled up. My lights splashed on the spikes of a Mark IX tank trap. I set the parking jacks and got out.
“Remember what I told you,” I said. “No matter what.” I walked up into the beam of the lights.
A voice spoke from off to the side.
“Douse ’em, Rube.”
I went back and cut the lights. Three men sauntered out onto the highway.
“Keep the hands away from the sides, Rube.”
One of the men was a head taller than the others. I couldn’t see his face in the faint red light from the beacon, but I knew who he was.
“Hello, Naples,” I said.
He came up to me. “You know me, Rube?”
“Sure,” I said. “The first thing Haug told me was pay my respects to Mr. Naples.”
Naples laughed. “You hear that, boys? They know me pretty good on the outside, ha?”
He looked at me, not laughing any more. “I don’t see you before.”
“My first trip.”
He jerked a thumb at the hack. “Who’s your trick?”
“A businessman. Name is Stenn.”
“Yeah? What kind business?”
I shook my head. “We don’t quiz the cash customers, Joe.”
“Let’s take a look.” Naples moved off toward the hack, the boys at his side. I followed. Naples looked in at Stenn. Stenn sat relaxed and looked straight ahead. Naples turned away, nodded to one of his helpers. The two moved off a few yards.
The other man, a short bullet-headed thug in a grease-spatted overcoat, stood by the hack, staring in at Stenn. He took a heavy old-style automatic from his coat pocket, pulled open the door. He aimed the gun at Stenn’s head and carefully squeezed the trigger.
The hammer clicked emptily.
“Ping,” he said. He thrust the gun back in his pocket, kicked the door shut and went over to join Naples.
“Okay, Rube,” Naples called.
I went over to him.
“I guess maybe you on the level,” he said. “Standard fee. Five hundred, Old Federal notes.”
I had to be careful now. I held a bland expression, reached in—slowly—took out my wallet. I extracted two hundred-C notes and held them out.
Naples looked at them, unmoving. The thug in the dirty overcoat moved up close, and suddenly swung the edge of his palm at my wrist. I was ready; I flicked my hand aside and chopped him hard at the base of the neck. He dropped.
I was still holding out the money.
“That clown isn’t worthy of a place in the Naples organization,” I said.
Naples looked down at the man, stirred him with his foot.
“A clown,” he said. He took the money and tucked it in his shirt pocket.
“Okay, Rube,” he said. “My regards to Haug.”
I got in the hack and moved up to the barrier. It started up, trundled aside. Naples was bending over the man I had downed. He took the pistol from the pocket of the overcoat, jacked the action and aimed. There was a sharp crack. The overcoat flopped once. Naples smiled over at me.
“He ain’t worthy a place in the Naples organization,” he said.
I waved a hand vaguely and gunned off down the road.
II
The speaker in my ear hummed.
I grunted an acknowledgement and a blurred voice said, “Smith, listen. When you cross the South Radial, pick up the Midwest Feed-off. Take it easy and watch for Number Nine Station. Pull off there. Got it?”
I recognized the voice. It was Lefty, Haug’s Number One boy. I didn’t answer.
“What was the call?” Stenn asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nothing.”
The lights of the South Radial Intermix were in sight ahead now.
I slowed to a hundred and thought about it. My personal motives told me to keep going, my job as a paid Escort was to get my man where he wanted to go. That was tough enough, without detours. I eased back up to one-fifty, took the Intermix with gyros screaming, and curved out onto the thruway.
The speaker hummed. “What are you trying to pull, wise guy?” He sounded mad. “That was the South Radial you just passed up—”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s right. Smitty takes ’em there and he brings ’em back. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”
There was a long hum from the speaker. “Oh, a wiseacre,” it said finally. “Listen, rookie, you got a lot to learn. This guy is bankrolled. I seen the wad when he paid Haug off. So all right, we cut you in. Now, get this….”
He gave me detailed instructions. When he was finished, I said, “Don’t wait up for me.”
I took the speaker out of my ear and dropped it into the disposal slot. We drove along quietly for quite a while.
I was beginning to recognize my surroundings. This section of the turnpike had been opened the year before I left home. Except for the lack of traffic and the dark windows along the way it hadn’t changed.
I was wondering just what Lefty’s next move would be when a pair of powerful beams came on from the left, then pulled onto the highway, speeding up to pace me. I rocketed past before he had made full speed. I heard a loud spang, and glass chips scattered on my shoulder. I twisted and looked. A starred hole showed in the bubble, above the rear seat.
* * * *
“Duck!” I yelled. Stenn leaned over, put his head down.
The beams were gaining on me. I twisted the rear viewer, hit the I/R switch. A three-ton combat car, stripped, but still mounting twin infinite repeaters. Against that, old 16 was a kiddie car. I held my speed and tried to generate an idea. What I came up with wasn’t good, but it was all I had.
A half a mile ahead there should be a level-split, one of those awkward ones that caused more than one pile-up in the first few months the turnpike was open. Maybe my playmates didn’t know about it.
They were about to overtake me now. I slowed just a little, and started fading to the right. They followed me, crowding my rear wheel. I heard the spang again, twice, but nothing hit me. I was on the paved shoulder now, and could barely see the faded yellow cross-hatching that warned of the abutment that divided the pavement ahead.
I held the hack in the yellow until the last instant, then veered right and cleared the concrete barrier by a foot, hit the down-curve at a hundred and eighty in a howl of gyros and brakes—and the thunderous impact of the combat car.
Then I was off the pavement, fighting the wheel, slamming through underbrush, then miraculously back on the hard surface and coasting to a stop in the clear.
I took a deep breath and looked back. The burning remains of the car were scattered for a quarter of a mile along the turnpike. That would have been me if I had gauged it wrong.
I looked at the canopy of the hack. Three holes, not a foot apart, right where a passenger’s head would be if he were sitting upright. Stenn was unconcernedly brushing glass dust from his jacket.
“Very neat, Mr. Smith,” he said. “Now shall we resume our journey?”
“Maybe it’s time you leveled with me, Stenn,” I said.
He raised his eyebrows at me slightly.
“When Joe Naples’ boy Fr
iday pointed the gun at your head you didn’t bat an eyelash,” I said.
“I believe those were your instructions,” Stenn said mildly.
“Pretty good for a simple businessman. I don’t see you showing any signs of the shakes now, either, after what some might call a harrowing experience.”
“I have every confidence in your handling—”
“Nuts, Stenn. Those three holes are pretty well grouped, wouldn’t you say? The man that put them there was hitting where he was aiming. And he was aiming for you.”
“Why me?” Stenn looked almost amused.
“I thought it was a little shakedown crew, out to teach me a lesson,” I said. “Until I saw where the shots were going.”
Stenn looked at me thoughtfully. He reached up and took a micro-speaker from his ear.
“The twin to the one you rashly disposed of,” he said. “Mr. Haug was kind enough to supply it—for a fee. I must tell you that I had a gun in my hand as we approached the South Radial Intermix. Had you accepted the invitation to turn off, I would have halted the car, shot you and gone on alone. Happily, you chose to resist the temptation, for reasons of your own….” He looked at me inquiringly.
“Maybe I’m sap enough to take the job seriously,” I said.
“That may possibly be true,” Stenn said.
“What’s your real errand here, Stenn? Frankly, I don’t have time to get involved.”
“Really? One wonders if you have irons in the fire, Smith. But never mind. I shan’t pry. Are we going on?”
I gave him my stern penetrating look.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re going on.”
* * * *
In twenty minutes, we were on the Inner Concourse and the polyarcs were close together, lighting the empty sweep of banked pavement. The lights of the city sparkled across the sky ahead, and gave me a ghostly touch of the old thrill of coming home.
I doused that feeling fast. After eight years there was nothing left there for me to come home to. The city had a lethal welcome for intruders; it wouldn’t be smart to forget that.
I didn’t see the T-Bird until his spot hit my eyes and he was beside me, crowding.
I veered and hit the brakes, with a half-baked idea of dropping back and cutting behind him, but he stayed with me. I had a fast impression of squealing metal and rubber, and then I was skidding to a stop up against the deflector rails with the T-Bird slanted across my prow. Its lid popped almost before the screech died away, and I was looking down the muzzles of two power pistols. I kept both hands on the wheel, where they could see them, and sat tight.
