“It means, S.B., that I’ve come here with a little proposition before you go out on that balcony, and there’s a lot of the boys’ll back me up.” Hartle’s confidence was growing even cockier. “It means it’d be a very wise idea to put me in command of this assault on Luna City. You can stick around with your big ideas, but leave the practical stuff to me.”
“So? You wish to relegate me to a figurehead? Like the ruler of the old constitutional monarchies, while you— This is a—shall we say a revolt? You understand I—”
“Sure, you’re just groping with words. Yeah, call it a revolt if you like. Words don’t count. That’s what you’ve got to learn.”
“And if I refuse, as I assuredly will?”
“Then—”
It happened almost too quickly to follow. Hartle’s hand reached toward his blouse, but before it had more than begun the movement there was a flash from the hand of S.B. Something that had been Stag Hartle lay blasted on the floor. The illegally sharpened knife clanked from his blouse; the sound of ringing metal was clean against the anguished echo of his dying screams.
Sacheverell Breakstone walked over and picked up the knife. “A singularly clumsy attempt at assassination,” he observed. “Tire fool was hampered by his old habits. Conventionally, he had prepared his fingers for the knife with paraderm; that was enough to forewarn me. Now are you content, Astra? I have punished the murderer of Valentinez.” He spurned the body with his foot. “Outside, boys,” he said, and gestured to the balcony.
Two guards carried the corpse of Stag Hartle and tossed it over into the gathering throng. For a moment S.B. stood where he could be seen from below, the knife in one hand, the lovestonite pistol in the other. The visual object lesson was complete and succinct.
He turned back to the guests in the room. “You see, gentlemen and ladies, how simple and effective is the true exercise of power?”
Maureen Furness had sat through all this in tense and shuddering silence. Now at last she spoke. “I used to think that the old times were more alive, more exciting. That was before I ever saw a man die—”
Breakstone laughed. He seemed to swell physically to match his magniloquent dreams. His short stocky body in its comically anachronistic costume dominated the room. “Leave us,” he said abruptly to his guards. Then as they hesitated incredulous, he roared: “Leave us. You heard me.”
Hesitantly the men left.
The murmur of the gathering mob was loud from outside the balcony. “In a moment,” said S.B., “I shall address my tools of creation. And in this guardless moment, you fools shall provide me with my final proof of power, my last touch of inspiration. I shall show you your own impotence and grow strong on it. There.” He laid his lovestonite pistol and Stag Hartle’s sharpened dagger on the floor. “I am here, unguarded. There are weapons. And I am safe because you—”
Astra Ardless sprang forward and siezed the pistol. With one almost careless blow, Breakstone knocked her aside. There was a flash as she fell, and she cried out in pain. S.B. glanced down at her incuriously. “I had forgotten her; she does not share your idealism. Only her dead lover moves her. But she has not had the courtesy to take care of herself.”
Gan Garrett felt his muscles straining against his will. He could attack S.B. weaponless. He could beat him to a pulp; but to what avail? He could simply summon his guards back and— Destruction was the necessity. But can a man, conditioned from childhood to certain beliefs, beliefs moreover which he knows deep in his heart to be the lasting truth of mankind, can he sacrifice those beliefs even when they themselves seem to demand it?
His helplessness seemed to justify Breakstone’s taunts. And yet would his action not justify Breakstone even more profoundly? And then abruptly he realized how futile even destruction would be. He needed something more, something—
“—and enterprises of great pith and moment,” Uranov was muttering, “with this regard their currents turn awry, anci lose the name of action—”
“Your moment is over,” S.B. announced. “You have proved your spiritual castration, and from your impotence I have drawn fresh potency. Now I shall speak to my multitude, and within the hour we shall have begun our march upon Luna City. Our two-meter lovestonite disks—you did not know we had progressed to weapons of such size and power?—shall attack and melt down the dome of the city, turning the lunar night into the fatal glare of our new day, while—”
Both men seemed to move at once, so rapidly that Maureen Furness saw for a moment only a confused blur of movement. Hesketh Uranov had leaped for the knife, snatching it from the floor and driving it toward Breakstone’s heart. But at the same instant, Gan Garrett sprang between. His right hand caught Uranov’s, wrenched at the wrist, and forced the dagger down. His left connected squarely with the point of Breakstone’s jaw.
Garrett stood looking down at the sprawled body of the producer-directorfuehrer. “Failing my popgun,” he said, “my left is the best instantaneous anesthetic I know.”
Uranov rubbed his aching wrist and grunted. “What good is that? Let me kill him. I know the consequences. I know your W.B.I. oath and I know you’ll take me in and have me sent on a one-way trip. But my life doesn’t count, and his death does.
“Uh-huh. So we kill Breakstone, and where are we? We’ve still got his henchmen to reckon with, his gauleiters. The late Mr. Hartle can’t have been the only one. And there’s still that mob outside, hungry for anything that isn’t peace. No, Breakstone knew what he was doing when he made his big gesture.”
“It was the gestrue of a megalomaniac fool. They’ll all go too far and end by destroying themselves. This gesture was Breakstone’s invasion of Russia.”
“It’s going to turn out that way, but he didn’t see that far. It made sense to him—a psychological trick to bolster his own morale, and no danger attached. He knew we were sensible enough to see that his death couldn’t possibly do any good.” Garrett crossed to the unconscious Astra Ardless and picked up the pistol that had marred her vanishing beauty. “It seems like years I’ve been on the track of this lovestonite weapon, and this is the first time I’ve held one in my hand. Neat little gadget, isn’t it?”
“But what are we going to do?” Maureen protested. “You say S.B.’s death couldn’t do us any good. Then what do we gain by just knocking him out?”
“Listen. You heard him mention two-meter lovestonite weapons for attacking cities. I didn’t know they were working on such a scale. I wonder . . . yes, they could be terrific. Use a huge aluminum-foil mirror for charging them . . . yes. All right. Remember what he said about turning the night into a new day? Remember what the men out there are rebelling against and what they want?”
The door dilated, and one of Breakstone’s guards stepped in. He found himself looking straight into Garrett’s lovestonite pistol.
“Come on in,” Garrett urged politely. “Right this way. Take his pistol, Uranov, and keep him covered.”
The man’s eyes went to S.B.’s body, then to Garrett’s face. His mouth half-opened, but his eyes shifted to Garrett’s hand and he was silent.
“Good boy,” Garrett commended him. “I’ve got a little job for you.”
The man kept his eyes on the pistol and nodded. He had seen it work on Stag Hartle.
“And the first thing, if the lady will please turn away her eyes, is for you to strip.”
Gan Garrett stood on the balcony, in the uniform of Breakstone’s personal guard. His stolen female garments would not have become him in this crucial moment. Oratory, he felt, did not become him, either. But oratory was a necessary weapon of demagogy, and was demagogy at times perhaps a necessary weapon to bring him to his own higher aims?
The mob, long awaiting its leader, muttered restlessly. Garrett found the switch of the speaker, turned it, and began the most important words he was ever to say.
“Listen, men. You are gathered to hear your orders from your leader.”
There was a roar of impatient agreement.
> “Very well. I bring you your orders from your leader. But not from Breakstone. Breakstone is through.”
There was a furious outcry of protest. The flash of a lovestonite pistol seared the wall just to Garrett’s right. He stepped up to the speaker to dominate the crowd noise and spoke urgently: “Listen: Would I be here speaking to Breakstone’s men from Breakstone’s balcony if he hadn’t been bested? And do you want a leader who can be bested? Then listen to me. Hear the new words, the new orders, the new war.”
The murmur of the mob died down slowly, reluctantly. He could catch the dim echo of phrases: “—might as well—”
“—got to find out what goes—”
“—so what the hell; let’s hear what he—”
“Breakstone,” he repeated, “is through. He was a great leader, but a blind and foolish one. I offer you a greater. He planned to lead you on a great war, but a cruel and pointless one. I offer you a greater.”
There began to be mutterings of welcome, almost approbation from the crowd.
Garrett found his mind unwontedly praying, praying that this idea would work and that he might be worthy to carry it out. “You came with Breakstone,” he went on, “because you were not happy alone and in peace. Man demands more than that. He does not want to be his lonely self; he yearns for a great man, a great leader in whom he can put his trust. He does not want peace; he wants life and action and the great crusade of war.”
There was a handful of scattered cheers from below.
“Let me tell you about the crusade I bring you. See how it dwarfs Luna City. There were always wars in the old world because man needed his crusade. Because in wartime there came new life and new vigor. Because the weak piping times of peace were not worthy of man. And now, for these same reasons, Breakstone was leading you to war in this new world. Peace was not worthy of man—nor was man worthy of peace. He made peace into something weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. While peace, true peace—
“We fight a war; but in peacetime we relax into stupid nothingness. We take what comes, we wallow in comfort, and we come alive only for the next war. We have not yet learned to fight a peace.
“Crusades do not die when the weapons of war crumble into silence. Every moment of the true life of man should be, must be a crusade. In Africa and in Australia there are black men who have not yet been brought to full membership in mankind; there is a crusade. In Europe and Asia and America, there are still injustices even under our economic dispensation; there is a crusade. Cancer is dead by now; but diabetes and tuberculosis and Kruger’s disease still claim their thousands and their tens of thousands; there is a crusade.”
He was losing the mob; he felt that. They talked among themselves in huddled groups. There were no more shouts of acclaim. He lowed his voice to a pitch of intense resolution and plunged on to the heart of his offer.
“But those crusades are for the stay-at-homes, the ones that haven’t yet rebelled against this stagnant peace. You want more. You want fame and glory and wealth and excitement. You want a world to conquer. Well, it’s yours for the fighting. I promise you a world. I promise you—Mars!”
He went on hastily, before they could react away from the novel idea. “Why have our trips to Mars failed? Because only a few brave men—warriors like yourselves— dared to make them. The ships cannot carry enough fuel to return, and much of what they carry must be wasted against the cold of the Martian night. A handful of men cannot do enough work to extract the fuel we know is there.
“You are brave, you are daring, and you are no mere handful. A fleet, an armada of spaceships can carry you to Mars. Lovestonite can ease the fuel problem, not in the ship itself, but against the Martian night. Your two-meter disks will turn that night into a new day. And there, in this new outpost of man, there you can fight. You can fight the cold and the hardships. You can fight God knows what dangers of nature lurking there. You will be the bravest, the most daring, the fightinest of men.
“Man has not conquered Mars because he has been peace-loving and timorous and sheeplike. Men! Are you these things?”
There was a roar of NO! which must have drowned out the revelry in the night spots of Luna City if the airless moon could have carried sound outside the domes. Warmth flowed into Gan Garrett. The guess was working. He hastened on:
“I promised you a greater war. I also promised you a greater leader. You need him. You need the greater leader that bested Breakstone, because only he can make this new crusade real.”
He saw their eyes raised to him, and he moved his hand in a gesture of disclaimer. “No. I am not that leader. But I speak for him now. There is a great man for you to follow. Greater than Caesar and Napoleon and Hitler, and immeasurably greater than Breakstone. Greater even than the infinitely different greatness of Devarupa. Follow him. Let him lead you to triumph in the new crusade.”
He waited until there arose clamorous outcries for the new leader. Then he let his voice drop until the tuned-down speaker barely carried it, small and still, over the hushed crowd.
“That man is Man. He alone is the all-great leader. No single man, no worldconqueror, no saint, no genius of art or science, is important beside Man himself. And Man is all of you—and each of you. Look within that part of Man that is yourself, and find there that part of yourself that is Man. There is your great man, your strong leader. Follow him, and fight the crusade of Mars. Mars was the god of war. Now he leads the new war of peace!”
The balcony seemed upheld by a surging wave of jubilant noise.
“They didn’t get the last of it,” Gan Garrett said to his friends as he stepped back into S.B.’s chamber. “For them I’m the great man on the white horse. I’ve destroyed a fuehrer to become one. But they’ll learn, and meanwhile I’ve set them on the right road. We’ve a new world before us.”
Sacheverell Breakstone writhed, and grunted through the gag that was part of Garrett’s female costume.
Uranov gestured to him. “I just thought of another blessing. As a W.B.I. man, you’re arresting him?”
“Of course. He’ll get a one-way trip for Hartle.”
Uranov grinned. “Good. Now I can write the Devarupa epic without any words that he’s groped with.”
The Devarupa epic, generally accepted by now as the finest solly ever made, was released on the same day that the space armada left for Mars. Its fate, critical and commercial, did not concern its author. You don’t worry about epics on a space crew. Garrett and Maureen said good-by to him at the spaceport. “That’s why I’m not going,” Garrett said. “If I led this magnificent exhibition, if I was even on it, I’d be fixed forever as a great new fuehrer. I’m sinking back into the anonymity of a good W.B.I. agent.”
Uranov glanced at the loading of the two-meter disks. “See you soon though. And I’m the first man ever leaving for Mars who’s said that with any confidence.”
“Here,” said Maureen Garrett abruptly. She took a lovestonite figure from her recently altered identification bracelet. “Take him. He’s been pretty good luck for us by and large so far. I want him to make the first two-way trip.”
The loading was being speeded up. The crew was impatient for a new world, and for the new war of peace.
Man’s Reach
He listened carefully to the baritone’s opening phrases and after a moment jotted down the word robust on the pad in front of him. In another moment he added four letters to make it read robustious.
The voice rang big in the audition hall:
To saddle, to saddle, to spur, and away
In the gray of the glancing dawn,
When the hounds are out with a treble shout
And the whip and spur of the merry rout . . .
“A treble shout,” he reflected, would nicely characterize that last dramatic soprano. . . The baritone sang on, as big as the hall itself; and as empty. Dear God, how long was it since anyone even here on Terra had indulged in the absurdity of fox hunting, and when would concert baritones stop singing about
it?
An attendant was shoving a broom down the aisle, unperturbed by the baritone or anything else—even, apparently, by the fact that the aisle was perfectly clean. There was nothing to sweep away in front of his broom; yet oddly a scrap of paper remained behind it.
Jon Arthur was careful not to catch the attendant’s eye as he let his hand slip down and gather in the scrap. He tucked it under the pad and resolutely kept his gaze on the baritone.
The hunting song ended. The baritone paused, made an effort to adjust himself to the logical fact that there is no applause at auditions, and launched into his second number.
Jon Arthur grinned. He had won a bet with himself; he knew that so robustious a man would be bound to select Rhysling’s Jet Song. The familiar words boomed forth with that loving vigor of all baritones who have never seen deep Space.
Feel her rise! Feel her drive!
Straining steel, come alive . . .
It was safe to unfold the scrap of paper now. Arthur read the four simple words and knew that the pattern of his life was changed:
Kleinbach is at Venusberg
It was the finest rice paper, of course, and easy to swallow. Gulping, he looked at his fellow critics and wondered how many of them would vote in the election (the last election?) with one tenth of the care with which they were now considering their audition ballots. And whether, if he did not reach Kleinbach at Venusberg, it could possibly matter a damn how carefully they voted.
Jet Song was over, and it was clear from all expressions that this baritone, at any rate, would not get the scholarship to Mme. Storm’s Resident Laboratory. There was one more contestant, and Arthur grudgingly cursed the waste of even that much time before he could get started.
The girl looked like nothing much. Nobody had explained to her how unfortunate this year’s styles were for tall women. Then she began to sing.
Jon Arthur hastily consulted the audition list and noted the name Faustina Parva. He began to make a note on the pad, then let the pencil rest idle in his hand while his whole being lived in his ears.
The Compleat Boucher Page 42
