The Complete LaNague

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Word of something like that gets around,” Jo assured him, “especially since this isn’t exactly a one-man operation.”

  Haas’s head snapped around. “What do you mean by that? This is my creation! Mine! From the first diagram to the working model – mine!”

  “And financed entirely by you, of course.”

  “What do you know about my financing?” Haas asked in clipped tones.

  “Not much. But outside financing causes outside talk, and I keep myself informed on any talk about innovative devices.”

  “I’ll bet you do.”

  “It’s my job. And because it’s my job, I’ve traveled all the way from Ragna to try and convince you that you need IBA. Your device has good potential, but we can make sure you get the most out of it.”

  “‘Good potential,’ you say?” he said mockingly with what he probably thought was a sly smile. “It has excellent – it has astounding potential! So what makes you think I need any help at all from IBA?”

  “Because you’re going to market too soon.”

  “That is a matter of opinion, Miss Finch.”

  “It’s fact, I’m afraid. Your gate has the potential for use inside a planet’s gravity well, but you haven’t perfected that aspect yet, and it’s that–”

  Haas slammed his fist down on his desk and shot to his feet. “How do you know all this! How can you! It’s all secret! No one’s supposed to know!”

  A thought drifted through Jo’s mind, like a small winged thing banking off an updraft: What a naïve little man. But she refused to allow herself to be drawn from the matter at hand.

  “When are you planning to introduce the gate on the market, Mr. Haas? Within one standard year, am I correct?”

  Haas nodded, amazed that this young woman could know so much about his affairs.

  “And when will the intra-gravity well capability be perfected?”

  Haas seated himself again. “Five standards or so,” he said hoarsely.

  “Well, then. My advice is to wait. It will be extremely difficult to generate much interest in the gate as it stands. You must remember that every interstellar freighter currently in use is equipped with its own on-board warper. These ships have absolutely no use for a warp gate stationed at the critical point in the gravity well; it does little for them that they can’t do themselves. The big companies might purchase a few for high traffic use along the major trade lanes, but the smaller companies are going to be hard-pressed to meet what I assume will be a very steep price. In brief, Mr. Hass: without the intra-gravity well capability, your warp gate will never get off the ground.”

  Haas snorted. “We’ve already considered all that and dismissed it. There will be an initial flood of orders, no question about it. And when that comes in, we’ll be able to produce subsequent gates at reduced cost due to increased production scale.” Clasping his hands behind his neck, he leaned back in his chair with a what-do-you-think-of-that? look on his face. “You see? We’ve taken everything into account.”

  “Have you? What about Star Ways?”

  “What about it?”

  “Competition. You don’t–”

  Haas’s burst of harsh laughter cut Jo off. “Competition! The gate is unique! There is no competition.”

  “If you’d let me finish what I was about to say,” Jo snapped with thinning patience, “you might learn something. You don’t think that SW is going to sit still and let you make its primary product obsolete, do you? It’s going to cut its prices on the on-board warper and it’s going to keep those prices down – way down – until you fold. And when you go out of business, SW will come and lease the rights to the warp gate from you and sell it for you. The royalties you’ll receive in return will net you enough money to buy a small planet, but your company will be gone.” Her voice softened. “IBA can prevent that from happening. Or if not, we’ll at least give that big conglomerate a battle the likes of which it’s never seen.”

  “No,” Haas said in an intense, low voice as he leaned for rested his arms on the desk. “That will never happen. Star Ways will never get the rights to the gate because I own them completely! And I’ll never sell or lease or rent or trade no matter what the price. It’s not the money any more…” His eyes seemed to glaze, and though he was looking in Jo’s direction wasn’t seeing her. “It’s something more than that. The warp gate is my life. I’ve worked on nothing else for as long as I can remember. Only recently have I been able to devote my full time to it, but its always been with me. I’ve worked as an engineer, a designer, even a technician when times weren’t so good, but I’ve always come home to the gate. It’s part of me now. I would no sooner lease the gate to another company than I would lease my right arm to another man. The Haas Company will only lease the rights from me; and if the Haas Company can’t sell the gate, no one else will. That I promise you.”

  Silence in the room. Jo frowned and wondered if deBloise and his associates were aware of Haas’s monomania. She could see nothing but financial ruin ahead.

  Old Pete’s thoughts ran along a different path. He’d been silent since they’d entered the room, watching and admiring the way she handled herself. He’d also been studying Haas and had been moved by the little man’s disturbed and revealing statements. A little old man – younger than Pete, yes, but still old – with a dream. His body and perhaps his mind, were becoming unreliable vehicles, but still he drove them toward that dream. A dream! For a person in his or her second or third decade it would be called a dream; for someone Denver Haas’s age, it would no doubt be termed an obsession.

  Old Pete finally broke the silence. “I wonder what your backers would say if they learned of your attitude.”

  “They know all about it,” Haas replied. “I’ve always leveled with potential backers.” A thin smile briefly straightened the habitual downward curve of his lips. “That’s why backers have been a rare species for me. But these fellows – they’re with me 100 per cent.”

  Jo was stunned by the statement. It didn’t make sense. “They know, and they’re still with you?”

  Haas nodded.

  “Would you mind telling us the names of your backers?” Old Pete asked.

  “Not at all. Be glad to tell you if I knew, but I don’t. Oh, I could tell you the names they gave me, but I know they’re fronts. For some reason, they wish to remain anonymous – strange, but none of my concern, really. I’ve searched long and hard to find men with vision such as these. We’re in complete accord and everything is legal, so I couldn’t care less if they want to remain anonymous.”

  “They know you want to put the gate on the market as is?” Jo repeated, bafflement wrinkling her forehead.

  “Know? They not only know, they’ve encouraged me to move as quickly as possible. They see no reason to let the gate languish in its present state when it could be earning a good return on their investment while I perfect the modifications.” He rose. “And now I must get back to my work. But I do want to thank you both for stopping in: I’ve always had the utmost confidence in the gate, but you’ve managed to boost it even higher.”

  “That wasn’t our intention, I assure you,” Jo said.

  “Well, that’s the net effect, no matter what you intended. I was shocked at first by how much you knew about the gate, but then I realized that IBA has far-reaching contacts. The fact that you’re interested enough in the gate to come this far in person in order to get in on the kill, that’s proof enough for me that its success is guaranteed. Everybody knows that IBA rarely takes on losers.”

  Jo wanted to say that most of her clients were losers before seeking out IBA’s help, but realized the futility of further talk. IBA could have done a lot for him, but under no circumstances could she work with a man like Denver Haas. Shrugging, she rose to her feet and turned toward the door.

  “Oh, and there’s one little factor you completely neglected in your assessment of the gate’s chances on the market,” Haas said in a gloating tone.

  Jo thre
w him a questioning glance.

  “Military contracts! You forgot all about the military possibilities of the gate! It’s perfect for supply and personnel transport on a large scale. He smiled expansively. “Yes, I don’t think there’ll be any problem in getting those initial orders. We’ll just sit back and let them roll in.”

  “Good day, Mr. Haas,” Jo said, continuing toward the door. “And good luck.”

  Old Pete followed he out, shaking his head sadly.

  PREOCCUPIED SILENCE FILLED the rented flitter as they headed back to the spaceport. Neither of them noticed a man leave the Haas warehouse after them and enter his own flitter. He was not far behind when they docked their craft in the rental drop-off zone.

  “Well,” said Old Pete as they entered a lounge alcove to await seats on a shuttle up to their orbiting ship, “I certainly don’t know what to make of it.”

  “I’m in a daze myself,” Jo replied. “Especially after his parting shot: military contracts! The man’s mad!”

  “Obsessed, maybe. But not mad. At least not completely.”

  “But military contracts! The Federation Defense Force will, I’m sure, be glad to know that such a thing as the warp gate is available, but the prospects of a big order are nil.”

  “I doubt if the DF will buy a single unit.”

  “Why do people like Haas allow themselves to get involved in the business end of things?” Jo mused. “He’s unquestionably a brilliant designer and theorist – the existence of the gate proves that – but he has no idea of the economic forces against him in the market. We could do a lot for him, you know. Right now I’ve got a good half-dozen ideas that could possibly get him through the first few years until he worked out the necessary modifications. But as it stands now, SW will wipe him out in no time and deBloise and his crew will lose all their money.”

  Old Pete grunted. “That’s what bothers me: deBloise throwing away a fortune. I’ve never met that man, Josephine, but I know him. I know him as well as his mother, his father, and his wife know him. I probably know some things about him that even he doesn’t know. And one thing’s certain: he’s not a fool. He’s crafty, he covers all exits, and his involvement in this fiasco-to-be is totally out of character.”

  “Which leaves us with only one possible conclusion,” Jo said, glancing at a man leaning against a wall outside the lounge area. It almost seemed as if he were watching them.

  “I know,” Old Pete replied in a breathy voice. “DeBloise knows something we don’t. And that bothers me.”

  Jo dismissed the watcher as just another bored traveler; this conspiracy talk must be getting to her. “What bothers me more is the thought that the warp gate could be lost to us. I mean, what if Haas’s company folds and he really does decide to withhold the gate from sale or lease or whatever. That could be tragic.”

  Old Pete shrugged. “Tragic, yes. But he’d be perfectly within his rights. According to Andy, the patents are good for at least another couple of decades. The human race would just have to wait it out.”

  The signal for their shuttle flight flashed and they rode the belt out onto the field. The man who had been standing across from the lounge area went up to the observation deck and watched them enter the shuttle. Only after the craft was airborne did he go below.

  He headed directly for the row of subspace transmission booths that are a feature at every spaceport. Entering the first booth, he sealed himself in, opaqued the glass, and began to transmit an urgent message to Fed Central.

  deBloise

  THE BARROOM WAS DONE entirely in wood, something you didn’t see much any more on Fed Central. But this section of the club had originally been a tavern in the Imperium days and had been preserved in the original state. The bar itself was the same one patrons had leaned on nearly three centuries ago when the place had been called the White Hart, its solid keerni wood preserved under a clear, thick, high-gloss coating through which an idle drinker could still make out doodles and initials scratched into the original finish.

  It belonged now to the Sentinel Club, the oldest, most respected, most exclusive club in the outworlds. Membership was strictly male, and restricted to those who had managed to achieve status in the financial, political, and artistic spheres. Elson deBloise reveled in such a rarefied atmosphere, felt a real sense of place and purpose here. He belonged here. There was no comparable establishment on his homeworld where a man of his breeding and wealthy heritage could be among his peers.

  He was not among his peers at the moment, however. The hour was a shade early and he was alone at the bar, hunched over a delicate glassful of Derbian orchid wine. The green-tinged fluid was a little too sweet for his taste but was all the rage on Fed Central these days, so he ordered it whenever he was out. Had to keep up with the times, be as modern as the next man, if not more so. Talk about tomorrow, never about the old days.

  Because nobody around here thought of the old days as good. LaNague had seen to that: his revolution had changed more than the power structure; it had reached into the hearts and minds of his contemporaries and caused a fundamental alteration in the way they viewed their society. Today, generations later, outworld thinking was still influenced by the lesson of that revolution. So a conservative image had to be avoided at all costs.

  “Restructurist” was much preferred as a label. It was neutral in emotional tone and had a certain progressive ring to it. After all, that’s what they intended to do – restructure the Federation. DeBloise smiled to himself. Restructure? They were going to turn it upside down and twist it around.

  He continued to smile. It was fitting in a way that he should be sitting here in this converted tavern plotting the scrapping of the LaNague Charter. It was said that Peter LaNague and Den Broohnin had spent many an evening in this very room when it was called the White Hart as they conspired to bring down the Metep Imperium nearly three centuries ago.

  And what a conspiracy that had been! Despite the fact that deBloise publicly minimized LaNague’s contribution to the revolution, despite the fact that the Restructurist movement had for years been engaged in a clandestine campaign to discredit the bizarre society that had spawned LaNague, thereby discrediting the man himself. Despite the fact that the man’s ingenious wording of the charter had frustrated Restructurists for generations, he had to grant LaNague grudging admiration. His conspiracy had reached into every level of Imperial society, had stretched from the deepest galactic probe to Earth itself. Utterly masterful!

  DeBloise felt he could be generous in his praise. After all, he was the engineer of a conspiracy of his own. True, it didn’t have the breadth and depth of LaNague’s, and its flashpoint would be nowhere near as brilliant and dramatic, but its outcome would eventually prove to be as crucial to the course of human history. The Haas warp gate provided the key. And when that key was turned, there would be furious protests in some quarters, but nothing that could not be soothed by promises that the invocation of the emergency clause in the charter was merely temporary. All would soon return to normal just as soon as we get this one little matter settled, they would say.

  But things would never be the same. A single instance of forceful intervention in the interstellar economy by the Federation was all that was necessary; thereafter, the power of the charter to restrain the Restructurists would be effectively broken. In a few standard years, the charter would be a revered but vestigial document and the Federation would be under Restructurist control.

  He could almost picture himself on the high presidential dais after the next Assembly elections. He deserved that seat. He’d worked for it. It had taken many years of searching and planning to find the right issue – volatile enough to energize the Assembly, and yet still manageable as to timing and discretion concerning his involvement. Only he had seen the political potential of Haas’s invention; only he had possessed the influence over his fellow Restructurists to convince them to go along with his plan.

  Yes, he deserved the presidential seat. And he’d make go
od use of it once it was his. All economic activity – and thereby all human activity – within the Federation would come under his supervision. Bringing the larger corporations and trade services to heel would be no easy matter but it could be done. First he’d start singling out oddball planets like Flint and Tolive and bring them into line through trade sanctions – they’d never willingly accept a Restructurist-dominated Federation. The corporations would naturally protest since they didn’t like anyone to close a market to them. When they did, he’d bring the full weight of a bolstered Federation Defense Force against them. And when they tried to bribe him – as he knew they eventually must – he would righteously expose them as the moneygrubbing leeches they were.

  And soon… soon humanity would shape itself into a cohesive unit, soon there would be true harmony and equality among the planets, each sharing in the bounties of the others, soon there would begin a new Golden Age for humanity, a Golden Age designed and administered by Elson deBloise.

  LaNague had had an opportunity to take a similar course three centuries ago; he’d held the outworlds in the palm of his hand but had refused to grasp them. Instead, he presented them with his charter and hurled them free. Such an act remained far beyond deBloise’s comprehension. The human race needed someone to guide it and oversee its course. The great mass of humanity had no thought of destiny. Too many individuals expended their energies in chase of puny, shortsighted goals. They all needed direction – and deBloise was convinced he could provide it.

  There would, of course, be those who’d insist on choosing their own course and the rest of humanity be damned. There would always be self-styled individuals who’d selfishly insist on pursuing their own personal values. These would have to be discouraged or weeded out from the vast body of the human race.

  He’d also have to contend with that other breed of nay-sayer: the ones who would point to history and say that economies and societies controlled from the top have never succeeded; that the impetus for a society must come from within, not from above.