“Are you from Percy X?” she asked. Her heart labored.
“I’m private,” the ancient cab informed her tinnily. “Not part of a fleet, like you have up North. I do what I like. For twenty UN dollars I’ll convey you to the Neeg-parts. I’ve been following you, miss; I knew that creep of a wik ship would dump you off.”
“Are you safe to ride in?” She felt dubious.
“Sure. I own a very good Tom mechanic; I bought him with fares I saved up.” The cab added quickly, “It’s legal for a class-one homeostatic mechanism to own a Tom; since the war, anyhow. Only most machines are too stupid to make such a major investment. Get within, miss.”
She clambered in. The cab loaded her gear into its luggage compartment with many alarming creaks and clankings. Joan zipped up her coveralls and, as the cab ascended, adjusted her makeup in anticipation of her first meeting with the leader of Earth’s last remaining resistance forces.
“Listen, don’t be apprehensive,” the cab said. “I ferry people to the hills all the time. I’ve got a monopoly; nobody else does it. That’s how I earn a buck. I can’t compete on the regular runs; I mean, I sort of smell bad, if you know what I mean. Some guy, when I was ferrying him, he said I smell like cat wee. Do you think so, or was he just trying to make me feel inferior?”
“He was trying,” Joan lied, “to undermine your self-respect. For neurotic reasons of his own.”
“I generally carry Neegs who want to join Percy X; they come from all over North America. From all over the world, in fact. But you’re white; I mean, anyhow, you aren’t colored in the true sense of the word. Watch out for Percy’s bodyguards, especially the man they call Lincoln, that he doesn’t shoot you before you get a chance to open your mouth. I see you have recording gear, there.”
“I’m going to try to record some of the Neeg-parts’ music.”
“You’re in the music business? Sing a jazz tune for me. To pass the time.”
Joan said, “I don’t sing.”
“You know How High the Moon?”
She grunted in affirmation.
“That’s my favorite melody,” the cab continued. “Remember how June Christy, back in 1950, used to sing it?” It hummed the tune as it flew toward the burgeoning hills. At last the hills lay directly below. The cab, breaking off its humming, said, “Let’s have the twenty UN dollars now. Before they kill you.” Its voice had suddenly become hard.
As she placed the bills in the proper slot the cab descended in nausea-producing close spirals.
“My whole decent circuit is gummed up,” it explained as it thumped onto the rough ground, bounced, at last came to a shuddering halt. “Sorry. I’ll give you back a dollar if you feel—”
“Keep it,” Joan said. And, opening the door manually, stepped out.
Wearing brown khaki uniforms, boots, with automatic side-arms, two Neeg-parts confronted her, both young and tough-looking. The cab hurriedly lurched into the air after first unloading, with frantic haste, her recording gear; it headed back in the direction from which it had come.
“Look at this,” one of the Neegs said conversationally to the other. “A lily-skinner. What do you know about that.”
“Isn’t she cute,” said the second, leering.
“You like to make the scene, baby?” the first asked.
His companion gave him a contemptuous shove. “You’ll get some white-man’s disease from her, man. That’s for sure.”
Joan said, “Can you take me to Percy X?”
They continued to talk to each other as if she had not spoken. “Well, what good is this white wik gal anyway?”
“She brought us some presents. Look at all that expensive electronic stuff.” Both men bent to examine it. “Ought to be able to do something with that.”
“But the girl, we can’t do nothin’ with her.” The man spoke to Joan directly. “I’m sorry, baby, but you can’t have no last meal or blindfold or nothin’. We too busy for any of that crung.”
Speechless, terrified, Joan watched the man raise his laser rifle to his shoulder and aim it point-blank at her forehead while his companion chanted mockingly, “This is it, baby; this is it.”
When Gus Swenesgard regained consciousness, the first sight that materialized before his clouded eyes was the snout, lizard eyes and worm-face of a Gany. Marshal Koli; he recognized him. It’s got to be a nightmare, Gus thought groggily, rubbing his forehead and squinting.
But it wasn’t.
Looking around, Gus discovered that he lay near the hole which he and his turncoat crew of rascally Toms had dug. Night had come; a sliver of moon cast just enough light to make the swarm of attendant creatures around Koli look even more like a bad dream. How’d they get me back up to the surface? he wondered. I guess they can do anything, he decided bleakly. That’s why they won; that’s why they’re here.
“I’m not sorry for you, Mister Swenesgard,” Koli said in a hissing, cold voice. “Do you know something, sir? You’re finished. It would have been better for you if you had died in that cave as your foreman did. It is perfectly obvious what you anticipated doing. You have been, in direct opposition to the legal decrees of the Occupation Authority, searching for buried weapon-caches left by the defeated forces of your UN troops.”
“No,” Gus said thickly. “It wasn’t weapons; I wasn’t looking for weapons.” He managed to sit up.
“Then what was it?” The voice bored at him, full of harshness.
Briefly, he thought of telling the worm. But he would never be believed. “Never mind,” he said miserably. “But on my mother’s honor I wouldn’t use weapons against you people.”
“Whatever you may have intended,” Marshal Koli snapped, “the weapons are now in the hands of the Neeg-parts. If they have been troublesome before, now they will be unbearable. You and that Joan Hiashi—you’re both rebels. Therefore we will kill you both. And of course right away.” With his tongue Marshal Koli gave a signal; a huge, seemingly mindless creech grasped Gus in an unbreakable grip and began shoving him roughly toward the Gany’s parked ship.
A moment later, inside the ship, Gus found himself pushed unceremoniously into an overstuffed Terran chair which the Gany had from somewhere appropriated.
He found himself sweating. But he had not given up; he dragged out his vast cotton bandanna handkerchief and shakily mopped his balding head. “You don’t understand, Koli. I wasn’t going to tell you, but I have—or I guess had—a military campaign in mind against the Neeg-parts. I was diggin’ out those trick gadgets to use against Percy X. It’s the truth, on my mother’s honor. In fact, I was going to personally nail Percy for you, once and for all. You all don’t know who your friends are.”
“I thought,” Koli said bitingly, “that Miss Hiashi was our friend. But she destroyed contact-relations with us and has, no doubt, gone over to the Neegs by now. Taking with her valuable information about our operations in this area.”
“That Jap girl, that Hiashi; she was working for you?” He stalled for time, trying to say something; his mind worked furiously. Out of the corner of his eye he could see three of the creeches putting in order some variety of machine. He had a suspicion, intense and immediate, that he knew what it did; he had seen pictures of such devices. The worms used it for skinning a man alive, slowly so as to preserve the skin. Once more he wiped the sweat from his face and thought, Soon my hands will be secured and I won’t even be able to wipe. And after a while I’ll be another skin—pelt, they call it—in Koli’s famous collection. “You don’t want me,” he said aloud, as the creeches wheeled the machine over to him. “I’m just small potatoes. You all want Percy right? He’s the Neeg; he’s really giving you all trouble.”
“If I can’t have him,” Koli said coldly, “I’ll just have to make do with you.” He gestured with his tongue for the creeches to hold Gus down.
“Wait,” Gus said hoarsely. “You don’t have to settle for me. You can have Percy X himself.” He hesitated. “I can lead you right to him.”
The Gany general signaled his creeches to let Gus go. At least for the moment. “How do you expect to do that?”
“When that Jap gal was in the hotel I took the liberty of patting her sweet little head.”
“I’m not interested in your sexual depravity, Mister Swenesgard.”
“But listen,” Gus said. “I planted a little bitty microminiaturized transmitter in her hair; that’s what I did.”
After an interval Marshal Koli began once again to visualize the beautiful pelt of Percy X; he perceived its appearance on the wall of his Ganymedian villa. “Let the fool go,” Koli said to his creeches.
On his unmade bed, in his hotel room in Gus Swenesgard’s none too luxurious tourist palace, Dr. Paul Rivers sat and sweated. In theory, when the sun went down it was supposed to get colder, particularly in autumn. In fact, however, it had gotten hotter.
Getting up, he moved to the window to stare moodily in the direction of the distant mountains. Somewhere out there could be found Percy X, the last symbol of man’s greatness. And with him—the wik spy, Joan Hiashi. If only I could warn him, he reflected. If only there existed some way by which I could reach him. Reaching, he opened the window, as if this might help. But all it did was make more audible the tireless crickets and bring to his nostrils the smell of damp stagnation that hung over the little Southern town. It was, he realized, just as hot and muggy outside as inside.
Somewhere a far-off radio or TV set played tinnily.
The sound nudged an obscure piece of memory in his mind. Wasn’t Percy X a telepath? Yes, according to the records Paul had been shown during his briefing Percy X had graduated with honors from one of the Psychedelic research schools. This meant that he could be reached, no matter where he was…but only, unfortunately, by another telepath. And Paul Rivers did not possess that talent.
On the other hand…
Quickly he put through a vidphone call to the central offices of his employer, the World Psychiatric Association. Shortly he found himself connected with Dr. Ed Newkom, one of the planet’s top authorities on communication.
“This is top priority, Ed,” he informed Newkom. “I want the loan of a thought amplifier for a week or two.” Sometimes, with luck, the device invented by Newkom could effectively double as an artificial telepathic booster—for a limited range, anyhow. “I can’t come and get it; you’ll have to fly it down here.” He told Newkom, tersely, where he was.
“I don’t trust any of the commercial transport systems,” Ed Newkom said. He hesitated. “I’ll—bring the thing down to you personally. With any kind of luck I’ll be with you by morning.”
“Thanks, Ed.” He felt relief. “The Association will pick up the tab on this.”
“This one is on me,” Ed Newkom said. “Ever since reading your paper on propagation of group psychosis I’ve wanted to see how you operate. I’m charging this trip up to education.”
After ringing off, Paul Rivers reseated himself on the bed, this time with a feeling of satisfaction. I can’t leave here, he said to himself grimly, but with any kind of luck my thoughts can!
Mekkis gazed out the window of the main passenger lounge of the ship at the planet Earth, which now grew larger by the minute. There it is, he breathed. My bale. Tennessee.
Actually he could not clearly see it, since the globe had become partially hidden behind cloud-formations. But imagination filled in what the eye could not see.
He ordered another drink and, before lapping it, said to his creeches, “A toast, as they say on Earth. A toast to the new emperor of Tennessee, Percy X.”
“A toast,” echoed the creeches. But only Mekkis drank.
V
JOAN HIASHI sat with her back against the wall of the cave, studying the features of the huge black man who crouched near her frying fish in a skillet over a small electric heating unit.
“Percy?” she said softly.
“Yes.” The Neeg-part leader did not look at her; he concentrated on what he held in his hand.
“Why did you stop that man from shooting me?”
“A thousand reasons and none,” Percy said gruffly. “You and I studied Buddhism together; Buddha taught us not to harm any living being. Christ said the same thing. All those pacifist bastards agreed on it, so who am I to argue with them?”
The bitter irony in his voice—she did not remember it from the days when they had both been studying to be ministers, each in his own faith. He had changed. Of course. And she had, too.
“I know it isn’t that simple now,” Percy added, turning the fish over “We live in a universe of murderers. You can’t keep out of it, stay neutral, wait for the next world; they won’t let you, baby.”
“I know what you must have gone through,” she began. But Percy broke in harshly.
“You do? You don’t know a damn thing about me. But I know all about you; I know all the worms you’ve kissed. I know all the lies you’ve told—I knew when you first started out to come here, to trap me for the Gany military governor. Your mind is like a clear mountain stream to me. That’s my curse, baby; I can see it all. Nobody can lie to me.”
“If you know,” she said carefully, “then you know why I did what I did. You know I had to do it. So you can forgive me.”
“Sure, I forgive you. For everything. Not quite; except for one thing. That I can’t forgive.”
“What’s that?”
“For you being alive, baby,” he said, still not looking at her.
After they had eaten they made love, there in the soft sand on the floor of the cave. Joan thought, as she lay breathing deeply, afterward, that it had been good to make love to a man who hadn’t crawled to anyone. She had forgotten what it felt like. “Is this what I really came here for, subconsciously?” she asked him as she toyed with his stiff, wire-like hair.
“I don’t know. I can read you but I can’t make excuses for you.”
She pulled away from him with a jerk, feeling hurt and puzzled.
“What’s the matter, wik girl?” he growled. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to love your enemies?”
“Stop throwing religion at my head.” She thought, now, how fine Percy would look on TV, what a great show she could build around him—if she could get back into favor with the Gany Bureau of Cultural Control. Then, abruptly, she realized that Percy was looking into her mind and seeing these thoughts, and she felt a moment of panic. How do you not think something? Just the effort of trying not to think it brings it more strongly into your mind!
“Once a wik, always a wik; right?” he said to her, fixing her with an unblinking stare.
“No, that’s not true.”
“Don’t lie to me.” He leaped to his feet, stood huge and black and dangerous as a bull in the ring, then began pacing restlessly back and forth, speaking in an intense monotone, now and then stopping to wave his arms, point a quivering finger, grimace savagely or shake his fist. “What’s the word ‘Neeg’ mean, wik girl? Is it a race or is it a religion?”
“A race.”
“It’s a religion, like being a Jew. Being white; that’s also a religion. I can tell you in just one word what the white religion is.”
“What?” Joan said guardedly.
“Hypocrisy.” There was a long silence while Percy waited for this to sink in. Or perhaps he waited for a reply. But she said nothing. “What’s the matter, wik girl?” he demanded. “Don’t you know how to talk? Are you just going to sit there and take it when I call you a hypocrite?” Bending, he picked up his rocket dart pistol from the floor of the cave and leveled it at Joan’s head.
“You’d kill me, just like that?”
“I saved your life; now it’s mine, to do with as I please.”
“I didn’t come here to do you any harm. I just wanted to collect folksongs for—”
“I don’t know any songs,” Percy said curtly.
“Maybe it would help your movement if I broadcast some of your music on my show.”
“I told you I
don’t know any songs!” He waved his rocket dart pistol in emphasis. “I’ve seen your show, and you know what I think of it?” He spat in the dust. “It’s white jazz you play and that’s the same thing as nothing—meaningless noise, a big fake. You, don’t believe in what you play, do you? You have nothing but contempt for the people who like it and contempt for yourself for playing it.”
“It’s a living,” she said tightly.
“I don’t know why I don’t shoot you; I’d be doing you a favor. God, I’d rather be dead than a gutless white jellyfish like you.” But he did not shoot, and she knew why. He had begun to enjoy tormenting her, searching with his telepathic ability through all the hidden parts of her mind, the places she herself never ventured into. “I think it’s gratitude, that’s what it is; I’m pathetically grateful to you for all you’ve done for my people, down through the ages—you’ve kept my people out of your world, kept them from becoming like you. Thank you, wik white girl; thank you. Thank—”
“Will you cut it out?” she snapped, angry at last.
“Backtalk? So there is some spirit in you. Maybe you’ve got a little Neeg blood in you. Listen; I think there’s hope for you, white wik girl. I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to let you join me. I’m going to give you a chance to quit lying, get up off your belly and be an authentic human being. What do you say?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“That’s just it; you don’t know. But I’m willing to teach you; I’m willing to spend my priceless time and patience working with you on the remote chance there might be some trace of real color hidden away in all that white mush you call your ‘personality.’ Listen; I know how you got brought up—don’t you think I know what your people have done to you? I know how they had you fixed, like their dogs and cats; I know how they taught you to say ‘thank you’ when someone with money, occupation script or UN bills, steps on your face. I know how rotten you feel inside, empty and impotent and helpless. No wonder you need to pile up so much money to make people pretend to like you; no wonder you need all that fame to prove to yourself that you exist. Listen; I’m going to put a gun into your hands and give you a chance to kill a few of those white crunks that did this to you.” Abruptly he thrust his gun butt first into her hand, stood back and grinned.
The Ganymede Takeover Page 4
