Monument (novel)

14

H. Harlow Wembling had developed the habit of looking out of one particular window of his embassy office. Now his office was in a different location—all of the embassy buildings had been moved down the slope to the construction area, where dormitories, offices, and workshops made up a small village—but in his idle moments Wembling continued to look out of the same window.

It faced on the ocean, and now the beach was crowded the way he had anticipated when he envisioned his resort—except that it was crowded with Wembling and Company’s idle work force. Men and women were cavorting in and out of the water and playing silly games, and Wembling glowered at them.

Hirus Ayns came in and seated himself. Wembling said, without turning around, “Any news?”

“About lifting the injunction, no. Otherwise, one small item. Fornri is back.”

Wembling turned.

“Narrif told me,” Ayns said. “He arrived with the marshals—he was the mysterious third passenger, and he managed to slip off the ship without being noticed. They’ve made him head of the council again.”

“Pity,” Wembling said. “I think we could have come to an agreement with Narrif, but we’ll never manage it with Fornri. He’s as smooth a scoundrel as I’ve ever met. So he came with the marshals.” He paused for a moment. Then he exclaimed, “So it was Fornri that started the legal action!”

“Right. And until the natives spend that half million credits they collected in fines, you can count on more of the same. Let’s cut to a token work force until the natives run out of money or their attorneys run out of arguments.”

Wembling shook his head. “Time is much more important than money. We’ve got to get as much work done as possible before the blowup over the treaty. If we can only work between law-suits, that’s better than no work at all. Anyway, this morning I reached an agreement with the overseers. As long as the court stops work, they’ll take half pay. They’ll still be making good wages in addition to having a glorious vacation. They hardly put up an argument. They were afraid I’d close down completely. No, I’ll keep everyone here. Did Narrif give you anything else?”

Ayns shook his head. “He’s frightened. He bought your line about the medical center. So did the others, but he led the way, and of course now they have to blame someone. There was a move to kick him off the council, but Fornri squelched it—he said if they punished everyone who made a mistake, the world would soon run out of councilors. But from now on I don’t think we’ll see much of Narrif.”

“Pity. He might have been useful.” Wembling ambled back to the window. “Right now there’s nothing we can do but wait.”

Two days later Wembling discharged most of his work force. He had received from his attorneys, the eminent firm of Khorwiss, Qwaanti, Mllo, Bylym, and Alaffro, an astute analysis of his legal position with a projection of the probable future legal actions to be expected from the natives’ attorneys. If all legal alternatives were explored, and if the natives’ money held out, they estimated that Wembling would be doing no work at all for the next six months. Wembling ordered transportation for his work force, keeping only a maintenance crew and the surveyors. The court had ruled that surveying stakes in no way permanently damaged a world. Wembling was permitted to set as many as he wished, and the natives were enjoined from interfering with them. This pleased Wembling. He could proceed with his first-stage planning, and less time would be lost than he had anticipated.

The other information he received pleased him less. Aric Hort was designated a reporting deputy marshal. Hort himself brought the information in the form of a notice from the marshals, who would be leaving shortly.

Wembling exploded. “Now I suppose I have to worry about a dirty double-crosser sending in false reports!”

“Certainly not,” Hort said with a grin. “True reports.”

The workmen left; the waiting dragged on. Finally the question of whether a vacation resort constituted a development of natural resources was resolved in Wembling’s favor. To the amazement of Wembling’s attorneys, Submaster Jarnes brought no further actions. Wembling gleefully hired a new work force, transported it to Langri, and again began tearing up meadows and forests; whereupon Jarnes struck again. Abruptly he appealed the natural resource ruling to Higher Court, and he astutely avoided having to deposit bond by pointing out that Wembling had brought in his work force before the period of appeal had expired. Higher Court merely extended the injunction previously in force, and Wembling again found himself glaring out of his office window at an entire work force cavorting in Langri’s enticing surf.

“So what do I do now?” Wembling demanded. “If I keep them here, he’ll hit me with injunction after injunction. If I send them home, he’ll wait with the next one until I bring in a new force.”

“Then keep ’em here,” Ayns said. “If time is more important than money, make him play his whole hand. Then you can get to work.”

“Well—maybe. Except that I don’t need to keep all of them here. Just enough so they’ll think they have to keep me from using them.”

Submaster Jarnes followed the suit that challenged Wembling’s right to build a resort with another that questioned his right to run the resort after it was built. Wembling lost a week’s work before Higher Court voided the injunction, dryly affirming that if Wembling wanted to exercise his legal right to construct a resort that he might not be able to use, he had the right to do so. While the courts were meditating that question, Jarnes followed with another action asking the courts to prevent Wembling and Company from destroying Langri’s natural resources through the building of a resort, and to compensate the natives for those already destroyed. Construction was halted for five weeks, and a furious Wembling had to count each tree that had been removed, and tabulate cubic meters of soil redistributed, and tons of rock dumped into the ocean, and shrubs, herbs, and meadow grass crushed, dug up, or buried, and wild life driven away, knowing as he did so that the moment he won this idiotic suit Submaster Jarnes would have another ready.

Which he did.

The weeks became months, and Wembling could only contemplate his mounting costs and wait. Finally the day came when Master Khorwiss notified him that Jarnes had no more cards to play. Further, the courts were becoming highly impatient of these well-reasoned but legally unsound requests for injunctions. Wembling enlarged the work force so he could employ double shifts the moment the last injunction was lifted.

Aric Hort brought the message, as he had so many times previously. Wembling already had been informed by way of his own communications center, and once again he grudgingly verified that Hort was just as prompt in delivering news of an injunction dissolved as he was of an injunction imposed.

“Well, that ends this farce,” Wembling said, as Hort handed him the official release. “That was the last one.”

“If you say so,” Hort remarked agreeably.

Wembling eyed him suspiciously. “What infamies are the natives concocting now?”

“I’ve told you at least a dozen times that the natives don’t confide in anyone. If they ever do decide to trust me, you’ll be the last to know it.”

Hort strolled away, and Wembling, bristling with anger, stepped to the nearest com unit and sent his work force into action.

A few minutes later he was watching with satisfaction while his gigantic machines carved Langri’s soil and masticated its forest. Suddenly one of them leaned sideways at an unlikely, rakish angle and came to an abrupt stop. Wembling charged toward it and found the operator gazing bewilderedly at the left front wheel, which was firmly lodged in a deep hole.

“Of all the stupid things to do!” Wembling bellowed.

The operator protested that he hadn’t seen the hole.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t see it. You can’t drive a machine into a hole that big without seeing it. Don’t just stand there—let’s get it out, and fast, and next time look where you’re going.”

As Wembling turned to walk away, the ground dissolved beneath him. He landed with a thud and found himself standing waist-deep in a neatly incised hole. For a moment he ignored the helping hand extended by the operator and thought deeply. The hole obviously was freshly dug, and yet no dirt could be seen nearby. He could testify that it had been artfully hidden. It was, he reflected, of a size and depth nicely calculated to entrap the wheels of his machines.

“The natives did this!” he roared.

He shook off the operator’s hand and climbed out by himself. Ayns came hurrying up, and Wembling exhibited the hole. “They must have sneaked in and done it during the night. I want the entire site ringed with lighted sentry posts.”

“We don’t have enough men,” Ayns objected.

“We’ll get enough men. I want those sentry posts operating tonight.”

He turned to watch another machine lumbering past. Abruptly he leaped toward it, screaming, “Stop!”

The machine skidded to a halt a few centimeters from a native who had sprung out of nowhere to fling himself across its path. As Wembling charged up, the operator got out and bent over the native.

“There’s nothing wrong with him,” the operator said. “He just laid down there to interfere with the work. Let me run over him and put a stop to this nonsense.”

“You fool!” Wembling bellowed. “That’s the one thing that could cost me my charter. I don’t dare harm a native, and they know it. They don’t dare harm one of you, and they know that, too. Take him over to the forest and throw him in. Next time, be on the lookout for something like this.”

He waved some workmen over, and they picked up the native and carried him away. The operator mounted his machine, and before he could get it in motion another native darted up and sprawled in front of it.

“I’m beginning not to like this job,” the operator growled.

Wembling paid no attention. He had glimpsed a peculiar movement at the edge of the forest. He raised his binoculars, and then he broke into a run. By the time he arrived, one of his machines had raised itself into the air only to fall back with a crash as a tree collapsed on top of it.

The operator babbled excitedly. “Native was in that tree. He fed a vine into the winding drum. I didn’t pay no attention—what’s a little vine to a machine that big and heavy—and then, before I could get back to shut the thing off—”

Wembling turned on his heel and walked away. He was past anger. For the remainder of the day he watched without comment while the ground repeatedly collapsed under his machines and natives persistently halted the work; and at the end of the day he expressed no surprise whatsoever when Ayns came to report seven men missing.

“The natives are playing right into our hands,” he said grimly. “This time they’ve gone much too far, and they’re not going to get away with it.”

“The men are alarmed,” Ayns said. “If we don’t light the dormitory area tonight and put a strong guard there, well lose our work force.”

“If we do, we can’t protect the construction site,” Wembling protested. “The natives’ll riddle it with holes and commit all kinds of deviltry.”

Ayns repeated firmly, “We’ll lose our work force.”

Wembling raised his arms resignedly. “All right. Set the guard around the dormitories.”

Looking out of his bedroom window, Wembling cursed the lights. They perfectly illuminated the area around the buildings, but beyond the bright swath they cut through the still Langrian night, he could see nothing at all. If the natives possessed any kind of a weapon that was effective from a distance, they would be helpless.

Seven of his men had disappeared without a trace. Each of them had been working alone near the edge of the forest, and in a matter of seconds he had vanished.

“Probably overpowered by a mob and carried off,” Ayns said, but it made no difference whether it had been done by a mob or by sorcery. The entire work force was in a panic. Wembling had said the natives wouldn’t dare, and they had dared. Probably they thought they had nothing to lose, and as far as Wembling could figure out, they were right. He dared not attempt any kind of retaliation.

Work procedures would have to be revised. In the future his men would have to work in groups, with the site guarded both day and night. The additional expense could be written off, but it would slow the work.

Abruptly the night erupted. Shouts, screams, the hellish thud, thud, thud of native drums, the deep honks of their signal gourds, all blended into a horrifying cacophony. Wembling raced to his door and looked out. Something enormous crashed and thudded across the construction site, and he took one glance at the monstrous, looming, shadowy form that suddenly roared into the circle of light and fled toward the rear of the building. It struck with a hollow, popping sound that made his ears ring, accompanied by a splintering crash. It was followed by another, and still another, and the fourth struck Wembling’s office and skidded it sideways into the next building.

Silence rushed in for a moment, and then the shouts and curses of the work force rent the night. Wembling crawled out from under a table, shakily confirmed that he had no bones broken, and went to assess the damage.

Ayns, with several of the sentries, was outside studying the remains of the object that had struck the office. “The natives rolled some of those silly gourds down the slope,” he said. Then he exclaimed sharply, “What’s that?”

The sentries hauled a squirming figure from the slimy pulp. It was one of the missing men. Fumbling distastefully, they found another. Other sentries were performing similar rescues from the slimy remains of the other gourds.

“Are they all right?” Wembling demanded.

“We don’t know yet,” Ayns answered.

They had been bound and gagged and stuffed into the large gourds with protective small gourd helmets on their heads. Not only did they show no gratitude for their release, but they were, all of them, thunderingly angry—not at the natives, but at Wembling. While they flexed cramped limbs and stomped feeling into numbed feet, they poured torrents of abuse on Wembling and Company and all of its works.

“Now just a moment,” Wembling said. “Maybe you had a rough time, but you don’t seem any the worse for it, and I don’t have to stand for that. Report in the morning for disciplinary action.”

“I’ll report in the morning for transportation,” a worker snapped. “I quit.”

“Now wait—”

“So do I,” another said.

The onlookers shouted in chorus, “We all quit!” and sent up a cheer. Wembling turned and went back to his office. It had been pushed down a slope, and it stood at a crazy angle.

“I want this back on its foundation as soon as it’s light,” Wembling told Ayns, who had followed him. He grabbed a towel and began wiping the gourd pulp from his hands.

“I think they meant it about quitting,” Ayns said. “What do we do now—issue weapons?”

“You know we don’t dare. One injured native, and our friend the deputy marshal will turn in a report that’ll cost us our charter. On the other hand, it’s no concern of ours if someone else injures a native.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Space Navy. We’re citizens of the Federation. Our lives and property are threatened and our lawful endeavors have been interfered with. We’re entitled to protection.”

Ayns gave Wembling one of his rare smiles. “Now that you mention it, I’m sure that we are.”

Wembling thumped on the sloping top of his desk. “H. Harlow Wembling has enough influence to get what he’s entitled to.”