Skylark DuQuesne

17. Ky-El MOKAK THE WILDER

THE first thing Seaton and Crane had to do, of course, was to figure out how to get back somewhere near Galaxy DW-427-LU, within fourth-order range of that one particular extremely powerful Chloran system, without using enough sixth-order stuff to touch off any alarms — but still enough to make the trip in days instead of in months.

Some sixth-order emanations could be neutralized by properly phased and properly placed counter-generators; the big question being, how much?

The answer turned out to be, according to Crane, “Not enough” — but, according to Seaton, “Satisfactory”. At least, it did make the trip not only possible, but feasible. And during the days of that trip each Skylarker worked — with the Brain or with a computer or with pencil and paper or with paint or India ink and a brush, each according to his bent — on the problem of what could be done about the Chlorans.

They made little headway, if any at all. They did not have enough data. Inescapably, the attitude of each was very strongly affected by what he or she knew about the Chlorans they had already encountered. They were all smart enough to know that this was as indefensible as it was inevitable.

Thus, while each of them developed a picture completely unlike anyone else’s as to what the truth probably was, none of them was convinced enough of the validity of his theory to defend it vigorously. Thus it was discussion, not argument, that went on throughout the cautious approach to the forbidden territory and the ultra-cautious investigation of the Tellus-type planet the Brain had selected through powerful optical telescopes and by means of third and fourth-order apparatus. Then they fell silent, appalled; for that world was inhabited by highly intelligent human beings and what had been done to it was shocking indeed.

They had seen what had been done to the planet Valeron. This was worse; much worse. On Valeron the ruins had been recognizable as having once been cities. Even those that had been blown up or slagged down by nuclear energies had shown traces of what they had once been. There had been remnants and fragments of structural members, unfused portions of the largest buildings, recognizable outlines and traces of thoroughfares and so on. But here, where all of the big cities and three-fourths or more of the medium-sized ones had been, there were now only huge sheets of glass.

Sheets of glass ranging in area from ten or fifteen square miles up to several thousands of square miles, and variously from dozens up to hundreds of feet thick; level sheets of cracked and shattered, almost transparent, vari-colored glass. The people of the remaining cities and towns and villages were human. In fact, they were white Caucasians, as white and as Caucasian as the citizens of Tampa or of Chicago or of Portland, Oregon or of Portland, Maine. Neither Seaton nor Shiro, search as they would, could find any evidence that any Oriental types then lived or ever had lived on that world — to Shiro’s lasting regret. He, at least, was eliminated as a spy.

“Well, Dottie?” Seaton asked.

She gnawed her lip. “Well… I suppose we’ll have to do something — but hey!” she exclaimed, voice and expression changing markedly. “How come you think you have to go down there at all to find out what the score is? You’ve snatched people right and left all over the place with ordinary beams and things, long before anybody ever heard of that sixth-order, fourth-dimensional gizmo.”

Seaton actually blushed. “That’s right, my pet,” he admitted. “Once again you’ve got a point. I’ll pick one out that’s so far away from everybody else that he won’t be missed for a while. Maybe two’d be better.”

Since it was an easy matter to find isolated specimens of the humanity of that world, it was less than an hour later that two men — one from a town, one found wandering alone in the mountains — were being examined by the Brain.

And what an examination! Everything in their minds — literally everything, down to the last-least-tiniest coded “bit” of every long-chain proteinoid molecule of every convolution of their brains — everything was being transferred to the Valeron’s Great Brain; was being filed away in its practically unfillable memory banks.

When the transfer was complete, Sitar drew her pistol, very evidently intending to do away with the natives then and there. But Dorothy of course would not stand for that.

Instead, she herself put them back into a shell of force and ran them through the Valeron’s locks and down into a mountain cave, which she then half-filled with food. “I’d advise you two,” she told them then, in their own language, “to stay put here for a few days and keep out of trouble. If you really want to get yourselves killed, though, that’s all right with me. Go ahead any time.”

When Dorothy brought her attention back into the control room, the Brain had finished its analysis of the data it had just secured from the natives, had correlated it with all their pertinent data it had in its banks, and was beginning to put out its synthesized report.

That report came in thought; in diamond-sharp, diamond-clear thought that was not only super-intelligible and super-audible, but also was more starkly visible than any possible tri-di. It gave, as no possible other form of report could give, the entire history of the race to which those two men belonged. It described in detail and at length the Chlorans and the relationship between the two races, and went on to give, in equal detail, the most probable course of near-term events. It told Seaton that he should investigate this planet Ray-See-Nee in person. It told him in fine detail what to wear, where to go, and practically every move to make for the ensuing twenty-four hours.

At that point the report stopped, and when Seaton demanded more information, the Brain balked. “Data in sufficient,” it thought, and everyone there would have sworn that the Great Brain actually had a consciousness of self as it went on, “This construct — ?” it actually meant “I” — “is not built to guess, but deals only in virtual certainties; that is, with probabilities that approximate unity to twelve or more nines. With additional data, this matter can be explored to a depth quite strictly proportional to the sufficiency of the data. That is all.”

“That’s the package, Dottie,” Seaton said then. “If we want to reach the Chlorans without them reaching us first, there’s how. That makes it a force, wouldn’t you say?”

Dorothy wasn’t sure. “For twenty-four hours, I guess,” she agreed, dubiously. “After which time I think I’ll be screaming for you to come back here and feed that monster some more data. So be mighty darn sure to get some.”

“I’ll try to, that’s for sure. But the really smart thing to do might be to take this wreckage half a dozen galaxies away and put the Brain to work rebuilding her while I’m down there investigating.”

“D’you think I’ll sit still for that?” Dorothy blazed. “If you do, you’re completely out of your mind!”

And even Crane did not subscribe to the idea. “Why?” he asked, “just to tear her down again after you’ve found out what we’ll have to have?”

“That’s so, too.” Seaton thought for a moment, gray eyes narrowed and focused on infinity, translating the imperatives of the Brain into practical measures. Then he nodded. “All right. I admit I’ll feel better about the deal with you people and the Brain standing by.”

And Seaton, now lean and hard and deeply tanned, sat down in his master controller and began to manufacture the various items he would need; exactly as the Brain told him to make them.

And next morning, as the sun began to peer over the crest of the high mountain ridge directly below the Skylark of Valeron, Seaton came to ground, hid his tiny landing craft in a cave at the eighteen-thousand-foot level, and hiked the fifteen miles down-mountain to the nearest town.

He now looked very little indeed like the Doctor Richard B. Seaton of the Rare Metals Laboratory. He was almost gaunt. His skin was burned to a shade consistent with years of exposure to wind and weather. His hair had very evidently been cut — occasionally — with shears by his own hand; his beard had been mowed — equally occasionally with those same shears.

He wore crudely made, heavy, hobnailed, high-laced boots; a pair of baggy, unsymmetrical breeches of untanned deerskin; and a shapeless, poor-grade-leather coat that had been patched crudely and repeatedly at elbows and shoulders and across the back. He also wore what was left of a hard hat.

As he strode into the town and along its main street, more than one pair of eyes looked at him and then looked again, for the people of that town were not used to seeing anyone walk purposefully. Nor was the sloppily uniformed guard at the entrance to City Hall. This wight — who couldn’t have been a day over fifteen — opened his eyes, almost straightened up and said:

“Halt, you. Who’a you? Whatcha want?”

“Business,” Seaton said, briskly. “To see the mayor, Ree-Toe Prenk.”

“Awri’; g’wan in,” and the youth relapsed into semistuporous leaning on his ratty-looking rusty rifle.

It was easy enough to find His Honor’s office, since it was the only one in the building doing any business at all. Seaton paused just inside the doorway and looked around.

Everything was shabby and neglected. The wall-to-wall carpet was stained and dirty, worn through to the floor, in several places. The divider-rail leaned drunkenly, forward here, backward there. The vacant receptionist’s desk was as battered and scarred as though it had been through a war. The place hadn’t been cleaned for months, and not very thoroughly then.

And the people in that office were in perfect sync with their surroundings. Half a dozen melancholy-looking people, men and women, sat listlessly on hard, straight-backed chairs; staring glumly, fixedly at nothing; completely disinterested, apparently, in whether they were ever called into the inner office or not.

And the secretary! She was dressed in what looked like a gunny-sack. She was scrawny. Her unkempt, straight, lank hair was dirty-mouse brown in color. She didn’t look very bright. She was, however, the only secretary in sight, so Seaton strode up to her desk.

“Miss What’s-your-name!” he snapped. “Can you, without rupturing a blood-vessel, come to life long enough to do half a minute’s work?”

The girl jumped, started to rise to her feet at her desk, and blushed. “Why, yes… yes, sir, I mean. What can we do for you, Mister — ?”

“I’m Ky-El Mokak. I want to talk to Hizzonner about turning myself in.”

That brought her to life fast. “About what?” she cried, and her half-scream was followed instantly by a deeper, louder voice from the intercom.

His Honor had not been asleep after all. “You what? All right, Fy-Ly, send him in; but be sure he hasn’t got a gun first.”

“Gun? What would I be doing with a gun?” Seaton patted his pockets, shucked off his dilapidated coat, and made a full turn to show that he was clean. Then, seeing no coat-rack or hangers, he pitched the coat and hat into a corner and strode into the inner office.

It was, if possible, in even worse shape than the outer one. The man behind the desk was fifty-odd years old; lean and bald. He looked worried, dyspeptic and nervous. He held a hand-weapon — which was not the least bit rusty — in workmanlike fashion in a competent-looking right hand. It was not pointed directly at Seaton’s midsection. It evidently did not have to be.

“What I’d ought to do right now,” the man said quietly, “is blow your brains out without letting you say a word. You’re another damn rat. A fink — a spy — maybe a revver or an undergrounder, even. You don’t look like any wilder I ever saw brought in.”

The Brain had not dumped Seaton on a strange and dangerous new planet without providing him with a full “knowledge” of its history, its mores and even its dialects.

Through the educators Seaton had received enough of RaySee-Nee’s cultural patterns to be able to carry off his role. He knew what His Honor was thinking about; he knew, even, very accurately just how far the man could be pushed, where his real sympathies lay, and what he could be counted upon to do about it.

Wherefore Seaton said easily: “Of course I don’t. I’ve got a brain. Those lard-headed chasseurs couldn’t catch me in a thousand years. None of ’em can detect a smell on a skunk. And you won’t shoot me, not with the bind you’re in. You aren’t a damn enough fool to. You wouldn’t shoot a crippled kid on crutches, let alone a full-grown, able-bodied man.”

Prenk shivered a little, but that was all. “Who says I’m in a bind? What kind of a bind?”

“I say so,” Seaton said, flatly. “You’re hitting bottom right now. You’re using half-grown kids; girls, even. How many weeks is it going to be before you don’t make quota and your town and everything and everybody in it get turned into a lake of lava?”

Prenk trembled visibly and his face turned white. “You win,” he said unsteadily, and put his pistol back into the top right-hand drawer of his desk. “Whoever you are, you know the score and aren’t afraid to talk about it. You’d have no papers, of course — on you, at least… Let’s see your arm.”

“No number.” Seaton rolled up his left sleeve and held his forearm out for examination. “Look close. Scars left by good surgery are fine, but they can’t be made invisible.”

“I know they can’t.” His Honor looked very closely indeed, then drew a tremendously deep breath of relief. “You are a wilder! You mean to say you’ve been up in the hills ever since the Conquest without getting caught?”

“That’s right. I told you I’m smart, and the brains of a whole platoon of chasseurs, all concentrated down into one, wouldn’t equip a half-witted duck.”

“But they’ve got dogs!”

“Yeah, but they aren’t smart, either. Not very much smarter than the chasseurs are. Hell, I’ve been living on those dogs half the time. Pretty tough, fried or roasted, but boiled long enough they make mighty tasty stew.”

“Mi-Ko-Ta’s beard! Who are you, really, and what were you, before?”

“I told you, I’m Ky-El Mokak. I am — was, rather — a Class Twelve Fellow of the Institute of Mining Engineers. Recognize the ring?” Seaton went to the desk and placed his left hand flat on its surface.

Prenk studied the massive ornament. It had been fabricated, in strict external accord with the Brain’s visualization of what it should have been, from synthesized meteoric metal — metal that had actually never been in open space, to say nothing of ever having been anywhere near the gray-lichened walls of the revered Institute that Seaton had never seen.

Having examined the ring minutely, Prenk looked up and nodded; his whole manner changed. “I recognize the ring and I can read the symbols. A Twelve! It’s a shame to register and brand you. If you say so I’ll let it drop.”

“I’ll say so. I’m not committing myself that deep yet.”

“All right, but why did you come in? Or is it true that whatever undergrounds spring up are smashed flat in a week?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t find any. Not one, and I searched every square mile for a thousand miles north, east, south, and west of here. And I didn’t find anybody who wasn’t too dangerous to travel with, and I’m gregarious. Also, I don’t like caves and I don’t like camp cooking and I don’t like living off the land — and I do like music and books and art and educated people and so on — in other words, I found out that I can’t revert to savagery. And, not least, I like women and there aren’t any out there. What few ever make it up there die fast.”

“I’m beginning to believe you.” A little of the worry and harassment left His Honor’s face.

“One more question. Why, knowing the jam we’re in, did you come here instead of going somewhere where you’d be safe?”

“Because, on the basis of stuff I picked up here and there, you and I together can make it safe here. I can fix your mining machinery easily enough so you can make quota every week with no sweat; so the town won’t get slagged down; not right away, anyway.

You aren’t a quisling, and my best guess is that most of the spies and storm troopers have sneaked out or have been pulled out because of what’s supposed to be about to happen here,” Seaton said.

Prenk stared thoughtfully at Seaton. “You don’t appear to be the suicidal type. But you know as well as I do that just making quota won’t be enough for very long. What have you really got in mind, Ky-El Mokak?”

Seaton thought for a moment. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he dug down into his baggy breeches and brought out two closely folded headsets.

“Put one of these on. It isn’t a player or a recorder; just a kind of super-telephone. A fast way of exchanging information.”

Prenk wore it for a couple of minutes, then took it off, staring suspiciously in turn at it and at Seaton. “Why didn’t I ever hear of anything like that before?” he demanded.

Seaton didn’t answer the question and Prenk went on, “Oh; secret. Okay. But what makes you think you can set up an underground right out here in the open?”

“There’s no reason in the world why we can’t,” Seaton declared. “Especially since we’d just be reviving one that everybody, including the Premier and you yourself, thinks is smashed flat and is about to be liquidated.”

This was the second really severe test Seaton had made of the Brain’s visualizations, and it too stood solidly up. All Prenk said was, “You’re doing the talking; keep it up,” but his hands, clenching tightly into fists, showed that Seaton’s shot had struck the mark.

“I’ve talked enough,” Seaton said then. “From here on it’d be just guessing. It’s your turn to talk.”

“All right. It’s too late now, I’m afraid, for anything to make any difference. Yes, I was the leader of a faction that believed in decent, humane, civilized government, but we weren’t here then, we were in the capital. Our coup failed. And those of us who were caught were exiled here and arrangements were made for us to be the next wipe-out.”

“Some of your party survived, then. Could you interest them again, do you think?”

“Without arms and equipment, no. That was why we failed.”

“Equipment would be no problem.”

“It wouldn’t?” Prenk’s eyes began to light up.

“No.” Seaton did not elaborate, but went on, “The problem is people and morale. I can’t supply people and we have to start here, not over in the capital. Self-preservation.

We’ve got to make quota. Your people have been hammered down so flat that they don’t give a whoop whether they live or die. As I said, I can fix the machinery, but that of itself won’t be enough. We’ll have to give ’em a shot in the arm of hope.”

“Okay, and thanks.”

And no one in the outer office, not even the secretary, so much as looked up as the two men, talking busily, walked out.

DuQuesne, en route to Earth, knew just what a madhouse Earth was, and in just what respects. He knew just how nearly impossible it was to buy machine tools of any kind.

He also knew just what an immense job it was going to be to build a duplicate of the Skylark of Valeron. Or, rather, to build the tools that would build the machines that would in turn build the planetoid. With his high-order constructors he could build most of those primary machine tools himself; perhaps all of them in time; but time was exactly what he did not have. Time was decidedly of the essence.

DuQuesne’s ex-employer, The World Steel Corporation, had billions of dollars’ worth of exactly the kind of tooling he had to have. They not only used it, they manufactured it and sold it. And what of it they did not manufacture they could buy. How they could buy!

As a result of many years of intensive, highly organized, and well directed snooping, Brookings of Steel had over a thousand very effective handles upon over a thousand very important men.

And he, DuQuesne, had a perfect handle on Brookings. He was much harder and more ruthless than Brookings was, and Brookings knew it. He could make Brookings buy his primary tooling for him — enough of it to stuff the Capital D to her outer skin. And he would do just that.

Wherefore, as soon as he got within working range of Earth, he launched his projection directly into Brookings’ private office. This time, the tycoon was neither calm nor quiet.

Standing behind his desk, chair lying on its side behind him, he was leaning forward with his left hand flat on the top of his desk. He was clutching a half-smoked, half chewed cigar in his right hand and brandishing it furiously in the air. He was yelling at his terrified secretary; who, partly standing in front of her chair and partly crouching into it, was trying to muster up courage to run.

When DuQuesne’s projection appeared Brookings fell silent for a moment and goggled.

Then he screamed. “Get out of here, you!” at the girl, who scuttled frantically away. He hurled what was left of his cigar into his big bronze ashtray, where it disintegrated into a shower of sparks and a slathery mess of soggy, sticky brown leaves. And finally, exerting everything he had of self-control, he picked his chair up, sat down in it and glared at DuQuesne.

“Careful of your apoplexy, Fat,” DuQuesne sneered then. “I’ve told you — you’ll rupture your aorta some day and that will just about break my heart.”

Brookings’ reply to that was unprintable; after which he went on, even more bitterly, “This is all it lacks to make this a perfect day.”

“Yeah,” DuQuesne agreed, callously. “Some days you can’t lay up a cent. I suppose you’ve been eager to know why I didn’t return your goons to you.”

“There’s nothing in the world I’m less interested in.”

“I’ll tell you anyway, for the record.” DuQuesne did not know what had actually happened, but Brookings was never to know that. “They each got one free shot, as I said they would. But they missed!”

“Skip that, Doctor,” Brookings said, brusquely. “You didn’t come here for that. What do you want this time?”

DuQuesne reached over, took a ball-point out of Brookings’ pocket, tore the top sheet off of the memorandum pad on Brookings’ desk, and wrote out an order for one hundred twenty-five million dollars, payable to the World Steel Corporation, on a numbered account in a Swiss bank. He slid the order across the glass top of the desk and said:

“You needn’t worry about whether it’s good or not. It is. I want machine tools and fast deliveries.”

Brookings glanced at the paper, but did not touch it. His every muscle tensed, but he did not quite blow up again. “Machine tools,” he grated. “You know damn well money’s no good on them.”

“Money alone, no,” DuQuesne agreed equably. “That’s why I’m having you apply pressure. You’ll get the details — orders, specs, times and places of delivery, and so forth by registered mail tomorrow morning. Shall I spell out the ‘or else’ for you?”

Brookings was quivering with rage, but there wasn’t a thing in the world he could do about the situation and he knew it. “Not for me,” he managed finally, “but I’d better record it for certain people who will have to know.”

“Okay. Any mistake in any detail of the transaction or one second more than twenty-four hours’ delay in any specified time of delivery will mean a one-hundred-kiloton superatomic on North Africa Number Eleven. Good-by.”

And DuQuesne cut his projection. To Brookings, he seemed to vanish; to DuQuesne himself, he simply was back in his own Capital D, far out in space; and DuQuesne allowed himself to smile.

Things were going rather well, he thought. Seaton was tangled up with whoever the new enemy had turned out to be; might well be dead; at any rate, was not a factor he, DuQuesne, needed currently to take into his calculations. By the time Seaton was back in circulation DuQuesne should have his new ship and be ready to handle him. And from then on…

From then on, thought DuQuesne, it was only a short step to his rightful, inevitable destiny: His universe. No one able to contest his mastery.-So thought DuQuesne, who at that point in time knew nearly every factor that bore upon his plans, and had carefully and correctly evaluated them all. He knew about the Llurdi and the Jelmi; he knew that Seaton and the Chlorans were, from his point of view, keeping each other neutralized; he knew that the Norlaminians, even, were unlikely to cause him any trouble.

DuQuesne really knew all the relevant facts but one — or, you might say, two. These two facts were a very long distance away. One was a young girl. The other was her mother.

Two individuals out of a universe! Why, even if DuQuesne had known of their existence, he might have discounted their importance completely. In which he would have been — completely — wrong.