The Ganymede Takeover

FIVE

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, wirelike 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.

“Suppose,” Joan said presently, “I shoot you instead.”

“No. You don’t have the guts. But evidently he caught something deep in her mind, something marginal which even she could not perceive; as abruptly as he had given her the gun he yanked it back to his own possession. “Lincoln,” he called, and his second-in-command appeared; he had, Joan realized, been listening and watching all this time. “Take this white worm-kisser out of my sight. If I see it again I’ll probably crush it under my heel.”

As Lincoln led her away she asked him, shaken and disturbed, “What’s wrong with him? Why does he rave on like that?”

Lincoln laughed sharply. “Where’s your woman’s intuition, baby? Percy’s been carrying your picture in his wallet for years—as long as I’ve known him. You’re none other than his dear, darling, long-lost sweetie pie . . and you’re a worm-kisser. A hopeless worm-kisser. If you don’t think that’s funny you just don’t have any sense of humor at all.”

Marshal Koli, Military Administrator of the occupied bale of Tennessee, said aloud to his staff, “As you know, we have for months been contriving a stratagem with the purpose of snaring the Neeg-part leader, Percy X. In this connection we have, shall I say, agents within the ’part groups under fealty to Percy X. Thereby we have managed to ascertain to some degree his whereabouts at certain times.” He flicked his tongue at an impressive wall map which showed the bale, and, most specifically, the un-pacified hill-areas controlled by both the Indian tribal remnants and the Neeg-parts.

On the map a luminous button, movable, lay placed. The button represented the approximate current location of Percy X.

“Our operation,” Marshal Koli continued, “is, as you know, called Operation Cat Droppings—a Terran idiom connected with some unpleasant task. And this has been unpleasant because it has taken too long.” At this point he drew himself almost entirely erect, balancing himself on his tail-tip in his determination to impart the seriousness of what he now proposed to declaim down the chain of command.

“Operation Cat Droppings,” he declared, “will reach its crucial terminal phase at eleven P.M., bale of Tennessee time. Our crack commando teams, descending by means of individual air-pulsation tubs, entirely silently, will ring the spot where the malefactor is entrenched.” He paused and then said, “This is the moment for which I have prepared during my entire period as Military Administrator of this bale. Each one of our predetermined, arranged-for tactical operations will, at eleven P.M. become operative. After that—” He flicked his tongue rapidly in agitation. “Either we will have Percy X or we won’t. In any case there will be no further chance.” Hastily he added, “In terms of the military jurisdiction of this bale, I mean. What the civil administrator who follows me does I have no knowledge of.” But, he thought, through our wiks who have infiltrated the Neeg-parts I do know Percy; a great deal about him, even though, thanks to Percy’s telepathic ability, none of our wiks have been able to get close enough to kill him or even effectively spy on the operations of his inner circle of command.

Touching a selenoid switch with his tongue he activated a servo-assist projector mounted on his desk; on the far wall, in 3-D and color, appeared the image of Percy X, taken with a telescopic camera. Percy squatted in a leisurely, secure—or believed secure—parlay with his sub-leaders.

“All Terrans tend, of course, to look alike, the Marshal said. “But observe the strong chin, the great wide smile of strength of this man. He is a superior Terran.” The last, he reflected, to capitulate. And one, in scrutinizing him, can readily see why. “To insure the success of Operation Cat Droppings, he continued, “I am offering, for this first and only time, this ultimate and critical fruition of all our painstaking planning, an incentive.”

All eyes in the room fixed rigidly on him.

“With incalculable generosity I am offering ten thousand tulebs for the creech who accomplishes the commando mission—income tax free, too.” He observed the gratifying servility revealed on each face; hunger for the reward, pitiless determination to be the one who earned it. and, seeing this, knew he had managed at this last critical hour, after so many false starts, to move in the right direction. This he had imbibed from Terran psychology books: how to motivate a person. “Inform your subordinates,” he stated, “that if this long-prepared-for coup fails, they will all be smunged. Do you comprehend, all of you who repose in soft felt-lined niches, what it means to be smunged?” He wove toward them menacingly, studying them with dour fierceness.

As one worm they nodded. Every member of the Ganymedian military had heard of the trial-less quasi-juridical procedures generally resulting in a fine of first magnitude and two centuries of smunge-dom on some airless rock in the asteroid belt.

And then there was the money. Build an atomic pile to near-critical mass under their anit Koli said to himself, and meanwhile dangle an addictive narcotic or the lettuce (a Terran term) before their noses: they’ll come through. And —

I’ve got to, too, he realized. Now that I comprehend that the so-called “wik” agent, that Joan Hiashi, was engaging in tarry diddle from the start. What if it got out that, in spite of his own telepathic ability, a mere Terran had outfoxed (also a Terran term) him? He still did not quite understand how she had done it. Plainly it was one thing to read a mind and another to understand it, particularly if it was the mind of some member of an alien race.

But now, thanks to the animal craft of that fawning toady Gus Swenesgard, she’ll lead me to him in spite of herself If not, I’ll be the one who got used. by her.

“The Operation, he declared, “will develop in the usual pattern which has been, up to now, so successful in other areas of this planet. First, unmanned homotropic missiles of the dart variety will be released from a satellite passing overhead; they will not kill, only stun. Then, when the ’parts are rendered harmless—” He droned on and on. “And in conclusion,” he wound up, “let me warn you: Percy X’s pelt must be absolutely intact. No burns, holes, tears, rips, thin spots; there must be no defacement of any kind. You understand? The highest sort of aesthetic values are involved in this matter; this is not a mere political or military operation—this is, first and foremost, a great art-treasure hunt.”

It had become cold. Cold and damp and foggy; the Tennessee hillside forest poked up indistinctly. The Neeg-parts, however, could not risk building a fire; the Ganys had sensitive heat detectors that would zero in on a campfire in an instant, even through the overcast. Instead they huddled together for warmth, arms and legs intertwined, blankets and threadbare sleeping bags spread over them to retain as much as possible of the precious body-heat.

And they talked together quietly, or slept— although most had picked up the necessary habit of sleeping in the daytime and waking to alertness at night.

Joan Hiashi and Percy X lay in the midst of the mound of human flesh, sharing an oversize overcoat.

Holding the girl loosely in his arms, Percy said, “It takes danger, the deadly kind, to make men touch each other. But when they do, it’s good; it’s the finest thing there is. But we humans have always been afraid of each other. We’ve wanted to think of ourselves as spirits without bodies, or minds that triumphed over matter, not as a herd of animals huddling together for warmth. I’m thankful to the Ganys for—”

“Christ, it’s cold,” Joan said, through chattering teeth.

“Be glad you can feel the cold. At least you feel something.”

Someone in the heap began humming.

“Won’t the Gany sound detectors pick that up?” Joan asked.

“There’s a wind,” Percy said. “The wind and the sounds of the birds and animals make it hard for them to track on sounds.”

Another voice joined in, and another and another. She had never heard anything like it before. Long sobbing moans that slid up and down the scale without a break, superimposed over a rhythm more implied than stated, a rhythm that seemed to suggest the beating of a vast communal heart. There seemed to be no preconceived melody, and each voice joined in and ceased wherever the singer chose.

Now more voices joined in. The tempo increased. Some of the men began to slap out a rhythm with the palms of their hands against their bodies. Joan felt the music’s beauty as a pain in her chest. Her mind resisted, thrashing like a man drowning, but her emotions became caught up in the music and flung wildly downward, like a stick in the rapids.

“Go ahead,” Percy said gently. “Record it.” Evidently he knew that she wore a microminiaturized tape recorder disguised as a wristwatch. “Take it with you when you go back. It doesn’t matter after all.” He, too, seemed moved by the music. “If those worms finally manage to finish us off, at least our song will still be around to make you wiks uncomfortable, to remind you what a man sounds like.” With tenderness he ran his hands through her hair and froze. He had come across something small, round and metallic, something in her hair.

“Ouch,” she cried as he jerked it loose.

Quickly, expertly, he examined it by matchlight. “A radio,” he muttered, then threw it as far as he could into the darkness. Jumping to his feet he shouted to his men, “Move out! Move out! Scatter! This damn wik girl was bugged! They may be closing in on us right this minute!”

Without a moment’s hesitation they scattered, guns at the ready. Joan ran also, after Percy’s retreating back. “Don’t leave me here,” she gasped, stumbling, almost falling in the mist-shrouded darkness.

A light appeared in the sky, small, like a falling star, yet it had to be closer than a falling star.

“Look out, Percy!” Joan shouted. It was a miniature tapered autonomic dart, descending at spectacular velocity, and seeking just one person, Percy X.

Lincoln raised his laser rifle and, with a skill that showed an almost automatic reflex, he shot the descending dart out of existence.

“Another,” Percy snapped. “To the right.” He did not sound frightened, but his voice had become speeded up and shrill. “A third. Too close, too close; we can’t get them all.” He said it factually, without the warmth even of despair: no time now for that meager emotion, no time even to give up. Percy X fired, almost as Lincoln did; the two Neegs fired again and again and still the rain of black, homotropic dots descended. A Gany weapon, Joan realized. From the war. The Shaft, it had been called. It had, alone, taken out on an individual basis, one by one, a vast number of highly-placed, essential Terran technicians and military leaders.

Kneeling, Percy swiftly unstrapped a small packet from his calf. With a violent scratching motion against the rough soil he ignited it; the mechanism flashed and flared and a cloud of noxious denseness flowered until the sky disappeared.

The Shafts themselves would be unaffected. But their tropism would be abolished; they would have no destination and would begin to strike at random. Unless one or more had already come too close, had passed the stage in which the tropism defined the direction of flight.

Too late for Lincoln; in the gloom Joan heard him cry out and fall. Then Percy, too, shouted one brief strangled cry before toppling to the weed-infested ground. No dart had been set for Joan’s particular cephalic index, so the weapons left her alone— assuming that none of the wild ones got her at random. Operating by the sense of touch alone she moved quickly to where she had heard Percy fall. It’s my fault, she said to herself bleakly.

No time existed, however, to brood about that.

Somehow, with a strength she never knew she had, she managed to half-drag, half-carry him a few yards; panting painfully, her knees wobbling, she stumbled through the invisible weeds, slid on shards of rock and dirt particles, down a slope, away, with no direction in mind, only the knowledge that she had to act rapidly. Blindly, without any real hope, she slithered and slid and hurried as best she could, dragging the inert but not dead—she knew the Shafts; they did not generally carry freights of toxins—to some other, vague, unknown place.

Ahead, a shape, upright, moved. A Neeg-part, she thought with relief. She said gaspingly. “They got Percy with a Shaft; I’m trying to get him out before the next step.” She panted for breath.

The upright, metal-encased figure, like some artificial chitinous reflex entity, said, “I am the next step.” It lifted a hand weapon and aimed it at Joan. “This does not stun,” it said in faultless but overly-precise English. “You are my prisoner, Terran. As is he.” It gestured with a manual extremity toward the inert figure lying before Joan. “Most especially he.” The slotted eyes glowed and projected a beam of illumination, assisting it in making its visual scan which would be transmitted to Gany military operation GHQ. The scan, already, was being relayed; she heard the hum.

Bending over Percy she snatched the hand gun from his belt; within the mass of metal confronting her dwelt a creech and she meant to kill the thing or be killed by it. At pointblank range she fired.

The bullet, ringingly, bounced off the Creech’s polished armor. Harmlessly. The thing did not even appear to notice; it continued with its scan of Percy’s features.

Joan Hiashi emptied the gun futilely at the towering hulk before her, then threw the weapon at it. And then stood helpless, waiting, the still-inert Percy X in a tumbled, dead-doll heap before her.