Subspace explorers, p.21
Subspace Explorers, page 21
"Excellent! In, then. It's about a mile. We walk."
The three walked into and along the tunnel; with the girl, under no restraint, between the two men.
After walking the indicated mile they came to what looked like-and in fact was-the entrance to a thoroughly modern building. They went in and the big man, after dismissing his smaller companion, ushered the girl into a small, plainly-furnished office.
"They aren't here yet, I see. Take a chair, please." He sat down behind the desk. "We'll wait here; it won't be very long."
Nor was it. In about fifteen minutes the door opened and three gray-uniformed men, one of them pushing a wheeled chair, entered the office. Beedy, without headband or locket, was chained to the chair. His uniform was tom off, both eyes would soon be black-and-blue "shiners," and his flesh was puffy and bruised, but he was still full of fight. When he saw the girl, however, he stopped struggling instantly and stopped her with a word as she leaped to her feet, screamed, and ran toward him.
"If you'd used your brain, meathead," he said, glaring between swollen lids at the man behind the desk, "and told your gorillas to tell me you had her here, it would've saved all five of us some lumps."
"Well, I can't think of everything," the big man admitted. "I did tell her we had you, come to think of it, which perhaps accounts for her cooperation." He studied his three men. The smallest one of them was of B D's size, but each of the three bore more marks of battle than did the captive. "I was not informed that you are such an expert at unarmed combat. Free him, you, and get out. With the chair."
"Free him?" one of the captors protested. "Why, he'll..." and one of the others broke, in:
"But he damn near killed Big Pietr, boss-they're taking him up to sick-bay now, and..."
"You heard me," the boss said, without raising his voice a fraction of a decibel, and the three obeyed.
As the door closed, the two went into each other's arms, the girl moaning over her lover's wounds.
"It's all right, now that I know you aren't hurt. You aren't, are you?"
No, not the least bit, in any way," she assured him. "But they hurt you, and if you think..."
"Hush, sweetheart, listen. I got more of them than they did of me, so, with you here safe, if they won't carry a grudge I won't." He cocked a blood-clotted eyebrow-with a slight wince-at the man behind the desk. "No grudge, I take it?"
"Splendid? No grudge at all."
B D turned to B A. "Wasn't this in your hunch?" he asked.
"Your getting all beat up certainly wasn't, but the rest of it... well, I guess it could fit the pattern... but don't try to tell me it was that clear in yours, either!"
"I won't; but it does fit the pattern."
"You two are far and away the best we've found yet," the man at the desk said then. "Since I'm going to be your instructor, you may as well start calling me 'Basil." "Bay-sill? That doesn't make sense," the girl said.
"It's my name. We don't use symbols-I'll go into that later. You are beginning to realize that your knowledge and experience have left you almost entirely ignorant of man, of nature, and of the cosmos. Exposure to that knowledge will be such a shock to your minds that you will feel much better together than apart. To that end, would you like to be married-'mate,' is your word for it-immediately?"
"But we can't," the girl said. "Not for half a year yet" "Sure we can, and we will," B D said. "My hunch is that the Company is getting the flame...." He hesitated slightly and shivered, but went on doggedly, "and that you have already captured at least twelve other Company Agents without getting flamed yourselves. Is that right, Bay-sill?"
"Very pleasingly right. Twenty, so far, have been able to withstand the impact of the truth and remain sane... but none of them are anything like in your class... you must both be mals."
He glanced at them questioningly, but neither made any response and he went on. "If so, I hope to persuade you to help us look for others like you. Now, before I take you upstairs to the sick-bay and thence to your suite, where you will find clothing and so on, I am going to give you some of the basic elements of the truth. I shall give them to you brutally straight. You will be shocked as you have never believed it possible to be shocked. You will not be able to understand any part of it at first, but you must not ask me any questions until tomorrow morning, when I will begin instructing you in detail. By that time you will have given the matter sufficient thought so that you will be able to ask intelligent questions. You wish to marry each other, you said?"
"We certainly do!"
"Splendid! You can make decisions, as well as think. I have very high hopes indeed of you two. After the short visits I mentioned I will arrange for your wedding. Then, if you wish, you may dine and retire to your suite until eight hours tomorrow.
"Now for your first introduction to the truth. This world is not the only world in existence and you people -you upper echelons are just as much people as those you call People-are not the only people. There are thousands of millions of other worlds, more or less like this one, throughout an immensity of space so vast as to be beyond imagining. There are thousands of millions of human beings-members of the human race, to which both you and we belong inhabiting many of those worlds. One such world, my native planet Earth, has a population of almost seven thousand million people. "Your concept of the Company is completely false. There are hundreds of thousands of companies, each a self-perpetuating group of men. Not supermen in any sense, but ordinary men like me. Your company was and is only one of the multitude of companies of Earth. It was founded by and is still operated by a group of greedy, utterly callous capitalists-money men-of Earth. It was founded and is being operated specifically as a world of slave labor. Every person born on this world is a slave; a slave without freedom, liberty, or personal rights of any kind.
"We, on the other hand, represent a society of worlds of freedom-loving people. We have come here to liberate all the inhabitants of this world from slavery; to enable you to take your rightful place-and that place is yours by right-in the fellowship of all the civilized worlds. Our creed, the creed of all free peoples everywhere, is this:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
"These things I have told you, young friends, are fundamental. They are basic. They are absolutely necessary prerequisites for any learning of the truth; so think them over very carefully until tomorrow morning.
"When your instruction is complete, I am sure that you will be glad to work side by side with us to unite your world with our society-The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics."
Chapter 19
DOUBLE AGENT
Back on Earth, affairs political and financial moved so fast and in such quantity that Upton Maynard had more work on his hands than any one man could possibly do. He had to sleep five or six hours almost every night. Also, he could handle those Tellurian affairs much better if he were there in person-especially if he could drop GalMet entirely for a while-and why not? Young Smith had plenty of jets... wherefore he called Smith and Miss Champion into his inner office.
"Miss Champion, take notes, please. Mr. Eldon Jay Smith I believe, the Executive Vice-President of Galactic Metals, Incorporated?"
"That is precisely what I have the honor and privilege of being, sir." Smith put his right hand over his heart and bowed. "As of the present moment, sir; that is, sir, I mean, sir."
"You'll start executing as of the present moment, sir," and Maynard told him what he had in mind, concluding, "So sit on the throne, hub, 'til I get back-and don't let the block line drop down through the bottom of the chart."
"Drop? You kidding? Now we can get something done -it'll zoom right up through the top. How about it, Dorry?" He winked at Miss Champion, who, always the perfect First Secretary-always, that is, in Maynard's presence-did not wink back. She merely smiled.
"But suppose I take her along?"
"Go ahead. Do that. Wreck the outfit. I've been wanting to quit and go fishing, anyway."
"Yeah. I know. I know just what I'd be wrecking anyway, I'd bet on the fish. 'Bye, Don; 'bye, Doris," and Maynard strode blithely out.
The girl gave Smith a long, level look. "You're the only human being alive with the sublime nerve to give him the needle that way. Just suppose he climbs your frame for it some day?"
"He set the pace, didn't he? Anyway, I'd get along." "Pfooie! Nobody could blast you out of here with an atomic bomb and everybody knows it. You really know him don't you? I've always thought I was the only one who did."
"I know he's the universe's best-and that these damned yes-men and toadies around here make him just as sicka da bel' as they do me-and that's a great God's plenty."
"That's what I meant, Don... and you're not too bad a stinker yourself, in some ways." For weeks, ever since they had become psionic, a current of something-like electricity plus-had been flowing between these two, and it was getting stronger all the time.
"Thanks for them kind words, Dorry. You're slipping. First thing you know you'll..."
"I'm not slipping and whatever it was you were going to say, I won't. No telepathy, no rapport. I've been a career business woman ever since I was fifteen-a good one-and I'm going to keep on being just that."
He smiled; more a grin than a smile. "That's the way to talk, Dorry. Strictly business. If there's any one thing in this wide fat world I really love, it's business."
"Let's get at it, then." Miss Champion, now all briskly efficient FirSec, picked up her book. "I'll remind you, Mister Smith, that you are wasting time that is costing the company a dollar a minute. In exactly four and one half minutes you have an appointment with Felton of Barbizon about. enlarging the operation there; at nine plus forty five with Quisenberry of Belmark, ditto; at ten plus ten with Andersen of Pharmics...."
Maynard landed on Earth at Chicago Spaceport. He took a copter to the big old building on Michigan Avenue that was GalFed's headquarters. Stevens Spehn's office was on the twenty sixth floor, in front, affording a splendid view of Lake Michigan-all water clear out to the horizon.
Having sent a thought ahead, Maynard strode straight through the main office and the FirSec's office. That smart girl, who of course listened in on everything, even -or especially?-on thought, merely glanced up with a smile from the tape she was reading and exchanged greetings in thought with him as he went past.
Spehn's office, vastly unlike his previous one, was small and plainly furnished. Even his desk was small; he could, with a little stretching, reach anything on its plate-glass top. He was leaning 'way back in his swivel chair, with both feet perched up on the corner of his desk. When Maynard came in Spehn pointed his cigarette at a huge overstuffed chair near the desk, but facing the huge front window. Maynard sat down, lighted a long, thin cigar, crossed his legs, and spoke aloud. "So you're rolling, Steve. So you like your PsiCor, eh?"
"Oh, brother!" Spehn got up, walked around to the older man, shook him solemnly by the hand, and resumed seat and pose. Then: "Oh... broth... therr! One hundred percent convictions so far and not a possible miss in sight. Psionic Intelligence agents are things that... well, maybe some cloak-and-dagger men have dreamed about such things, hut we've got 'em. Over ten thousand already and more coming and they're all batting a thousand, Boss, the Big Brains claim that while ethics is related to psionics, ethics is not and cannot be made an absolute. Do you buy that?"
"In the abstract, as a generalization, yes. In practice, and in the specific case of our own culture as it now is, perhaps not. I might almost say probably not."
"Very, very cautious about going out on a limb, aren't you? So bite yourself off a piece of this and chew on it and give your taste-buds a treat. The opposition hasn't got any psiontists worth a tinker's toot and never will have any."
Maynard did not question this statement. All experience had shown that any psychics of much ability, immediately upon perceiving the vastnesses of psionics, went to Newmars and the University of Psionics as a matter of course. Spehn went on:
"It's a truly wonderful thing to know, for certain damn sure, everything that goes on. So we're steam-rolling 'em to the queen's own taste. This next election will be honest; the kind of election the Founding Fathers had in mind. GalFed should be in the saddle shortly after that. Of course there'll be some fuss, but Guerd should be ready by then. You're sticking around?"
Maynard nodded. "Longer than that, Stev. Until GalFed is, both in name and in fact, THE GALACTIC FEDERATION; until Tellus-a united Tellus-is both in name and in fact the capital of all civilization."
Spehn thought for a moment. "That's a big order, boss, but I wouldn't wonder if we might be able to deliver the goods."
After half an hour more of discussion, Maynard went up one floor and had a long discussion with Fleet Admiral Guerdon Dann.
He then tuned his mind to that of Li Hing Wong, who brought Feodr Ilyowicz in for a three-way. Things were going as well as was to be expected. The Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain, which had faced outward, had been replaced by Psionic Curtains facing inward. Since the fleet englobing Earth, whatever it really was, did not seem to care what happened to either Russia or China, there had not been very much effective opposition. People were dying, but that couldn't be helped. The only way progress could be made was by killing off the commissars and the warlords and all such corruptionists; and, since corruption had been the way of life for centuries, reclamation would necessarily be a slow process.
As each district was reclaimed and put under a psionic Peace-lord its people were given as much self-government as they could handle-which wasn't very much. They would have to grow up to self-government, and that would take a low; time. If famine and pestilence did not take care of the population problem, population control would; by birth-control and logic if possible, by sterilization if necessary.
It was not a cheerful report; but Maynard had not expected it to be. He shrugged his shoulders and went on to interview every one of the men and women who were handling the political campaign. Then, last of all, he turned his attention to the financiers who were operating in the stock market.
The Plastics Building, in Chicago, Illinois, WestHem, Tellus, occupied the entire eight hundred block west; bounded by Halsted and Peoria Streets on the east and west, and by Washington and Randolph Boulevards on the south and north. Its main bulk, built of steel-reenforced synthetics of various kinds, was eighty five stories high, and a comparatively slender tower reached up fifteen stories higher still. This tower housed the private offices of the Biggest of the Big of Plastics, Incorporated; and its entire top floor, the one hundredth of the building, was devoted to the series of exceedingly private offices, in ascending order of privacy from the private elevator, of the least accessible man on Earth-President Byron Punsunby himself.
To say that these offices were sumptuous is to make the understatement of the year, but that is all that will be said. At three o'clock one Wednesday afternoon, while President Punsunby was sitting at his most sumptuous desk, alone in his most sumptuous, most private office, clear across the tower from the elevator, a call came in on a communicator that was his alone, in a mish-mash of noise and herringbone that he alone could unscramble. He stared at it angrily for a few seconds; his big, fat body tensing, his big, fat face stiffening, and his small blue eyes growing even harder than their hard wont.
He'd been getting altogether too damned many calls on that com of late and he hadn't liked any one of them. And this was the worst. It wasn't subspace, or even long distance; it was local-and this was one purely sweet-scented hell of a time for him to have to leave Earth... why couldn't the ape handle a few things himself?
He unscrambled the mish-mash; Erskine Cantwell, the Comptroller General of The World, appeared. "Where are you?" Punsunby snapped. "Spaceport?" "Yes. Just landing."
"Come in. I'll be alone."
Cantwell did not enter the Plastics Building by any of the usual routes. He approached it via subway, opened an almost invisible door into the second subbasement, walked along a deserted hall, opened a completely invisible door by speaking a series of six coined words, and took the ultra-secret elevator straight up into Punsunby's ultra-private office.
"Well?" Punsunby demanded, savagely. "I told you to take whatever steps might prove necessary. Why the hell didn't you do it, instead of coming here again?"
"What do you think?" Cantwell sneered. "That I'm here for the fun of it? I'm only the Highest Agent, remember? Six A's and a B, with only a violet headlight. It takes the one and only discarnate God Himself-the one and only holder of seven straight A's-the All-Powerful and Eternal-the one and only being able to pour the pure mercury-vapor light of God onto his poor dumb creatures-you, you fat-head, are the only living human being who can modify Article Ninety of your precious Second Directive, and by all the devils in hell you..."
"Christ almighty!" Punsunby broke in. He had been turning not-so-slowly purple as he listened to this lesemajeste, but at the words "Second Directive" his face began to pale. "But that's the basis of the whole caste system-it's never been modified. Things can't be that bad, Ersk-there must be some other way of handling this trouble."
"It's exactly that bad, and if you can find any other way to clean up the mess I'll roll a peanut from here to Buckingham Fountain with my nose. And I've had it. You can take this..."
"Don't say it, Ersk." Punsunby got up, walked around the desk, and put a big hand on the slender man's shoulder. "We couldn't operate without you. But such a change as that... God knows where a thing like that would end."
