H. L. Gold (ed), page 36
The set buzzed and whistled, warming up, muttering with the cosmic interference whose source nobody knows. I began to speak into the microphone, softly and urgently: “Calling Intelligence HQ, Sol III, North America Center. Captain Halgan Conru calling North America Center. Come in, Center, come in.”
The receiver rustled with the thin dry voice of the stars. Dimly, I could hear the wind outside, snarling around the walls. “Come in, Center. Come in, Center.”
“Captain Halgan!” The voice rattled into the waiting stillness of the shack. “Captain Halgan, is it really you?”
“Get General Vorka at once,” I said. “Meanwhile, are you recording? All right, be sure you get this.”
I told them everything I knew. I told them what planet this was, and where we were on its surface, and what our strength and plans were. I gave them the disposition of the scoutship pickets, as far as those were known to me, and the standard Legion recognition signals. I finished with an account of the savage differences still existing between Earthman and Earthman, and Earth and its treacherous allies. And all the time I was talking to a recording machine. Nobody was listening.
When I was through, I waited a minute, not feeling any particular emotion. I was too tired. I sat there, listening to the wind and the interstellar whistling, till Vorka spoke to me.
“Halgan! Halgan, you’ve done it!”
“Shut up,” I said. “What’s coming now?”
“I checked the Fleet units. We have a Supernova with escort at Bram-gar, about fifteen light-years from where you are. You are at their base, aren’t you ? Can you hold out for two days more ?”
“I think so.”
“Better get into the hills. We may have to bombard.” “Go to hell.” I turned off the set.
Now to get back. They must already know it was a trick; they must be scouring the base for the saboteur. As soon as all loyal men were back, the hunt would really be on.
I had, of course, worn gloves. There would be no fingerprints. And the operator wouldn’t know who had attacked him.
I changed the scrambler setting to one picked at random. And in a corner, as if it had fallen there by accident, I dropped a handkerchief stolen from Wergil of Luron. The tiny fragments of tissue which adhere to such a thing could easily be proven to be from him or one of his associates, for the basic Luronian life-molecules are all levorotatory. It might help.
I slipped back down the stairs, quickly and quietly. It was over. The base was as good as taken. But there was more to be done. Apart from the saving of my own life, there was still a desperate need for secrecy. For if the rebels knew what was coming, they might choose to stand and fight, or they might fire into the roadless wilderness of space. Whichever it was, all our work and sacrifice would have gone for little.
The provocateur policy is the boldest and most farsighted enterprise ever undertaken. It is the first attempt to make history as we choose, to control the great social forces we are only dimly beginning to understand, so that intelligence may ultimately be its own master.
Sure. Very fine and idealistic, and no doubt fairly true as well. But there is death and treachery in it, loneliness and heartbreak, and the bitterness of the betrayed. Have we the right to set ourselves up as God? Can we really say, in our omniscience, that everyone but us is wrong? There were sane, decent, intelligent folk here on Boreas, the ones we needed so desperately for all civilization. Did we have to make them our enemies, so that their grandchildren might be our friends?
I didn’t know. Wherever I turned, there were treason and injustice. However hard I tried to do right, I had to wrong somebody.
I ran on, back to my cabin. I peeled off my clothes and dived into bed, and by the time they looked in on me I had worked back most of my fever.
Don’t think, Conru. Don’t think of this new victory and the safety of the Empire. And, perhaps, a step closer to the harshly won unity of Earth. Don’t think of the way the light catches in Barbara’s hair and gets turned into molten gold. You’ve got a fever to create, man. You’ve got to think yourself sick again. That ought to be easy.
VIII
Barbara came in. She was white and still, and presently she leaned her head against my breast and cried quietly, for a long time. “There is a spy here,” she told me.
“I heard about it.” I stroked her hair and held her to me, clumsily. “Do you know who it was?”
“I don’t know. Somehow, they seem to think the Luronians may be guilty, but they aren’t sure. They arrested them, and two were killed resisting. Colonel Wergil is in the brig now, while they decide if Luron can still be trusted.”
“It can’t,” I said. “Earth must win alone.”
“We’ll win,” she said dauntlessly. “With Luron or without it, we’ll win.” Then, like a little frightened girl, creeping close to me: “But we needed that help so much.”
I kissed her and remained silent.
The next day I got on my feet again, weak but recovered. I wandered aimlessly around the base, waiting for Barbara to get through work, listening to people talk. It was ugly, the fear and tension and wolfish watchfulness. Whom can we trust? Who is the enemy?
Mostly, they thought the Luronians were guilty. After all, those were the only beings on the planet who had not had to pass a rigorous investigation and psychological examination. But nobody was sure.
Levinsohn spoke over the televisor. His gaunt, lined face had grown very tired, yet there was metal in his voice. The new situation necessitated a change of plans, but the time of assault would, if anything, be moved ahead. “Be of good heart. Stand by your comrades. We’ll still be free!”
I went to Barbara’s apartment and we sat up very late. But even in this private record I do not wish to say what we talked about.
And the next day the Empire came.
There was one Supernova ship with light escort, but that was enough. Such vessels have the mass of a large asteroid, and one of them can sterilize a planet; two or three can take it apart. Theoretically, a task force comprising twenty Novaclass battleships with escorts can reduce one of those monsters if it is willing to lose most of its units. But nothing less can even do significant damage, and the rebel base did not have that much. Nor could they get even what they had into full action.
The ships rushed out of interstellar space, flashing the recognition signals I had given. Before the picket vessels suspected what was wrong, the Valgolians were on them. One managed to bleat a call to base and the alarm screamed again, men rushed to battle stations. Then the Imperials blanketed all communications with a snarl of interference through which nothing the rebels had could drive.
So naturally they were thought to have been annihilated in a few swift blazes of fire and steel, a quick clean death and forgetfulness of defeat. But only the drivers were crippled, and then the Supernova yanked the vessels to its titan flanks and held them in unbreakable gravity beams. The crews would be taken later, with narcotic gas or paralyzer beams—alive.
For the Empire needs its rebels.
I knew the uselessness of going to battle stations, so I hung behind, seeking out Barbara, whose place was with the missile’computer bank. I met her and Kane in the hallway. The boy’s face was white, and there were tears running down his cheeks.
“This is the end,” he said. “They’ve found us out, and there’s nothing left but to die. Good-bye, Barbara.” He kissed her, wildly, and ran for his ship. Moodily, I watched him go. He expected death, and he would get only capture, and afterward—
“What are you doing here, Con?” asked Barbara.
“I’m too shaky to be any good in the artillery. Let me go with you, I can punch a computer.”
She nodded silently, and we went off together.
The floor shook under us, and a crash of rock roared down the halls. The heavy weapons on the Supernova were bloodlessly reducing our ground installations and our ships not yet in action to smashed rubble. They would kill not a single one of us, except by uncontrollable accident, and save many Valgolian and Earth lives that way, but it wasn’t pleasant to be slugged. The girl and I staggered ahead. When the lights went out, I stopped and held her.
“It’s no use,” I said. “They’ve got us.” “Let me go!” she cried.
I hung on, and suddenly she collapsed against me, crying and shaking. We stood there with the city rumbling and shivering around us, waiting.
Presently the Valgolian commander released the interference and contacted Levinsohn, offering terms of surrender. It seemed to Levinsohn, and it was meant to seem, that further resistance would be useless butchery. His ships were gone and his foes need only bombard him to ruin. He capitulated, and one by one we laid down our arms and filed to meet the victors.
The terms, as announced by messengers—the intercom was out of action—were generous. Leading rebels and those judged potentially “dangerous” would go to penal colonies on various Earthlike planets. Except that they weren’t penal colonies at all, but, of course, the Earthlings wouldn’t know this. They were indoctrination centers, and, with all my bitterness, I still longed to observe a man like Levinsohn after five years in one of the centers. He’d see things in a different perspective. He’d see the Empire for what it was—even if I sometimes had a little trouble seeing that now—and he’d be a better rebel for it.
Someday Levinsohn and his kind would be back on Earth, the new leaders ready to lead the way to a new tomorrow. And I would be with them.
I’d be back with Levinsohn and the rest, and with Barbara, too, and we’d try to pave the way to the peace and friendship. But meanwhile there’d be other revolutions—striving and hoping and breaking their hearts daring what they thought would be death to win what they called freedom and what we hoped would be evolution.
It was the fire to temper a new civilization.
We walked down the hall, Barbara and I, hand in hand, alone in spite of all the people who were shuffling the same way. Most of them were weeping. But Barbara’s head was high now.
“What will happen to us?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “But, Barbara, whatever happens after this, remember that I love you. Remember that I’ll always love you.”
“I love you too.” She smiled, and kissed me. “We’ll be together, Con. That’s all that matters. We’ll be together.”
That was important—and it made me feel good. Yes, we’d be together; I’d see to that. But for a while Barbara would hate me through all the long years of the indoctrination. Someday, perhaps, she would understand … the indoctrination could do it, and I could help. But by the gods of space, how would it be to take that hate all that while?
We came out into the central chamber where the prisoners were gathering to be herded up to the ships. Armed Valgolian guards stood under the glare of improvised lights. Other Imperials were going through the city, flushing out those who might be hiding and removing whatever our armed forces could use. The equipment would do no one any good here, and Boreas would be left to its darkness.
It was cold in the vast shadowy room. The heating plant had broken down and the ancient cold of Boreas was seeping in. Barbara shivered and I held her close to me. Nat Hawkins moved over to join us, wordlessly.
I was questioned in a locked room by one of the big Valgolian officers. He looked at a stereograph in his hand and he took me aside, but it was not unusual. Many of the starbound prisoners were being questioned by their guards, and I was merely one of them.
“Colonel Halgen?” the officer asked with an eagerness close to hero-worship. He was obviously fresh from school and military terminology came from his lips as if it really meant something to a Valgolian. The colonel, of course, meant that in a titular sense I had been elevated for my work. Funny, if you use the language enough, you get to believe it yourself.
“Sir,” the young officer continued, “this is one of the greatest pieces of work I’ve ever seen. I am to extend the official congratulations of—”
I let him talk for a while and then I raised my hand peremptorily and I told him that the girl with the Earthling Hawkins was to go along for indoctrination, despite the fact that her name did not appear on his lists. He nodded, and I went back to Barbara, but half a dozen men had come between us.
Levinsohn and five guards. The man’s carriage was still erect, the old unbreakable pride and courage were still in him. Someone among the prisoners broke loose and rushed at him, cursing, till the Valgolians thrust him back into line.
“Levinsohn!” screamed the man. “Levinsohn, you dirty Jew, you sold us out!”
There you see why this rebellion had to be crushed. Earth still had a long way to go. The Levinsohns, the Barbaras, the more promising of the anarchs would be educated and returned and the civilizing process would go on. Earth’s best and bravest would unite and fight us, and with each defeat they would learn something of what we had to teach them, that all races, however divergent, must respect each other and work together, learn it with an intensity’ which the merely intellectual teaching of schools and propaganda could not achieve alone—or, at any rate, soon enough.
Valgolia is the great and lonely enemy, the self-appointed Devil, since none of us can be angels. It is the source of challenge and adversity such as has always driven intelligence onward and upward, in spite of itself.
Sooner or later, generations hence, perhaps, all the subject worlds will have attained internal unity, forgetting their very species in a common bond of intelligence. And on that day Valgolia’s work will be done. She and her few friends, her donagangors, will seemingly capitulate without a fight and become simply part of a union of free and truly civilized planets.
And such a union will be firmer and more enduring than all the tyrant empires of the past. It will have the strength of a thousand or more races, working together in the harmony which they achieved in struggling against us.
That is the goal, but it is a long way ahead; there may be centuries needed, and meanwhile Valgolia is alone.
Barbara would understand. In time she would understand what she as yet did not even know. But first would be the hatred, the cold stark hatred that must come of knowing who and what I really am. I could only wait for that hatred to come after she learned, and then wait for it to go, slowly, slowly… .
Lines of the Earthlings were filing forward, and, with Nat Hawkins, Barbara waited for me. I walked to her and took her hand. Her head was high, as high as Levinsohn’s. She expected all of us to die, but she’d meet the relatives and friends she thought were dead.
It would be a great, a crushing humiliation, to know one’s martyrs were alive and being well treated and intensively educated by the foe, who was supporting and encouraging one’s supposedly dangerous revolution.
“It won’t be so bad as long as we’re together, darling,” I said.
She smiled, misunderstanding, and kissed me defiantly before our Valgolian guards.
WALT SHELDON
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I fought to be awake. I was dreaming, but I think I must have blushed. I must have blushed in my sleep.
“Do it!” she said. “Please do it! For me!”
It was the voice that always came, low, intense, seductive, the sound of your hand on silk … and to a citizen of Northern, a conformist, it was shocking. I was a conformist then; I was still one that morning.
I awoke. The glowlight was on, slowly increasing. I was in my living machine in Center Four, where I belonged, and all the familiar things were about me, reality was back, but I was breathing very hard.
I lay on the pneumo a while before getting up. I looked at the chroner: 0703 hours, Day 17, Month IX, New Century Three. My morning nuro-tablets had already popped from the tube, and the timer had begun to boil an egg. The egg was there because the realfood allotment had been increased last month. The balance of trade with Southern had just swung a decimal or two our way.
I rose finally, stepped to the mirror, switched it to positive and looked at myself. New wrinkles—or maybe just a deepening of the old ones. It was beginning to show; the past two years were leaving traces.
I hadn’t worried about my appearance when I’d been with the Office of Weapons. There, I’d been able to keep pretty much to myself, doing research on magnetic mechanics as applied to space drive. But other jobs, where you had to be among people, might be different. I needed every possible thing in my favor.
Yes, I still hoped for a job, even after two years. I still meant to keep on plugging, making the rounds. I’d go out again today.
The timer clicked and my egg was ready. I swallowed the tablets and then took the egg to the table to savor it and make it last.
As I leaned forward to sit, the metal tag dangled from my neck, catching the glowlight. My identity tag.
Everything came back in a rush—
My name. The dream and her voice. And her suggestion. IVould I dare? Would I start out this very morning and take the risk, the terrible risk?
You remember renumbering. Two years ago. You remember how it was then; how everybody looked forward to his new designation, and how everybody made jokes about the way the letters came out; and how all the records were for a while fouled up beyond recognition.
The telecomics kidded renumbering. One went a lit’tle too far and they psycho-scanned him and then sent him to Marscol as a dangerous nonconform.
