“Ralph Thomas Bumgartner,” replied the creature. “One of the best professional assassins around, and, like yourself, an immortal in the pay of The Hunter. You can never revenge yourself upon him, for neither of you could ever really damage the other. We could tell you where he is, but it would do you little good, you see.”
“Tell me anyway,” Savage commanded eagerly. “I want to know.”
“Oh, I will… for it will verify my story. But you do not want him any more than you really wanted poor Santori. It is his employer you should seek, the one who arranged for you to die in a manner so bizarre that you would never truly suspect the premeditation of your murder. The one who had to know pretty closely the moment of your death so that you could be intercepted, in the proper emotional state, and subjected to the correct theatrics, so that you would do as was preordained by your murderer for you to do.
“I speak of your employer: Stephen Wade, The Hunter.”
Savage sighed. “I’m ahead of you on that one,” he told the creature. “I just didn’t like to think about it.”
“Bumgartner — McNally — has a cottage on an island village called Ocracoke in the ocean part of North Carolina, I am informed,” the creature told him. “The description means nothing to me. Does it help you?”
“I know the place,” Savage affirmed.
“It is near Haven, you see. Right now, Bumgartner is not at home. His team is on what you would call an exfiltration mission, roughly six hundred and fifty lightyears distant from here. He will return in a few of your weeks.”
“So what do you want me to do?” Savage asked.
“We will keep in touch,” the creature replied. “I will now take Mr. Bakkus to his home and leave him. In the morning he will be unusually tired but otherwise unharmed; and he will, of course, know nothing of this.”
“So I’ll be seeing you?” Savage said, realizing it sounded inane.
“No, not me, but someone.” Bakkus turned and walked out of the door. Just before leaving he/it turned back one last time. “Remember, not even Hunter himself knows this conversation took place.”
And with that, it left.
Savage lay back on his pillow, still wide awake, thinking about the absurdities of this new life. That Bumgartner was McNally he had little doubt, and he would check, anyway. That Hunter recruited that way was also probably true. But, if The Bromgrev recruited double agents, then which side had made him a candidate for murder? The Hunter, because he wanted another routine agent? Or The Bromgrev, who wanted a traitor?
For the Devil was the Father of Lies, and the best lie was always the truth told as one wanted it told. Who was who? Who ran what? One wages a dirty war with totalitarian methods. The other murders to get recruits. In neither camp did the individual count for anything. People were things to be used. It was, he thought, a most uncharming philosophy.
The problem was, of course, that the Devil had lied to him. But which was the Devil?
Whose game should he play? he asked himself. A lifetime of experience had conditioned him to equate each of two sides with either good or evil. It struck him that those terms — any moral terms — simply did not apply.
In war, there is no good or evil.
Only interests.
STEP TWO
1
THE LIGHTS, THOSE ever-present, damnable lights the Fraskan War Room board, had been blinking for interminably long time. A tall, lean figure sat at the central console, gloomily studying the rapid series printouts spewing forth.
He looked like an eight-foot skeleton over which tiny, thin layer of blue-white skin had been stretched somehow. “Humanoid,” Earthmen might have called him, but hardly “human,” although he was displaying some very human characteristics. Aruman Vard, Agent-in-Charge of the Fraskan Sector home world, rose and paced nervously back and forth before the big board, disgusted with the information he been receiving but helpless to correct the situation.
Every once in a while, he would return to the command console and glance at the printouts and displays. The fear index, he noted, was almost perfect — for the enemy. The penetration ratio gave him very little time to do what he knew he must, as it was; yet he continued to put it off. One did not abandon one’s life and home land so freely.
He reached over and pushed a large button on console. The war board picture flipped, and showed instead only the sector. Areas in friendly hands were blue; those under enemy control were red. His planet, Fraska, itself was a blinking red.
The board was mostly stable red, anyway. He looked closely at the tiny single light blinking, telling him his world was still free. The light blinked red.
A telescreen on the far wall showed the spaceport, filled with ugly black keyhole-shaped landing craft. The announcer, almost in hysterics, kept repeating:
“Rhambdan forces are now in the capital, and all citizens are warned to stay inside, where you are, until further notice. Military Command has announced that formal surrender will take place later this morning, all remaining ships of the line having broken contact and headed into deep space. I repeat again: stay indoors. Stay where you are until further—”
Vard angrily reached over to a console and switched it off. That was that.
He sat down in the controller’s chair, swiveled around to the transceiver, and punched in a ten-digit code.
“Open all channels!” he ordered crisply.
He did not wait for a reply or an acknowledgement, but began speaking as soon as the lights on the console told him that all connections had been completed.
“This is Group to all teams. I have a red light, repeat, red light. Enemy is in the city. Dalthar! Dalthar! Deploy immediately to primary objectives; use secondaries in numerical sequence only as local conditions indicate. We have lost and we must now do our duty. Every blow that you strike today is a blow to the enemy, and a step toward ultimate reclamation of our beloved motherland. I know not who you are, but I—”
He stopped, aware that he was trembling violently; the microphone was as a thing alive in his hand, writhing, bouncing uncontrollably. Finally he regained some of his composure, although his voice sounded thick and slurred to his ears.
“Luck be with you all,” he managed, his voice cracking.
He switched off the communicator, sat back wearily in his chair, and contemplated the master board. Flipping a toggle switch he replaced the starfield with a projection of both sides of the globe, alive with thousands of tiny flashing lights representing at least as many anonymous Fraskans in organized cells all over the planet. He had never known any of them, he thought, and almost none knew him. One by one, the lights were winking out, representing duties done or attempted sabotage, gumming up the mighty industrial works that were the enemy’s objectives and prize, ruining the sweetness of victory.
Their homes and their jobs. Their lives. Winking out.
Soon only a few were left: the nervous, the cowards, the unsuccessful, the traitors … and the captured.
For most of them, Vard knew, there would be no returning. Suddenly very conscious of time, Vard juggled the dial combinations on the master transceiver for the last time.
“Group to Mystery. I have acknowledged and transmitted your red light. Will abandon post in a tenth period or earlier. Prepare to transmit.” There was again no reply, but in a ship far out in space the words were heard by the cyborg signals still on board.
A tiny transceiver implanted long ago in his brain suddenly began a sharp, high-pitched whine that was audible to noone but him. Vard knew he would have live with that sound, live with it until he was picked up — or killed. If captured, the signal would rise until it struck a certain pitch, shattering his skull.
Taking a last look around the master control console, Vard went over to a small panel near the doorway. He opened it, revealing a small switch held in place by complex electrical lock, and removed a tiny vibrating key from his belt. This was inserted in the lock, twisted first this way, then that.
Aruman Vard watched the lock give way and swing aside, revealing a clear path to the switch.
He pulled it.
Then he took the elevator to the surface and went down a narrow corridor to the street level, past the sign marked ARUMAN VARD: IMPORT/EXPORT and into an almost deserted street. He moved briskly, not looking back.
When he was about two blocks away, the building began a slow dissolve, like heated plastic: all of it running together. By the time he was three blocks off, it was a huge puddle of boiling matter.
Living on an ancient world long devoid of its natural atmosphere, whose red sun gave off a dull glow but little heat, presented problems enough, just surviving there. But on this world of domed cities and underground honeycombs sustained by a highly sophisticated technology, the problem of escape was compounded almost beyond belief. Vard knew that The Hunter’s boys did not expect him to make it, but he trusted them to keep faith with him as he had all these years with them.
Suicide or surrender were simply not in his makeup. He headed for a small private garage a few blocks away. There, he knew, his escape vehicle had been maintained by robots awaiting its one use. Once there, he would feel far more secure. He damned himself for letting his emotions carry him to a possibly fatal delay. Now the Rhambdans were within the city; and getting out of the Dome, through the great locks, might be next to impossible. A whine in his head told him that it had better not be.
There! The garage! Now, just place the identdisk on the plate, then raise the doorway by vocal command. The door slid silently back. The garage was empty. Vard felt panic rising within him. There was no way he could have made a mistake. The agents had acknowledged delivery! It just wasn’t possible!
It was, however, fact. The car either had never been there or it had been stolen in some inexplicable way.
He wasted no more time.
The alleyway was still, but … were hidden eyes already viewing him? Were The Bromgrev’s agents now preparing to pounce? What if he were a Known, and they were expecting him to lead them to others? What if—?
The alternative was to fight it out here — and die. Home was gone, his world was gone. Aruman Vard walked swiftly down the silent alley.
“His car’s not there,” said a metallic feminine voice in the ship that was hiding off-planet. “Now he’s making a hurried decision.”
“Think he’ll stand and fight?” Ralph Bumgartner asked in a tone that indicated he really couldn’t care less.
“No, definitely not,” replied the disembodied voice. “All Agents-in-Charge are chosen with a high survival index in mind. He’ll go down fighting if caught, but he won’t give up escape unless caught or dead.”
“Very well. Keep me posted. Let me know irnmediately if he doesn’t make it, and zap him at the first sign of trouble. We have several others to go, you know.”
“Don’t get worried,” the voice reassured him. “Look on the bright side. If he makes it, he’ll be one of the best agents we’ve got.”
“If he gets out of this one, he’s probably The Bromgrev,” Bumgartner replied glumly as he slowly stirred his gin fizz.
2
ARUMAN VARD SAW the bubblecar as he turned the second corner. It was empty, of course, and probably locked.
He went up to the little vehicle and tried the cockpit release. Yes, locked. Even in panic the Fraskans were an orderly people. They were, he reflected, a race almost apart from himself, a nation of domesticated animals, in which a throwback had no place.
He reached into his wallet pouch and brought out a key jammer, attaching it to the side lock. There was a humming sound, and the vehicle’s top raised slightly. Reaching over, he pushed the bubble up the rest of the way and climbed inside. His eyes fell to the identdisk on the dashboard.
Let’s see, he thought. I’m Garon Hnub, a vasilis merchant from Kashar here on a business permit. That should be more than enough, unless I’m closely questioned. He wished he knew what “vasilis” was.
Thanking the dead gods of his world for such a stroke of good fortune; he started the small engine and fed instructions into the auto’s guidance system. The car moved smoothly forward.
Vard idly thumbed through the guidance card files in the center console, noting with pleasure that the bubblecar had not only a section of approved city routes but one, too, for the Great Waste Highway to Kashar. That made it much simpler. Vard marveled at his good fortune in finding a salesman’s car — from out of town! — the first time out, although he had been in the commercial district. Things were going so smoothly that Vard halfway suspected a trap.
The car sped toward the Northeast Lock.
Almost immediately, behind him, came the unmistakable purple flashing of a police cruiser. His hearts sank as he felt the override of the cruiser take hold of his vehicle and glide him gently to a stop by the side of the road. The cruiser pulled up beside him and stopped, and its occupants became clearly visible. They were not Fraskans.
One was a tall, orange creature, looking like a large, thin cone perched point upward on a mass of fleshy tentacles. Spaced evenly around its midsection were seven stalked eyes, three of which were studying him. The other occupant resembled a small, green monkey. While the orange thing seemed to glide up and out of the Cruiser, as if on a cushion of air, the little green creature scampered out the other side. Both approached Vard, who remained seated in his car for want of anything better to do. These, then, were Conquerors: mercenaries and allies from greedy worlds who had flocked to the Rhambdan call for war; former fifth columnists on occupied worlds; and such like. Opportunists, in for a share of the wealth that was what they believed the winners’ prize would be. If either was telepathic… The tiny whine in Vard’s head seemed to grow omniously loud.
“Good day, citizen!” boomed a deep voice in Universal.
Vard started slightly; be knew somehow that it came from the orange cone, although no mouth or other orifice was visible.
“Thought criminal!” shrilled the green monkey in high-pitched voice.
Vard’s hand was already on his pistol.
“Pay no heed to my friend here, honest citizen,” the orange cone put in hastily. “In a fight on Bluxada I was just finishing the statement ‘Some of these creatures are thought criminals,’ when one of them unworthily proved it by cracking his head open. Since then, they’re the only two words he’s been able to say. Not much of a conversationalist now, I admit, but still a good partner.”
“Thought criminal,” agreed the little monkey, a tear glistening in one eye.
Vard relaxed his grip on the pistol. Stupid, overconfident, arrogant ones. He doubted that they had ever been in a battle, or could face an enemy. They could handled.
“Now, then, kind sir,” continued the cone, “you are a rarity in the city this day.”
“Thought criminal,” agreed its partner.
“You have,” said the cone, “been speeding where few have dared to crawl. This makes us wonder about you, understandably.”
“Oh, noble sirs,” Vard replied, trying to sound as anguished and scared as he could, “I am but a poor merchant, caught here and seemingly stranded many hours distant from my home in Kashar, away from my mate and many offspring. I want only to get back to my family group, to be with them during this troubled time. I have been unable to call them, and they fear me dead, I am certain.”
The orange cone remained impassive; the green monkey scratched its nose.
“Well, Twixl,” the cone said suddenly, “what do you think of him?”
“Thought criminal,” answered Twixl idly, much more concerned with fondling his own tail. “Well, not really,” the cone replied, “but I do think our Fraskan friend warrants some sort of inspection.”
The cone drew closer to Vard. “I’m afraid, dear citizen, that we must bring in all who violate the curfew. However, since you are doubtless who you say you are, and in the interest of promoting the new spirit of brotherhood between our people and yours, we’ll probably be able to fly you to Kashar as soon as you are cleared.”
Vard nodded, resigned to his course of action. As obviously stupid as these creatures were, that very dullness gave them a literal attitude toward their orders. They could be bought, probably, in a different situation, but never bent.
“If you will just follow us to the local station, we will process you quickly and see about getting you home,” the cone concluded, already gliding back toward the patrol car. Twixl nodded and turned also.