Kelty said, “A bill of goods, huh? Are you going to tell me the Great Leader dreamed this up?”
The technician looked dazzled. “Still, I never heard of—”
“Wait,” said Kelty. “The computer’s air-traffic-control circuit ordered the ship off. Here’s what happened.” He touched a second button. The wall blanked.
A voice said authoritatively, “Planetary Control Center, Paradise City, Paradise. No flights are authorized, and no landing permit—”
The wall flared with color, and a hard face, eyes narrowed, scarred below the left eye and across the bridge of the nose, appeared against an unfocused background, to snarl, “Be damned with your authorization. This is the Imperial light cruiser Droit de Main, flagship of Search Force IX. Vice Admiral Sir Ian Cudleigh is aboard this ship . . .”
The red-bearded technician stared at the screen, where the tough figure suddenly turned aside:
“Master of the Ordnance! Give them a taste of our steel!”
Kelty hit another button, and the wall lit with a view of buildings exploding in sheets of flame and smoke.
At the end, Kelty turned to the technician. “Then the first ship showed again, and the two ships went out of view, and the long-range pickups started feeding in more data. There’s a fleet out there.”
The technician, obviously shaken, stared at the blank wall. “Where does this leave us?”
“You tell me. The computer had to make a quick choice which side to be on, and it must have only taken one-tenth of one percent of its circuits to decide that. There wasn’t much choice, if you know what I mean.”
“But where in space did these—”
There was a jarring buzz. A voice said urgently, “Now receiving.”
* * *
The wall lit up again. A very pale face, marked by dissipation but with intense dark eyes, looked out under a narrow golden crown.
“I see you not. To whom do I speak?”
“This is the Planetary Control Center, Paradise City, Para—”
“Listen closely. It is I, Oggbad, Prince of the Empire, Premier Peer of the Kingdom, High Master of the Unseen Realms. I require your immediate aid to repulse the treasonous assaults of the low villains, Vaughan, Percy, and Ewald. Yield at once to my command or come under ban of the most hideous punishment. How say you?”
There were several buzzing sounds of varying pitch, then the words, “Owing to a lack of sufficient data—”
“Bah! These are the words of poltroons, or traitors! I am Oggbad! Yield!”
There was a total silence, then, “Very well! You think the material power of the traitor Vaughan will protect you. I say it will not! Nay, if the fools hound me throughout the length of the universe, and drive me from sun to sun, and destroy the last remnant of my worldly power, still, I am Oggbad! In the unseen realms, guns count for nought. All is unchanged, and I am still High Master of the Unseen Realms. As an earnest of my intent, and a warning to those who believe matter can of a right rule the universe, I shall inspirit the very animals with a hate of your treason, and hurl the might of the forest against you. Nay, I say, yield, or face the most dread powers of the Unseen Realms!”
The computer could manage nothing but a buzz.
“So be it,” said the pale dissipated face looking at them from the wall, its dark eyes blazing. “You anger me. And though I be shorn of material power you will soon learn the might of my dominion. I will regain a footing for my power! And as I am here, you will serve, or I will destroy you. Bear my words closely in mind.”
The wall went blank. Kelty stared at it dazedly. The technician passed a hand across his eyes.
Finally, Kelty said, “All right. But we’re on the right side, at least. That last business was lunacy. That’s—”
There was another jarring buzz. “Now receiving.”
Kelty and the technician winced and turned back toward the wall. The wall lit up with a view of the same scarred tough face they’d seen first. This face now had a thoughtful exasperated look.
“The fiend has slipped away. No cloak of invisibility could hide so large a ship from our instruments, but there it is. He is gone. Trouble is on foot again. But he’ll not leave this world alive. Well, so be it. I speak now to the Earldom-Designate of Paradise, so-called. Answer!”
The computer gave another buzz. “We are listening.”
“Why have you a voice but no face?”
“Owing to technical difficulties.”
“Be damned with technical difficulties! On all we know, Oggbad is still alive! Listen closely. As you have yielded to His Royal and Imperial Highness, Vaughan, Duke of Trasimere, Prince Contestant to the Throne, on the truth of whose cause the light of Heaven shines, so are you in duty bound to obey him. You are now a part of the Empire, in immediate fiefdom to Duke Vaughan himself. Whosoever denies this, does so on instantaneous peril of his life. Now then, the cursed Oggbad is loose on the planet. You must set your defenses in order. Mischief is afoot, and on such a scale as you may never have seen before. But fear not. Duke Vaughan is here. His material power is no small weight against the invisible might of Oggbad. Oggbad must first ensheathe his strength in material form to act in the visible realms. The Duke Vaughan’s power is already on rein to act. And we are quick, ready, and hold our minds to the task—we will come through the storm. Oggbad’s first onset is the worst. Prepare to meet the Duke Vaughan himself within the hour. There is no time to waste.”
The wall went blank.
Like two punchdrunk fighters, Kelty and the red-bearded technician stared at the wall.
* * *
Roberts, himself half-dazed, suddenly realized that Kelty and the technician, probably the two most important humans in the computer-run part of the city, were now stuck on dead center. The slightest push would move them in either direction.
“Quick!” said Roberts. “Hit Kelty with ‘desire to inform, explain, and expound!’ Easy at first, then if he does what he should, step it up. We want the rest of the city to know what’s going on.”
On the screen, Kelty was saying dazedly, “Are we dreaming? How do we handle a thing like this?” The red-bearded technician was starting to grin. “They don’t waste any time, do they? Well, well. What does the computer say to this?”
“That’s a point,” said Kelty. He crossed to the keyboard set out from the wall. Almost immediately, the wall lit up in yellow letters:
INSUFFICIENT DATA
Kelty stepped back as if he’d been struck.
The technician nodded. “That’s about all we can expect from it. After the crisis is over, then it will have the data and the answers.”
“Damn it,” said Kelty, “we’ve got to do something!” His face cleared. “Yes, we’ll let the people know what’s going on!”
“What good will that do?”
“Maybe it will give that collection of fanatics something to think about besides blowing up the computer.”
“Yes. That’s an idea.”
Roberts glanced at Morrissey. “O.K. So far so good. But now we have the little problem of providing Oggbad with an army.”
Morrissey said, “I’ve been thinking about that. It strikes me we’re making big promises, and don’t know whether we can actually come through with any results.”
“If not, they’re no worse off in that city than before. And as for us, we can always explain it away by ‘capturing’ Oggbad, and then having him escape by sorcery as soon as we figure out what to do next. After all, when you’ve only got three hours to save the lives of millions of people, you can’t expect perfection.”
“Well, no—” said Morrissey.
“What might work,” said Roberts, “is to make a kind of large U-shaped pattern of ‘desire to escape’, and move it slowly forward, from the forest across the cultivated belt toward the city. Can we do that?”
Morrissey nodded. “That’s about what I’d planned. What I don’t know is whether it will work.”
“Let’s try it. If we can get those behemoths really moving, they should be able to cover that distance pretty fast. Then there’s the problem of the city. Unless that symbiotic computer puts its oar in again, what I think we ought to do is for Hammell and me to land near the border, between the two parts of the city, while you move the animals along . . .”
“If they move,” said Morrissey.
” . . . And also pour ‘desire to cooperate’ at the city’s populace. Once we get them in the right frame of mind, we’ll wait till the animals arrive, and then there’ll be a common enemy. After that, any time the people start to break into factions, Oggbad will bash them over the head. Meanwhile, we can use the want-generator to pour the right desires at the city, while the situation itself tends to make it certain that these desires are interpreted the right way. Once we really get that setup going, we can probably shut off the want-generator entirely, except for emergencies.”