Frank Mitsui looked still more unhappy and seemed to be fumbling for words. One of the other hobos cut in. “Don’t be a fool, Jeff. Don’t you know what they’ve done to people like Frank?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, you’re on the dodge. If they catch you, it’s the labor camp. So is Frank. But if they catch him, it’s curtains — right now. They’ll shoot him on sight — .”
“So? What did you do, Frank?”
Mitsui shook his head miserably.
“He didn’t do anything,” the other continued. “The empire has no use for American Asiatics. They’re liquidating them.”
It was quite simple. The Pacific coast Japanese, Chinese, and the like did not fit into the pattern of serfs and overlords — particularly the half-breeds. They were a danger to the stability of the pattern. With cold logic they were being hunted down and killed.
Thomas listened to Frank’s story. “When I got home they were dead — all of them. My little Shirley, Junior, Jimmy, the baby — and Alice.” He put his face in his hands and wept. Alice was his wife. Thomas remembered her as a brown, stocky woman in overalls and straw hat, who talked very little but smiled a lot.
“At first I thought I would kill myself,” Mitsui went on when he had sufficient control of himself, “then I knew better. I hid in an irrigation ditch for two days, and then I got away over the mountains.
Then some whites almost killed me before I could convince them I was on their side.”
Thomas could understand how that would happen, and could think of nothing to say. Frank was damned two ways; there was no hope for him.
“What do you intend to do now, Frank?”
He saw a sudden return of the will to live in the man’s face. “That is why I will not let myself die! Ten for each one” — he counted them off on his brown fingers — “ten of those devils for each one of my babies
— and twenty for Alice. Then maybe ten more for myself, and I can die.”
“Hm-m-m. Any luck?”
“Thirteen, so far. It is slow, for I have to be very sure, so that they won’t kill me before I finish.”
Thomas pondered it in his mind, trying to fit this new knowledge into his own purpose. Such fixed determination should be useful, if directed.
But it was some hours later before he approached Mitsui again.
“How would you,” he asked gently, “like to raise your quota from ten to a thousand each — two thousand for Alice?”
CHAPTER THREE
The exterior alarms brought Ardmore to the portal long before Thomas whistled the tune that activated the door. Ardmore watched the door by televisor from the guard room, his thumb resting on a control, ready to burn out of existence any unexpected visitor. When he saw Thomas enter his thumb relaxed, but at the sight of his companion it tightened again.
A PanAsian! He almost blasted them in sheer reflex before he checked himself. It was possible, barely possible, that Thomas had brought a prisoner to question..
“Major! Major Ardmore! It’s Thomas.”
“Stand where you are. Both of you.”
“It’s all right, Major. He’s an American. I vouch for him.”
“Maybe.” The voice that reached Thomas over the announcing phone was still grimly suspicious. “Just the same — peel off all of your clothes, both of you.” They did so, Thomas biting his lip in humiliation, Mitsui trembling in agitation. He did not understand it and he felt trapped.
“Now turn around slowly and let me look you over,” the voice commanded.
Having satisfied himself that they were unarmed, Ardmore told them to stand still and wait, then called Graham on the intercommunication circuit. “Graham!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Report to me at once in the guard room.”
“But, Major, I can’t. Dinner will be — ”
“Never mind dinner! Move!”
“Yes, sir!”
Ardmore pointed out the situation to him in the screen. “You go down there and handcuff both of them from behind. Secure the Asiatic first.
Make him back up to you, and watch yourself. If he tries to jump you, I may have to wing you, too.”