Rule Golden

4

I found that I could move, inchmeal, if I sweated hard enough at it. It took me what seemed like half an hour to get my hand into my pocket, paw all the stuff out onto the floor, and get the key-ring hooked over one finger. Then I had to crawl about ten feet to Aza-Kra, and when I got there my fingers simply wouldn’t hold the keys firmly enough.

I picked them up in my teeth and got two of the wristcuffs unlocked. That was the best I could do; the other one was behind him, inside the trunk, and neither of us had strength enough to pull him out where I could get at it.

It was comical. My muscles weren’t cramped, but my nervous system was getting messages that said they were—so, to all intents and purposes, it was true. I had no control over it; the human body is about as skeptical as a God-smitten man at a revival meeting. If mine had thought it was burning, I would have developed simon-pure blisters.

Then the pins-and-needles started, as Aza-Kra began to flex his arms and legs to get the stiffness out of them. Between us, after a while, we got him out of the trunk and unlocked the third cuff. In a few minutes I had enough freedom of movement to begin massaging his cramped muscles; but it was three-quarters of an hour before either of us could stand.

We caught the mid-afternoon plane to Paris, with Aza-Kra in the trunk again. I checked into a hotel, left him there, and went shopping: I bought a hideous black dress with imitation-onyx trimming, a black coat with a cape, a feather muff, a tall black hat and the heaviest mourning veil I could find. At a theatrical costumer’s near the Place de l’Opera I got a reasonably lifelike old-woman mask and a heavy wig.

When he was dressed up, the effect was startling. The tall hat covered the cone, the muff covered two of his hands. There was nothing to be done about the feet, but the skirt hung almost to the ground, and I thought he would pass with luck.

We got a cab and headed for the American consulate, but halfway there I remembered about the photographs. We stopped off at an amusement arcade and I got my picture taken in a coin-operated machine. Aza-Kra was another problem—that mask wouldn’t fool anybody without the veil—but I spotted a poorly-dressed old woman and with some difficulty managed to make her understand that I was a crazy American who would pay her five hundred francs to pose for her picture. We struck a bargain at a thousand.

As soon as we got into the consulate waiting-room, Aza-Kra gassed everybody in the building. I locked the street door and searched the offices until I found a man with a little pile of blank passport books on the desk in front of him. He had been filling one in on a machine like a typewriter except that it had a movable plane-surface platen instead of a cylinder.

I moved him out of the way and made out two passports; one for myself, as Arthur James LeRoux; one for Aza-Kra, as Mrs. Adrienne LeRoux. I pasted on the photographs and fed them into the machine that pressed the words "Photograph attached U. S. Consulate Paris, France” into the paper, and then into the one that impressed the consular seal.

I signed them, and filled in the blanks on the inside covers, in the taxi on the way to the Israeli consulate. The afternoon was running out, and we had a lot to do.

We went to six foreign consulates, gassed the occupants, and got a visa stamp in each one. I had the devil’s own time filling them out; I had to copy the scribbles I found in legitimate passports at each place and hope for the best. The Israeli one was surprisingly simple, but the Japanese was a horror.

We had dinner in our hotel room—steak for me, water and soy-bean paste, bought at a health-food store, for Aza-Kra. Just before we left for Le Bourget, I sent a cable to Eli Freeman:

Big story will have to wait spread this now all stock-yard so-called epidemic and similar phenomena due one cause step on somebody’s toe to see what I mean.

Shortly after seven o’clock we were aboard a flight bound for the Middle East.

And that was the fourth day, during which a number of things happened that I didn’t have time to add to my list until later.

Commercial and amateur fishermen along the Atlantic seaboard, from Delaware Bay as far north as Portland, suffered violent attacks whose symptoms resembled those of asthma. Some—who had been using rods or poles rather than nets—complained also of sharp pains in the jaws and hard palate. Three deaths were reported.

The “epidemic” now covered roughly half the continental United States. All livestock shipments from the West had been canceled, stockyards in the affected area were full to bursting. The President had declared a national emergency.

Lobster had disappeared completely from east-coast menus.

One Robert James Dahl, described as the owner and publisher of a Middle Western newspaper, was being sought by the Defense Department and the FBI in connection with the disappearance of certain classified documents.

The next day, the fifth, was Saturday. At two in the morning on a Sabbath, Tel Aviv seemed as dead as Angkor. We had four hours there, between planes; we could have spent them in the airport waiting room, but I was wakeful and I wanted to talk to Aza-Kra. There was one ancient taxi at the airport; I had the driver take us into the town and leave us there, down in the harbor section, until plane time.

We sat on a bench behind the sea wall and watched the moonlight on the Mediterranean. Parallel banks of faintly-silvered clouds arched over us to northward; the air was fresh and cool.

After a while I said, “You know that I’m only playing this your way for one reason. As far as the rest of it goes, the more I think about it the less I like it.”

“Why?”

“A dozen reasons. The biological angle, for one. I don’t like violence, I don’t like war, but it doesn’t matter what I like. They’re biologically necessary, they eliminate the unfit.”

“Do you say that only the unfit are killed in wars?”

“That isn’t what I mean. In modem war the contest isn’t between individuals, it’s between whole populations. Nations, and groups of nations. It’s a cruel, senseless, wasteful business, and when you’re in the middle of it it’s hard to see any good at all in it, but it works—the survivors survive, and that’s the only test there is.”

“Our biologists do not take this view.” He added, “Neither do yours.”

I said, “How’s that?”

“Your biologists agree with ours that war is not biological. It is social. When so many are killed, no stock improves. All suffer. It is as you yourself say, the contest is between nations. But their wars kill men.”

I said, “All right, I concede that one. But we’re not the only kind of animal on this planet, and we didn’t get to be the dominant species without fighting. What are we supposed to do if we run into a hungry lion—argue with him?”

“In a few weeks there will be no more lions.”

I stared at him. “This affects Hons, too? Tigers, elephants, everything?”

“Everything of sufficient brain. Roughly, everything above the level of your insects.”

“But I understood you to say that the catalyst—that it took a different catalyst for each species.”

“No. All those with spines and warm blood have the same ancestors. Your snakes may perhaps need a different catalyst, and I believe you have some primitive sea creatures which kill, but they are not important.”

I said, “My God.” I thought of lions, wolves, coyotes, house-cats, lying dead beside their prey. Eagles, hawks and owls tumbling out of the sky. Ferrets, stoats, weasels ...

The world a big garden, for protected children.

My fists clenched. “But this is a million times worse than I had any idea. It’s insane. You’re upsetting the whole natural balance, you’re mocking it cross-ways. Just for a start, what the hell are we going to do about rats and mice? That’s—” I choked on my tongue. There were too many images in my mind to put any of them into words. Rats like a tidal wave, filling a street from wall to wall. Deer swarming out of the forests. The sky blackening with crows, sparrows, jays.

“It will be difficult for some years,” Aza-Kra said. “Perhaps even as difficult as you now think. But you say that to fight for survival is good. Is it not better to fight against other species than among yourselves?”

“Fight!” I said. “What have you left us to fight with? How many rats can a man kill before he drops dead from shock?”

“It is possible to kill without causing pain or shock....

You would have thought of this, although it is a new idea for you. Even your killing of animals for food can continue. We do not ask you to become as old as we are in a day. Only to put behind you your cruelty which has no purpose.”

He had answered me, as always; and as always, the answer was two-edged. It was possible to kill painlessly, yes. And the only weapon Aza-Kra had brought to Earth, apparently, was an anesthetic gas....

We landed at Srinager, in the Vale of Kashmir, at high noon: a sea of white light under a molten-metal sky.

Crossing the field, I saw a group of white-turbaned figures standing at the gate. I squinted at them through the glare; heat-waves made them jump and waver, but in a moment I was sure. They were bush-bearded Sikh policemen, and there were eight of them.

I pressed Aza-Kra’s arm sharply and held my breath.

A moment later we picked our way through the sprawled line of passengers to the huddle of bodies at the gate. The passport examiner, a slender Hindu, lay a yard from the Sikhs. I plucked a sheet of paper out of his hand.

Sure enough, it was a list of the serial numbers of the passports we had stolen from the Paris consulate.

Bad luck. It was only six-thirty in Paris now, and on a Saturday morning at that; we should have had at least six hours more. But something could have gone wrong at any one of the seven consulates—an after-hours appointment, or a worried wife, say. After that the whole thing would have unraveled.

“How much did you give them this time?” I asked.

“As before. Twenty hours.”

“All right, good. Let’s go.”

He had overshot his range a little: all four of the hackdrivers waiting outside the airport building were snoring over their wheels. I dumped the skinniest one in the back seat with Aza-Kra and took over.

Not for the first time, it occurred to me that without me or somebody just like me Aza-Kra would be helpless. It wasn’t just a matter of getting out of Chillicothe; he couldn’t drive a car or fly a plane, he couldn’t pass for human by himself; he couldn’t speak without giving himself away. Free, with no broken bones, he could probably escape recapture indefinitely; but if he wanted to go anywhere he would have to walk.

And not for the first time, I tried to see into a history book that hadn’t been written yet. My name was there, that much was certain, providing there was going to be any history to write. But was it a name like Blondel... or did it sound more like Vidkun Quisling?

We had to go south; there was nothing in any other direction but the highest mountains in the world. We didn’t have Pakistan visas, so Lahore and Amritsar, the obvious first choices, were out. The best we could do was Chamba, about two hundred rail miles southeast on the Srinager-New Delhi line. It wasn’t on the principal air routes, but we could get a plane’ there to Saharanpur, which was.

There was an express leaving in half an hour, and we took it. I bought an English-language newspaper at the station and read it backward and forward for four hours; Aza-Kra spent the time apparently asleep, with his cone, hidden by the black hat, tilted out the window.

The “epidemic” had spread to five Western states, plus Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba, and parts of Mexico and Cuba ... plus England and France, I knew, but there was nothing about that in my Indian paper; too early.

In Chamba I bought the most powerful battery-operated portable radio I could find; I wished I had thought of it sooner. I checked with the airport: there was a flight leaving Saharanpur for Port Blair at eight o’clock.

Port Blair, in the Andamans, is Indian territory; we wouldn’t need to show our passports. What we were going to do after that was another question.

I could have raided another set of consulates, but I knew it would be asking for trouble. Once was bad enough; twice, and when we tried it a third time—as we would have to, unless I found some other answer—I was willing to bet we would find them laying for us, with gas masks and riot guns.

Somehow, in the few hours we were to spend at Port Blair, I had to get those serial numbers altered by an expert.

We had been walking the black, narrow? dockside streets for two hours when Aza-Kra suddenly stopped.

“Something?”

“Wait,” he said. “... Yes. This is the man you are looking for. He is a professional forger. His name is George Wheelwright. He can do it, but I do not know whether he will. He is a very timid and suspicious man.”

“All right. In here?”

“Yes.”

We went up a narrow unlighted stairway, choked with a kitchen-midden of smells, curry predominating. At the second-floor landing Aza-Kra pointed to a door. I knocked.

Scufflings behind the door. A low voice: “Who’s that?”

“A friend. Let us in, Wheelwright.”

The door cracked open and yellow light spilled out; I saw the outline of a head and the faint gleam of a bulbous eye. “What d’yer want?”

“Want you to do a job for me, Wheelwright. Don’t keep us talking here in the hall.”

The door opened wider and I squeezed through into a cramped, untidy box of a kitchen. A faded cloth covered the doorway to the next room.

Wheelwright glanced at Aza-Kra and then stared hard at me; he was a little chicken-breasted wisp of a man, dressed in dungarees and a striped polo shirt. “Who sent yer?”

“You wouldn’t know the name. A friend of mine in Calcutta.” I took out the passports. “Can you fix these?”

He looked at them carefully, taking his time. “What’s wrong with ’em?”

“Nothing but the serial numbers.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re on a list.”

He laughed, a short, meaningless bark.

I said, “Well?”

“Who’d yer say yer friend in Calcutter was?”

“I haven’t any friend in Calcutta. Never mind how I knew about you. Will you do the job or won’t you?”

He handed the passports back and moved toward the door. “Mister, I haven’t got the time to fool with yer. Perhaps yer having me on, or perhaps yer’ve made an honest mistake. There’s another Wheelwright over on the north side of town. You try him.” He opened the door. “Good night, both.”

I pushed it shut again and reached for him, but he was a yard away in one jump, like a rabbit. He stood beside the table, arms hanging, and stared at me with a vague smile.

I said, “I haven’t got time to play games, either. I’ll pay you five hundred American dollars to alter these passports—” I tossed them onto the table—“or else I’ll beat the living tar out of you.” I took a step toward him.

I never saw a man move faster: he had the drawer open and the gun out and aimed before I finished that step. But the muzzle trembled slightly. “No nearer,” he said hoarsely.

I thought, Five minutes, and held my breath.

When he slumped, I picked up the revolver. Then I lifted him—he weighed about ninety pounds—propped him in a chair behind the table, and waited.

In a few minutes he raised his head and goggled at me dazedly. “How’d yer do that?” he whispered.

I put the money on the table beside the passports. “Start,” I said.

He stared at it, then at me. His thin lips tightened. “Go ter blazes,” he said.

I stepped around the table and cuffed him backhand. I felt the blow on my own face, hard and stinging, but I did it again. I kept it up. It wasn’t pleasant; I was feeling not only the blows themselves, but Wheelwright’s emotional responses, the shame and wretchedness and anger, and the queasy writhing fear: Wheelwright couldn’t bear pain.

At that, he beat me. When I stopped, sickened and dizzy, and said as roughly as I could, “Had enough, Wheelwright?” he answered, “Not if yer was ter kill me, yer bloody barstid.”

His voice trembled, and his face was streaked with tears, but he meant it. He thought I was a government agent, trying to bully him into signing his own prison sentence, and rather than let me do it he would take any amount of punishment; prison was the one thing he feared more than physical pain.

I looked at Aza-Kra. His neck-spines were erect and quivering; I could see the tips of them at the edges of the veil. Then inspiration hit me.

I pulled him forward where the little man could see him, and lifted the veil. The feathery spines stood out clearly on either side of the corpse-white mask.

“I won’t touch you again,” I said. “But look at this. Can you see?”

His eyes widened; he scrubbed them with the palms of his hands and looked again.

“And this,” I said. I pulled at Aza-Kra’s forearm and the clawed blue-gray hand came out of the muff.

Wheelwright’s eyes bulged. He flattened himself against the back of the chair.

“Now,” I said, “six hundred dollars—or I’ll take this mask off and show you what’s behind it.”

He clenched his eyes shut. His face had gone yellowish-pale; his nostrils were white.

“Get it out of here,” he said faintly.

He didn’t move until Aza-Kra had disappeared behind the curtain into the other room. Then, without a word, he poured and drank half a tumblerful of whisky, switched on a gooseneck lamp, produced bottles, (pens and brushes from the table drawer, and went to work. He bleached away the first and last digits of both serial numbers, then painted over the areas with a thin wash of color that matched the blue tint of the paper. With a jeweler’s loupe in his eye, he restored the obliterated tiny letters of the background design; finally, still using the loupe, he drew the new digits in black. From first to last, it took him thirty minutes; and his hands didn’t begin to tremble until he was done.