No Man's World

XI

“They certainly took their time getting here!”

“You’d think the fire helicopters would be garaged more conveniendy.”

“They’re useless! Nothing but a load of inefficient bunglers!” Lobengu was livid. He strode up and down on the lawn, clad only in violent mauve pyjamas, his face as red through the tan as the bright spring flowers lining the plastic-gravel walks. The evening nip in the air wasn’t pleasing him, either.

“Oh, I don’t know,” protested Carson Napier mildly. “They saved the kitchen quarters.”

“My samples! All my special lines! Gone! Vanished!”

“Well,” Caradine said, feeling remorse, “that’s one fallacy in dealing only in one particular line. My samples went up in smoke too. But I have others to offer.”

Lobengu couldn’t speak. He staggered off, almost frothing, swearing eternal damnation to the Horakah fire brigade and their slackness and bungling and sheer inefficiency and downright numbskull ineptness.

The incendiary capsule provided by Rawson as part of the bargain had done its duty only too well.

The hotel, the Blue Dragon, was no more. In its place smouldered a sagging heap of blackened beams and the charred remnants of the kitchen quarters.

Caradine felt quite unhappy about it. He hadn’t intended to be so drastic..

However, the canister in which Rawson and Sharon had been smuggled onto this world had been destroyed, and the job done by the incendiary capsule insured that probing investigators would not piece together its existence or the true purpose of Caradine’s sample case. At least, so he hoped.

Walking up and down with the others—they were all dressed as they had been except for Lobengu, who had retired early and disastrously—Caradine mulled over Rawson’s cocky confidence. The tardy arrival of the fire brigade was a pointer to this tiny portion of Alpha being a showcase. They’d probably never envisaged any occurrence like this, and the fire helicopters had had to be brought in from outside. Caradine wondered what that outside was going to be like.

Carson Napier walked up across the grass, with the shadows stretching longer and longer, and they began to stroll up and down together, to all appearances just two evicted guests speculating on their night’s accommodation.

“Well, Carter. We can talk now.”

“I think it’s safe. If a spy eye is on us—”

“I’ve a gadget to take care of those, and a bug if they use one.” He didn’t specify where the gadget was kept about his person.

“You called me Caradine. You said you were omitting the frills. All right. That’s okay, the Second CST is no more and that means that the frills are now meaningless.”

“I’ve come a long way to find you.”

“You’ve stepped straight out of a fairy story if you asked these people.” Jinny Jiloa had gone home with her parents. Caradine wondered briefly if he would ever see them again. “But I think I should make it quite clear to you that my home is now Shanstar. You mentioned Belmont. I assume you are using that only as a cover. I’m not using Shanstar. I belong to Shanstar. Oh, and if you want to kill me you’ll have to shoot me in the back.”

“Yes, I know of your prowess with a gun.” - “I’m not proud of it. Well, come on then, what do you want?”

“That depends rather on whether you are still the David Caradine of ten years ago.”

“Those were the days… Hell, you don’t start the old tear ducts going. I washed my hands of the whole filthy business when the Second CST was sabotaged. I’d sweated blood to build that; I’d put everything I’d got into it. And then some lousy nit-ridden effeminate so-called militarists stepped in and tried to take over.” Caradine was getting mad.

“I know,” Napier said sympathetically. “It was bad. I was a simple lieutenant of the Terran Space Navy then. I remember as though it was yesterday your final broadcast to the Commonwealth.”

“And only four years ago—no, five, now—I lit out for space and went clear through the Blight. I guess you had a rugged trip, following me.”

“Some. Your renunciation of supreme power rather took the thrust from the tubes of the gentry you so aptly described. They formed a Third Commonwealth Suns of Terra, you know!”

“Did they now!”

“It didn’t last. When they were overthrown the Fourth and Fifth rose and fell. When I left they were trying to knock into shape the Third Republic. I guess their numbering in either Commonwealths or Republics is along into double figures by now.”

“You don’t appear to have a high regard for these new groupings.”

“No.”

“Aren’t you forgetting that they are the governments of the whole family of suns centering on Earth? Over one million it was, last count. All outwards in the opposite directions from the Blight. Someone must exercise a sort of general direction to keep the harmony, otherwise you’ll have the parochial bickerings they have here.”

“You always did that well. Very well. The little men who try to run things now tremble when your name is mentioned.”

“And some did not. Some men have been known to acknowledge a liking for me…”

Caradine remembered Napier’s early remark and the look on his face. He hadn’t misjudged that look, then. And he very much cared for the youngster’s direct and natural way of conversation, without a hint of a kowtow in parsecs. That was a good feeling to have.

“Those men who are now in command know that whilst you are not reported as dead, absolutely and finally, their authority is a mere shadow.”

“Ah!”

Well, then, this might be it. Napier could have been sent to dispose of the wispy, far-off, but still potent threat that one day, one dreamlike day, David Caradine would return to Earth and her million suns and resume his old, voluntarily renunciated cloak of power.

“You’re in for a big disappointment, Napier. Either way, you lose. If you’ve come to ask me to return, sent by a caucus of my old government friends, I’ve finished with it all, as I said the day I resigned. If you come to kill me, you have a man-sized job. And even if you do kill me, I don’t care. I’ll have less problems when dead—”

“John Carter!” The imperious voice rang across the darkening lawn. Both men turned.

A man hurried towards them over the grass. Caradine gained an impression of haste, a motded face with large dark eyes, a fleshy nose and a weak mouth. But his thoughts were still back on Earth, back when he was running the Second Commonwealth Suns of Terra. That position of supreme power had not come overnight; he’d had to use every artifice to weld those million suns into some semblance of law and order. He could scarcely claim, even, that he ruled them. Such a task with orders of that magnitude was well-nigh impossible, even with all the wonders of robotic speed and organization. But the CST formed a single unit; there were no wars within its boundaries, no tariffs, no barriers. Men moved freely within the Second CST, and united solidly to fight any hostile alien attacks from without.

“Mr. John Carter? My name’s Baksi.” He spoke confidentially so that Napier could not hear. “No doubt Hsien Koanga mentioned me to you?”

“Yes, he did.” Baksi was one of the agents previously sent by Koanga. Caradine’s mental hackles rose.

“Koanga sent me a gram. Coded, of course, under the guise of shipping instructions. I need to talk to you, privately.”

“Of course.” Caradine turned to Napier. “Will you excuse me? I must, be about my business. It has been a pleasant Chat.”

Napier smiled. “I didn’t come to kill you, and I have formed my opinions already. My mission is accomplished. I’ll be seeing you around, Mr. John Carter.”

“Please hurry, Carter,” Baksi said nervously.

“Goodbye, Carson Napier. The Second CST is one with Atlantis, Pergamum and the Martian Empire.”

Caradine moved away: What was so urisetthng, so strange, about that smile on Napier’s face?

A breeze frisked across the evening sky and Caradine changed direction to the pathetic pile of personal belongings of the dispossessed hotel guests. “Half a minute, Baksi. Think I’ll put my coat on. That, at least, was saved.”

“Hurry then.”

Caradine found his coat, a black hip-length weatherproof, and supposed someone searching for their own belongings had tossed it down so casually. He put it on and it dragged. He allowed no expression on his face, but followed Baksi as the frightened man hurried towards a ground car parked in the lengthening shadows.

Right-hand pocket, a familiar shape. So familiar that it brought a pang of memory. Left-hand pocket, a round metal object with a strap. Wristwatch? Caradine pulled it out and casually slipped it onto his wrist, placing his own watch back in the pocket. No watch. This must be the gadget Napier had mentioned. Spy eyes and bugs, huh? Well, he wasn’t so naked as before. It looked like a watch, though, which was useful.

They entered the ground car.

“I’m taking you outside, Carter. All this pretty-pretty setup is stricdy for the tourists and salesmen and others the moguls have to let onto Alpha. If the moguls had their way no one apart from their techs and work people would set foot on Alpha. The whole planet is one immense arsenal.”

“So I’m learning. How have you been getting on?”

Baksi hunched over the wheel. They turned off the hotel driveway and began to ride, fast and silently, through lighted streets with imposing buildings flanking both sides. A light rain began to drift down and the pavements sheened in reflected color. Other ground traffic and air cars riding strict lanes above thickened.

“Not so good. Horakah is a tough nut, Carter. I was detailed to uncover as many items as I could of their new FaZcon-class battleships. So far I’ve seen the outside of the perimeter wall.” He had a nervous tic that dragged down the side of his face from time to time. Caradine found the feeling of impotent waiting in him hurting.

Rain pelted the windscreen. There had been no warning that Caradine knew of, but now the skies were emptying of the held-up rain Weather Control had ordained for this spring evening. The tires began to sussurate on the macadam.

“A flier car would have been useless,” Baksi said. His knuckles on the wheel gripped like knots.

He was peering ahead now, trying to penetrate the curtain of rain. “Ah…” The car slowed, stopped.

The rear door opened, and closed, the newcomer flopped back on the upholstery. “Rotten night.- Caught me without a coat.”

“Got the passes?” Baksi was looking into the rearview TV screen.

“Sure.” A damp shirt-sleeved arm stretched forward between Baksi and Caradine. “Here. Take ’em, Carter. One each.”

Caradine accepted the slips of flexible red plastic. A number was deeply stamped on each, and, from his own experience, he guessed that the cards were molecularly stressed. Any attempt by amateurs to alter a single dot on the card would cause its molecular lattices to collapse. Result, no card.

“These are to get outside, I suppose?”

“Yes. Horakah keeps it close to the chest.”

“Howd’ you get ’em?”

“Channels. Our concern. Damn this rain!”

The car was going faster than Caradine cared for, considering the circumstances. Tires squealed loudly as Baksi took a comer. Now they were out in open country, with only darkness about, rushing wind, slanting shards of rain and a single distant red light, like a beckoning finger.

Caradine didn’t like it that Hoe, the newcomer, sat in the hack where there was room for him up front.

The car worked up a good speed. The lance of crimson light neared. Minutes later Baksi was pressing the brake. The car slowed its headlong rush. It stopped, bathed all in a crimson flood of fight. Helmeted heads and uniforms crowded.

“Passes?”

“Here.” The three passengers showed the red, heavily stamped cards. A wait. Then the passes came back through the rolled-down window.

“Okay. Scram.”

Baksi’s fumbling hand missed the starter twice, and Caradine bent over and pressed the button. The mill growled to life and the car moved forward. Baksi was shaking like a leaf in a storm—like a leaf on that tree above Harriet La-fonde’s head, in the storm this would cause back on Gamma.

That, suddenly, Caradine saw and realized. He felt a severe pang of horror at what he had let Harriet in for. And then he tried to console himself that she, whatever her merits as a woman, represented a culture full of aggrandizement and war fever. It didn’t work very well. Poor Harriet.

He had a severe tussle, there in the darkness of the hurtling car in the rushing night, to prevent himself from turning around and going back.

These two wouldn’t stop him, of course.

Those passes—tricky things to meddle with…

A ground car, straight out of the tourist trap and into the true Alpha-Horakah, filled with unnameable wonders and horrors.

Hmm. The feeling in him that Baksi wasn’t what he should be. And would Hsien Koanga have sent a gram? Hadn’t he said that he didn’t know if his agents were still free?

“Much farther?” he asked, easing his shoulder in the seat upholstery.

“No. I don’t know what particular mission you have been assigned by Koanga, but whatever it is you’ll need a base outside. We’re going there. People can walk about pretty freely outside providing they have the correct identifications.”

“What do you do? Knock a man over for his?”

“Something like that. It’s all manufacturing plants and spacefields and testing sites. I doubt there’s a single blade of grass.”

“Grass is tough stuff. Grows on a bald man’s head.”

“Yeah.” Baksi tried to laugh. And Hoe, from the back seat, raised a guffaw.

Caradine made up his mind. Even if he was wrong, even if these two were still working in some bona fide fashion for Koanga, he wanted no truck with frightened men. They were ready for the chopper. That was only too evident. And those so-convenient passes…

Trap. Caradine smelled it, sniffed around it, came to the same inescapable conclusion: Trap.

“Do you and your pal Hoe have much exercise?” he asked.

“Huh?” Baksi flashed him a glance spared from his continual manual driving. “Exercise?”

“That’s what I said. Y’know, walking sets up a man’s muscles like nothing else. Expands his chest. Gives him a bounce to his stride.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“I don’t want you to.” The Beaty was in Caradine’s hand. “I also don’t care if you make me use this.” He flicked the cut-switch and the engine died in a dwindling sigh of wind and tires. “Out. Both of you.”

“You can’t do this! Baksi was shaking and yelling.

Hoe had backed up in his seat. But the Beatty could cut him down before he moved three inches. He knew it.

“How did you find out?” Baksi was yelling. His weak face was contorted with the fear freezing his guts. “Did Koanga know? I had to do it! They forced me. They made me turn you over.”

“Cut it, you idiot!” That was Hoe, lividly violent, cursing foully.

“Out,” said Caradine.

The two doors opened and slammed. If they had guns they didn’t dare use them under the threat of the Beatty.

“Now start walking. I’ll drop you if you turn around.”

The two walked off, into the darkness, back along the road. When the blackness had swallowed them up, Caradine started the car and left at more than a hundred miles an hour.

He was on the outside. He was on his own.