No Man's World

XIII

This changed the degree, not the quality, of what Caradine had to do.

Long ago he had made up his mind that petty pilfering of interstellar secrets was not for him. Hsien Koanga had wanted the details of the Horakah space fleet build-up, and the probable way they would plan their tactics in the event of a space battle. All that was very fine, blood-stirring stuff, but Caradine had been used to dealing with the nerve-center of a stellar commonwealth, of himself arranging those details and of indicating the general line of mutual advancement.

Once upon a time men had glibly and non-understandingly talked of empires of a million planets, and of their being a Queen Planet ruling all with a just but heavy hand. That was nonsense, of course. Men hadn’t been able to rule themselves when compressed onto a single planet, onto a single continent, even. The complexities and magnitudes involved in interstellar groupings—empire was rather an outmoded term nowadays—meant inevitably that a cohesion based on more than mere big-fist obedience must operate. Caradine was well aware that the inevitable was only what you weren’t quick-witted enough to avoid.

You might have on file and cybemetically indexed all the details on all the inhabitants of your stellar grouping. But that didn’t stop one farmer on a planet fifty light years off from trading with a local produce firm. And if the produce firm dealt with another adjacent grouping that was in bad odor with the cybernetic index, then the index was going to have to do a lot of cog-whirring to do anything about it.

To run an interstellar commonwealth with any semblance of humanity and common sense you all had to feel friends. If graft and corruption crept in, then those responsible would be ditched fast. If you were of—well, dammit to hell— if you were of Earth, then your pride in belonging to the commonwealth with its advantages outweighed scruples of being the underdog and of being graft-ridden. Modern men had, at least, evolved from the dawn of civilization.

Caradine sat watching the rest of the TV news and he wondered. Horakah’s days were numbered, but she didn’t know that yet. Hsien Koanga was a very small cog in all the diiferent wheels, a cog along with the others of Rawson and Sharon. And now Harriet Lafonde had been dragged in.

He wondered how many of these people of this work-ridden planet, sitting around him in this restaurant now, would find their scruples vanish, and their desires to no longer be the underdogs strong enough to make them actually think. They weren’t quite ready yet. They hadn’t been brought all the way to the boil. Give them time, a few more whirls of their planet around their sun.

But Caradine didn’t have that time.

Three of his friends—he counted them all his friends on the relationship twining between them—were being held here in Alpha-Horakah’s central city of Horak. Cunning ploys, machinations, ferreting out of interstellar secrets—all those would have to wait. His direction of action had been subdy changed, and he didn’t have much time.

He rose, paid the bill and left. As he walked leisurely away from the restaurant four black squad cars dropped down and brown-clad police belted in through the front doors. They smashed a lot of glass going in. Caradine chuckled. All that drama—and the bird had flown.

They were on to him.

All right. That meant that now he was technically on the run. His sphere of action had been widened.

His alarm detector strapped to his wrist remained dead. He went into another restaurant, this time choosing a high-class establishment with tablecloths over the slick plastic, and headed straight for the men’s room. He made a pretense of washing his hands and drying them under the infrareds.

When the place was empty save for one other—one that Caradine had waited for as being most suitable—he walked across and cut the edge of his palm across the man’s neck. He caught him under the armpits before he fell and dragged him into a cubicle. It was some crush.

The man wasn’t dead, but he’d be unconscious for an hour. Caradine stripped him,/slowing down when others used the washroom. The clothes fitted well. That’s why Caradine had waited for the right victim. There was plenty of money, Galaxos as well as local currency. There was a tiny dartgun, loaded with poisonous darts that could puff silently for fifty feet. Nasty litde thing. But it, too, was a pointer.

The ident papers showed that Caradine’s new name was Jefferson Raoul Logan. He was a laboratory attendant, first-class. Caradine supposed that that meant he wiped up the mess when an experiment fouled up. He fastened the last magneclamp on his cherry-colored shirt, after having weakened it, propped Logan comfortably, bound and gagged with surplus items of clothing, and left. He dogged the door and shot the engaged-tab up. He went out whistling.

Logan’s air car was parked in the lot and the robot brought it out at once as soon as Caradine presented the parking stub. He got in and sent the car up steeply, heading into the fast traffic lanes, heading straight into Horak.

He was not challenged. He had about forty minutes left, and as much time after that as it took Logan to attract attention.

He was not overly confident about the Horak controls. They’d been watchful. Somehow they knew he was near, and they’d be trigger-happy.

The towers ahead grew, rising into the sky until they overtopped the traffic lane he was following. They worried him a little. The moguls might live there, although rumor had it that they lived stricdy isolated aboard a floating platform half a mile up, supported on an antigrav stilt. And rumor, circulating in this workers’ warren, was relatively reliable on matters like that.

Now that he was embarked on the thick ear stuff he could find out where they lived all right; getting to them might not be so easy.

There was a floating check point up ahead, a round-bellied flier, all portholes and gun barrels and aerials. Air cars were hanging on their antigravs lined up waiting to be checked past. Brown-uniformed police with personal antigrav flier packs flitted from car to car. If he left the traffic lane now he’d be calling attention to himself. Brazen it through.

There were ten minutes of his estimated forty of free time left when the police checked the car. They glanced at him —he felt thankful that a haircut and a new way of combing his hair made a difference—glanced at his credentials, glanced inside the car, and waved him on. He left sedately.

Logan’s home address was a rabbit-warren type of dormitory housing technicians and laboratory workers. It towered ninety stories and was as exciting as a slab of wormy cheese. Caradine put down near the block and sat in the car, waiting.

The ninety-story dormitory crouched in the shadow of those omnipresent towers, scintillating up there in the sunshine.

Caradine waited until a prowling policeman on a one-man antigrav flier pulled in and began the usual rigmarole.

He put his head in the opened driving-side window. His broad face wore a scowl. Caradine brought the gun barrel down onto the man’s forehead. Then he had opened the door against the sag of body, pulled the man in, closed the door and started up. Ten blocks away he pulled into a covered archway leading to a green-painted gate on a loading platform fifty stories above ground. He pulled into the side and the shadow, allowing other traffic to pass to and from the gate.

The policeman groaned and opened a bleary eye.

The question was: “Where is the head office, chum? Where do the moguls hang out?”

After a promise, made with a granite-set face, that he’d •be killed unpleasantly if he didn’t answer, the man told all.

At least, he told all that a man in his position would know.

There was a floating platform, anchored in the sky directly above that cluster of roseate towers. All approaches were guarded so that—and then he went off into obscenity.

Caradine hit him again and turned him off. He put the flier at full lift and went up. His time had run out, now, and he wondered if he could beat the deadline. If he didn’t a bolt of that ferocious energy that had destroyed Baksi’s car would scorch him out of thin air.

Keeping a cool head was becoming harder and harder.

So far he’d been dealing with civilians and the lower orders of the police hierarchy. As he rose into the sky he was rising, too, into a new level of authority and power. He kept the radar turned on a 360° sweep and was rewarded by a blip coming onto the screen from ahead and to his left. He carried on as though unaware. Below, the towers fell, dwindling with distance, until a drifting thread of cloud blotted them out altogether.

The approaching flier turned out to be a private job. Two more went past, some way off. Caradine switched on the small interflier radio.

“Can you help me?” he asked plaintively. “Something’s wrong and I don’t seem to get the robot’s help. I think it’s failed.”

The occupant of the other flier when they matched courses and doors and he looked through the windows, was young, square-faced and wore that stamp of authority that is so much more than a mere physical impression.

“Sure. Just hold things as they are. I’m coming aboard.”

Caradine smiled, and he was still wearing that smile as he brought the gun down. His new name, then, was Pearsall Adlai Korunna Swarthout. A Personal Assistant. That was all. The ident papers told nothing of what or who he was a Personal Assistant to. Caradine put the new clothes on, finding that they fitted tolerably well, turned the man—who was wearing Logan’s clothes and carrying Logan’s ident papers and riding in Logan’s air car—adrift, and put his new vehicle steeply upwards. If the man was shot up before they questioned him, well, this was not a case of war is war, but of preventing a war. Caradine was growing more and more convinced that if he was to succeed he would have to forget the civilized decencies.

They must have a pretty fair description of him circulated by now plus photographs and all the other ident devices. Speed and deception were his two major weapons. They couldn’t stop up every bolthole. The planetary setup was too big and overbalanced. Horakah was finding out that the hard way.

So far, apart from the policeman he had questioned, they had had no indication of his target. He would now be taking his biggest chance to date: approaching the moguls’ flying platform. If he could once step aboard that floating palace to…

And there it was ahead.

The silver sheen dazzled. Tower after tower, pinnacle after spire and dome and raking many-windowed block. The whole vast edifice was contained in his field of vision like a flawless gem. As he approached, the size of it began to make itself felt; the edges crept away, the tips of the spires and the lowest landing stages lining the skirt, expanded out. This single enormous platform was a complete floating city, half a mile up in the sky.

He’d have to land aboard a stage and go through into some sort of lock; air problems had at this height cropped up. He put the car straight at a yellow-painted lock above which a green light cycled on one-second intervals. Two or three other cars were waiting. Caradine had studied the car controls and when the radio called harshly for his identification, he merely flipped the right switch and his robot broadcaster sent out his car registration and his name.

On his turn the radio said: “Come in, please, P.A. Swarfh-out.”

So they were polite to a Personal Assistant. Useful. He was growing worried over the lack of confusion he had been creating. Slugging a few inoffensive civilians counted for nothing up here. He remembered the familiar package Napier had slipped into his jacket, and felt comforted.

The car touched down on the pad and robots seized it and drew it through the valves. Inside the vaulted lock brilliant lights blazed, white paint was everywhere, and noises boomed magnified as though in a drum. There was also a reception committee.

They were no surprise to Caradine. Good luck did not necessarily extend to his picking the right airlock for Swarth-out’s car out of all the locks available. The big question mark now hanging over his head was: Would they shoot first and not bother about the questions?

Up here he was dealing with a different order of authority from that sprawling on the planetary surface. There were uniformed men with guns everywhere. They merely waved his car to a lay-by and closed in on it. Caradine took Napier’s little toy out, opened the door, and tossed one of the grenades. Then he fell flat on the floor of the car, shut his eyes and stuffed arms and hands over head and ears.

The fire, the concussion and the nerve-flash were excruciating.

Even with the protection afforded his nerves by Napier’s pack, from which he had thrown one grenade, he felt that torturing jolt of agony. What those poor devils out there were going through—well, that was no business of his now.

He jumped briskly out of the car, ran through the swathes of unconscious bodies, all smartly uniformed, to the exit. Their nerves would be a jangling hell for twelve hours. After that they could report for duty perfectly fit. Caradine put a hand down to the nerve-protection pack and the remaining grenades. They would have to be used sparingly.

So far he hadn’t run across the use of nerve-grenades since leaving Earth; but anything could be hidden away up here in a floating palace half a mile high. And in that stilt-supported wonderland he had to do just a little more damage and create just a little more mayhem, before the moguls would take notice of him as his merits deserved. Ahead stretched white-painted, brilliantly lit corridors. He ran fleetly down the first to hand.

At the end he debouched from an ornate archway into a wide phantasmagoric plaza. Broad cool lawns stretched on either hand, their borders banked and surrounded by immense tiers of exotic flowers. A single crystal sweep of dome covered everything and contained within its artificial environment air and light, water and heat. Caradine thought he could see the plants growing as he raced along.

Enormous statues of every age reared in clumps, lines and avenues. Bright birds flitted, and furry, long-legged animals with jeweled chains paced among the blooms. The scent of flowers was heady and betraying.

Perhaps, one of those weakening and betraying thoughts struck wickedly at Caradine’s ego, perhaps he thought too much of himself? Was he putting too high a premium on his life and abilities? Would the moguls care at all?

He had to find people. Crowds were safety. The plaza was deserted.

His heart was thumping and his breath came faster by now. So near, so terribly near. He must keep cool. Keep his wits and courage steady, find a crowd, and everything could go on from there. He ran on, swerving to avoid a wandering herd of camels, almost collided with a solemnly pacing pair of elephants, and so came, hot and sticky, into a paved road and the miraculous sight of masses of men and women, all brightly clothed, passing and repassing tall-windowed white buildings lining a boulevard. He slipped in among the crowd, slowed down, and got his breath back.

Two scarlet-uniformed policemen closed in, one on each side. They were very polite, smooth, supercilious and yet perfectly civil. Caradine smiled.

“You do not appear dressed correctly for today,” the taller said. “This is comedy day, as ordained by the high mogul. Will you please come with us, sir.”

No asking for passes. No brandishing of guns. Just a couple of quiet men in uniform, the breaking of a law, and the polite request. Caradine went.

Word could not yet have been passed through. He still had to hurry, but he had the saving grace of five minutes.

At the first intersection Caradine stopped and said: “My comedy clothes are down here. I just didn’t have time to change.”

They looked. It was natural. Caradine casually began to walk down the intersection. After a slight pause, the two policemen followed. The nearest doorway just had to do. Caradine found it, turned in as though he owned the place, gave the large cool lobby a single swift glance—empty-turned and struck the leading policeman on the jaw. He caught the second as the riot-call button almost went down under a frantic finger. Whew! A near one.

The chance now was whether to don the scarlet uniform or to carry on in Swarthout’s clothes—ordinary clothes on a day ordained as comedy day. Hmm. The uniform seemed to be the better bet. Caradine humped the likelier of the two men into the robotically controlled elevator and went back for the other. On the way up to a randomly selected floor, he changed. On the way down he dealt with the policemen, binding and gagging them and then pushing them into an air-conditioning room off the main passage. One good thing about comedy day: everybody was on the streets.

The next half hour was rather amusing.

No sooner had he stepped out onto the streets than a large scarlet car swooped down, an imperious voice ordered him aboard, and he was sitting with twenty other scarlet-clad policemen, going hell-for-Ieather to arrest himself.

He quite enjoyed following orders, going here, standing guard there, gruffly asking people for passes—the gloves were off now and the politeness gone—at last being called with very many others to report to a central point. The car took them there en masse. He guessed that by this time Horakah police administration was in a chaotic state, divisions and authorities hopelessly entangled so that he could pass as just another man from another section, mixed up with many other sections’ detachments. The car landed on a covered roof and sliding doors closed.

Well, he’d managed it at last. He quickly found from the men around him that this was the kingpin building, the lair of the moguls. His opinion of them had been steadily sinking all during his smoke and dazzle operations. Even a badly organized planet should have caught him by now. That these people hadn’t had caused him troubles, so that in this instance it seemed he had to go to them himself.

Harassed officials scuttered everywhere, shepherding men into guard positions. Caradine found himself one of a company of ten men detailed off to cordon the entrance to a long passageway leading deeper into the heart of the building. A tall window gave a glimpse of a courtyard. In that yard Caradine saw armored flying tanks taking off from an underground hangar, one after the other, their dark-green hulls sheening and grim with weapons. Fully armored soldiers poured from doors and raced away beyond his vision. He stilled the smile on his lips.

All this preparation, all this chaos, wasn’t for him.

No wonder he hadn’t been caught easily. Behind all the gaiety of comedy day and the exotic flowers and strange animals, lying darkly hidden under the facade of carefree life on this floating palace platform, the moguls were facing a threat to their existence. What that threat was, Caradine had an inkling. He had once thought impossible what had happened very soon afterwards. He no longer thought it amazing that he could contemplate the current impossibility and know it in sober truth very likely.

Damn young Carson Napier, anyway!

But, even so…

At the first opportunity afforded by a slight change of guard position in the continual fussing that went on, Caradine slipped away, assumed a very important face and bearing, and strode with firm and heavy footfalls down the corridors deep into the heart of the building. This was the final payoff. He was not challenged. All about him he could hear the murmur of machinery. Worried-looking officers passed him. He was meeting more and more soldiers and space navy men. Yet still, in the security of his scarlet uniform, he was not stopped. Of course not—he was carrying a private message, wasn’t he? How long that story would last he didn’t know.

When at last he was stopped by a posse of black-clad men, he found the story wouldn’t stand up at all. It gave him just time to pull and toss a nerve-grenade.

This far in, the resultant shambles must draw attention. Whatever was happening in the galaxy couldn’t distract all attention from this.

He started to run on. From somewhere a streak of light passed over his left shoulder making him wince from the heat of it, struck a far cornice and brought down in thundering destruction and melting ruin the whole wall and ceiling. Raw metal paneling showed beyond.

Hell! They were so jumpy they weren’t acting as he had expected. The fear that he had been containing so well boiled in him now. He got a bad attack of the shakes, running with thumping heart and wheezing lungs away from that deadly gun. Hell and damnation! If he got out of this alive he’d say something to young Napier. By hell he would!

He was approaching a double-valved door whose leaves must have been a good fifty feet high. The men guarding them looked like midges in a frieze along the bottom. He flung a nerve-grenade with all his strength, and plunged on after it too fast so that he felt the searing scorch of its back blast.

But he cleared the door, one leaf of which sagged from broken hinges after the blast.

He went through. Another nerve-grenade cleared the way.

Directly ahead, through a colossal archway soaring up for two hundred feet, he saw a blaze of illumination. When he went through the arch the size of the room beyond appalled him. On its tessallated floor men looked like ants. High above, chandeliers the size of two-story buildings hung from a roof swathed in convoluted groining. Not a single pillar in the entire expanse supported that ceiling. Along both sides stood rows of guards, motionless, at attention, reduced in size by distance to rows of dolls.

The room was so large it was indecent.

A man’s insignificance in this room was thrown up in his face.

Caradine began the long journey across the marble floor to the group of men and women clustered around the screens at the far end. No one tried to stop him. The rows of immobile guards were merely adornment leaving all work of security to ubiquitous police and plain-clothes men. His footfalls echoed from the marble, died and were lost in the vastness in a whimper. Ostentatiously, he took his gun out and let it dangle, gripped by the barrel. He could sense and appreciate the subtle understanding that now existed between himself and the moguls; he had beaten their security network, and so now they were waiting to see what he wanted.

No other method would have brought him, a mere civilian from an insignificant stellar grouping, into the inmost sanctum of proud and mighty Horakah.

This he had understood from the beginning. This he had worked for, and for this he had nearly died. The fear was still in him, a black tide lapping at the borders of his sanity. But he had to suppress it now, he had to maintain a brain so calm and cool that he could meet and match these coldly waiting moguls.

Two gaudily attired officers approached him and he handed over the Beatty with an air of condescension. He did not stop walking forward.

On those sprawling screens covering one end of the chamber he saw star patterns, etched segments of the galaxy. The men and women looking at the screens turned as he approached.

They were much as he had expected. Big men, fleshy, with powerful, ruthless faces, men cast from the same mold of power. Men like this had been used by him in the old days, used as his tools.

The shock of seeing Hsien Koanga and Allura was only slight. The moguls would bring those two here with amusement, interested to see his reactions.

He noticed the guards near them. He looked for Harriet.

She was there.

His blood gave an almighty thump through his veins as she stepped forward. She was looking perfect. A golden sheath covered her glorious body and her hair had been sprayed into a silver tumble of curls. Her red lips smiled.

“At last you arrive, John Carter. We have been waiting for you.”

Caradine paused. A confusing welter of dismay, fear, black anger and pitiful self-reproach grew and died in him. “I thought—” he began.

“Before we kill you, John Carter,” Harriet Lafonde said with stroking feline savagery, “we would like to know why you have done what you have done.”