The Ganymede Takeover

FOUR

As the lonocraft reached the northern border of the plantation, its articulation circuit creaked on and it declared, “This is as far as I am licensed to go. I’ll either have to alter course or deposit you here, miss. Take your choice.”

“I’d like,” Joan Hiashi said, “for you to carry me to those hills over there.” She pointed.

“Go ahead and like away,” the taxi said, and veered to follow the perimeter of the plantation. The hills receded.

“Okay,” Joan said wearily. “Let me off here.”

The ionocraft settled into a deserted, unclaimed marshland, miles from the hills. Getting out, Joan watched gloomily as the cab unloaded her recording equipment. She had been prepared, to some extent, for this; she had on high boots.

“Lots of luck, miss,” the taxi said, and, slamming its door, rose into the sky. She watched it until it had disappeared from sight and then she sighed heavily, wondering what came next.

Possibly she could walk the rest of the way to Percy’s hills, but she could not carry the recording gear; it would have to be left here. In which case, why go to the hills at all?

A voice said, “Miss Hiashi?”

She glanced around, startled, then realized that it came from the right-hand cup of her bra. “Yes,” she. said. “What is it?”

“A small error,” said the voice which she now recognized as belonging to Marshal Koli. “I neglected, in your briefing, to inform you that your friend, Percy X, has, since last being in contact with you, taken special intensive training at the school of the Bureau of Psychedelic Research.”

“So what?” She did not like the Gany’s tone; he was trying, obviously, to break some sort of bad news indirectly.

“He’s a telepath, Miss Hiashi.”

Seating herself on her recording gear she let the full impact of this news sink in. Finally she said, “What am I going to do? Just wait for him to kill me? He may be zeroing in on me telepathically right this minute.”

“Be calm, Miss Hiashi,” the far-from-calm worm said. “If you will set your bra transmitter to continuous broadcast we will be able to triangulate a fix on you in a short time and come to pick you up.”

“Pick me up?” she demanded. “Or pick up what’s left of me?” Savagely she unzipped her nylon coveralls, tore off her bra, placed the right cup on a rock and raised a booted heel above it.

“Miss Hiashi,” squeaked the bra, “I warn you; if—” The voice ceased as she brought down her heel, hard, and heard a satisfying crunch as the delicate microscopic device disintegrated. The bra lay there, dead. She felt then a sudden sense of freedom. All the years of a faithful, cooperative wik—canceled out in a moment’s impulsive gesture. Or perhaps she might in time find her way back into the good graces of the authorities. But—she couldn’t afford to let such thoughts cross her mind right now; Percy might be scanning them.

The noise of motors. She glanced up. And felt fear.

Another ionocraft, even more seedy and in disrepair than the first, came clatteringly in over the treetops; it settled to earth, somewhat bumpily, a few yards from her. Its door slid rustily half-open, stuck, shuddered; then at last, with a final surge of effort, moved fully aside to reveal a shabby, little-used interior that dated from years before the war.

“Are you from Percy X?” she asked. Her heart labored.

“I’m private, the ancient cab informed her tinnily. “Not part of a fleet, like you have up North. I do what I like. For twenty UN dollars I’ll convey you to the Neeg-parts. I’ve been following you, miss; I knew that creep of a wik ship would dump you off.”

“Are you safe to ride in?” She felt dubious.

“Sure. I own a very good Tom mechanic; I bought him with fares I saved up.” The cab added quickly, “It’s legal for a class-one homeostatic mechanism to own a Tom; since the war, anyhow. Only most machines are too stupid to make such a major investment. Get within, miss.”

She clambered in. The cab loaded her gear into its luggage compartment with many alarming creaks and clankings. Joan zipped up her coveralls and, as the cab ascended, adjusted her makeup in anticipation of her first meeting with the leader of Earth’s last remaining resistance forces.

“Listen, don’t be apprehensive.” the cab said. “I ferry people to the hills all the time. I’ve got a monopoly; nobody else does it. That’s how I earn a buck. I can’t compete on the regular runs; I mean, I sort of smell bad, if you know what I mean. Some guy, when I was ferrying him, he said I smell like cat wee. Do you think so, or was he just trying to make me feel inferior?”

“He was trying,” Joan lied, “to undermine your self-respect. For neurotic reasons of his own.”

“I generally carry Neegs who want to join Percy X; they come from all over North America. From all over the world, in fact. But you’re white; I mean, anyhow, you aren’t colored in the true sense of the word. Watch out for Percy’s bodyguards, especially the man they call Lincoln, that he doesn’t shoot you before you get a chance to open your mouth. I see you have recording gear, there.”

“I’m going to try to record some of the Neeg-parts’ music.”

“You’re in the music business? Sing a jazz tune for me. To pass the time.”

Joan said, “I don’t sing.”

“You know How High the Moon?”

She grunted in affirmation.

“That’s my favorite melody,” the cab continued. “Remember how June Christy, back in 1950, used to sing it?” It hummed the tune as it flew toward the burgeoning hills. At last the hills lay directly below. The cab, breaking off its humming, said, “Let’s have the twenty UN dollars now. Before they kill you.” Its voice had suddenly become hard.

As she placed the bills in the proper slot the cab descended in nausea-producing close spirals.

“My whole decent circuit is gummed up,” it explained as it thumped onto the rough ground, bounced, at last came to a shuddering halt. “Sorry. I’ll give you back a dollar if you feel—”

“Keep it,” Joan said. And, opening the door manually, stepped out.

Wearing brown khaki uniforms, boots, with automatic side-arms, two Neeg-parts confronted her, both young and tough-looking. The cab hurriedly lurched into the air after first unloading, with frantic haste, her recording gear; it headed back in the direction from which it had come.

“Look at this,” one of the Neegs said conversationally to the other. “A lily-skinner. What do you know about that.”

“Isn’t she cute,” said the second, leering.

“You like to make the scene, baby?” the first asked.

His companion gave him a contemptuous shove. “You’ll get some white-man’s disease from her, man. That’s for sure.”

Joan said, “Can you take me to Percy X?”

They continued to talk to each other as if she had not spoken. “Well, what good is this white wik gal anyway?”

“She brought us some presents. Look at all that expensive electronic stuff.” Both men bent to examine it. “Ought to be able to do something with that.”

“But the girl, we can’t do nothin’ with her.” The man spoke to Joan directly. “I’m sorry, baby, but you can’t have no last meal or blindfold or nothin’ We too busy for any of that crung.”

Speechless, terrified, Joan watched the man raise his laser rifle to his shoulder and aim it point-blank at her forehead while his companion chanted mockingly, “This is it, baby; this is it.”

When Gus Swenesgard regained consciousness, the first sight that materialized before his clouded eyes was the snout, lizard eyes and worm-face of a Gany. Marshal Koli; he recognized him. It’s got to be a nightmare, Gus thought groggily, rubbing his forehead and squinting.

But it wasn’t.

Looking around, Gus discovered that he lay near the hole which he and his turncoat crew of rascally Toms had dug. Night had come; a sliver of moon cast just enough light to make the swarm of attendant creatures around Koli look even more like a bad dream. How’d they get me back up to the surface? he wondered. I guess they can do anything, he decided bleakly. That’s why they won; that’s why they’re here.

“I’m not sorry for you, Mister Swenesgard,” Koli said in a hissing, cold voice. “Do you know something, sir? You’re finished. It would have been better for you if you had died in that cave as your foreman did. It is perfectly obvious what you anticipated doing. You have been, in direct opposition to the legal decrees of the Occupation Authority, searching for buried weapon-caches left by the defeated forces of your UN troops.”

“No,” Gus said thickly. “It wasn’t weapons; I wasn’t looking for weapons.” He managed to sit up.

“Then what was it?” The voice bored at him, full of harshness.

Briefly, he thought of telling the worm. But he would never be believed. “Never mind,” he said miserably. “But on my mother’s honor I wouldn’t use weapons against you people.”

“Whatever you may have intended,” Marshal Koli snapped, “the weapons are now in the hands of the Neeg-parts. If they have been troublesome before, now they will be unbearable. You and that Joan Hiashi—you’re both rebels. Therefore we will kill you both. And of course right away.” With his tongue Marshal Koli gave a signal; a huge, seemingly mindless creech grasped Gus in an unbreakable grip and began shoving him roughly toward the Gany’s parked ship.

A moment later, inside the ship, Gus found himself pushed unceremoniously into an overstuffed Terran chair which the Gany had from somewhere appropriated.

He found himself sweating. But he had not given up; he dragged out his vast cotton bandanna handkerchief and shakily mopped his balding head. “You don’t understand, Koli. I wasn’t going to tell you, but I have—or I guess had—a military campaign in mind against the Neeg-parts. I was diggin’ out those trick gadgets to use against Percy X. It’s the truth, on my mother’s honor. In fact, I was going to personally nail Percy for you, once and for all. You all don’t know who your friends are.”

“I thought,” Koli said bitingly, “that Miss Hiashi was our friend. But she destroyed contact-relations with us and has, no doubt, gone over to the Neegs by now. Taking with her valuable information about our operations in this area.”

“That Jap girl, that Hiashi; she was working for you?” He stalled for time, trying to say something; his mind worked furiously. Out of the corner of his eye he could see three of the creeches putting in order some variety of machine. He had a suspicion, intense and immediate, that he knew what it did; he had seen pictures of such devices. The worms used it for skinning a man alive, slowly so as to preserve the skin. Once more he wiped the sweat from his face and thought, Soon my hands will be secured and I won’t even be able to wipe. And after a while I’ll be another skin—pelt, they call it—in KoWs famous collection. “You don’t want me,” he said aloud, as the creeches wheeled the machine over to him. “I’m just small potatoes. You all want Percy right? He’s the Neeg; he’s really giving you all trouble.”

“If I can’t have him,” Koli said coldly, “I’ll just have to make do with you.” He gestured with his tongue for the creeches to hold Gus down.

“Wait,” Gus said hoarsely. “You don’t have to settle for me. You can have Percy X himself.” He hesitated. “I can lead you right to him.”

The Gany general signaled his creeches to let Gus go. At least for the moment. “How do you expect to do that?”

“When that Jap gal was in the hotel I took the liberty of patting her sweet little head.”

“I’m not interested in your sexual depravity, Mister Swenesgard.”

“But listen,” Gus said. “I planted a little bitty microminiaturized transmitter in her hair; that’s what I did.”

After an interval Marshal Koli began once again to visualize the beautiful pelt of Percy X; he perceived its appearance on the wall of his Ganymedian villa. “Let the fool go,” Koli said to his creeches.

On his unmade bed, in his hotel room in Gus Swenesgard’s none too luxurious tourist palace, Dr. Paul Rivers sat and sweated. In theory, when the sun went down it was supposed to get colder, particularly in autumn. In fact, however, it had gotten hotter.

Getting up, he moved to the window to stare moodily in the direction of the distant mountains. Somewhere out there could be found Percy X, the last symbol of man’s greatness. And with him—the wik spy, Joan Hiashi. If only I could warn him, he reflected. If only there existed some way by which I could reach him. Reaching, he opened the window, as if this might help. But all it did was make more audible the tireless crickets and bring to his nostrils the smell of damp stagnation that hung over the little Southern town. It was, he realized, just as hot and muggy outside as inside.

Somewhere a far-off radio or TV set played tinnily.

The sound nudged an obscure piece of memory in his mind. Wasn’t Percy X a telepath? Yes, according to the records Paul had been shown during his briefing Percy X had graduated with honors from one of the Psychedelic research schools. This meant that he could be reached, no matter where he was . but only, unfortunately, by another telepath. And Paul Rivers did not possess that talent.

On the other hand—

Quickly he put through a vidphone call to the central offices of his employer, the World Psychiatric Association. Shortly he found himself connected with Dr. Ed Newkom, one of the planet’s top authorities on communication.

“This is top priority, Ed,” he informed Newkom. “I want the loan of a thought amplifier for a week or two.” Sometimes, with luck, the device invented by Newkom could effectively double as an artificial telepathic booster—for a limited range, anyhow. “I can’t come and get it; you’ll have to fly it down here.” He told Newkom, tersely, where he was.

“I don’t trust any of the commercial transport systems,” Ed Newkom said. He hesitated. “I’ll— bring the thing down to you personally. With any kind of luck I’ll be with you by morning.”

“Thanks, Ed.” He felt relief. “The Association will pick up the tab on this.”

“This one is on me,” Ed Newkom said. “Ever since reading your paper on propagation of group psychosis I’ve wanted to see how you operate. I’m charging this trip up to education.”

After ringing off, Paul Rivers reseated himself on the bed, this time with a feeling of satisfaction. lean 7 leave here, he said to himself grimly, but with any kind of luck my thoughts can!

Mekkis gazed out the window of the main passenger lounge of the ship at the planet Earth, which now grew larger by the minute. There it is, he breathed. My bale. Tenneessee.

Actually he could not clearly see it, since the globe had become partially hidden behind cloud-formations. But imagination filled in what the eye could not see.

He ordered another drink and, before lapping it, said to his creeches, “A toast, as they say on Earth. A toast to the new emperor of Tennessee, Percy X”

“A toast,” echoed the creeches. But only Mekkis drank.