Clans of the Alphane Moon (19 page)

“Mr. Hentman, we’ve picked up the telepathic thought-emanations of a Ganymedean slime mold. It’s somewhere nearby outside the ship. It wants to be allowed in so—” He glanced at Chuck. “So it can be with Rittersdorf, here; it says it wants to ‘share his fate.’” Feld grimaced. “It’s very concerned about him, obviously.” He looked disgusted.

“Let the damn thing in,” Hentman instructed. As Feld departed Hentman said to Chuck, “To be honest I don’t know what’s going to become of you, Rittersdorf; you seem to have managed to create a complete mess of your life in every direction. Your marriage, your job, taking your long trip here and then changing your mind… what
do
you have?”

“I think perhaps the Paraclete is back,” Chuck said. It would seem so, in view of the fact that he had declined, at the final moment, to take Hentman up on his offer regarding Mary.

“What’s this thing you’re talking about?”

“The Holy Spirit,” Chuck said. “It’s in every man. But hard to find.”

Hentman said, “Why don’t you fill the vacuum with something noble, like saving these nuts here on Alpha III M2 from mandatory hospitalization? At least you’d be getting back at the CIA. There are a couple of highly-priced Alphane military characters on the ship… in a matter of hours they can bring in official craft to take formal, legal possession of this moon. Of
course Terran warships are hanging around here, too, but this just shows how carefully it has to be handled. You’re an ex-CIA man; you ought to be able to work something tricky like this out.”

“I wonder how it would feel,” Chuck said, “to spend the rest of my life on a moon populated solely by psychotics.”

“How the hell do you think you’ve
been
living? I’d call your inter-personal relationship with your wife psychotic. You’ll make out; you’ll find some fray to bed down with to replace Mary. As a matter of fact when our flare went off we got a reasonably good look—via the pics—of the one you were huddled with. She’s not so bad, is she?”

“Annette Golding,” Chuck said. “Polymorphous schizophrenia.”

“Yeah, but even so, won’t she do?”

After a pause Chuck said, “Possibly.” He was not a clinician, but Annette had not seemed very ill to him. Much less so, in fact, than Mary. But of course he knew Mary better. Still—

Once more there came a rap at the door; it opened and Gerald Feld said, “Mr. Hentman, we’ve discovered the identity of the individual attacking us. It’s the CIA simulacrum, Daniel Mageboom.” He explained, “The Ganymedean slime mold in gratitude for our letting it into the ship gave us that information. I have an idea.”

“The same idea,” Hentman said, “occurs to me. Or if it isn’t I don’t want to hear it.” He turned to Chuck. “Well contact Jack Elwood at the San Francisco office of the CIA; we’ll have him pull the operator off the simulacrum, whoever it is that’s operating it, probably Petri.” Obviously Hentman was completely familiar with the working of the CIA’s San Francisco
office. “Then, Rittersdorf, we’ll have you take over operation of the simulacrum from here. As long as his radio contact is maintained you can do it, and we basically need only a handful of instructions for it; simply program it out of action and off the sidelines. Will you do that much?”

Chuck said, “Why should I?”

Blinking, Hentman said, “B-because it’s going to get our power supply and blow us up, using that damn laser beam as it is; that’s why.”

“You’ll be killed, too,” Feld pointed out to Chuck, “in that event. Both you and your Ganymedean slime mold.”

“If I go before the supreme council of this moon,” Chuck said to Hentman, “and ask them to seek Alphane protection, and they do—it may set off another major war between Alpha and Terra.”

“Oh hell no,” Hentman said emphatically. “Terra doesn’t care that much about this moon;
Operation Fifty-minutes
, that’s just a minor, minor afterthought, nothing of importance. Believe me, I’ve got lots of contacts; I know this. If Terra really cared that much they would have gone in here years ago. Right?”

“What he says is true,” Feld said. “Our man at TERPLAN verified this some time ago.”

Chuck said, “I think the idea is a good one.”

Both Hentman and Feld visibly sighed with relief.

“I’ll take it to Adolfville,” Chuck said, “and if I can get the clans to reconvene their supreme council I’ll put the idea before them. But I intend to do it in my own way.”

“What does that mean?” Hentman inquired nervously.

“I’m not a public speaker or a politician,” Chuck said. “My job has been programming material for simulacra.
If I can get control of Mageboom I’ll have him appear before the council—I can feed him better lines to speak, better arguments, than I could possibly give my own self.” And also—but he did not say this aloud—he would be a great deal safer here in Hentman’s ship than in Adolfville. Because the Terran military could at any moment break the Manses’ shield, and one of their first acts would be to round up the inter-clan council. Someone before the council right then, proposing a switch of loyalties to the Alphane empire, would be unlikely to emerge. The proposal, coming from a Terran citizen—as he himself was—would be identified, and correctly, as an act of treason.

What I’m doing, Chuck realized with shock, is nothing less than throwing my lot in with Hentman’s.

The thoughts of the slime mold came to him, reassuringly. “You have made a wise choice, Mr. Rittersdorf. First your decision to permit your wife to live, and now this. If worst comes to worst we will all wind up subjects of the Alphanes. But under their rule I’m certain we can survive.”

Hentman, also hearing the thoughts, grinned. “Shall we shake on it?” he asked Chuck, holding out his hand.

They shook. The treasonable deal, for better or worse, had been made.

The bulky Mans tank, clanking and rattling, its headlights blazing, coasted up beside Gabriel Baines and Annette Golding and hiccoughed to a halt. The turret flew open and the Mans within stood up cautiously.

From the surrounding darkness there emerged no laser beam attack by Dr. Mary Rittersdorf. Perhaps, Gabriel Baines thought hopefully, Mrs. Rittersdorf had acceded to the request posted by the Holy Triumvirate, to the letters of fire in the sky. In any case this appeared to be his and Annette’s opportunity, as promised by Ignatz Ledebur.

In one swift motion he leaped up, tugged Annette to her feet, and with her scrambled up the side of the Mans tank. The driver helped them inside, banged the hatch shut after them; together the three of them sprawled within the cramped cab of the tank, panting sweatily.

We got away, Gabriel Baines informed himself. But he felt no joy. It did not seem important; in the great scheme it was a very little matter which they had accomplished. Still, it was something. Reaching out he put his arm around Annette.

The Man said, “You’re Golding and Baines? The council members?”

“Yes,” Annette said.

“Howard Straw ordered me to round you both up,” the Mans explained; he got behind the controls of his tank and started it into motion once more. “I’m supposed to take you to Adolfville; there’s a further meeting of the inter-clan council about to take place and Straw insists you have to be there.”

And so, Gabriel Baines reflected, because Howard Straw needs us for a vote, we survive; Mary Rittersdorf doesn’t get to pick us off in the first light of dawn. Ironic. But it demonstrated the importance of the bond linking the clans. The bonds were life-giving, and to all of them. Even to the lowly Heebs.

When they reached Adolfville the tank let them off at the large central stone building; Gabriel Baines and Annette made their way up the familiar stairs, neither of them speaking; weary and soiled from lying hour after hour out in the open at night they were in no mood to exchange trivialities.

What we need, Baines decided, is not a meeting but six hours’ sleep. He wondered what the purpose of this meeting was; hadn’t the moon already taken its course of action by fighting the Terran invaders the best it knew how? What more could be done?

At the antechamber of the council room Gabriel Baines paused. “I believe I’ll send my simulacrum in first,” he said to Annette. With his special key he unlocked the supply closet in which—by legal right—he kept his Mans-made simulacrum. “You never know,” And it would be a shame to lose one’s life at this point, after just now escaping from Mrs. Rittersdorf.

“You Pares,” Annette said with a trace of forlorn amusement.

The Gabriel Baines simulacrum wheezed into life as he activated its mechanism. “Good day, sir.” It then nodded to Annette. “Miss Golding. I shall go in now,
sir.” Politely, it bowed its way past the two of them, started somewhat jerkily but briskly into the council room.

“Hasn’t all this taught you anything?” Annette asked Gabriel Baines as they waited for the simulacrum’s return and report.

“Like what?”

“That there is no perfect defense.
There is no protection.
Being alive means being exposed; it’s the nature of life to be hazardous—it’s the stuff of living.”

“Well,” Baines said astutely, “you can do the best you can by way of shielding yourself.” It never hurt to try. That was part of life, too, and every living creature engaged itself perpetually in attempting it.

The Baines simulacrum now returned and made its formal report. “No deadly gas, no electrical discharge of a dangerous degree, no poison in the water pitcher, no sign of peep-holes for laser rifles, no concealed infernal machines. I would offer the suggestion that you can safely enter.” It ceased, then, having completed its task… but then, to Baines’ surprise, it all at once clacked back on again. “However,” it stated, “I would call your attention to the unusual fact that there is
another
simulacrum within the council room, other than myself. And I don’t like that one bit, not one bit.”

“Who?” Baines demanded, astounded. Only a Pare would be so concerned with his self-defense as to employ an expensive sim. And he was of course the sole Pare delegate.

“The person to address the council,” his Baines-simulacrum replied. “On whom the delegates wait; it is a simulacrum.”

Opening the door Gabriel Baines peeped in, saw the other delegates already assembled, and, standing before them, the companion of Mary Rittersdorf, the
CIA man Daniel Mageboom, who, according to the slime mold, had been with her in the laser-beam attack on her husband, on the Mans tankman, himself and Annette Golding. What was Mageboom doing here? A lot of good his Baines-simulacrum had been, after all.

Against his better judgment, flying in the face of every instinct, Gabriel Baines slowly entered the council room, took his seat.

The next thing, he thought, is for Dr. Rittersdorf to gun us all down collectively from some concealed spot.

“Let me explain,” the Mageboom simulacrum said at once, as soon as Baines and Annette Golding were seated. “I am Chuck Rittersdorf, now operating this simulacrum from a nearby spot on Alpha III M2, from the inter-system ship of Bunny Hentman. You may have noticed it; it has a rabbit painted on its side.”

Howard Straw said keenly, “So the fact is you’re no longer an extension of the Terran intelligence service, the CIA.”

“Correct,” the Mageboom simulacrum agreed. “We have pre-empted, at least temporarily, the CIA control of this artifact. Here, as quickly as possible, is the proposal which we feel advances the best hope for Alpha III M2, for all the clans. You must formally, as the supreme governing body on the moon, at once request the Alphanes to come in and annex. They guarantee not to treat you as hospital patients but as legitimate settlers. This annexation can be accomplished through the agency of the Hentman ship, since two high-ranking Alphane officials at this moment are—”

The simulacrum bucked, convulsed, ceased speaking.

“Something’s wrong with it,” Howard Straw said, standing up.

Abruptly the Mageboom simulacrum said, “Wrzzzzzzzzzimus. Kadrax an vigdum niddddd.” Its arms flapped, its head lolled and it declared, “Ib srwn dngmmmmmm
kunk!
”

Howard Straw stared at it, pale and tense, then turned to Gabriel Baines and said, “The CIA on Terra has cut into the hyper-space transmission from the Hentman ship here.” He slapped his thigh, found his side arm, lifted it up and closed one eye to aim precisely.

“What I have just said,” the Mageboom simulacrum stated, in a now somewhat altered, more agitated and higher-pitched voice, “must be disregarded as a treasonable snare and an absurd delusion. It would be a suicidal act for Alpha III M2 to seek so-called protection from the Alphane empire because for one reason—”

With a single shot Howard Straw disabled the simulacrum; pierced through its vital cephalic unit the simulacrum dropped with a crash spread eagle to the floor. Now there was silence. The simulacrum did not stir.

After a time Howard Straw put his side arm away and shakily reseated himself at his place. “The CIA in San Francisco succeeded in pre-empting Rittersdorf,” he said, unnecessarily in that every delegate, even the Heeb Jacob Simion, had followed the sequence of events firsthand. “However, we have heard Rittersdorf’s proposal, and that’s what matters.” He glanced up and down the table. “We’d better act swiftly. Let’s have the vote.”

“I vote to accept the Rittersdorf Proposal,” Gabriel Baines said, thinking to himself that this had been a
close call; without Straw’s quick action the simulacrum, again under Terran control, might have blown itself up and gotten them all.

“I agree,” Annette Golding said, with great tension.

When the total vote had been verified everyone but Dino Watters, the miserable Dep, turned out to have declared in the affirmative.

“What was wrong with you?” Gabriel Baines asked the Dep curiously.

In his hollow, despairing voice the Dep answered, “I think it’s hopeless. The Terran warships are too close. The Manses’ shield just can’t last that long. Or else we won’t be able to contact Hentman’s ship.
Something
will go wrong, and then the Terrans will decimate us.” He added, “And in addition I’ve been having stomach pains ever since we originally convened; I think I’ve got cancer.”

Howard Straw signaled by pressing a buzzer and a council servant entered, carrying a portable radio transmitter. “I will now make contact with the Hentman ship,” Straw stated, and clicked on the transmitter.

   In contact with the remnants of his organization on Terra, Bunny Hentman lifted his head and with a haggard expression on his face said to Chuck Rittersdorf, “What happened is this. That guy London, chief of the San Francisco branch of the CIA and Elwood’s superior, caught on to what was happening; he was monitoring the sim’s activities—must have already been suspicious, no doubt because I got away.”

“Is Elwood dead?” Chuck asked.

“No, just in the grang at the S.F. Presidio. And Petri took over once more.” Hentman rose to his feet, shut
off the line to Terra temporarily. “But they didn’t regain control of Mageboom in time.”

“You’re an optimist,” Chuck said.

“Listen,” Hentman said vigorously. “Those people in Adolfville may be legally and clinically insane, but they’re not stupid, especially in matters pertaining to their security. They heard the proposal and I bet right now they’re voting in favor of it. We should get a call from them by radio any time.” He examined his watch. “I say within fifteen minutes.” He turned to Feld. “Get those two Alphanes in here, so they can relay the request immediately to their ships of the line.”

Feld hurried off. After a pause Hentman, sighing, reseated himself.

Lighting a fat, green, Terran cigar Bunny Hentman leaned back, hands behind his head, regarding Chuck.

Moments passed.

“Does the Alphane empire need TV comics?” Chuck asked.

Hentman grinned. “As much as they need simulacrum-programmers.”

Ten minutes later the call came through from Adolfville.

“Okay,” Hentman said, nodding as he listened to Howard Straw. He glanced at Chuck. “Where are those two Alphanes? Now’s the time; now or just plain never.”

“I’m here, representing the Empire.” It was the Alphane RBX 303; it had hurried flappingly into the room with Feld and its companion Alphane. “Assure them once again that they will not be treated as invalids but as settlers. We are absolutely anxious to make that point clear. Alphane policy has always been—”

“Don’t make a speech,” Hentman said incisively.
“Ring up your warships and get them down to the surface.” He handed the transmitter’s microphone to the Alphane, rose wearily and walked over to stand beside Chuck. “Jeez,” he murmured. “At a time like this it wants to recap on its foreign policy over the last sixty years.” He shook his head. His cigar had gone out; now with great deliberateness he relit it. “Well, I guess we’re going to learn the answers to our ultimate queries.”

“What queries?” Chuck said.

Hentman said briefly, “Whether the Alphane empire can use TV comics and sim-programmers.” He walked away, stood listening to RBX 303 trying by means of the ship’s transmitter to raise the Alphane battle fleet. Puffing cigar smoke, hands in his pockets, he silently waited. One would never know from his expression, Chuck reflected, that literally our lives depend on the successful establishment of this conduit of communication.

Twitching with nervous agitation, Gerald Feld came up to Chuck and said, “Where’s the Frau Doktor right now?”

“Probably wandering around somewhere below,” Chuck said. The Hentman ship, now in an orbit three hundred miles at apogee, no longer had contact, except by radio, with events occurring on the moon’s surface.

“She can’t do anything, can she?” Feld said. “To fnug this up, I mean. Of course she’d like to.”

Chuck said, “My wife, or ex-wife, is a scared woman. She’s alone on a hostile moon, waiting for a Terran fleet which probably will never come, although of course she doesn’t know that.” He did not hate Mary now; that was gone, like so many other things.

“You feel sorry for her?” Feld asked.

“I—just wish that destiny hadn’t crossed her and me up quite so completely as it has. Her in relationship to me, I mean. I have the feeling that in some obscure way which I can’t fathom Mary and I could somehow still have made it together. Maybe years from now—”

Hentman announced, “He’s got the line ships. We’re in.” He beamed. “Now we can get so goddamn completely absolutely bagged that—well, you name it. I’ve got the booze here on the ship. Nothing, you understand, nothing at all more is required from any of us; we’ve done it. We’re now citizens of the Alphane empire; we’ll pretty soon have license-plate numbers instead of names, but that’s okay with me.”

Finishing his statement to Feld, Chuck said, “Maybe someday when it doesn’t matter I can look back and see what I should have done that would have avoided this, Mary and me lying in the dirt shooting back and forth at each other.” Across the darkened landscape of an unfamiliar world, he thought to himself. Where neither of us is at home, and yet where I—at least—will probably have to live out the remainder of my life. Maybe Mary too, he thought somberly.

To Hentman he said, “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Hentman said. To Feld he said, “Congratulations, Jerry.”

“Thank you,” Feld said. “Congratulations and a long life,” he said to Chuck. “Fellow Alphane.”

“I wonder,” Chuck said to Hentman, “if you could do me a favor.”

“Like what? Anything.”

Chuck said, “Lend me a launch. Let me drop down to the surface.”

“What for? You’re a hell of a lot safer up here.”

“I want to look for my wife,” Chuck said.

Raising an eyebrow Hentman said, “You’re sure you want that? Yeah, I can see by the expression on your face. You poor damn guy. Well, maybe you can talk her into staying with you on Alpha III M2. If the clans don’t mind. And if the Alphane authorities—”

“Just give him the launch,” Feld interrupted. “At this moment he’s a terribly unhappy man; he doesn’t have time to hear what you want to say.”