Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (13 page)

This, Mowry realized, was his heaven-sent opportunity. Snap-searchers might continue down the side streets and in the city’s tough quarters but they’d be well-nigh impossible on the east-west artery with all that military traffic passing through. If he could reach the cross-town route he could head clean out of Pertane with safety. After that he could dance around elsewhere until the time was ripe to return attention to the capital.

He paid his miserly landlord two months’ rent in advance without creating more than joyful surprise. Then he checked his false identity papers. Hurriedly he packed his bag with guilders, a fresh supply of stickers, a couple of small packages and got out.

No sudden traps opened out between there and the city center; even if they ran around like mad the police could not be everywhere at once. On the east-west road he carried his bag unnoticed, being of less significance than a grain of sand amid the great mob of spectators that had assembled. By the same token progress was difficult and slow. The route was crowded almost to the walls. Time and again he had to shove his way past the backs of an audience which had its full attention on the road.

Many of the shops he passed had boarded-up windows as evidence that they had been favored by his propaganda. Others displayed new glass and on twenty-seven of these he slapped more stickers while a horde of potential witnesses stood on tiptoe, stared over their fellows at the military procession. One sticker he plastered on a policeman’s back, the broad, inviting stretch of black cloth proving irresistible. The cop gaped forward along with the crowd, ignored pressure behind him and got decorated from shoulder to shoulder.

Who will pay for this war?

Those who started it will pay.

With their money—and their lives.

Dirac Angestun Gesept.

After three hours of edging, pushing and some surreptitious sticker-planting he arrived at the city’s outskirts. Here the tail end of the parade was still trundling noisily along. Standing spectators had thinned out but a straggling group of goon-fanciers were walking in pace with the troops.

Around stood houses of a suburb too snooty to deserve the attentions of the police and Kaitempi. Ahead stretched the open country and the road to Radine. He carried straight on, following the rearmost troops until the procession turned leftward and headed for the great military stronghold of Khamasta. Here the accompanying civilians halted and watched them go before mooching back to Pertane. Bag in hand, Mowry continued along the Radine road.

Moodiness afflicted him as he walked. He became obsessed with the notion that he had been chased out of the city even if only temporarily and he didn’t like it. Every step he took seemed like another triumph for the foe, another defeat for himself. Given the free choice he’d have stayed put, accepting increasing risks as they came, glorying in meeting and beating them. He didn’t have a free choice, not really.

At the training college they had lectured him again and again to the same effect. “Maybe you
like
having a mulish character. Well, in some circumstances it’s called courage, in others it’s downright stupidity. You’ve got to resist the temptation to indulge unprofitable heroics. Never abandon caution merely because you think it looks like cowardice. It required guts to sacrifice one’s ego for the sake of the job. Those are the sort of guts we want and must have. A dead hero is of no earthly use to us!”

Humph! Easy for them to talk, hard for those who have to listen and obey. He was still aggrieved when he reached a permasteel plaque standing by the roadside. It said:
Radine
—33
den.
He looked in both directions, found nobody in sight. Opening his bag he took out a package and buried it at the base of the plaque.

That evening he checked in at Radine’s best and most expensive hotel. If the Jaimecan authorities succeeded in following his tortuous trail around Pertane they’d notice his penchant for hiding out in overcrowded, slummy areas and tend to seek him in the planet’s rat-holes. With luck a high-priced hotel would be the last place in which they’d look for him if the search spread wider afield. All the same he’d have to be wary of the routine check of hotel registers which the Kaitempi made every now and again regardless.

Dumping his bag he left the room at once. Time was pressing. He hurried along the road, unworried about snap-searches which for unknown reasons were confined to the capital, and had not yet been applied to other cities. Reaching a bank of public phone booths a mile from the hotel, he made a call to Pertane. A sour voice answered while the booth’s tiny screen remained blank.

“Cafe Susun.”

“Skriva there?”

“Who wants him?”

“Me.”

“That tells me a lot. Why’ve you got that scanner switched off?”

“Listen who’s talking,” growled Mowry, eyeing his faceless screen. “You fetch Skriva and let him cope with his own troubles. You aren’t his paid secretary, are you?"

There came a loud snort, a long silence, then Skriva’s voice sounded. “Who’s this?”

“Give me your pic and I’ll give you mine.”

“I know who it is—I recognize the tones,” said Skriva. He switched his scanner, his unpleasing features gradually bloomed into the screen. Mowry switched likewise. Skriva frowned at him with dark suspicion. “Thought you were going to meet us here. Why are you phoning?”

“I’ve been called out of town and can’t get back for a piece.”

“Is
that
so?”

“Yar, that
is
so!” snapped Mowry. “And don’t get hard with me because I won’t stand for it, see?” He paused to let it sink in, went on, “You got a dyno?”

“Maybe,” said Skriva, evasively.

“Can you leave right away?”

“Maybe.”

“If you want the goods you can cut out the maybes and move fast.” Mowry held his phone before the scanner, tapped it suggestively, pointed to his ears to indicate that one never knew who was listening in these days and might perhaps have to be beaten to it. “Get onto the Radine road and look under marker 33
-den. Don’t
take Arhava with you.”

“Hey, when will you—”

He slammed down the phone, cutting off the other’s irate query. Next he sought the local Kaitempi H.Q. the address of which had been revealed in Pigface’s secret correspondence.

In a short time he passed the building, keeping as far from it as possible on the other side of the street. He did not give close attention to the building itself, his gaze being concentrated above it. For the next hour he wandered around Radine with seeming aimlessness, still studying the areas above the rooftops.

Eventually satisfied he looked for the city hall, found it, repeated the process. More erratic mooching from street to street while apparently admiring the stars. Finally he returned to the hotel.

Next morning he took a small package from his bag, pocketed it, made straight for a large business block noted the previous evening. With a convincing air of self-assurance he entered the building, took the automatic elevator to the top floor. Here he found a dusty, seldom-used passage with a drop-ladder at one end.

There was nobody around. Even if somebody had come along they might not have been unduly curious. Anyway, he had all his answers ready. Pulling down the ladder he climbed it swiftly, got through the trapdoor at the top and onto the roof. From his package he took a tiny inductance coil fitted with clips and attached to a long half-thin cable with plug-in terminals at its other end.

Climbing a short trellis mast, he counted the wires on the telephone junction at its top, checked the direction in which the seventh one ran. To this he carefully fastened the coil. Then he descended, led the cable to the roof’s edge, gently paid it out until it was dangling full length into the road below. Its plug-in terminals were now swinging in the air at a point about four feet above the pavement.

Even as he looked down from the roof half a dozen pedestrians passed the hanging cable and showed no interest in it. A couple of them glanced idly upward, saw somebody above and wandered onward without remark. Nobody questions the activities of a man who clambers over roofs or disappears down grids in the street providing he does it openly and with quiet confidence.

He got down and out without mishap. Within an hour he had performed the same feat atop another building and again got away unchallenged. His next move was to purchase another typewriter, paper, envelopes, a small hand-printing set. It was still only midday when he returned to his room and set to work as fast as he could go. The task continued without abate all that day and most of the next day. When he had finished the hand-printer and typewriter slid silently into the lake.

The result was the placing in his case of two hundred and twenty letters for future use and the immediate mailing of another two hundred and twenty to those who had received his first warning. The recipients, he hoped, would be far from charmed by the arrival of a second letter with a third yet to come.

Hage-Ridarta was the second.

The list is long.

Dirac Angestun Gesept.

After lunch he consulted yesterday’s and today’s newspapers at which he’d been too busy to look before now. The item he sought was not there: not a word about the late lamented Butin Arhava. Momentarily he wondered whether anything had gone wrong, whether the Gurd-Skriva brothers had jibbed at his choice of a victim or whether they were merely being slow on the uptake.

The general news was much as usual. Victory still loomed nearer and nearer. Casualties in the real or mythical A. Centauri battle were now officially confirmed at eleven Sirian warships, ninety-four Terran ones. That data was given a frontpage spread and a double column of editorial hallelujahs.

On an inner page, in an inconspicuous corner, it was announced that Sirian forces had abandoned the twin worlds of Fedira and Fedora, the forty-seventh and forty-eighth planets of the empire, “for strategic reasons.” It was also hinted that Gooma, the sixty-second planet, might soon be given up also, “in order to enable us to strengthen our positions elsewhere.”

So they were admitting something that could no longer be denied, namely, that two planets had gone down the drain with a third soon to follow. Although they had not said so it was pretty certain that what they had given up the Terrans had grabbed. Mowry grinned to himself as words uttered in the cake shop came back to his mind.

“For months we have been making triumphant retreats before a demoralized enemy advancing in utter disorder.”

He went along the road, called the Cafe Susun. “Did you collect?”

“We did,” said Skriva, “and the next consignment is overdue.”

“I’ve read nothing about it.”

“You wouldn’t—nothing having been written.”

“Well, I told you before that I pay when I’ve had proof. Until I get it, nothing doing. No proof, no dough.”

“We’ve got the evidence. It’s up to you to take a look at it.”

Mowry thought swiftly. “Still got the dyno handy?”

“Yar.”

“Maybe you’d better meet me. Make it the ten-time hour, same road, Marker
den-8."

The car arrived dead on time. Mowry stood by the marker, a dim figure in the darkness of night with only fields and trees around. The car rolled up, headlights glaring. Skriva got out, took a small sack from the trunk, opened its top and exhibited its contents in the blaze of the lights.

“God in heaven!” said Mowry, his stomach jumping.

“It’s a ragged job,” admitted Skriva. “He had a tough neck, the knife was blunt and Gurd was in a hurry. What’s the matter? You squeamish or something?”

“I’d have liked it less messy. A bullet would have been neater.”

“You’re not paying for neatness. If you want it done sweet and clean and tidy say so and jack up the offer.”

“I’m not complaining.”

“You bet you’re not. Butin’s the boy who’s entitled to gripe.” He kicked the sack. “Aren’t you, Butin?”

“Get rid of it,” ordered Mowry. “It’s spoiling my appetite.”

Letting go a grim chuckle, Skriva tossed the sack into an adjacent ditch, put out a hand. “The money.”

Giving him the package, Mowry waited in silence while the other checked the contents inside the car with the help of Gurd. They thumbed the neat stack of notes lovingly, with much licking of lips and mutual congratulations.

When they had finished Skriva chuckled again. “That was twenty thousand for nothing. We couldn’t have got it easier.”

“What d’you mean, for nothing?” Mowry asked.

“We’d have done it anyway, whether you’d named him or not. Butin was making ready to talk. You could see it in the slimy
soko’s
eyes. What d’you say, Gurd?” Gurd contented himself with a neck-wringing gesture.

Leaning on the car’s door, Mowry said, “I’ve got another and different kind of job for you. Feel like taking it on?” Without waiting for response he exhibited another package. “In here are ten small gadgets. They’re fitted with clips and have thin lengths of cable attached. I want these contraptions fastened to telephone lines in or near the center of Pertane. They’ve got to be set in place so that they aren’t visible from the street but the cables can be seen hanging down.”

“But,” objected Skriva, “if the cables can be seen it’s only a matter of time before somebody traces them up to the gadgets. Where’s the sense of hiding what is sure to be found?”

“Where’s the sense of me giving you good money to do it?” Mowry riposted. “How much?”

“Five thousand guilders apiece. That’s fifty thousand for the lot.”

Skriva pursed his lips in a silent whistle.

“I can check whether you’ve actually fixed them,” Mowry went on, “so don’t try kidding me, see? We’re in business together. Better not kiss the partnership goodbye.”

Grabbing the package, Skriva rasped, “I think you’re crazy—but who am I to complain?”

Headlights brightened, the car set up a shrill whine and rocked away. Mowry watched until it had gone from sight, then he tramped back into Radine, made for the public booths and phoned Kaitempi H.Q. He was careful to keep his scanner switched off and try to give his voice the singsong tones of a native Jaimecan. “Somebody’s been decapitated.”