In the Beginning (11 page)

“You’ll find out, chum. Just make sure you can run fast when they spot you, though.”

“When who spots me?”

“The guards, dope. The Tax Agents. You don’t think you can breathe for free on Callisto, do you?”

“You mean they
tax your breathing?”
I asked, incredulously, and before I could get an answer I saw a cordon of guards forming around our truck.

***

There were half a dozen of them, burly men in blue uniforms, all of them wearing the ubiquitous metal collar. They had halted our truck, which had been last in the procession. I saw the other trucks in the convoy rolling on toward their destination somewhere in the city.

“Don’t make trouble for me,” my driver said pleadingly. “I’ll be docked if I don’t get my cargo back on time.”

One of the men in uniform reached up and opened the cab of the truck. “Come on out of there, you.”

“Who, me?” I asked innocently. “What for?”

“Don’t play games,” he snapped. “Get out of that truck.” He waved a lethal-looking blaster at me, and I decided not to argue with it. I leaped lightly to the ground, and as I did so the uniformed man signalled to my driver that he could go ahead.

The six men ringed threateningly around me. “Who are you?” the leader demanded. “Where’d you come from?”

“That doesn’t matter,” I said belligerently. He put his hand on my arm, and I jerked away. “I’m a tourist. Want to see my landing permit?”

“Landing permits don’t mean a thing here,” he said. “Where’s your respirometer?”

“My
what?”

“According to statute 1106A, Book Eleven, Civil Code of the Principality of Callisto City,” he reeled off, “all inhabitants of the Principality of Callisto City are required by law to wear respirometers at all times, whether they are transients or permanent inhabitants.” He finished his spiel and gestured boredly to one of his assistants. “Give him the collar, Mack.”

The man named Mack opened a wooden box and revealed one of those metal collars, the kind that seemed to be all the rage in Callisto just then. He held it out invitingly.

“Here you are, dear. The finest model in the house.”

I drew back. “I don’t want your goddam collar,” I snapped hotly.

“You’ve heard the regulation,” the head man said. “Either you put the collar on or you turn around and walk out the way you came.”

I turned and looked through the translucent airlock out at the barren wastes of frozen ammonia. “I’m staying here, for the time being. And I don’t plan on wearing any collars.”

He frowned. I was being particularly troublesome, and he didn’t like it. He waved his blaster in an offhand gesture. “Put the collar on him, boys.”

Mack and one of the others advanced toward me, holding the gleaming metal circlet. I took one look at it, smiled, and said, “Okay. I know when I’m licked. I can’t fight all of you.”

They relaxed visibly. “Good to see you cooperate. Put it on him.”

I let them come close, and Mack was starting to lower the thing over my head when I went into action. I batted the collar out of his hands and heard it go clanging across the floor, and at the same time I lashed out with my foot and nipped the boss’ blaster right out of his amazed hand. The gun went flying thirty feet or more.

Then they were all on me at once. I pounded back savagely, feeling solid flesh beneath my knuckles and occasionally the unyielding coldness of someone’s collar as I drove a fist past it into his jaw.

Some picnic,
I thought, as I waded gleefully in, flattening Mack with a poke in the stomach and sending another one reeling to the ground with a swift kick. Luckily for me, the head man had been the only one wearing sidearms—and apparently some street urchin had made off with the blaster before he could find it again, because I wasn’t getting cooked.

I crashed two of them together, pushed the remaining two aside, and dashed away toward the entrance to the city. I heard them pounding after me in hot pursuit.

It was about a hundred yards to the edge of the city. I made the dash in a dozen seconds and found myself in a crowded thoroughfare, with a number of people watching my fight with evident interest.

I broke into the crowd and kept on running, pushing people aside as I went. Behind me, I could see the six policemen jostling their way along. One of them had found another blaster somewhere, but he didn’t dare use it in such a crowd.

I rounded a corner, nearly slipped, and then doubled back and headed for the main thoroughfare again. The cops weren’t taken in by my maneuver, though, and as I looked back I saw them following grimly, shouting something at me. There were more of them now.

Suddenly I felt a hand slide into mine, soft and warm, and a gentle voice at my side said, “Come with me.”

I didn’t argue. I saw the crowd close up into a solid mass behind us, and heard the roaring of my frustrated pursuers, as my unknown rescuer led me away to safety.

***

As we ran, I glanced down and saw a girl at my side, with her hand grasping mine. She was about twenty-two, wearing a clinging blue tunic that cut off above her knees. She had copper-red hair, and around her neck was that curious collar.

After running a block and a half, we came to a small tenement-house of the kind common in Callisto City. “In here,” she whispered, and we ducked inside.

Then up a flight of stairs, around a corridor, down a dimly-lit hallway. We stood for an anxious moment outside her door, while she fumbled nervously in an attempt to touch her thumb to the doorplate, and then finally she managed to impress her print on the sensitive photoelectronic plate and the door slid noiselessly open.

We stepped inside, and with a feeling of relief I watched the heavy door roll back. I was safe—for now.

I turned to the girl. “Who are you? Why’d you bring me here?”

The run had tired her. Her breasts rose and fell as she gasped for breath, and she smiled and held up a hand for time as she struggled to talk. Finally, panting, she managed to say, “I’m June Knight. I saw the whole scene with the guards. You’re safe here, for a while. But tell me—why have you come to Callisto?”

“Why does everyone wear these collars?” I countered, ignoring her question.

Her pretty face grew sad. “They make us—the Three, that is. Come on inside, and I’ll get together something for you to eat. You must be starved, and we can talk later.”

“No,” I said quickly. “I’m not hungry. I’m more anxious to find out what’s been happening here.”

“Well, even if you’re not hungry, I am,” she said. “Come into the kitchen and I’ll tell you the whole story—the story of how this whole city’s been enslaved.”

She went into the adjoining room of the little flat, and I followed her. She punched keys on the robocook, dialing a small but nutritious meal, and when the food was placed before her on the table she turned to me.

“First,” she said, “when’s the last time any news came from Callisto to the outside world?”

I shrugged. “I haven’t been keeping up with the news. I’ve been on Mars the last two years, hunting
rhuud
in the lowlands. The papers don’t get there often.”

“Oh. You’ve been out of touch. Well, you haven’t missed any news from Callisto, because we’ve had an efficient news blanket in operation for almost a year and a half. And for a while it was a voluntary one—just about two years ago, when the air started going bad. We didn’t want outsiders to know.”

I blinked. “The
air?”
In a dome-city like this, the air supply was, of course, wholly artificial, and its proper maintenance was of vital importance to the entire community. “What happened to the air?” I asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “None of us are. Suddenly it became impure. People began sickening by the hundreds; some died, and almost everyone else was ill in one way or another. A tremendous investigation was held by the people who were our government then—Cleve Coldridge was our mayor, a fine man—and nothing could be determined about the source of the impurities. And then my father—he’s dead now—invented this.” She tapped the metal collar she wore around her throat.

“And what, may I ask, is that collar?”

“It’s a filter,” she said. “When the collar is worn, it counteracts the impurities in the air, through some process I don’t understand. My father died shortly after he developed it, and so he didn’t get a chance to offer it to the public. He willed the design and the process to three—friends—of his.” Her mouth clamped together bitterly, and I saw her struggling to fight back tears. Almost automatically, I put my arm around her.

“I’ll be all right,” she said. “Every time I think of those three, and what they’ve done to Dad’s invention—”

“Tell me about it later, if you want.”

“No. You might as well know the whole story. The three of them—Martin Hawkins, an Earthman, Ku Sui, a Martian, and Kolgar Novin, a Venusian—announced my father’s device to the public as if they had discovered it themselves. It was the solution to our air-impurity problem. They started turning out the collars in mass production, and within a month everyone in Callisto City was wearing one.”

“Did that stop the sickness?”

She nodded. “Immediately. The hospitals emptied out in no time at all, and there hasn’t been a case of that disease since then.”

“Is that all?” I asked.

“Hardly. The trouble didn’t start until after we were all wearing the collars.” She took my hand and guided it along her collar to the back of her neck, where I felt a tiny joint in the metal.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“That joint is the weapon those three hold over us at all times. These collars, you see, can be tightened at will by remote control—and my father’s three friends operate the controls!”

I whistled. “What a hideous kind of dictatorship! You mean—anyone who makes too much of the wrong kind of noise gets his collar tightened.”

“Exactly. As soon as the whole city was wearing the protective collars—the collars that we thought were our salvation—the Three called a public meeting, and announced that they were taking over the government. Mayor Coldridge stood up to protest such a high-handed move—”

“And suddenly felt his collar tightening around his neck!” I concluded. I could picture the scene vividly.

“It was terrible,” she said. “Right in the middle of his speech, he clutched at his throat, went red in the face, and sank to his knees. They let him up after a minute or so, and explained what they had done. Then they announced that anyone who protested against what they were doing would get similar treatment. We’ve been against them ever since.”

I stood up, almost overwhelmed with anger. I had come to the right place this time! Maybe giant Jupiter was something I needed to explore someday for my own peace of mind, but this mess on Callisto required immediate attention. I didn’t see how I was going to fight it, either, but I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to leave here until the last collar had been removed from a Callistan throat.

“What about this breathing-tax?” I asked.

She nodded. “That’s the latest thing. They’ve decided the regular taxes aren’t enough for them, and so they’re bleeding us white with this new one. They installed meters in all the collars, to measure the amount of air we consume, and—” her voice was choked with hatred—“they tax us. There’s even a price of air here. Every Friday, we have to pay a certain amount.”

“And if you don’t?”

She put her hand to her throat, and made a swift squeezing motion. I shuddered. I’d never come across anything so vicious as this. When I was hunting
rhuud
on Mars, I thought I was against an ugly beast—but those Martian land-serpents weren’t half so cold-blooded as the Three who held Callisto in their iron grip.

I was going to break their hold. I vowed it, as I looked at the red-eyed girl staring solemnly at me.

***

Suddenly there was a knock on the hall door. I sprang up at once, and June looked at me with alarm.

“Hide in there,” she said, pointing to the bedroom. I dashed inside and crouched behind the bed, wondering who was at the door.

I head a male voice say, “It’s me, June. You decent?”

“Come on in,” she said, and I heard the door slide open. I peeped out and saw a tall, good-looking young man enter. Around his throat was the inevitable collar. He ran to her, put his arms around her, embraced her. I felt a sour twinge of jealousy, though I had no conceivable right to.

“Hello, Jim,” she said warmly.

The newcomer was frowning worriedly. “Have you heard about this new trouble?” he asked without preamble. “They’ve just announced it from the capitol building.”

“What is it?”

“There’s a fugitive loose in the city somewhere,” the man named Jim said rapidly. “Apparently he broke in by stowing away in a cargo shipment from Ganymede, and he escaped when Hawkins’ guards tried to put a collar on him. He’s been at large for the past half hour—and Ku Sui and Hawkins have just announced that they’re going to start tightening the collars gradually until he turns himself in!”

June gasped. “Everyone’s collar?”

“Everyone. There’s a gigantic manhunt going on now, with the whole city out trying to find this guy. If we don’t get him and turn him in, those three madmen are liable to choke us all as a punitive measure.”

As he spoke, he winced and put his hand to his throat. “They’re starting now!”

A moment later, June uttered a little cry as the remote-control torturers went to work on her collar as well. I went almost insane with rage at that.

I got off the floor and went inside.

“I’m the man they’re looking for,” I announced loudly. Jim turned, startled, and flicked a glance from me to June and back to me again.

“Where’d
he
come from, June?” Jim asked coldly.

“He’s the fugitive,” she said hesitantly. “He was running from the Tax Guards and practically ran into me. I brought him here.”

“Great Scot!” he shouted. “Of all the crazy stunts! Come on—let’s turn him in before they choke us all.”

He started toward me, but I held up a hand. I’m a big man, and he stopped, giving me the respect my size deserves. “Just one moment, friend. Don’t be so quick to turn people in. Suppose you tell me who you are?”