Planet in Peril (18 page)

Raven said: “Sometimes I see your point of view, Mr.
Dinkuhl
, and am even minded to share it. You two have now ceased to be an asset and become instead a nuisance. Have you any good reason why I should not eliminate a nuisance?”

“The best. Were persuasive talkers. I doubt if you have an executioner you could be sure of, since we should naturally claim access to
Ramaseshan
. Besides, you really are very busy, Director. I should get back to your desk, if I were you.”

Raven smiled. “The points are not overwhelming, but you have me. I lack the essential vindictiveness of a Chief Director; it accounts for my present awkwardness.
Ramaseshan
, for instance ... Ah well. I take it you will not reconsider simply for the sake of helping me save my skin, Mr.
Grayner
? I thought not. What do you plan to do now, by the way?”

“Leave us to our worries,”
Dinkuhl
said. “You have your own.”

“Very true. Good-by, Mr.
Grayner
. I wish I could say I believed you to be in good hands. Good-by, Mr.
Dinkuhl
.”

Walking jauntily but without haste, Raven went out

There was no hurry this time. They went along to Oak Ridge for drinks and a meal.

“An enviable position, Charlie,”
Dinkuhl
said. "You can even use that wrist transmitter to call up the Atomics bravos if anyone else shows awkward. For a few days you can describe yourself as in Atomics but not of it No longer than that, I think. The Chief Director is versatile if not vindictive. He may still make a deal with
Ramaseshan
. Or even, for that matter, eliminate him. I told you the stakes were high.”

Charles contemplated his gin and vermouth.

“Hiram,” he said, “the last few weeks I have spent chasing my tail. I don’t entirely blame you for this, though I do have the impression that you’ve provided a twist once or twice when I showed signs of slowing down, but I would have you know I’m tiring rapidly.”

“Telecom came and took you. You put yourself into Atomics. I only got you out of those two havens.” “Right. For what purpose?”

“Purpose?”
Dinkuhl
grinned. “I’m not Raven. What do you want yourself?”

“To find Sara. If she’s alive.”

“O.K. Any clues?”

“None. As you know.”

“As I know. Well, we’ve tried the
overworld
. I never thought we’d get anything there. Now we try the underworld.”

“The underworld?”

Dinkuhl’s
face changed, hardened.
His voice dropped an octave. “B
rother,” he demanded, “are you damned?” He resumed his normal expression. “After a lifetime preaching culture, I guess I can preach damnation.” “What do you expect to get from the
Cometeers
?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. Anything. At least, it’s where Contact Sections are least likely to look for us. With a couple of natural beards, we’ll be impenetrable. Put not your trust in plastics when nature can lend a hand. I’ll do the preaching, Charlie. You can go around with the hat.”

Charles said doubtfully: “You think you can get by?” “I’ve made a study of it. I’ll have the rest of the preachers tearing their beards out by the roots.”

“It seems crazy.”

“When sanity calcifies, madness is the only solution. Any better ideas?”

Charles shook his head.

the
y moved in leaps of
a
hundred or a hundred and fifty miles, and at random. There was no control of the movements of the Preachers—it was their duty to travel as the spirit moved them, and they were welcome everywhere. Charles and
Dinkuhl
moved in a vast circular swath: east to Ohio, south to Kentucky and North Carolina, north again along the Atlantic seaboard.

Apart from one evening on Mining property,
Dinkuhl
had preached previously in sheds, outside the towns, belonging to Agriculture. Tonight, their gyro touched down on a waterfront section, a stretch that was apparently unused now though still nominally under the control of Telecom. It was a very decayed sector altogether, crammed with broken-down warehouses that seemed ready to slip off the waterfront into the unhealthy-looking water. The gyros already parked showed a good attendance.

They met a Preacher Robinson inside, and made their salutations. Preacher Robinson was a gaunt man and there was something odd about his speech.

"I’ve heard you’re a fine teller of the Wrath, Preacher,” he said. "Would you like to lead off?”

Dinkuhl
replied: "Better if you lead off, Preacher. You’ve been preaching longer than I have.”

Preacher Robinson inclined his head. “As you like.”

He preached well, with a cold bitter fervor. But
Dinkuhl
, following him, was in tremendous form. The audience that had listened in silence, betraying only by an occasional shuffling of feet that some charge of iniquity had sunk deeply home, was roused to a pitch of sobbing and shouting by
Dinkuhl's
playing on their emotions.
Dinkuhl
passed them back to Robinson for the liturgy that took place in the open, but, under his influence still, it was the crowd rather than the Preacher that dominated the responses.

When it was over, Charles and
Dinkuhl
stood beside Preacher Robinson and made their informal good-
bys
to the faithful. They had decided that in the presence of Robinson they would not put their usual questions about Sara and
Humayun
. Charles stood in silence while the two Preachers listened to the small talk and small problems of the departing congregation. The comet was plainly visible at the top of the black chasm between two warehouses. A few yards away there was the slow lap of water against rotting piles.

There was still a handful of the congregation left when Preacher Robinson started to talk. He said to
Dinkuhl
:

“How long have you been telling the Wrath,
Preacher?”

“Not long, Preacher. The call only came to me a few weeks ago.”

“You tell it well.”

“An instrument of the Lord, Preacher.”

Dinkuh
l’
s
voice, Charles noted, had relapsed into the drawl that signified alertness. The remaining handful of the damned had moved in closer; they were surrounded by them. There could be very little doubt that they were followers of Preacher Robinson. It was not two to one; it was two to half a dozen.

“Tell me, Preacher,” Robinson said, “these other two you have been asking questions about—a woman called
Koupal
, a man called
Humayun
—are they instruments of the Lord, too?”

It might still be no more than a routine check-up; the fact that they knew of the questions they had been asking did not necessarily signify anything more than that the

Cometeers
were a tighter-knit organization than had seemed likely on the surface.

Dinkuhl
said: ‘‘Every man and every woman is an instrument of The Lord.”

Preacher Robinson laughed, and his laughter was the dropping of a cloak. It was the laughter of cynicism. They had reached an inner circle; that was clear enough. And it was an inner circle dedicated to something other than the fanaticism of the
Cometeers
. But to what? The general inference was clear enough. Some managerial. But which? Which managerial was capable of controlling an organization like this—an organization of which Ledbetter and even Raven were unmistakably afraid?

“You put that well, Manager
Dinkuhl
,” said Preacher Robinson. “We’re still curious, all the same. What do you want
Koupal
and
Humayun
for?”

“Would you believe it,”
Dinkuhl
drawled, “if I told you it was for no other reason than the pangs of aching love?”

“For both of them?”

“Well, one each. Charlie for
Koupal
and me for
Humayun
. It’s just that I’m built that way.”

Robinson laughed again. “You know,” he said, “I think we’d take you in for that sense of humor, if for no other reason.”

“Take us in—where?” asked
Dinkuhl
. “And are we expected to come willingly?”

“You’ll find out where. Willingly if you like. Otherwise not. We’ve come prepared.”

Dinkuhl
groaned. “Not
astarate
again.”

“No,” Robinson said, “not
astarate
.” He drew something out from beneath his Preacher’s cloak. “We’re the more primitive type.”

His followers were making similar dispositions. Charles recognized what it was they carried from having seen something of the sort on a Red League historical soap opera. They were old-fashioned blackjacks.

Dinkuhl
said: “Mind if I have a word with Charlie-on our own?”

“A word. Don’t make it longer than half a minute.”

Dinkuhl
drew Charles to one side. “Can you swim?” Charles nodded. “The blunt instruments are all they’ve got; they would have produced something else if they had it. Probably don’t carry anything metal in case someone puts the detectors on them. Anyway, it’s worth trying a rush. There’s only a couple between us and the water. Right over them and in. Swim left. There’s a main artery within a hundred yards, and they can’t get at us before then because of the warehouses. They won’t try anything under lights.”

Charles said: “O.K. When do we go?”

“We’ll walk back to them and I’ll take out a cigarette pack and a lighter. When I toss the lighter in the Preacher’s face, we move.”

The watchers appeared to relax as Charles and
Dinkuhl
walked back together to where Robinson stood.
Dinkuhl
drew his pack of cigarettes out, slowly. He felt in his pockets for the lighter.

Robinson said: “Are you prepared to be reasonable? We play ball if you do.”

Dinkuhl
brought out his lighter, and pressed the flame button. The small blue glow shot up to its full height of three inches.

“A lot depends,”
Dinkuhl
observed, “on the brand of ball you play. For instance—”

He roared: “Now
!
” as he flicked the lighter in Robinson’s face, and Charles leapt for the man immediately between himself and the waterfront. The man went down, but he brought Charles down with him. Charles rolled clear, but by the time he had got to his feet another of them had him by the arm and yet another was between him and the water.
Dinkuhl
had got clear. He stood by the water’s edge, and looked back. They were making no attempt to go after him. Me again, Charles thought.

He called: “Beat it, Hiram!”

As he tore his arm free and dived for the man in his path, Charles saw
Dinkuhl
bull-rushing back to his assistance. He did not see anything eke. Something hit him on the back of the head.

He came back to consciousness once to the sound of a high-pitched buzzing roar, recognizable as the noise of a
stratoliner’s
engines. He sat up, and had time to see that he was in the hold of a cargo-plane, and tied up.
Dinkuhl
, also tied up, lay a little way off.

A voice said: "No trouble. We don’t want trouble.”

Another blackjack blow smashed him back into oblivion.

The next time Charles
came to, he was free of his bonds. He sat up carefully, and then stood up. His head ached, but no more than it had done after
astarate
; probably the bludgeoning effect of a blackjack was no worse than that of a drug.

He was in a small neat cell of a room, but there was no question of this being a cabin in a real or fake spaceship. There was an
armorplex
window in one wall, and outside light came through it. His first attention was to
Dinkuhl
, though.
Dinkuhl
was lying on the floor; he had a nasty black and blue bruise on his left temple. Charles tried to rouse him, but without success. There was no water in the room, and slapping his cheeks brought no result. At least, he was alive.

Leaving him for the moment, Charles went to the window and looked out. The building they were in was on a height, and looked across a city that pricked his memory without quite yielding to it. A mixture of styles, but predominantly very old, and with more than a hint of the oriental. A museum city. That narrowed the possibilities quite a bit—there were few cities that had escaped both the War’s destructions and the subsequent pattern of standardization in civic reconstruction that had marked the beginning of
managerialism
. He tried to think which this could be, but without being able to persuade himself of one likelihood over another. The sky was busy with gyros; that didn’t help either.

It wasn’t until the door of the room opened, and he saw the man who stood in the threshold that he guessed where he was. A number of things fell into place then, not least the trace of unfamiliar accent in Preacher Robinson’s speech. He had never seen this man in the flesh, but he had seen a deep-view of him, and in the same dress.