“Silence!” Number One said curtly. He turned his rage on the captain. “What else? I can see there is something else!”
“Your Leadership, a whole series of industrial complexes—industries, mills, mines—have also surrendered. Declared themselves open areas, the equivalent of open cities.”
“You mean the Betastan government has surrendered?” Number One demanded unbelievingly!
“Praise to the Holy Ultimate,” The Temple Bishop intoned reverently.
“Shut up, confound it!”
The captain swallowed. “No, sir. That doesn’t seem to be it. It’s just these individual cities and industrial complexes have declared themselves open and have surrendered. They’re awaiting your occupation forces, Your Leadership. All military units have been withdrawn into the countryside.”
Number One, for once, was uncomprehending. For a moment it looked as though he were about to lapse into one of his characteristic moods of contemplation, but then he tossed his heavy head abruptly. He turned to Marshal Croft-Gordon and Deputy Fielder.
“Your opinions, Coaids?”
Croft-Gordon bit out, “Send the bombers! This is a trick. Level them!”
Ross Westley, with formerly unknown vigor snapped, “No! Didn’t you hear this man? The Betastani have broadcast their surrender to the whole planet. Not a person of good will, not only in the neutral countries but in Alphaland itself, would stand for an attack upon those cities now!”
“All the largest cities have surrendered?” McGivern said in shocked tones. “Why, the computers said the war would be over in less than three months, but at this rate, they won’t last three weeks.”
“At this rate, they won’t last three days,” Mark Fielder amended. “There’s something awfully wrong, here. I don’t like it.”
PART TWO
Chapter VII
Number One, surrounded by his inmost staff, had fallen into deep thought. Not a breath could have been heard. Even the colonel who had brought the announcement of the surrender of Betastan’s largest centers, although he had never been in the presence of his ultimate superior before, knew the story of the Presidor’s lapses into contemplation and the fate of any who interrupted such a reverie.
But Marshal of the Armies Rupert Croft-Gordon could stand it no longer.
“We’ve got to act!” he barked.
Number One’s eyes came away from far distances. He regarded his military chief desolately. “Very well, Coaid, order the advance. Our armies are to counter the provocations of the Betastani border aggressions. They are to return force with force, in the defense of the Motherland and the Holy United Temple.”
“The cities?” the Marshal demanded. “Shall we strike the cities?”
“No. All air fleets and missiles are to be reassigned targets of secondary importance. The secondary targets they would have hit upon leveling these that have declared themselves open.”
“But it’s a trick! Our whole campaign is based upon the destruction of those primary targets.”
Number One nodded grimly. “I suspect you are correct. This then shall be our procedure: air marines shall land in light force in New Betatown and all the other so-called open cities and industrial areas.”
“In light force?” Mark Fielder protested. “They wouldn’t last the day out.”
The Presidor nodded again. “That is my suspicion, Coaid. And this is my declaration: in any city, or other locale, which has declared itself open, if a single Alpha-land trooper is killed, then the city’s classification is voided and our missiles will immediately retaliate.”
Ross Westley said, shock in his voice, “You mean that each detachment of our own air marines is to be considered expendable? That if any action takes place in any of these cities, the place would be leveled, which would automatically eliminate our occupying force there as well?”
Number one didn’t bother to answer.
Temple Bishop Stockwater intoned, “Such sons of the Motherland and of the United Temple will proudly offer their lives to the Crusade.”
Ross shot an indignant look at him.
The Marshal said, “I’ll issue immediate orders to occupy the points in question.” He moved over to a visio- phone.
After a few moments, he touched a stud to amplify. Over the communication device could be heard, although over a great distance, the sounds of artillery and bombs.
“The counterattack is launched!” the Marshal proclaimed.
Number One looked at his assistants, one by one, his face expressionless. “Very well, Coaids, the die is cast. It is now in the hands of the Holy Ultimate.”
The Temple Bishop bowed his head. “Amen.”
Ross Westley, his face glum, wove his way through the chaos of his outer offices. The Commissariat of Information was in full swing, in full voice. Clerks ran rather than walked; every office machine in the series of rooms seemed in full clatter. All was monstrous confusion.
He snorted.
Ross sometimes wondered what was transpiring in this, his own department, and realized that he, as supposed head of it all, had only a glimmering of understanding. The Commissariat of Information. Under one department or the other, it either originated, or censured, every book, every article, every fictional piece, every show—legitimate, Tri-Di, or tape. Not even nightspot comedians were free of the ever-present scrutiny of his minions, and woe to him whose sly innuendo touched upon matters political or religious or dwelt, even in far passing, upon the prerogatives of the Presidor or of the United Temple.
But Ross himself? He suspected that if he should secretly drop dead months would go by before anyone in his million-tentacled organization would realize it; that not a computer, not a collator, not a sorter or keypunch would slow even momentarily.
He snorted.
Sometimes he suspected that the same applied to every bureaucrat on every level. He himself dealt with his immediate assistant, Job Bauserman, and such department heads as Martha Taylor and Pater Ian, and seldom with anyone below that level. He hardly even knew the names of any of the lower assistants.
But take Number One. He also dealt with his immediate Coaids, his deputies. And he probably didn’t know the names of any under that level. And suppose the Presidor suddenly decided to withdraw into his own apartments for a week, a month, a year. Would the workings of the bureaucracy stop? Hardly.
He grunted contempt. The historian in him wondered. Would the Macedonian armies have continued on and conquered Persia had Alexander been killed at Issus? He suspected they would have. The Greek star was in the ascendancy, the Persian on the decline. Had Napoleon died in Egypt, would the exploding, idealistic people’s armies of the French have conquered Europe? Why not? It was in the cards that feudalistic Austria and the German and Italian states couldn’t stand against the new socioeconomic forces. Would the fate of Europe been greatly different had Hitler died in the streets of Munich during his first putsch? Probably not. Germany was fated to make her bid for control of Europe, and with the British Commonwealth, the Soviet goliath and industrially overwhelming America against her, fated to lose.
Somebody had said something to him. He scowled and halted.
“I beg your pardon.”
It was one of his senior secretaries, stationed immediately outside his office. What was her confounded name? Yes, Jet Pirincin.
“Coaid Westley. A new report has just come in. Our glorious armies are everywhere victorious. They have
