“I’m not sorry for you, Mister Swenesgard,” Koli said in a hissing, cold voice. “Do you know something, sir? You’re finished. It would have been better for you if you had died in that cave as your foreman did. It is perfectly obvious what you anticipated doing. You have been, in direct opposition to the legal decrees of the Occupation Authority, searching for buried weapon-caches left by the defeated forces of your UN troops.”
“No,” Gus said thickly. “It wasn’t weapons; I wasn’t looking for weapons.” He managed to sit up.
“Then what was it?” The voice bored at him, full of harshness.
Briefly, he thought of telling the worm. But he would never be believed. “Never mind,” he said
miserably. “But on my mother’s honor I wouldn’t use weapons against you people.”
“Whatever you may have intended,” Marshal Koli snapped, “the weapons are now in the hands of the Neeg- parts. If they have been troublesome before, now they will be unbearable. You and that Joan Hiashi—you’re both rebels. Therefore we will kill you both. And of course right away.” With his tongue Marshal Koli gave a signal; a huge, seemingly mindless creech grasped Gus in an unbreakable grip and began shoving him roughly toward the Gany’s parked ship.
A moment later, inside the ship, Gus found himself pushed unceremoniously into an overstuffed Terran chair which the Gany had from somewhere appropriated.
He found himself sweating. But he had not given up; he dragged out his vast cotton bandanna handkerchief and shakily mopped his balding head. “You don’t understand, Koli. I wasn’t going to tell you, but I have—or I guess had—a military campaign in mind against the Neeg-parts. I was diggin’ out those trick gadgets to use against Percy X. It’s the truth, on my mother’s honor. In fact, I was going to personally nail Percy for you, once and for all. You all don’t know who your friends are.”
“I thought,” Koli said bitingly, “that Miss Hiashi was our friend. But she destroyed contact-relations with us and has, no doubt, gone over to the Neegs by now. Taking with her valuable information about our operations in this area.”
“That Jap girl, that Hiashi; she was working for you?” He stalled for time, trying to say something; his mind worked furiously. Out of the comer of his eye he could see three of the creeches putting in order some variety of machine. He had a suspicion, intense and immediate, that he knew what it did; he had seen pictures of such devices. The worms used it for skinning a man alive, slowly so as to preserve the skin. Once more he wiped the sweat from his face and thought, Soon my hands will be secured and I won’t even be able to wipe. And after a while I’ll be another skin—pelt, they call it—in Koli’s famous collection. “You don’t want me,” he said aloud, as the creeches wheeled the machine over to him. “I’m just small potatoes. You all want Percy right? He’s the Neeg; he’s really giving you all trouble.”
“If I can’t have him,” Koli said coldly, “I’ll just have to make do with you.” He gestured with his tongue for the creeches to hold Gus down.
“Wait,” Gus said hoarsely. “You don’t have to settle for me. You can have Percy X himself.” He hesitated. “I can lead you right to him.”
The Gany general signaled his creeches to let Gus go. At least for the moment. “How do you expect to do that?”
“When that Jap gal was in the hotel I took the liberty of patting her sweet little head.”
“I’m not interested in your sexual depravity, Mister Swenesgard.”
“But listen,” Gus said. “I planted a little bitty microminiaturized transmitter in her hair; that’s what I did.”
After an interval Marshal Koli began once again to visualize the beautiful pelt of Percy X; he perceived its appearance on the wall of his Ganymedian villa. “Let the fool go,” Koli said to his creeches.
On his unmade bed, in his hotel room in Gus Swenesgard’s none too luxurious tourist palace, Dr. Paul Rivers sat and sweated. In theory, when the sun went down it was supposed to get colder, particularly in autumn. In fact, however, it had gotten hotter.
Getting up, he moved to the window to stare moodily in the direction of the distant mountains. Somewhere out there could be found Percy X, the last symbol of man’s greatness. And with him—the wik spy, Joan Hiashi. If only I could warn him, he reflected. If only there existed some way by which I could reach him. Reaching, he opened the window, as if this might help. But all it did was make more audible the tireless crickets and bring to his nostrils the smell of damp stagnation that hung over the little Southern town. It was, he realized, just as hot and muggy outside as inside.
Somewhere a far-off radio or TV set played tinnily.
The sound nudged an obscure piece of memory in his mind. Wasn’t Percy X a telepath? Yes, according to the records Paul had been shown during his briefing Percy X had graduated with honors from one of the Psychedelic research schools. This meant that he could be reached, no matter where he was but only, unfortunately, by another telepath. And Paul Rivers did not possess that talent.
On the other hand
Quickly he put through a vidphone call to the central offices of his employer, the World Psychiatric Association. Shortly he found himself connected with Dr. Ed Newkom, one of the planet’s top authorities on communication.
“This is top priority, Ed,” he informed Newkom. “I want the loan of a thought amplifier for a week or
two.” Sometimes, with luck, the device invented by Newkom could effectively double as an artificial telepathic booster—fora limited range, anyhow. “I can’t come and get it; you’ll have to fly it down here.” He told Newkom, tersely, where he was.
“I don’t trust any of the commercial transport systems,” Ed Newkom said. He hesitated. “I’ll— bring the thing down to you personally. With any kind of luck I’ll be with you by morning.”
“Thanks, Ed.” He felt relief. “The Association will pick up the tab on this.”
“This one is on me,” Ed Newkom said. “Ever since reading your paper on propagation of group psychosis I’ve wanted to see how you operate. I’m charging this trip up to education.”
After ringing off, Paul Rivers reseated himself on the bed, this time with afeeling of satisfaction. I can’t leave here, he said to himself grimly, but with any kind of luck my thoughts can!
Mekkis gazed out the window of the main passenger lounge of the ship at the planet Earth, which now grew larger by the minute. There it is, he breathed. My bale. Tenneessee.
Actually he could not clearly see it, since the globe had become partially hidden behind cloud- formations. But imagination filled in what the eye could not see.
He ordered another drink and, before lapping it, said to his creeches, “A toast, as they say on Earth. A toast to the new emperor of Tennessee, Percy X” “A toast,” echoed the creeches. But only Mekkis drank.
V
Joan Hiashi sat with her back against the wall of the cave, studying the features of the huge black man who crouched near her frying fish in a skillet over a small electric heating unit.
“Percy?” she said softly.
“Yes.” The Neeg-part leader did not look at her; he concentrated on what he held in his hand.
“Why did you stop that man from shooting me?” “A thousand reasons and none,” Percy said gruffly. “You and I studied Buddhism together; Buddha taught us not to harm any living being. Christ said the same thing. All those pacifist bastards agreed on it, so who am I to argue with them?”
The bitter irony in his voice—she did not remember it from the days when they had both been studying to be ministers, each in his own faith. He had changed. Of course. And she had, too.
“I know it isn’t that simple now,” Percy added, turning the fish over “We live in a universe of murderers. You can’t keep out of it, stay neutral, wait for the next world; they won’t let you, baby.”
“I know what you must have gone through,” she began. But Percy broke in harshly.
“You do? You don’t know a damn thing about me. But I know all about you; I know all the worms you’ve kissed. I know all the lies you’ve told—I knew when you first started out to come here, to trap me for the Gany
