military governor. Your mind is like a clear mountain stream to me. That’s my curse, baby; I can see it all. Nobody can lie to me.”
“If you know,” she said carefully, “then you know why I did what I did. You know I had to do it. So you can forgive me.”
“Sure, I forgive you. For everything. Not quite; except for one thing. That I can’t forgive.”
“What’s that?”
“For you being alive, baby,” he said, still not looking at her.
After they had eaten they made love, there in the soft sand on the floor of the cave. Joan thought, as she lay breathing deeply, afterward, that it had been good to make love to a man who hadn’t crawled to anyone. She had forgotten what it felt like. “Is this what I really came here for, subconsciously?” she asked him as she toyed with his stiff, wirelike hair.
“I don’t know. I can read you but I can’t make excuses for you.”
She pulled away from him with a jerk, feeling hurt and puzzled.
“What’s the matter, wik girl?” he growled. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to love your enemies?” “Stop throwing religion at my head.” She thought, now, how fine Percy would look on TV, what a great show she could build around him—if she could get back into favor with the Gany Bureau of Cultural Control. Then, abruptly, she realized that Percy was
looking into her mind and seeing these thoughts, and she felt a moment of panic. How do you not think something? Just the effort of trying not to think it brings it more strongly into your mind!
“Once awik, always a wik; right?” he said to her, fixing her with an unblinking stare.
“No, that’s not true.”
“Don’t lie to me.” He leaped to his feet, stood huge and black and dangerous as a bull in the ring, then began pacing restlessly back and forth, speaking in an intense monotone, now and then stopping to wave his arms, point a quivering finger, grimace savagely or shake his fist. “What’s the word ‘Neeg’ mean, wik girl? Is it a race or is it a religion?”
“A race.”
“It’s a religion, like being a Jew. Being white; that’s also a religion. I can tell you in just one word what the white religion is.”
“What?” Joan said guardedly.
“Hypocrisy.” There was a long silence while Percy waited for this to sink in. Or perhaps he waited for a reply. But she said nothing. “What’s the matter, wik girl?” he demanded. “Don’t you know how to talk? Are you just going to sit there and take it when I call you a hypocrite?” Bending, he picked up his rocket dart pistol from the floor of the cave and leveled it at Joan’s head.
“You’d kill me, just like that?”
“I saved your life; now it’s mine, to do with as I please.”
“I didn’t come here to do you any harm. I just wanted to collect folksongs for—”
“I don’t know any songs,” Percy said curtly.
“Maybe it would help your movement if I broadcast some of your music on my show.”
“I told you I don’t know any songs!” He waved his rocket dart pistol in emphasis. “I’ve seen your show, and you know what I think of it?” He spat in the dust. “It’s white jazz you play and that’s the same thing as nothing— meaningless noise, a big fake. You, don’t believe in what you play, do you? You have nothing but contempt for the people who like it and contempt for yourself for playing it.”
“It’s a living,” she said tightly.
“I don’t know why I don’t shoot you; I’d be doing you a favor. God, I’d rather be dead than a gutless white jellyfish like you.” But he did not shoot, and she knew why. He had begun to enjoy tormenting her, searching with his telepathic ability through all the hidden parts of her mind, the places she herself never ventured into. “I think it’s gratitude, that’s what it is; I’m pathetically grateful to you for all you’ve done for my people, down through the ages—you’ve kept my people out of your world, kept them from becoming like you. Thank you, wik white girl; thank you. Thank—”
“Will you cut it out?” she snapped, angry at last. “Backtalk? So there is some spirit in you. Maybe you’ve got a little Neeg blood in you. Listen; I think there’s hope for you, white wik girl. I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to let you join me. I’m going to give you a chance to quit lying, get up off your belly and be an authentic human being. What do you say?’ ’ “I don’t know,” she said.
“That’s just it; you don’t know. But I’m willing to teach you; I’m willing to spend my priceless time and
patience working with you on the remote chance there might be some trace of real color hidden away in all that white mush you call your ‘personality.’ Listen; I know how you got brought up—don’t you think I know what your people have done to you? I know how they had you fixed, like their dogs and cats; I know how they taught you to say ‘thank you’ when someone with money, occupation script or UN bills, steps on your face. I know how rotten you feel inside, empty and impotent and helpless. No wonder you need to pile up so much money to make people pretend to like you; no wonder you need all that fame to prove to yourself that you exist. Listen; I’m going to put a gun into your hands and give you a chance to kill a few of those white crunks that did this to you.” Abruptly he thrust his gun butt first into her hand, stood back and grinned.
“Suppose,” Joan said presently, “I shoot you instead.”
“No. You don’t have the guts. But evidently he caught something deep in her mind, something marginal which even she could not perceive; as abruptly as he had given her the gun he yanked it back to his own possession. “Lincoln,” he called, and his second-in-command appeared; he had, Joan realized, been listening and watching all this time. ‘ ‘Take this white worm-kisser out of my sight. If I see it again I’ll probably crush it under my heel.”
As Lincoln led her away she asked him, shaken and disturbed, “What’s wrong with him? Why does he rave on like that?”
Lincoln laughed sharply. “Where’s your woman’s intuition, baby? Percy’s been carrying your picture in his wallet for years—as long as I’ve known him. You’re none other than his dear, darling, long-lost sweetie pie . . and you’re a worm-kisser. A hopeless worm-kisser. If you don’t think that’s funny you just don’t have any sense of humor at all.”
Marshal Koli, Military Administrator of the occupied bale of Tennessee, said aloud to his staff, “As you know, we have for months been contriving a stratagem with the purpose of snaring the Neeg-part leader, Percy X. In this connection we have, shall I say, agents within the ’part groups under fealty to Percy X. Thereby we have managed to ascertain to some degree his whereabouts at certain times.” He flicked his tongue at an impressive wall map which showed the bale, and, most specifically, the unpacified hill-areas controlled by both the Indian tribal remnants and the Neeg-parts.
On the map a luminous button, movable, lay placed. The button represented the approximate current location of Percy X.
“Our operation,” Marshal Koli continued, “is, as you know, called Operation Cat Droppings—a Ter- ran idiom connected with some unpleasant task. And this has been unpleasant because it has taken too long.” At this point he drew himself almost entirely erect, balancing himself on his tail-tip in his determination to impart the seriousness of what he now proposed to declaim down the chain of command.
“Operation Cat Droppings,” he declared, “will reach its crucial terminal phase at eleven PM., bale of Tennessee time. Our crack commando teams, descending by means of individual air-pulsation tubs, entirely silently, will ring the spot where the malefactor is entrenched.” He paused and then said, “This is the moment for which I have prepared during my entire period as Military Administrator of this bale. Each one of our predetermined, arranged-for tactical operations will, at eleven P.M. become operative. After that—” He flicked his tongue rapidly in agitation. “Either we will have Percy X or we won’t. In any case there will be no further chance.” Hastily he added, “In terms of the military jurisdiction of this bale, I mean. What the civil administrator who follows me does I have no knowledge of.” But, he thought, through our wiks who have infiltrated the Neeg-parts I do know Percy; a great deal about him, even though, thanks to Percy’s telepathic ability, none of our wiks have been able to get close enough to kill him or even effectively spy on the operations of his inner circle of command.
Touching a selenoid switch with his tongue he activated a servo-assist projector mounted on his desk; on the far wall, in 3-D and color, appeared the image of Percy X, taken with a telescopic camera. Percy squatted in a leisurely, secure—or believed secure—parlay with his sub-leaders.
