Norstrilia - Illustrated Page 12

  “You’ve told Earth about me?” said Rod.

  “Why not? We want to get you there alive.”

  “But message security—?” said the doctor.

  “I have references which no outside mind will know,” said the Lord Redlady. “Finish up, Mister Financial Secretary. Tell the young man what he has on Earth.”

  “Your computer outcomputed the government,” said John Fisher to the hundredth, “and it mortgaged all your lands, all your sheep, all your trading rights, all your family treasures, the right to the MacArthur name, the right to the McBan name, and itself. Then it bought futures. Of course, it didn’t do it. You did, Rod McBan.”

  Startled into full awakeness, Rod found his right hand up at his mouth, so surprised was he. “I did?”

  “Then you bought futures in stroon, but you offered them for sale. You held back the sales, shifting titles and changing prices, so that not even the central computer knew what you were doing. You bought almost all of the eighth year from now, most of the seventh year from now, and some of the sixth. You mortgaged each purchase as you went along, in order to buy more. Then you suddenly tore the market wide open by offering fantastic bargains, trading the six-year rights for seventh-year and eighth-year. Your computer made such lavish use of Instant Messages to Earth that the Commonwealth defense office had people buzzing around in the middle of the night. By the time they figured out what might happen, it had happened. You registered a monopoly of two years’ export, far beyond the predicted amount. The government rushed for a weather recomputation, but while they were doing that you were registering your holdings on Earth and remortgaging them in FOE money. With the FOE money you began to buy up all the imports around Old North Australia, and when the government finally declared an emergency, you had secured final title to one and a half stroon years and to more megacredits, FOE money megacredits, than the Earth computers could handle. You’re the richest man that ever was. Or ever will be. We changed all the rules this morning and I myself signed a new treaty with the Earth authorities, ratified by the Instrumentality. Meanwhile, you’re the richest of the rich men who ever lived on this world and you’re also rich enough to buy all of Old Earth. In fact, you have put in a reservation to buy it, unless the Instrumentality outbids you.”

  “Why should we?” said the Lord Redlady. “Let him have it. We’ll watch what he does with the Earth after he buys it, and if it is something bad, we will kill him.”

  “You’d kill me, Lord Redlady?” said Rod. “I thought you were saving me?”

  “Both,” said the doctor, standing up. “The Commonwealth government has not tried to take your property away from you, though they have their doubts as to what you will do with Earth if you do buy it. They are not going to let you stay on this planet and endanger it by being the richest kidnap victim who ever lived. Tomorrow they will strip you of your property, unless you want to take a chance on running for it. Earth government is the same way. If you can figure out your own defenses, you can come on in. Of course the police will protect you, but would that be enough? I’m a doctor, and I’m here to ship you out if you want to go.”

  “And I’m an officer of government, and I will arrest you if you do not go,” said John Fisher.

  “And I represent the Instrumentality, which does not declare its policy to anyone, least of all to outsiders. But it is my personal policy,” said the Lord Redlady, holding out his hands and twisting his thumbs in a meaningless, grotesque, but somehow very threatening way, “to see that this boy gets a safe trip to Earth and a fair deal when he comes back here!”

  “You’ll protect him all the way!” cried Lavinia, looking very happy.

  “All the way. As far as I can. As long as I live.”

  “That’s pretty long,” muttered Hopper. “Conceited little pommy cockahoop!”

  “Watch your language, Hopper,” said the Lord Redlady. “Rod?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Your answer?” The Lord Redlady was peremptory.

  “I’m going,” said Rod.

  “What on Earth do you want?” said the Lord Redlady ceremoniously.

  “A genuine Cape triangle.”

  “A what?” cried the Lord Redlady.

  “A Cape triangle. A postage stamp.”

  “What’s postage?” said the Lord Redlady, really puzzled.

  “Payments on messages.”

  “But you do that with thumbprints or eyeprints!”

  “No,” said Rod, “I mean paper ones.”

  “Paper messages?” said the Lord Redlady, looking as though someone had mentioned grass battleships, hairless sheep, solid cast-iron women, or something else equally improbable. “Paper messages?” he repeated, and then he laughed, quite charmingly. “Oh!” he said, with a tone of secret discovery. “You mean antiquities…?”

  “Of course,” said Rod. “Even before Space itself.”

  “Earth has a lot of antiquities, and I am sure you will be welcome to study them or to collect them. That will be perfectly all right. Just don’t do any of the wrong things, or you will be in real trouble.”

  “What are the wrong things?” said Rod.

  “Buying real people, or trying to. Shipping religion from one planet to another. Smuggling underpeople.”

  “What’s religion?” said Rod.

  “Later, later,” said the Lord Redlady. “You’ll learn everything later. Doctor, you take over.”

  Wentworth stood very carefully so that his head did not touch the ceiling. He had to bend his neck a little. “We have two boxes, Rod.”

  When he spoke, the door whirred in its tracks and showed them a small room beyond. There was a large box like a coffin and a very small box, like the kind that women have around the house to keep a single party-going bonnet in.

  “There will be criminals, and wild governments, and conspirators, and adventurers, and just plain good people gone wrong at the thought of your wealth—there will be all these waiting for you to kidnap you or rob or even kill you—”

  “Why kill me?”

  “To impersonate you and try to get your money,” said the doctor. “Now look. This is your big choice. If you take the big box, we can put you in a sailship convoy and you will get there in several hundred or thousand years. But you will get there, ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent. Or we can send the big box on the regular planoforming ships, and somebody will steal you. Or we scun you down and put you in the little box.”

  “That little box?” cried Rod.

  “Scunned. You’ve scunned sheep, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve heard of it. But a man, no. Dehydrate my body, pickle my head, and freeze the whole mucking mess?” cried Rod.

  “That’s it. Too bloody right!” cried the doctor cheerfully. “That’ll give you a real chance of getting there alive.”

  “But who’ll put me together? I’d need my own doctor—” His voice quavered at the unnaturalness of the risk, not at the mere chanciness and danger of it.

  “Here,” said the Lord Redlady, “is your doctor, already trained.”

  “I am at your service,” said the little Earth-animal, the “monkey,” with a small bow to the assembled company. “My name is A’gentur and I have been conditioned as a physician, a surgeon and a barber.”

  The women had gasped. Hopper and Bill stared at the little animal in horror.

  “You’re an underperson!” yelled Hopper. “We’ve never let the crutting things loose on Norstrilia.”

  “I’m not an underperson. I’m an animal. Conditioned to—” The monkey jumped. Hopper’s heavy knife twanged like a musical instrument as it clung to the softer steel of the wall. Hopper’s other hand held a long thin knife, ready to reach Redlady’s heart.

  The left hand of the Lord Redlady flashed straight forward. Something in his hand glowed silently, terribly. There was a hiss in the air.

  Where Hopper had been, a cloud of oily thick smoke, stinking of burning meat, coiled slowly toward the ventilators. Hopper’s clo
thing and personal belongings, including one false tooth, lay on the chair in which he had been sitting. They were undamaged. His drink stood on the floor beside the chair, forever to remain unfinished.

  The doctor’s eyes gleamed as he stared strangely at Redlady.

  “Noted and reported to the Old North Australian Navy.”

  “I’ll report it too,” said the Lord Redlady, “…as the use of weapons on diplomatic grounds.”

  “Never mind,” said John Fisher to the hundredth, not angry at all, but just pale and looking a little ill. Violence did not frighten him, but decision did. “Let’s get on with it. Which box, big or little, boy?”

  The workwoman Eleanor stood up. She had said nothing but now she dominated the scene. “Take him in there, girls,” she said, “and wash him like you would for the Garden of Death. I’ll wash myself in there. You see,” she added, “I’ve always wanted to see the blue skies on Earth, and wanted to swim in a house that ran around on the big big waters. I’ll take your big box, Rod, and if I get through alive, you will owe me some treats on Earth. You take the little box, Roddy, take the little box. And that little tiny doctor with the fur on him. Rod, I trust him.”

  Rod stood up.

  Everybody was looking at him and at Eleanor.

  “You agree?” said the Lord Redlady.

  He nodded.

  “You agree to be scunned and put in the little box for instant shipment to Earth?”

  He nodded again.

  “You will pay all the extra expenses?”

  He nodded again.

  The doctor said,

  “You authorize me to cut you up and reduce you down, in the hope that you may be reconstituted on Earth?”

  Rod nodded to him, too.

  “Shaking your head isn’t enough,” said the doctor. “You have to agree for the record.”

  “I agree,” said Rod quietly.

  Aunt Doris and Lavinia came forward to lead him into the dressing room and shower room. Just as they reached for his arms, the doctor patted Rod on the back with a quick strange motion. Rod jumped a little.

  “Deep hypnotic,” said the doctor. “You can manage his body all right, but the next words he utters will be said, luck willing, on Old Earth itself.”

  The women were wide-eyed, but they led Rod forward to be cleaned for the operations and the voyage.

  The doctor turned to the Lord Redlady and to John Fisher, the Financial Secretary.

  “A good night’s work,” he said. “Pity about that man, though.”

  Bill sat still, frozen with grief in his chair, staring at Hopper’s empty clothing in the chair next to him.

  The console tinkled, “Twelve hours, Greenwich mean time. No adverse weather reports from the channel coast or from Meeya Meefla or Earthport building. All’s well!”

  The Lord Redlady served drinks to the Misters. He did not even offer one to Bill. It would have been no use, at this point.

  From beyond the door, where they were cleaning the body, clothes and hair of the deeply hypnotized Rod, Lavinia and Aunt Doris unconsciously reverted to the ceremony of the Garden of Death and lifted their voices in a sort of plainsong chant:

  Out in the Garden of Death, our young

  Have tasted the valiant taste of fear.

  With muscular arm and reckless tongue,

  They have won, and lost, and escaped us here.

  The three men listened for a few moments, attentively. From the other washroom there came the sounds of the workwoman Eleanor, washing herself, alone and unattended, for a long voyage and a possible death.

  The Lord Redlady heaved a sigh. “Have a drink, Bill. Hopper brought it on himself.”

  Bill refused to speak to them but he held forth his glass.

  The Lord Redlady filled that and the others. He turned to John Fisher to the hundredth and said:

  “You’re shipping him?”

  “Who?”

  “The boy.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Better not,” said the Lord Redlady.

  “You mean—danger?”

  “That’s only half the word for it,” said the Lord Redlady. “You can’t possibly plan to offload him at Earthport. Put him into a good medical station. There’s an old one, still good, on Mars, if they haven’t closed it down. I know Earth. Half the people of Earth will be waiting to greet him and the other half will be waiting to rob him.”

  “You represent the Earth government, Sir and Commissioner,” said John Fisher. “That’s a rum way to talk about your own people.”

  “They are not that way all the time,” laughed Redlady. “Just when they’re in heat. Sex hasn’t a chance to compare with money when it comes to the human race on Earth. They all think that they want power and freedom and six other impossible things. I’m not speaking for the Earth government when I say this. Just for myself.”

  “If we don’t ship him, who will?” demanded Fisher.

  “The Instrumentality.”

  “The Instrumentality? You don’t conduct commerce. How can you?”

  “We don’t conduct commerce, but we do meet emergencies. I can flag down a long-jump cruiser and he’ll be there months before anybody expects him.”

  “Those are warships. You can’t use one for passengers!”

  “Can’t I?” said the Lord Redlady, with a smile.

  “The Instrumentality would—?” said Fisher, with a puzzled smile. “The cost would be tremendous. How will you pay for it? It’d be hard to justify.”

  “He will pay for it. Special donation from him for special service. One megacredit for the trip.”

  The Financial Secretary whistled. “That’s a fearful price for a single trip. You’d want SAD money and not surface money, I suppose?”

  “No. FOE money.”

  “Hot buttered moonbeams, man! That’s a thousand times the most expensive trip that any person has ever had.”

  The big doctor had been listening to the two of them. “Mister and Owner Fisher,” he said, “I recommend it.”

  “You?” cried John Fisher angrily. “You’re a Norstrilian and you want to rob this poor boy?”

  “Poor boy?” snorted the doctor. “It’s not that. The trip’s no good if he’s not alive. Our friend here is extravagant but his ideas are sound. I suggest one amendment.”

  “What’s that?” said the Lord Redlady quickly.

  “One and a half megacredits for the round trip. If he is well and alive and with the same personality, apart from natural causes. But note this. One kilocredit only if you deliver him on Earth dead.”

  John Fisher rubbed his chin. His suspicious eyes looked down at Redlady, who had taken a seat, and looked up at the doctor, whose head was still bumping the ceiling.

  A voice behind him spoke.

  “Take it, Mister Financial Secretary. The boy won’t use money if he’s dead. You can’t fight the Instrumentality, you can’t be reasonable with the Instrumentality, and you can’t buy the Instrumentality. With what they’ve been taking off us all these thousands of years, they’ve got more stroon than we do. Hidden away somewhere. You, there!” said Bill rudely to the Lord Redlady. “Do you have any idea what the Instrumentality is worth?”

  The Lord Redlady creased his brow. “Never thought of it. I suppose it must have a limit. But I never thought of it. We do have accountants, though.”

  “See,” said Bill. “Even the Instrumentality would hate to lose money. Take the doctor’s bid, Redlady. Take him up on it, Fisher.” His use of their surnames was an extreme incivility, but the two men were convinced.

  “I’ll do it,” said Redlady. “It’s awfully close to writing insurance, which we are not chartered to do. I’ll write it in as his emergency clause.”

  “I’ll take it,” said John Fisher. “It’s got to be a thousand years until another Norstrilian Financial Secretary pays money for a ticket like this, but it’s worth it. To him. I’ll square it in his accounts to our planet.”

  “I’ll witness it,
” said the doctor.

  “No, you won’t,” said Bill savagely. “The boy has one friend here. That’s me. Let me do it.”

  They stared at him, all three.

  He stared back.

  He broke. “Sirs and Misters, please let me be the witness.”

  The Lord Redlady nodded and opened the console. He and John Fisher spoke the contract into it. At the end Bill shouted his full name as witness.

  The two women brought Rod McBan, mother-naked, into the room. He was immaculately clean and he stared ahead as though he were in an endless dream.

  “That’s the operating room,” said the Lord Redlady. “I’ll spray us all with antiseptic, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” said the doctor. “You must.”

  “You’re going to cut him up and boil him down—here and now?” cried Aunt Doris.

  “Here and now,” said the Lord Redlady, “if the doctor approves. The sooner he goes, the better chance he has of coming through the whole thing alive.”

  “I consent,” said the doctor. “I approve.”

  He started to take Rod by the hand, leading him toward the room with the long coffin and the small box. At some sign from Redlady, the walls had opened up to show a complete surgical theater.

  “Wait a moment,” said the Lord Redlady. “Take your colleague.”

  “Colleague?” said the giant.

  “A’gentur,” said Redlady. “It’ll be he who puts Rod together again.”

  “Of course,” said the doctor.

  The monkey had jumped out of his basket when he heard his name mentioned.

  Together, the giant and the monkey led Rod into the little gleaming room. They closed the door behind them.

  The ones who were left behind sat down nervously.

  “Mister and Owner Redlady,” said Bill, “since I’m staying, could I have some more of that drink?”

  “Of course, Sir and Mister,” said the Lord Redlady, not having any idea of what Bill’s title might be.

  There were no screams from Rod, no thuds, no protest. There was the cloying sweet horror of unknown medicines creeping through the airvents. The two women said nothing as the group of people sat around. Eleanor, wrapped in an enormous towel, came and sat with them. In the second hour of the operations on Rod, Lavinia began sobbing.