Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (14 page)

“Hi?”

“There’s a head in a sack near Marker 8
-den
on the road to Pertane.”

“Who’s that talking? Who—”

He cut off, leaving the voice to gargle futilely. They’d follow up the tip, no doubt of that. It was essential to his plans that authority should find the head and identify it. In this respect he was persuading the Kaitempi to help play his game and he got quite a bit of malicious satisfaction out of it. He went to his hotel, came out, mailed two hundred and twenty letters.

Butin Arhava was the third.

The list is long.

Dirac Angestun Gesept.

That done, he enjoyed an hour’s stroll before bedtime, pacing the streets and as usual pondering the day’s work. It would not be long, he thought, before someone became curious about hanging cables and an electrician or telephone engineer was called in to investigate. The inevitable result would be a hurried examination of Jaimec’s entire telephone system and the discovery of several more taps.

Authority would then find itself confronted with three unanswerable questions, all of them ominous: who’s been listening, for how long, and how much have they learned?

He did not envy those in precarious power who were being subjected to this mock build-up of treachery while elsewhere the allegedly defeated Terrans were gaining sanctuary by taking over Sirian planets one after another. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown—but infinitely more so when a wasp crawls into bed with it.

A little before the twelve-time hour he turned into the road where his high-class hideout was located, came to an abrupt halt. Outside the hotel stood a line of official cars, a fire-pump and an ambulance. A number of uniformed cops were meandering around the vehicles. Tough looking characters in plain clothes were all over the scene.

Two of the latter appeared out of nowhere and confronted him hard-eyed.

“What’s happened?” asked Mowry, behaving like a Sunday school superintendent.

“Never mind what’s happened. Show us your documents. Come on, what are you waiting for?”

Carefully Mowry slid a hand into his inner pocket. They were tense, fully alert, watching his movement and ready to react if what he produced was not paper. He drew out his identity-card, handed it over knowing that it bore the proper cachet of Diracta and the overstamp of Jaimec. Then he gave them his personal card and movement permit. Inwardly he hoped with all his heart that they would be easily convinced.

They weren’t. They displayed the dogged determination of those under strict orders to make someone pay dearly for something or other. Evidently whatever had occurred was serious enough to have stirred up a hornet’s nest.

“A special correspondent,” said the larger of the two mouthing the words with contempt. He looked up from the identity-card. “What is special about a correspondent?”

“I’ve been sent here to cover war news specifically from the Jaimec angle. I do not bother with civilian matters. Those are for ordinary reporters.”

“I see.” He gave Mowry a long, sharp, penetrating look. His eyes had the beady coldness of a sidewinder’s. “From where do you get your news about the war?”

“From official handouts—mostly from the Office of War Information in Pertane.”

“You have no other sources?”

“Yes, of course. I keep my ears open for gossip and rumors.”

“And what do you do with
that
stuff?”

“I try to draw reasonable conclusions from it, write it up and submit the script to the Board of Censorship. If they approve it, I’m lucky. If they kill it, well”—he spread his hands with an air of helplessness—“I just put up with it.”

“Therefore,” said the Kaitempi agent, cunningly, “you should be well-known to officials of the Office of War Information and the Board of Censorship,
hi?
They will vouch for you if requested to do so,
hi?”

“Without a doubt,” assured Mowry, praying for a break.

“Good! You will name the ones you know best and we will check with them immediately.”

“What, at this time of night?”

“Why should you care what time it is? It is your neck—”

That did it. Mowry punched him on the snout, swiftly, fiercely, putting every ounce of weight behind the blow. The recipient went down good and hard and stayed down. The other fellow was no slouch. Wasting no time in dumbfoundment, he took a bow-legged but quick step forward, shoved a gun into Mowry’s face.

“Raise them high, you
soko,
or I’ll—”

With the speed and recklessness of one who is desperate, Mowry ducked under the gun, seized the other’s extended arm, got it over his shoulder and yanked. The agent let out a thin, piercing yelp and flew through the air with the greatest of ease. His gun dropped to the ground. Mowry scooped it up and started the sprint of his life.

Round the corner, along the street and into an alley. This took him by the back of his hotel and as he tore past he noted out of the corner of one eye a window missing and a great ragged hole in the wall. Hurdling a pile of smashed bricks and splintered timber, he reached the alley’s end, shot across the next street.

So that was it. Somehow they had smelled him out, possibly as a result of one of those infernal registration checks. They had searched his room and tried to open his bag with a metal master-key. Then had come the big bang. If the room had been crowded at the time the explosion would have enough force to kill at least a dozen of them. It would be a blow sufficient to get their blood up for a month. If ever they laid hands on him . . .

He kept going as fast as he could make it, the gun in his grip, his ears straining for sounds of pursuit. Pretty soon the radio alarm would be going over the air, they’d close every exit from the town, blocking trains, buses, roads, everything. At all costs he must beat them to it by getting outside the cordon before it was formed—if it could be done.

As far as possible he tried to race through lanes and alleys, avoiding main roads on which patrol cars would be running to and fro loaded with guns and eyes. At this late hour there were few people about, no crowds in which to hide. The streets were almost empty with most folk abed and an armed man sprinting through the night was mighty conspicuous. But nothing could be done about that. To mooch with an air of innocence was to give time for the trap to close about him.

Darkness was his only help, not counting his legs. He pounded through alley after alley, bolted across six streets, halted in deep shadow as he was about to jump the seventh. A car bulging with uniformed cops and plainclothes Kaitempi slid past, its windows full of faces trying to look everywhere at once.

For a short time he stood silent and unmoving in the shadow, heart thumping, chest heaving, a trickle of sweat creeping down his spine. Immediately the hunters had gone he was across the street, into the opposite alley and racing onward. Five times he paused in concealment, mentally cursing the delay, while prowl cars snooped around.

The sixth stop was different. He lurked in the alley’s corner as headlights came up the street. A mud-spattered dyno rolled into view, stopped within twenty yards of him. The next moment a solitary civilian got out, went to a nearby door and shoved a key into its lock. Mowry came out of the alley like a quick-moving cat.

The door opened just as the car shot away with a shrill scream from its dynamo. Struck with surprise, the civilian wasted a half a minute gaping after his vanishing property. Then he let go an oath, ran indoors and snatched up the telephone.

Luck has got to be mixed, decided Mowry as he gripped the wheel. There must be good to compensate for bad, a turn for the better to balance a change for the worse. Swinging the car into a broad, well-lit avenue, he slowed it to a more sedate pace.

Two overloaded patrol cars passed him going in the opposite direction, another overtook him and rocked ahead. They weren’t interested in a dirty dyno trundling home late; they were hunting a breathless fugitive assumed to be still galloping around on two feet. He estimated that it would be no more than another ten minutes before the radio made them change their minds. It might have been better if he had shot the car’s owner and thus gained himself extra valuable minutes. But he hadn’t. Too late to regret the omission now.

After seven minutes he passed the last houses of Radine and headed into open country along an unfamiliar road. At once he hit up top speed to make maximum distance while the going was good. The car howled along, headlight beams dipping and swaying, the
den
-needle creeping close to its limit.

Twenty more minutes and he shot like a rocket through a long, straggling village buried deep in slumber. One mile farther on he rounded a bend, got a brief glimpse of a white pole across the road, the glitter of buttons and shine of metal helmets grouped at each end. He set his teeth, aimed straight at the middle without reducing speed by a fraction. The car hit the pole, flung the broken halves aside and raced on. Something struck five sharp blows on the back, two neat holes appeared in the rear window, a third where the windshield joined the roof.

That showed the radio alarm had been given, that forces had been alerted over a wide area. His crashing of the roadblock was a giveaway. They now knew in which direction he was fleeing and could concentrate ahead of him. Just where he was going was more than he knew himself He’d never been on this road before, the locale was strange and he had no map to consult. Worse, he had little money and no documents of any kind. The loss of his case had deprived him of everything save what was upon his person, plus a hot car and a stolen gun.

Soon he reached a crossroad with a marker dimly visible on each corner. Braking violently, he jumped out, peered at the nearest one in the poor light of night. It said
Radine
—27
den.
The opposite marker said
Valapan
—92
den.
So that’s where he’d been heading—to Valapan. Doubtless the police there were out in full strength, a reception committee too well prepared to permit another crash-through.

The marker on the left-hand road read
Pertane
—51
den.
He clambered back into the car, turned left. Still no signs of close pursuit were visible but that meant nothing. Somebody with radio contact and a big map would be moving cars around to head him off as reports of his position filtered in.

At the marker indicating 9
den
he found another crossroad which he recognized. The skyglow of Pertane now shone straight ahead while on his right was the road leading to the cave in the forest. He took an added risk of interception by driving the car a couple of miles nearer Pertane before abandoning it. When they found it there they’d probably jump to the conclusion that he’d sought refuge somewhere in the big city. It would be all to the good if they wasted time and manpower scouring Pertane from end to end.

Walking back, he reached the forest and continued along its fringe. It took him two hours to arrive at the tree and the tombstone. During that period he dived into the woods eleven times and watched carloads of hunters whine past. Looked like he’d got a veritable army to chasing around in the night and that was a worthwhile result if Wolf was to be believed.

Entering the forest, he made for the cave.

At the cave he found everything intact, undisturbed. He arrived thankfully, feeling that he was as safe here as he could be anywhere upon a hostile world. It was hardly likely that the hunt would succeed in tracking him through twenty miles of virgin forest even if it occurred to them to try.

For a short time he sat on a container and let his mind indulge a wrestling match between duty and desire. Orders were that on each visit to the cave he must use the transmitter and send an up-to-the-minute report. There was no need to guess what might happen if he were to do so this time. They’d order him to stay put and indulge in no further activities. Later they’d send a ship, pick him up and dump him on some other Sirian planet where he could start all over again. On Jaimec they’d leave his successor.

The idea of it riled him. All very well them talking about the tactical advantages of replacing a known operator with an unknown one. To the man who suffered replacement it smacked of incompetence and defeat. He flatly refused to consider himself either inefficient or beaten. Hell with ’em! Maybe the Kaitempi had gained a smell at his whiskers but that didn’t make him as good as theirs.

Besides, he had carried out phase one and part of phase two. There was yet phase three, the build-up of pressure to the point where the foe would be so busy defending the back door that he’d be in no condition to hold the front one.

Phase three involved strategic bombing both by himself and by anyone he could pay to do it. He had the necessary material for the former and the money for the latter. In yet unopened containers lay enough money to buy a dozen battleships and give every man of their crews a large box of cigars. Also forty different kinds of infernal machines, not one of them recognizable for what it was, and all guaranteed to go
whump
in the right place, at the right moment.

He was not supposed to start offensive action of the phase three type until ordered to do so because usually it preceded full-scale attack by Terran space forces. But in the meantime he could work his way up to it by keeping
Dirac Angestun Gesept
in the public eye, arranging a few more executions and in general performing his proper function of being a pain in the neck.

No, he would not signal them just yet. He would play around a bit longer, long enough to establish his right to remain to the bitter end regardless of whether or not the Kaitempi had him taped. He’d been run out of Radine but he wasn’t going to be chased right off the planet. That would be too much for his self-esteem.

Opening a couple of containers, he undressed, put on a wide belly-belt that made him corpulent with guilders. Then he donned ill-cut, heavy clothes typical of the Sirian farmer. A couple of cheek-pads widened and rounded his face. He plucked his eyebrows into slight raggedness, trimmed his hair to comply with the current agricultural fashion.