Entities: The Selected Novels of Eric Frank Russell (15 page)

With purple dye he gave his face the peculiar mottling of a bad complexion. The final touch was to give himself an injection alongside his right nostril; within two hours it would create that faint orange-colored blemish occasionally seen on Sirian features.

He was now a middle-aged, coarse-looking and somewhat overfed Sirian farmer and again he had documents to match. This time he was Rathan Gusulkin, a grain-grower. His papers showed that he had emigrated from Diracta five years ago. This served to explain his Mashambi accent which was the only thing he could not successfully conceal.

Before setting out in his new role he enjoyed another real Earth meal and four hours of much-needed sleep. When two miles from the outskirts of Pertane he buried a package holding fifty thousand guilders at the base of the southernmost left-hand buttress of the bridge across the river. Not far from that point, beneath deep water, a typewriter lay in the mud.

From the first booth in Pertane he called the Cafe Susun. The answer was prompt, the voice strange and curt, the distant scanner not operating.

“That the Cafe Susun?” Mowry asked.

“Yar.”

“Skriva there?”

A brief silence followed by, “He’s somewhere around. Upstairs or out back. Who wants him?”

“His mother.”

“Don’t give me that!” rasped the voice. “I can tell by your—”

“What’s it got to do with you?” Mowry shouted. “Is Skriva there or not?”

The voice became suddenly subdued and sounded completely out of character as it cajoled. “Hold on a piece. I’ll go find him for you.”

“You needn’t bother. Is Gurd there?”

“No, he hasn’t been in today. Hold on, I tell you. I’ll go find Skriva. He’s upstairs or—”

“Listen!” ordered Mowry. He stuck his tongue between his lips and blew hard.

Then he dropped the phone, scrambled out of the booth and beat it at the fastest pace that would not attract attention. Nearby a bored shopkeeper lounged in his doorway and idly watched him go. So also did four people gossiping outside the shop. That meant five witnesses, five descriptions of the fellow who had just used the booth.

“Hold on!” the strange voice had urged, striving but failing to conceal its normal note of arrogant authority. It wasn’t the voice of the barkeep nor the careless, slangy tones of any frequenter of the Cafe Susun. It had the characteristic bossiness of a plainclothes cop or a Kaitempi agent. Yar, hold on, Stupid, while we trace the call and pick you up.

Three hundred yards along the road he jumped a bus, looked backward, could not discern whether the shopkeeper and the gossips had noticed what he had done. The bus lumbered forward. A police car rocked past it and braked by the booth. The bus turned a corner. Mowry wondered just how close a close shave can be.

The Cafe Susun was staked, no doubt of that. The cops’ prompt arrival at the booth proved it. How they had got a line on the place and what had induced them to raid it was a matter of sheer speculation. Perhaps they’d been led to it by their investigations of the bloody head in a sack.

Or perhaps Gurd and Skriva had been nabbed while tramping heavy-footed all over a roof and waving cables across a street. He could readily imagine them fixing a mock telephone-tap with a thumping noisiness fit to arouse the street. On a rooftop, blinded by easy money, they were liable to make themselves as conspicuous as a pair of drunken elephants.

If they had been caught they’d talk, tough as they were. The Kaitempi would
make
them talk. When fingernails are peeled off one by one with a pair of pliers, or when intermittent voltage from a battery is applied to the corners of the eyeballs, the most granite-hard character becomes positively garrulous.

Yes, they’d talk all right—but they couldn’t say much. Only a weird tale about a crackpot with a Mashambi accent and an inexhaustible supply of guilders. Not a word about
Dirac Angestun Gesept.
Not a syllable about Terran intervention on Jaimec.

But there were others who could talk and to better effect.

“You see anyone leave this booth just now?”

“Yar. A fat yokel. Seemed in a hurry.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Down the road. Got on a 42 bus.”

“What did he look like? Describe him as accurately as you can. Come on, be quick about it!”

“Medium height, middle-aged, round-faced, got a bad complexion. Quite a belly on him, too. Had a red
falkin
alongside his nose. Wearing a fur jacket, brown cord pants, heavy brown boots. Looked the farmer type if you get what I mean.”

“That’s enough for us. Jalek, let’s get after the bus. Where’s the mike—I’d better broadcast this description. We’ll nail him if we move fast.”

“He’s a cunning one. Didn’t take him long to smell a trap when Lathin answered his call. He blew a dirty noise and ran. Bet you the bus-jump is a blind— he’s got a car parked someplace.”

“Save your breath and catch up with that bus. Two callers have escaped us already. We’ll have a lot of explaining to do if we lose a third.”

“Yar, I know.”

Mowry got off the bus before anyone had time to overtake it. He caught another one running on a transverse route. But he did not play tag all over the city as he had done in the past. Right now things were a lot livelier, the pursuers almost certainly had a description of him and it looked like he’d got most of Jaimec on the hop.

His third change put him on an express bus heading out of town. It dropped him a mile beyond the bridge where he had hidden fifty thousand guilders for the benefit of those who, for all he knew, might not have another fifty hours to live. Once again he was heading back to the forest and the cave.

To retrace his steps to the bridge and try to unearth the money would be stupid and dangerous. Police cars would be heading this way before long. The hunt for a pot-bellied farmer would not be confined to Pertane. Anytime now they’d start probing the rural areas immediately outside the city limits. So long as daylight remained the best thing for him to do was to get out of sight and stay out until such time as he could assume yet another new guise.

Moving fast he reached the edge of the forest without being stopped and questioned. For a short time he continued to use the road, seeking shelter among the trees whenever a car approached. But traffic increased and vehicles appeared with such frequency that eventually he gave up hope of further progress before dark. He was pretty tired too, his eyelids were heavy, his feet had taken a beating.

Penetrating farther into the woods he found a comfortable, well-concealed spot, lay on a thick bed of moss and let go a sigh of satisfaction. For a while he reposed in thoughtful silence while his eyes idly surveyed small patches of sky visible through leafy gaps.

Wolf had asserted that one man could pin down an army. He wondered how large a number he’d fastened and what real good it had done, if any. The most frustrating thing about this solitary wasp-life was that he had no way of obtaining a glimpse behind the scenes, of looking into the enemy’s headquarters and measuring his multiple reactions, of seeing for oneself how widespread and crippled they became.

How many precious man-hours had his presence cost the foe? Thousands, tens of thousands, millions? To what forms of war service would those man-hours have been devoted if he had not compelled the enemy to waste them in other directions? Ah, in the answer to that hypothetical question lay the true measure of a wasp’s efficiency.

Gradually he gave up these unprofitable musings and drifted into sleep. Night was upon him when he awoke refreshed and energetic. He was also less soured with events. Things could have been worse, lots worse. For example, he could have gone straight to the Cafe Susun and walked into the arms of the trappers like a prize chump. The Kaitempi wouldn’t know what they had grabbed but they’d hold him on general principles and in their own effective way they’d squeeze him of every item of information he possessed. Thinking it over, he doubted his ability to hold out once they really got to work on him. About the only captives from whom the Kaitempi had extracted nothing were those who had managed to commit suicide before questioning.

As he trudged steadily through the dark toward the cave he blessed his luck, wisdom or intuition in making a phone call. Then his thoughts became occupied with Gurd and Skriva. If they had been caught, as seemed likely, it meant he’d been deprived of valuable allies and once again was strictly on his own. He’d have to find some way of replacing them and that wouldn’t be easy.

But if, like himself, they had escaped the trap, how was he going to find them? The crummy cafe had been their only recognized point of contact. He didn’t know where they lived and it would be foolhardy to go around asking. They didn’t know his address, either. They’d want to meet him fully as much as he wanted to meet them. Both sides could waste weeks or months fumbling at random for each other in a city as big as Pertane. Somehow the problem had to be solved.

Arriving at the cave as dawn was breaking, he took off his shoes, sat on the pebble beach and soaked his aching feet in the stream. Still his mind chewed unceasingly at the question of how to find Gurd and Skriva, if they were still free. Eventually the Kaitempi would remove the stakeout from the Cafe Susun either because they were satisfied that they had exploited it to the limit, or because their patience had run out, or because of pressure of other business. It would then be possible to visit the place and find someone able to give all the information he needed. But heaven alone knew when that would be; perhaps as far off as a year next Christmas.

In new and radically changed disguise he could mooch around the neighborhood of the cafe until he found one of its regular customers and used him as a lead to Gurd and Skriva. It would be a risky tactic, a highly dangerous one. Chances were high that, for the time being, the Cafe Susun was the focal point of Kaitempi activity over the entire district with plainclothesmen keeping watch for suspicious-looking characters lounging around anywhere within a mile of the place.

After an hour’s meditation he decided that there was one possibility of regaining contact with the brothers. It depended not only on them being on the loose but also having their fair share of brains and imagination. It might work. They were crude and ruthless but not stupid and a steady flow of guilders must have greatly stimulated their natural cunning.

He could leave them a message where he’d left one before, hoping they’d have the sense to think of the same thing themselves and go take a look. On the Radine road under Marker 33
den.
If they had successfully completed their last job they had fifty thousand guilders owing to them. That should be more than enough to sharpen their wits.

The sun came up, spreading its warmth through the trees and into the cave. It was one of those days that beguiles a man into lying around and doing nothing. Succumbing to temptation he gave himself a holiday and postponed further action until the morrow. It was just as well: constant chasing around, uneasy sleeps and much nervous tension had combined to thin him down and tax his resources.

All that day he loafed in or near the cave, enjoying peace and quietness, freedom from pursuit, cooking himself large and succulent Earth meals. No prowlers came sneaking through the forest, no scout-planes snooped low overhead.

Evidently the enemy was obsessed with the notion that the quarry sought sanctuary only in heavily populated places; it just hadn’t occurred to them that anyone would take to the wilds. This was logical enough from their viewpoint, their having accepted
Dirac Angestun Gesept
as a large, well-organized opposition too big and widespread to lurk in a cave. The wasp had magnified himself to such elephantine proportions that they weren’t going to waste time looking down rabbit-holes for him.

That night he slept like a child, soundly and solidly, right around the clock. He spent the next morning in total idleness, had a bath in the stream during the heat of noon. Toward evening he cropped his hair in military fashion, leaving himself with no more than a stiff bristle covering his skull. Another injection obliterated the
falkin.
He retinted himself all over, making his color a fresher and slightly deeper purple. Dental plates filled the gaps where his wisdom teeth had been and made his face appear wider, heavier, with squarer jaw line.

A complete change of clothing followed. The shoes he donned were of military type, the civilian suit was of expensive cut, the neck-scarf was knotted in space-marine fashion. To this ensemble he added a platinum watch-fob and a platinum wrist-bangle holding an ornamental identity-disc.

He now looked like somebody several cuts above the Sirian average. The new set of documents he pocketed confirmed this impression. They vouched for the fact that he was Colonel Krasna Halopti of the Military Intelligence Service and as such entitled to claim the assistance of all Sirian authorities anytime, anywhere.

They could execute him out of hand for masquerading as a high-ranking officer. But what matter?—they’d strangle him anyway. A man cannot die twice.

Satisfied that he now looked the part one hundred percent and that he bore little resemblance to any of his previous appearances, he sat on a container and wrote a brief letter.

“I tried to get in touch with you at the cafe and found the place full of K
-sokos.
The money had been buried in readiness for you at the base of the southernmost left-hand buttress of the Asako Bridge. If you are free, and if you are able and willing to take on more work, leave a message here saying when and where I can find you.”

Leaving it unsigned, he folded it, slipped it into a damp-proof cellophane envelope. Into his pocket he dropped a small, silent automatic. The gun was of Sirian manufacture and he had a fake permit to carry it.

This new role was more daring and dangerous than the others had been, but had its compensations. A check with official records would expose and damn him in double-quick time. Against this was the average Sirians respect for authority and reluctance to challenge it. Providing he conducted himself with enough self-assurance and sufficient arrogance even the Kaitempi might be tempted to accept him at face value.