Authors: Keith Laumer
“I warned you—”
“I heard you. Five times. And I only warned you once. You’re
getting ahead of me,” Retief rose, motioned to the hulking guard. “Come on,
Jake; we’ve got a lot of ground to cover before dinner.”
At the curb, Retief held out his hand. “Give me the power
cylinder out of your rifle, Jake.”
“Huh?”
“Come on, Jake. You’ve got a nervous habit of playing with
the firing stud. We don’t want any accidents.”
“How do you get it out? They only give me this thing
yesterday.”
Retief pocketed the cylinder. “You sit in back. I’ll drive.”
He wheeled the car off along a broad avenue crowded with vehicles and lined
with flowering palms behind which stately white buildings reared up into the
pale sky.
“Nice looking city, Jake,” Retief said conversationally.
“What’s the population?”
“I dunno. I only been here a year.”
“What about Horny and Pud? Are they natives?”
“Whatta
ya mean, natives? They’re just as civilized as me.”
“My boner, Jake. Known Sozier long?”
“Sure; he useta come around to the club.”
“I take it he was in the army under the old regime?”
“Yeah—but he didn’t like the way they run it. Nothing but
band playing and fancy marching. There wasn’t nobody to fight.”
“Just between us, Jake—where did the former Planetary Manager
General go?” Retief watched Jake’s heavy face in the mirror. Jake jumped,
clamped his mouth shut.
“I don’t know nothing.”
Half an hour later, after a tour of the commercial center, Retief
headed toward the city’s outskirts. The avenue curved, leading up along the
flank of a low hill.
“I must admit I’m surprised, Jake,” Retief said. “Everything
seems orderly; no signs of riots or panic. Power, water, communications
normal—just as the general said. Remarkable, isn’t it, considering that the
entire managerial class has packed up and left . . .”
“You wanta see the Power Plant?” Retief could see
perspiration beaded on the man’s forehead under the uniform cap.
“Sure. Which way?” With Jake directing, Retief ascended to
the ridge top, cruised past the blank white façade of the station.
“Quiet, isn’t it?” Retief pulled the car in to the curb.
“Let’s go inside.”
“Huh? Corporal Sozier didn’t say nothing—”
“You’re right, Jake. That leaves it to our discretion.”
“He won’t like it.”
“The corporal’s a busy man, Jake. We won’t worry him by
telling him about it.”
Jake followed Retief up the walk. The broad double doors were
locked.
“Let’s try the back.”
The narrow door set in the high blank wall opened as Retief
approached. A gun barrel poked out, followed by a small man with bushy red
hair. He looked Retief over.
“Who’s this party, Jake?” he barked.
“Sozier said show him the plant,” Jake said.
“What we need is more guys to pull duty, not tourists. Anyway,
I’m Chief Engineer here. Nobody comes in here ’less I like their looks.”
Retief moved forward, stood looking down at the red-head. The
little man hesitated, then waved him past. “Lucky for you, I like your looks.”
Inside, Retief surveyed the long room, the giant converter
units, the massive bussbars. Armed men—some in uniform, some in work clothes,
others in loud sport shirts—stood here and there. Other men read meters,
adjusted controls, or inspected dials.
“You’ve got more guards than workers,” Retief said.
“Expecting trouble?”
The red-head bit the corner from a plug of spearmint. He
glanced around the plant. “Things is quiet now; but you never
know . . .”
“Rather old-fashioned equipment, isn’t it? When was it
installed?”
“Huh?
I dunno. What’s wrong with it?”
“What’s
your basic power source, a core sink? Lithospheric friction? Sub-crustal
hydraulics?”
“Beats
me, Mister. I’m the boss here, not a dern mechanic.”
A
grey-haired man carrying a clip-board walked past, studied a panel, made notes,
glanced up to catch Retief’s eye, moved on.
“Everything
seems to be running normally,” Retief remarked.
“Sure;
why not?”
“Records being kept up properly?”
“Sure; some of these guys, all they do is walk around looking
at dials and writing stuff on paper. If it was me, I’d put ’em to work.”
Retief strolled over to the grey-haired man, now scribbling
before a bank of meters. He glanced at the clip board.
Power off at sunset. Tell Corasol
was scrawled in block letters across the record sheet. Retief nodded, rejoined
his guard.
“All right, Jake. Let’s have a look at the communications
center.”
Back in the car, headed west, Retief studied the blank
windows of office buildings, the milling throngs in beer bars, shooting
galleries, tattoo parlors, billiards halls, pin-ball arcades, bordellos, and
half-credit casinos.
“Everybody seems to be having fun,” he remarked.
Jake stared out the window. “Yeah.”
“Too bad you’re on duty, Jake. You could be out there joining
in.”
“Soon
as the corporal gets things organized, I’m opening me up a place to show dirty
tri-di’s. I’ll get my share.”
“Meanwhile, let the rest of ’em have their fun, eh, Jake?”
“Look, Mister, I been thinking: Maybe you better gimme back
that kick-stick you taken outa my gun . . .”
“Sorry, Jake; no can do. Tell me, what was the real cause of
the revolution? Not enough to eat? Too much regimentation?”
“Naw, we always got plenty to eat. There wasn’t none of that
regimentation—up till I joined up in the corporal’s army.”
“Rigid class structure, maybe? Educational discrimination?”
Jake nodded. “Yeah, it was them schools done it. All the time
trying to make a feller go to some kind of class. Big shots. Know it all. Gonna
make us sit around and view tapes. Figgered they are better than us.”
“And Sozier’s idea was you’d take over, and you wouldn’t have
to be bothered.”
“Aw, it wasn’t Sozier’s idea. He ain’t the big leader.”
“Where does the big leader keep himself?”
“I dunno. I guess he’s pretty busy right now.” Jake
snickered. “Some of them guys call themselves colonels turned out not to know
nothing about how to shoot off the guns.”
“Shooting, eh? I thought it was a sort of peaceful
revolution; the managerial class were booted out, and that was that.”
“I don’t know nothing,” Jake snapped. “How come you keep
trying to get me to say stuff I ain’t supposed to talk about? You want to get
me in trouble?”
“Oh, you’re already in trouble, Jake. But if you stick with
me, I’ll try to get you out of it. Where exactly did the refugees head for? How
did they leave? Must have been a lot of them; I’d say in a city of this size
they’d run into the thousands.”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course, it depends on your definition of a big shot.
Who’s included in that category, Jake?”
“You know, the slick-talking ones; the fancy dressers; the
guys that walk around and tell other guys what to do. We do all the work and
they get all the big pay.”
“I suppose that would cover scientists, professional men,
executives, technicians of all sorts, engineers, teachers—all that crowd of
no-goods.”
“Yeah, them are the ones.”
“And once you got them out of the way, the regular fellows
would have a chance; chaps that don’t spend all their time taking baths and
reading books and using big words; good Joes that don’t mind picking their
noses in public.”
“We got as much right as anybody—”
“Jake, who’s Corasol?”
“He’s—I don’t know.”
“I thought I overheard his name somewhere.”
“Uh, here’s the communication center,” Jake cut in.
Retief swung into a parking lot under a high blank façade. He
set the brake and stepped out.
“Lead the way, Jake.”
“Look, Mister, the corporal only wanted me to show you the
outside—”
“Anything to hide, Jake?”
Jake shook his head angrily and stamped past Retief. “When I
joined up with Sozier, I didn’t figger I’d be getting in this kind of
mess . . .”
“I know, Jake; it’s tough. Sometimes it seems like a fellow
works harder after he’s thrown out the parasites than he did before.”
A cautious guard let Retief and Jake inside, followed them
along bright lit aisles among consoles, cables, batteries of instruments. Armed
men in careless uniforms lounged, watching. Here and there a silent technician
worked quietly.
Retief paused by one, an elderly man in a neat white
coverall, with a purple spot under one eye.
“Quite a bruise you’ve got there,” Retief commented heartily.
“Power failure at sunset,” he added softly. The technician hesitated, nodded,
and moved on.
Back in the car, Retief gave Jake directions. At the end of
three hours, he had seen twelve smooth-running, heavily guarded installations.
“So far, so good, Jake,” he said. “Next stop, sub-station
Number Nine.” In the mirror, Jake’s face stiffened. “Hey, you can’t go down
there—”
“Something going on there, Jake?”
“That’s where—I mean, no; I don’t know.”
“I don’t want to miss anything, Jake. Which way?”
“I ain’t going down there,” Jake said sullenly.
Retief braked. “In that case, I’m afraid our association is
at an end, Jake.”
“You mean . . . you’re getting out here?”
“No, you are.”
“Huh? Now wait a minute, Mister; the corporal said I was to
stay with you.”
Retief accelerated. “That’s settled, then. Which way?”
Retief pulled the car to a halt two hundred yards from the
periphery of a loose crowd of brown-uniformed men who stood in groups scattered
across a broad plaza, overflowing into a stretch of manicured lawn before the
bare, functional facade of Sub-station Number Nine. In the midst of the
besieging mob, Sozier’s red face and bald head bobbed as he harangued a cluster
of green-uniformed men from his place in the rear of a long open car.
“What’s it all about, Jake?” Retief inquired. “Since the
parasites have all left peacefully, I’m having a hard time figuring out who’d
be holed up in the pumping station—and why. Maybe they haven’t gotten the word
that it’s all going to be fun and games from now on.”
“If the corporal sees you over here—”
“Ah, the good corporal. Glad you mentioned him, Jake. He’s
the man to see.” Retief stepped out of the car and started through the crowd. A
heavy lorry loaded with an immense tank with the letter H blazoned on its side
trundled into the square from a side street, moved up to a position before the
building. A smaller car pulled alongside Sozier’s limousine. The driver stepped
down, handed something to Sozier. A moment later, Sozier’s amplified voice
boomed across the crowd.
“You in there, Corasol. This is General Sozier, and I’m
warning you to come out now or you and your smart friends are in for a big
surprise. You think I won’t blast you out because I don’t want to wreck the
plant. You see the tank aboard the lorry that just pulled up? It’s full of
gas—and I got plenty of hoses out here to pump it inside with. I’ll put men on
the roof and squirt it in the ventilators . . .”
Sozier’s voice echoed and died. The militiamen eyed the
station. Nothing happened.
“I
know you can hear me, damn you!” Sozier squalled. “You’d better get the doors
open and get out here fast—”
Retief stepped to Sozier’s side. “Say, Corporal, I didn’t
know you went in for practical jokes—”
Sozier jerked around to gape at Retief.
“What are you doing here!” he burst out. “I told Jake—where
is that—”
“Jake didn’t like the questions I was asking,” Retief said,
“so he marched me up here to report to you.”
“Jake, you damn fool!” Sozier roared. I gotta good mind—”
“I disagree, Sozier,” Retief cut in. “I think you’re a complete
imbecile. Sitting out here in the open yelling at the top of your lungs. For
example: Corasol and his party might get annoyed and spray that fancy car
you’ve swiped with something a lot more painful than words.”
“Eh?” Sozier’s head whipped around to stare at the building.
“Isn’t that a gun I see sticking out?”
Sozier dropped. “Where?”
“My mistake; just a foreign particle on my contact lenses.”
Retief leaned on the car. “On the other hand, Sozier, most murderers are sneaky
about it; I think making a public announcement is a nice gesture on your part.
The Monitors won’t have any trouble deciding who to hang when they come in to
straighten out this mess.”