At the end of three weeks, my “idyll of primitive atavism” came to an abrupt end.
I awoke from a dreamless, lovely sleep to find a hunting blastgun prodding my chin.
These valleys between the ranges were the heavens themselves: grassy plateaus, stately forests, picturesque rock formations, streams which rippled or roared in an interesting complexity, surrounded all about by majestic snow-crowned peaks!
Songbirds and an infinite variety of game abounded and fed the stomach and the eyes and ears alike.
Day after day we had wandered, from one enticing campsite to the next, each one seemingly more charming than the last.
I had a bit of trouble with my driver, Ske. Because one has to have the identification impress on the vehicle frame, or one can’t get a replacement, he had insisted, at great labor—since he had no tools—in hammering that section off, using rocks, using twists to heat the metal so it would break. It had taken him hours and hours. The result was that he was left carrying a twenty-foot piece of vehicle frame, quite heavy and cumbersome, always getting in the road when he scrambled down cliffs or tried to go through dense trees.
He also had to carry the toasted sweetbuns and the remains of sparklewater in its warped containers as well as some singed upholstery I was using for blankets. When you added to this the weight of recent kills, one could imagine that it was a burden. And as I wandered along, pausing to admire the view, savor the redolent perfume of the air or take a shot at some songbird, I was nevertheless aware of his critical stares at my back when he thought I was not looking.
One day, as I sauntered up a steep path, and after he had fallen back down three times, tripped by the vehicle frame’s propensity for gouging into the dirt, I heard him muttering. And so, while he stood teetering on the unfirm path, I took the time to try to put him right. I sat down on a boulder and began to explain to him what this was all about.
I told him that every being had in him a throwback, an atavism, to the primitive; I went into considerable technical details, all in the best traditions of Earth psychology. I even analyzed him as having an atavism deficiency. And all the thanks I got was him falling down the path again and this time swearing!
But, undaunted, I essayed another approach. When he got back up to me again, I explained how every sentient being of our type had yet retained, left over from evolution, a reptile brain below and between the lobes. This brain was what prompted blind leadership. I even drew him a picture of it in the slanted dirt. And then I diagnosed his trouble as a reptile brain deficiency that made him blind to the necessity of blindly following where I led. But once more all the thanks I got was him falling down to the bottom once more.
However, I did not permit this problem to blunt the acute pleasure I was taking in my stroll across this vast land. Not only did it have no Tug One in it, it had neither Heller nor Krak and only the faintest shadow of Lombar Hisst.
As days proceeded onward, I must have shot at least five hundred songbirds. Some of them, when they fell, were hard to get to or only wounded and my driver often had trouble recovering them, burdened as he was.
But he was making his own trouble. I told him to throw away the identoframe: we would never again have need of an airbus, so why carry the frame you have to turn in to get a replacement? I just couldn’t seem to get through to him about this.
He couldn’t be taught in other ways as well. Each time we would make a camp, instead of locating dry wood, he would start a fire with the greenest bark to hand and for the last half-hour of daylight, huge columns of white smoke would rise like pillars into the air, absolutely towering into the sky. I tried and tried but I couldn’t break him of it. I decided he was simply atavism deficient!
Thus, when the cold muzzle of the gun awoke me that dawn, I was not too surprised to hear my driver talking in a rather high, urgent voice when any atavistic impulse would have been to shut up!
“. . . And so we almost had the contrabandists and they up and shot us down!” Ske was saying. “But true to our duty, we have been following them day after day, scouting on their trail. They left fantastic amounts of evidence behind. You just look at that game bag! We found it just last night and it’s full of fancy feathers!”
One always studies the enemy. The two fellows who had us were dressed in the green of game wardens. They had the emblem of some Lord sewn on their chests. They looked very ugly. They were heavily armed. I heard a twig snap back under the trees and knew there was a third one back there, covering us.
“And,” Ske was saying, his voice pitched even higher, “to prove that we flushed them and that they fled afraid of us, look at that needle blastgun they left behind!”
“Ah,” said a three-hundred-pound brute, the other one that wasn’t holding the gun on my chin. He picked up my needlegun. “We’ll just confiscate this. Nice gun.”
“Evidence of the Crown,” I said hastily. “You must not tamper with legal evidence!”
“This,” said the three-hundred-pounder impressively, “is Lord Mok’s preserve. All half-million acres of it. And anything found in it is Lord Mok’s!”
For “Lord Mok’s,” I thought, substitute “game warden’s.”
The gun muzzle bruised my chin with a poke. “Get up. We’re taking you in!”
I noticed for the first time that they had a rope around Ske’s neck. The “you” didn’t seem to include Ske as the three-hundred-pounder seemed to be looking about for a limb to hang him from. Oh, well, I thought. One can always get a replacement driver.
Ske did not seem to take to the idea of being hanged. But instead of groveling, he grabbed the rope to slacken it and drew himself up tall. Not very tall as he isn’t very big.
“That!” said Ske, pointing dramatically at me, “is Officer Gris of the Apparatus! He is on a secret mission for the Emperor!” His voice could be heard for a mile!
It produced an interesting effect. Three men emerged from the trees and came forward at a run with leveled guns! It looked like there was going to be a double hanging right now!
Ske had freed himself for an instant. He dived to my side. He yanked open the flap of a pocket, grabbed out my communication disk and screamed into it, “For the sake of the Gods, don’t fire! Officer Gris will be in your range!” It was a pretty silly thing to do as we were about ten times the distance that that communication disk could reach.
Ske whispered to me frantically, “Tell them they’re all under arrest!”
I blinked. The yokels had all hauled up. They were suspended, looking up and around anxiously. Yokels, indeed. Lord Mok didn’t hire smart men for game wardens.
I got up. “You’re all under arrest,” I said.
“For posing as game wardens!” shouted Ske.
This hanging or battle or whatever it had been about to become, disintegrated into, “We’ve got credentials!” and “How do we know you are an Officer Gris?” and that sort of thing.
Everybody showed everybody their badges. Ske ran around pushing my identoplate into people’s faces.
They finally told me that they’d have to keep the needlegun and game bag as “evidence” we’d actually been following poachers. And they said they had a supply plane leaving their preserve headquarters the next morning for Government City and we could hitch a ride on it.
Ske seemed very elated and almost cheering.
I wasn’t. It seemed like the sky had fallen in. I was very certain that catastrophe awaited me. The very thought of going back made my stomach hurt!
PART SEVEN
Chapter 6
Dispiritedly, I sat and watched the Transport Issue Clerk.
The wardens had dropped us off at the Apparatus Vehicle Center in Government City, not even thanking me for the needlegun and game bag.
Ske had lugged in the frame from the wreck and the Transport Issue Clerk, instead of giving Ske a blast, had practically cooed over it. Ske had written out a report—Crash in Line of Duty—and had then made out the application for another vehicle.
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“Uuuuuu! It’s been promoted!” cried the Transport Issue Clerk. “It’s a Grade Eleven now!” He slapped Ske’s wrist, “You naughty boy. You didn’t have to wreck the other to get a new one. You just could have brought it in. What unnecessary paperwork you drivers make!”
And then he was onto his communications link with the commercial suppliers—Zippety-Zip Manufacturing Outlet—in Commercial City. “Uuuuu, Chalber, dear,” he said musically to whomever was on the other end. “We’ve had a promotion. And it will need a Model 794-86 right away.” He muted the disk and turned to Ske. “They’ve only one with purple upholstery and green tassels. Will that do?” Apparently Ske thought it would, for the clerk got “Dear Chalber” to rush right over with it himself.
“Oh, you are so lucky,” said the clerk to Ske. “The Model 794-86 is absolutely adorable! It has the circular seat in back that makes down into a bed.”
“Hot Saints!” exclaimed Ske, and well he might, for he had to sleep in my vehicle most of the time.
“Oh, yes,” cooed the clerk. “And it has window blinders and the cutest bar. You and me will just have to take a ride in it,” wink, wink, “won’t we?”
I decided there were things I didn’t know about Ske.
Shortly “Dear Chalber” arrived and there was a hurried and furtive interchange between him and the clerk and I saw the golden flash of money changing hands. Aha! So that was why the Apparatus had so many strange vehicle wrecks!
The clerk gave “Dear Chalber” a kiss and when a following vehicle had flown him off, the clerk turned to Ske and there was a furtive interchange there and I distinctly saw another, smaller golden flash.
The new airbus was quite elegant: purple light spinners and green landing wheels with a bright red band all around it. Hardly the thing for undercover work! The interior was so clean it was disgusting. I got in wearily.
“Have some more wrecks, dear,” I heard the happy clerk tell Ske.
I was wrong about Ske. He was wiping the clerk’s kiss off very vigorously as he eased in under the wheelstick. We took off for my office.
“I think you owe me something,” I said. I had to repeat it in a louder voice even though the new bus was much quieter.
“Oh, you mean the money,” said my driver. “That was just one credit he owed me.”
He protested he would need it for food but he knew how firm I could be. He finally threw it over his head at me. And even though I was quite certain he had had to peel it off a roll of bills, the airbus was diving about in traffic, so I decided to be satisfied. The back windows were down and I hadn’t fastened my belt. The note had almost sailed out! A close one!
At my office, when I walked in, the two boys Too-Too and Oh Dear instantly, with just one glance at me, fell into each other’s arms and began to cry. The rest of the clerks in the front office left and it wasn’t even lunch hour. It was quite late in the day. Must be early quitting time, I thought.
Bawtch came stooping out of his office and saw me. “Oh, it’s you!” he said. “Why do you have to keep coming in here and upsetting everything?”
I tried to point out that I had been missing for three weeks. And he just kept raving on about me always being underfoot!
Defensively I went back into my office. I looked on the desk, half expecting to see a warrant-for-my-arrest notice. Nothing. Same dust.
The contractors had finished their work. I went in and checked and sure enough, when you pressed the wall just so, it revolved and there was a ladder to a hatch in the roof. The silent-break glass was innocently in place. The river roiled along five hundred feet below.
When I came out, Bawtch, a very inconsistent type, had piled some forms on my desk. “As long as you’re here, you can stamp these forms. You never stamped the first contractor and now there are two to stamp. I have a new payroll and the expenses allocation that Twolah and Odur will require. And another shipment came in from Blito-P3 that must be stamped as received in good order. Office expenses have also gone up.” He was shoving me at my desk now. “I can’t understand why it is if you’re always bursting in here why you can’t at least do your work!”
I began to stamp. I got even with him. I didn’t even read the stuff. Maintain a lofty attitude is always the best way! Puts the riffraff in their place!
I found out suddenly I was stamping blank forms! That would never do. They have to be written on first! I got brave. “Bawtch, you’re getting soft in the head. You forgot to make these forms out before you brought them in! Old age, Bawtch. Dotage!”
He snatched the pile away in considerable anger. He stalked out. I could see I had reached him. You have to be very firm with such riffraff. Lombar was right when he had said that there were very few Academy officers about: those of us there were had to really slave to make the Apparatus run as well as it did!
I got up and walked into the main office. It promptly cleared again of clerks. I was aware suddenly that some people were behind me and to my left. It was Too-Too and Oh Dear. My position had them trapped: they couldn’t leave without running close to me. They were standing there in frozen horror.
Behind them was a third; it was a training operator from the Apparatus Training Command. And, what do you know, he was sitting at a brand-new master data console!
How out of place it looked, all bright, shining, new plates and keyboards and glittering screens amongst the dirt and decayed furniture of the outer office.
And then I grasped the situation. Bawtch had come up. I spoke very severely, “What is this master console doing here?”
Bawtch, who is silly about some things like keeping security from other parts of the Apparatus, ordered the training operator out and, when he had gone, turned to me. “You stamped the order for it three weeks ago. You are entitled to it with your increase in rank, though why they promoted you, I don’t dare imagine!”
I knew that wasn’t the reason. That was just his eighty-year-old failure to become an officer talking. “You got this in here so that these two boys could use it!”
Bawtch blew up. “You brute! You didn’t expect them to get their data from a dirty old Lord, did you?”
“I certainly did! The kind of data you can get on these machines does not include what Endow knows. They better make up time getting into Endow’s bed or I’ll include any sisters!”
The two boys had already fallen into each other’s arms. At this last, they went out in a dead faint.
Bawtch left, spinning chairs out of the way and slamming them to the floor. He banged his door shut. He seemed upset.
I stepped over the boys and sat down at the console. Well, well. A master console of my own! I threw it out of training mode and into activation. I took out Bawtch’s chief clerk identoplate and was about to insert my own when I changed my mind and left his in. In his agitation he had forgotten it.
I punched in my own name and designation: actually this takes a moment or two as there are twenty-two thousand, six hundred and eighty-one Soltan Grises in the tens of millions of Voltarian officers of all branches and I didn’t want the wrong one.
WARRANTS?
I punched.
NOT YET
said the machine.
PAY STATUS?
I punched in. The machine promptly pulsated red flashes.
ALERT, ALERT, ALERT! THROUGH CLERICAL ERROR,THIS OFFICER WAS ADVANCED ONE CREDIT IN EXCESS OF A YEAR’ ADVANCE PAY. ALL FURTHER PAY UNCOLLECTIBLE UNTIL REFUND OCCURS.
I had thought I would now have three weeks pay I could draw on. But not so! But what luck! I did have one credit and I could send it in. But as I was reaching for it, the machine went on talking.
WARNING, WARNING,WARNING. IF SAID OFFICER LOSES ANY ONE OF HIS FOUR PAYCHECKS FOR ANY REASON OR SUFFERS DEMOTION OR FINE, COMMUNICATE AT ONCE TO THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT COURTS-MARTIAL UNIT.
I went cold. What if I did lose Mission Earth?
The mountains had their game wardens, Government City had its Finance Department. There was no place to hid
e!
It was not unknown to me, but the threat of becoming a gutter bum in some slum city, living on garbage, if that, so unnerved me that the five-second warning flash had begun before I realized I had not remedied being broke right now.
I hastily tapped,
ITEM EN ROUTE
and scribbled my name and designations on a scrap of paper and wadded it and the one-credit note into a capsule. I slammed it hastily into the slot and punched,
FINANCE ADJUSTMENTS
and off it went with a whoosh.
Shortly, the screen flashed,