“Not today it ain’t,” chortled Gus with a coarse wink. “Here.” He handed Paul a cigar, not his usual cheap make but an authentic hand-rolled Cuesta Rey. “Help me celebrate.”
Paul accepted the cigar but did not light it. “Celebrate what?”
“The death of Percy X,” announced the portly, flushed little balding man. “And the s-s-surrender of the Neeg-parts.” In his excitement he stammered over his words, trying to get them all out at once. “What all the Gany occupation forces put together couldn’t do, ol’ Gus Swenesgard did without hardly raising a sweat.” He noticed the unlit cigar and added, “Say, if you don’t smoke, maybe you’ll have a drink.”
“I’m in,” Paul said. I wonder, he thought, if he really has succeeded in wiping out the Neeg-parts and Percy—and if so, where he has the body. Gus now handed him a glass of straight Scotch, grinning broadly; Paul tasted it, then set it down. I’ll need, he thought grimly, all my wits about me in coping with this wily old crook. “How do you know,” he said aloud, “that Percy X is dead?”
“Well,” admitted Gus candidly, “I ain’t actually seen the corpse, but the autonomic control central radioed me an hour or more ago and told me all effective resistance had ceased up there. Percy ain’t among the prisoners, so he must be dead.”
“Couldn’t he have escaped?”
Gus shook his head so vigorously that his jowls danced. “N-n-not on your l-l-life. They had him trapped in a cave—no way out. And I sent in robots to track him down if alive or sort him out from the other bodies if dead. I expect I’ll get the report any minute now. Meanwhile I think I’ll stroll over and tell that worm, Mekkis, the good news. Want to come along?”
“No thanks,” Paul said; he did not care to get within range of a telepathic Gany.
“Suit yourself,” Gus said, and stumped out.
Aboard the most modern ionocraft taxi in the bale Gus rode over to military headquarters. As the taxi descended, he could not help noticing that the usually busy complex of installations appeared oddly deserted. Nothing stirred. Strange, he thought, as he landed.
At the first opportunity he took a human wik to one side and asked, “Hey, what’s going on here? Where is everybody?”
“Don’t you know?” the wik, a manual laborer, said, amazed at such ignorance. “The Ganys are pulling out.”
“What? Leaving the bale?” Gus was dumbfounded.
“Hell no. Leaving this planet.”
Before Gus could recover enough to ask further questions the workman had departed to resume his work, that of crating up what appeared to be microfilm documents of an official nature. Despite his shock Gus could not help noticing, with a calculating, practical eye, that the Ganys were apparently leaving a good deal of valuable items behind: not only vehicles and the housing installations but even weapons—of advanced Gany design. I think, he reflected, I’ll ask my old friend Mekkis if I can maybe take all this junk off his hands…so to speak. I know how a feller hates to have a lot of useless odds and ends littered around everywhere when he’s trying to move.
For the first time in weeks Gus found himself admitted to Mekkis’ private chambers. The Administrator, coiled peacefully, appeared to be reading a Terran book but looked up with a cordial smile as Gus entered.
“I understand you’re moving,” Gus blurted out.
“Do you? But I’m not. Not at all.” The Administrator’s tone held haughty aloofness; the subject obviously touched some deep, cold wellspring in him.
“But the workman told me—”
“The entire Ganymedian occupation force with the exception of me is withdrawing. Since I have not merged with the Great Common for quite some time I have no notion why. Nor do I really care. In any case, let me assure you that I, and my necessary entourage of personal creeches, are staying.”
Gus said, “I don’t understand. Don’t all you Ganys act as a—”
“I have scientific reasons for detaching myself. An experiment begun by the late, great Doctor Rudolph Balkani remains to be completed. Can I swear you to secrecy?”
“What? Oh yeah; sure.” Gus nodded.
With his jaws, Mekkis lifted up a thick typescript manuscript; he deposited it, with effort, before him on his desk. “I obtained this from Balkani’s New York publisher. It arrived today, arranged for by persons working in my behalf. This is the sole copy…of Doctor Balkani’s final statement, his Oblivion Therapy—entirely mine, now. I see in your mind that this does not mean anything to you or even interest you; what you care about is power. You want this office, don’t you?”
“Um,” Gus said sheepishly, gesturing.
“Be my guest, Mr. Swenesgard. I am vacating these buildings shortly, just on the off-chance that some of my so-called ‘fellow’ Ganymedians might come looking for me.” With that faint hint of a sneer he concluded, “This place, Mr. Swenesgard, is all yours.”
“Here he comes,” Paul Rivers said to Joan Hiashi; she ducked down in the front seat of their ionocraft once more as Paul got swiftly out. In the slanting rays of the setting sun Gus came shuffling along, obviously somewhat drunk. Paul walked toward him thinking, I suppose he’s starting to celebrate his victory already.
A few people moved here and there, mostly dutiful Toms who made it a point to mind their own business; nobody appeared to notice—or care—that the kingfish of the bale manifested himself in this condition. It had probably happened before.
“Hi, Gus,” Paul said.
Gus halted, swaying unsteadily and blinking at Paul without comprehension. “Who’re you?” Gus demanded.
“We talked briefly several hours ago,” Paul said. “And for several days I stayed at your hotel.” He made his tone firm, so that it would be penetrate. “I’m Doctor Paul Rivers.”
“Oh yeah, I remember now.” Gus nodded. “And I, Doctor, am the future emperor of the world.”
What, Paul asked himself acutely, does he mean by that?
Gus placed a beefy hand on Paul’s shoulder and, waving his finger under Paul’s nose, said, “They’re leaving.”
“Who’s leaving?” He had to brace himself against the weight of Gus’ heavy hand.
“The worms. And when they go, you know who’s going to take over around here? Me; that’s who: me.” Gus released his grip on Paul’s shoulder and staggered back a step. “The day of the Thing on Horseback has passed.” His slurred speech had suddenly sharpened into distinct clarity. But only momentarily.
Is he drunk, Paul wondered, or is he telling the truth? “Come on, Gus,” he said, placing Gus’ arm over his shoulder. “I’ll help you into the hotel.”
When, with a grunt of relief, Paul deposited the bulky and stumbling Gus onto a couch in the hotel lobby the clerk at the desk, like everyone else in town, pretended to see nothing.
“I’m the one,” Gus began again, half to Paul and half to himself. “The one with all the autonomic weapons the Ganys gave me to fight Percy X. And I’m the one, now, who has all those crazy mental weapons Percy had, too. I’m the man”—and here he paused to burp—“with the power.” Again, all at once, his voice cleared into focus; his eyes ceased to show their usual glaze. “I’m going to go on TV, prime time. When the Ganys pull out the people won’t know what to do; they’ll be looking for a leader, somebody to take the place of the worms. They’ll be thirsting for solid American-human leadership from someone they know and trust, someone who knows them and is one of them.”
After an interval Paul said, “That’s not a bad pitch.”
“I know,” Gus said.
The Man on Horseback, Paul thought, replacing the Thing on Horseback; Gus is right—this is the time for him to appear. Gus would be the familiar replacing the alien. Humanity incarnate, with all its limitations and faults, but indubitably real.
“I can see it now,” Gus said thickly, his eyes once more filmed over, his head wagging unsteadily. “The TV show begins; I put in my appearance while the announcer reads a little something I scratched out ahead of time—informin
g them as to my victory over the Neeg-parts, a victory even the Ganys couldn’t achieve.” He belched once again and had to cease talking; his face, red and large, seemed to swell to even greater proportions. “Hey, you leaving, Doc?” He blinked.
It isn’t every day, Paul thought, that I get to talk to the future emperor of Earth. But if I don’t get out of here and do something, and fast, there may not be any Earth left to rule over.
Ten minutes later Paul Rivers, with Joan beside him, skimmed over starlit fields toward the mountains. He placed the ionocraft on full automatic pilot and got out Ed Newkom’s thought amplifier.
“Why are you doing that?” Joan asked, with mild curiosity.
Paul said, “I have a nagging fear, which I can’t get rid of, that Percy X is still alive.”
“If he wants to use his hell-weapon,” Joan said, “let him. What difference does it make, really?”
Can it be true, Paul asked himself, that the possible extinction of most of the human race is a matter of complete indifference to her? Maybe that’s what she wants: final, complete oblivion for everyone.
“You need to save the world,” she said remotely. She glanced then at him, as if he were a retarded child.
Ignoring the look—he could not answer it—he set to work with the amplifier, trying to tune in on Percy X.
“Hello, Paul,” came Percy’s thought, almost immediately.
“Percy, I want—” he began, but Percy X cut him off.
“I know. You want me to hold off on the hell-weapon.”
“That’s right.”
Percy X’s thought came through heavy with weariness. “I almost wish I could. But I can’t; it’s our last chance to defeat the worms. My little so-called ‘army’ got wiped out and they damn near finished off me. I simply have nothing left to fight with but the hell-weapon, and I’m not going to give up, man; I’m not going to give up!”
“But,” Paul transmitted, “the worms are leaving.”
“For how long?” demanded Percy X bitterly. “They’ll be back. And meanwhile we’ll know they’re up there, ready to return and take over whenever they feel like it.”
“You can’t prevent that even if you use the hell-weapon; it’ll only get the Ganys here on Earth. The others who are still on Ganymede won’t be harmed, and, like you say, they can launch a new attack against Earth any time they want to.”
A wave of glee rushed from Percy’s mind to his own. “That’s not so. Before I turn on the machine my good buddy Mekkis is going to key his own mind into the group mind of the Ganymedian Great Common. Anything that happens to the mind of Mekkis, here on Earth, will happen to the entire Ganymedian ruling class at the same time—and the ruling class does all the thinking on Ganymede. Without them the creeches will be lucky if they can avoid slipping back to the level of the Stone Age; what can a body do when you cut off its head, Doctor?”
“But the human race,” Paul said. “You’ll destroy it, too.”
“Those Ganys are totally dependent on their creeches; they’re weak. Men, who are more or less used to taking care of themselves, will eventually manage to pull out of it—but the Ganys won’t.” Percy paused, and Paul felt a wave of wistful accidental warmth flow from Percy to himself. “I hope, Doc, that you’re one of the strong ones. If so, I’ll be seeing you.”
“Yes,” Paul said, “you’ll be seeing me.” But nothing remained of Percy X’s thought pattern except the meaningless blur of an expert scramble pattern.
Marshal Koli drifted slowly through the control cabin of the flagship of the Ganymedian space fleet, the helmet on his head connecting him, through the ship’s encephalic amplifier, to the Great Common of the home world and to all other members of the ruling elite, wherever they might be.
An entire block of minds, the leaders of the clock faction, spoke in Koli’s mind as a single voice. “Is the evacuation complete?”
“With one exception,” Koli answered. “Mekkis.”
“Mekkis? Mekkis?” The Great Common searched itself and found one missing mind. One and only one. Nobody wished to be left out of this vital operation; even the sick, who were sometimes excused, were here, adding their touch of yellow suffering to the rainbow of blended spirit. “What happened to him?” the polyencephalic entity inquired.
“Went native,” Koli informed them—or rather it. “I, for one, will not miss him.”
“Nor will we,” came the massed voice of the Council.
“I will miss him,” said Major Cardinal Zency, dissenting.
The Electors at the bench bathed him in a wave of soothing condolence, to which he reacted, to their surprise, with resentment.
“Is the missile in readiness?” came the massed thought of the clock faction leaders again.
“I am checking it over now,” Marshal Koli answered; he drifted over the gleaming cylinder of destruction which now reposed before the airlock, ready to be moved forward into launching position. “Look through my eyes, fellow Ganymedians, and see for yourself.” Koli could feel a multitude of beings behind his eyes, watching everything he watched, feeling everything he felt. They would even taste what he tasted when his tongue touched the firing button that would launch the missile into space.
The flagship shifted slightly in space, its motion sending the crew including Koli, drifting slowly toward one side of it. Marshal Koli, well-accustomed to such things, paid no attention; his mind was busy reviewing once again, with good measure of satisfaction, the chain of events which would follow his touching the firing button. The missile, once launched, would move quickly to a point near the Earth but outside Earth’s atmosphere; there it would stabilize itself in an orbit that would keep it fixed directly between Earth and the Sun. Then, automatically, it would project an electromagnetic field in the aural spectrum which would cause the rays of the Sun to bend, to warp out of their normal path, so that not a single ray of sunlight would reach the Earth. The seas will freeze, Koli thought, right down to the bottom—and not only the seas but the atmosphere, the very air the Terrans breathe. The atmosphere will drift down like a pale snow until Earth is as bare of breathable gas as the planet Pluto.
Then, and only then, would the aural field within the missile be turned off and the rays of the Sun allowed once again to reach the surface of Earth. The atmosphere would melt, become first a liquid and then, once again, a gas. The seas would melt, the planet would slowly, over a period of almost a century, become habitable again; Ganymedians would return and colonize it, this time solely with imported life forms from the home world. It had certainly been a major mistake, reflected the Great Common, to allow the native life forms to live, in the vain hope that they might become useful creeches. The mistake, if they ever found other habitable worlds, would not be repeated.
From now on the policy would be: Turn off the Sun. And wait.
Koli had saved one item from Earth, a perfect souvenir of the human race that would now, with the extinction of that race, become very soon a rarity of incredible value. A complete collection of the early short comedies of the original Three Stooges, pre-World War Three. He licked his chops in anticipation of the envy on his friends’ faces when he projected these films, over and over again, in his private villa back home. What do I care, he thought smugly, if they become a little bored? I’ll say to them, “This is what mankind was like,” and I’ll have them; yes, I’ll have them. They won’t be able to argue with the authentic films which the Terrans themselves made. And they’ll be forced to say, whether they like it or not, “Koli, when you exterminated the Earth creatures, you did the right thing.”
I don’t want to kill you, Paul Rivers thought, his palms sweating against the cool metal of the laser rifle. But I will if I have to.
“I see,” Percy X said. He half-sat, half-fell against a rough, pitted rock-surface and watched the spinning world come slowly to rest.
“I’ve been following you,” Paul said. “I spotted you from the air. You must be tired; you didn’t even detect us telepathically.?
??
“Yeah, I am tired,” Percy panted. But Paul could see that he had begun to regain possession of himself, sizing up the situation like a brilliant, trapped, cat-like animal. First the Neeg-part leader studied Paul—and his laser rifle—and then the parked ionocraft behind Paul and at last Joan Hiashi, who, at that moment, had knelt down to inspect something on the loose, rocky soil of the hillside. “Hello, Joan,” Percy said, but she did not even look at him, let alone answer.
“She’s found an anthill,” Paul Rivers said. “She’s taken quite an interest in ants, lately.”
“They’re upset,” Joan said tonelessly. “They can sense something coming.”
“I see in your mind,” Percy said to Paul Rivers, “that you haven’t destroyed the hell-weapon, which is what you came here to do.”
“We only got here a few minutes before you did,” Paul pointed out. “Yes, I know it’s in a cave over there.” He gestured with his free hand. “I’ve got a metal-tropic detection apparatus in my ship. You’re not going to get to use it, even if I have to fry you with this laser rifle.”
Percy had begun to breathe evenly now, and his eyes, which had been dull and feverish a moment before, had become alert and penetrating. “Tell me, Paul,” he said slowly, calculatingly. “Have you ever tried to shoot a telepath before?”
“Get into the ionocraft,” Paul ordered, raising the gun a hair.
Ignoring the command Percy continued, “It isn’t easy to shoot someone who can read your mind, Doctor. I can tell, an instant before you pull the trigger, where you plan to aim that gun—before you aim it.” He smiled and added, “And if you’re really going to shoot.”
“Get into the ionocraft,” Paul Rivers repeated, but he thought, Suppose he’s right; suppose I can’t shoot him.
“I don’t think you can,” Percy X said. “Put the gun down, Paul; I don’t want to hurt you any more than you want to hurt me.”
Paul had been aware of a feeling of unreality for some time now, but had put it down as an aftereffect of some nearby, recent usage of an illusion projector in this mountain region. However, in that case, he realized, the effect should be wearing off, instead of steadily increasing, as it seems to be.