Lest We Forget Thee, Earth Page 9

  “I’ve been traveling quite a while,” Navarre said. “Is there some change in the procedure? Is there a visa required now?”

  “Visa! Friend, this passport’s dated five weeks ago. I don’t know where you got it or who you are, but the passport’s obviously fake and so are you.”

  “I_”

  The little man glared triumphantly at Navarre. “You may or may not be aware of it, but Kariad and Jorus severed diplomatic relations six months ago. We’ll probably be at war with them within a month. This is a hell of a time for you to decide to take your vacation on Kariad, Mr. Nolliwar Strumo of Jorus—or whoever you are!”

  He signaled to the guards. “Take him away and shut him up until Security can investigate his background. I wonder if he thought I was a fool? Next, please!”

  XIII

  Navarre sat in a windowless box of a room far below the surface level of the spaceport, breathing shallowly to keep the foul taste of the exhausted air from reaching the depths of his lungs, where it would linger for hours. He wondered what had gone wrong.

  A state of war imminent between Jorus and Kariad, after hundreds of years of peace. And he had picked just this time to try to masquerade as a Joran citizen visiting Kariad! Why, it would have been safer to attempt to bluff his way through under his own identity, he realized. Or perhaps even to assume his false Kariadi guise and become, once again, Melwod Finst, Admiral of the Navy of Kariad.

  He heard footsteps and straightened up. The interrogators were coming at last.

  The positronic relays of the cell-door lock whirred momentarily; the door swung smoothly back into its niche, and Navarre blinked at the sudden bright stream of light that came bursting in. When he could see clearly again, he found himself confronted by the stout, stubby bore of a Kariadi blaster.

  There were two interrogators, a large fat one and a small wizened one. Security interrogators always worked in teams of somatic opposites; it was part of the vast body of technique accumulated for the purpose of keeping the prisoner off-balance.

  “Come with us,” said the small one with the blaster, and gestured.

  Navarre pushed himself up off the cot and followed. He knew resistance was out of the question now.

  They led him up a long dreary cell-block, past a double door, and into a glass-doored room somewhat larger than his cell, brightly lit, with glowing luminescent panels casting a soft, pleasant radiance over everything.

  Pointing to a large chair in the center of “the room, the small one said, “Sit there.” Navarre sat.

  The interrogators took seats against the walls, at opposite sides of him. He glanced from one to the other. They were dark blue in color, but otherwise they had little in common. The small man was dried and wrinkled like a prune; glittering, fast-moving eyes glinted at Navarre out of a mousy face. As for the other, he must have weighed nearly four hundred pounds; he slumped relievedly in his chair, a mountain of blue flesh, and dabbed futilely at the rivulets of sweat that came dribbling down from his forehead and bushy eyebrows and lost themselves in the wilderness of his many successive chins.

  “Very well,” the fat one began, in a patient, friendly voice. “You say you are Nolliwar Strumo of Jorus. Your passport says so also. Who are you?”

  “Nolliwar Strumo, of Jorus,” Navarre said.

  “Highly doubtful,” the heavy man remarked. “I must remind you that it’s within our designated authority to make use of any forms of interrogation we may deem necessary in order to obtain information from you. We are nearly in a time of war. You claim to be a representative of a planet with whom we do not currently have diplomatic relations.” He smiled coldly. “Now, this may or may not be true. But if you persist in claiming to be from Jorus, we’ll have to treat i you as if such is actually the case—until we find out otherwise.”

  While he was speaking, the character of the luminescent panels had been changing steadily. The pastel greens and gentle oranges had faded, and were gradually replaced by harsher tones, more somber ones, blues, violets. It was part of the psychological approach to interrogation, Navarre knew; the room color would get less friendly as the interview went on.

  The small man said, in a dry rasping voice, “Your passport is obviously a forgery. We have laboratory confirmation on that. Who are you?”

  “Nolliwar Strumo of Jorus.” Navarre was determined to be stubborn as long as possible.

  The fat man scowled mildly. “You have the virtue of consistency, at least. But tell us this: if you’re from Jorus, as you insist, why are you here on Kariad? And why did you foolishly take no precautions to conceal your planet of origin when you must have been aware that traffic between Jorus and Kariad is currently prohibited? No, it doesn’t stand up. What’s your game?”

  “I sell spaceships,” Navarre said blandly.

  “Another lie. No Nolliwar Strumo is listed in the most recent munitions directory published on Jorus.”

  Navarre smiled. “You’ve been very clever, both of you. And busy.”

  “Thank you. The identity of Nolliwar Strumo is obviously false. Will you tell us who you are?”

  “No.”

  “Very well, then. Place your hands on the armrests of your chair, please,” the fat man ordered.

  “If I don’t?”

  “We’ll place them there for you. If you want to keep all your fingers, do it yourself.”

  Navarre shrugged and grasped the armrests. The fat man jabbed a button on a remote-control panel in his hands, and immediately metal clamps sprang out of the Earthman’s chair and pinioned him firmly.

  The fat man touched another knob. A shudder of pain rippled through Navarre’s body, making him wince.

  “Your pain threshold is abnormally high,” the fat one remarked conversationally. “Eight-one-point-three on the scale. No other Joran we’ve tested has run higher than sixty-six. Would you say he was a Joran, Ruiil?”

  The small Kariadi shook his head. “On the basis of that, highly doubtful.”

  “You’ve had a sample, Nolliwar Strumo. That was just a test. The chair is capable of producing pain more than eighteen degrees above even your extraordinary threshold—and I can guarantee you won’t enjoy it.” He touched his hands lovingly to the control-panel. “You understand the consequences. Now, tell us your name, stranger.”

  A bolt of pain shot up Navarre’s left leg; it felt as if his calf muscle had been ripped from his living leg. He waited until some of the pain had receded, and forced a smile.

  “I am not Nolliwar Strumo,” he said. “The passport is forged.”

  “Ah! A fact at last! But who are you, then?”

  Another lancing burst of pain racked him—this time, as if fleshy fingers had grasped the delicate chambers of his heart and squeezed, gently enough, but numbingly. Navarre felt torrents of sweat come dribbling down his face.

  “Who I am is not for your ears,” he said.

  “Eh? And for whose, then?”

  “Marhaill’s. And the Oligocrat will roast both of you when he learns what you’ve done.”

  “We simply carry out a job,” remarked the smaller man. “If you have business with Marhaill, you should have spoken up about it earlier.”

  “My business is secret. But I’d be of no use to him dead or mad from torture, which is why I’m letting you know this now.”

  The interrogators glanced at each other uncertainly. Navarre held his breath, waiting, trying to blot out the lingering after-effects of the pain. Interrogators were probably accustomed to this sort of wild bluffing, he thought.

  “You are not from Jorus?”

  “I’m an Earthman,” Navarre said. “With my hair worn long.” Cautiously he asked, “Is Helna Winstin still adviser to Lord Marhaill?”

  “She is.”

  Navarre nodded. He had got into trouble once, by making incorrect assumptions about the status quo; from now on he was going to verify every point.

  “Tell Helna Winstin that a long-haired Earthman is in the interrogation chambers
, and would speak to her on urgent business. Then see if she allows your quiz game to continue any further “

  The interrogators looked doubtful. “If we waste her time, stranger—”

  “If you fail to call her, and somehow I survive your gentle handling,” Navarre promised, “I’ll see to it that your fat is stripped away layer by layer, blubbery one, and that your tiny companion is smothered in it!”

  There was a moment’s pause. Finally the^small man, >the one named Ruiil, stood up and said, “There’s no harm checking. I’ll call upstairs. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Ruiil disappeared. He returned five minutes later, looking pale and shaken.

  “Well? What’s the word?”

  “We’re to free him,” he said. “There’s been some sort of mistake. The Earthman wants to see him in her chambers immediately “

  With consummate punctiliousness, the two interrogators helped Navarre out of the torture chair—he was a little wobbly of footing on the left leg, which had borne the force of the chair’s neural bolt—and paused a moment as he straightened up.

  They led him back down the corridor, into a large and well-furnished room complete with a lavish bar. The interrogators live well down here, Navarre thought, as they drew a pale amber drink for him.

  He gulped it. “Your hospitality is overwhelming. I’m impressed.”

  “Please don’t hold this against us,” the fat man said. The resonance was gone from his voice, now. He was whining. “We do our jobs. You must admit we had cause to interrogate you—and you said nothing! If you had, only spoken up earlier…”

  “I’ll spare you,” Navarre declared magnanimously. “Take me to Earthman Winstin, now.”

  They escorted him to a glide-channel furnished in clinging soft brown damask and shot upward with him toward the surface. A dull blue landcar waited there, and the fat interrogator scribbled an order on a stylopad and handed it to the waiting driver.

  “Take him to the palace. The Earthman wants to see him quickly.”

  Navarre glanced back once and saw the tense, anxious faces of the interrogators staring at him; then he turned his head, and promptly forgot them. The day was warm, and both suns were in the sky, the red and the yellow.

  Fifteen minutes later he was at the sumptuous palace of the Oligocrat, and just five minutes after that he was being shown through a widening sphincter into the private chambers of Helna Winstin, Earthman to the Court of Lord Marhaill.

  She was waiting for him, a slim, wiry figure in glittering platinum-cloth and red tights, looking graceful and delicate and as resilient as neofoam webwork. Her scalp was bare, in Earthman fashion.

  “I was worried about you,” she said.

  “I ran into some snags when I landed. How was I supposed to know there was feuding going on between Jorus and Kariad? I posed as a Joran, and naturally the customs men collared me.”

  “I sent you a message about it,” she said. “As soon as I received yours. But there are lags in subspace communication; you must have left too soon. Still, no damage has been done; you’ve arrived.”

  No damage, thought Navarre wryly, except for one throbbing leg and an uneasy ache in the area of the chest. He dropped down wearily on a richly upholstered divan and felt the faint soothing caress of the massage-cells as they went to work on his fatigued thighs and back.

  “How is it on Earth?” she asked.

  “Everything is fine.”

  Briefly, he described the status of the settlement as of the time he had left. She nodded approvingly when he was finished.

  “It sounds encouraging. Do you think Antrok will win the election?”

  “He’s a logical choice. The boy’s a natural leader. But what’s this little storm brewing up between Jorus and Kariad?”

  She smiled secretively. “You may remember that Admiral Melwod Finst left Kariad seven months ago on maneuvers, with three first-line ships at his command.”

  “And a Joran fleet of the same size, departed about that time for points unknown, under the command of the excellent Admiral Hannimon Drulk.”

  “Exactly. Now, it became necessary in time for me to account for the whereabouts of Admiral Finst and his fleet. I could hardly reply that Admiral Finst was in reality an Earthman named Navarre, whose appointment to the Kariadi Admiralty I had obtained by coldly bamboozling my good Oligocrat Marhaill. So I took the alternate path of action and caused the maneuver of a subspace dispatch from the noted Admiral Finst saying he had been set upon in deep space by three unidentifiable starships, and was in the midst of a fierce battle.”

  Grinning, Navarre said, “I begin to see.”

  “Likewise,” she went on, “I caused to be filtered into the hands of my tame Joran spy a report that Admiral Drulk’s fleet had been destroyed in action somewhere in deep space. Then it was a simple matter to let Jorus accidentally find out about the similar fate that befell Admiral Finst.”

  “And so both Marhaill and Joroiran concluded that there had been a pitched battle between fleets of Kariad and Jorus in some distant sector of space,” Navarre said. “Which led each of them to suspect that the other had some nefarious designs on him. And which kept both of them from guessing that their ships were perfectly safe, and were now serving as the main line” of defense for the hated enemy Earth!”

  Navarre leaned forward, suddenly serious. “So Jorus and Kariad are at the edge of war over six ships that they think were destroyed. Do you think it’s a wise move to let such a war take place.”

  Helna said, “Of course not. But if I can keep them at the verge of war—if I can foment constant uneasy friction between the two systems—it’ll keep their minds off Earth. Marhaill’s a weak man; he’ll listen to me. And he fears Jorus more than he does Earth. I knew I had to drive a wedge between him and Kausirn, and I succeeded.”

  “Kausirn’s in charge, then?”

  “Evidently. Joroiran is hardly seen in public any more. He’s still alive, but completely in the power of the Lyrellan. Marhaill’s aware of this.”

  Navarre clenched his fists angrily. He still had a mild liking for Overlord Joroiran, spineless, incompetent ruler that he was. And he disliked the Lyrellan intensely.

  “Why did you came back, now?” Helna asked.

  “I was afraid Kausirn might be stirring things up to send a Joran fleet to Earth. Six ships couldn’t hold off the full force of the Joran navy any better than six sheep could. But if Jorus and Kariad are going to go to war with each other—”

  Helna shook her head quickly, an expression of inward doubt appearing on her face. “Don’t be too confident of that.”

  “What do you mean? I thought—”

  “The public attitude is an unhealthy one. But I think Kausirn suspects that he’s being hoaxed. I know he’s been negotiating with Marhaill for top-level talks, face to face.”

  “Well? Can’t you take advantage of your rank to head such talks off?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve warned Marhaill against a possible Joran assassination plot, but on this one thing he doesn’t seem to listen to me. I think it’s inevitable that he and Kausirn will get together and compare notes despite me. And then—”

  “And then what?”

  “And then Jorus and Kariad will undoubtedly sign a treaty of mutual harmony,” Helna said. “And send a combined fleet out to crush Earth.”

  XIV

  Two weeks later, Navarre left Kariad at night, in a small ship bearing the arms of the Oligocrat Marhaill. His pilot was a member of Marhaill’s Secret Service, hand-picked by Helna herself. No one had been on hand to see him’ off; no one checked to see his passport, no one asked where he was going.

  His flight clearance papers bore the code inscription XX-1413, signed by Marhaill, countersigned by Helna. That was enough to get him past any bureaucrat on Kariad; the translation of the double-X was, Special Secret Ambassador for the Oligocrat, do not interfere.

  Navarre chuckled every time he had occasion to glance at at his image in
the ship’s mirror, during the brief journey between the worlds. He could hardly recognize himself, after the job Helna had done.

  His youthful crop of brown hair had been shaven once again; to his bald scalp had been affixed a wig of glossy black Kariadi-type hair, thick-stranded and oily. His normally high cheekbones had been lowered by .an overlay of molding plastic; his eyebrows had been thickened, his lips built up into fleshiness and his jaw-contour altered, his ears drawn back and up by a simple and easily repairable bit of surgery.

  He weighed twenty pounds more than he had the week before. His skin-color was bright blue.

  He was Loggon Domell, Ambassador from the Court of the Oligocrat Marhaill to the Court of Joroiran VII, and only a skilled morphologist could have detected the -fact that behind the outer layer that called itself Loggon Domell was one Hallam Navarre, Earthman.

  This was the second time he had masqueraded as a Kariadi, but Helna and her technicians had done an infinitely more painstaking job than he had, earlier, when he had passed himself off as Melwod Finst. “Finst” had simply looked like Navarre with his skin died blue and his scalp wigged; Domell was an entirely different person.

  It had all been remarkably simple. Helna had persuaded Marhaill that it would be well to send an ambassador to Jorus to discuss the galactic situation with Joroiran and with Kausirn; Marhaill, busy with his draft-hunting and his mistresses, had agreed, and asked Helna to suggest a man capable of handling the job.

  “I have just the man,” she had said. “One Loggon Domell, of this city. A wise and prudent man who will serve Your Majesty well.”

  Marhaill had nodded in agreement. “You always are so helpful, Helna. Send this Domell to Jorus!”

  The little ship landed in midday at the Jorus City spaceport. By prior arrangement, a government car was there to meet him at the edge of the landing apron. A high-ranking Joran named Dilbar Loodig had been chosen as the official greeter.

  Navarre knew this Loodig: a hanger-on at court, a man with a high hereditary title and little else to commend him. Loodig’s boast was that he knew everyone at court by the slope of their shoulders and the angle at which they held their necks; Navarre wondered whether Loodig’s ability would stand him in good stead now. It would cost the courtier his life if unhappily he were to recognize Navarre.