The World Swappers Page 12

  He grew aware that Lecoq was answering him. “Not a sign,” he was saying in disgusted tones. “We kept as close a watch on him as we possibly could during the whole operation, trying to find some clue to relate him to others of his group; there was nothing. Then, at the end, he just vanished when my man’s back was turned. I dismissed the man, of course, but it probably wasn’t altogether his fault.”

  “Well, two things are clear,” Bassett said abruptly. “We can’t tolerate a powerful secret society like this–we need that matter transmitter of theirs, for one thing–and what’s more, we can’t continue to let them use us.”

  Lecoq’s eyes held puzzlement. He said, “I can’t make out what it is they want. They seem to have done everything we wanted.”

  “But not for the same reasons, that’s definite. Did we manage to identify anyone who could perhaps be an associate of Counce’s?”

  “Several people who could be.” Lecoq opened a bulky folder on his knee and selected documents from it. “Almost beyond a doubt, this Ymiran, Jaroslav Dubin; unfortunately he could be anywhere in the galaxy right now. We’re looking for him. His disappearance was too neat, too patly timed, to have been coincidental. And look at the consequences.”

  “But we can’t rule out the possibility that he was merely kidnapped by Counce’s group,” Bassett remarked heavily. “And who else?”

  “Probably someone on the staff of Video India. I’ve investigated the people involved in the Falconetta Show, and there are half a dozen of them who disappear unaccountably for short periods. Falconetta herself is one.”

  Bassett raised his eyebrows. “Really! It doesn’t surprise me, I must say. How about this old man who produces the show–the one who’s been complaining to our advertising department about the copy we sent them?”

  “Him too. And then there are individuals on all the outworlds who may conceivably be connected with Counce. They turned up on the spot when we delivered the Ymirans, took charge, and walked off again when things were straightened out. We haven’t been able to establish that any of them arrived or departed by matter transmitter, though. They’re all respected and influential local citizens–civil servants, scientists, doctors, psychologists–but none of them would have been expected to make himself responsible for a group of immigrants without some special reason.”

  Bassett nodded, his eyes skimming rapidly down the pages of the reports. “There’s a sort of picture emerging,” he said. “The impression I get is of a long-established undercover organization which recruits its members very carefully and offers them advantages such as the matter transmitter in return for unquestioning obedience. It’s the scope of the things they can offer which makes our job so difficult. I doubt whether we could easily buy one of them, even if we managed to identify him beyond doubt.”

  “There’s a warning in the way they managed to get the Ymiran girl away from us, too,” said Lecoq mournfully. “I suspect they keep a careful watch on all their members, and if one of them is unaccounted for, they take steps to make certain he isn’t selling the organization out.”

  “We must have the matter transmitter,” Bassett said flatly. “I doubt whether this group could have been set up in the first place without it. Why hasn’t someone else invented it by now?”

  “Maybe they are so well organized they can find out whenever there’s a risk of that happening,” Lecoq suggested. “And they buy the inventor off, or silence him.”

  Bassett shook his head. “They’d need to be hellishly efficient to do that without any news leaking out at all. I don’t want to give them credit for more than is reasonable. By the way, how many people have you involved directly in this? I mean, how many people besides ourselves know now about the existence of Counce’s group?”

  “So far as the staff of the company is concerned, and all the other people who were involved in the evacuation of Ymir, it doesn’t exist. I can say that quite definitely. The idea of evacuating Ymir was yours, and I put it into practice. I think it would be bad for morale if we let it be known that we were acting under–well, under blackmail.”

  “Agreed.” Bassett thumbed through the papers Lecoq had given him. “Well, what we must do now is obvious. We must investigate the most likely of these people whose names are on the list, and somehow get the facts from them.”

  “Starting with Video India?” Lecoq suggested. Bassett inclined his head.

  Counce had in fact stepped back across the parsecs to Regis as soon as he judged the remainder of the evacuation could be left to Bassett’s capable staff. There was much to be done–with Friend, the alien survivor; with Enni Zatok; with Anty Dreean. Besides, it was absolutely certain that Bassett would not rest content with what he had. Sooner or later he was going to find the existence of their group intolerable, and seek a way of attacking it.

  He had been congratulating Anty on the way in which he had restored Enni’s self-confidence and alert brightness–admitting only to himself, for it was a cynical thought, that a fundamental question of human nature had done more than Anty’s actual help. He was standing with the young man alongside the transfax platform, watching the Ymiran girl, who lay in the sunlight fifty yards distant, eyes closed. She wore nothing but dark glasses, and her pale, sun-starved skin had tanned to golden brown.

  It was the measure of a considerable achievement, to have rid her of her deep-seated irrational conditioning about clothes. Counce had said so.

  “It’s like everything else. An individual who is at the mercy of a reaction not based on necessity is that much a malfunctioning person. Take our attitude towards the the Others, for instance.”

  Anty blinked. “I don’t see the connection.”

  “No? Think it over. When they came out fighting from their ship, they were motivated by such a reaction. We, by contrast, were acting strictly from logical necessity. The chance of hostile contact between our races is a disaster; we’re free to maintain that our efforts to promote peaceful understanding are idealistic and all that, but when you reduce it to essentials, it’s the necessity of saving our own skins, not the hope of some future benefit for both our races, which really drives us on.”

  “I’m with you,” Anty nodded.

  Counce gave him a sidelong glance. He really was quite handsome in his new body. A stir of envy rose in Counces mind, and subsided again at once.

  “Pretty, isn’t she?” he said casually.

  “Who, Enni? Yes, she is,” Anty answered with an unsuccessful attempt at equal casualness, and Counce gave him a grin before turning away.

  As he passed the door of Wu’s office, the door was flung back and the director hailed him. “News from Ram, Saïd!” he called. “Bassett’s put two and two together.”

  “Has he now!” Counce went into the cool shadow of the office; Wu had four fans going so hard they were almost blowing the files off his desk.

  “It can’t be coincidence that four of his firm’s staff have been making casual inquiries about where Ram, Falconetta and our other two agents spend their off-duty time.” Wu kept his eyes on Counce’s face, watching for his reaction.

  “That’s the other two at Video India, you mean,” Counce said with irritating obtuseness. Wu took a deep breath and nodded.

  “What do you recommend we should do about it?”

  “Why, tell them, of course.” Counce didn’t blink or smile.

  “Tell them? You’re out of your mind!”

  “Not at all. We knew we had to come at least partly into the open to impress Bassett and enlist his help. If he’s been a little quicker than we anticipated in picking up the unavoidable clues we left, we can’t help that.” Counce took a chair, swung it round, and sat down facing Wu across the back of it.

  “Now as I see it, the problem is perfectly simple. So long as Bassett gets enough information about us to keep him happy, there’s small risk of him finding out something about us that we don’t know he knows. I want you to tell Ram to supply Bassett with enough data to lead him to Regis.”
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  “What for?”

  “I want Bassett out here, on his own. Where we can deal with him on our terms.” Counce’s eyes seemed to cloud over, as though he were looking at a memory. “It seems to me, Wu–without wishing to be conceited–that in essence there are two human beings. Archetypes, if you like. I’m one. Bassett is the other.

  “Do you know, I was just about his age when I stumbled across the transfax? Bassett is brilliant. So was I, in a different field. But we think differently. We both plan, take thought for the consequences of our actions, but our motives are parsecs apart.”

  Wu sat down silently. He had a feeling that he was not really meant to be listening, that Counce’s soliloquy was for himself alone.

  “Maybe if Bassett had been in the same situation as I was, if he’s seen he had the chance of not just one lifetime, but many lifetimes, to work out his plans, he would have done as I did. But I can’t really believe that. He wouldn’t have given a damn for the fact that the Ymirans were living under conditions unfit for any decent person, if it hadn’t happened to provide him with a means of implementing his plans for himself.”

  He roused himself and stood up. “Ram will be able to fix things,” he said briskly. “I want Bassett here, in his private ship, not knowing quite what he expects to find. And I’ll handle him after that.”

  Wu nodded.

  “Meantime,” Counce continued, “I’m going to step up to the polar base and check on how Friend is getting on. I have a sneaking suspicion we may have been wrong about him.”

  Wu looked slightly alarmed. “How?”

  “Well, Falconetta seems to have made such strides in gaining his confidence, I’m inclined to think we could scrap our plans for preventing contact with the Others, and merely limit it. After all, Ymir stands empty now, waiting for them. Why should we not give it to them at once, as proof of our good intentions? So long as we make it perfectly plain that the gift is conditional on their not infringing human-occupied space elsewhere, I think we could safely intermingle with them–even invite them to maintain a base on Regis, perhaps. We dictate the circumstances, naturally. But the information this will give us about their psychology and their emotional attitudes would more than make up for the trouble of undertaking all the contact work ourselves.”

  “That seems reasonable,” nodded Wu. “In fact,” he added, enthusiasm mounting, “it sounds thoroughly attractive. How soon would you want to do it?”

  “At once,” said Counce, and went out.

  CHAPTER XIX

  Friend had taken things into his own–not exactly hands, but they served the same purpose. Now, when Counce stepped from the transfax into the frigid northern air, he could see at once the slight but unmistakable impact of alien thought-patterns on his surroundings. There was a building, to begin with, proportioned differently from human dwelling. It was not much more than a hut, but expertly made out of blocks of permafrozen soil, sealed with ice which glistened under the stars. There was a sort of garden before it–colored rocks and stones, low-growing alien plants of grayish-green which must have come from seeds included as food in the cargo of the alien ship.

  He went direct to the entrance of the hut, and that too was inhumanly planned, proportioned to a blocky, thick-set alien body. He knocked at the door and was invited in by Falconetta.

  There was nothing much in the room, except the couch they had taken from the ship, shelves to serve as tables, and things which Friend had asked to have made or had made for himself. Falconetta, wrapped in her furs because the air inside the hut was no warmer than that outside, squatted on a cushion on the floor; Friend himself was on the couch. Between them there was a finished version of the language converter the technicians had designed when Friend arrived.

  “Why, Saïd!” Falconetta exclaimed in delight. “How good to see you. Friend, this is–”

  The language converter grunted and interrupted itself; it was disconcerting to hear the alien version of the words at the same time as the human, but doubtless one got used to that, Counce reflected. Certainly Falconetta did not seem put out.

  “I remember you,” Friend said; they had given him a deep, rather pleasantly masculine voice by setting the controls appropriately. “You were the one who untied me when I was first here. I never thanked you. I was afraid then, but not any more.”

  Counce felt a surge of satisfaction. He smiled at the alien, wondering if he had learned to interpret this offensive gesture of displaying one’s fangs as it was meant to be interpreted.

  “I don’t know if anyone told you,” Falconetta said, “but I discovered that Friend studied ecology, and was on this flight as a trainee expert in colonial settlement. Their disciplines appear to have a lot in common with ours.”

  “And in ecological terms,” Friend qualified, “it now appears perfectly plain to me that the galaxy will contain us both to our mutual benefit. This is strange, but I know it.”

  “I think,” said Counce reflectively, “that I should like to show you something and ask your opinion as an ecologist about it. Falconetta, have you time to spare? Are you not needed back on Earth?”

  “I went back the day before yesterday and arranged with Ram to use up some shows we have in the can already,” she replied. “I’m free for some time to come now.” Dryly, she added, “So far as education goes, I think I’m doing a good job here.”

  “I don’t think you need worry about depending too much on physical attraction,” Counce grunted, glancing at the alien’s gray hide and wondering by what standards he judged the females of his own species. That would have been a problem if they’d decided to keep Friend isolated from his own people for a long time; it was reasonable to assume that a young functioning male had the same sort of psychological difficulties among the Others.

  Friend naturally missed the implications of the remark, and his heavy head switched in puzzlement from side to side, but he made no comment.

  “Right,” said Counce, making the decision. “Come with me.”

  It wasn’t too much of a risk, bringing Friend to Ymir by transfax. Chances were, the alien had already figured out that mankind had such a device anyway; how else would they have snatched a full-sized ship from its course?

  Ymir was not quite barren, of course; there were the empty cities to bear witness to human occupation, and the fields of hardy winter-bearing wheat, and the starving cattle that had had to be left behind in the evacuation. But aside from that, and the indigenous life, it was empty. Waiting.

  To save power, Counce sent forward a transfax unit first; he chose a spot for it where a cross section of the whole planet would spring into view–ice-ridged mountains, bare, rocky plains, an inlet of the floe-scattered sea, rolling yellowish-gray against the shore.

  They stepped through one after the other: Counce first, then Friend, apprehensively, but bravely, and Falconetta last. The two humans stood shivering in a blast even icier than that of Regis’ polar regions, but the alien stepped forward almost reverently.

  While he was surveying the scene, Counce caught Falconetta’s eye and grinned; she gave an answering nod and a smile. The language converter, which had been refined to lightness and ease of carrying, stood beside her. Counce picked it up and directed it towards Friend.

  “This is the world you surveyed from space on your last trip,” he said, and Friend swung round in altogether human astonishment.

  “But that’s not possible,” the converter boomed. “We saw that it was populated by your kind.”

  Counce thought of the things that had happened since then. Time enough for detailed explanations later; for now, let it appear a truly disinterested action. He said, choosing his words carefully, “We did not need this planet. Some of us had come here to live, but it was hard for them to find enough to eat. Therefore when we discovered that your race favored such worlds as this, we concluded you would be able to make better use of it. Could you?”

  “Could we?” Friend threw up his forelimbs to embrace the landscape. “W
hy, this is the most beautiful world I ever saw!”

  Counce drew his eyebrows together with a wry expression; he hoped Friend was far enough away for the look to be lost on him. But Falconetta saw it, and chuckled.

  Friend was setting off on a tour of inspection; despite their coldness, they followed him, and it was more than two hours before they circled back towards the transfax through which they had come. They were barely within sight when they saw that someone stood on its platform, scanning the landscape.

  “Excuse me,” said Counce. “Someone wants us.” He began to run, and as he came closer saw that the new arrival was Katya.

  “So there you are!” she snapped. “I wish you’d been kind enough to let us know where you were going. It wasn’t till we found Friend and Falconetta had both disappeared too that Wu had an inspiration. Damn it, we’ve got people looking for you over half the galaxy!”

  Counce glanced round. “We’ve been enjoying ourselves,” he murmured. “What’s the trouble?”

  “Only another alien ship headed for Ymir, that’s all! We were getting set to drag it off its course when Wu said something about you having second thoughts, and we’re going out of our minds with worry.”

  “How long will it be before it gets here?”

  “Two to three days. We’ve got eight hours to seize it with the transfax before it gets out of range.”

  “Two to three days,” echoed Counce thoughtfully. “All right, we’ll let it come all the way, and when it arrives, we’ll surprise them with a small reception committee. Regis Main,” he said to the transfax robot, and stepped out of earshot before Katya could reply.

  Counce would have given much to be a telepath when the ship swooped to its landing and the Others found one of their own kind waiting on the strange new world. He would have liked so much to know–instead of merely guessing–what the astonished reactions were. Still, the mere appearance was reward in itself.