The World Swappers Page 3

  Weighing the unit meditatively in his hand, Counce lowered his body to a squatting position and said, “Some time, Ram, we are going to have to figure what’s missing from a psych-profile. Didn’t you assure me Bassett would be confused enough by the circumstances of my arrival to let me go and ask no questions?”

  Ram bent his noble head as if to avoid Counce’s gaze. “There’s always one unpredictable factor–how the individual will react to your actual physical presence. I’m sorry if you consider that I failed you, Saïd. Meantime, though, I think we should be gone from here before Bassett returns; he sent his ship into orbit at about six hundred miles, and it will not take him long to land again.”

  Stiffly, the old man turned to the pilot desk, and lost himself in the careful maneuvering of the vessel. Counce threw the belt over a nearby hook and sat back against the wall.

  “I think that was hardly kind of you,” said Falconetta, passing her right hand through her long black hair. The tresses rustled on the gold lamé of her sari. Counce gave a shrug.

  “I agree. Sorry. I just don’t feel in a mood to apologize right now. After all, we were relying on Ram–”

  “Exactly. If anybody in the galaxy could have prepared a workable plan, it was Ram. That his idea didn’t come off merely shows that we’ve all been at fault in underestimating Bassett. It doesn’t detract from Ram’s ability.” She turned her smoky-yellow eyes speculatively in the direction of the pilot desk. “He knows so damned much about applied psychology, I sometimes wonder why he isn’t dictator of Earth instead of producer of a video show.”

  “You know quite well why he’s not. Like ninety-nine per cent of the susceptible males on Earth, he’s hopelessly in love with you, and he wouldn’t settle for being dictator of Earth if he couldnt dictate to you too. Which he couldn’t.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” said Falconetta with a trace of weariness. “But I’ve gotten so used to making people fall for me that it’s a positive relief to be with you, Saïd. I know you don’t give a damn one way or the other.”

  “Hello, human being,” said Counce, and quirked his lips.

  “Human yourself,” said Falconetta with a fleeting smile. “Seriously, though, Said–I know I don’t have any say in the matter, but I think it might be as well for me to be ugly next time, if you follow me.” She looked down approvingly at her slender, graceful body, and shook her head. “I shall miss this … but I’m desperately afraid of coming to rely too much on physical attractiveness and not enough on my own ability.”

  “I don’t think there’s much risk of that. But I’ll try and drop a hint. Were you beautiful before?”

  “Not as beautiful as I am now. I turned a few heads. But when I found myself like this, it was a–a shock, you know?”

  Counce nodded. “It’s always a shock. It’s always different. But adapting to the difference is like riding a bicycle or swimming–once you’ve learned, the talent of adjustment stays with you. I should know.”

  Falconetta nodded. “How many times have you died, Saïd? I don’t think I’ve ever asked.”

  “Five.” Counce’s eyes seemed for a moment to lose their focus, as if he was staring into memory. “The first time is always the worst.”

  Falconetta shuddered. “I hope so. Did you ever go back and look at yourself?”

  “No. Did you?” Counce regarded her curiously; she gave a slow nod.

  “It was back on Shiva, where I was born. I went and looked at the headstone on my own grave. But the thought that there was the name I had called my own, and the idea that under that stone was the flesh I had lived inside of–ugh! I shall never do it again.”

  Ram finished setting the course on the pilot desk; now he turned the chair to face the others, and Counce made a small movement that accepted him into the discussion.

  “Where precisely did we go wrong?” Ram inquired. “We followed you on the screen, of course, but there’s certain information–atmosphere, if you like–which doesn’t come through.”

  Counce spread his hands helplessly. “Mainly, I think we failed to realize just what an intelligent man Bassett is. And by intelligent, I mean adjusted to facts as they present themselves. His selective inattention level must be incredibly low.”

  “I wish we could give him the facts,” Falconetta said musingly. “He is the sort of man we need.”

  “Not quite. If intelligence were enough, we could appeal to him–intelligence is logical, after all. It’s pride and self-esteem that present the difficulties, and Bassett has plenty of those.” Counce punched fist into palm. “We need him and what he can do for us. He needs us too, though he doesn’t know what for, wouldn’t admit it if he did–and in any case we can’t tell him. Paradoxical, isn’t it?”

  Ram exhaled with a gusty sigh. “Yes,” he said. “Like most very intelligent men, he is expert at looking after himself. Which implies that you and I would not rate very high on any scale of practical intelligence.”

  “Because we spend a stupidly large amount of time worrying about other people?” Falconetta suggested.

  “Exactly. Check the school records over the centuries –the infant geniuses have gone on to become business giants and administrators, not social reformers, artists, poets. Intelligence manifested as common sense.”

  “Not quite,” objected Counce. “Common sense ought to prevent Bassett from doing as he intends to do. If his plans materalized, the thing that would please him most would be that he was the man who opened up the outworlds, who made the outworlds other Earths. And that’s the most dangerous fiction of all, because they aren’t! An outworlder is a human being, but he’s not an Earthman, and Bassett would treat him as if he were. You can’t reduce millions of unique individuals to a single common pattern; if they’re all being made to behave according to a norm, most of them are being driven to act in ways more or less foreign to their nature. Can you imagine people on Boreas, Astraea, Ymir, everywhere, all being hammered into a mold meant for Earthmen? That’s what Bassett would do, and the results would be terrifying!”

  Falconetta shuddered. “I know. And yet he isn’t what you’d call an evil man.”

  “No. Just inexperienced.”

  The robot operating the transfax gave them a polite warning, and the cabin filled with a flash of brilliant light as something materialized on the platform. Frowning, Counce picked it up–a single sheet of paper with a brief message on it. He scanned it, and then deliberately folded it up before looking at the others.

  “What’s the most disastrous thing you can conceive happening in the immediate future?” he asked.

  “Bassett ignoring our intrusion?” suggested Falconetta with a frown. “After all, he now knows there’s someone in the galaxy with a workable matter transmitter, which is the worst mistake we’ve made in years. What that may do to his thinking–”

  “Bad,” conceded Counce. “But not the worst. We could always assassinate him if we were driven to it. Ram?”

  “Discovery of Ymir by the Others,” the old man said, and Counce nodded emphatically.

  “Very bad indeed. You’ve more or less bracketed what has actually happened. This note is from Wu on Regis–the Others visited it before we got there. They’ve dug up proof.”

  Their faces reflected their dismay. “That’s awful,” whispered Falconetta. “And coming on top of what Bassett did …”

  “You already have an idea,” said Ram, scrutinizing Counce’s face keenly. “Saïd, you have one of the keenest minds in the galaxy; let us hear what your suggestion is.”

  “Well, this makes it absolutely essential for us to make Bassett lose patience with his own ability to solve the Ymiran problem. Could you imagine him refusing to jump at a real live Ymiran, right here on Earth?”

  “There are Ymirans on Earth,” objected Falconetta. “They have an embassy in Rio about four blocks from Bassett’s head office.”

  “But they staff the place with the least corruptible and most masochistic of the faithful. Since Jarosla
v, there hasn’t been anyone there capable of thinking for himself.”

  “When I think of the Ymirans I’ve met,” Ram said quietly, “I begin to wonder if Bassett might not be doing them a favor if he went ahead unchecked.”

  “They are a bunch of frigid, unthinking dullards, aren’t they?” Counce agreed. “But look at it this way. No amount of external examination will reveal the solution to the Ymiran problem. No one except ourselves could realize its true nature. Bassett would doubtless think that to get his hands on a native Ymiran, study him, drain his mind of every subjective impression he recalls, would enable him to solve the problem. When he finds that’s not enough after all, the letdown may be sufficient for him to give in and call on us for help.”

  “It strikes me as being very feasible,” said Ram. “But for one thing. How do you propose getting such an Ymiran to Bassett?”

  “Ask Jaroslav. If anyone can manage it, he can. He’s told us that not all the younger generation on Ymir are as mentally fogbound as their elders. We must bring one of the most alert young people to Earth–by orthodox ship. If Bassett found memories of travel by transfax in the subject’s mind, he’d recognize our hand in the matter and know he was being fooled.”

  “This isn’t going to be exactly a pleasant experience for the Ymiran Jaroslav selects, is it?” put in Falconetta.

  “Very unpleasant. But Jaroslav is about due to become the first, as distinct from the only, recruit we’ve had from Ymir. If he hasn’t a suitable person in mind, I’ll have some very unkind comments to make. But if he has, then I think the person he sends will be more than compensated for what he has to undergo by joining us later.”

  “Fair enough,” nodded Falconetta. Counce glanced at Ram, and after a moment the white head inclined in agreement.

  “Right. I’ll go arrange it with Jaroslav,” said Counce, pulling himself to his feet. “Ram, can you get enough power on this transfax to ship me to Ymir?”

  “It’s not the transfax that’s the problem, but the propulsor pile of the submersible,” said Ram dubiously. “This will probably drain its fissiles past their half-life. But I suspect the urgency justifies it. Please go ahead.”

  He rose from his chair and gave his habitual courtly bow; Falconetta smiled and lifted one slim beringed hand in salutation. In the middle of his own parting gesture, Counce found himself under a different sun.

  CHAPTER V

  Temperamentally, reflected Bassett, Lecoq and himself were ill-suited. If only he could find another man with such a gift for improvisation, but without Lecoq’s irascibility and tendency to work himself up into a frenzy … He dismissed the thought. He had looked hard and long for a substitute for Lecoq, but, though Bassett was always careful not to let him know it, Lecoq had made himself indispensable.

  Now he raised a hand to cut short the subordinate’s flow of words. “Lecoq!” he said sharply. “Sit down, have a cigar, and shut up for a moment. Suppose we look at this matter with a bit more detachment–”

  “Detachment!” snarled Lecoq. “With a situation like this facing us, how can we even pretend to be detached?”

  “I said shut up and sit down,” Bassett repeated levelly, and Lecoq, grumbling, subsided.

  For a moment Bassett did not go on. He turned his head to the picture window at the right of his desk; made of one-way glass for privacy, it gave him a view from the vantage point of the eleventh floor clear across Rio to the edge of the sea. Afternoon sun was glimmering on a seeming infinity of windows in the lower buildings within his view.

  Matter transmitter … The concept ticked through Bassett’s mind. With instantaneous transport of goods, how enormously complex a trading empire might be built up; how much more of the visible universe might be delivered into the hands of man!

  He grew aware that he was stretching Lecoq’s limited ability to remain silent beyond its capacity. He turned back to face his assistant across the vast bare top of his enormous desk.

  “You panic, Lecoq,” he said bluntly. “As you say, it is disturbing to discover that there exists a group of persons with such resources that they can not only employ devices we believed to be purely hypothetical, but can also forecast the failure of a plan we believed to be reliable.”

  “Disturbing!” Lecoq snapped. “It means that we’ve been made monkeys of!”

  “Nonsense. If this group, whoever they are and wherever they may operate from, were powerful enough for us to need to fear them, actively fear them, then they would not feel a need to remain hidden from us. Obviously, they do wish to stay concealed. This argues that they have considerable resources of knowledge, but not of effective forces. Yet it is reassuring that they have not succeeded in remaining in hiding. Up till the other day, we had heard the vaguest rumours of such a group. Now we know a good deal about them. Logically, I deduce that we have worried them out of their preferred pattern of behavior. Good. Let’s do it again. Soon.”

  Lecoq scowled gloomily. “How? We still don’t know where they operate, who their members are. I’ve consulted a dozen of our staff physicists, and none of them can define a method of detecting the operation of a matter transmitter, so we can’t locate them that way.”

  “How?” said Bassett, ignoring the last part of Lecoq’s remark. “Why, by taking them at their word and capitalizing on their suggestion about Ymir.”

  “You’re not seriously proposing to follow that up, are you?” Lecoq demanded. “Ymir! It’s the least likely of the outworlds to afford a solution to our problems.”

  “They were right about our failure on Boreas, weren’t they?” Bassett countered. “You’re not going to tell me they rigged our own company computers to give us a false answer. No, we got adequate confirmation on that score as soon as we processed our data. Boreas is out. It looked obvious. This suggests to me that we probably weren’t even asking the right questions. But that’s beside the point. If this mysterious group has such exact knowledge of my personal movements, for example, that they can have a man waiting for me in mid-Pacific within half a mile of the place where my ship comes down–”

  “They probably extrapolated from its entry into the atmosphere and transmitted the man there a moment before we arrived.” Lecoq plainly did not think highly of the achievement.

  “I don’t care how he got there.” Bassett hunched himself forward in his chair and rested his elbows on the desk. “The important fact is that they did have someone waiting to meet me on my arrival on Earth, which argues a close study and pretty full knowledge of my recent activities. No one except ourselves knew just when we were returning to Earth, nor that I was proposing to put down in mid-Pacific instead of coming direct to the South Atlantic off Rio, as might have been expected. That’s point one.

  “Point two: They knew in advance, and our computers have agreed with them, that Boreas was a stupid place to look for an answer to our problems.

  “Point three: Despite their vaunted pretensions to be able to solve the Ymiran problem, they took the trouble of arranging an elaborate and impressive means of telling me about it. This could well imply that they are in fact looking to me for the solution which they can’t find, even though they know where it lies. Consequently–”

  Bassett threw himself back in his chair again and gave Lecoq a belligerent and authoritative stare. “Consequently, we will investigate, with all the resources at our disposal. And this time we’ll frame our questions differently. What do you know about Ymir, Lecoq?”

  The suddenness with which he threw out the question took Lecoq by surprise. Now he hunted for his voice as if, in the unaccustomedly long period of listening, he had momentarily mislaid it.

  “Why, I know quite a lot about all the colonies. Ymir is by far the coldest, most miserable and generally unlikely world which men have ever attempted to make their home. The equatorial regions are habitable; the population is around eight or ten million, and everyone is half-frozen and half-starved. But they claim to like it.”

  “No!” exploded Bassett. “Th
at’s a dangerous way of putting it. They don’t like it; they endure it more or less gladly, and there’s a whole universe of difference. I’ve been reading up on Ymir’s history–just before I called you up, as a matter of fact. I still have the spool in, in fact.”

  He glanced down at the controls on the side of his desk, moved one of the switches, and shaded the windows so that the office was in half-darkness. Lecoq swung his chair around to face the same wall as Bassett, and on which, as the projector warmed up to speed, a flickering series of words and pictures appeared. Bassett was running the spool back to its beginning.

  “This is an official account from the Ymiran Embassy,” he said. “I had someone call on them and pick it up this morning. Apparently they supply these to anyone who asks for one, by way of publicity.”

  “I shouldn’t have thought they had much to boast about on their icebox of a planet,” Lecoq said sarcastically.

  “Oh, it isn’t boasting. It’s probably a sort of inverted pride; they’re displaying their toughness, self-righteousness and endurance. Look at that, now.” He stopped the projector on a wide-angle shot of Ymir’s capital city, Festerburg; its square, ugly buildings poked up between walls of ice, and coarse black smoke swirled about each rooftop, as if trying to blend it back into the bleak landscape. They burned coal and oil, laid down in an earlier interglacial period, obtained by arduous hand mining and drilling.

  “Know where that is?” Bassett demanded.

  “That’s the capital,” Lecoq snapped. “Festerburg.”

  “Right. Know why they call it Festerburg? It’s from the first line of one of their religious songs, Ein’ feste Burg ist unser Gott. I could think of better reasons for choosing the name, but that’s the official reason as given here.”

  He snapped rapidly through a series of shots of the founding fathers of Ymir, all without exception angry-faced, intolerant-looking men and women. He stopped at a faded view of the original landing.