Part 13 (1/2)
Honesty tempted von Schlichten, for a moment, to disclaim originality for the principles he had just enunciated, even at the price of trying to p.r.o.nounce the name of Niccolo Machiavelli with a geek-speaker.
The sun slid lower and lower toward the horizon behind them as the aircar bulleted south along the broad valley and dry bed of the Hoork River, nearing the zone of equal day and night. Ha.s.san Bogdanoff drove while Harry Quong finished his lunch, then changed places to begin his own. Von Schlichten got two bottles of beer from the refrigerated section of the lunch-hamper and opened one for Paula Quinton and one for himself.
”What are we going to do with these geeks,”--she was using the nasty and derogatory word unconsciously and by custom, now--”after this is all over? We can't just tell them, 'Jolly well played; nice game, wasn't it?' and go back to where we were Wednesday evening.”
”No, we can't. There's going to have to be a Terran seizure of political power in every part of this planet that we occupy, and as soon as we're consolidated around the north of Takkad Sea, we're going to have to move in elsewhere,” he replied. ”Keegark, Konkrook, and the Free Cities, of course, will be relatively easy. They're in arms against us now, and we can take them over by force. We had to make that deal with Jonkvank, or, rather, I did, so that will be a slower process, but we'll get it done in time. If I know that pair as well as I think I do, Jonkvank and Yoorkerk will give us plenty of pretexts, before long. Then, we can start giving them government by law instead of by royal decree, and real courts of justice; put an end to the head-payment system, and to these arbitrary ma.s.s arrests and tax-delinquency imprisonments that are nothing but slave-raids by the geek princes on their own people. And, gradually, abolish serfdom. In a couple of centuries, this planet will be fit to admit to the Federation, like Odin and Freya.”
”Well, won't that depend a lot on whom the Company sends here to take Harrington's place?”
”Unless I'm much mistaken, the Company will confirm me,” he replied.
”Administration on Ullr is going to be a military matter for a long time to come, and even the Banking Cartel and the mercantile interests in the Company are going to realize that, and see the necessity for taking political control. And just to make sure, I'm sending Hid O'Leary to Terra on the next s.h.i.+p, to make a full report on the situation.”
”You think it'll be cleared up by then? The _City of Montevideo_ is due in from Niflheim in a little under three months.”
”It'll have to be cleared up by then. We can't keep this war going more than a month, at the present rate. Police-action, and mopping-up, yes; full-scale war, no.”
”Ammunition?” she asked.
He looked at her in pleased surprise. ”Your education has been progressing, at that,” he said. ”You know, a lot of professional officers, even up to field rank in the combat branches, seem to think that ammo comes down miraculously from Heaven, in contragravity lorries, every time they pray into a radio for it. It doesn't; it has to be produced as fast as it's expended, and we haven't been doing that. So we'll have to lick these geeks before it runs out, because we can't lick them with gun-b.u.t.ts and bayonets.”
”Well, how about nuclear weapons?” Paula asked. ”I hate to suggest it--I know what they did on Mimir, and Fenris, and Midgard, and what they did on Terra, during the First Century. But it may be our only chance.”
He finished his beer and shoved the bottle into the waste-receiver, then got out his cigarettes. ”There isn't a single nuclear bomb on the planet. The Company's always refused to allow them to be manufactured or stockpiled here.”
”I don't think there'd be any criticism of your making them, now, general. And there's certainly plenty of plutonium. You could make A-bombs, at least.”
”There isn't anybody here who even knows how to make one. Most of our nuclear engineers could work one up, in about three months, when we'd either not need one or not be alive.”
”Dr. Gomes, who came in on the _Pretoria_, two weeks ago, can make them,” she contradicted. ”He built at, least a dozen of them on Niflheim, to use in activating volcanoes and bringing ore-bearing lava to the surface.”
Von Schlichten's hand, bringing his lighter to the tip of his cigarette, paused for a second. Then he completed the operation, snapped it shut, and put it away.
”When did all this happen?”
She took time out for mental arithmetic; even a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p officer had to do that, when a question of interstellar time-relations arose.
”About three-fifty days ago, Galactic Standard. They'd put off the first shot, six bombs, before I got in from Terra. I saw the second shot a day or so before I left Niflheim on the _Canberra_. Dr. Gomes had to stay over till the _Pretoria_ to put off the third shot. Why?”
”Did you run into a geek named Gorkrink, while you were on Nif?” he asked her. ”And what sort of work was he doing?”
”Gorkrink? I don't seem to remember.... Oh, yes! He was helping Dr.
Murillo, the seismologist. His year was up after the second shot; he came to Ullr on the _Canberra_. Dr. Murillo was sorry to lose him. He understood Lingua Terra perfectly; Dr. Murillo could talk to him, the way you do with Kankad, without using a geek-speaker.”
”Well, but what sort of work ...?”
”Helping set and fire the A-bombs.... _Oh! Good Lord!_”