Part 6 (1/2)

”Yah,” Starrlah-Wilny said.

”Missed a bleedin' er two 'n' tha croaker says I'm stuck with it so I better stick around, fer a wile anyways.”

”Aw ri', load tha pelt 'n' start shovin' tha meat in.” They did so, while the boss, of course, looked on. After a time, while the hard-frozen carca.s.ses were being trundled along the monorail into the frigid body of the truck, the owner-very highly pleased with the size and quality of this load-spoke again.

”Some say the wildies're better'n tha civ'lized feems sometimes. Mabbe so 'nless ye hafta cut their dam throats to keep 'em f'm knifin' ya. Wildies're bad thataway. Lotta men get gizzarded, tryin' to tame 'em. 'Speshly that old. Smart 'nuf 'n' good 'nuf to keep tha whankers f'm sniff'n'em out that long, they slice y'up into whanker-meat 'n' scram tha h.e.l.l out. Me, I druther pay more 'n' keep my guts inside me where they belong.

”Naw.” Rodnar-Brosk disagreed.

”If ya beat 'em up, sh.o.r.e. Why tha h.e.l.l not? All ya hafta do is show 'em ya like 'em 'n' like to have 'em around. She broke in good 'n' I never licked 'er once. B'sides, lookut whatcha get. Jever see a city feem with them lines er that quality? She's got breedin', boss. Tha.s.s why I wanted 'er, not 'cause she was cheap.”

”She don't look too bad now, fer a fact. Primin' up, ya might say.” The big man looked at the supposed Wilny's firmly jutting b.r.e.a.s.t.s and at her superb figure in exactly the same way as he would have examined a prize-winning orkst in a stockshow. Having status and a number; he was infinitely above any un'stat.

”Looks like mabbe she c'n work good 'n'd have good get. How long was y'up in tha hills, Wildy Wilny.”

”Ever since I was belly-high to a norkst,” she bragged. She was working smoothly, easily, without missing a hook.

”But ya can't dodge 'em f rever once they start reely whank'rin' ya, so they fin'ly drug me in. But ya know sumpin? It's gettin' so I kinda like the grock.” She jerked a thumb at Rodnar.

”I like to eat reg'lar, too, 'n' sleep safe 'n' dry 'n' soft 'n' warm.”

”Noticed he gotcha a high-stat bed 'n' throwed tha bunk out. Yer cost'n'm, wildy. Mabbe yer wuth it, though.”

”Depen's on where yer lookin' from, who's gettin' tha blade. I figgered first-off I was gettin' purely jobbed, but in some ways it's nice, knowin' where yer at. Mebbe I'll get all civ'lized 'n' even like brats, I dunno.”

”Tha.s.saway to talk, wildy,” the fat man said. Then, the loading done, he climbed up into his cab, thought for half a minute, and added, ”This ain't a bad load for two orksters, tha time ya took, it ain't bad a tall.” That was a compliment indeed. With the Garshan gone, Starrlah looked at Rodnar with an impish glint in her eyes and beamed a tight thought.

”So I 'broke in good' and you 'like them lines.' I got breedin' too. Thanks so much, my dear.” Laughter came bubbling to the surface.

”Oh, Rod-wasn't it fun.” As has been said, the two Slaarans could not stand psionic inspection, but that was to be feared only if they had given Wayrec or some other top-bracket Garshan psiontist some cause for suspicion-and they were pretty sure that they hadn't yet. They had been careful enough at every point to be virtually certain of that, even though they had no real evidence whatever that Laynch actually was plotting against the Tyranny of Sonrathendak Ranjak. If any Garshans were so plotting, however, they would have been checking right along for spies, both inside their organization and outside it and using their every ability to vam (a word covering the full range of extrasensory perception and capability.) This checking would cover everyone down to and including Status Fifteen, certainly. To Twenty, probably, and to Twenty-Five possibly. Below Thirty the possibility would be vanis.h.i.+ngly small-there were so many people in those grades that any systematic psionic coverage of them would take vastly more time and effort than it could possibly be worth. And as for the possibility of checking the billions of Garshan un'stats-that didn't warrant consideration. No-the Slaarans' only risk of detection lay in the quality of their own varning. They would be safe unless and until they tripped some psionic trap hard enough to trigger a lock-onand that they hadn't better do! The real Brosk had requisitioned enough stock from the owner to keep him and his half-wild mate at work twelve or fourteen hours out of every twenty-four. Neither Rodnar nor Starrlah, however, had to feel of or even look closely at an orkst to know when. it was priming up. They could do many other ”impossible” things. Wherefore they spent much of their time lying flat on their backs on the big bed, varning. Hour after hour their mental fusion scanned nonpsionic minds-sifting indetectably the total knowledge of governmental, managerial, executive, and regulatory personnel up to and including Status Ten. That was as high as they wanted to go at first-people who, besides being nonpsionic, were neither as smart nor as able as they themselves were. (They both were actually high Fives in ability, but there wasn't a thing they could do about it-yet.) They did not learn very much from any one person, but the total knowledge of things Garshan obtained from the thousands of medium-to-high executives studied was impressive indeed. And when each item had been stored in Stafflah's near-eidetic memory, had been indexed and cross-indexed therein; had been a.n.a.lyzed and synthesized by both operators working in fusion, and finally, when a hundred or so different a.s.sumptions and hypotheses had been extrapolated and/or projected into the future, then and then only then was the Starr-Rod team ready to go to work on the really powerful psionic minds of Garsh. This was fantastically tricky business, especially since one of the first discoveries they made rocked them right back on their heels. The highest high-stats of Garsh, up to and including the Grand Justice himself, were psiontists! Wow! With the Council of Grand Justices unanimously and continuously opposed to psionics in every form, what did that mean? The Slaarans did not exactly know, but their educated guess was that it confirmed their belief that Garsh was and had been planning on taking over the entire Justiciate. And the Garshan Wayrec, so outspoken at the Inst.i.tute meeting, was obviously a spy. This new data did not, however, change either their objective or their method of operation. They would have to be even more careful than ever, was all. To be caught in their spying by those minds would be veree ungood indeed, they would never get another chance even fractionally as good. Wherefore they did not actually touch any high-stat psionic mind at all.

They attended, invisibly and indetectably, highlevel meetings and conferences, listening to and recording all business transacted. They listened to high executives dictating via voice or thought to machines or secretaries. They held detector webs, for fifteen minutes at a time, to entrap leakages of thought from minds immersed in high-level planning. They hovered over tables in exclusive restaurants, especially over those tables at which strong drink was copiously imbibed, hence at which grievances against superiors were sometimes being aired. These data were very informative indeed. Above all, they followed VIPs after important meetings, varning for leakages and unguarded, unconscious radiations of thought. There were reasoned or careless afterthoughts of differences of opinion concerning matters of high policy and decision and action. There were angry condemnations of and bitter recriminations against-too intense to be contained-the stupidities and the incompetence of persons mentioned profanely and luridly by name. All these and thousands of smaller-and quite possibly meaningless-items were seized, studied, and stored... and to such good purpose did they work that by the end of Starrlah's vacation period they had everything pretty well wrapped up. Not in detail, of course, but in broad they had a fairly coherent and meaningful picture and they had figured out the first moves in the game they would have to play. Wherefore they vanished from the orkstmen's cabin, leaving their borrowed garments behind, and, while those garments were still warm, the real Brosk and the real Wilny reappeared in them, with no knowledge whatever that they had been out of them except to sleep, or that they had been away from the orkst-ranch for any time at all. They knew as a matter of course that they had been on the ranch all along, they remembered distinctly every detail of the work they had done and every word of their various conversations with the ranch's owner. And both took it for granted that they had learned by doing to be better orkstmen than they had ever been before. Both Slaarans reappeared in Rodnar's subs.p.a.cer in the cavern on the moon of Garsh where, after thanking the psiontist-trainees for a job well done, they dismissed them, and with haste, though not without some difficulty, they removed every trace of their Garshan disguises. There followed a brief but fervent time of parting. Then Starrlah vanished by 'porting herself back into her one-room, one-girl apartment in Meetyl on Slaar; and next morning, it was a thoroughly refreshed, lovely, and buoyant FirSec Starrlah who went enthusiastically back to work at her regular job. Rodnar. on the other hand, 'ported his subber to join Marrjyl and Knuaire, awaiting aboard Knu's yacht. With the little vessel stowed, they went into mind-to-mind discussion of what had been learned. Although some pertinent details were still lacking, it was completely safe for them to a.s.sume that Grand Justice Laynch of Garsh planned to overthrow the Justiciate and make himself the Supreme Grand Justice. And by everything that was logical and by indications picked up during their spying, he would be acting without delay. The flight of tens of thousands of psiontists, many of them undetected highstats holding important positions, with the general chaos attending their disappearance, gave the Garshan a made-to-order opportunity. Having reached this conclusion, they acted.

10 - THE EAGLE-FEEDING.

Rodnar, Marrjyl, and Knuaire, working together to avoid duplication, alerted two hundred-odd other Psiontist Firsts of six planets and they all went to Slaar. Five of those six planets did not require attention, since none of them had a Grand Justice on the Justiciate; but Slaar was all-important. As a matter of fact, it worked out that whoever held the City of Meetyl and its Edifice of Justice and its top-echelon Guards of the Person held the entire Justiciate. The two hundred-plus psiontists 'ported into Meetyl without any trouble. Most of them were unknown to the Guards, all of them had excellent covers, and a few hundred visitors make no impression at all upon a city of ten million. The three ringleaders-four, counting the metallurgist Sleht-who were well known to, and wanted badly by, the secret police, had no trouble, either- Meetyl had so many first-cla.s.s hotels that, except for the tourist and convention seasons, there were many hundreds of rooms vacant every night. Food, of course, was no problem, and the fact that they could not pay for either lodging or food did not bother them at all. They had no worries about anything three-dimensional, but subs.p.a.ce was something else. Something entirely else. They were watching subs.p.a.ce-all subs.p.a.ce through or by any part of which any approach whatever could be made to the Edifice of Justice and the person of the Supreme Justice of the Justiciate. Since time would be extremely important in the instant of attack-to be measured in milliseconds-they had set up an instantaneously-reactive webwork of warning, and the psiontist handling that webwork worked a s.h.i.+ft only one minute long. That was as long as even those minds could stay at the peak of tension and awareness. They were virtually certain that Laynch would make his move in daylight and in public. They were fairly sure that it would be at a big public affair, very probably the well- publicized eagle-feeding extraordinary to be held five days from then in the Room of the Throne itself, and which His Power the Supreme Justice himself was going to grace with his presence. Nevertheless, they took no chances. The Supreme Justice, although he had no suspicion of the fact, was being guarded as no ent.i.ty in all history had ever been guarded before, guarded through every millisecond of every hour of every day. Marrjyl, whose long one-minute s.h.i.+ft followed Rodnar's, was just as tense and alert and keen as he had been. She, too, held a plasma-jet blaster in one hand and a razor-sharp bladesman's knife in the other. The Edifice of Justice is not an edifice. Nor is it a cave. It is a thing of a thousand rooms built in the depths of a mountain. It is protected in every direction by more than two thousand yards of solid rock, as well as by all the weaponry known to a warlike race of men. Built of high-tensile alloy, it is much stronger as a unit than the volume of rock it replaced. It is air-conditioned throughout, its lighting is an apparently sourceless glow of daylight quality and intensity. The greatest, finest artists of all Second s.p.a.ce worked for more than two centuries on its decorating. For those who lived there at the time in question-the elite, the creme de la creme of the entire Justiciate-it was the ultimate in luxury and of status. Anything that any one of those personages wanted, he or she in full measure had. The Room of the Throne was immense, so tremendous that, while its shape was actually long and narrow, it was so wide that it seemed impossible for such a vast unpillared cavity to exist so far underground. It was of a splendor and a magnificence not seen on Tellus since the glories of Babylon and of Rome. It was both barbarous and supermodern; it was utterly fantastic. The wall-to-wall carpet was of synthetic fiber, with a deep, rich pile, flaming out all the colors of the spectrum in bizarre designs.

Walls and ceiling, in mosaics of exquisite artistry of tile and gold and jade and jet, portrayed in story after pictured story the triumphant history of the Justiciate. But there were also cages of steel bars, within which huge mountain eagles beat their clipped wings fruitlessly and screamed in hungry rage. There were brutish men, naked except for leather belts, who carried heavy bludgeons and long, sharp-edged knives. There were guards in full s.p.a.cearmor carrying plasma-jet blasters in their hands. There were agile, hard-trained men and women in knife-fighters' nylons, wearing the beautifully-made tools of their trade. Nine-tenths of the Room's great length of floor sloped sharply upward, to afford all standees-no one sat, ever, in The Presence-a clear view of what was happening on its level one-tenth. That immense ramp now held fifteen thousand people, all of whom had paid for their tickets by being of service to the Guards of the Person. Not in cash, those ducats were not for sale at any price in cash. The Throne, on its dais of jet and gold and purple, was built against the end wall opposite the ramp. It was made of varicolored transparent plastic, which, self-luminous, radiated bands and beams and ever-changing patterns of many-colored light. It was inlaid and laced and latticed with polished gold, it was studded with blazing, sparkling gems. And the man who sat on that magnificent throne looked every inch the power he was. Seventy or so years old, he was tall, straight, and carried very little fat. His hair was white, but he still had it all, and his teeth-he was grinning savagelywere even, white, and natural. Before the Throne, flat on their faces on the floor, were three rows of people. Three rows of naked men and women, each row a hundred and twenty feet long. Packed close, side by side. Psychics all, mentalists who had the inner strength-or the sheer stupidity-neither to fight nor to teleport themselves out of harm's way. The Supreme Justice, without rising, held up his ornately carved and jeweled scepter and spoke.

”Any trial of such vermin as these would be superfluous. They are not human beings, they have no right to live in human guise. I declare them eaglemeat. Keeper of the First Cage, to work.” One of the brutish men leaped to the end of the first row of victims, seized a man by the hair, and dragged him over the carpet to the first cage of the long line. There, on a rubber mat-while the eagles screamed and flapped in ever-mounting frenzy-he slashed his victim's tendons, bludgeoned the limbs to break the bones, then flung the crippled body into the cage. Everyone stood spellbound at this, the opening event of the long-awaited spectacle. Everyone, that is, except the two hundred-plus uninvited psiontists. They were all watching subs.p.a.ce now. This was-or very shortly would be-the moment. Since Rodnar and Marrjyl, while watching. were not wound up nearly as tightly as the psiontist whose s.h.i.+ft it was, they were a flick of time behind that psiontist in materializing in the Room of the Throne. They appeared, however, close beside the Supreme Justice and in time. Laynch himself was there in full flesh, driving a knife at Ranjak's heart. Rodnar swung his blaster, but he had made a very poor choice of weapons. Blasters were heavy, whereas knives are light. Thus Marrjyl's knife flashed three-quarters through that brawny wrist before the gun was in line. Instantly, almost instantaneously, Rodnar did what he should have done in the first place-locked mentally onto the knife and hand, stopping them cold a bare four inches from target-finding that he acted just in time. Laynch's mind was there, too, with all its power. For an instant those two tremendously powerful minds warred, then Rodnar found himself in possession of the knife, four almost-whole fingers, and a part of a thumb. The rest of the hand had vanished with Laynch. Rodnar tried to follow the Garshan. He was sure it would be useless, but he had to try. His departure and return were almost simultaneous. He got back in time to see the abandoned knife and five severed digits fall into Ranjak's lap. The knife, dropping point down, was so sharp that it cut effortlessly through jeweled robe of state and through ornate brocade shorts and made a wound in the royal leg that began quite freely to bleed.

”He won't be back in person,” Rodnar snapped the thought at Marrjyl.

”He'll have to have that hand attended to or bleed to death and by that time it'll be over. So watch here while I-.”

”Why me, you noisome jerk?” she stormed.

”Watch him yourself.”

”Because I want somebody here who's got both brains and guts-and down there's a job for professionals, not amateurs!” and he leaped into the melee. All this had happened so rapidly that the Supreme Justice was just beginning to realize what was going on. He had no doubt at all, though, that he was still the supreme despot of all the planets of all s.p.a.ce, and he reacted accordingly.

”Shut up, you egregiously slankerous kfard!” Marrjyl drove the thought so viciously that every cell of the nonpsionic brain screamed in agony.

”You're not Lord of s.p.a.ce anymore. You're a ma.s.s of meat worth exactly as much as that much eaglemeat. You started something. n.o.body knows who'll end it or how. In the meantime you had better give thanks to whatever Force you recognize that we decided to save your life-at least for now.” Rodnar was already deep in the action. A small army of Garshans-he never did find out how many-had 'ported into the Room of the Throne to kill a few thousands of the Justiciate's officialdom, and they were going about it in a thoroughly workmanlike fas.h.i.+on. Rodnar and his fellows were not defending the Justiciate to save the lives of any Tyrant's minions. They did not care if all those vicious onlookers died. They were after Garshan operators. It was now war to the death between them and the psiontists of Garsh, and both sides knew it. All the guards, s.p.a.cemen and savages alike, were already dead, of course. Neither side wanted interference, so the guards had died first, by mental force alone. Unseeing, careless of footing, Rodnar materialized with both feet squarely upon the naked back of a slender yellowskinned woman still lying p.r.o.ne on the carpet. She uttered one prodigious involuntary grunt, screamed once, and vanished, and Rodnar noticed, almost unconsciously, that the other pacifists were disappearing, too. Being sacrificed gloriously was one thing, to be trampled to death ignominiously, under the feet of a coa.r.s.ely brawling mob, was something else. The sudden drop through the s.p.a.ce where the yellow woman's slim body had been, although only a few inches, disturbed Rodnar's aim so much that the needle beam of his blaster, instead of drilling a neat hole through the Garshan's head at the bridge of his nose, cut him completely in two diagonally, from his right shoulder down and across through his left hip. The Garshan's body did not impede the ferocity of Rodnar's beam at all. It went resistlessly on, slicing through the bodies of a score or more of spectators on the ramp, through the splendid rug and through the even more splendid mosaic of the floor, and deep into the rock of the subfloor before its frightful force was spent. Rodnar gasped and scanned; but no ally-psiontist had been in the way of that wide, wild slash. Fair enough-but this was no place for blaster work. He 'ported the gun away and went in with his knife. As has been said, Rodnar wasn't big. He stood only five nine and tipped the beam at an unimpressive one-sixty. He was, however strong and tough and fast. He was in hard training and he had studied and practiced bladesmans.h.i.+p ever since he was six years old. In ordinary knife-fighting, one combatant always knows where the other is. He doesn't disappear. This engagement, however, was knife-fighting plus. Either could disappear at will, to reappear in the same instant behind the other and stab him in the back. Many tricks were tried on Rodnar during the seventy-five seconds that the battle lasted, but none of them worked. Once he found himself facing Sonjormel Wayrec of Garsh-the disruptive psiontist spy-who attacked viciously and whom Rodnar promptly disemboweled. Rod was covering the whole hemisphere of perception and he was very, very fast. Thus, before the battle ended, he was covered with blood-not his own-from one end to the other. Suddenly all fighting stopped. All surviving enemies had vanished. Rodnar scanned. Two hundred thirteen dead Garshans. Almost all of his men had taken a slash or two, but only four of them were dead-and Knuaire and Sleht weren't wounded. Fair enough. There is no need to detail here what happened and was still happening on the ramp. Everyone knows what occurs when a jam-packed mob goes panic mad. Almost a thousand people died in the Room of the Throne that day. Rodnar 'ported to Marrjyl's side, getting there at the same moment as Knuaire.

He took over the tasks she had been doing, including that of holding together the edges of Ranjak's wound, which was already beginning to clot.

”Thanks for the help,” he said aloud.

”Oh? You did know it, then?” she answered.

”Between Knu and you I was really busy. Knu needed help more than you, he's not a pro.” Her eyes were still stormy, but a slight smile was trying to make headway at the corners of her mouth. Knuaire answered.

”Of course we knew. We're not that stupid. Otherwise I certainly would have taken a couple of nicks or worse-I'm not that good with a blade and some of those Garshans were experts.”

”But what are you sore about?” Rodnar demanded.

”You aren't notching your knife, are you.”

”No.” Marrjyl's half-smile disappeared.

”I wanted in! Besides, the girls will all think I glumpfed out.”

”Is that all?” Rodnar smiled broadly.

”You know better than that. So do they if they're listening-and they probably are. You were picked for this job, girl. I told you.”

”Don't I get any credit?” The question formed in the three minds. It was Starrlah who as FirSec had been holding the fort for Ranjak.

”I watched, of course, and though I may not be an expert at psionics or in bladesmans.h.i.+p, I know I kept a few of those knives out of your back, Rod.” Rodnar's mental reply was contrite and warmly grateful.

”I should have known, sweetheart-and thanks so much. I'll thank you in person after we take care of His Nibs.”

”You're not going to.”

”No-we'll 'port him out to the yacht. We'll see if we can't drive some sense through his thick, hard skull. If we can't I'll feed him to the eagles, just like he thought he was going to do to us.” He paused.

”We'll have to get behind a good tight screen somewhere with him before we can relax.” He looked at Knuaire.

”We both need a bath, and...”

”I'll inform the attentive world you do.” Marrjyl wrinkled her nose in pretended distaste.

”Over all the loudspeakers of Slaar.” Two men, the woman, and the ex-dictator vanished.

11 - HIS MAGNIFICENCE TAKES INSTRUCTION.