Somewhat belatedly Sobrie produced his own gun, ducking below the level of the table, only to see that all the voices that had been added to his side of the argument had been silenced, their owners dead.
He ripped open his shirt, plunged his hand inside, and slowly rose.
Guns were trained on him. He took his hand from his shirt and held up the s-grenade he had taken from his body-pouch.
“Don’t move, anyone,” he said in a strained voice, “or we all get it.”
Step by step he backed to the door, their eyes watching him blankly. In seconds he had reached it, flung it open and then was racing through the cavernous cellars.
White faces, shocked by the sound of gunfire, stared at him, their mouths black holes. He waved the gun and shoved people aside, strangely aware that no pursuit was, as yet, being organised. No more than twenty seconds passed before he had reached the nearest exit. He plunged into it, up the dank tunnel, pounding along it for yard after yard.
The tunnel ended in a concealed door which opened on to yet another cellar beneath a disused warehouse. Sobrie presently emerged in a side street in an outlying district of Sannan. He hurried from the spot to more populated streets, and stopped at the first vidbooth.
Layella’s face came up on the screen. Her eyes widened at the sight of him.
“Hello. What is it?”
“Layella, get out of the apartment right away.”
Alarm showed on her features. “What?”
“Get out of there this minute. Don’t wait to take anything – just as much money as you can snatch up.” He thought for a moment. “Meet me under the clock in Kotsin Square. Have you got that?”
Her face became pale, but calm. “Yes.”
“Right.” He killed the screen, and a moment later was pacing the busy street, his mind racing, trying to figure the situation from all angles. They’d have to leave Sannan, and quickly. They could go – my God, where? Everything was in turmoil. Already the networks would be breaking open; there’d be almost nothing left.
He took a tubeway and came up some distance from Kotsin Square. Making a rough calculation of how long it would take Layella to get there, he walked slowly the rest of the way. When he arrived she was already waiting, looking nervous and fidgety, dressed in a drab brown coat.
“Where are we going?” she asked, looking at him with round, Amhrak eyes.
“We’ll go to Jorb Gandatt,” he said. “He’ll help us.” Some of the League was bound to survive, he told himself. There were bound to be some diehards, like himself and Jorb, who wouldn’t surrender. Enough would pull through so that some kind of organisation remained.
He felt sure that Jorb was trustworthy and that he’d be able to help them. The Sannan circuit (his own circuit, he thought ruefully, the one he commanded) would be entirely blown, but Jorb didn’t belong to it; he was one of Sobrie’s contacts with the outside. He might be able to tell them where to go to be safe.
She took his arm as they crossed the square. At first he didn’t notice that the entrance to Kotsin Square seemed a little crowded, or the grey van, without any insignia or designation, that was parked unobtrusively to one side of the square. But just before they entered the throng they were both taken roughly by the arms and propelled toward the vehicle.
The back of the van was open. Inside sat a pudgy little man who had been scanning the square’ through a set of periscopes. Sobrie realised, with a sudden jump of his heart, that they’d fallen into one of those Titan devices one heard about but never met: a roving racial street-check. And the pudgy man was that half-legendary figure, the dev expert: one who could tell a dev or a part-dev at a glance.
The dev expert looked Layella up and down as though she were something dirty. “She’s one all right,” he said in an acid, slightly nasal voice. “I don’t know how she’s got away with it so long.”
Sobrie gave a strangled cry. Whether he’d have had the nerve to use his s-grenade, thus killing Layella too, he’d never know. Because two plainclothes Titans held him with arms outspread, while one reached under his shirt and yanked out the deadly device.
“Interesting,” murmured Limnich. “And Leard Ascar is still out there, you say?”
“Yes, Leader,” said Heshke.
“Hmm. Of course, we’ve always known there was a possibility of human settlements existing out among the stars – some of them perhaps dev. There are indications of interstellar flight in the records of the Pundish Aeon – but you know that, of course, Citizen Heshke.”
“Yes, Leader,” Heshke said again, slightly embarrassed. Planetary Leader Limnich was, as Heshke had found during meetings with him earlier in his career, obsessive about anything bearing on the history of True Man. His knowledge of archaeological detail came close to challenging Heshke’s own.
Heshke faced Limnich across the latter’s massive desk, and was spoken to respectfully by him. Hueh Su-Mueng was also present, but was forced to sit in the corner, flanked by two guards. Planetary Leader Limnich cast him a disdainful glance every now and then, plainly disliking to have the dev in his office.
“And what do you make of this plan of theirs, Heshke? What’s their ulterior motive?”
“I sincerely believe they have no ulterior motive, Leader,” Heshke told him frankly. “They evidently have no designs on Earth, indeed no direct interest in our planet at all. Strange though it may seem, they’re prompted simply by the urge to help a neighbour in distress.”
“The fiendishly clever Chink,” Limnich muttered audibly, nodding to himself as if with some inner satisfaction.
“Yes, I’ve heard the phrase before,” Heshke said stiffly.
Behind Limnich stood Colonel Brask, looking on the scene much as Heshke recalled him doing on that day in Titan-Major Brourne’s office. The looks he gave Hueh, however, displayed undisguised loathing.
“And how did you find it, living with… the Chinks?” Brask asked him.
Heshke squirmed uncomfortably. “They are… not like us,” he admitted.
“Indeed not.”
“I was impressed, however, by how much they could help us,” Heshke added.
Brask gave a smile of wintry sarcasm, and Limnich replied: “Whatever their intentions were, their scheme has come unstuck this time. Surely you’re aware, Citizen Heshke, that we’ll never give up our efforts to hold Earth for True Man. The son doesn’t desert his mother, even to save his own life – and no matter how dire the peril to them both. We’re building up our power to defend our birthright. That defence will be total – desperate, perhaps – but overwhelming. Titan-Colonel Brask here, as it happens, is in charge of the formation of the Titanium Legions of Kronos, named after the ancient god of time, that will enable us – already are enabling us – to strike across the centuries. He can tell you that we’re not beaten yet.”
“But you know the nature of the catastrophe that’s coming!” Heshke exploded. “It’s a natural catastrophe, not due to any living enemy. How are you going to deal with that?”
“We already have a plan,” Brask told him loftily.
“And what’s that? I’m fascinated!” Despite being in the presence of such charismatically high rank, Heshke couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
“Our aim is to effect the total annihilation of the enemy’s biosphere. By means of a massive nuclear attack we’ll eradicate all life, so that not a microbe remains. Their time-system is associated with the existence of life: consequently, by removing that time-wave, which will die with the death of alien life, we remove the impediment to our own existence.”