“Yes, thanks to an unexampled teacher.”
Shiu Kung-Chien departed. Ascar, impatient to get on with it, continued checking the work of the servitors, carefully scanning the streams of calligraphic ideograms that came up on the monitor.
It was damned good to get away from desk-work. He’d been hungering for action for some time.
Titan-Major Brourne stood in a large concourse, a sort of intricate plaza, watching the flood of men, materials and weapons that came surging in a disciplined operation through the docking ports. The flowers and shrubs, the miniature trees and tinted screens, had all been trampled down and cast aside to make way for the traffic, which was heading deeper into the space city. The immediate area was solidly secured, ringed by heavy machine guns and even light cannon, and hour by hour came reports of whole districts taken without any show of resistance.
At this rate the whole city would be in his hands in a day.
Already he’d made an excursion into the occupied areas and everything he saw confirmed his instincts. It was exactly as he would have expected: decadence, nothing but decadence. Decadent art, decadent science, decadent customs. The Chinks were effete, ultra-sophisticated, wallowing in sensual pleasure – the whole city was simply an orgy of effeminate prettiness. And the people didn’t seem to know how to react to the invasion. They had none of the rude, healthy vigour that made True Man great.
Brourne strode to a small building near the ports where he had set up his field HQ. Hueh Su-Mueng sat looking over a complicated map he’d prepared of the city. As the reports came in he was marking more and more of it in blue, his code for “taken”.
The plan of operations was largely his brainchild. His idea was to have the whole city under control before the masters of the Leisure Retort could gather their wits sufficiently to take any effective action. He was striking down toward the bottleneck joining the two retorts, so as to cut off any retreat in that direction or any orders for weapons that might be given to the workers. Once the Leisure Retort had been seized he’d been promised that he himself could take a small force of Titans into the Production Retort. He hoped for a good response from its inhabitants to his news.
“All in order?” Brourne rapped.
Su-Mueng nodded, looking up at the stubby, barrel-like man. “We’re keeping to our timetable remarkably well.”
“Too well,” Brourne rumbled sulkily. “I like the opposition to put up a bit of a fight.”
Su-Mueng ignored the remark and continued studying the map, wondering where Hwen Wu and the rest of the cabinet were.
A Titan sergeant appeared at the door and saluted smartly. “We’ve found a white man, sir.”
Brourne turned with interest, but the man who stood there flanked by two troopers was unknown to him. He was a tall, slim man, his eyes steady, wearing garments of an unfamiliar cut – basically Earth style, but probably tailored here in the space city, Brourne imagined.
“Who are you?” he barked.
The other paused before answering in a low tone. “My name is Citizen Sobrie Oblomot.”
The Titan-Major glared at him, then decided on a less threatening posture. “Well, it’s certainly a change to find a white man in a place like this,” he said briskly. “How did you come to be here?”
“A Chink ship brought me,” Oblomot told him. “From the Amhrak reservation.”
“Amhrak? Are you an Amhrak?” Brourne was startled, almost indignant. “Frankly I wouldn’t have known it—”
“No, I’m not Amhrak. I was banished there for… political reasons.”
“Oh, I see.” Brourne grimaced. “As a matter of fact, my men were expecting to find Rond Heshke, the archaeologist, when they brought you in. Presumably he was on the ship too?”
“No…” Oblomot said slowly. “Rond stayed behind.”
Brourne looked disappointed.
Dismally Sobrie’s eyes took in the scene in Brourne’s HQ. It depressed him, having thought he’d escaped the Titans for good, to see them come pouring into Retort City as well. For a moment he’d had the crazy idea that they were taking over the universe.
His first thought had been for Layella. Even in Retort City costume she stood out a mile. But a group of women had taken care of her and hidden her somewhere. With luck the Titans wouldn’t notice her for some time.
For some reason he hadn’t tried to flee himself. Probably, he rationalised, he’d become infected with Rond Heshke’s style of defeatism.
The young officer at the table turned around and spoke to the Titan-Major. It was, Sobrie realised with a start, Hueh Su-Mueng – wearing Titan uniform! The spectacle of a full-blooded Chink dressed out as a Titan-Lieutenant made Sobrie burst into laughter.
Brourne silenced him with a scowl and lumbered over to glance at the map. His troops had reached the centre of the city – of this half of the city, at any rate. Even if its rulers tried to organise some sort of defence it would do them no good now.
“Excellent, excellent,” he murmured. “Well, there it is, then. The job’s practically done.”
Su-Mueng rose to his feet and spoke respectfully. “Now that matters have reached this stage, Major, may I request that I lead a force into the Lower Retort, to assess the situation there?”
The Titan laughed brutally. “Sit tight, Chink, you’re not going anywhere.”
Alarm showed on Su-Mueng’s yellow features. “I don’t understand, Major. Planetary Leader Limnich made a firm promise—”
“We don’t do deals with devs,” Brourne sneered. “Sometimes they come in useful, like animals come in useful. You’ve done your job, and thanks very much.” He jerked his head to two huge guards at the back of the room, who promptly strode forward and stamped to attention on either side of Su-Mueng.
The boy’s a simpleton, Sobrie thought. He really didn’t know what sort of people he was mixing with. He probably doesn’t understand, even now, what racism means.
And Su-Mueng did, indeed, look bewildered, like a child who’s been cheated.
“This – this is outright treachery!” he spluttered breathlessly, swaying as though about to faint. “When Limnich hears—”
“Limnich, Limnich!” Brourne jeered. He laughed again, loudly. “After you left, Limnich had his office fumigated!”
“You need me to get cooperation in the Lower Retort —”
“The Lower Retort will get the same treatment this one is getting – and soon.” He would have moved into the Production Retort first, in fact, except that there was no dock there for the spaceships. Still, Brourne didn’t anticipate any trouble. The masters are gutless, he thought. The slaves must be even worse.
“If you have any further role to play, it will be as an interpreter,” he told Su-Mueng. “We’ll probably need a few of those.”
He gestured to the guards. “Take him in custody. This fellow Oblomot, too. I’ll decide what to do with him later.”
Su-Mueng stood blankly for a moment. Then he did an astonishing thing. He took one step to the rear and both hands went smoothly up to both men’s necks. The troopers jerked momentarily, then fell back, unconscious.
The lithe youth bounded forward to meet the party escorting Sobrie. His hands seemed scarcely to touch them, merely weaving in and out in a graceful arabesque. But the soldiers were caught up in that arabesque, tumbling in a flurry of limbs until they finished up dazed on the other side of the room.
The people of the Upper Retort practised the arts and all mental pleasures; those of the Lower Retort practised sport. Su-Mueng was using Hoka, the culmination of thousands of years’ development of unarmed combat. Compared with the enthusiasts in the Production Retort Su-Mueng was but a beginner, but he could stun – or, though that was forbidden, kill – with but a light touch upon a nerve, and in his hands an untrained man’s body was but an assemblage of self-destructive levers.