Flandry weighed his answer, thinking of knives at his back and night beyond the windows. “I have no message, Tuan, other than friendly greetings,” he said. “What else can the Imperium offer until we are able to get to know your people better?”
“But you have come here under orders, Captain? Not by chance?”
“My credentials are in my spaceship, Tuan.” Flandry hoped his commission, his field agent’s open warrant, and similar flashy documents might impress them. For an unofficial visitor could end up in a canal with his throat cut, and no one in all the galactic vastness would care.
“Credentials for what?” It was a nervous croak from the end of the table.
Warouw scowled. Flandry could sympathize with the Guard chiefs annoyance. This was no way to conduct an interrogation. Biocontrol was falling all over its own flat feet: crude bluster and cruder insinuation. To be sure, they were amateurs at this job-Warouw was their tame professional-but the lowest-echelon politician in the Empire would have had more understanding of men, and made a better attempt at questioning such a quasi-prisoner.
“If the Tuan pleases,” Warouw interposed, “we seem to be giving Captain Flandry an unfortunate impression of ourselves. May my unworthy self be permitted to discuss the situation with him privately?”
“No!” Bandang stuck his head forward, like a flabby bull. “Let’s have none of your shilly-shally. I’m a man of few words, yes, few words and-Captain, I, ah, trust you’ll realize… will not take offense… we bear responsibility for an entire planet and-ah-well, as a man of sophistication, you will not object to narcosynthesis?”
Flandry stiffened. “What?”
“After all-” Bandang wet his lips. “You come unheralded… ah… without the expected, er, preliminary fanfare or-Conceivably you are a mere impostor. Please! Please do not resent my, um, necessary entertaining of the possibility. If you actually are an official, ah, delegate-or agent-naturally, we will wish to ascertain—”
“Sorry, Tuan,” said Flandry. “I’ve been immunized to truth drugs.”
“Oh? Oh. Oh, yes. Well, then… we do have a hypnoprobe-yes, Colleague Warouw’s department is not altogether behind the times. He obtains goods on order from the Betelgeuseans… Ah, I realize that a hypnoprobing is, er, an uncomfortable experience—”
To put it mildly, thought the Terran. His spine crawled. I see. They really are amateurs. Nobody who understood politics and war would be so reckless. Mind-probing an Imperial officer! As if the Empire could let anyone live who heard me spill half of what I know! Yes, amateurs.
He stared into the eyes of Warouw, the only man who might realize what this meant. And he met no pity, only a hunter’s wariness. He could guess Warouw’s calculations:
If Flandry has chanced by unofficially, on his own, it’s simple. We kill him. If he’s here as an advance scout, it becomes more complicated. His “accidental” death must be very carefully faked. But at least we’ll know that Terra is interested in us, and can start taking measures to protect our great secret.
The worst of it was, they would learn that this visit had indeed been Flandry’s own idea, and that if he died on Unan Besar a preoccupied Service wouldn’t make any serious investigation.
Flandry thought of wines and women and adventures yet to be undertaken. Death was the ultimate dullness.
He dropped a hand to his blaster. “I wouldn’t try that, sonny boy,” he said.
From the corner of an eye, he saw one of the Guards glide forward with a raised truncheon. He sidestepped, hooked a foot before the man’s ankles, shoved, and clipped behind the ear with his free hand as the body fell. The Guard hit the floor and stayed there.
His comrades growled. Knives flashed clear. “Stop!” yelled an appalled Bandang. “Stop this instant!” But it was Warouw’s sharp whistle, like a man calling a dog to heel, which brought the Guards crouching in their tracks.
“Enough,” said Warouw. “Put that toy away, Flandry.”
“But it’s a useful toy.” The Terran skinned teeth in a grin. “I can kill things with it.”
“What good would that do you? You would never get off this planet. And in thirty days-two Terrestrial weeks, more or less-Watch.”
Ignoring stunned governors and angry Guards, Warouw crossed the floor to a telecom screen. He twirled the dials. Breath wheezed from the Biocontrol table; otherwise the room grew very quiet.
“It so happens that a condemned criminal is on public exhibition in the Square of the Four Gods.” Warouw flicked a switch. “Understand, we are not inhuman. Ordinary crime is punished less drastically. But this man is guilty of assault on a Biocontrol technicial. He reached the state of readiness for display a few hours ago.”
The screen lit up. Flandry saw an image of a plaza surrounded by canal water. A statue loomed in each corner, male figures dancing with many arms radiating from their shoulders. In the middle stood a cage. A placard on it described the offense. A naked man lay within.
His back arched, he clawed the air and screamed. It was as if his ribs must break with the violence of breath and heartbeat. Blood trickled out of his nose. His jaw had dislocated itself. His eyes were blind balls starting from the sockets.
“It will progress,” said Warouw dispassionately. “Death in a few more hours.”
From the middle of nightmare, Flandry said, “You took his pills away.”
Warouw turned down the dreadful shrieking and corrected: “No, we merely condemned him not to receive any more. Of course, an occasional criminal under the ban prefers to commit suicide. This man gave himself up, hoping to be sentenced to enslavement. But his offense was too great. Human life on Unan Besar depends on Biocontrol, which must therefore be inviolable.”
Flandry took his eyes from the screen. He had thought he was tough, but this was impossible to watch. “What’s the cause of death?” he asked without tone.
“Well, fundamentally the life which evolved on Unan Besar is terrestroid, and nourishing to man. But there is one phylum of airborne bacteria that occurs everywhere on the planet. The germs enter the human bloodstream, where they react with certain enzymes normal and necessary to us and start excreting acetylcholine. You know what an overly high concentration of acetylcholine does to the nervous system.”
“Yes.”
“Unan Besar could not be colonized until scientists from the mother planet, New Djawa, had developed an antitoxin. The manufacture and distribution of this antitoxin is the responsiblity of Biocontrol.”
Flandry looked at the faces behind the table. “What happens to me in thirty days,” he said, “would not give you gentlemen much satisfaction.”
Warouw switched off the telecom. “You might kill a few of us before the Guards overcame you,” he said. “But no member of Biocontrol fears death.”
Bandang’s sweating countenance belied him. But others looked grim, and a fanatic’s voice whispered from age-withered lips: “No, not as long as the holy mission exists.”
Warouw extended his hand. “So give me that gun,” he finished, almost lightly.
Flandry fired.
Bandang squealed and dove under the table. But the blaster bolt had gone by him anyway. It smote the window. Thunder crackled behind it.
“‘You fool!” shouted Warouw.
Flandry plunged across the floor. A Guard ran to intercept him. Flandry stiff-armed the man and sprang to the tabletop. An overlord grabbed at him. Teeth crunched under Flandry’s boot. He leapfrogged a bald head and hit the floor beyond.