Hort said, “It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if your commanding officer were having an extremely interesting conversation with a young native named Fornri.”
“Is his name Fornri?” Vorish asked in a low voice.
“Yes, sir.”
“I told him he’d get killed if he tried to go through the perimeter,” Hort said. “I told him with all those new lights and sentry posts it’d be impossible, and I could make an appointment for him tomorrow, and he said it was too important to wait and the Plan would get him past the sentries.”
“What Plan?” Smith asked.
“The Plan behind everything the natives do. You’ve been listening to part of it.”
Vorish leaned forward and turned off the projection. “I suppose all the sentries and patrols have been watching the forest so they can hear the explosions better, and this Fornri walked right up to Sentry Post Number One without being challenged.”
“That he did,” the officer said grimly. “He had to pass through the perimeter, avoid three patrols, and follow a route that should have been visible to half the rear-line sentry posts, and no one saw him. I’m going to throw twenty men in the brig.”
“I’ll look into that later,” Vorish said. “Well—I’ve heard Wembling’s side of this, so it’s only fair that I hear what the natives have to say. Do you suppose Wembling would let us have an interpreter?”
“I wouldn’t know about that, sir, but this native doesn’t need one. He speaks Galactic.”
Vorish nodded his head. “Of course. He would. This is quite an assignment we’ve drawn here. Everything is perfectly logical and utterly inexplicable. Gourds explode, but only when they’re properly asked. A construction site is under tremendous guard with the navy called in to help, and for no obvious reason. Natives speak Galactic, which as far as I know isn’t a native language anywhere in the galaxy. Bring this Galactic-speaking native in.”
16
He was clad only in a loincloth, and he entered the Hiln’s control room with the superb confidence of one about to take possession of it. He said, “Commander Vorish? I am Fornri.”
Vorish did not offer to touch hands. He would give this native a fair hearing, but he wasn’t pleased about the commotion that had made the interview possible. He especially wasn’t pleased because, if his men had been as alert as he expected them to be, this youngster should have been a corpse right now instead of an emissary, and Vorish could think of nothing that Fornri or any other native might have to say to him that couldn’t wait until the morrow or even the next week. He indicated a stool, and as Fornri accepted it he moved up one for himself.
Fornri spoke firmly. “My understanding is that you are members of the Space Navy of the Galactic Federation of Independent Worlds. Is that correct?”
Caught in the act of seating himself, Vorish straightened up and stared. He said blankly, “Yes—”
“On behalf of my government, I ask your assistance in repelling invaders of our world.”
The communications duty officer so far forgot himself as to exclaim, “The devil!” Vorish managed to sit down on his second try, and he said calmly, “By ‘invaders’ I suppose you refer to the construction project.”
“I do.”
“Your planet has been classified Three-C by the Federation, which places it under the jurisdiction of the Colonial Bureau. Wembling and Company have a charter from the Bureau. They are hardly to be considered invaders.”
Fornri spoke with exaggerated deliberation. “My government has a treaty with the Galactic Federation of Independent Worlds. The treaty guarantees the independence of Langri and also guarantees the assistance of the Federation in the event that Langri is invaded. I am calling upon the Federation to fulfill its treaty obligations.”
Vorish turned to the duty officer. “Let’s have the index.”
“Shall I put it on that screen, sir?”
“Yes. Dial Langri for me, please.”
The screen at Vorish’s side flickered to life, and he spoke aloud as he read. “Initial contact in ’44. Classified Three-C in ’46. There’s no mention of any treaty.”
Fornri took a tube of polished wood from his belt and slipped out a rolled parchment. He passed it to Vorish, who unrolled it and smoothed it flat. He stared at it so long, and so incredulously, that the duty officer came to look over his shoulder.
“That’s the seal of the battle cruiser Rirga!” the duty officer exclaimed. “It’s a certified copy of the original.”
Vorish tapped the parchment with one finger. “Where is the original?”
“It is preserved in a safe place,” Fornri said. “We requested copies at the time the treaty was signed, and the naval officers supplied them.”
Vorish looked again at the screen. “There’s something exceedingly peculiar about this. The treaty is dated two months after the initial contact, and it classifies the world Five-X. That would mean that the ’46 action was a reclassification. The index should say so, but it doesn’t.”
“There’d be no possible explanation for almost a two-year delay in classifying a world,” the duty officer said. “But is the treaty genuine?”
“Where would these natives get the knowledge and equipment to produce a forgery on this order?” Vorish turned to Fornri. “If this is genuine, and I see no reason to doubt it, there’s skulduggery here on an order I wouldn’t have thought possible. Tell me what happened.”
The next morning Aric Hort called to keep an appointment made by way of Smith’s com equipment the night before. He took Vorish for a walk along the beach, and at a point beyond the construction site perimeter, where the coast curved northward for a short distance, they found eight native boys waiting for them with a boat. They had a swift ride along the coast, past several native villages, and eventually the shore curved west again and Vorish saw the spectacular silhouette of a modern building perched on a bluff by the sea.
“So that’s the medical center,” he said. “Would you mind explaining—”
“Not until you’ve seen it. I promised Talitha she could have first crack at you before I stuff you with misleading information.”
“Talitha?”
“Miss Warr. Wembling’s niece. The medical center is her pet project.”
“I gather that you don’t think much of it.”
“I think it’s tremendous,” Hort said. “I just wish the natives hadn’t had to pay such a stiff price for it. When a man has an infected toenail, we ought to be able to heal him without cutting off his head.”
They turned shoreward and beached their boat beside two other native boats that were drawn up on the beach. Someone had gone to considerable trouble to construct a paved walk that curved to the top of the bluff on a gentle slope, but another path, crude but well worn, went directly and steeply to the top, and Hort led him that way without apology.
Talitha Warr received him graciously and introduced him to Dr. Fenell, the Wembling and Company staff doctor who spent two half days a week at the medical center and also was on call for emergencies. Miss Warr was capable of ornamenting any surroundings and also seemed dazzlingly efficient. Dr. Fenell was a gawky young man, obviously inexperienced, and certainly not the sort Vorish would have expected to find in such an adventurous project. He wondered if the man was a failure attempting to rehabilitate himself.
The doctor followed Miss Warr about as though she were the doctor and he the nursing assistant, and he fawned over her at every opportunity. Vorish observed Aric Hort glaring at the two of them. Obviously there was a rivalry here that perhaps accounted for Hort’s attitude toward the medical center and made his judgments suspect, but that was no concern to Vorish. He would form his own judgments.