Lobengu couldn’t speak. He staggered off, almost frothing, swearing eternal damnation to the Horakah fire brigade and their slackness and bungling and sheer inefficiency and downright numbskull ineptness.
The incendiary capsule provided by Rawson as part of the bargain had done its duty only too well.
The hotel, the Blue Dragon, was no more. In its place smouldered a sagging heap of blackened beams and the charred remnants of the kitchen quarters.
Caradine felt quite unhappy about it. He hadn’t intended to be so drastic..
However, the canister in which Rawson and Sharon had been smuggled onto this world had been destroyed, and the job done by the incendiary capsule insured that probing investigators would not piece together its existence or the true purpose of Caradine’s sample case. At least, so he hoped.
Walking up and down with the others—they were all dressed as they had been except for Lobengu, who had retired early and disastrously—Caradine mulled over Rawson’s cocky confidence. The tardy arrival of the fire brigade was a pointer to this tiny portion of Alpha being a showcase. They’d probably never envisaged any occurrence like this, and the fire helicopters had had to be brought in from outside. Caradine wondered what that outside was going to be like.
Carson Napier walked up across the grass, with the shadows stretching longer and longer, and they began to stroll up and down together, to all appearances just two evicted guests speculating on their night’s accommodation.
“Well, Carter. We can talk now.”
“I think it’s safe. If a spy eye is on us—”
“I’ve a gadget to take care of those, and a bug if they use one.” He didn’t specify where the gadget was kept about his person.
“You called me Caradine. You said you were omitting the frills. All right. That’s okay, the Second CST is no more and that means that the frills are now meaningless.”
“I’ve come a long way to find you.”
“You’ve stepped straight out of a fairy story if you asked these people.” Jinny Jiloa had gone home with her parents. Caradine wondered briefly if he would ever see them again. “But I think I should make it quite clear to you that my home is now Shanstar. You mentioned Belmont. I assume you are using that only as a cover. I’m not using Shanstar. I belong to Shanstar. Oh, and if you want to kill me you’ll have to shoot me in the back.”
“Yes, I know of your prowess with a gun.” - “I’m not proud of it. Well, come on then, what do you want?”
“That depends rather on whether you are still the David Caradine of ten years ago.”
“Those were the days… Hell, you don’t start the old tear ducts going. I washed my hands of the whole filthy business when the Second CST was sabotaged. I’d sweated blood to build that; I’d put everything I’d got into it. And then some lousy nit-ridden effeminate so-called militarists stepped in and tried to take over.” Caradine was getting mad.
“I know,” Napier said sympathetically. “It was bad. I was a simple lieutenant of the Terran Space Navy then. I remember as though it was yesterday your final broadcast to the Commonwealth.”
“And only four years ago—no, five, now—I lit out for space and went clear through the Blight. I guess you had a rugged trip, following me.”
“Some. Your renunciation of supreme power rather took the thrust from the tubes of the gentry you so aptly described. They formed a Third Commonwealth Suns of Terra, you know!”
“Did they now!”
“It didn’t last. When they were overthrown the Fourth and Fifth rose and fell. When I left they were trying to knock into shape the Third Republic. I guess their numbering in either Commonwealths or Republics is along into double figures by now.”
“You don’t appear to have a high regard for these new groupings.”
“No.”
“Aren’t you forgetting that they are the governments of the whole family of suns centering on Earth? Over one million it was, last count. All outwards in the opposite directions from the Blight. Someone must exercise a sort of general direction to keep the harmony, otherwise you’ll have the parochial bickerings they have here.”
“You always did that well. Very well. The little men who try to run things now tremble when your name is mentioned.”
“And some did not. Some men have been known to acknowledge a liking for me…”
Caradine remembered Napier’s early remark and the look on his face. He hadn’t misjudged that look, then. And he very much cared for the youngster’s direct and natural way of conversation, without a hint of a kowtow in parsecs. That was a good feeling to have.
“Those men who are now in command know that whilst you are not reported as dead, absolutely and finally, their authority is a mere shadow.”
“Ah!”
Well, then, this might be it. Napier could have been sent to dispose of the wispy, far-off, but still potent threat that one day, one dreamlike day, David Caradine would return to Earth and her million suns and resume his old, voluntarily renunciated cloak of power.
“You’re in for a big disappointment, Napier. Either way, you lose. If you’ve come to ask me to return, sent by a caucus of my old government friends, I’ve finished with it all, as I said the day I resigned. If you come to kill me, you have a man-sized job. And even if you do kill me, I don’t care. I’ll have less problems when dead—”
“John Carter!” The imperious voice rang across the darkening lawn. Both men turned.
A man hurried towards them over the grass. Caradine gained an impression of haste, a motded face with large dark eyes, a fleshy nose and a weak mouth. But his thoughts were still back on Earth, back when he was running the Second Commonwealth Suns of Terra. That position of supreme power had not come overnight; he’d had to use every artifice to weld those million suns into some semblance of law and order. He could scarcely claim, even, that he ruled them. Such a task with orders of that magnitude was well-nigh impossible, even with all the wonders of robotic speed and organization. But the CST formed a single unit; there were no wars within its boundaries, no tariffs, no barriers. Men moved freely within the Second CST, and united solidly to fight any hostile alien attacks from without.
“Mr. John Carter? My name’s Baksi.” He spoke confidentially so that Napier could not hear. “No doubt Hsien Koanga mentioned me to you?”
“Yes, he did.” Baksi was one of the agents previously sent by Koanga. Caradine’s mental hackles rose.
“Koanga sent me a gram. Coded, of course, under the guise of shipping instructions. I need to talk to you, privately.”
“Of course.” Caradine turned to Napier. “Will you excuse me? I must, be about my business. It has been a pleasant Chat.”
Napier smiled. “I didn’t come to kill you, and I have formed my opinions already. My mission is accomplished. I’ll be seeing you around, Mr. John Carter.”
“Please hurry, Carter,” Baksi said nervously.
“Goodbye, Carson Napier. The Second CST is one with Atlantis, Pergamum and the Martian Empire.”
Caradine moved away: What was so urisetthng, so strange, about that smile on Napier’s face?
A breeze frisked across the evening sky and Caradine changed direction to the pathetic pile of personal belongings of the dispossessed hotel guests. “Half a minute, Baksi. Think I’ll put my coat on. That, at least, was saved.”
“Hurry then.”
Caradine found his coat, a black hip-length weatherproof, and supposed someone searching for their own belongings had tossed it down so casually. He put it on and it dragged. He allowed no expression on his face, but followed Baksi as the frightened man hurried towards a ground car parked in the lengthening shadows.
Right-hand pocket, a familiar shape. So familiar that it brought a pang of memory. Left-hand pocket, a round metal object with a strap. Wristwatch? Caradine pulled it out and casually slipped it onto his wrist, placing his own watch back in the pocket. No watch. This must be the gadget Napier had mentioned. Spy eyes and bugs, huh? Well, he wasn’t so naked as before. It looked like a watch, though, which was useful.