"O. K., Chief. I don't know what you're up to, but we'll go along a thousand percent!"
The face of the Prince was a frozen mask. "Take him away."
For some minutes after Ardmore was gone the Serene One sat staring at the chessboard and pulling at his underlip.
They placed Ardmore in a room underground, a room with metal walls and massive locks on the door. Not content with that, he was hardly inside when he heard a soft hissing noise and saw a point at the edge of the door turn cherry red. Welding! They evidently intended to make sure that no possible human weakness of his guards could result in escape. He called the Citadel.
"Lord Mota, hear thy servant!"
"Yes, Chief."
"A wink is as good as a nod."
"Got you, Chief. You are still where you can be overheard. Slang it up. I'll get your drift!"
"The headman witch doctor hankers to chew the rag with the rest of the sky pilots."
"You want Circuit A?"
"Most bodaciously."
There was a brief pause, then Thomas answered. "O. K., Chief, you've got it. I'll stay cut in to interpret it
probably won't be necessary, since the boys have practiced this kind of double talk. Go ahead you've got five minutes, if they are to surrender on time."
Any cipher can be broken, any code can be compromised. But the most exact academic knowledge of a language gives no clue to its slang, its colloquial allusions, its half statements, over statements, and inverted meanings. Ardmore felt logically certain that the PanAsians had planted a microphone in his cell. Very well, since they were bound to listen to his end of the conversation, let them be confused and baled by it, uncertain whether he spoke in gibberish to his god, or had possibly lost his mind.
"Look, cherubs -- mamma wants baby to go to the nice man. It's all hunkydory as long as baby-bunting carries his nice new rattle. Yea, verily, rattle is the watchword -- you don't and they do. Deal this cold deck the way it's stacked and the chopstick laddies are stonkered and discombobulated. The stiff upper lip does it."
"Check me if I'm wrong, Chief. You want the priests to give themselves up, and to rattle the PanAsians by their apparent unconcern. You want them to carry it off the way you did, cool as a cucumber, and bold as brass. I also take it that you want them to hang on to their staffs, but not to use them unless you tell them to. Is that right?"
"Elementary, my dear Watson!"
"What happens after that?"
"No thirty."
"What's that? Oh, 'No thirty' -- more to come on this story; you'll tell us later. All right, Chief -- it's time!"
"Okey-dokey!"
Ardmore waited until he was reasonably certain that all the PanAsians not immediately concerned with guarding the prisoners would be asleep, or at least in their quarters. What he proposed to do would be effective fully only in the event that no one knew just what had happened. The chances were better at night.
He called Thomas by whistling a couple of bars of "Anchors Aweigh." He responded at once -- he had not gone off duty, but had remained at the pararadio, giving the prisoners an occasional fight talk and playing records of martial music. "Yes, Chief?"
"The time has come to take a powder. Allee-allee out's in free!"
"Jailbreak?"
"In the manner of the proverbial Arab -- the exact manner."
They had discussed this technique before; Thomas gave itemized instructions and then said, "Say when, Chief. "
"When!"
He could almost see Thomas nod. "Right -- oh! O. K., troops, get going!"
Ardmore stood up and stretched his cramped limbs. He walked over to one wall of his prison and stood so that the single light cast a shadow on the wall. That would be about right there! He set the controls of his staff for maximum range in the primary Ledbetter effect, checked to see that the frequency band covered the Mongolian race, and adjusted it to stun rather than kill. Then he turned on power.
A few moments later he turned it off, and again regarded his shadow on the wall. This required an entirely different setting, directional and with fine discrimination. He turned on the red ray of Dis to guide him in his work, completed his set-up, and again turned on power.
Quietly and without fuss, atoms of metal rearranged themselves and appeared as nitrogen, to mix harmlessly with the air. Where there had been a solid wall was now an opening the size and shape of ,a tall man dressed in priestly robes. He looked at it, and, as an after thought, he meticulously traced an ellipse over the head of the representation, an ellipse the size and shape of his halo. That done, he reset the controls of his staff to that he had used before, turned on power, and stepped through the opening. It was a close fit; he had to wriggle through sideways.
Outside it was necessary to step over the piled-up bodies of a dozen or more PanAsian soldiers. This was not the side of the welded-up entrance; he guessed that he would have found guards outside each and any of the four walls, probably floor and ceiling as well.
There were more doors to pass, more bodies to clamber over before he found himself outside. When he did, he was completely unoriented. "Jeff," he called, "where am I?"
"Just a second, Chief. You're -- No, we can't get a fix on you, but you are on a line of bearing almost due south of the nearest temple. Are you still near the palace?"
"Just outside it."
"Then head north -- it's about nine squares."
"Which way is north? I'm all turned around. No wait a minute -- I just located the Big Dipper, I'm all right."
"Hurry, Chief."
"I will." He set out at a quick dogtrot, kept it up for a couple of hundred yards, then dropped into a fast walk. Damn it, he thought, a man gets out of condition with all this desk work.
Ardmore encountered several Asiatic police, but they were in no condition to notice him; he had kept the primary effect turned on. There were no whites about -- the curfew was strict with the exception of a pair of startled street cleaners. It occurred to him that he should induce them to go with him to the temple, but he decided against it; they were in no more danger than a hundred fifty million others.
There was the temple! -- its four walls glowing with the colors of attributes. He broke into a run and burst inside. The local priest was almost at his heels, arriving from the other direction.
He greeted the priest heartily, suddenly realizing the strain he had been under in finding how good it was to speak to a man of his own kind -- a comrade. The two of them ducked around back of the altar and went down below to the control and communication room, where the pararadio operator and his opposite number were almost hysterically glad to see them. They offered him black coffee, which he accepted gratefully. Then he told the operator to cut out of Circuit A and establish direct two-way connection with headquarters with vision converted into the circuit.
Thomas appeared to be about to jump out of the screen. "Whitey!" he yelled. It was the first time since the Collapse that anyone had called Ardmore by his nickname. He was not even aware that Thomas knew it. But he felt warmed by the slip.
"Hi, Jeff," he called to the image, "good to see you. Any reports in yet?"
"Some. They are coming in all the time."
"Shift to relay through the diocese offices; Circuit A is too clumsy. I want a quick report."
It was forthcoming. Within less than twenty minutes the last diocese had reported in. Every priest was back in his own temple. "Good," he told Thomas. "Now I want the proprietor in each temple set for counteraction, and wake all those monkeys up. They ought to be able to use a directional concentration down the line each priest returned on, and reach clear back to the local jailhouse."