“Mi-Ko-Ta’s beard! Who are you, really, and what were you, before?”
“I told you, I’m Ky-El Mokak. I am — was, rather — a Class Twelve Fellow of the Institute of Mining Engineers. Recognize the ring?” Seaton went to the desk and placed his left hand flat on its surface.
Prenk studied the massive ornament. It had been fabricated, in strict external accord with the Brain’s visualization of what it should have been, from synthesized meteoric metal — metal that had actually never been in open space, to say nothing of ever having been anywhere near the gray-lichened walls of the revered Institute that Seaton had never seen.
Having examined the ring minutely, Prenk looked up and nodded; his whole manner changed. “I recognize the ring and I can read the symbols. A Twelve! It’s a shame to register and brand you. If you say so I’ll let it drop.”
“I’ll say so. I’m not committing myself that deep yet.”
“All right, but why did you come in? Or is it true that whatever undergrounds spring up are smashed flat in a week?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t find any. Not one, and I searched every square mile for a thousand miles north, east, south, and west of here. And I didn’t find anybody who wasn’t too dangerous to travel with, and I’m gregarious. Also, I don’t like caves and I don’t like camp cooking and I don’t like living off the land — and I do like music and books and art and educated people and so on — in other words, I found out that I can’t revert to savagery. And, not least, I like women and there aren’t any out there. What few ever make it up there die fast.”
“I’m beginning to believe you.” A little of the worry and harassment left His Honor’s face.
“One more question. Why, knowing the jam we’re in, did you come here instead of going somewhere where you’d be safe?”
“Because, on the basis of stuff I picked up here and there, you and I together can make it safe here. I can fix your mining machinery easily enough so you can make quota every week with no sweat; so the town won’t get slagged down; not right away, anyway.
You aren’t a quisling, and my best guess is that most of the spies and storm troopers have sneaked out or have been pulled out because of what’s supposed to be about to happen here,” Seaton said.
Prenk stared thoughtfully at Seaton. “You don’t appear to be the suicidal type. But you know as well as I do that just making quota won’t be enough for very long. What have you really got in mind, Ky-El Mokak?”
Seaton thought for a moment. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he dug down into his baggy breeches and brought out two closely folded headsets.
“Put one of these on. It isn’t a player or a recorder; just a kind of super-telephone. A fast way of exchanging information.”
Prenk wore it for a couple of minutes, then took it off, staring suspiciously in turn at it and at Seaton. “Why didn’t I ever hear of anything like that before?” he demanded.
Seaton didn’t answer the question and Prenk went on, “Oh; secret. Okay. But what makes you think you can set up an underground right out here in the open?”
“There’s no reason in the world why we can’t,” Seaton declared. “Especially since we’d just be reviving one that everybody, including the Premier and you yourself, thinks is smashed flat and is about to be liquidated.”
This was the second really severe test Seaton had made of the Brain’s visualizations, and it too stood solidly up. All Prenk said was, “You’re doing the talking; keep it up,” but his hands, clenching tightly into fists, showed that Seaton’s shot had struck the mark.
“I’ve talked enough,” Seaton said then. “From here on it’d be just guessing. It’s your turn to talk.”
“All right. It’s too late now, I’m afraid, for anything to make any difference. Yes, I was the leader of a faction that believed in decent, humane, civilized government, but we weren’t here then, we were in the capital. Our coup failed. And those of us who were caught were exiled here and arrangements were made for us to be the next wipe-out.”
“Some of your party survived, then. Could you interest them again, do you think?”
“Without arms and equipment, no. That was why we failed.”
“Equipment would be no problem.”
“It wouldn’t?” Prenk’s eyes began to light up.
“No.” Seaton did not elaborate, but went on, “The problem is people and morale. I can’t supply people and we have to start here, not over in the capital. Self-preservation.
We’ve got to make quota. Your people have been hammered down so flat that they don’t give a whoop whether they live or die. As I said, I can fix the machinery, but that of itself won’t be enough. We’ll have to give ’em a shot in the arm of hope.”
“Okay, and thanks.”
And no one in the outer office, not even the secretary, so much as looked up as the two men, talking busily, walked out.
DuQuesne, en route to Earth, knew just what a madhouse Earth was, and in just what respects. He knew just how nearly impossible it was to buy machine tools of any kind.
He also knew just what an immense job it was going to be to build a duplicate of the Skylark of Valeron. Or, rather, to build the tools that would build the machines that would in turn build the planetoid. With his high-order constructors he could build most of those primary machine tools himself; perhaps all of them in time; but time was exactly what he did not have. Time was decidedly of the essence.
DuQuesne’s ex-employer, The World Steel Corporation, had billions of dollars’ worth of exactly the kind of tooling he had to have. They not only used it, they manufactured it and sold it. And what of it they did not manufacture they could buy. How they could buy!
As a result of many years of intensive, highly organized, and well directed snooping, Brookings of Steel had over a thousand very effective handles upon over a thousand very important men.
And he, DuQuesne, had a perfect handle on Brookings. He was much harder and more ruthless than Brookings was, and Brookings knew it. He could make Brookings buy his primary tooling for him — enough of it to stuff the Capital D to her outer skin. And he would do just that.
Wherefore, as soon as he got within working range of Earth, he launched his projection directly into Brookings’ private office. This time, the tycoon was neither calm nor quiet.
Standing behind his desk, chair lying on its side behind him, he was leaning forward with his left hand flat on the top of his desk. He was clutching a half-smoked, half chewed cigar in his right hand and brandishing it furiously in the air. He was yelling at his terrified secretary; who, partly standing in front of her chair and partly crouching into it, was trying to muster up courage to run.
When DuQuesne’s projection appeared Brookings fell silent for a moment and goggled.
Then he screamed. “Get out of here, you!” at the girl, who scuttled frantically away. He hurled what was left of his cigar into his big bronze ashtray, where it disintegrated into a shower of sparks and a slathery mess of soggy, sticky brown leaves. And finally, exerting everything he had of self-control, he picked his chair up, sat down in it and glared at DuQuesne.
“Careful of your apoplexy, Fat,” DuQuesne sneered then. “I’ve told you — you’ll rupture your aorta some day and that will just about break my heart.”
Brookings’ reply to that was unprintable; after which he went on, even more bitterly, “This is all it lacks to make this a perfect day.”
“Yeah,” DuQuesne agreed, callously. “Some days you can’t lay up a cent. I suppose you’ve been eager to know why I didn’t return your goons to you.”