“I generally carry Neegs who want to join Percy X; they come from all over North America. From all over the world, in fact. But you’re white; I mean, anyhow, you aren’t colored in the true sense of the word. Watch out for Percy’s bodyguards, especially the man they call Lincoln, that he doesn’t shoot you before you get a chance to open your mouth. I see you have recording gear, there.”
“I’m going to try to record some of the Neeg-parts’ music.”
“You’re in the music business? Sing a jazz tune for me. To pass the time.”
Joan said, “I don’t sing.”
“You know How High the Moon?”
She grunted in affirmation.
“That’s my favorite melody,” the cab continued. “Remember how June Christy, back in 1950, used to sing it?” It hummed the tune as it flew toward the burgeoning hills. At last the hills lay directly below. The cab, breaking off its humming, said, “Let’s have the twenty UN dollars now. Before they kill you.” Its voice had suddenly become hard.
As she placed the bills in the proper slot the cab descended in nausea-producing close spirals.
“My whole decent circuit is gummed up,” it explained as it thumped onto the rough ground, bounced, at last came to a shuddering halt. “Sorry. I’ll give you back a dollar if you feel—”
“Keep it,” Joan said. And, opening the door manually, stepped out.
Wearing brown khaki uniforms, boots, with automatic side-arms, two Neeg-parts confronted her, both young and tough-looking. The cab hurriedly lurched into the air after first unloading, with frantic haste, her recording gear; it headed back in the direction from which it had come.
“Look at this,” one of the Neegs said conversationally to the other. “A lily-skinner. What do you know about that.”
“Isn’t she cute,” said the second, leering.
“You like to make the scene, baby?” the first asked.
His companion gave him a contemptuous shove. “You’ll get some white-man’s disease from her, man. That’s for sure.”
Joan said, “Can you take me to Percy X?”
They continued to talk to each other as if she had not spoken. “Well, what good is this white wik gal anyway?”
“She brought us some presents. Look at all that expensive electronic stuff.” Both men bent to examine it. “Ought to be able to do something with that.”
“But the girl, we can’t do nothin’ with her.” The man spoke to Joan directly. “I’m sorry, baby, but you can’t have no last meal or blindfold or nothin’ We too busy for any of that crung.”
Speechless, terrified, Joan watched the man raise his laser rifle to his shoulder and aim it point-blank at her forehead while his companion chanted mockingly, “This is it, baby; this is it.”
When Gus Swenesgard regained consciousness, the first sight that materialized before his clouded eyes was the snout, lizard eyes and worm-face of a Gany. Marshal Koli; he recognized him. It’s got to be a nightmare, Gus thought groggily, rubbing his forehead and squinting.
But it wasn’t.
Looking around, Gus discovered that he lay near the hole which he and his turncoat crew of rascally Toms had dug. Night had come; a sliver of moon cast just enough light to make the swarm of attendant creatures around Koli look even more like a bad dream. How’d they get me back up to the surface? he wondered. I guess they can do anything, he decided bleakly. That’s why they won; that’s why they’re here.
“I’m not sorry for you, Mister Swenesgard,” Koli said in a hissing, cold voice. “Do you know something, sir? You’re finished. It would have been better for you if you had died in that cave as your foreman did. It is perfectly obvious what you anticipated doing. You have been, in direct opposition to the legal decrees of the Occupation Authority, searching for buried weapon-caches left by the defeated forces of your UN troops.”
“No,” Gus said thickly. “It wasn’t weapons; I wasn’t looking for weapons.” He managed to sit up.
“Then what was it?” The voice bored at him, full of harshness.
Briefly, he thought of telling the worm. But he would never be believed. “Never mind,” he said miserably. “But on my mother’s honor I wouldn’t use weapons against you people.”
“Whatever you may have intended,” Marshal Koli snapped, “the weapons are now in the hands of the Neeg-parts. If they have been troublesome before, now they will be unbearable. You and that Joan Hiashi—you’re both rebels. Therefore we will kill you both. And of course right away.” With his tongue Marshal Koli gave a signal; a huge, seemingly mindless creech grasped Gus in an unbreakable grip and began shoving him roughly toward the Gany’s parked ship.
A moment later, inside the ship, Gus found himself pushed unceremoniously into an overstuffed Terran chair which the Gany had from somewhere appropriated.
He found himself sweating. But he had not given up; he dragged out his vast cotton bandanna handkerchief and shakily mopped his balding head. “You don’t understand, Koli. I wasn’t going to tell you, but I have—or I guess had—a military campaign in mind against the Neeg-parts. I was diggin’ out those trick gadgets to use against Percy X. It’s the truth, on my mother’s honor. In fact, I was going to personally nail Percy for you, once and for all. You all don’t know who your friends are.”
“I thought,” Koli said bitingly, “that Miss Hiashi was our friend. But she destroyed contact-relations with us and has, no doubt, gone over to the Neegs by now. Taking with her valuable information about our operations in this area.”
“That Jap girl, that Hiashi; she was working for you?” He stalled for time, trying to say something; his mind worked furiously. Out of the corner of his eye he could see three of the creeches putting in order some variety of machine. He had a suspicion, intense and immediate, that he knew what it did; he had seen pictures of such devices. The worms used it for skinning a man alive, slowly so as to preserve the skin. Once more he wiped the sweat from his face and thought, Soon my hands will be secured and I won’t even be able to wipe. And after a while I’ll be another skin—pelt, they call it—in KoWs famous collection. “You don’t want me,” he said aloud, as the creeches wheeled the machine over to him. “I’m just small potatoes. You all want Percy right? He’s the Neeg; he’s really giving you all trouble.”
“If I can’t have him,” Koli said coldly, “I’ll just have to make do with you.” He gestured with his tongue for the creeches to hold Gus down.
“Wait,” Gus said hoarsely. “You don’t have to settle for me. You can have Percy X himself.” He hesitated. “I can lead you right to him.”
The Gany general signaled his creeches to let Gus go. At least for the moment. “How do you expect to do that?”
“When that Jap gal was in the hotel I took the liberty of patting her sweet little head.”
“I’m not interested in your sexual depravity, Mister Swenesgard.”
“But listen,” Gus said. “I planted a little bitty microminiaturized transmitter in her hair; that’s what I did.”
After an interval Marshal Koli began once again to visualize the beautiful pelt of Percy X; he perceived its appearance on the wall of his Ganymedian villa. “Let the fool go,” Koli said to his creeches.
On his unmade bed, in his hotel room in Gus Swenesgard’s none too luxurious tourist palace, Dr. Paul Rivers sat and sweated. In theory, when the sun went down it was supposed to get colder, particularly in autumn. In fact, however, it had gotten hotter.
Getting up, he moved to the window to stare moodily in the direction of the distant mountains. Somewhere out there could be found Percy X, the last symbol of man’s greatness. And with him—the wik spy, Joan Hiashi. If only I could warn him, he reflected. If only there existed some way by which I could reach him. Reaching, he opened the window, as if this might help. But all it did was make more audible the tireless crickets and bring to his nostrils the smell of damp stagnation that hung over the little Southern town. It was, he realized, just as hot and muggy outside as inside.