Lincoln laughed sharply. “Where’s your woman’s intuition, baby? Percy’s been carrying your picture in his wallet for years—as long as I’ve known him. You’re none other than his dear, darling, long-lost sweetie pie . . and you’re a worm-kisser. A hopeless worm-kisser. If you don’t think that’s funny you just don’t have any sense of humor at all.”
Marshal Koli, Military Administrator of the occupied bale of Tennessee, said aloud to his staff, “As you know, we have for months been contriving a stratagem with the purpose of snaring the Neeg-part leader, Percy X. In this connection we have, shall I say, agents within the ’part groups under fealty to Percy X. Thereby we have managed to ascertain to some degree his whereabouts at certain times.” He flicked his tongue at an impressive wall map which showed the bale, and, most specifically, the unpacified hill-areas controlled by both the Indian tribal remnants and the Neeg-parts.
On the map a luminous button, movable, lay placed. The button represented the approximate current location of Percy X.
“Our operation,” Marshal Koli continued, “is, as you know, called Operation Cat Droppings—a Ter- ran idiom connected with some unpleasant task. And this has been unpleasant because it has taken too long.” At this point he drew himself almost entirely erect, balancing himself on his tail-tip in his determination to impart the seriousness of what he now proposed to declaim down the chain of command.
“Operation Cat Droppings,” he declared, “will reach its crucial terminal phase at eleven PM., bale of Tennessee time. Our crack commando teams, descending by means of individual air-pulsation tubs, entirely silently, will ring the spot where the malefactor is entrenched.” He paused and then said, “This is the moment for which I have prepared during my entire period as Military Administrator of this bale. Each one of our predetermined, arranged-for tactical operations will, at eleven P.M. become operative. After that—” He flicked his tongue rapidly in agitation. “Either we will have Percy X or we won’t. In any case there will be no further chance.” Hastily he added, “In terms of the military jurisdiction of this bale, I mean. What the civil administrator who follows me does I have no knowledge of.” But, he thought, through our wiks who have infiltrated the Neeg-parts I do know Percy; a great deal about him, even though, thanks to Percy’s telepathic ability, none of our wiks have been able to get close enough to kill him or even effectively spy on the operations of his inner circle of command.
Touching a selenoid switch with his tongue he activated a servo-assist projector mounted on his desk; on the far wall, in 3-D and color, appeared the image of Percy X, taken with a telescopic camera. Percy squatted in a leisurely, secure—or believed secure—parlay with his sub-leaders.
“All Terrans tend, of course, to look alike, the Marshal said. “But observe the strong chin, the great wide smile of strength of this man. He is a superior Terran.” The last, he reflected, to capitulate. And one, in scrutinizing him, can readily see why. “To insure the success of Operation Cat Droppings, he continued, “I am offering, for this first and only time, this ultimate and critical fruition of all our painstaking planning, an incentive.”
All eyes in the room fixed rigidly on him.
“With incalculable generosity I am offering ten thousand tulebs for the creech who accomplishes the commando mission—income tax free, too.” He observed the gratifying servility revealed on each face; hunger for the reward, pitiless determination to be the one who earned it. and, seeing this, knew he had managed at this last critical hour, after so many false starts, to move in the right direction. This he had imbibed from Terran psychology books: how to motivate a person. “Inform your subordinates,” he stated, ‘ ‘that if this long-jprepared-for coup fails, they will all be smunged. Do you comprehend, all of you who repose in soft felt-lined niches, what it means to be smunged?” He wove toward them menacingly, studying them with dour fierceness.
As one worm they nodded. Every member of the Ganymedian military had heard of the trial-less quasi-juridical procedures generally resulting in a fine of first magnitude and two centuries of smunge- dom on some airless rock in the asteroid belt.
And then there was the money. Build an atomic pile to near-critical mass under their ani, Koli said to himself, and meanwhile dangle an addictive narcotic or the lettuce (a Terran term) before their noses: they’ll come through. And —
I’ve got to, too, he realized. Now that I comprehend that the so-called "wik” agent, that Joan Hiashi, was engaging in tarry diddle from the start. What if it got out that, in spite of his own telepathic ability, a mere Terran had outfoxed (also a Terran term) him? He still did not quite understand how she had done it. Plainly it was one thing to read a mind and another to understand it, particularly if it was the
mind of some member of an alien race.
But now, thanks to the animal craft of that fawning toady, Gus Swenesgard, she’ll lead me to him in spite of herself If not, I’ll be the one who got used. by her.
“The Operation, he declared, “will develop in the usual pattern which has been, up to now, so successful in other areas of this planet. First, unmanned homotropic missiles of the dart variety will be released from a satellite passing overhead; they will not kill, only stun. Then, when the ’parts are rendered harmless—” He droned on and on. “And in conclusion,” he wound up, “let me warn you: Percy X’s pelt must be absolutely intact. No burns, holes, tears, rips, thin spots; there must be no defacement of any kind. You understand? The highest sort of aesthetic values are involved in this matter; this is not a mere political or military operation—this is, first and foremost, a great art-treasure hunt.”
It had become cold. Cold and damp and foggy; the Tennessee hillside forest poked up indistinctly. The Neeg-parts, however, could not risk building a fire; the Ganys had sensitive heat detectors that would zero in on a campfire in an instant, even through the overcast. Instead they huddled together for warmth, arms and legs intertwined, blankets and threadbare sleeping bags spread over them to retain as much as possible of the precious body-heat.
And they talked together quietly, or slept— although most had picked up the necessary habit of sleeping in the daytime and waking to alertness at night.
Joan Hiashi and Percy X lay in the midst of the
mound of human flesh, sharing an oversize overcoat.
Holding the girl loosely in his arms, Percy said, “It takes danger, the deadly kind, to make men touch each other. But when they do, it’s good; it’s the finest thing there is. But we humans have always been afraid of each other. We’ve wanted to think of ourselves as spirits without bodies, or minds that triumphed over matter, not as a herd of animals huddling together for warmth. I’m thankful to the Ganys for—”
“Christ, it’s cold,” Joan said, through chattering teeth.
“Be glad you can feel the cold. At least you feel something."
Someone in the heap began humming.
“Won’t the Gany sound detectors pick that up?” Joan asked.
“There’s a wind,” Percy said. “The wind and the sounds of the birds and animals make it hard for them to track on sounds.”
Another voice joined in, and another and another. She had never heard anything like it before. Long sobbing moans that slid up and down the scale without a break, superimposed over a rhythm more implied than stated, a rhythm that seemed to suggest the beating of a vast communal heart. There seemed to be no preconceived melody, and each voice joined in and ceased wherever the singer chose.
Now more voices joined in. The tempo increased. Some of the men began to slap out a rhythm with the palms of their hands against their bodies. Joan felt the music’s beauty as a pain in her chest. Her mind resisted, thrashing like a man drowning, but her emo- tions became caught up in the music and flung wildly downward, like a stick in the rapids.