“What if he doesn’t?” Paul Rivers asked.
“The latest psycho-comptiter findings indicate that this would lead to a massive increase in schizophrenia throughout the world, a thorough group insanity impossible to control. However, there is one way to avoid this.”
“How?” Paul Rivers asked. He checked over his needle gun expertly and carefully as he spoke.
“Martyrdom. If he must die, it has to be a hero’s death. The worms know this as well as we do. Our therapists attached to the office of Military Administrator Koli reports that Koli plans to capture Percy alive and have him skinned. The humiliation to the human ego were Percy to be skinned like a mere animal, for some sort of wall hanging, would constitute a traumatic incident of a magnitude difficult to overestimate. This, above all else, must not be allowed to happen.”
“Hmm,” Paul Rivers said, pocketing his needle gun.
“It’s up to you, Rivers.” Choate then rang off; the miniature screen faded into an odd little slot of darkness.
Retracing his steps back down the hotel corridor, Paul Rivers reached Joan Hiashi’s room; he pushed open the door and stepped inside.
Only Gus stood there. By the window, smiling. The smile alone told Paul Rivers an additional unpleasant fact.
“Mister Swenesgard,” he said in a low, level voice, “you really wanted her to go. Didn’t you?” The smile on the fat man’s moon-like face increased. “Why, how you talk,” Gus said. “And,” he added with satisfaction, “there ain’t no use you trying to chase after her. That broken-down old ionocraft taxi she’s in is the only one available.”
III
Lincoln Shaw sat sprawled in the hot sun with his back against a tree, frowningly repairing, for the hundredth time, the frame on his horn-rimmed glasses. He was a thin, small-boned mulatto with an air of cultured delicacy considerably out of place here in this mountain setting.
“Hey Lincoln,” came a shout from the other side of the clearing. “Who that who freed the slaves?”
“I did,” Lincoln said automatically. This was a standing joke between Lincoln and Percy; he had long since ceased getting angry about it.
“No,” Percy roared, “I did!”
“Nobody freed the slaves,” Lincoln muttered under his breath as Percy strode into the clearing carrying rabbits fresh from the traps.
“I heard that.” Percy threw himself down on the grass. “And for once you’re right. Nobody can free someone else; each man has got to do that for himself, right?”
“You make it sound so easy,” Lincoln said, brushing away one of the ubiquitous flies.
“Sure it’s easy. Any man can have freedom if he’s willing to die for it.”
“You mean kill for it, Lincoln said absently. “Right again.” Percy punched him on the arm. “Damn it, man—that hurt. You always got to act like a goddam clown?”
“How do you want me to act?”
“With a little dignity. You’re the leader of a major political movement; how can you expect anybody to respect you or what you stand for if you always act like a goddam clown?”
“You think maybe I ought to carry a ceremonial sword?” Percy said, amused.
“You’d stick yourself in the rear with it.” Lincoln glanced up briefly, blinked nearsightedly, then returned to fiddling with his glasses. “But I’ll tell you one thing for sure,” he added. “If you act like dirt, people will treat you like dirt.”
Percy’s hand shot out and clamped viciously onto Lincoln’s wrist. “Listen, man. You see the color of my skin? It’s dirt-color. I’m dirt and so are you and so is everybody else in this so-called ‘political movement,’ and if you were a farmer instead of an egghead Northern intellectual you’d know that the best dirt is the blackest dirt. You’re dirt, man, and don’t forget it.”
“Yassuh, massuh boss,” Lincoln said, his usual overly-perfect English giving way to a whining parody of Good Old Uncle Tom. Percy laughed and released his grip.
“As a clown you got me beat from the word go, Percy chuckled, but Lincoln only shrugged and returned to his work.
Alone in his office the worm Marshal Koli ruminated languidly in a torpor of wish-fulfillment fantasy
as to the successful capture of Percy X. One final coup before he returned to Ganymede; before, mandatorily, he relinquished his post.
Peculiar that here on Terra the dark races held the lowest caste; it was obvious to every Ganymedian that the order was inverted from its natural hierarchy. After all, the Negroes presented a pleasing appearance and were endowed with—by and large—a natural, balanced philosophy of life, a moderation and subtle humor. Whereas the Whites tended to hang frantically on the twin horns of ambition and fear. Fear of failure, greed to rise; a bad mixture, indicating an unstable temperament.
Nonetheless, since the Terrans had achieved only the sixth level in evolution and possessed both pedal and manual extremities—and not vestigial but functional—they could be viewed only as animals. Hence Marshal Koli felt no qualms in the dreamy anticipation of the capture of Percy X; the Neeg-part commander would be mericfully killed and his virgin pelt would be removed, processed (including the head); glass eyes would be installed, though of course the organic teeth—if good—would be retained. What a magnificent wall-hanging! Or, if not that, if the pelt turned out to be furry enough, what a delicious rug to slither over!
In his villa on Ganymede, Marshal Koli possessed several excellent pelts already installed attractively, impressing the casual or formal visitor; he had expertly taken advantage of his location here on Terra throughout the war. Trophies constituted primary symbols of victory; they were not mere toys or art objects. They represented what had been achieved,
and the wall-mounted pelt of Percy X would be the crowning acquisition.
—If he could acquire it before the termination of his position of authority.
From the Percy X file he lifted, with his jaws, a 3-D color still photo of the Neeg and examined it with relish. What a fine forehead. And chin. The entire face squared off, full of strength, even beauty; no wonder the creature had risen to become the charismatic leader of all the remaining Neeg-parts in the mountains.
As soon as Miss Hiashi had contacted Percy X she was to communicate, via a miniaturized transmitter concealed in the right cup of her bra, with Marshal Koli’s office. And, continually, she would report concerning the whereabouts and activities of Percy X until such time as Koli saw fit to snap shut his trap on the Neeg-part leader. Everyone would be happy. Miss Hiashi would have her recordings of the music of a vanishing cult and Koli would have his pelt. He felt admiration for the girl. It was just such boldness combined with guile that had gained her the high position she held in the show business world, together with the approval of the Ganymedian Bureau of Cultural Control.
Flicking on an intercom outlet before him he said, “Any news from home? Has the Grand Council adjourned yet, or is it still in session?” Sometimes the confabulations of the Common Mind occupied weeks of squirming altercation.
His communications creech answered, “No report yet, Marshal. I will inform you as soon as word comes through from our reps in the Council.”
It would take one Terran week for the ship from Ganymede, bearing the new civil administrator, to reach Tennessee following his appointment. And, added to this figure, one had to consider the administrator’s procrastination, the bale of Tennessee being the unappetizing prospect that it was. The appointee might in fact appeal, and litigation within the Common generally droned on for months.
Everything, to use the Terran expression, was A.O.K.
At that moment Marshal Koli’s second-in- command, Colonel Mawoi, entered the room carried by his creeches. Communicating telepathically Mawoi said, “Sir, may I make a minor point before you begin on other considerations with respect to the Percy X file?”