Then the voice rasped, “Good! You’re doing fine!”
“Am I? Can’t see any signs of it so far. I’ve been plastering paper all over the planet and nothing is happening.”
“Plenty is happening,” contradicted the Voice. It came through with a rhythmic variation in amplitude as it fooled Sirian detection devices by switching five times per second through a chain of differently positioned transmitters. “You just can’t see the full picture from where you’re standing.”
“How about giving me a glimpse?”
“The pot is coming slowly but surely to the boil. Their fleets are being widely dispersed, there are vast troop movements from their overcrowded home-system to the outer planets of their empire. They’re gradually being chivvied into a fix. They can’t hold what they’ve got without spreading all over it. The wider they spread the thinner they get. The thinner they get the easier it is to bite lumps out of them. Hold it a bit while I check your planet” He went off, came back after a time. “Yes, position there is that they daren’t take any strength away from Jaimec no matter how greatly needed elsewhere. In fact they may yet have to add to it at the expense of Diracta. You’re the cause of that.”
“Sweet of you to say so,” said Mowry. A thought struck him and he said eagerly, “Hey, who gave you that information?”
“Monitoring and Decoding Service. They dig a lot out of enemy broadcasts.”
“Oh.” He felt disappointed, having hoped for news of a Terran Intelligence agent somewhere on Jaimec. But of course even if there was one they wouldn’t tell him. They’d lie about it. They’d give him no information that Kaitempi persuasion might force out of him. “How about this Kaitempi card and embossing machine? Do I leave them here to be collected or do I keep them for myself?”
“Stand by and I’ll find out.” The voice went away for more than an hour, returned with, “Sorry about the delay. Distance takes time in any terms. You can keep that stuff and use it as you think best. T.I. got a card recently. An agent bought one for them.”
“Bought one?” He waggled his eyebrows in surprise.
“Yes—with his life. What did yours cost?”
“Major Sallana’s life, as I told you.”
“Tsk-tsk! Those cards come mighty dear.” There was a pause, then, “Closing down. Best of luck!”
“Thanks!”
With some reluctance Mowry replaced the receiver, switched off the zuum-zuum, capped the cylinder and rolled it back into the cave. He’d have liked to listen until dawn to anything that maintained the invisible tie between him and that faraway lifeform. “Best of luck!” the voice had said, not knowing how much more it meant than the alien, “Live long!’ From yet another container he took several packets and small parcels, distributed them about his person, put others into a canvas shoulder-bag of the kind favoured by the Sirian peasantry. Impatience prevented him from waiting for the full light of day. Being now more familiar with the forest lie felt sure he could fumble his way through it even in the dark. The going would be tougher, the journey would take longer, but he could not resist the urge to get back to the car as soon as possible.
Before leaving his last act was to press the hidden button on Container-22 which had ceased to radiate the moment he’d entered the cave and remained dead ever since. After a one-minute delay it would again set up the invisible barrier that could not be passed without betrayal.
He got out the cave fast, the parcels heavy around him, and had made thirty yards into the trees when his finger-ring started its tingling. Slowly he moved on, feeling his way from time to time. The tingling gradually weakened with distance, faded out after eight hundred yards.
From then on he consulted his luminous compass at least a hundred times. It led him back to the road at a point half a mile from the car, a pardonable margin of error in a twenty-mile journey two-thirds of which had been covered in darkness. At two hours after dawn he arrived with tired eyes and aching feet, clambered thankfully into the car, edged it unseen from the forest and purred along the highroad to the dump called home.
The day of the appointment kicked off with a highly significant start. Over the radio and video, through the public-address system and in all the newspapers the government came out with the same announcement. Mowry heard the miserably muffled bellowings of a loudspeaker two streets away, the shrill cries of newsvendors. He bought a paper, read it over his breakfast.
“Under the War Emergency Powers Act, by order of the Jaimec Ministry of Defence: organisations, societies, parties, and other corporate bodies will be registered at the Central Bureau of Records, Pertane, not later than the twentieth of this month. Secretaries will state in full the objects and purposes of their respective organisations, societies, parties or other corporate bodies, give the address of habitual meeting places, and provide a complete list of members.”
“Under the War Emergency Powers Act by order of the Jaimec Ministry of Defence: after the twentieth of this month any organisation, society, party, or other corporate body will be deemed an illegal movement if not registered in accordance with the above order. Membership of an illegal movement or the giving of aid and comfort to any member of an illegal movement will constitute a treacherous offence punishable by death.”
So at last they’d made a countermove. Dirac Angestun Gesept must kneel at the confessional or at the strangling-post. By a simple, easy legislative trick they’d got D.A.G. where they wanted it, coming and going. It was a kill-or-cure tactic full of psychological menace and well calculated to scare all the weaklings right out of D.A.G.’s ranks.
Weaklings are blabs.
They talk. They betray their fellows, one by one, right through the chain of command to the top. They represent the rot that spreads through a system and brings it to total collapse. In theory, anyway.
Mowry read it again, grinning to himself and enjoying every word. The government was going to have a tough time enticing informers from the D.A.G. Fat lot of talking can be done by a membership completely unaware of its status. There are no traitors in a phantom army.
For instance, Butin Arhava was a fully paid up member in good standing—and didn’t know it. Nobody had bothered to tell him. The Kaitempi could trap him and draw out his bowels very, very slowly without gaining one worthwhile word about the Sirian Freedom Party.
Around mid-day Mowry looked in at the Central Bureau of Records. Sure enough a queue stretched from the door to the counter where a couple of disdainful officials were dishing out forms. The line slowly edged forward, composed of secretaries or other officers of trade guilds;?ith -drinking societies, video fan clubs and every other conceivable kind of organisation. The skinny oldster moping in the rear was Area Supervisor of the Pan-Sirian Association of Lizard Watchers. The podgy specimen one step ahead of him represented the Pertane Model Rocket Builders Club. There wasn’t one in the entire stting who looked capable of spitting in a Spakum eye much less overthrowing his own government.
Joining the queue, Mowry said conversationally to Skinny, “Nuisance this, isn’t it?”
“Yar. Only the Statue of Jaime knows why it is considered necessary.”
“Maybe they’re trying to round up people with special talents,” Mowry offered. “Radio experts, photographers and people like those. They can use all sorts of technicians in wartime.”
“They could have said so in plain words,” opined Skinny impatiently. “They could have published list of them and ordered them to report in.”
“Yar, that’s right.”