 Chapter 5 You can depend on it, it's wrong. Gongong Island, with its blue-gray company buildings, and the taran green of the farms, and the spaceport with its ring of mooring pylons empty since the city of Pretoria had lifted out two days before Fraterra was dropping away behind. Von Schlichten held his lighter for Paula Quinton, then let his own cigarette. I was rather horrified, Friday afternoon, at the way you and Colonel O'Leary and Mr. Blount were blaspheming against Stanley Brown, she said. His book is practically the sociographer's caran for this planet. But I've been checking up since, and I find that everybody who's been here any length of time seems to deride it, and it's full of the most surprising misstatements. I'm either going to make myself famous, or get burned at the stake by the extraterrestrial sociographic society after I get back to Terra. In the last three months I've been really too busy with X-Rite's work to do much research, but I'm beginning to think there's a great deal in Stanley Brown's book that will have to be reconsidered. How'd you get into this, Miss Quinton? He asked. You mean sociology or X-Rite's? Well, my father and my grandfather were both extraterrestrial sociographers, anthropologists whose subjects aren't anthropomorphic, and I majored in sociology at the University of Montevideo, and I've always been in sympathy with extraterrestrial races, one of my great-grandmothers was a frian. The deuce. I'd never have guessed that as small and dark as you are. Well, another of my great-grandmothers was Japanese, he replied. The family names French, I'm also part Spanish, part Russian, part Italian, part English, the usual modern Argentine mixture. I'm in Argentina, too, from La Rioja, over along the Sierra de Velasco. My family lived there for the past five centuries. They came to the Argentine in year three, atomic era. On account of the Hitler bust-up? Yes, I believe the first one, also a general von Schlichten, was what was then known as a war-criminal. That makes us partners in crime, then, she laughed. The Quintans had to leave France about the same time. They were what was known as collaborationists. That's probably why the southern hemisphere managed to stay out of the third and fourth World Wars, he considered. It was full of the descendants of people who'd gotten a short end of the second. Do you speak the Kraken language, General? She asked. I understand it's entirely different from the other equatorial Ullurian languages. Yes, that's what gives the Kraken's an entirely different semantic orientation. For instance, they have nothing like a subject predicate sentence structure. That's why Stanley Brown, to the contrary, not withstanding, they are entirely non-religious. Their language hasn't instilled in them a predisposition to think of everything as a result of an action performed by an agent. And they have no definite parts of speech. Any word can be used as any part of speech, depending on context. Tense is applied to words used as nouns, not words used as verbs. There are four tenses, spatial, temporal, present, things here and now, spatial, present, and temporal remote, things which were here at some other time, spatial, remote, and temporal, present, things existing now somewhere else, and spatial, temporal, remote, things somewhere else some other time. Why, it's a wonder they haven't developed a theory of relativity. They have. It resembles ours about the way the Wright Brothers' airplane resembles this air-car. But I was explaining the Keen-Kanzala's Dillingham theory and the older Einstein theory to Keen-Kangad once, and it was beautiful to watch how he picked it up. Half the time he was a jump ahead of me. The air-car began losing altitude and speed as they came in over Kragark swamp. The treetops below blended into a level plain of yellow-green pierced by glints of stagnant water underneath and broken by an occasional low hillock sometimes topped by a stockaded village. Those are the swamp-savages' homes, he told her. Most of what you find in Stanley Brown about them is fairly accurate. He spent a lot of time among them. He never seems to have realized, though, that they are living now as they have ever since the first appearance of intelligent life on this planet. You mean they're the real Aboriginal people of Ular? They and the geocannibals, whom we are doing our best to exterminate, he replied. You see, at one time the dominant type of mobile land life was the thing we call a shellosaur, a big thing running from five to fifteen tons, plated all over with silicate shell, till it looked like a six-legged pinecone. Some were herbivores and some were carnivores. There are a few left in remote places, quite a few in the southern hemisphere, which we haven't explored very much. They were a dissatisfied life form. Outside of a volcano or an earthquake or an avalanche, nothing could hurt a shellosaur but a bigger shellosaur. Finally, of course, they grew beyond their sustenance limit, but in the meantime some of them began specializing on mobility instead of armor and began excreting waste matter instead of turning it to shell. Some of these new species got rid of their shell entirely. Perihomo sapiens Ularus is descended from one of these. The shellosaurs were still a serious menace, though. The ancestors of the present Ularan, the Protogeeks, when they were—what about the Java eight-man stage of development—took two divergent courses to escape the shellosaurs. Some of them took to the swamps, where the shellosaurs would sink if they tried to follow. Those savages down there are still living in the same manner. They never progressed. Others encountered problems of survival which had to be overcome by invention. They progressed to barbarism, like the people of the fishing villages, and some of them progressed to civilization, like the Concrucans and the Keegarkans. Then there were others who took to the high rocks where the shellosaurs couldn't climb. The Jeals are the primitive, original example of that. Most of the North Ular civilizations developed from mountaineer savages, and so did the Xeraks and the other northern plain nomads. Well, how about the Kragans? Paula asked. Which were they? Bunch looked in the scanning the horizon ahead. He pulled over a pair of fifty-power binoculars on a swinging arm and put them where she could use them. Right ahead there, just a little to the left. See that brown-gray spot on the landward edge of the swamp? That's King Kincad's town. It's been there for thousands of years, and it's always been Kincad's town. He might say even the same Kincad. The Kragan kings have always provided their own heirs by self-fertilization. That's a complicated process, involving simultaneous male and female masturbation, but the offspring is an exact duplicate of the single parent. The present Kincad speaks of his pair as little me, which is a fairly accurate way of putting it. He knew what she was seeing through the glasses—a massive butte of flint, jetting out into the swamp on the end of a sharp ridge, with a city on top of it. All the buildings were multi-storied, some piling upward from the top, and some clinging to the sides. The high watch tower at the front now carried a telecast director aimed at an automatic relay station on an unmanned orbiter two thousand miles off-planet. There either swapped people who moved up onto that rock or their mountaineers who came out that far along the ridge and stopped, she said. Which? Nobody's ever tried to find out. Maybe if you stay on Ular long enough, you can. That ought to be good for about eight to ten honorary doctorates and maybe a hundred souls a year in book royalties. Maybe I'll just do that, general. What's that on the little island over there? She asked, shifting the glasses, a clump of flat-riffed buildings under a red and yellow danger flag. That's Dynamite Island. The Kragans have an explosives plant there. They make nitroglycerin. Like all the Thalassic people, they also make TNT and catastrophite and propellants. Learn that from us, of course. They also manufacture most of their own firearms, some of them pretty extreme, up to twenty-five millimeter for shoulder rifles. Don't ever fire one. It'd break every bone in your body. Are they that much stronger than us? He shook his head. Just denser, heavier. They're about equal to us in weightlifting. They can't run or jump as well as we can. We often come out here for games with the Kragans where the geeks can't watch us. And that reminds me, you're right about that being a term of derogation because I don't believe I've ever knowingly spoken of a Kragan as a geek. And in fact, they've picked up the word from us and apply it to all non-Kragans. But as I was saying, our baseball team has to give theirs a handicap, but their football team can beat the daylights out of ours. In a tug of war, we have to put two men on our end for every one of theirs. But they don't even try to play tennis with us. Don't the other natives make their own firearms? No, and we're not going to teach them how. The Dalasic peoples here in the equatorial zone are fairly good empirical teaspoon measure chemists. Well, no, alchemists. They found out how to make nitroglycerin and use it for blasting and for bombs and mines. And they screw little capsules of it on the end of their arrows. Most of their chemistry, such as it is, was learned in trying to prevent organic materials like wood from petrifying. Up in the north, where it gets cold, they learned a lot about metallurgy and ceramics and about forced draft pneumatics, from having to keep fires going all winter to thaw frozen food. They make air rifles to shoot metal darts. The air car came in, circling slowly over the town on the big rock, and let down on the roof of the castle-like building from which the watchtower rose. There were a dozen or so individuals waiting for him. The five Terrans, three men and two women, from the telecast station and the rest, Kragans. One of these, dark skinned but with speckles no darker than light amber, armed only with a heavy dagger, came over and clapped Von Schlichten on the shoulder, grinning opalescently. "'Greetings, Von,' he squawked in Kragan, then seeing Paula switched over to the customary language of the Takadsi country. It makes happiness to see you. How long will you stay with us?' Till the Aldebaran gets in from Kragan Krupp to pick up the rifles, Von Schlichten replied, in lingua tera. He looked at his watch. Two hours and a half. Conquered, this is Paula Quitten. Paula, King Conquered. He took out his geek-speaker and crammed it in his mouth. Before any other raise on Uler that would have been the most shocking sort of bad manners without the token concealment of the handkerchief. Conquered took it as a matter of course. At some length Von Schlichten explained the nature of Paula's sociographic work, her connection with the extra-terrestrial's rights association, and her intention of going to the arctic mines. Conquered nodded. "'You were right,' he said. I wouldn't have understood all that in your language. If I had read it, maybe, but not if I heard it.' He put his upper right hand on Paula's shoulder and uttered a clicking approximation of her name. "'I make you one of us,' he told her. "'You must come back after the work stops at the mines, if you want to learn about my people. I'll show you what you want to see, and tell you what you want to know. But why not stay here? Why bother about those geeks at the mines? The company treats them much better than they deserve. Stay here with us. We will make you happy to be with us.' Paula replied slowly. "'I think, Conquered, but I must go. Those on Tara, who sent me here, want me to learn for myself how the workers at the mines are treated. But I will come back. In a hundred, a hundred and fifty days.' "'Conquered's opal-jeweled grin widened. Good. We'll be waiting for you.' He turned and introduced another craig in about his own age, who wore the equipment and insignia of a company native major, and was freshly painted with a company emblem. This is Cormark. He and I have borne young to each other. Cormark, you watch over Paula Quitten. He managed, on the second try, to make it more or less recognizable. Bring her back safe, or else find yourself a good place to hide.' Conquered introduced the rest of his people, and Von Schlichten introduced the Terrans from the telecast station. Then Conquered looked at the watch he was wearing on his lower left wrist. "'We will have plenty of time before the ship comes to show Paula the town,' he suggested. Von, you know better than I do what she would like to see.' He led the way past a pair of long ninety millimeter guns to a stone stairway. Von Schlichten explained as they went down that the guns of King Conquered's town were the only artillery above seventy-five millimeter on Uller in non-terran hands. They climbed into an open machine gun carrier and strapped themselves to their seats, and for two hours King Conquered showed her the sights of the town. They visited the school, where young Craigans were being taught to read lingua tera, and studied from textbooks printed in Johannesburg and Sydney and Buenos Aires. Conquered showed her the repair shops, where two score descendants of Craigan river chieftains were working on contra-gravity equipment under the supervision of a Scottish africaner and his Malay Portuguese wife. The small arms factory, where very respectable copies of Terran rifles and pistols and auto-weapons were being turned out, the machine shop, the physics and chemistry labs, the hospital, the ammunition loading plant, the battery of a hundred and fifty-five millimeter long toms built in Conquered's own shops, which covered the road at the sloping rock spine behind the city, the printing shop and book findery, the observatory, with a big telescope and an ingenious orry of the beta-hydrate system, the nuclear power plant, part of the original prize for giving up Brigandich. Half an hour before the ship from Conquered was due, they had arrived at the airport, where a gang of Craigans were clearing a berth for the Aldebaran. From somewhere, Conquered produced two cold bottles of capetown beer for Paula and Von Schlichten and a bowl of some boiling hot black liquid for himself. Von Schlichten and Paula lit cigarettes between sips of his bubbling hellbrew, Conquered nod on the stalk of some swamp plant. Paula seemed as much surprised at Conquered's disregard for the eating taboo as she had been at Von Schlichten's open flouting of the convention of concealment when he had put in his geek-speaker. This is the only place on Ula where this happens, Von Schlichten told her, here or in the field when Terran and Craigans soldiers are together. There aren't any taboos between us and the Craigans. No, King Cad said, we cannot eat each other's food, and because our bodies are different we cannot be the fathers of each other's young. But we have been battle comrades and work-shares, and we have learned from each other my people more from yours than yours from mine. Before UK my people were like children shooting arrows at little animals on the beach and climbing among the rocks that Darmie and I do and playing war with toy weapons. But we are growing up and it will not be long before we will stand beside you as the grown son stands beside his parent and when that day comes you will not be ashamed of us. It was easy to forget that King Cad had forearms and a rubbery quart speckled skin and a face like a lizard. I have always wished that some of your people could come to terror to steady, Von Schlichten said. I was talking about it with Sid Harrington only a short while ago. He thinks it would be a good thing for your people and for mine. Yes, I want Little Me when he is old enough to travel to visit your world, King Cad said, and some of the other young ones, and when Little Me is old enough to take over the rule of our people I would like to go to terror myself. Someday I am going to return to terror. I would like to have you make the trip with me, Von Schlichten said. That would be wonderful, Von, King Cad exclaimed. I want to see your world before I die. It must be a wonderful place. A world is what its people make it, and your people must be able to make anything of your world that you would want. We almost made a lifeless desert like the poles of Uller out of our world, Von Schlichten told him. Four hundred and more years ago we fought great wars among ourselves with weapons such as I hope will never even be thought of on Uller. Our whole northern hemisphere where our greatest nations were was devastated. Much of it is wasteland to this day. But we put an end to that folly in time. We made one nation out of all our people, and swore never to commit such crimes again. And then we built the ships that took us out to the stars. But I want you to see our world and some of the other worlds that we have visited. I think you would like it. I know I would. And with you to tell me what the things I would see meant, King Cad was silent for a moment. Then he spoke again, changing the subject irreply. I hope Paula will pardon me, but isn't Paula the kind of Terran that bears young? That's right, King Cad. I never bore any yet, but that's the kind of Terran I am. I like Paula, King Cad said. She has come all the way from Terra to help us and to learn about us. Of course the Kraken's don't need that kind of help, and the geeks who would stick a knife in her as soon as she turned her back on them don't deserve it. But she wants to learn about us, just as I want to learn about Terra. Von, why don't you and Paula have young? He asked. I think that would be fine. Then little Paula Von and little me could be friends, long after the three of us are dead and gone. End of Chapter 5. Recording by Acacia Wood. Chapter 6 of Wooler Uprising. This is LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sean O'Hara. Wooler Uprising by H. Beanpiper. Chapter 6. The bad news came after the coffee. The last clutter silverware and dishes ceased as native servants finished clearing the table. There was a remaining clutter of cups and saucers, liquor glasses tinkled, and occasional cigarette lighter clicked. At the head table, the voices seemed louder. Don't lag at a mill, Saul's word. Brigadier General Barney Mortgvitz, the Skilf Military CO, was saying the lady on his right. There are two confounded meek. Nowadays, nobody yells nitsutabit at you. Nobody sticks all four thumbs in the mouth and weighs its fingers. Nobody commits nuisance on sidewalk in front of you. They just stand and look at you like a farmer looking at a turkey the week before Christmas, and that I don't like. Oh, gosh. Jules Keveney, the Skilf Resident agent at the head of the table, explained, you soldiers are all alike, making your part in general lunch, looked in. He nodded in the direction of guest water. If they don't bow and scrape to you and get off the sidewalk to let you pass, you say they're insolent and need a lesson. If they do, you say they're plotting insurrection. What I said, Mortgvitz repeated, was I expect a certain amount of disorder and a certain minimum show of hostility towards us from some of these geeks to conform to what I know to be our own popularity with many of them. But I don't find it. I want to know why I'm inclined. General lunch looked and came to a subordinate support to agree. The sudden absence of a very testility is declining. Colonel Ching Lee, he called on a local intelligence officer and constabulary chief. This fellow Rikid was here about a month ago. Was there any noticeable disorder at that time? And deterrent demonstrations, attacks on company property or personnel, shooting at air cars, that sort of thing. No more than usual, general. In fact, it was when Rikid came here that the condition General Mortgvitz speaking of began to become conspicuous. We did catch some of Rikid's disciples trying to get in among the enlisted men of the tent and you and I and the fifth Zurk cavalry and promote this affection that was reported at the time, sir, and acted upon as far as the civil administration would permit. Bunch looked and replied, and I might say that Lieutenant Governor Blount has reported from Kegar, or he is now that same unnatural absence of hostility exists there. Well, of course, General Keevney said patronizingly, King Morgzold has things under pretty tight control of Kegar. Do not allow a few fanatics to do anything to prejudice the spaceport negotiations. I wonder if the idea of back that spaceport proposition isn't get us concentrated at Kegar. For Rorgzold could wipe us out in one surprise blow, somebody down the table suggested. Oh, Rorgzold wouldn't be crazy enough to try anything like that. Commander Dirk Prinzlu of the Aldebaran declared, you get away with it for just 12 months. Time would take for the news to get to Terra and for Federation Space Navy task course to get here. And then there'd be a little bit of radioactive geek floating around this system as far out as the orbit of Beta Hydra 7. That's quite true. Punch looked and agree. Point is, does Rorgzold know it? I doubt if he even believes there is a Terra. Then where in space does he think we come from? Keevney demanded. I believe he thinks Niflheim is our home. Punch looked and replied. Or rather, the string of orbiters and artificial satellites around Niflheim, where he thinks Niflheim is, I wouldn't even try to guess. Well, it takes six months for a ship to go between here and Nif, Prinzlu considered. Because of the hyperdrive effect, he experienced time of the voyage. Inside the ship is on the order of three weeks. Taking that as figure, he'd estimate distance at about a quarter million miles, assuming the velocity is being the speed of one of our contragravity ships here on Euler. I'm assuming doesn't even know there's a hyperdrive. Yes. After he wiped us out, he might even consider the idea of an invasion of Niflheim with captured contragravity ships. Hideo Shio leery chuckled. That would be a big laugh. If any of us were alive then to do any laughing. You don't really believe that, General. Keevney asked. His tone was still derisive, but under the derision was uncertainty. After all, Bunchlutin had been on Euler for 15 years to his two. Any question of geek psychology is wide open as far as I'm concerned. Longer I stay here, the less I understand it. Bunchlutin finished his branding and got out a cigarette case and letter. I have an idea of the sort of garbled reports he spies of is, who spend a year on Niflheim as laborers bring back. You know, the line where he's been taking the course, Colonel Chang Lee put in. He as much as says that Niflheim's our home and the farms where we raise our food here and those evergreen planning and conch isthmus between here and Gronkh are the beginning of intent to drive out all native life on this planet and make it over for ourselves. And that savage didn't think and ideologue that for himself. He got it from somebody like Orgzold. The black bearded brigandier general added. You know, the main base off Niflheim is practically self sporting with hydroponic gardens and animal tissue culture vats and it's enough bigger than one of our city ships to pass through a little world. Yeah, somebody like Orgzold or King Ferkadier could easily pick up an idea that that's our home planet. But King Kankad was talking about. Paula Quinton began. We were speaking of geeks, not Kregans. Punch looked and lit cigarette and held his lighter out for hers. He saw that big beta hydra orrery at Kankad's observatory. Well, there's quite a little story about that. You know, it's generally realized by the natives here that Ulur is a globe. The North Zirks have ridden all the way around it on hipposaur back in high latitudes. And the Thalassic peoples at the equator have sailed all five equatorial seas and partaged all the ismuses between. But of course, Ulur is the center of the universe. The sun travels around it on a rather complicated double spiral track. As a theory, it claims most of what they're able to observe and any minor effects don't conform to it are just ignored. They have a model, a most ingenious affair run by Clockwork at the University of Konkuk, to show the apparent movement and position of beta hydra in the sky. It also, fairly accurately. Well, some of our astronomers constructed this ory and exhibited it to a gathering of the leading native scholars who are also the high priests of local religion, sort of combined Academy of Arts and Sizes and College of Cardinals. They almost were massacred. As soon as the assembled punnets saw this thing, they grasped its meaning and began geeking and screaming and yorking and squawking and drenching knives. It was blasphemous and sacrilegious and undermined faith and invalidated the whole logic system. I was Brigadier General in command of Konkuk Military District then. The post them Mazzangue has now. When I got a riot call from the University, I hustled around with the company of Kragans and we cleared the hall with the bayonets and ran the Reverend professors out onto the campus. And after we got things in hand, the Kragans crowded around the ory, trying to set it up to show the existing position of the planet relative to the primary and figure out the theory back of it. They were very much interested. Some of them must have sent word home about it because Kanked came in the next ship wanting to see it. It was so much taken with it, Sid Harrington gave it to him. It's one of his most cherished possessions. But the Konkuk tundits bite all four thumbs and wave their fingers every time they think of it. He warmed his coffee from a controlled temperature pot. He can't use Kragan thinking on any subject as a criterion of what somebody like Orgzil's opinion will be. I never could understand the admiration some of you military people have for these cutthroats, keep me declared. Well, yes I can. You people like them because they do your dirty work for you. He reads Stanley Brown too all that. He did Oshio Leary said. Miss Quinton, how do you like your visit Kanked's town? Still think Kragans are cultural mongrels? Why, they're wonderful. I never expected anything like it. They just seem to have picked up everything they could from us and then gone on from there to develop culture of their own with our techniques. For instance, those big guns, the ones they call the Ridge Battery, that they built for themselves. They aren't copies of Terran guns. They don't look like our work or give the feel our work would. And that telescope at the observatory, she continued. Did they built that too? Yeah, Solway Furnished was a couple textbooks on lens grinding and telescope design and a book on optics. You see, when you made that deal with them, they realized we weren't any better fighters than they were. We just had better weapons. To have the same kind of weapons, they'd have to learn to make them. And once they began studying technology, they found that it had to study science. Weapon making was the entering wedge. After that, they found they could use the same skills to make anything else they wanted. Give them another century or so and they'll be one of the great races of the galaxy. Yes, and it's good thing there are friends to work if it's added. I'm always sorry there's so few of them and so many of the geeks. Yes, company ought to let a stockpile nuclear weapons here just be on safe side. Another officer farther down the table said. Now, I'm not exactly in favor of that, punch looked and replied. It's the same principle as not allowing guards who have to go in among the convicts carry firearms. If somebody like Orgzill got ahold of nuclear bomb, even a little old first century H bomb, he could use it for a model and construct a hundred legged with all the plutonium we've been handing out for power reactors. And there are too few of us and we're concentrating too few places to last long if that happened. What this planet needs, though, is a visit by a 50 odd ship test course of the Space Navy, just show the geeks what we have back of us. After a show like that, there'd be a lot less as nid suit a bit around here. General, I'd implore that sort of talk, keep me said. I hear too much of this mailed fist and rattling saber stuff from some of the junior officers here without you're getting cotton and an encouragement to it. You're here to earn dividends for the stockholders of the ruler company and we can only do that by gaining the friendship and respect of the natives. Mr. Keveney, Paula Quinton spoke up, I doubt if even you would seriously accuse the extraterrestrials rights association of favoring what you call mailed fist and rattling saber policy. We've done everything in our power to help those people and if anybody should have their friendship, we should. Well only five days ago, in Conkruk, Mr. Muhammad Faray and I were attacked by a mob. Our native air car driver was murdered and if it hadn't been for General Von Schlickton and his soldiers, we'd have lost our lives. Mr. Faray is still hospitalized as a result of injuries he received. It seems that General Von Schlickton and his Kragans aren't trying to get friendship and confidence. They're willing to settle for respect in the only way they can get by hitting harder and quicker than the geeks can. Somebody down the table, one of the military, of course, said, here here. Von Schlickton came as close as a man wearing a monocle can to winking Paula. Good girl, he thought. She's starting to play for the army team. Well, of course, even he began. And he stopped as a Tarrant Sergeant came up to the table and then overbaring Morkevitz's shoulder, whispering urgently. The blackbearded brigadier arose immediately, taking his belt from the back of his chair and putting it on. Motioning Sergeant to accompany him, he spoke briefly to Keevnie and then came around the table to where Von Schlickton sat, the rest in agent accompanying him. Message just came in from Conkruk General, he said softly, said Harrington's dead. It took Von Schlickton all of a second to grasp what had been said. Good God, when, how? Here's all we know, sir. The Sergeant said, giving him a radio print slip. Came in 10 minutes ago. It was an all station priority telecast. Governor General Harrington had died suddenly in his room at 2210. There are no details. He glanced at his watch as 2243. Conkruk and Skilk were in the same time zone. That was fast work. He handed a slip to Morkevitz, who gave it to Keevnie. He from the telecast station, Sergeant, he asked, all right, let's go. Wait a minute, General. Keevnie put out a hand to detain him as he took his belt and put it on. How about this? He gestured nervously with a radio print slip. Get up and make an announcement now. Von Schlickton told him, fastening the buckle and hitching his pistol and survival kit into place. It'll be out all over the planet in half an hour. Never hold news out unnecessarily. He stubbed out his cigarette. Come on, Sergeant. As he hurried from the banquet room, he could hear Keevnie tapping on his wine glass. Everybody, please, let me have your attention. There's just come in a piece of the most tragic news. End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Of Uler Uprising This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Acacia Wood. Uler Uprising by H. B. Piper Chapter 7 Bismillah! How dumb can we get? The lights had come on inside the semi-circular and now open storm porch of Company House, but it was still daylight outside. The sky above the mountain to the west was fading from crimson to burnt orange, and a couple of the brighter stars were winking in the visibility. Von Schlichten and the sergeant hurried a hundred yards from the street between low, thick walled office buildings to the telecast station next to the administration building. A woman capped and met him just inside the door of the big, sound-proofed room. We have a wavelength open to concrete, General, she said, in booth three. He nodded. Thank you, Captain. We've all lost a true friend, haven't we? Another girl, a tech sergeant, was in the booth. On the screen was the image of a third young woman, a lieutenant, at Concrooke Station. The sergeant rose and started to leave the booth. Stick around, sergeant, Von Schlichten told her. I'll want you to take over when I'm through. He sat down in front of the Combination Visit Screen and Pickup. Now, Lieutenant, just what happened? He asked. How did he die? We think it was poison, General. General Mazzangui has ordered autopsy and chemical analysis. If you can wait about ten minutes, he'll be able to talk to you himself. Call him. In the meantime, give me everything you know. Well, the Governor decided to go to bed early. He was going hunting in the morning. I suppose you know his usual routine. Von Schlichten nodded. Harrington would have taken a shower, put on his dressing gown, and then sat down at his desk, lighted his pipe, poured a drink of Terran bourbon, and began to write his diary. Well, at twenty-two hundred, give or take a couple of minutes, the Craig and Guard Sergeant on that floor heard ten pistol shots as fast as they could be fired, semi-auto, in the Governor's room. The door was locked, but he shot it off with his own pistol and went in. He found Governor Harrington on the floor, wearing only his gown, holding an empty pistol. He was in convulsions, frothing at the mouth, in horrible pain. Evidently, he'd fired his pistol, which he kept on his desk, to call help. All the bullets had gone into the ceiling. The Sergeant punched the emergency button beside the bed and reported, then tried to help the Governor. But it was too late. One of the medics got there in five minutes, just as he was dying. He'd written his diary up to noon of to-day and broken off in the middle of a word. There was a bottle and an overturned glass on his desk. The constable or he got there a few minutes later, when the Brigadier General Mazzongui took charge. A white rat, given fifteen drops from the whiskey bottle, died, with the same symptoms in about ninety seconds. Who had access to the whiskey bottle? A geek-servant, who takes care of the room. He was caught an hour earlier trying to slip off the island without a pass. They were holding him at the guardhouse when Governor Harrington died. He's now being questioned by the Kragans. The girl's face was bleakly remorseless. I hope they do plenty to him. I hope they don't kill him before he talks. Wait a moment, General. We have General Mazzongui now, the girl said. I'll switch you over. The screen broke into a kaleidoscope jumble of color and cleared the chocolate-brown face if the Mazzongui was looking out of it. I heard what happened, how they found him, and about that geek chamber valet being arrested, Bonch looked and said. Did you get anything out of him? He's admitted putting poison in the bottle, but he claims it was his own idea. But he's one of Father Keelook's parishioners, so… Keelook! Goddamn! So that was it! Bonch looked and almost shouted. Now I know what he wanted was Stalin, and that goat, and those rabbits. Five thousand miles away in Conkruk, Themostically's Mazzongui whistled. Bismillah! How dumb can we get? He cried. Of course they'd need for us to draw animals to find out what would poison a Terran. Wait a minute. I'll make a note of that to spring on this geek if the Kragens haven't finished him by now. Bonch looked and watched Mazzongui pick up his denote phone and whisper in it for a moment. All right, Carlos. What else? Has Eric been notified? We called Geekark, but he's an audience with King Orzild, and we can't reach him. Well, who's in charge at Conkruk now? Not much of anybody. Laviola, the fiscal secretary, and Hans Meierstein, the banking cartel's lawyer, and Hallad, the personnel chief, and Berman, the commercial secretary. We've made up a sort of quadroom for it, and we're trying to run things. I don't know what would happen if anything came up suddenly. A blue-gray uniformed arm with a major's cuff braid came into the screen, handing a slip of paper to Mazzongui. He took it, glanced at it, and swore. Bonch looked and waited until he had read it through. Well, something has all right, the African said. We just got a call from Geekark's palace. The revolt's broken out, presumably headed by Gurgirk. Household guards either mutinied or wiped out by all of me the mutineers. All but those 20 Kragens rifles we loaned Geekark. They ain't about a dozen of Geekark's courtiers and their personal traiteiners are holding the approaches to the king's apartments. The native lieutenant in charge of the Kragens just radioed in, says the situation is desperate. When a Kragens says that, he means Dan near hopeless. Is this being recorded? When Mazzongui nodded, he continued. All right. Use the recording for your authority and take charge. I'm declaring martial rule at Congruque, as of now 2253. Tell Eric Blount what's happened and what you've done as soon as you can get in touch with him. I'm leaving for Congruque at once. I ought to get in by 0800. Now as to the trouble at the palace. Don't commit more than one company of Kragens and ten air jeeps, four combat cars, and tell them to evacuate J.Kark and his followers and our Kragens to Gongonk Island, and alert your whole force. These Palates revolutions are always synchronized with street riding, and this thing seems to have been synchronized with Sid Herrington's death, too. Get our Kragens out if you can't save anybody else from the palace, but sacrificing 30 or 40 men to save twenty is no kind of business and keep sending reports. I can pick them up in my car radio as I come down. He turned to the girl's sergeant. Keep on this. There'll be more coming in. He rose and left the booth. If we can pull J.Kark's bacon off the fire he was thinking the company can dictate its own terms to him afterward. If J.Kark's killed, we'll have Gurgirk's head off for it, and then take over Congruque. In either case, it'll be a long step toward getting rid of all these geek despots. And with Eric Blount as Governor-General, the girl captain in charge of the station met him as he came out. Poison, he told her. A geek servant did a job, on orders from Gurgirk and possibly Rakeed. Gurgirk started a push against King J.Kark. I'm going to Congruque at once. Call the military airport and have my command car brought to Company House. Harry Kwong and Asan Bogdanov had been at the banquet, too. In a world of lizard-faced silicate-eaters, a social difference between a human-general and a human-air car-driver was almost infantismal. He'd have to talk to Barney Mordekwitz, too, when word of events at Congruque got out among the local geeks as it probably had already. The inner door of the soundproof telecast room burst open, three men hurried inside and it slams shut behind them. In the brief interval there had been firing audible from outside. One of the men had a pistol in his right hand and with his left arm he supported a companion whose shoulder was mangled and dripped blood. The third man had a burp gun in his hands. All were in civilian dress shorts and light jackets. The man with a pistol holstered it and helped his injured companion into a chair. The burp guner advanced into the room, looked around, saw Vaughn Schlickton and addressed him. General, the geeks turned on us, he cried. The tenth North Oolers mutinied. They're running wild all over the place. They've taken their barracks and supply buildings and the lorry hangers and the maintenance-yard. They're headed this way in a mob. Some of the Zurt Calvaries joined them. How about the Kragans? The eighteenth rifles? There with us. I saw a party of them firing into the mob. I saw some of the tenth NU&I tossing a dead Kragan on their bayonets. Have any ammo left for that burp gun? Come on, then. Let's see what it's like at Company House, Vaughn Schlickton said. Captain Malavez, you know what to do about defending this station. Get busy doing it. And have that girl in Boot 3 tell Concroek what's happened here and say that I won't be coming down as planned just yet. He opened the door and the rattle of shots outside became audible again. The civilian with a burp gun knew better than to let a general go out first, elbowing Vaughn Schlickton out of the way he crouched over his weapon and dashed outside, drawing his pistol Vaughn Schlickton followed, pulling the door shut after him. Darkness had fallen while he had been inside. Now the whole company reservation was ablaze with electric lights. Somebody at the power plant, either the regular staff if they were still holding or the mutineers if they had taken it, had thrown on the emergency lights. There was a confused mass of gray-skinned figures in front of Company House, reflected light twinkling on steel over them. From the direction of the native troops barracks, more natives were coming on the run. On the building, across the street, on the roof, two machine guns were already firing into the mob. A group of Terrans came running out of a roadway between two buildings from the direction of the repair shop, several of them paused a fire behind them with pistols. They started toward Company House, saw what was going on there and veered, darting into the door of the building from which the auto-weapons were firing. From up the street a hundred old Sarian-faced native soldiers were coming at the double, bayonets fixed and rifles at high port. With them ran several Terrans, motioning his companion to follow Von Schluck and ran to meet them, following and beside a Terran captain who ran in front. What's the score, Captain? He asked. Tin North Ulur and the Fifth Calvary of Mutinid so have these rod-tag auxiliaries, that mob down there is a part of them. He was puffing under the double effort of running and talking. Hulting blew up in seconds, no chance to communicate with anybody. A Terran woman in black slacks in an orange sweater ran across the street in front of them, pursued by a group of enlisted men at the Tenth North Ulur native infantry all shrieking, Znid, Zdubit! The fugitive ran into a doorway across the street before her pursuers were aware of their danger, the Kragans had swept over them. There was no shooting, the slim, cruel-bladed bayonets did the work. From behind him as he ran, Von Schluckton could hear Kragan voices in a new cry, Znidgeek! Znidgeek! The mob were swarming up under the steps and into the semi-retunda of the storm porch. There was shooting, which told him that some of the humans who had been at the bankwood were still alive. He wondered half-sick how many and whether they could hold out till he could clear the doorway, and most of all he found himself thinking of Paula Quinton. Skidding to a stop within fifty yards of the mob he flung out his arms crucifix-wise to halt the Kragans. Behind he could hear the Terrans and native officers shouting commands to form front. Give them one clip, reload, and then give them the bayonet, he ordered. Shed them off the steps and then clear the porch. One clip, fire, and reload at will, somebody passed it on in Kragan. The hundred rifles let go all at once, and for five seconds they ported deafening two thousand rounds into the mutineers. There was some fire in reply, as their corporal narrowly missed him with a pistol. He saw the captain's head fly apart when an explosive rifle bullet hit him, and half a dozen Kragans went down. Reload, set your safeties, Von Schlichten bellowed. Charge! Under human officers a North Ruler native infantry would have stood firm. Even under their native officers and sergeants they should not have broken as they did. But the best of these had paid for their loyalty to the company with their lives, and the rest had destroyed their authority by revolting against the source from which it was derived. At that the skilken peasantry who made up the tenth infantry in the Cert Calvarumian tried briefly to fight as individuals shrieking ZNIDZ SUTEBIT until the Kragans were upon them stabbing and shooting. They drove the rioters from the steps or killed them there. They wiped out those who had gotten into the semicircle of the storm porch. The inside doors Von Schlichten saw were open. They, beyond them, were a deterrence and a dozen or so Kragans. Hediocio Leary and Barney Mordecavitz seemed to be in command of these. We had about 30 seconds warning Mordecavitz reported and the Kragans in the hall bought us another sixty seconds. Of course, we all had our pistols. Hey! These storm doors are wedge, somebody discovered. Those goddamn geek servants! Yeah, kill any of them you can. Cat, somebody else advised. If we could have gotten them doors closed. The mob, driven from the steps, was trying to reform and renew the attack. From up the street the machine guns silent during the bayonet fight began hammering again. The mob surged forward to get out of their fire and were met by rifle blasts and a hedge of bayonets at the steps. They surged back and the machine guns flailed them again. They started to rush the building from once the automatic fire came and there was a fuselage and a shriek of ZNIDGEEK from up the street. They turned and fled in the direction from once they had come, bullets scorching them from three directions at once. For a moment Bunch looked in and the three Terrans and 80 odd Kregans who had survived the fight stood on the steps, weapons poised, seeking more enemies. The machine guns up the street stuttered a few short bursts and were silent. From behind the beleaguered Terrans and their Kregan guards were emerging. He saw Jules Cavani and his wife, Commander Prince Lu of the Aldebaran, Harry Kwong and Bogdanoff. Ah, there she was. He heaved a breath of relief and waved to her. The Kregans were already setting about their after-battle chores. About twenty of them spread out on guard. The others by fours went into the street, one covering with his rifle, while the other three checked on their own casualties, used the short leaf-shaped swords they carried to slash off the heads of enemy wounded and collected weapons and ammunition. A couple of hundred more Kregans led by a native major Cormark, the co-parent of Young with King Kengad came up at the double and stopped in front of Company House. We were in quarters, aboard the Aldebaran and in the guest house at the airport Cormark reported, we were attacked fifteen minutes ago by a mob. We took ten minutes beating them off and five more getting here. I sent native Captain Geerdiek and the rest of the fours to retake the supply depot in the shops and lorry hangers which had been taken and relieved the military airport which is under attack. There was still firing from the commercial airport in the smaller military airfield. Once there was a string of heavy explosions that sounded like eighty millimeter rockets. Good enough, I hope you didn't spread yourself out too thin. What's the situation at the commercial airport? The two ships, the Aldebaran and the freighter northern star are both safe, Cormark replied. I saw them go on contragravity and rised about a hundred feet. Whose crowd is that you have? He asked the Taran Lieutenant who had taken over command of the First Force of Kragans. Company Six, 18th Rifle, Sir. We were on duty at the guard house. Fighting broke out in the direction of the native barracks. A couple of runners from Captain Retief of Company Four came in with word that he was being attacked by mutineers from the 10th NUNI but that he was holding them back. So Captain Charbono who was killed a few minutes ago, left a Taran Lieutenant and a Kragans native Lieutenant and a couple of native sergeants and 30 Kragans to hold the guard house and brought the rest of us here. Funch looked and nodded. You'd passed the military airport in the power plant, wouldn't you? He asked. Yes, Sir. The military airport's holding out and I saw the red and yellow danger lights on the fence around the power plant. That meant the power plant was, for the time, safe. Somebody turned twenty thousand volts into the fence. All right. I'm setting up my command post at the telecast station where the communication equipment is. He turned to the crowd that had come out onto the porch from inside. Where's Colonel Qing Li? Here, General. The intelligence and constabulary officer pushed through the crowd. I was on the phone talking to the military airport, the commercial airport, Orden-Stipot, spaceport, ship docks, and power plant. All answer. I'm afraid Pop Good at the city power plant is done for. Nobody answers there, but the TV pickup is still on in the low dispatcher's room and the place is full of geeks. Colonel Jarman is coming here with a lorry to get Combat Car Crews. He's shorthanded. Port Captain Levitt has all the native labor at the airport and spaceport herded into Repair Dock. He's keeping them covered with the forward ninety millimeter gun of the Northern Star. Lorry hangers, repair shops, and maintenance yards don't answer. That's what I was going to ask you. Good enough. Harry Kwong Hassan Bogdanoff. His command Car Crew front and centered. I want you to take Colonel Leary up as soon as my car is brought here. Hid, you go up and see what's going on. Drop flares where there isn't any light, and take a look at the native labor camp and the equipment park south of the reservation. Cormark, you take all your gang and half these soldiers from the Eighteenth Pier and help clear the native troop barracks, and don't bother taking any prisoners. We can't spare personnel to guard them. Cormark Grind, the taking of prisoners had always been one of those irrational Tarran customs which no Oolaring regarded with favor or even comprehension. End of Chapter 7 Recording by Acacia Wood Chapter 8 Of Oolaring Uprising This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Acacia Wood Oolaring Uprising by H. B. Piper Chapter 8 Authority of Governor-General Vaughn Schlickton There is fresh intelligence from Conkruk by the time you return to the telecast station. Mutiny had broken out there among the laborers and native troops who outnumbered the Tarrans and their Kragan mercenaries on Gongong Island by 5,000 to 500 and 1,500 respectively. The attempt to relieve Jay Carrick's palace had been called off before the relief force could be sent. There was heavy and confused fighting all over the island and most of the combat contragravity and about half the Kragan rifles had had to be committed to defend the company farms across the Channel on the mainland south of the city. There had also been an urgent call for help from Colonel Rodolfo McKinnon in command of company troops at the Keegark residency and another from the residency at Quirk, one of the free cities on the eastern shore of Takhad Sea. He called Keegark a girl, apparently one of the civilian telecast technicians answered. We must have help, General Vaughn Schlickton, she told him. The native troops all but 200 Kragins have mutinied. They have everything here except company house, docks, airport, everything. We're trying to hold out but there are thousands of them. Our Takhad native infantry, soldiers of King Orgzyl's army and townspeople, they all seem to have firearms. What happened to Eric Blount and your resident agent, Mr. Lemoine? We don't know. They were at the palace talking to King Orgzyld. We've tried to call the palace but we can't get through. General, we must have help. A call came in a few minutes later from Crank, 500 miles to the northeast across the mountains. The resident agent there, when Francis Xavier Shapiro reported rioting in the city and an attempted palace revolution against King Junkfunk and that the residency was under attack. By way of variety it was the army of King Junkfunk that had mutinied. The six North Ulur native infantry and the two companies of Zerk Calvary at Crank were still loyal along with the Kragins. There was a pattern to all this. Vaughn Schlickton stood staring at the big map on the wall showing the Dakad Sea area at the equatorial zone and the country north of it to the pole, the area of Ulur occupied by the company. He was almost beginning to discern the underlying logic of the past half-hours events when Cavini, the skilk resident blundered into him in a half-days. Sorry, General, didn't see you. His face was ashen and his jowl sacked. Vaughn Schlickton wondered if there could be another spectacle so wobagon as a back-slapping extrovert with the bottom knocked out of him. My God, it's happening all over Ulur, not just here at skilk, everywhere where we have a residency or a trading station. Why, it's the end of all of us. It's not quite that bad, Mr. Cavini. He looked at his watch. It was now nearly an hour since the native troops here at skilk had mutinied. Insurrections like this usually succeeded or failed in the first hour. It was a little early to be certain, but he was beginning to suspect that this one hadn't succeeded. If we all do our part, we'll come out of it all right, he told Cavini. More cheerfully than he felt, then turned to ask Brigadier General Morkovitz how the fighting was going at the native troops' barracks. Not badly, General. Colonel Jarman's got some contragravity up and working. They blew out all four of the Tenth's In-U-N-I's barracks. The Tenth and the Zerks are trying to defend the Calvary barracks. Some of our Kragans managed to slip around behind the Calvary staples. They're leading out hipposaurs and snobbing at the rear of the Calvary barracks. That'll give us some Calvary of our own. A lot of these Kragans are good riders. How about the repair shops and maintenance yard and lorry hangers? I don't want those geeks getting hold of that equipment and using it against us. Cormark's outfit are trying to take back the lorry hangers. Jarman's got a couple of air jeeps and a combat car helping them. Won't be one of us left by this time tomorrow! Cavini was wailing to Paula Quintin and another woman and the company is finished! We'd better get them a drink or a cup of coffee, General. Morkovitz suggested with a knockout drop in it. Colonel Ching Lee, the intelligence officer, seemed to have somewhat the same idea. He approached Cavini and tried to quiet him. At the same time a woman in black slacks and an orange sweater, the one whose pursuers had been overrun by the Kragans at the beginning of the fighting, approached Von Schlichten. General. King Kakad's calling, she said. He's on the screen in booth four. Right. To avoid any possibility of misunderstanding, he slipped his geek speaker into his mouth before entering the booth. King Kakad's face was looking out of the screen at him with Philly Amazaki, the telecast operator at Kakad's town, standing behind him. Von. The Kragans spoke almost as though in physical pain. What can I do to help? I have twenty thousand of my people here who are capable of bearing arms, all with firearms, but I have transport for only five hundred. Where shall I send them? Von Schlichten thought quickly. Key Gark was finished. The residency stood in the middle of the city surrounded by two hundred thousand of King Orgzyld's troops and subjects. Since Ulerns were bisexual, the total population, lest the senile, crippled, and very young was the military potential. Sending Kankad's five hundred warriors and his meager contragravity there would be the same as shoveling them into a furnace. The people at Key Gark would have to be written off, like the twenty Kragans at Jaykark's palace. Send them to Konkruk, he decided. Them Azangwis in command there. He'll need help to hold the company farms. Maybe he can find additional transport for you. I'll call him. I'll send off what force I can at once, Kankad promised. How does it go with you at Skilk? We're holding, so far, he replied. Pallas with me here. She sends a friendship. Captain Inez Malavaz, the woman officer in charge of the station, put her head into the booth. General, immediate urgency message from Colonel O'Leary, she said. Native laborers from the mine labor camp are pouring into the mine equipment park. Colonel O'Leary has used all his rockets and MG ammunition trying to stop them. Call you back later, Von Schlichten told Kankad. I'll see what Them Azangwis can do about transport. Give what force you can started for Kankuk at once. He left the booth removing his geek speaker. Barney, he called. General Mordkovitz. Who's the ranking officer in direct contact with the 18th Rifles? Major Falkenberg? That's right. Tell him to get as many of his cragons as he can spare down to the equipment park. He turned in as Malavaz. You call Jarman. Tell him when O'Leary reported and tell him to get cracking on it. Tell him not to let those geeks get any of that equipment onto contragravity. Knock it down as fast as they try to lift out with it. And tell him to see what he can do in the way of troop carriers or lorries to get Falkenberg's rifles to the equipment park. House business of the lorry hangers and maintenance yard. Cormark's still working on that, the girl captain told him. Nothing definite yet. In one corner of the big room somebody had thumb-tacked a ten-foot square map of the company area to the floor. Paula Quinten and Mrs. Jules Kavini were on their knees beside it. Pushing out handfuls of little pink and white pills that somebody had brought in two bottles from the dispensary across the road, each using a billiard bridge. The girl in the orange sweater had a handful of scribbled notes and was telling them where to push the pills. There were other objects on the map, too— pistol cartridges and cigarettes and foil-wrapped food-concentrate wafers. Paula, seeing him, straightened. The pinker ours, General, she said, the white are the geeks. Bunch licked and suppressed a grin. That was the second time he'd heard her use that word this evening. The cigarettes are air-jeeps, the cartridges are combat cars, and the wafers are lorries or troop carriers. Not exactly regulation map-markers, but I've seen stranger things used. Captain Malabez. Yes, sir. The girl captain rushing past her hands full of teleprint sheets stopped in mid-stride. What we need, he told her, is a big TV screen and a pickup mounted on some sort of a contra-gravity vehicle at about two to five thousand feet directly overhead to give us an image of the whole area. Can do? Can't rise, sir. We have an eight-foot circular screen that ought to do all right for two thousand feet. I'll implement that at once. Going into a temporarily idle telecast booth, he called Kinkruk. First he spoke to a civilian who chewed a dead cigar, and then he got the mystically's mizongui on the screen. How is it now, he asked. Getting a little better, the Greco-African replied. Half an hour ago we were shooting geeks out the window. Now we have them contained between the spaceport and the native troops and labor barracks and down the east side of the island to the farms. We have the wire around the farms on the island electrified and we're using almost all our combat contra-gravity to keep the farms on the mainland clear. He hesitated for a moment. Did you hear about Eric and Lemoine? Vunch looked and shook his head. We just got a call from Adolfo McKinnon. He took a couple of prisoners and made them talk. The whole party that were at Orgzild's Palace were massacred. Some of them were lucky enough to get killed fighting. The geeks took Eric and Hendrick alive. Rolled them in a puddle of thermoconcentrate fuel and set fire to them. When we can spare the contra-gravity we're going to drop something on the key geek embassy over in town. Well, that was what I wanted to call you about, contra-gravity. He told Miss Angui about King Kankad's offer. His crowd ought to be coming in a couple of hours. What can you scrape up to send to Kankad's town to airlift Kraygens in? Well, we have 350-foot gun-cutters, one 90-millimeter gun-a-piece, the Elm around the Gaucho and the Bush Ranger. But they're not meant to transports and we need them here pretty badly. Then we have five fertilizer and charcoal scows and a lot of heavy transport lorries and two 180-foot pick-up boats. How about the Peach of Air? Vonch looked and asked. She was doing concruc from in the east about thirteen hundred today, wasn't she? Miss Angui swore. She got in all right, that the geeks boarded her at the dock within twenty minutes after things started. They tried to lift out with her and the channel battery shot her down into concruc channel off the fifty-sixth street docks. Well, you can't let the geeks have her to use against us. What do you hear from the other ships? Procians at Grank we haven't had any reports of any kind from there, which doesn't look so good. The Northern Lights is at Grank, too. The Oom Paul Kruger should have been at Bork in the east when the gun went off and the Jan Smuts and the Christian DeWitt were both at Keegark. We can assume Orgzild has both of them. All right. I'm sending Aldebaran to K'n Keats to pick up more reinforcements for you. We can use them, and with Aldebaran we ought to be able to take the offensive against the city by this time tomorrow. Anything else? Not at the moment. I'll see about getting Aldebaran sent off now. Leaving the booth, he heard about the clatter of communications machines and hubbub of voices, Jules Kavini arguing contentiously. Evidently, Colonel Ching Lee's efforts to drag the resident out of his despondency have been an excessive success. But it's crazy! Not just here, everywhere on Ular, Kavini was saying. How did they do it? They have no telecast equipment. You have me stop, Jules. Mordecavitz was replying. I know a lot of rich geeks have receiving sets, but no sending sets. The pattern that had been tantalizing Von Schluchten took visible shape in his mind. For a moment he shelved the matter of the Aldebaran. They didn't need sending equipment, Barney. He said, They used ours. What do you mean, Kavini challenged? Look what happened. Sid Harrington was poisoned and concrueck. The news, of course, was sent out at once, as the geeks knew it would be, to every residency and trading station on Ular. And that was a signal they'd agreed upon, probably months in advance. All they had to do was have that geek servant put poison in Harrington's whiskey, and we did the rest. Well, what was our intelligence doing? Sleeping? Kavini demanded angrily. No, they were writing reports for your civil administration blokes to stuff in the wastebasket, and being called a mailed, fist and rattling sabre alarmists for their pains. He turned away from Kavini. Barney, where's Dirk Prenzlou? Abort his ship. He hitched a ride to the airport with Jarman when he was here picking up aircrews. Call him. Tell him to take the Aldebaran to Concadstown at once. As soon as he arrives there, which should be about eleven hundred, he's to pick up all the cragons he can pack aboard and take them to concrueck. From then on he'll be under thumb as Angui's orders. To concrueck, Kavini fairly howled. Are you nuts? Don't you think we need reinforcements here, too? Yes, I do. I'm going to try to get them, Bunch looked and told him. Now pipe down and get out of people's way. He crossed the room to where two cragons, a male sergeant, and the ubiquitous girl and the orange sweater were struggling to get a big circular TV screen up, then turned to look at the situation map. A girl tech sergeant was keeping Paula Quinton and Mrs. Jules Kavini informed. Stop pushing geeks out of the fifth Cert Calvary barracks, the sergeant was saying. The one at the north end, the one next to it, and they're both on fire now. She tossed a slip into the wastebasket beside her and glanced at the next slip, and more pink pills back of the barracks and stables and moved them a little to the northwest. Cragons is skirmishers to intercept geeks trying to slip away from the Calvary barracks. Though why we want to do that, I don't know, Mrs. Kavini said, pushing out a handful of pink pills with her billiard bridge, let them go and good riddance. I never did like this bridge of silver for a fleeting enemy idea. Paula Quinton said, evicting token mutineers from the two northern barracks, there's usually two-way traffic on bridges. Kill them here, and we won't have to worry about keeping them out. Of course, it was easy to beat blood thirsty about pink pills and white pills. Once on a three-months reaction drive voyage from Yichgrill to Loki, he had taught a couple of professors of extraterrestrial zoology to play creak spiel, and before the end of the trip he was being horrified by the callous disregard they showed for casualties. But little Paula had the right idea. Dead enemies don't hit back. A young craigin with his lower left arm in his sling and a dob of antiseptic plaster over the back of his head came up and gave him a radio print slip. Guido Cormacini's, the resident agent-grand, had reported at last. The city, he said, was quiet, but King New York Kirk's troops had seized the company airport in Docks, taken the Prostion and the Northern Lights, and put guards aboard them and were surrounding the residency. He wanted to know what to do. Funch licked and managed to get him on the screen after a while. He looks as though York Kirk's trying to play both sides at once, he told the Grink resident. If their bellions put down, he'll come forward as your friend and protector. If we're wiped out elsewhere, he'll yell, Znidsidibit! And swamp you. Don't antagonize him. We can't afford to fight this war on any more fronts than we are now. We'll try to do something to get you in frozen before long. He called Crink again, a girl with red-gold hair and a dusting of freckles across her nose answered. How are you making out? he asked. So far fine, General. We complete control of the company area and all our native troops, not just the Kragans, are with us. Junkfanks pushed the mutineers out of his palace and were keeping open a couple of streets between here and there. We airlifted all our Kragans and half the six Innu and I to the palace and we have the Zerks patrolling the streets on Sarbak. Now we have our lorries and troop carriers out picking up elements of Junkfanks' loyal troops outside town. Who's doing the rioting, then? She named three of Junkfanks regiments. And the city hoodlums and priests from the temples of one sect that followed Rakeed and skilken fifth columnists. Mr. Shapiro can give you the details, shall I call him? Never mind. He's probably busy. He's not as easy on the eyes as you are and you're doing all right. How long do you think it take with the equipment you have to airlift all of Junkfanks' loyal troops into the city? Not before this time tomorrow. All right. Are you in radio communication with Junkfanks now? Full telecast audio visual, the girl applied. Just a minute, General. He put in his geek-speaker. The screen exploded into multi-colored light, then cleared. Within a few minutes, Asari and Ulaan Fais was looking out at him. A harsh-lined, elderly face, with an old scar, quartz-crested, along one side. Your Majesty, Von Schlichten greeted him. Junkfank pronounced something intended to correspond to Von Schlichten's name. We have image men under sad circumstances, General, he said. Sad for both of us, King Junkfank, we must help one another. I am told that your soldiers in Crink have been risen against you and that your loyal troops are far from the city. Yes. That was the work of my War Minister, Herkirk, who was in the pay of King Friket of Skilk, made Jeals devour him alive. I have Herkirk's head over here somewhere, if you want to see it. But that will not bring my loyal soldiers to Crink any sooner. Dead traitors' heads do not interest me, King Junkfank, Von Schlichten replied, in what he estimated that the Crink and King would interpret as a tone of cold, blooded cruelty. There are too many traitors' heads still on traitors' shoulders. What regiments are loyal to you, and where are they now? Junkfank began naming regiments and locating them all at minor provincial towns at least a hundred miles from Crink. Herkirk did his work well, I am afraid you killed them too mercifully, Von Schlichten said. While I am sending the northern star to Crink, she can only bring in one regiment at a trip, the way where they are scattered. Which do you want first? Junkfank's mouth, until now compressed grimly, parted in a gleaming smile. He made an exclamation of pleasure, which sounded rather like a boy running along a picket fence with a stick. Good general, good he cried. The first should be the regiment murderers at Frunk. They all have rifles like your soldiers. Have them brought to the great square at the palace here. And then the regiment fear-makers at Jilsnit, and the regiment corpse-troopers at let that go until the murderers are in, Von Schlichten advised. There at Frunk, you say? I'll send the northern star there directly. Oh, good general, I will not soon forget this. And as soon as the work is finished here, I will send soldiers to help you at Skilk. There shall be a great pile of the heads of those who had part in this wickedness, both here and there. Good, now if you will pardon me, I'll go to give the necessary orders. As he left the booth, he saw Hadayoshi O'Leary in front of the situation-map and hailed him. Harry and Hassan are getting the car re-armored, they drop me off here. Want to come up with us and see the show? No, I want you to go to Crink as soon as Harry brings the car here again. He told O'Leary what he intended doing. He'll probably have to go around a head of the star and alert these regiments. And as soon as things stabilize at Crink, prod Junk Bank into airlifting troops here. You're authorized, in my name, to promise Junk Bank that he can assume political control at Skilk after we've stuffed for kids' head in the dust-pin. Jules Kovini, who always seemed to be where he wasn't wanted, heard that and fairly screamed. General Von Schlickden! That is a political decision. You have no authority to make promises like that. That is a matter for the Governor General at least. Well, as of now, an intel successor to Sid Harrington can be sent here from Terra. I'm Governor General Von Schlickden told him. Mentally thanking Kovini for reminding him of the necessity for such a step. Captain Malabez, you will send out an all-station telegast immediately. Military Commander-in-Chief Carlos Von Schlickden, being informed of the deaths of both Governor General Harrington and Lieutenant Governor Blount, assumes the duties of Governor General as of 0001 today. He turned to Kovini. Does that satisfy you? He asked. No, it doesn't. You have no authority to assume a civil position of any sort, let alone a very highest position. Von Schlickden unbuttoned his holster and took out his authority, letting Kovini look into the muzzle of it. Here it is, he said. If you're wise, don't make me appeal to it. Kovini shrugged. I can't argue with that, he said. But I don't fancy the Uller Company is going to be impressed by it. The Uller Company, Von Schlickden replied, is six and a half parsecs away. It takes a ship six months to get from here to Terra, and another six months to get back. A radio message takes a little over 21 years, each way. He holstered the pistol again. You were bitchin' about how we needed reinforcements a while ago. Well, here's where we have to reverse clouds of it and use politics as an extension by other means of war. That brings up another question, General, one of Kovini's subordinates said. Can we hold out long enough for help to get here from Terra? By the time help could reach us from Terra, Von Schlickden replied, we'll either have this revolt crushed or there won't be a live Terran left on Uller. He felt a brief sadistic pleasure as he watched Kovini's face sag in horror. What do you think we'll live on for a year, he asked. On this planet, there's not more than a three-month supply of any sort of food a human can eat, and the ships that'll be coming in until one of our plight can get to Terra won't bring enough to keep us going. We need the farms and livestock and the animal tissue culture plants that can crook, and the farms that crank and on the plateau back of Skilk, and we need peace and native labor to work them. Nobody seemed to have anything to say after that for a while. Then Kovini suggested that the next ship was due in from Niflheim in three months, and that it could be used to evacuate all the Terrans on Uller. And I'll personally shoot any able-bodied Terran who tries to board that ship, Von Schlickden promised, get this through your heads, all of you. We are going to break this rebellion, and we are going to hold Uller for the company and the Terran Federation. He looked around him. Now get back to work, all of you. He told the group that had formed around him in Kovini. Miss Quinton, you just heard me order my adjutant, Colonel O'Leary, on detached duty to Crink. I want you to take over for him. You'll have rank and authority as Colonel for the duration of this war. She was thunderstruck. But I know absolutely nothing about military matters. There must be a hundred people here who are better qualified than I am. There are, and they all have jobs, and I'd have to find replacements for them and replacements for the replacements. You won't leave any vacancy to be filled. And you'll learn, fast enough, he went over to the situation map again and looked at the arrangement of pink and white pills. First of all, I want you to call Jarman at the military airport and have an air jeep and driver sent around here for me. I'm going up and have a look around. Barney, keep the show going while I'm out, and tell Colonel Quinton what it's all about. Chapter 9 Don't Push Them Anywhere Put Them Back in the Bottle He looked at his watch and stood for a moment, pumping the stale air and tobacco smoke of the telecast station out of his lungs as the light air jeep let down into the street. O-1-15, two hours and a half since the mutiny at the native troops barracks had broken out. The company reservation was still ablaze with lights, and over the roof of the hospital and dispensary and test lab, he could see the glare of the burning barracks. There was more fire glare to the south, in the direction of the mine equipment park and the mine labor camp, and from that direction the bulk of the firing was to be heard. The driver, a young lieutenant, who seemed to be a predominantly Malayan and Polynesian blood, slid back the dirt glass canopy for him to climb in, then snapped it into place when he had strapped himself into his seat. Can you handle the armament, sir? he asked. Bunch looked and nodded approvingly. Not a very flattering question, but the boy was right to make sure before they started out. I've done it once or twice, he understated. Let's go. I want to look at what's going on down at the equipment park and the labor camp first. They lifted up. The driver turning the nose of the air jeep in the direction of the flames and explosions and magnesium lights to the south and tapping his booster button gently. The vehicle shot forward and came floating in over the scene of the fighting. The situation map at the improvised headquarters had shown a mixture of pink and white pills in the mine equipment park. Something was going to have to be done about the lagoon, correcting it, for the area was entirely in the hands of loyal company troops, and the mob of laborers and mutinous soldiers had been pushed back into the temporary camp where the workers had been gathering to await transportation to the Arctic. As he feared, the riding workers, many of whom were trained to handle contragravity equipment, had managed to lift up a number of dump trucks and power shovels and bulldozers, intending to use them as improvised air tanks, but Jarman's combat cars had gotten on the job promptly and all of these had been shot down and relying in wreckage, mostly among the rows of parked mining equipment. From the labor camp, a surprising volume of fire was being directed against the attack which had already started from the retaken equipment park. This was just another evidence of the failure of intelligence in the constabulary and consequently of himself to anticipate the brewing storm. There was, of course, practically no chance of keeping oolorans from having native weapons, swords, knives, even bows and air rifles. And a certain number of volumed-made trade-quality automatic pistols could be expected. But most of the fire was coming from military rifles, and now and then he could see the furnace-black clash of a recoilless rifle or a bazooka, or the steady flicker of a machine-gun. Even if a few of these weapons had been brought from the barracks by retreating tenth inventory or fifth cavalry mutineers, they were still too many. Hovering above the fighting, aloof from it, he saw six long troop carriers land in disgorged cragen rifles who had been released by the liquidation of resistance at the native troops barracks. A little later, two air tanks floated in, and then two more, going off contra-gravity and lumbering on treads to fire their ninety-millimeter rifles. At the same time, combat cars swooped in, banging away with their lighter autocannon and launching rockets. The titanium prefab huts set up to house the laborers intended to be taken north with them for their stay on the polar desert were simply wiped away. Among the wreckage, resistance was being blown out like the lights of a candelabrum. Push the white pills out, girls. He thought, don't push them anywhere. Put them back in the bottle. This year, there wouldn't be any hunting done at the North Pole. Next year, the stockholders will be bitching about their dividend checks, and a lot of new machine operators are going to have to be trained for next year's mining, if there is any mining next year. He took up the hand-phone and called HQ. Bunch looked in. What's the wavelength of the officer in command of the equipment park? A voice at the telecast station furnished it. He punched it out. Bunch looked in right overhead. That you, Major Falkenberg? Nice going, Major. How are your casualties? Not too bad. Twenty or thirty Kragans and loyal Skilkans at eight Terrans killed. About as many wounded. Pretty good, considering what you're running into. Get many of your Kragans mounted on those hipposores? About a hundred. A lot of sores got shot while we were leading them out from the stables. While I can see geeks streaming away from the labor camp out the south end, going in the direction of the river, use what calvary you have on them and what contra-gravity you can spare, I'll drop a few flares to show their position and direction. Anticipating him, the driver turned the air jeep and started toward the dry Hork River. Bunch looked and nodded approval and told him to release flares over the fugitives. Right, Falkenberg replied. I'll get on it at once, General. And start moving that mine equipment up into the company area. Some we can put in the air. The rest we can use to build barricades. None of it do we want the geeks getting holed of and the equipment parks outside our practical perimeter. I'll send people to help you move it. No need to do that, sir. I have about a hundred and fifty loyal noath-oolerans, foremen, technicians, overseers, who can handle it. All right. Use your own judgment. Put the stuff back of the native troops' barracks and between the power plant and the company office buildings and anywhere else you can. The lieutenant nudged him and pushed a couple of buttons on the dashboard. Here go the flares now. Immediately a couple of air jeeps pounced in to strife the fleeing enemy. Somebody must have already been issuing orders on another wavelength. A number of kragans riding hipposaws were galloping into the light of the flares. Now let's have a look at the native barracks and the maintenance yards, he said, and then we'll make a circuit around the reservation about two or three miles out. I'm not happy about where Furka's army is. The driver looked at him. I've been worrying about that too, sir. He said, I can't understand why he hasn't jumped us already. I know it takes time to get one of these geek armies on the road, but he's hoping our native troops in the mine labors will be able to wipe us out themselves like Licton said. For the timidity and stupidity of our enemies, Allah make us truly thankful. Amen. Something no commander should depend on, but be glad when it happens. If Furka'd had had a couple of regiments on hand outside the reservation to jump us as soon as the 10th and the Zergs mutinied, he could have swamped in twenty minutes and will all have had our throats cut by now. There was nothing going on in the area between the native barracks and the mountains except some sporadic firing as small patrols of kragans clashed with clumps of fleeing mutineers. All the barracks, even those of the rifles, were burning. The red and yellow danger lights around the power plant and the waterworks and the explosives magazines were still on. Most of the floodlights were still on and there was still some fighting around the maintenance yard. It looked as though the survivors of the 10th NUNI were in a few small pockets which were being squeezed out. There was nothing at all going on north of the reservation. The countryside by day a checkerboard of walled fields and small villages was dark, except for a few dim lights here and there where the occupants of some farmhouse had been awakened by the noise of battle. The air-jeep dropped lower and the driver slid open the window beside him. Von Schlichten could hear the grunts and snorts and squawks of farm animals similarly aroused. Then, two miles east of the reservation, he caught a new sound, the flowing river-like murmur of something vast on the move. Hear that, Lieutenant? He asked. Head for it about a hundred thousand feet. When we're directly above it, let go some flares. Yes, sir. The younger man had lowered his voice to a whisper. That's Geek, headed for the reservation. Maybe for Cad's army, Von Schlichten thought aloud, or maybe a city mob. Not quite noisy enough for a mob, is it, sir? A tired mob, Von Schlichten told him. They'd start out on a run yelling, ZINNIN, SUDABIT! By the time they got across the bridges to this side of the river, they'd be winded. They'd stop for a blow, and then they'd settle down to steady slog and to save their wind. Sometime a mob like that's worse than a fresh mob. They get stubborn. They act more deliberately. The noises were going clearer, louder. He picked up the phone and punched the wavelength of the military airport. Von Schlichten. By compliments to Colonel Jarman, tell him there's a geek mob, or possibly for Cad's regulars, on the main highway from Skilk, two miles east of the reservation. Get some combat contragravity over here at once. We'll light them up for you, and tell Colonel Jarman to start flying patrols up and down along the Horwick River. This may not be the only gang that's coming out to see us. The sounds were directly below now, the scuffing of horny, sold feet on the dirt road, the clink and rattle of slung weapons, the clicking and squeaking of oolour and voices. The lieutenant said, Here go the flares, sir. Von Schlichten shut his eyes and opened them slowly. The driver, upon releasing the flares, had nosed up, banked, turned, and was coming in again, down the road toward the advancing column. Von Schlichten peered into his all-armament sight, his foot on the machine-gun pedal, and his fingers on the rocket buttons. The highway below was jammed with geeks, and they were all stopped, dead, and staring upward, as though hypnotized by the lights. A second later they had recovered and were shooting, not at the air-jeep, but at the four globes of blazing magnesium. Then he had the close-packed mass of non-humanity in his sights. He tramped the pedal and began punching buttons. He still had four rockets left by the time the mob was behind him. All right, let's take another pass at them. Same direction. The driver put the air-japes into a quick loop, and came out of it in front of the mob, who now had their backs turned, and were staring in the direction in which they had last seen the vehicle. Again Von Schlichten plowed them with rockets and harrowed them with his guns. Some of the skilkens were trying to get over the hyphens as they needed their side of the road. Really, stockades of petrified tree-trunks. Others were firing, and this time they were shooting at the air-jeep. It took one hit from a heavy shallower rifle, and immediately the driver banged and turned away from the road. Damn it! Why did you do that, Von Schlichten demanded, lifting his foot from the gun-pedal? Are you afraid of the kind of pop-guns these geeks are using? I'm not afraid to risk my vehicle or myself, so the lieutenant replied, with the extreme formality of a very junior officer chewing out a very senior one. I am, however, afraid to risk my passenger. Generals are not expendable, sir. Neither are they issued for use as clay pigeons. He was right, of course. Von Schlichten admitted it. I'm too old to play cowboy like this, he said. Back to the reservation, telecast station. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw eight or ten more flares of light, and the ground flashes of exploding shells and rockets. The air above the road was sparkling with gun-flames. German mess have had some contra-gravity ready to be sent off on the instant. While he had been out, somebody had gotten a TV pick-up mounted on a contra-gravity lifter and run up to two thousand feet, on the end of a steel-tuff Tinselin mooring line. The big circular screen was lit, showing the whole company reservation, with the surrounding countryside foreshortened by perspective to the distant lines of skilk. The map had been taken up from the floor, and a big terrain board had been brought in from the chief engineer's office and set up in its place. In front of the screen, Paula Quinton, Barney Mordkovitz, Colonel Ching Lee, and conspicuously silent Jules Covini, set drinking coffee and munching sandwiches. Half a dozen terrains of both sexes were working furiously to get the markers which replaced the pink and white pills placed on the board, and one of Captain Inés Malavez's non-coms with a headset was getting combat reports directly from the switchboard. Everything was clicking like well-oiled machinery. On the TV screen, the residency area was ablaze with light, and so were the ship docks, the airport and spaceport, the shops, and the maintenance yard. On the terrain board, the ladder was now marked as completely in company hands. The ruins of the native troop barracks were still burning, and there was a twinkle of orange-red here and there among the ruins of labor camp. Much of the equipment for the polar mines had already been shifted in defensible ground. The rest of the circle was dark except for the distant lines of skilk, where the nuclear power plant was apparently still functioning in native hands. Then, without warning, a spot of white light blazed into being southeast of the company area and southwest of skilk, followed by another, and another. Instantly, Von Schluhting glanced up at the row of smaller screens, and on one of them saw the view as picked up by a patrolling air jeep. The army of King Friket of Skilk had finally put in its appearance, coming in two columns, one southward from skilk, and the other northward along the west bank of the dry river. The former had crossed over and joined the ladder about three miles south of the reservation. The scene in the screen was similar to the one he had himself witnessed through his armament sight. The skilk and regulars had been marching in formation, some on the road, and some along parallel lanes and paths. They had the look of trained and disciplined troops, but they had made the same mistake as the rabble that had been shot up on the north side of the reservation. Unused to attack from the air, they had all halted in place and were gaping open-mouthed, their opal teeth gleaming in the white flare light. However, before the air-card passed over them, the lead company of one regiment, armed with Taren rifles, had begun firing. In the big screen it could be seen that Colonel Jarman had thrown most of his available contragravity at them, including the combat cars that had already started to form the second wave of the attack on the mob to the north. Other flares bloomed in the darkness, and the fiery trails of rockets curved downward to end, and yellow flashes on the ground. The air-jeep with the pick-up circled back, the troops on the road, and in the adjoining fields had broken. The former were caught between the fences which made Ulaan Road such death traps when under air attack. The latter had dispersed and were running away individually and by squads. At first it looked like a panic, but it could see officer signaling to the larger groups of fugitives to open out, apparently directing the flight. By this time there were ten or twelve combat cars and about twenty air-jeeps at work. In the moving view from the pick-up jeep he saw what looked like a ninety-millimeter rocket land in the middle of a company that was still trying to defend itself with small arms fire on the road, wiping out about half of them. Make the most of it, boys, Barney Mordecavitz's mouth full of a sandwich was saying, Heave it to him, you won't get another chance like that at those buggers. Why not? Colonel Paula Quinton wanted to know. Her military education was progressing, but it still had a few gaps to fill in. The next time their air struck they won't stay bunched, Mordecavitz replied. A lot of them didn't stay bunched this time, if you noticed, and they'll keep out from between the fences. On the large screen a quick secession of gun flashes leaped up from the direction of the Hook River. Shells began bursting over the scene of the attack. The screen turned to the pick-up on the air-jeep went dead. In the big screen there was a twinkling of falling fire. Almost at once thirty or forty rocket trails converged on the gun position, and for a moment explosions burned like a bonfire. They had a seventy-five millimeter at the rear of the column, somebody called from the big switchboard. Lieutenant Kelligan's jeep was hit. Lieutenant Vermas is cutting in his pick-up on the same wavelength. The small screen lighted again. In the big screen a cluster of magnesium lights appeared above where the Skilken gun had been. In the small screen there was a stubble grain field, pocked with craters, and the bodies of fifteen or twenty natives all rather badly mangled. An overturned and apparently destroyed seventy-five millimeter gun lay on its side. Five or six fairly large fires had broken out by this time around the point of attack. Funch looked and nodded approvingly. I was wondering how long it would take somebody to think of that. He said, granaries and forged stacks on the side of those farms. They'll burn for half an hour at least. He looked at his watch, and by that time it'll be daylight. As far as we know that was the only seventy-five millimeter gun Furched had, Colonel Chingley said. He had at least six, possibly ten, forty millimeters. It's a wonder we haven't seen anything of them. Well, there's no way of being sure, Jules Kamini said, but I have an idea. They're all around the palace. Furched knows about how much contragravity we have. He's probably wondering why we aren't bombing him now. He doesn't know we've sold the palace to King Junkfek for an army, Funch looked and said. And that reminds me, how much contragravity could Furched scrape together for an attack on us? I've been expecting a geek Luftwaffe over here at any moment. Colonel Chingley studied the smoking tip of a cigarette for a moment. Well, Furched owns, personally, three ten-passenger air-cars, a thing like a troop carrier that he transports some of his courtiers around in, four air-jeeps armed with a pair of fifteen millimeter machine guns apiece, and two big lorries. There are possibly two hundred vehicles of all types and skilk in the country round, but some of them are in the hands of natives friendly to ask and or hostile to forkhead. I can get the exact figures from the Constabulary Office at Company House. That's close enough, Funch looked and told him. And they'll be oodles of thermoconcentrate fuel and blasting explosives. Colonel Quintin, suppose you call Ed Wallingsby, the chief engineer, right away, have him commission Colonel. Tell him to get to work making this place secure against air attack. Tell him to consult with Colonel Jarman. Tell him to get those geeks. LeBet has pinned in the repair docks at the airport and used them to dig slit trenches and fill sandbags and so on. He can use Craig and limited duty wounded to guard them. Mr. Carini, you can begin setting up something in the way of an ARP organization. You'll have to get along on what nobody else wants. You will also consult with Colonel Jarman and with Colonel Wallingsby. Better get started on it now. Just think of everything around here that could go wrong in case of an air attack and try to do something about it in advance. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 If Uler Uprising This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Akshia Wood. Uler Uprising by H. Meme Piper. Chapter 10 The Geek Luftwaffe and the Craig and Air Lift. At O-245 an attack developed on the northwestern corner of the reservation in the direction of the explosives' magazines. It turned out to be relatively trivial. Remnants of the mob that had been broken up by air attack on the road had gotten together and were making rushes in small bands, keeping well spread out. Beating them off took considerable ammunition, but it was accomplished with negligible casualties to the defenders. They finally stopped coming around daylight. In the meantime, the mysticly's mizongui called from Konkruk, appearing in the screen, with his left arm in a freshly white sling. What the hell have you been doing to yourself, Unschlickden wanted to know? Crossbow Bolt about half an hour ago? A couple of inches lower and acting Brigadier General Colbert would have been talking to you now instead of me. Lucky it didn't have a nitro capsule on the end. How are you making out? Have Concad's people started coming in yet? Oh yes, about six hundred of them have gotten in already in the damnest collection of vehicles you ever saw. Concad must be using every scrap of contragravity he has. It's a regular airborne Dunkirk in reverse. Concad sent word that he's coming here in person, as soon as he has things organized at his place. And the geeks have scraped together an air force of their own, farm lorries, air cars, that sort of thing, and they're using them to bomb us here and at the mainland farm, mostly with nitroglycerin. We've shot down about twenty of them, but they're still coming. They tried a boat attack across the channel. That's how I got this. We've been doing some bombing ourselves. We made a down payment for Eric Blount and Hendrick Lemoine. Took a fifty ton tank off a fuel lorry, fitted it with a detonator, filled it with thermoconcentrate, and ferried it over on the Elmorene and dumped it on the Keegarken Embassy. Must have landed in the middle of the central court, in about fifteen seconds flames were coming out every window in the place. His face became less jovial. We had something pretty bad happen here, too, he said. That concrute fincibles rival of Prince Jayzord's mutiny, along with the others. They got into the hospital and butchered everybody in the place. Patience and staff. The Kragans got there too late to save anybody, but they wiped out the fincibles. Jayzord himself was the only one they took alive, and he didn't stay that way very long. How are you making out with your civil administration crowd? Mizongui grimaced. I haven't had to put any of them under actual arrest so far, though we've had to keep Berman away from the communications equipment by force. He wanted to call you up and chew you out for not evacuating everybody in the north to concrute. Is he crazy? No, just scared. He says you're going to get everybody on Ular massacred by detail when you could save concrute by bringing them all here. You tell him I'm going to hold this planet, not just one city. Tell him I have a sense of my duty to the company and its stockholders if he hasn't, put it in those terms, and he may understand you. Yes, I'll try that out on Meierstein too. He's in a hell of a state about the losses a banking cartel are taking on this deal. Well, I'll call you when there's anything new. By 03.30 it was daylight. The attacks against the northwest corner of the perimeter stopped entirely. Wallingsby had the 300 old skilken laborers at work. He had gathered up all the tarpaulin he could find, and had the two sewing machines in the tentmaker shop running on sandbags. Jules Kavini, to Von Schlichten's agreeable surprise, had taken hold of his ARP assignment and was doing an efficient job in organizing for firefighting, damage control, and first aid. Colonel Jarman had his air jeeps and combat cars working in ever-widening circles over the countryside, shooting up everything in sight that even looked like contra-gravity equipment. Some of these patrols had to be recalled around 1030 when sporadic nuisance sniping began from the side of the mountain to the west. And, along with everything else, Paula Quinton managed, along with her other work, to get a complete digest prepared of the situation elsewhere in the terrain-occupied parts of the planet. The situation at Konkruk was brightening steadily. The second wave of Konkads improvised airlift, reinforced by contra-gravity from Konkruk, had come in. There were now close to 2,000 fresh cragons on Gongrok Island, and the mainland farms, Konkhad himself with them. The Aldebaran had reached Konkads' town and was loading another 1,000 cragons. There was nothing more from Kigark. A message from Colonel McKinnon had come in at dawn to the effect that the geeks had penetrated his last defenses and that he was about to blow up the residency thereafter Kigark went off the air. By 0730 the northern star had landed the regiment-murderers, armed with first-quality Terran infantry rifles and a few machine guns and bazookas at the palace at Kringk, and by 0845 she had returned with another regiment, the geel-feeders. The three-street lane connecting the palace and the residency had been widened to six and then to eight. Guido Karmacini's at Grank was still at uneasy peace with King Ukerk, who was still undecided whether the rebels or the company were going to be eventual victors, and afraid to take any irrevocable steps in either direction. Eight men and four women, the survivors of a trading station on the eastern shore of Tekad Sea, reached Konkruk in Ellori, another trading station on the south shore, reported by telecasts, that the natives there had refused to rise against them, and had crucified five of Rakhid's disciples who had come among them preaching Zinid's Sudebit. At 1100, Paolo Quintin and Barney Mordkebits virtually ordered him to get some sleep. He went to his quarters at Company House, down to Spaceship captain-sized drink of honey rum, and slept until 1600. As he dressed and shaved, he could hear through the open window the slow sputter of small arms fire, punctuated by the occasional a 40-millimeter autocannon or the hammering of a machine gun. Returning to his command post at the telecast station, the terrain board showed that the perimeter of defense had been pushed out in a bulge at the northwest corner. The TV screen pictured a crude, breastwork of petrified tree trunks, sandbags, mining machinery, packing cases in odds and ends, upon which Wallingsby's native laborers were working under guard, while the skirmish line, if cragons, had been thrown out another four or five hundred yards, and were exchanging pot-shots with skylkins on the gullied hillside. Where's Colonel Quintin, he asked, she ought to be taking a turn in the sack now. She's taken one. Major Falkenberg, who had commanded the action at the native troop barracks and the labor camp, the night before, told him. General Mordkebits chased her off to bat a couple of hours ago, called me in to take her place, and then went out to replace me. Colonel Gillifords in the hospital got hit about thirteen hundred. They're afraid he's going to lose a leg. That's a bloody shame. He pointed to the northwest corner of the perimeter on the screen. Whose idea was that, he asked? It's a good one. I ought to have thought of it myself. You knew Adjutant? Falkenberg grinned. She asked somebody what those big domes up there were. When they told her there were ten thousand tons of thermoconcentrate, five thousand tons of blasting explosives, and five tons of plutonium under them, she damn near fainted, and then she ordered that right away. More reports came in. The entire garrison of the small residency at Pork, the most northern of the eastern shore-free cities, had arrived at Concadstown in 200-foot contragravity scows and five air-cars. Two of the air-cars arrived half an hour behind the rest of the refugee flotilla, having turned off at Kegark to pay their respects to King Orgzild. They reported to Kegark residency in ruins. At central buildings vanished in a huge crater. The Jan Smuts and the Christian DeWitt were still in the company docks, both apparently damaged by the blast, which had destroyed the residency. One of the air-cars had rocketed and machine-gunned some Kegarkans who appeared to be trying to repair them. The other blew up King Orgild's nitroglycerin plant. Von Schlichten called Concroek and ordered a bombing mission against Kegark organized to make sure the two ships stayed out of service. The northern star was still bringing loyal troops into Crank. King Johnkvenk, whom Von Schlichten called, was highly elated. We are killing traitors wherever we find them, he exalted. The city is yellow with their blood. Their heads are piled everywhere. How is it with you at Skilk? We have killed many also, Von Schlichten boasted, and tonight we will kill more. We are preparing bombs of great destruction, which we will rain down upon Skilk until there is not one stone left up on an ether, or one infant of a day's age left alive. Johnkvenk reacted as he was intended to. Oh, no, General, don't do all that, he exclaimed. You promised me that I should have Skilk on the word of a Terran. Are you going to give me a city of ruins and corpses? Ruins are no good to anybody, and I am not a gill to eat corpses. Von Schlichten shrugged. When you are strong, you can flog your enemies with a whip. When you are weak, all you can do is kill them. If I had five thousand more troops here, oh, I will send troops as soon as I can, Johnkvenk hastened to promise. All my best regiments, the murderers, the gill-feeders, the corpse-reapers, the devastators, the fear-makers. But now that we have stopped this sinful rebellion here, I can't take chances that it will break out again as soon as I strip the city of troops. Von Schlichten nodded. Johnkvenk's argument made sense. He would have taken a similar position himself. Well, get as many as you can over here as soon as possible, he said. We'll try to do as little damage to Skilk as we can, but... At 1830 Paula joined him for her breakfast, while he sat in front of the big screen eating his dinner. There had been light ground action along the southern end of the perimeter, King Ferkhead's regulars, reinforced by Zerk tribesmen and levies of townspeople, all of whom seemed to have firearms, were filtering in through the ruins of the labor camp and the wreckage of the equipment park, and there was renewed sniping from the mountainside. The long afternoon of the northern autumn drag dawn, finally at 2200 the sun set, and it was not fully dark for another hour. For some time there was an ominous quiet, and then, at 0030, the enemy began attacking in force, driving herds of livestock, lumbering six-legged brutes, spelled bred by the North Ulurans for food, to test the defenses for electrified wires and land mines. Most of these were shot down or blown up, but a few got as far as the wire, which, by now, had been strung and electrified completely around the perimeter. Behind them came parties of stilkin regulars with long-handled insulated cutters, a couple of cuts were made in the wire, and a section of it went dead. The line at this point had been rather thinly held, the defenders immediately called for air support, and German ordered 15 of his remaining 20 air jeeps and five combat cars into the fight. No sooner were they committed, then the radar on the commercial airport control tower picked up air vehicles approaching from the north, and the air raid sirens began howling and the searchlights went on. As a protection from the sudden fury of the summer and winter gales, the buildings were all low, thick walled, and provided with steel doors and window shutters, which were electrically operated and centrally controlled. These slammed shut in every occupied building. The contragravity which had been sent to support the ground defense at the south side of the reservation turned to meet this new threat and everything else available, including the four heavy air tanks lifted up. Meanwhile, guns began firing from the ground and from rooftops. There had been four air cars, ordinary passenger vehicles, equipped with machine guns on improvised mounts, and ten big lorries converted into bombers in the attack. All the lorries and all but one of the makeshift fighter escorts were shot down, but not before explosive and thermoconcentrate bombs were dumped all over the place. One lorry emptied its load of thermoconcentrate bombs on the control building of the airport, starting a raging fire and putting the radar out of commission. A repair shop at the Ordnance Depot was set on fire, and a quantity of small arms and machine gun ammunition piled outside for transportation to the outer defenses blew up. An explosive bomb landed on the roof of the building between company house and the telecast station, blowing a hole in the roof and demolishing the upper floor, and another load of thermoconcentrate missing the power plant set fire to the dry grass between it and the ruins of the native troops' barracks. Before the air attack had been broken up, the soldiers of King Friket and their irregular supporters were swarming through the dead section of wire. They had four or five big farm tractors, nuclear powered, but unequipped with contragravity generators, which they were using like ground tanks of the first century. This attack penetrated to the middle of the reservation before it was stopped, and the attackers either killed or driven out. For the first time since daybreak, the red and yellow lights came on around the power plant. As soon as the combined air and ground attack was beaten off, Punch looked and ordered all his available contragravity up, flying patrols around the reservation, and retaliatory bombing missions against Skilk, and began bombarding the city with his 90 millimeter guns. A number of fires broke out, and about 0200, a huge expanding globe of orange red flames, soared up from the city. There goes for Ked's thermoconcentrate stock, he said to Paula, who was stranding beside him in front of the screen. Half an hour later, he discovered that he had been overly optimistic. Much of the enemy supply of Tyrant thermoconcentrate had been destroyed, but enough remained to pelt the reservation in the company buildings within Cendiaries when a second and more severe air attack developed, consisting of 40 or 50 makeshift lorry bombers and 15 air cars. The previous attack Punch looked and had viewed in the screen at the telecast station, it was his questionable good fortune to observe the second, one directly having been out inspecting the defenses around the ordnance depot at the time. Like the first, the second air attack was beaten off, or more exactly down. Most of the enemy contragravity was destroyed, at least two dozen vehicles crashed inside the reservation. As then the first instance, there was simultaneous ground attack from the southern side with a demonstration attack at the north side. For a while, Punch looked and found himself fighting hand to hand, first with his pistol, and then, when his ammunition was gone with a picked up rifle and bayonet, it was full daylight before the last of the attackers was either killed or driven out. Five minutes later, while he was reloading his pistol clips with salvaged cartridges, the northern star came bulking over the mountains from the west. End of Chapter 10 Recording by Acacia Wood Chapter 11 of Ulur Uprising This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Acacia Wood Ulur Uprising by H. B. Piper Chapter 11 of Prinstoms Which Have Been Won by Conquest Holstering his pistol, he raced for the telecast station to receive a call from a Colonel Khalid Ibn Talal, a Zanzibar Arab, aboard the approaching ship. I have one of Jonkfang's regiments, the Geofeders, armed with Terran 9mm rifles and a few bazookas. I have a company of our Zirks with their mounts and a battalion of the south in UNI. I also have four 90mm guns, Terran Man, to be reported. What's the situation, General, and where do you want me to land? Bonch looked and described the situation succinctly in an ancient and unprintable military cliche. Try landing south of the reservation, a little west of the ruins of the labor camp, he advised. The bulk of Frikad's army is in that section, and I want them run out as soon as possible. We'll give you all the contra-gravity and fire support we can. The northern star let down slowly, firing her guns and dropping bombs, as she descended, rifle fires spurred it from all her lower-deck portholes. There was cheering, human and Ullaran from inside the battered defense perimeter, combat cars, air jeeps, and improvised bombers lifted out to strafe the silkens on the ground, and the four air tanks moved out to take position and open fire with their 90mm, helping Flesh King Frikad's regulars and auxiliaries out of the gullies and ruins, and drive them south along the mountain, away from where the ship would land, and also away from the city of Skilk. The northern stars set down quickly, and troops in artillery began to be unloaded, joining in the fighting. It was five hundred miles to Kringk, three hours after lifting out the northern star was back again, with two more of King Johnk Bank's infantry regiments, and by thirteen hundred, when the fourth load arrived from Kringk, the fighting was entirely on the eastern bank of the Dry Huark River. This last contingent of reinforcements was landed in the eastern suburbs of Skilk, and began fighting their way into the city from the rear. It was evident, however, that the pacification of Skilk could not be accomplished as rapidly as Von Schlichten wished. Street fighting against a determined enemy is notoriously slow work, and he decided to risk the northern star in an attack against the palace itself, and over the objections of Paula Quinton, Jules Kaviney, and Barney Mordkovitz to leave the attack in person. Inside the city he found that the Zerk Calvary from Kringk had the rest up one of the broader streets to within a thousand yards of the palace, and supported by infantry, contra-gravity, and a couple of air tanks, were pounding and hacking at a mass of Skilkens, whose uniform lack of costume prevented distinguishing between soldiery and townsfolk. Very few of these, you observe, seemed to be using firearms. With his glasses he could see them shooting with long northern air rifles, and a few to cod sea crossbows. Either weapon would shoot clear through a Terran, or halfway through an Ularen at fifty yards, but at over two hundred they were almost harmless. There were a few fires still burning from the babarmen of the night before, Ularen, and particularly north Ularen cities, did not burn well, and the blaze which had consumed the bulk of Ferkhead's stock of thermoconcentrate fuel had long ago burned out, leaving an area of six or eight blocks blackened and lifeless. The ship let down, while the six combat cars which had accompanied her, buzzed the palace roof, strafing it to keep it clear, and the Kragens aboard fired with their rifles. She came to rest on seven-eighths weight reduction, and even before the gangplanes were run out, the Kragens were dropping to the flat roof, running to stair-head penthouses, and tossing grenades into them. The taking of the palace was a gruesome business, knowing exactly how much mercy they would have shown had they been storming in the residency. Ferkhead soldiers and curtees fought desperately and had to be exterminated floor by floor, room by room, hallway by hallway. There were some attempted escape from the ground floors, Von Schlichten and his Kragens fought their way down from above, but the northern star and her escort of combat cars and air-jeeps bombed and machine-gunned and rocketed the fugitives from above, and the loyal Zurt cavalry bursting through the mob came up shooting and lancing. By this time an air-car fitted with a sound amplifier with circling overhead, while a loyal made-up officer of the sixth NUNI shouted offers of quarter and orders to the troops to spare any who surrendered. Driving down from above, Von Schlichten and his Kragens slithered over floors increasingly greasy with yellow oolor and blood. He had picked up a broadsword at the foot of the first stairway down, a little later he tossed it aside in favor of another, better balanced and with a better guard. There was a furious battle at the doorway of the throne room, finally climbing over the bodies of their own dead and the enemies, they were inside. Here there was no question of quarter whatever, at least as long as Ferkhead lived, north oolor and nobles did not surrender under the eyes of their king, and north oolor and kings did not surrender their thrones alive. There is also a tradition of which Von Schlichten was mindful that a king must only be killed by his conqueror in personal combat with steel. With a wedge of Kragen bayonets around him and the picked up broadsword in his hand he fought his way to the throne, where Ferkhead waited, a sword in one of his upper hands, his spear of state in the other, and a dagger in each lower hand. With his left hand Von Schlichten detached the bayonet from the rifle of one of his followers and went forward, trying not to think of the absurdity of a man of the sixth century A.E., the representative of a civilized chartered company, dueling to the death with swords, with a barbarian king for a throne he had promised to another barbarian, or of what could happen on oolor if he allowed this four armed monstrosity to kill him. It was not as bad as it looked, however. The ornate spear of state, in spite of its long cruel looking blade, was not an especially good combat weapon, at least for one hand, and Ferkhead seemed confused by the very abundance of his armament. After a few slashes and jabs Von Schlichten knocked the unyieldy thing from his opponent's hand. This raised a fearful ululation from the skilken ability who would stop fighting to watch the duel. Evidently it was the very worst sort of a bad omen. Ferkhead, seemingly relieved to be disencumbered of the thing, caught his sword in both hands and aimed a roundhouse swing at Von Schlichten's head. Von Schlichten dodged, crippled one of Ferkhead's lower hands with a quick slash, and lunged at the royal belly. Ferkhead used his remaining dagger to parry, backed a step closer to his throne, and took another swing with the sword, which Von Schlichten parried on the bayonet in his left hand. Then, backing, he slashed at the inside of Ferkhead's leg with a thousand-year-old coup de jean arc. Ferkhead, unable to support the weight of his dense tissueed body on one leg, stumbled. Von Schlichten ran him neatly through the breast or the sword, and through the throat with the bayonet. There was a silence in the throne room for an instant. And then, with a horrible collective shriek, the skilkins threw down their weapons. One of Von Schlichten's cragons slung his rifle and picked up the spear of state with all four hands, taking his post ceremoniously behind the victor. A couple of others dragged the body of Ferkhead to the edge of the dais, and one of them drew his leaf-shaped short sword and beheaded it. At mid-afternoon Von Schlichten was on the roof of the palace, holding the spear of state with Ferkhead's head impaled on the point while a Taren technician aimed an audiovisual recorder. This, he said, with a geek-speaker in his mouth is King Ferkhead's spear of state, and here upon it is King Ferkhead's head. Two days ago Ferkhead was at peace with a company, and Ferkhead was king and skilk. If he had not dared raise his feeble hand against the might of the Uller Company, he would still be alive, and his spear would still be borne behind him. So must all those who rise against the company perish. Cut. The camera stopped. A kraken came forward and took the spear of state with its grizzly burden, carrying it to a nearby wall and leaning it up like a piece of stage property no longer required for this scene but needed for the next. Von Schlichten took out his geek-speaker, wiped and pouched it, and took a cigarette case from his pocket. While this is the limit, Paula Quinton, who had come up during the filming of the scene, exploded. I thought you had to kill him yourself in order to encourage your soldiers. I didn't think you wanted to make a movie of it to show your friends. I'm through. You can find yourself a new adjutant. Von Schlichten tapped the cigarette on the golden platinum case and stared at her through his monocle. "'You can't resign,' he told her. Resignations of officers are not being accepted until the end of hostilities. In any case, I shouldn't care to have you go. You've been the best adjutant. Hadiyoshi O'Leary not accepted. I ever had. Sit down, Colonel,' he let the cigarette. Your political-military education still needs a little filling in." At rank we have two ships. One is the Northern Lights, sister ship of the Northern Star. The other is the cruiser Procyon, the only real warship on Uller, with a main battery of four 200 millimetre guns. How King Yorkirk was able to get control of those ships, I don't know, but there will be a board of inquiry and maybe a couple of courts-martial when things get stabilized to a point where we can afford such luxuries. As it is, we need those ships desperately, and as soon as he gets in I'm sending Hadiyoshi O'Leary to rank with the Northern Star in a load of kraken rifles to pry them loose. The auto-visual of which this is the last scene is going to be one of the crowbars he's going to use. Oh, I get it! Her eyes widened with pleasure at having finally caught on. She accepted the cigarette and the light one she looked and offered. Good old nerve and a crike. Yes. A little idea I adapted from my Nazi ancestors of 450 years ago. Hadiyoshi is going to treat King Yorkirk to a movie-show. Well, I bet he won't loosen up and release Procyon in Northern Lights and unblockade the rank residency after he sees that shot of Ferked's head leering at him off the point of that overgrana soggy. As I said, that's only the last scene, too. I've been having scene-shot all through this fight. Some of them are really horrifying. But why did you have to fight Ferked yourself? she asked. You took an awful chance with two hands to his fore. Not so awful, remember what I told you about the physical limitations of Ulren's? But I had to kill him myself with a sword, according to local custom that makes me King of Skilk. Why, Your Majesty! she rose in curtsied mockingly. But I thought you were going to make Junk Bank King of Skilk. He shook his head. Just by Saroi, he corrected. I'm handing the Spear of State down to him, not up to him. Ulren is my Vossel, and consequently as Vossel of the Company, and before long he won't be much more green-geither. That'll take a little longer. There'll have to be military missions and economic missions and trade agreements, and all the rest of it first. But he's on the way to becoming a puppet prince. Half an hour later a large and excessively ornate air-launch, specially built at the Cronkroek shipyards for King Junk Bank, was sighted coming over the mountains from the east. An escort of combat cars was sent to meet it, and a battalion of cragons, and the survivors of Ferked's court were drawn up on the palace roof. His Majesty Junk Bank, King of Crink, the former herald of King Ferked's court, now herald to King Carlos von Schlichten, shouted, banging on a brass shield with a flat of his sword, as Junk Bank descended from his launch, attended by a group of his nobles and his Spear of State, with Hadiocio Leary and Francesen Shapiro shepherding them. As the guests advanced across the roof, the herald banged again on his shield. His Majesty Carlos von Schlichten, which came out more or less as Karloch von Schlichten, King, by right of combat, of Skilk. Von Schlichten advanced to meet his fellow monarch, his own Spear of State, with Ferked's head still grinning from it, two paces behind him. Junk Bank stopped, his face contorted with Sorian rage. What is this? he demanded. You told me that I could be King of Skilk. Is this how a Terran keeps his word? A Terran's word is always good, Junk Bank, von Schlichten replied, omitting the titles, as was proper in one sovereign, addressing another. My word was that you should reign in Skilk, and my word stands, but these things must be done decently according to custom and law. I killed Ferked in single combat. Had I not done so, the Spear of Skilk would have been left lying, for any of the young of Ferked to pick up. Is that not the law? Junk Bank nodded grudgingly. It is the law, he admitted. Good. Now, since I killed Ferked in lawful manner, his Spear is mine, and what is mine I can give as I please. I now give you the Spear of Skilk, to carry in my name, as I promised. The Kraken who was carrying the ceremonial weapon tossed the head of Ferked from the point, another Kraken kicked it aside and advanced to wipe the Spearblade with a rag. Von Schlichten took the Spear and gave it to Junk Bank. This is not good, one of the Skilken nobles protested. He had a better right than any of the others to protest. He had, a few hours before, ridden in at the head of a company of his retainers to swear loyalty to the company. That you should rule over us, yes. You killed Ferked in single combat, and you are the soldier of the company, which is mighty, as all here have seen. But that this foreigner, to be given the Spear of Skilk, that is not good. Some of the others, emboldened by his example, were jabbering agreement. Listen all of you, Von Schlichten shouted. Here is no question of crink ruling over Skilk. Does it matter who holds the Spear of Skilk when he does so in my name? And King Junk Bank will be no foreigner. He will come and live among you, and later he will travel back and forth between Crink and Skilk, and he will leave the Spear of Crink and Crink, and the Spear of Skilk and Skilk, and in Skilk he will be Skilken. That seemed to satisfy everybody except Junk Bank, and he had it, wit enough, not to make an issue of it. He even had the Spear of Crink carried back aboard his launch out of sight, and when he accompanied Von Schlichten an hour later to see Hadiyoshi O'Leary off for rank, he had the Spear of Skilk carried behind him. When he was alone with Von Schlichten in a room that had been King Friked's bed-chamber, however, he exploded. What is all this foolishness which you promise these people in my name in which I must now carry out, that I am to leave the Spear of Skilk and Skilk, and the Spear of Crink and Crink, and come here to live? You wish to hold Skilk? Von Schlichten asked. I intend to hold Skilk. To begin with, there shall be a great killing here, a very great killing, of all those who advise that fool of a Friked to start this business, of those who gave shelter to the false prophet Rakid when he was here, of the faithless priests who gave ear to his abominable hearses, and allowed him to spew out his blasphemies in the temple, of those who sent spies to Crink to corrupt and pervert my soldiers, and nobles, of those who, all that is, as it should be, Von Schlichten agreed, except that it must be done quickly, and all at once, before the memories of these crimes fade from the minds of the people, and great care must be taken to kill only those who can be proven to be guilty of something, thus will be said that the justice of King John Bank is terrible to evildoers, but a protection and a shield to those who keep the peace and obey the laws, thus you will gain the name of being a wise and just king, and when the priests are to be killed it should be done under the direction of those other priests who were faithful to the gods, and whom King Phryk had drove out of their temples, and it must be done in the name of the gods, thus will you be esteemed a pious and not impious king. As to why you must be a skilkin and skilk, you heard the words of Flurg Nerk, and how the others agreed with him, it must not be allowed to seem that the city has come under the foreign rule. And you must not change the laws, unless the people petition you to do so, nor must you increase the taxes, and you must not confiscate the estates of those who are put to death, for the death of parents is always forgiven before the loss of patrimonies, and you should select certain skilkin nobles and become the father of their young, and above all you must leave none of the young of Phryket alive to raise rebellion against you later. Junkpik nodded, deeply impressed, by the gods Karlo Kvansil think this is wisdom, now it is to be seen why the likes of Phryket cannot prevail against you, or against the company as long as you are the company's upper sword arm. He tempted Von Schlington for a moment to disclaim originality for the principles he had just enunciated, even at the price of trying to pronounce the name of Nicolo Machiavelli with a geek speaker. On second thought, however, considerations of policy restrained him. If Junkpik ever heard of the prince, nothing would satisfy him short of an Ullarin translation, and Von Schlington would have been just about as happy over an Ullarin translation of a complete set of Beth-Cycle-Bombs specifications. End of Chapter 11, Recording by Acacia Wood